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Articles on Entrepreneur Matters:

The Mom Entrepreneur Juggling Act

More stay-at-home moms are redirecting their creativity, experience and education into starting businesses on the side. Whether your goals are as simple as supplementing the family’s income or as lofty as building a company that could eventually be worth millions, starting part-time is a great way to test the business waters.

But between helping the kids with complex homework assignments, shuttling them to countless activities and volunteering at their school--all while managing the household and trying to carve out a little time for yourself--where do you find the time to start a business?

First, “prepare a thorough business plan,” says Jennifer Bluemle, who built Buffalo, New York-based J.W. Daigler Co., which offers custom-designed notecards, invitations and birth announcements, all while raising Finn, 3. A business plan will help keep you on track so you use your limited time wisely, and it also provides a blueprint for taking the business full-time should you decide to do so later. Gather information on market trends, demographics and similar businesses, and use this information to write your plan. Plenty of books and resources can guide you through the process; one helpful source is www.onepagebusinessplan.com .

Before launching a part-time business, be sure you have the support of your spouse and family. Now--not three months into startup--is the time to bring any of their concerns into the open. Work with your spouse to come up with solutions to possible problems (could you divide up some of your household chores, for example?). Lay some ground rules--for instance, no working on Sundays or discussing business at the dinner table.

After you launch your business, know there will be even greater demands on your time as market forces begin to take over. At this point, it’s extremely important to stay on top of things. “Be organized, use your time wisely, and try to be on a schedule,” Bluemle suggests. “Write a daily to-do list. Be realistic, and make sure you get the key tasks done. Also remember that things always take more time than you think, so don’t get frustrated.”

It’s also important to get your child-care needs in order. Although this can vary depending on your business, expecting to work with small children underfoot is probably unrealistic. Many moms use part-time day care, in-home nannies or babysitters to free up chunks of time when they can work on the business. Once children are in school, you’ll have more time to yourself. Still, most moms find it necessary to squeeze in business at night after the kids are in bed.

Bluemle organizes her workday around Finn’s schedule, working while he’s in preschool, during nap times and after he goes to bed. She also has a babysitter come over two days per week. When she has unexpectedly busy workdays but no babysitter, she has disciplined herself to put off work for a later time. “There’s always work that can be done,” Bluemle explains. “But I have to tell myself it will still be there tomorrow.”

Tamara Monosoff
28 May 2007

Tamara Monosoff is Entrepreneur.com’s “Inventions” columnist; founder and CEO of Mom Inventors Inc., a product development and manufacturing company; and author of The Mom Inventors Handbook: How to Turn Your Great Idea Into the Next Big Thing.

Awaken The Entrepreneur Within You

There's a commonly held belief that one becomes an entrepreneur by going into business, or going out on one's own.

I don't subscribe to that belief.

In fact, not only don't I subscribe to that belief, but I hold strongly to the opposing belief--with overwhelming evidence to support my position--that to go into business, or out on one's own, in the belief that by so doing you'll be an entrepreneur will result in tragic consequences of the greatest magnitude. In short, it's a very, very bad idea!

So then what exactly is an entrepreneur? Let me share my view with you, and then let me give you three exercises to do to help awaken the entrepreneur within you.

An entrepreneur is not a person, but a personality, the personality living inside of each and every person on the face of the earth, the personality who dreams. The entrepreneur inside of you, of me, of your friends, of your relatives of every shape, size and dimension, no matter what they do for a living, no matter how bold or how shy, no matter where they live or what their education may or may not be, the entrepreneur in each and every human being is the dreamer who sees life as it could be, not as it is. It's the dreamer who sees mountains where only flat land exists; who sees great buildings and cities and countries arising with enormous energy where no buildings or cities or countries live as of yet; who sees the sweet juice of opportunity around every corner, in every nook, cranny and claptrap yard, in every square or rounded inch of misery. To the entrepreneurial personality living in each and every human being, there is a life larger than life, a beauty larger than beauty, a promise larger than any promise could hope to be. The entrepreneur in each and every one of us is the inventor, the creator, a lunatic of the most profound dimensions, the inconsolable pursuer of the impossible who sees visions where others only see work.

