by Nicole Morell of Honeybunch

Amy Ballon and Danielle Botterell are best friends and business partners in a successful personalized fleece blanket company called Admiral Road. With the recent launch of their book Mom Inc., they are also newly minted authors. A week after the official launch of Mom Inc., I chatted with the pair to get their take on the state of Mompreneurship in Canada:

First of all, congratulations on your book, Mom Inc. We all know how challenging it is to run a business and a household, but adding a book into the mix? I bow down to you. How did the idea for Mom Inc., come about?

We’ve been mulling the idea of a book for a very long time.  In the early days of our business we realized that despite having MBAs and corporate work experience we had so much to learn about getting Admiral Road up and running.  We thought it would be great if there was a book on starting a business for mompreneurs.  It took us a while before we felt like we really had a story to tell, but once we started interviewing all of the other mompreneurs featured in Mom Inc. we knew we could create a great resource for future mompreneurs.

What is your Twitter-length synopsis of the book?

Mom Inc. is an honest look at life when you’re juggling business and family, filled with practical advice and tips for budding entrepreneurs.

You founded Admiral Road in 2002 before the term “mompreneur” had even been coined let alone become the social and business phenomenon that is today. Has the road gotten any easier for mompreneurs? Or, how has the road changed?

Mompreneurship has been a choice for women for ages.  In fact, both of our grandmothers were mompreneurs!  What’s changed in the last decade is the general awareness about entrepreneurial moms.  Social media has enabled mompreneurs to become more organized:  Now there are dedicated networking groups, online communities and conferences for mompreneurs.  As media coverage of mompreneurs increases there’s a greater understanding and acceptance of women making the choice to actively attempt to balance work and family.

Up front you make the distinction between mompreneurs and what you call “Big E Entrepreneurs.”  What defines a mompreneur?

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, and has carved out some of the work week to be available to her children.

I like the idea that entrepreneurship can be taught; I think a lot of us were taught that you’re either born with the drive to make your own way in the world or you are, essentially, a worker bee. Does mompreneurship offer a sort of stepping stone to “Big E” entrepreneurship? Can anyone be a mompreneur?

We think anyone can be a mompreneur.  We do encourage women to really think about what they want from their business and from their lives overall.    It’s so important to know what your goals are before jumping in.  If the goal is to (make your company huge/) start a big company, then you’ll need to invest and plan accordingly.  It’s also important to have a good sense of your own personality, needs and factors affecting a potential business (like family demands, the strength of your relationships, etc.) to make sure that the timing and entrepreneurial venture are right for you.  We think it’s important to make sure you’re in the right place in your life to take on a new business.  In our research, many of the women had no business background whatsoever.  Interestingly, however, once these women experienced their lives as mompreneurs, they found the idea of returning to work for someone else almost impossible.  By desiring to have more control of their lives, they became entrepreneurs.

In your list of Top Secrets of Mompreneurship one in particular struck a chord with me: running your own show can be lonely. Admiral Road is a partnership, which is unique among the mompreneur community. How do you work together on a daily basis? Are you physically in the same location? Can you elaborate on the theme of being alone in your work?

We’re huge fans of partnership for mompreneurs.  Having a partner can not only spell you off so you can be there when your family needs you, but she can also share the ride with you, providing encouragement, accountability and companionship, not to mention capital.  While we’ve been in a great partnership for over 9 years, for most of those years we haven’t shared a location.  Since we try and get most of the work done ‘carpool to carpool’ we don’t like to spend a lot of time commuting – so we both work from our homes.  The Admiral Road office has been run out of each of our homes over the years.  We are in constant touch, though.  We have lunch every Monday to set the agenda for the week and work together in the office at least one other day.  And we’re on the phone and e-mail all the time.

The isolation that comes with self-employment is something that is often overlooked.  When you leave the corporate world behind you also leave your co-workers and the social interaction an office brings.  Harder still is finding the self-discipline to keep at it every day on your own.  In Mom Inc. we offer lots of tips and advice about how to manage working alone.  It’s an obstacle that can definitely be overcome.

What is your sense of the business world’s impression or awareness of the mompreneur community? Do we need them? Do they need us?

While it’s true that some people don’t take mompreneur-run businesses seriously, we think this impression is changing.  There are approximately 1 million women business owners in Canada, many of whom are moms – it’s one of the fastest growing segments of the Canadian economy.  More and more women are jumping into entrepreneurship and enjoying great success, which is changing the way people view mompreneurship.

Everyone loves to talk numbers. Among the 200 mompreneurs you surveyed, 71% of mompreneurs invested under $10,000 in their start-up and 54% took less than $10,000 a year out of their business. And 43% work less than thirty hours a week at their business. Did you uncover any other interesting numbers?

Probably the most interesting finding was that of all the varied types of businesses we encountered for Mom Inc, and for all the varying degrees of financial success, one thing was nearly universal.  Nearly every single woman we spoke to or surveyed said she considered herself successful.  We think that mompreneurs see success holistically and look at the general happiness of their lives in addition to the bottom line when judging their overall success.

The separation between work and home is especially blurry if, like I do, you work from home. What are some good tips to delineate work time from home time?

We work from home too!  There are lots of great tips in Mom Inc. for separating your work and home lives, even if you work in the house.  Here are a couple:

Find some dedicated work space at home.  Ideally it’s a room with a door you can close, or even a work center that closes.  It’s important to be able to ‘leave work’ at the end of the day.  It’s so easy to get caught up in your work as an entrepreneur, but you’ll need some time away to stay sane!

