"Some days your children are like little angels and sometimes they are little devils but you still love them at the end of the day," the mum-of-three and Dungog resident says with a laugh.

"There's no option but to make it work, my mindset really is that. I've done too much now and come too far to call it quits."

Yet Ms Hardie was literally on the verge of walking away from her business Spewy - which specialises in products that contain children's vomit and also double for toilet training purposes - just before the pandemic hit in 2019.

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Working from her then home in Maitland, she'd grown the business to a point but it had stagnated.

Desperate to try one last trick, she enrolled in an online, one-on-one business coaching program the week before the first lockdown, investing in a new laptop.

"I said said to my hubby, if this works then awesome we'll keep going, if it doesn't we'll call it a day and I will get a normal job," she recalls.

A week after enrolling she was homeschooling three children, but she managed to complete the six-month course and learn a suite of e-commerce skills she says have helped her business thrive.

Rebuilding her website and learning about email automation and other online tools, she lifted her sales, which she said were also boosted by the fact more people were at home and online.

She says she got to know her target market better with surveys and worked hard on learning what her customers wanted.

With business finally growing again, Ms Hardie quickly outgrew her home office and late last year the family moved to Dungog, where she now leases two warehouse spaces and has just signed a lease to rent a third when built.

Employing three local parents to work in the warehouse during school hours, she has increased revenue by more than 900 per cent, "and this year I am tracking to hit seven figures."

The original Spewy towel for children has not changed, however the company now has a Bed Mats range for toilet training that Ms Hardy says are different to others online thanks to their colourful patterns.

Spewy is also poised to launch pull-up training pants - "like a modern cloth nappy but without buttons and more like undies" - for children toilet training.

With most of its sales in Australia, the company manufactures its products in China because production costs are too high in Australia.

"I have looked to try and manufacture here in the four years I have had the business but it's still not doable financially, however Spewy is my idea and company so when you do purchase here you are still supporting an Australian family and the Australian economy," she says.

Ms Hardie is looking forward to having new warehouse space, planning to open it beyond Spewy to early childhood community groups for events.

For now, she says her biggest hurdle is simply to hustle.

"Managing my time to get everything done is the main challenge - I have put on a virtual assistant to try and help with that and I am learning to delegate. It's the time management to fit in everything and the day to day tasks but also the tasks I need to do to keep growing. I just need to clone me."

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