My biggest mistake: Diony McPherson, co-founder of Paperform

They’re now happily managing a $4.2 million business and four boys aged four and under, including eight-month-old twins. 

But when Diony McPherson and her husband Dean started Paperform as a side hustle in December 2016, their mission was to build a business that would give them time to raise a family — and the funds to afford a house in pricey Sydney.

Things got off to a promising start, with the pair able to quit their full-time jobs after six months to focus solely on Paperform, a platform which helps other businesses easily build interactive online forms.

But there was one rather large obstacle getting in their way: their mindsets.

The mistake

McPherson says the biggest error was assuming theirs could only ever be a lifestyle — rather than a growth — business.

“Even though our first kid wasn’t born until mid-2018, we were still in this mindset that ‘if we’re going to grow a family, then we can’t possibly grow a business’,” McPherson said. 

“Hustle culture” was everywhere, and because she and Dean valued their family, their community and a certain way of working, they believed they didn’t fit the mould as ‘business owners’. 

So for the first two years they toned down their ambitions, thinking...