Since this experience, I have learned that when you begin your career as an entrepreneur, what you don’t want to recognize is that your first business is often (and statistically proven to be) a dress rehearsal for the next and more profitable endeavors to come. Failures, although upsetting and stressful, are often a fact of life that you must prepare for and see as a stepping stone to your next career achievement. What I want to teach you is how to avoid the enormous failures and losses in your career and make you nimble enough to react and change early enough to sidestep a failure.
Once the loss of that business sunk in, I fell into a deep depression. What I didn’t know at the time was that the loss of that business would teach me some of the best skills going forward — and it would be a far better teacher than any university or high-paid consultant ever would be. I knew I had to move on, but felt enormous shame and embarrassment because something I had put so many years into and had sacrificed so much for did not pan out. At the time the business shut its doors, I was newly married and definitely feeling like a failure. I decided to get pregnant in order to move on. I know, I know — those of you who have children are laughing at how ludicrous the idea of having a baby to move on from a depression is, but I swear, I think the sex was helpful!
Since having my daughter, I realize that I may not be the only woman out there who has chosen pregnancy in order to move on from a difficult time in her life. I have always wanted children, even more so once I was married, but looking back, I wish I had chosen to have her just for her and not as a distraction from other pain. What I learned about depression is that it doesn’t go away on its own, and adding a pregnancy doesn’t make it better. In fact, it makes it much, much worse.
Once my daughter was born, our money was totally gone. I had gone bankrupt nine months earlier and I had one year of a small maternity leave benefit to figure out what I was going to do next and how I was going to contribute to our family financially. My husband was monitoring every penny we spent and continuously bringing up the question of when I would go back to work. He even suggested I get a job driving a school bus with my daughter in tow. Not that there is anything wrong with that job, but I had built a million-dollar-a-year charity with more than 50 staff. I knew my potential was greater but I did not know how to get there.
The pressure was enormous; the depression I had suffered from earlier morphed into a beast called postpartum depression and intense anxiety that went undiagnosed for the next year. It would not be until I started working again that I would begin to feel less anxious and more in control of my future. My anxiety at going back to work was crushing. I felt a burning shame at the thought of running into one of my old colleagues, and I was overwrought with worry that we would never be financially stable again. My husband was resentful that he was the only breadwinner, and that I was not showing much interest in getting a job. Needless to say, it was a difficult time.
However, I loved every moment of being with my daughter, even the moments when I thought I would drop dead from sleep deprivation, sore nipples, and overall exhaustion. But, we needed money, and I needed to work. Out of pure desperation to bring some money in, I began writing business plans about any business I had ever considered and could do from home with my daughter in tow. It was a wild and exciting time as I truly felt that my options were limitless. My husband was happy to see me back on my feet and therefore really supportive of another venture (as long as it brought some money in). I had a beautiful, healthy daughter who, luckily, napped regularly and was genuinely happy to truck around the city researching business ideas. I began to build a network of people who were supportive of me finding a new passion.
I wrote about everything I thought might be profitable. I was interested in baking so I looked into a cake shop. I was interested in writing and reading new novels so I looked into becoming a literary agent. I felt I had some experience with fund-raising and grant writing from my charitable background so I looked into consulting in the nonprofit sector. It was an exciting time because I began to see a way out of the mess I had created and I was learning how to recognize a successful business model versus a broken one. I quickly began to recognize how much money I would need to invest in order to turn a profit from carefully calculated cash flows of my first year and I took very conservative looks at how I would sell different products or services in order to meet my family’s financial needs.
It was important for me that my business met certain achievable goals. The following were my targets that the business I chose would have to reach:
• It would have to be something that allowed me to work from home with my daughter and bring me an income of $1,500 per month. That was what I needed in order to make my budget work. (My husband still laughs at how little money I needed then.)
• It needed to have a very low start-up investment. I took $10,000 from my home equity (I was thankful for the housing boom in my area) to start my next business and it couldn’t cost more than that amount; otherwise, it would be cat-food stew for dinner.
• Because of my lack of start-up funds, it needed to be a business that I could do mainly by myself, at least until the business could sustain employees or contractors. My only staff support was still breast-feeding and preferred watching The Wiggles!
• It had to be something that I truly enjoyed because I knew how much emotional, physical, and financial investment it would take. I was still up with my daughter at night (first baby, didn’t have the heart to “Ferberize” her yet) and I knew I would have to love what I was doing to stay conscious throughout the sales cycle.
From this list and from my list of business plan drafts, The Mompreneurs Networking Group Inc. was born. It had everything on my list and more. It allowed me to connect to a group of women (i.e., potential buyers and friends) and facilitate the growth of a new and blossoming community in the Canadian market — a community that continues to grow and develop today. From this business, I learned so much more, including —
• lessons learned from other entrepreneurial moms;
• how to build a website and how to update it;
• how to network;
• how to use social media marketing;
• how to sell;
• how to speak in front of a group;
• how to address my market via TV, the Web, and radio;
• how to negotiate a Unanimous Shareholders Agreement with professional investors; and
• how to sell my business.
My most important achievement has been that I was able to do this while being the main caregiver of my children. This has been my real accomplishment as I look back on my businesses over the last 15 years.
1. Why Are You Reading This Book?
I decided to write this book for three different groups of women:
• The women who continue to believe that their business is their “baby” and have their identities so wrapped up in it that they cannot see when it is broken.
• The women who want to become work-at-home entrepreneurs while being the primary caregiver to their children.
• The women who have businesses that are leaving the infancy stage and need a new set of lessons in order to move forward to a more sustainable business model.
For the last decade, women in North America have quickly surpassed men in starting new businesses. It is an economic reality that full-time childcare is difficult to find, expensive, and for many women, not their ideal choice going forward. Although corporations are still trying to figure out how to keep professional women after they have children, working 80-plus hours a week for someone else while not being able to be with your kids lacks a certain appeal.
Since the loss of the charity I founded, a real pet peeve of mine has been women who refer to their businesses as their “babies.” What I want to emphasize is that while your business is something you should be passionate about, it should be a vehicle to making you money and leveraging your career. If it does not, then you