Set office hours.  If you can make a schedule delineating work hours it’ll go a long way towards managing everyone’s expectations of you.  If your family knows when you’re not available they’re more likely to respect your work when you are.

Schedule time for getting personal errands done.  If you worked outside of the office you’d still be able to go to the doctor or hairdresser, right?  Don’t forget to make time in your schedule to take care of the things that need doing.  It’ll help you stay calm and motivated in the business.

So hot on the heels of Hollywood award season, how great would it be to have Mompreneur awards to recognize achievement amongst ourselves? I think we’re ready.

We’ve met women in the mompreneur community who have invented new products and women who have created new categories in the market altogether.  We’ve met women whose businesses have grown more quickly than they ever imagined and women who’ve achieved more financial success than they ever dreamed.  So, yes!  We love the idea of Mompreneur Achievement Awards!

And finally, where can we buy Mom Inc.?

Thanks for asking!  It’s widely available in Canada.  US orders can be placed at MomInc.ca, AdmiralRoad.com or Amazon.ca.

by Nicole Morell of Honeybunch

An interview with Catherine Choi, owner of So Young Mother, a lovely collection of diaper, travel, lunch and cooler bags. Catherine is based in Toronto.

What was your first product in the SYM range? What was the process of bringing it to market?

My first product was the Emily diaper bag. It took almost three years to bring it to market (working on it part-time). As with many mom-entrepreneurs, I had the idea for a diaper bag without having any sort of business background in manufacturing. The strength of my business lies in networking and talking to as many people as possible. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. I was first led to a sample bag maker in Montreal, then to manufacturing contacts in Canada, and, eventually overseas.

Originally you planned to manufacture your bags in Canada, but ultimately ended up having them made for you overseas. What can you tell us about that experience? We’ve all read cautionary tales about the risks of working with foreign factories – it must have been a huge leap of faith.

My original concept was a Made In Canada product but that quickly became a pipe dream as I learned about the prohibitive costs of manufacturing here. I took my sample to different manufacturers here and was told over and over that it would cost too much and that the tools required to make my product (which was very complicated) were not readily available. So I sampled in China for a year and a half with five different manufacturers before I found the right one – or so I thought. After I finally got a sample that was acceptable, I put in my production order and two months later received an entire production run of downgraded product based on an unapproved sample. I was beside myself and thought it was the end. But, lucky for me, my intermediary took responsibility for the production run and had it rerun at his cost- unheard of! One of the many miracles that have happened in the process of starting my business. Lesson learned: always hire an external agent to conduct a thorough inspection before anything is sent to you. Or, better yet, go yourself, which is what I eventually did.

How did you finance your business?

Most of the capital investment in my business has been financed personally but I also completed the SEB (self-employment benefits program), which allowed me to earn an extra year of EI in order to work on my business. Most of that money went towards childcare so I could work on my business.

Did you sell direct to consumers or dive right into wholesale?

I sell both direct to consumers as well as wholesale.

How did you market your diaper bag? Did you have an Etsy site?

I market my diaper bags and lunch boxes mainly through PR and some social media. Luckily, my new product line of lunch boxes and cooler bags seems to be a big hit so right now we’re riding the media wave. I also do some contests and giveaways, and some targeted ads directed towards retailers.

What market feedback did you glean from your experience promoting the bags?

Well, the market feedback I received from my Emily bag was discouraging. While people liked the bag, it appealed to a very narrow market for the style and price point. I couldn’t find a sales rep to carry it, and it was moving slowly in retail stores. It just didn’t have enough appeal to stand out from all the other diaper bags in the market at that price. As hard as it was, I talked to sales reps and retailers about what kind of bag they thought had the most appeal, what kind of features it should have, what was the ideal price point etc. I also realized that I needed more than one product in my line and varying price points. So I designed the unisex Charlie bag (which is an AMAZING bag) and then had the idea to do the lunch boxes when I realized that I couldn’t find a decent one for my kids. So I would have to say that when the market told me that my first product was not so fabulous after all, it forced me to rethink and reassess my whole business.

I remember chatting with you in my store last year and you mentioned having to make a decision to either pack it in or go for it. What was the “decision tree” (in MBA-speak) for you?

It was the opposite of a MBA process decision. In my heart of hearts, I knew I couldn’t give up just yet. I knew I had to give it another go. But if the second round of products weren’t a hit, cash flow issues would have forced me to give up. But who really knows? I do believe where there’s a will, there’s a way.

You’ve had major success with your next product, the lunch bags. Tell us about them and tell us about the development process – what did you do differently from the first time?

Well, I was much more experienced in dealing with China at this point, so the process was a lot quicker. The major difference was having technical specifications made to send to China – this sped up the process a great deal. And I also understood that “tweaking” my samples and making just one more change to them was endless and very dangerous in terms of meeting timelines. A small change to a product could mean the difference between having products for your season or not.

What has made the biggest difference to your business?

Networking has been critical to my business. I love to meet other entrepreneurs and hear their stories and share experiences. And we all help each other. This has been one of the greatest rewards of becoming an entrepreneur.

How do you market your company now?

I now have sales representation across Canada and will be participating in my first trade show in the US at the end of this month – very exciting!

Future plans?

We will be available in US retail stores in August and have had interest from Europe, the UK and Australia! One at a time. The plan is to continually strengthen the brand and increase distribution but not too quickly.

I often remind myself that the whole purpose in starting the business was to be able to have a flexible schedule for my family and to be able to be with my kids as much as possible. But it was also to have a job that I loved, and I must say, on most days, I absolutely love what I do and feel so lucky that I get to do this.