The Entrepreneurial Mom's Guide to Running Your Own Business. Kathryn Bechthold
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that will eventually suck you dry. You have to learn to evaluate your business on a monthly basis so that you can properly discern whether or not it is achieving your goals. If it is not, you need to learn to fix it now or cut it loose and move on before it overtakes you.
Now, I know that the last time your four-year-old smeared peanut butter across your new cashmere sweater or barfed on your latest financial statements you considered selling that child to the nearest nomadic clan, but I also know you got over it and remembered how sweet he or she really is once the child is asleep for the day and looking like his or her old cherubic self! What I want you to be able to do is to quickly assess whether or not your business model is broken, fix it, and recognize that if it is not fixable, you need to either walk away or sell it — fast. This is not something we would do with our babies, but you have to be ruthless and more practical as an entrepreneur. We are here to make money — priority number one when it comes to working — let’s not compare this with our children. We also need to recognize that we are more than our businesses. Businesses will come and go; we need to be secure in ourselves, and tough enough to say what needs to be said in order to not go down with a sinking ship like I did.
For the women who are interested in leaving the corporate lifestyle and becoming an entrepreneurial mom, congratulations! This is going to be one of the most fun, chaotic, and exhilarating times of your life and you get to do it on your own terms! What is most important for you is to know what your terms are. Is it a set amount of income each month? Being the primary caregiver to your children? Achieving a certain amount of clients? Or manufacturing a certain amount of product? You must know each of these key targets and have them embedded into your business plan in order to know where you are going and plan for how you are going to get there.
For the women who have had a business for a few years and need a new injection of inspiration and some new skills, I hope this book will be the vehicle to provide that to you. I have included interviews with other successful women in business in the book as well; I hope you find them as inspiring as I have.
If you are feeling a bit lost in where your business is going, the following are some questions I want you to start asking yourself. If you answer no to the following questions, I still want you to read this book because I have been there, too. In fact, I have learned that balance is not really achievable. To quote Julie Freedman Smith, “What we need to find is harmony in our day and profit in our businesses.”
1.1 Am I taking any money as a salary?
This is a tough one, as it does take some time to make a business into a profitable return on investment, but at what point do you have an opportunity and at what point is it no longer viable to continue along the same path? You need to know what these two points are clearly and concisely and then you need to have the guts to act on them. You need to learn to become flexible enough to change the plan when it no longer works and start fresh. Follow the money. Learning to acknowledge, sooner rather than later, that the business model is broken, will save you a lot of time and a tremendous amount of cash — not to mention your relationships.
1.2 Am I spending time growing my business to become more profitable?
What do you spend the most amount of your time doing? Is it sales or is it answering emails and organizing your space? Everything is important but nothing surpasses cash flow. You always need to focus on profitability and growing those opportunities. If 80 percent of your revenue comes from 10 percent of your product or services, you need to revamp that business plan to follow the money.
1.3 Am I energized by what I am doing?
Are you a couple of years in and dread going into your office or answering the phone? Stop now. Don’t waste any more time on what you are doing. Revamp your plan, start fresh, or walk away.
Every moment at work is time away from my kids — time I will never get back. If I don’t love it then I have committed to myself that I will change it or get out.
1.4 Am I properly balancing home and work life?
How much time did you plan to spend on work when you started this project? How much time did you plan on spending away from your kids? Are you achieving these goals? I look back at my daughter’s baby pictures and realize that through the fog of sleep deprivation and the distraction of difficult breast-feeding and hemorrhoids, I don’t remember a lot from her first year. The time went by so fast. When my kids have moved away and are starting their own families, I can work like a dog. Now, I want to be a good mom, a really good mom, and build amazing memories that last along with my c-section scars, the tiger stripes on my belly, and dribble of pee that runs down my leg every time I sneeze.
1.5 Do I remember to act reasonably when I discipline my children?
Do I act reasonably when I discipline my children or am I so stressed out that I scream like a banshee when they play “how far can my booger fly”? As a kid, you always see those moments when your mom and your friends’ moms lose it and fly off the handle. Whether it was you picking your nose in church or when your friends festively planted salami in your Christmas tree on your 14th birthday, there are times when all moms morph instantaneously into something out of The Exorcist. I have found a direct correlation between my work becoming too busy and me flying off the handle. Although sometimes warranted, I want to make sure when I fly off the handle it is for the right reasons and not because I haven’t set appropriate boundaries for myself in my work.
1.6 Do I get much time to invest in my marriage or relationships outside of my business?
When my first business went down the toilet, there was not only a path of financial destruction but emotional loss as well. My business had become so totally a part of me that I had not built new friendships outside of work. My friends were those I worked with — those that were really angry when their paychecks evaporated. It was a horrific situation and difficult still to write about years later, but is also an important lesson I keep to this day.
2. How to Use This Book
“Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you be miserable in comfort.”
— Helen Gurley Brown
Because I believe that women, especially entrepreneurial moms, need to stick together and support each other in order to become successful, I have tried to provide you with the most accurate and up-to-date information on how to be profitable in business in this book. I have detailed my worst experiences, and interviewed more than 150 entrepreneurial moms across North America to provide you with an objective idea of what it is really like, what to do, and what to avoid. I have also included some of my blog entries on my day-to-day entrepreneurial mom experiences that you can probably relate to. As well, I have included expert advice from lawyers, accountants, bookkeepers, and psychologists to give you a head start.
My website, www.entrepreneurialmombook.com, offers items of use to entrepreneurs.
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A New Economic Reality — Entrepreneurial Mothers
“Fed up with a corporate world that penalizes them for being both women and mothers, and gender inequities that are getting worse, women are beginning to take control of their financial destinies in record numbers by starting their own businesses.”
— Kim Lavine, The Mommy Manifesto, (New Jersey: Wiley, 2009).
There are nearly 11 million woman-owned companies in the US, 48 percent of all US businesses, and by 2025 the Census Bureau projects 55 percent of US businesses will be owned by women.[1]
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