Reprinted with permission by NorthJersey.com

The most mom-friendly workplace
Sunday, April 4, 2004

By LESLIE KOREN
Staff Writer at The Bergen Record

Mothering in the 21st century is no easy matter, according to a recent rash of maternal literature. If you stay home, you are abandoning the hard-fought independence won by your feminist foremothers. If you work, you are forsaking your child's needs.

Navigating the emotional and guilt-ridden minefield is exhausting, and there are no easy answers.

But a growing number of new mothers, craving both career and flexibility, are attempting to create their own solution: They are leaving established employment to start their own businesses.

Fueled by the confidence of women's lib, increased workplace demands, and advances in technology, the mommy start-ups are a harried but alluring middle ground between staying at home and climbing the corporate ladder.

Getting going

Tips from "The Girl's Guide to Starting Your Own Business" by Kimberly Yorio:

It's not a hobby. Is this idea profitable? Do market research. Check out the opportunities and the competition, and then decide if it is worth the time.

Dip your feet in first. Try to get a part-time gig before beginning, to make sure you really like what you are about to commit to.

Time for a family meeting: Make sure everyone who is capable of understanding how it will affect their lives knows the impact on their time and responsibility levels.

Believe in yourself: Most of the successful women Yorio interviewed never thought they would make it to where they are. They did.

In doing so, they are redefining "having it all" on their own terms, and taking a risk they never before thought possible.

Cathy Flynn, 35, commuted 40 minutes each way to a marketing job after her first daughter was born. Juggling motherhood and career was something she always imagined she would do, but the reality was miserable.

"It was really hard, and it started to take a toll on my quality of life," she said.

After reading about a woman who was successfully selling gift baskets from her home, Flynn quit her full-time gig while pregnant with her second daughter, and is now the owner of A Gift Basket to Remember, which she runs out of her Glen Ridge home. Her web site, agiftbasket2remember.org, will go live next month, and she networks and works craft fairs to solicit business. She makes the baskets at night, during nap time, and when her parents are available to baby-sit.

"I love my girls to death, but always there was something inside of me, an inner drive, that said I want to do something important. Something I could take ownership of," she said.

The corporate world never felt like the right fit, but before her girls she was too afraid to start her own business. Having done so, she finds she is using her skills much more so than in her day job, and expressing her creativity.

"I've never been quite so crazy, but also never been quite so happy," she said.

Women play so many roles - wife, mother, manager, etc. - that many find they need to find more autonomy, said Kimberly Yorio, co-author of "The Girl's Guide to Starting Your Own Business." She launched her public relations company months before becoming pregnant with her son, now 4 and with his own desk in her office.

"When you have a job you can control, you can give more energy to the other roles and feel less guilty because it's all for the good of you and your family vs. someone else ... your company, your boss, your employer," Yorio said.

No doubt, this is only possible for the privileged percentage of mothers whose partners make enough money to support the family while the business blossoms.

Women-owned businesses account for $2.3 trillion in revenues in the United States. Over the last 15 years, women have been starting their own businesses at twice the rate of men, and now own more than 10.1 million businesses, according to the Center for Women's Business Research.

Ten years ago, Cheryl Demas gave birth to her second child a week after her first was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. Unable to handle it all, she quit her job as a full-time engineer.

"No matter how family-friendly a workplace claims to be, they still expect to be first and come before a family, and rightfully so. Things need to be done in a certain time frame," she said. "It's very, very difficult to have two full-time [working] parents."

She freelanced as a Web site designer and created her own site on the side, for other moms working from home. WAHM.com (work at home mom) now gets 5,000 visitors a day and employs four other moms (working from their own homes). Oprah's producers have called four times to discuss a visit.

Demas wrote a book about her experiences as a work-at-home mom, "It's a Jungle Out There and a Zoo in Here," which includes advice for others and was recently republished by Warner Books. With it she realized a lifelong dream of being a published writer.

"The Internet is making so many things possible that weren't possible before," she said. "You can communicate day or night, and it doesn't matter if there is background noise."

Leslie Gatti and Laura Wood taught in Harrington Park before becoming pregnant. On a trip to Florida for winter break, they realized a common talent for finding the perfect gift. Thus was born thepinkpuppy.com, an online newsletter offering trendy and fun gift ideas. Now they both have toddlers, and share responsibility for the Web site. They work at nap time, after their kids are asleep at night, and when they can find baby-sitting.

"We knew we were done teaching. We wanted to be at home with our kids. But we wanted to have something that was just ours, too," Gatti said.

She and Wood are still trying to figure out how to make their popular Web site lucrative, but it has given them entrée into a larger network of women-owned and -operated Web sites and businesses that support each other, which they hope will lead to greater economic success.

Melissa Leonard of Westchester County, N.Y., left her job at a large financial institution when she was pregnant with her first child. She watched her friends get promotions while she changed diapers and ultimately felt as if she needed to make a change.

"I needed to contribute to our finances. I had this horrible feeling in my gut that I wasn't living up to my potential," she said.

One of her mentors casually suggested that she use her etiquette training to make money. She created a Web site (establishyourselfny.com), got business cards and a logo, and began pounding the pavement looking for clients. Now she teaches etiquette classes to children and corporate groups.

Her business responsibilities have forced her to teach her children to entertain themselves and not to interrupt. Often she will work downstairs in the office while her girls are upstairs playing in their rooms. They have learned to be quiet when Mommy is on a business call. She arranges play dates for the girls when she goes to consulting jobs, and her parents help with the baby-sitting.

Much has been written recently about the affluent professional woman who is opting out of work altogether once her child is born. But cutting off that identity can be difficult, especially after spending so much time developing a career.

"Years ago, you were a mother first. Now we spend all this time working and invest all this time and energy and work in your career. It's hard to give it up, and just to give it up is very, very frightening," said Melissa McHale, 33, a former teacher from Oradell who resigned after having her second child last month.

This month, she and a partner will start their new business, Road to Reading Readiness, which aims to help kids ages 2, 3, and 4 learn to read. (Call [201] 967-READ for more information)

"It's like another birth. I'm just really excited about having something I love and something I believe in. It's easy to get caught up in being a mom, knowing I have something else that's entirely dependent upon me is very balanced, I think."

koren@northjersey.com