Juggling kids, business and a cross-continental commute

For Irish entrepreneur Grainne Kelly, travelling with kids didn’t have to be a bum deal. Her inflatable fix has been such a success, she's now constantly on the road.

Anyone with young children knows that travelling as a family can be a harrowing experience, especially if you need to lug around bulky booster seats for the plane journey and rental car.

Borne out of her own necessity, Grainne Kelly, 45, developed the BubbleBum inflatable booster seat in 2009 that deflates to pack away neatly in your suitcase. It has proven so popular that today it can be found globally — including in Wal-Mart, Target, Toys R US and Amazon — and her business now generates $4 million in revenue a year.

“I’m lucky that I’ve been able to go to quite a few places at this point in my life,” Kelly, a former travel agent, says. “And I never thought my business would grow the way it has.”

But while getting the product into local stores proved straightforward for the Derry, Northern Ireland-based entrepreneur, going global, she recalls, was more of a challenge. To get traction, she focused on the US market and moved with her family for a year to Orlando, Florida to make inroads with retailers, open a US office and learn how Americans do business. Why the Sunshine State? It was warm there, she says.

Kelly now visits the US at least once a month for work, mostly to New Jersey, but also to Arkansas, where Walmart is headquartered. She also zips in and out for a day each week to London, which is just an hour-and-a half flight away from her home, and to other parts of the neighbouring UK.

A bum deal

Despite her previous job as a travel agent, Kelly isn’t a fan of cross-border travel. Up until this year, there was only one direct flight from the City of Derry Airport to America, and it went to Newark, New Jersey. She doesn’t like being away from her children for more than a couple of days, so she usually stays at a nearby hotel so she can quickly get through meetings and then head back home.

But her commute just got worse. Derry airport has recently cancelled its only US-bound flight, which means she needs to drive three-and-a-half hours to Dublin, fly to London and then fly to Newark. If she has to go somewhere else — like Minneapolis, where she meets with big box retailer Target — her trip takes even longer.

“That’s a lot of time wasted,” she says, adding that it will take her about 19 hours to get to Minneapolis. “Travel is a means to an end. I have to do it, but prefer not to.”

Defying jet lag

Part of the problem is jet lag, which she tries hard to fight. As soon as she gets on the plane, she puts herself on US time. She’ll try and sleep for five hours during the flight and she’ll only eat if it’s meal time in America. “You have to eat at the times people are eating at your destination,” she says.

A typical day for her would be landing at 18:30 local time and sleeping through the rest of the night. She’ll then wake up at 4:00, because her body is still on Irish time and five hours ahead of the East Coast. Kelly starts breakfast meetings at around 7:30 and lines up as many meetings as she can during the day, so she can be finished by 17:00.

One thing she won’t do? Dinner meetings. “If I’m going to be up at 4:00, I’m not going to be anyone’s friend come 22:00,” she says.

Bridging the cultural divide

Despite the jet lag, what she appreciates on arrival is American positivity. Culturally, she says, Ireland and America are quite different. For instance, people in the States ask her how she’s doing and expect a genuine response. In Ireland people respond to “How are you doing?” with another, “How are you doing?” No one responds to the question. “Americans say I’m really good, or I’ve been on vacation. These people are telling me how their day is and I love that,” she says.

Kelly also tries to tone down her thick Irish accent so she can be understood. Over the years she has Americanised it, to the point that her Irish friends don’t know what she’s saying, she laughs. And she has to remember to switch depending what country she’s in and even from one phone call to the next depending on who is on the line.

“We speak really quickly [in Ireland], so everything I say in America I say slowed down,” she says. For instance, when her kids asked for towels after a swim in the neighbourhood pool in Florida they were met with blank expressions. The vowel in towel sounds a lot different in an Irish accent than in American, she says. Kelly’s also learned over the last year that “lovely” is an odd word to say in America — a friend told her she should be saying “awesome” or “that’s really good,” instead.

Americans are also more confident than Irish people. “American children are conditioned to be super confident and they’re told nothing’s impossible,” she says. “We’re conditioned to undersell ourselves.” While her Irish humility can be an advantage in some cases, she’s also had to learn how to become more direct to get across what she wants. “I’ve had to lose the humility when talking about our business,” she says.

The food culture is also striking, she notes. American people eat huge meals with all the fixings, while in Ireland, the food is plain and usually organic, she explains. That’s why her favourite US eatery is Orlando’s Season 52, which serves organic food.

As for London, she’s not there long enough each day to integrate herself into the culture. Often, she’s there only for an hour’s meeting. The main difference, though, is the faster pace of life. “We’re more laid back than in London,” she says of the Irish.

What she misses?

The hardest part of being away is leaving her family, and her two boys, aged 16 and 13, who she keeps in touch with through text and free WhatsApp calls.

The second hardest part of being away? Not being able to drink hot water out of a pint glass. At home, her regular morning routine starts with pouring boiling water into a pint glass with lemon and lime. Then, she’ll have a two more.

“I know it sounds crazy, but I need to be well hydrated,” she says. “And in America, if I ask for a pint of water they’ll give me a look and then give me the water cold.”

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