The entrepreneur in you and in me is holy, truly holy, and not to be believed.

Which means that Walt Disney knew who his entrepreneur was, as did Sam Walton and Ray Kroc, as did Steve Jobs and Debby Fields, and yes, even as strange as it might seem to you, as did Einstein and Chopin and Rumi and every "imagineer" who ever dared climb a mountain that wasn't there, reach the summit, and hold up his hands and head and scream to those who didn't see him or her--or even the mountain--until they came into view, "I'm here!" And there was no "here" until they said it. And there was no "there" until all the others saw it. And there was no summit until they created it. And that's what the magic of your entrepreneurial soul does when you invite him or her to go climbing.

The First Exercise
Stop thinking about what you want to do. Stop doing what you're doing. Go to a place, any place will do, where activity ceases, where there is no itinerary, no schedule, no agenda, no responsibility, no work of any kind, no expectation, no result you've set for yourself, no goals, no objectives, no action plans whatsoever. Go to such a place to empty your mind.

And that's the first exercise to awaken the entrepreneur in you: to empty your mind. To dream and to create, there needs to be both space and energy. The entrepreneur in us wants to play with the idea of things, without constraint. To write without purpose, to imagine without an end game, to live fully and completely in the moment of his or her experience, now. Not in the past nor in the future, but now.

To prepare yourself for this exercise, try sitting down where you are, closing the door, telling everyone who might bother you to give you ten minutes without a disturbance of any kind. Unplug the phone, turn off your computer, sit down, face a wall, close your eyes, place your hands in your lap, breath deeply and just stay there, just like that. You'll see immediately what I mean, and why that's important.

You must do this first exercise every single day!

The Second Exercise
Get a blank piece of paper. You have nothing in mind. Sit with the blank piece of paper, and let whatever comes to mind go to the paper. Whether it be a sentence, or just three seemingly unrelated words. Whether it be an entire paragraph, a thought, a concern, a conclusion, let it write itself down. The key here is to let "It" speak. To let "It" say what "It" wants to say. To let "It" have the room to breath.

My saxophone teacher once said to me many years ago, "Michael, you don't make music; music finds you." You need to let "It" play its music. That's what the entrepreneur in you wants more than anything: to play "Its" music.

You'll be amazed what appears on the blank piece of paper as you do this second exercise.

Do it for only 10 minutes. Do it once a day. And save those pieces of paper, with the date on the top right hand corner. Save them in a box, or a file folder, and know that that box or file folder is a sacred place. Because your dreamer has created it. Your entrepreneur has become vulnerable. Your creator has expressed himself or herself, and you've been a witness to it.

The Third Exercise
Maintaining an entrepreneurial journal is a daily process, and I highly recommend it. Buy yourself a journal, preferably with leather covers, a rich-looking journal, a journal that impresses you because it looks so rich, so permanent, so significant. Write in that journal what you learned that day. Write in that journal what you felt that day. Write in that journal anything that came to mind that day, as you sat with a blank piece of paper, as you sat in your chair facing the wall for ten minutes with absolutely no interruption at all, as you felt your feelings come up, your feelings of being blocked, your feelings of being ashamed, your feelings of excitement, your feelings of despair...whatever came up that day, record it, even though you may not think you're an accomplished writer--or even if you think you are. Your entrepreneurial journal is not about the writing; it's about the recording. This is your life, someone once said. This is your life, and if you don't take it seriously, who will? This is your third exercise, and it will feed your first exercise and your second exercise, and you will know it.

Believe me, you will know it.

Michael Gerber
02 July 2007

Michael Gerber is the "Leadership" coach at Entrepreneur.com and is the author of the mega-bestseller, The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. He is also an entrepreneur himself, having spent the past three decades building his coaching company, E-Myth Worldwide around the idea of empowering business owners to gain more freedom, more money, more time and more life.