Mom Inc.

How to Raise Your Family and Your Business Without Losing Your Mind or Your Shirt

Amy Ballon, Danielle Botterell, Rebecca Reuber

• Publisher: Collins
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781554686261
• eBook ISBN: 9781443405485
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

From designing better baby shoes all the way to producing erotic videos, mompreneurs have been shaking up the world of business even while working carpool to carpool. For many women, self-employment is the answer to the challenge of combining work and family, which is why over 900,000 entrepreneurs in Canada are women (many of them moms) -- it's one of the fastest growing segments of the Canadian economy. But starting a successful, lasting business isn't as simple as putting down the diaper bag and picking up a briefcase. Drawing on their own experiences as successful mompreneurs and that of mompreneurs across Canada and the U.S., Amy Ballon and Danielle Botterell cover all the bases:

• Deciding to take the plunge -- is mompreneurship the answer?
• Researching your business idea and developing a business and marketing plan
• Navigating the early stages of planning and financing
• Balancing your business and family in the early stages and as your business (and child) grows
• Handling surprises and setbacks and managing growth

With informative sidebars and tips from Rebecca Reuber, Canada's leading expert on entrepreneurship, Mom Inc. is a friendly and hands-on look at the truth about mompreneurship and the challenges of juggling business and family, and an authoritative guide on how to start and run a successful business.

PART 1
PLANNING: SHOULD YOU BECOME A MOMPRENEUR?

Much as you’d (ideally) plan for parenthood, you’ll need to plan
for mompreneurship. Here we’ll look at the questions you’ll need
to ask yourself before deciding whether juggling your own
business and motherhood is for you.

1
Is mompreneurship for you?
The answer to your prayers?

Let’s step back and define what a mompreneur is. (People also call us mom-entrepreneurs, momtrepreneurs, entrepreneurial moms, etc.) In our opinion, a mompreneur is any woman who has started her business with a view to having some availability or flexibility to be with her children. First, we don’t get hung up on whether women start their business before or after having children. We, rather atypically, started ours in anticipation of family demands. Most women come to mompreneurship once the children are in the picture, but tomato, to-mah-to, we say.

Second, we have noticed that many mompreneurs start baby-focused businesses. It makes perfect sense—we all know how all-consuming a new baby can be, so what could be more obvious than starting a company to meet some demand in the baby marketplace? (In our case, it also occurred to us that if we were about to have children, so was nearly everyone else we knew, and we’d have a built-in customer base to start with.) However, a baby or kid-related business does not a mompreneur make—any business qualifies.

Third, we distinguish between mompreneurs—women attempting to balance family and career—and female Big “E” Entrepreneurs—who may be working a hundred hours a week and aren’t with their children during the workday. This may be contentious, and we certainly don’t want to imply that we think that female Big “E” Entrepreneurs are anything but total rock stars. We are not suggesting that mompreneurs don’t sometimes work insane hours or juggle children and work, or that female Big “E” Entrepreneurs who work the big hours aren’t available, loving mothers. We simply believe that a mompreneur is defined by at least a little bit of “mom time” in the workweek.

While we’re in potentially contentious territory, we should point out that starting a business in order to have flexibility to be with children is for many women a luxury. For many, mompreneurship is a choice about balance and lifestyle, and not just about money. We’ll tell you about a few women who went out and started businesses because they had no other means of paying the bills, or who started their businesses part-time while working full-time, as well as mompreneurs who are the primary earners in their homes. However, we’d be remiss if we didn’t note that many mompreneurs are not immediately counting on the income. Someone, usually her spouse, is able and willing to keep the family afloat in the early days of the venture.

When talking to people about what a mompreneur is, something interesting comes up. A few of the women we spoke to bristled at the term. During one conversation a woman pointed out, “I’m not in this because I’m a mom. It works well that I’m a mom. I want to be recognized in my own right.” Another woman says, “I don’t identify myself as a mompreneur but as an entrepreneur who is also a mom. I feel there is a difference.” Some women are downright irked by the term. We recently came across a (female) Twitter user who vowed to “unfollow” anyone who uses the word mompreneur in her profile.

This backlash is a stark contrast to the way the two of us articulated our roles when we started our business. Having just come from the corporate world, we knew we did not want to work the crazy hours of a straight-up Big “E” Entrepreneur. We always made the distinction that we were entrepreneurs who wanted to work part-time so we could be available to our kids, even before we’d heard the term mompreneur. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t taken our company very seriously or that it’s not successful. It also doesn’t mean that we don’t get our backs up when someone (usually from business school) asks us if we are “still doing our little business.” After all, it’s not a puppy dog or a fuzzy rabbit—it’s an honest-to-goodness revenue-generating, tax-paying organization, with everything that entails.

