countries including the US with its average six-week maternity leave, many women feel that returning to their corporate careers no longer fits with their priorities as a new Mama.
Although corporations are quickly trying to figure out how to keep their highly educated and trained female employees once these women have children, many are failing at coming up with new and creative ways to develop their working environments to suit the needs of these women. Women today understand the pressures of careers and the dedication their careers need. It becomes clear very quickly that if they are going to work that hard and be separated from their families for that many hours per day, they might as well start to consider doing it on their own terms and for themselves.
Women in Canada are still far from reaching equality in the workplace. Even as I write this book, the national news is reporting that a new study has found that female professors still make far less money than their male counterparts in Canadian universities, and it doesn’t get any better anywhere else:
• Earning differentials still hover around 30 percent between women and their male colleagues according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
• In Canada, approximately two-thirds of both male and female executives (67 percent of men and 64 percent of women) believe that gender equality in the workplace has improved in the last ten years. However, only one-third (32 percent) of all Canadian executives surveyed believe that men and women have equal opportunities in the workplace, and one-third (34 percent) of female executives in Canada believe that their gender limits their career opportunities, according to a recent study done by Accenture on the “thickness of the glass ceiling in North America.”[2]
Appropriate childcare is another reason why so many women are leaving their corporate careers to establish their own businesses. Where I live, daycares often have waiting lists that begin at conception — I’m not kidding. When you get that blue line on the pee stick, you can then get your name on a childcare waiting list for baby’s first birthday. Not only is it hard to find appropriate placements in a convenient time frame, the cost is exorbitant. Many North Americans can expect to pay upwards of 50 percent of their income to childcare costs. You can see how working from home has become more attractive.
If you do find a great, loving placement for your little ones, and you do have the kind of high paying career that allows you the luxury of affording childcare and your cost of living expenses, you will most likely have to work a crazy amount of hours in order to maintain your positive performance appraisals at work. Once your kids start their extracurricular activities — ballet, soccer, hockey, and violin lessons — you are running your daily life so fast that you can quickly forget about any quality of life, let alone little things like remembering to brush your teeth in the morning.
Now don’t get me wrong, choosing to own your own business is no cake walk. You need to prepare for long hours, financial investment, busy schedules, and stress — but isn’t it better to do that on your own schedule, work with clients you love, and take away the profit rather than handing that off to your boss?
“When I was on maternity leave with my fourth child, my nanny quit. I was working as a director of marketing at a large bank, and it had been quite a challenge juggling working full time with three children. So I decided this was a message to change things up, and I had also written my first book (The Secret Life of Supermom: How the Woman Who Does It All … Does It!) during that year-long maternity leave. I hung up the briefcase, picked up the pen, and never looked back. Now, five books later, as well as having had the opportunity to write for many magazines, be a frequent television and radio host/speaker, and work with corporations as a spokesperson to the mom market, I’m working harder than ever. But the positive side is that it’s extremely flexible — my kids are now 8, 11, 17, and 19 — and with technology I’m able to carry a virtual office with me everywhere. I love it.”
— Kathy Buckworth, author
“It is no great revelation that women have run the organization that has been the backbone of this country for generations — The FAMILY! If you study this organization that we call ‘the family,’ you will note it has been full of restructuring and downsizing over the years. It has been through a lot of cultural changes, but one of the constants has been the matriarch and her feminine leadership. Women are emerging as leaders of corporations, small businesses, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations … To most women, these highly desirable management skills are second nature because they do all these things all the time at home, running the family organization, without even really thinking about it.”
— Michelle Yozzo Drake, From the Kitchen to the Corner Office: Mom’s Wisdom on Leadership, (New York: Morgan James Publishing, LLC, 2008).
1. Motherhood: Reclaiming the Title and Living the Dream
“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”
— Jackie Kennedy
I started The MOMpreneur Magazine when my daughter was four months old. By the time the business was really taking off, she was becoming more independent and could hang out with Daddy in the evenings. Having a second child while running a national magazine led to challenges. I distinctly remember a heated discussion with my board of directors while breast-feeding my son. There are times when I feel that every client of mine has seen my nipples more often than I have in the last year. Although that isn’t always comfortable, I do feel good about the time I am getting to spend with my son, and I know that because I don’t apologize for him being with me, he is readily accepted by the stakeholders in my business life.
“Being a mommy entrepreneur is a lot like being Ginger Rogers; doing everything Fred Astaire did, but ‘backwards in high-heels,’ while making it look effortless. My workday as President of Green Daisy, Inc., is routinely interrupted by numerous requests from my kids including ‘can I have chocolate milk?’ to ‘can I buy a BB gun?’ And you know what? That’s a good thing! Seeing my children’s smiling faces throughout the workday is one of the perks of being a Mommy Millionaire.”
— Kim Lavine, Mommy Millionaire, (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008).
I have made decisions to slow down and change a few of my roles so that they interfere less in the first year of my son’s life. It isn’t always easy to make that transition and to trust others with your business opportunities, but you must in order to stay true to your priorities — not to mention giving your staff the space to breathe and to fall into a more superior role.
Choosing to be an entrepreneurial mom is no walk in the park; you have to be strong enough to draw boundaries around your family and ambitious enough to be profitable. The following are points to remember:
• You did this to have more control over your time and your family’s time, don’t blow it by losing sight of this goal.
• Have the guts to breast-feed your baby in a business meeting or do what you need to do when it comes to your children — you are a mom first. Stop apologizing for the toddler in the background having a potty break or the infant who just burped into the phone. You are a mompreneur and your children come first. Your business is what makes you money and allows you to be creative and keep your brain wet while your children grow. You can do both but you need to defend your boundaries like the “mama bear” you are.
• You must be strong enough to put in boundaries where your family is concerned. You must learn to recognize the best places to spend your time and evaluate every meeting, opportunity, and sales acquisition based on the dollar value it provides. If it doesn’t build your business or your bank account, why are you spending that time away from your family?
2. Defining Success
The one commonality among the women I have interviewed for this book is that they all define success in business