For the past month or so we’ve been raising capital for Work It, Mom!. As a young company we need investment capital so that we can grow to a scale where we can be a real business. And having been on the other side of investing for many years, let me tell you, it is SOOOO much easier there than here.

On an average day of dealing with potential investors I feel mostly like a punching bag after a really brutal workout. Being questioned endlessly about everything from our mission (”Are there really enough working moms out there who would care to connect with each other?) to our product (”Your site doesn’t show that you have a good sense of what women want — where is all the celebrity content and diet tips?”) is difficult, but it’s also very personal. (When I said that business is personal I really meant it.) Sometimes I truly feel beaten down.

But here’s the upside: Read the rest of this entry »

I am writing this while sitting on the bus, on my way back home from a day business trip to NYC. My feet are blistered despite the half-a-box of Band-Aids that I used up during the day of walking/running from one meeting to another. My right eye is bloodshot because I have completely failed to get any sleep this week (OK, last week and the week before that also.) My voice is coarse from all the talking and my right hand is cramping from all the typing. I have a fugly-looking red welt in my right shoulder from carrying my enormous laptop around all day. And I am too scared to look in my inbox because I’ve not yet gone on one business trip when either (1) there wasn’t some crisis on the site or (2) something going on at home.

And this was one of the better days. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been about a year since I last had a boss.

The boss I had at the time that I made the whole steady-career-to-full-time-entrepreneur change wasn’t a nice one. He was passive aggressive, liked to embarrass people, always blamed me or someone else if anything went wrong, and gave very little credit if things went right. I never cried at work — mostly because I think it’s bad for women to show so much emotion in the workplace — but I often ran to the bathroom or came home on the verge of tears from dealing with him.

Not having this person in my life has been a relief. But let me come clean and tell you that sometimes I really miss having a boss. Yes, even a boss who drove me nuts for five years. And here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »

One expression that I hear frequently now that I am an entrepreneur is: Don’t take it personally.

I’ve heard this from several entrepreneurs, investors, coaches, friends, family, you name it. Usually it comes up in a conversation where I talk about a difficult issue or challenge I am facing, or something that is not going as well as I’d like.”Don’t take it personally,” they say, and I nod to move the conversation along.

But I feel like I need to go on some kind of a public record here and say that I don’t buy that argument, not for a minute. To me, business is all about being personal. It’s both the most exciting and the most excruciatingly difficult part of being an entrepreneur. When I see a member being helped by other members on the site, when I get a note from someone saying they love Work It, Mom!, when I read a great member article, note, or blog post, I feel an unbelievable kind of pride and satisfaction. When we’re not growing as quickly as I’d like, when we release a new feature or design element that’s not working well, when a competitor does something better than we do, I feel responsible, stressed, and upset. I take it personally and I could not imagine not doing that.

Frankly, I didn’t think anyone could not take their business personally, but apparently I am wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve written about before, a bit more than six months ago our family went through a BIG life change. I quit my high-paying job in finance, we moved from our beloved-but-too-expensive-and-crazy New York City to a suburb of Boston, and I started a company (this here Work It, Mom!, of course!) As part of this transition we’ve gone from living on a fairly large income to living on mostly my husband’s income, which, while completely respectable, is a lot less than what we used to live on.

As this BIG change got closer I was completely freaked out. I was freaked out about leaving the city I came to love, moving to a new area, starting my own business, and changing our financial situation significantly. My husband and I are pretty frugal people - we saw our income increase 5x since our first jobs but we didn’t really change our life in a big way. Sure, I splurged on something for myself from to time, but I’d only buy things on sale and would agonize about spending significant sums of money just as much when I made lots of it as when I made little of it. But having the security of a steady and large paycheck is a nice luxury–your savings account grows, you don’t have to watch EVERY dollar, and the general stress level related to money is down.

So when the BIG change came, I was ready to be stressed and worried about money all the time and this impending stress made me very anxious. But as the weeks and months of our new life went on, the stress didn’t increase as much as I expected. It’s there, no doubt, but it’s not nearly as paralyzing as I anticipated.

To be honest, I am not quite sure why this is. I am an immigrant who has truly experienced what it’s like to be hungry and poor (welfare, food stamps, eating disguising canned fish — been there). My background has made me very conservative financially and I worry about our daughter’s college savings, our retirement and my parents’ retirement on a regular basis. (It’s OK to laugh at me now.) In other words, I am wired to stress about money and now that we have a lot less of it, I feel that I should be stressing more.

But I’m not. Read the rest of this entry »

I spoke to a reporter this morning who is doing an article about women entrepreneurs. (Luckily she is not doing an article about mompreneurs because, well, you know how I feel about that.) One of the issues we touched on was how women are perceived in the business world. I told her my stories–which you can read here and here. But then I said to this very nice woman that I’ve developed some strong opinion about this and I’d like to lay it out:

• Women who are strong and confident are often perceived as aggressive and bitchy
• Women who are nice and collaborative are often perceived as weak
• Once we have kids, many assume that our mom identity IS the entirety of who we are
• Women are too often each other’s worst enemies (we don’t network as well, we don’t help each other well, we are often catty)

This is all true, in my experience and according to some experts. But second to waving a magic wand and changing these ingrained perceptions and biases in the workplace, the only solution I can come up with is to try to not care and push ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s guest blog post is by Wendy, the rockin’ founder of emomsathome.com. Following up on my post yesterday about overcoming fears of failure as an entrepreneur, this is Wendy’s perspective on the topic. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of hers–read this, it will give you a fresh perspective whether or not you’re an entrepreneur.

Is it Fear of Failure or Fear of Success That Is Holding You Back?

My second home based business was a great freelance graphic design business. I ran it for 4 years from home, never took on any debt, and made money every year (until the end… but that’s another story). There were several times in which I tried to figure out how to grow the company without taking on more clients - and the obvious solution was to subcontract some of my work out to other freelancers.

This worked for a while, but I found that I was a little lot outside of my comfort zone to delegate work - especially work that had “my name on it”. I wanted to run the show - wanted to maintain control. At the time, I knew I was dealing with an internal struggle - and deducted that I was just afraid of failing :: that if I didn’t control all of the pieces of the puzzle, something would go terribly wrong.

So I eventually stopped trying.

It wasn’t until few years later that I realized that perhaps it wasn’t fear of failure at all. In fact, I was damn good at failing :: I failed to follow up on a ton of leads, failed to grow my business to the level I wanted, failed to manage my time efficiently, and in the end the burnout got to me and I ended up closing my doors (which may or may not be considered a failure - for me, it truly was the right time to move on).

It was a dear friend who helped me to see that failing was indeed comfortable for me. What I was actually afraid of was becoming a success. Megan over at eBay Selling for eParents wrote a heartfelt post about this yesterday. And instead of buttoning up her article, she left it open ended and asked for some input from others.

So here’s what I have found. Becoming successful has a whole slew of perceived baggage that comes with it: I feared that if I became hugely successful…

• Friendships and relationships would change because I would become more successful than the people I loved
• That success would go to my head and I would become a raving bi*ch (hahaha) Read the rest of this entry »