We wonder if it’s a matter of perception. Perhaps for some the term mompreneur conjures images of a woman selling a few hair barrettes at a local school craft sale. Not so, or more accurately, maybe not so. The types and sizes of mompreneur businesses are as varied as the women themselves. We spoke to women with very small businesses, just bringing in a few dollars or even just keeping themselves engaged while home with kids, and we spoke to women with multi-million-dollar businesses. A mompreneur runs her own business while making time in the workweek to be with her kids. Period. Mompreneur is not a bad word or a demeaning term. And while we’re at it, why do we need to look down on the mom selling the hair barrettes, anyway? This is a woman who creates, markets, and sells something. We say, “Good for her.” Looking down on each other and judging each others’ efforts is the kind of thinking that sends us right back to the dark ages. The truth is that the only way for anyone to truly control their schedule is to own their own business. We applaud anyone who starts any size business for any reason—it’s a heck of an effort.

Why mix business with motherhood?

There are millions of female entrepreneurs in North America, many of whom are, of course, mothers. Statistics looking directly at mompreneurs are limited, but we do know that it is a rapidly growing trend. According to a 2006 study by CIBC, there has been a dazzling fifty percent growth in the past fifteen years in the number of Canadian women who are self-employed. What’s more, the number of women entrepreneurs is rising sixty percent faster than the rate of men entrepreneurs.

News out of the United States also indicates a major uptick in the number of women entrepreneurs. According to the Center for Women’s Business Research, the number of women-owned businesses in the United States grew at twice the rate of all firms between 1997 and 2002. And women with children are jumping in—each with a different business goal, a different family situation, and a different strategy to balance it all.

Mumpreneurship is also a huge trend in the United Kingdom. British Telecommunications plc conducted a 2009 study on the subject. The study found that ten percent of moms surveyed were planning to launch their own businesses because of a growing desire to have more flexibility in their working lives. Choosing the hours they work, achieving a better balance between their work and family life, and being their own boss were the top three most-cited reasons.

Our observation is that there is a correlation between paid maternity leave and the appetite moms have to start their own businesses. Where we live, the federal government extended employment benefits in 2000 to provide a full year of maternity leave. In our opinion, mompreneurship has exploded onto the scene as a real option for women since that time. Many women realize in that year that they don’t need or don’t want to return to their previous career, or at least not to the job they were in. It makes sense: becoming a mother is a huge transformation. We fall madly in love with our babies. And after spending a year at home, the thought of leaving him or her to return to work can be heartbreaking. Worse, the costs of childcare can make the return to work less than attractive.

So what are the reasons women are opting to become mompreneurs? They are as varied as the women who take it on. We didn’t want to work the gruelling hours of our corporate pasts (little did we know!). Our three-point plan was to (1) have a project to keep us engaged while at home with our young kids, (2) earn enough money to supplement our family income, and (3) grow a business to the point that it would be ready to take off at the same time as our children were.

We’ve already talked about how we see the difference between a mompreneur and a Big “E” Entrepreneur, but in essence we wanted to respect the fact that the goals we set and measured for our business were commensurate with the time we had to devote to them. But we’re just two of the millions of mompreneurs out there.

KNOW THY MOTIVES!

We can’t stress enough the importance of knowing what you’re looking for in embarking on mompreneurship. We suggest making a list of your top few goals—for example, be available to kids, earn $40,000 a year, etc. Keep your list somewhere you can see it. YOU will come back to this list more often than you can imagine. mompreneurship isn’t necessarily a get-rich-quick scheme and it may take longer than you anticipate to meet all your goals—it’s essential to remind yourself why you went down this path.

Let’s take a look at some of the top reasons women with kids take on a business. Odds are good that more than one of these reasons, plus your own unique ones, will apply to you.

I can’t bear to leave the kids, and we need the cash

For some women, being available to their children is a long-standing dream. These mompreneurs tend to start their businesses so that they can afford to be home with the kids, more than for any other reason. Jennifer Torres is a mom to two girls and the founder of Salsa Babies, a program offering dance classes to moms with babes in arms. A former administrative assistant, Jennifer tells us, “I always knew I wanted to stay at home with my kids—long before I had them. I think it even affected my career choices prior to becoming a mom. On my maternity leave I was desperately trying to come up with an idea that would allow me to work from home.”

