What age group does Be Me target — and why are those first years so critical for a child's future?
Be Me is designed primarily for children aged 3 to 9, with a dedicated hardware product for that window, and a software extension that carries older children further — with a stronger focus on financial skills and mindset. The reasoning is grounded in child development: Sarah O'Reilly points to the fact that 90% of a child's behavioral profile is fully constructed before the age of 5, making those earliest years the single most decisive period for building the habits and life skills that will define the adult.
That insight shapes every design decision at Be Me. Rather than waiting for problems to surface in adolescence, the product intervenes at the root — at the age when daily routines are just forming and when repetition genuinely wires the brain. Whether a child is brushing their teeth, making their bed, or completing a small household task, each micro-habit is, in O'Reilly's framing, a building block for broader competence: emotional regulation, responsibility, and eventually financial literacy.
The scale of the challenge backs up the urgency of starting early. In the UK alone, 1 million children under 18 are currently using mental health services — a figure that underscores how much ground is lost when foundational skills are not established in time. Be Me's two-phase structure — hardware for the youngest cohort, software for school-age and older children — is designed to follow the child through that developmental arc rather than address a single moment. You can hear the full conversation, including how O'Reilly's own experience with her son Ralph shaped this thinking, on Listenly.
"90% of a child's behavioral profile is built by age 5, so those early years are really important — whether that starts with a small task like brushing your teeth, making your bed, that is building the life skills and the foundations for the person you're going to become."
— Sarah O'Reilly, Founder of Be Me · The Purpose People Podcast, ep. 187Sarah O'Reilly
Founder · Be Me
Sarah O'Reilly's authority on early childhood development is inseparable from her own story. She grew up watching two parents run their own businesses — absorbing, from the inside, the discipline, the setbacks, and the long-game thinking that entrepreneurship demands. She launched her first venture at 21, organising events in Bristol, before relocating to Oxford and eventually finding what she describes as her real purpose in her early thirties. That purpose took shape through her role as a mother of four children in a blended co-parenting family. It was her eldest son Ralph — who experienced sensory and emotional difficulties — who became the direct catalyst for Be Me. Searching for a reward system that would actually work for him, and finding nothing on the market that met the need, she built one herself. That personal urgency is what puts O'Reilly in a genuinely different position when she talks about the 3–9 age window: she is not citing developmental research from a distance — she lived the gap it addresses, and she built Be Me specifically to close it.