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Time management, modern technology help moms double as mompreneurs®
October 27, 2007
Story by Sandy Illian Bosch
The chalk scribbles on the sidewalk tell only part of the story of what goes on inside Kim Williams' Hinsdale home. This clearly is a place where children play, but a closer look reveals it also is headquarters for Williams' small but successful business, Ooh La La Papers.
Like a growing number of local moms, Williams' office doubles as a playroom, her dining room is often transformed into an assembly line and her china cabinet is filled with inventory and supplies rather than cups and saucers.
"I do everything here," said Williams, a 32-year-old former advertising saleswoman who started her customized stationary business two years ago. What started as a fun way to give a personalized gift has turned into a venture that affords the busy mom of 5-year-old Charlie and 2-year-old Max a sense of financial independence.
"It allows me extra money to do what I want to do," she said.
Two other local moms aren't quite there yet, but they're confident their personalized children's book soon will turn a profit. In fact, they already are talking about a second project.
Sarah Rivera of Hinsdale and Sarah Headrick of Western Springs are the authors of
The First Adventures of Incredible You, a personalized book for children. The book doesn't just insert the child's name into a predetermined story.
The First Adventures of Incredible You incorporates a child's loved ones, favorite places and details of their life into a story that's truly unique.
"It really does feel like it was written just for that child," Headrick, mom to Olivia, 6, and Colin, 4, said.
The two friends were looking for a project to take on together when they came up with the book. Among play dates, preschool and soccer practice, they carved out time to write the story and establish a business, Custom Made For Kids. They make it work with a brand of job sharing that's made possible only through modern technology.
"Ten years ago we couldn't have done this," said Rivera, mother of Will, 6, and John, 4. The women share an 800 number that's linked to their cell phones. When Rivera is on the clock, calls go to her cell phone. When Headrick is at the helm, calls come to her. Computers not only allow people to place orders from anywhere, it has proven to be an enormous marketing tool. A mention on a mom's blog site one morning had generated a pair of new orders by 10 a.m.
"I really think that's why there are so many mom entrepreneurs right now," Rivera said.
On her block alone are at least three women running companies from their dining rooms or basements, including Christa Roehl, who has turned an embroidery machine and a love of sewing into a successful part-time business.
While her three children are at preschool or asleep for the night, Roehl retreats to her basement workshop to transform plain cloth diapers into adorable baby burp cloths and canvas bags into one-of-a-kind carryalls.
Roehl has been sewing since she was a child, but she never considered it a source of income until people started to admire her daughter's homemade dresses.
"A neighbor asked me to make something for her," Roehl said. She's been sewing and embroidering ever since, turning out shirts with company logos, aprons that match any cook's kitchen decor and turning friend Casey Baca's line of children's backpacks into monogrammed masterpieces. Baca runs her successful children's backpack and accessories company, Four Peas, from her own home, just across the back yard from Roehl's house.
"In the last year it's more than doubled in size," Roehl said of her business, Hillshire Station. Just recently, it's started to spill out of its original space and into her children's playroom. Space is tight, but Roehl has no plans to move Hillshire Station out of her Quincy Street home.
"It's fine as it is," she said. A cramped work space, she said, is a small price to pay for the many benefits of working for herself, and from home. Like most of her fellow "mompreneurs®," Roehl cherishes the ability to spend as much time with her children as possible.
"You have to be disciplined to get the work done when you can," she said. That can mean early mornings and late nights, but it also means never missing a soccer game or school play.
"I want to go to my kids' games. I want to be able to pick them up," said Rivera, who worked as an attorney before deciding to stay home and be a mom.
That's the same goal Doris Christopher of Hinsdale had when she started her own business back in 1980. Christopher had been at home with her children for eight years when she decided to re-enter the working world. She thought carefully about what she wanted to do before coming up with a concept that combined her love of cooking and cooking gadgets with her love of teaching. With $3,000 borrowed from a life insurance policy, Christopher started going to people's homes to demonstrate how to use her favorite cooking tools, and Pampered Chef was born.
Twenty-seven years later, 60,000 Pampered Chef consultants make a living doing just was Christopher did. Their jobs allow them the conveniences that Christopher was looking for when she founded Pampered Chef -- flexibility and the chance to be a mom as well as a successful businesswoman.
Ask Loren Musgrove of Western Spring about her job and she'll tell you she's a mom first, a jewelry designer second. Like so many others, her business, LMB Jewelry, started as a hobby. It turned into a business when people started to admire Musgrove's handmade baubles.
"People started buying them off my neck," she said. Today, she sells her earrings, bracelets and necklaces at home parties and to people who know her work. Her hobby has turned into a part-time job that brings in about $20,000 a year. And that's sure to grow when Musgrove launches her company Web site early next year.
Unlike Roehl, who is happy to keep her job in her basement, Musgrove would like to see her business grow.
"I would love to have it grow into a full-time job," she said.
Balancing work and home life is hard for any mom. It can be even harder when your office is in your children's playroom. But Williams said there's something for her children to learn from seeing her fit work into her schedule.
"They see my work ethic," she said, and they know that one hour of work means a reciprocal hour of mom's undivided attention.
Williams' business is growing, and she has plans to launch a Web site early next year. But she'll never let it expand so fast that she misses out on her two growing little boys.
"If I have to get a baby-sitter, I won't do it," she said.
She is first a mom, then a businesswoman. The two jobs just happen to share the same work space.