For other women, wanting to be at home is something that comes upon them more gradually. Anita MacCallum, mom to two daughters, ages six and nine, left her job at an accounting firm to strike out on her own as a bookkeeper. Anita says, “I was five months into my six-month maternity leave and I knew I couldn’t go back. I was so pained at the idea of being separated from my baby that I thought, ‘This has got to work out some way.’ I’ve been opposed to having strangers look after my babies—that was the worst thought for me.” We bet a few moms reading this can relate to that desperate, painful dread of separation.

It may be the case that the income from your job doesn’t cover childcare costs. Perhaps your spouse’s career is incredibly demanding and for logistical reasons one parent needs to be home. The particular stories are limitless, but the desire to be home with their children definitely leads many women to mompreneurship.

I want to be home with the kids, but my brain needs more

Maybe you’ve already made the decision and the necessary financial arrangements to be home with the kids, but you somehow feel that you need to be engaged in something besides motherhood. Elizabeth Kaiden opened up Two Rooms, a workspace with childcare for self-employed parents in New York City. We love how she explains her need for something more.

“If you take a job, in some sectors, in New York, you are expected to work sixty hours a week,” Elizabeth says. “If you have a family, that’s crap. I didn’t want to do it. But I was also uncomfortable with the notion of being at home full-time. I didn’t want to accept it. I was anxious about losing my sense of self, my ability to think, my earning capacity. I thought I would drift. I was afraid. I wanted to be home with my kids, but not exclusively. I wanted something that kept me in the world, that made me feel like a grown-up.”

We think many women can relate to this sentiment. In fact, one mompreneur we know suggested that mompreneurship is a great place to hide. In other words, some of us mompreneurs are wary of just being stay-at-home moms, and having our own business lends a legitimacy to our daily lives that otherwise wouldn’t exist. We’ve spent quite a bit of time wondering about that equation. Why is it that there is somehow shame or a feeling of wastefulness for some women at the notion of “only” being a mother? But that may be a subject for a whole different book. The fact remains that this sense of needing to be seen as more than a mom exists for many, and mompreneurship can give some women a sense of purpose beyond motherhood. For women who are fortunate enough to be able to afford to be home full-time, having a business can be a great place to stretch the intellect and stay connected to the world, while at the same time taking at least a mental break from the marathon of motherhood.

I love what I do, but I need to lose the nine-to-five thing

Those moms who are lucky enough to have found their true calling and have firmly established themselves in their careers may be ambivalent about the choice between office and child-rearing. After all, if you’ve just spent the past ten years climbing the ladder, growing professionally, and becoming known in your field, walking away can be distressing to say the least. At the same time, however, the hours and schedules of corporate life do not always mesh with motherhood, as we well know. So what’s a mom to do?

For some of the mompreneurs we spoke to, it was a matter of reinventing their careers. In an age of conservation, these women have recycled their former careers into something that works for them.

Naomi Kriss is the founder of Kriss Communications. Her niche firm specializes in communications strategies for designers and architects. Before she had children, Naomi was the communications manager for a prominent (and male-dominated) architecture firm. Her hours were long, she worked extremely hard, and she developed a great reputation in the architectural community. After having her first child, she surprised her employer by choosing to return to work. Maternity leave was typically a woman’s graceful exit from the firm. However, she insisted that her hours not be so crazy, and she found strategies to work better, smarter, and faster. When she got pregnant again, she knew that she had hit the end of her corporate road. On her second maternity leave, she decided to spend the first six months just hanging out with her baby and the second six months developing her business plan. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and, before her leave was up, told her firm she wasn’t returning.

Naomi says, “I needed more of a balance between my work life and my personal life. Inside I was screaming, ‘I can do more!’ I loved the idea of building a business and worked hard to figure out how to continue doing what I love while also having time for myself and my family.” Today Naomi has three boys, ages nineteen months to seven years, and continues to be a sought-after marketing professional who is in control of her own schedule.

If you’ve got a marketable skill set, you might just be able to retrofit your old car...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction What were we thinking?
• PART 1 PLANNING SHOULD YOU BECOME A MOMPRENEUR?
• PART 2 CONCEPTION COMING UP WITH YOUR IDEA
• PART 3 GESTATION THE IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS PLANNING
• PART 4 BIRTH AND THE FIRST YEAR CONGRATULATIONS—IT’S A BUSINESS!
• PART 5 BABY STEPS TO BIG STRIDES MILESTONES AND HURDLES IN THE FIRST FIVE YEARS
• Epilogue The secrets of success
• Index
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Mompreneurs featured in this book
• Copyright
• About the Publisher