Current Mom:

So often, women become entrepreneurs for the freedom it gives to control your own schedule and the time you spend with your children. But ironically, many women entrepreneurs find maternity leave the toughest piece of the puzzle to solve.

Do you tell your clients or customers you’re pregnant? How long can you take off without risking the business you’ve built? What if clients start using another company and never come back to you? If you refer the work or hire a sub-contractor, are you giving away the core of your business? How can you afford to lose months of pay during maternity leave?

These are all questions that bedevil women entrepreneurs considering maternity leave. My answer to each is the same: don’t worry.

You may, in fact, lose a client or two — women entrepreneurs I know have experienced just that disappointment. But ultimately, you should start (or expand) your family when you are ready, and not postpone it out of fear. Children will affect your life more profoundly than any business venture. Moreover, you started your business once, so if you have to build it back up again, you know how to do it. In fact, you can avoid some mistakes, making it easier the second time!

As far as money goes, the few employed women in the U.S. who are fortunate enough to receive paid leave generally receive only a few weeks. Read full post.

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Virtual Entrepreneur blog has been featured on Executive MBA Programs blog by Adrienne Carlson. It’s always nice to have our work recognized by our peers but it’s even nicer to see that many moms are rocking their businesses. Congrats to all of them and enjoy the list:

Advice & Support from other mom entrepreneurs
Receive support and encouragement from other mom entrepreneurs with these blogs. They offer advice and share their stories on both motherhood and running a company.

1. The Mom Entrepreneur: Get the basics from a mom balancing motherhood and a small business. Her posts are filled with emotions when talking about the good fortune she has experienced and does not take for granted.

2. My Business Adventures: A Mom’s blogging journey of starting her own business. Share her ins & outs, wins and losses, anecdotes, and life’s lessons as she moves ahead.


3. Entrepreneur Mom: You’ll find practical tips and smart ideas about entrepreneurship on this blog. This mom also invites successful entrepreneurs to share their best advice with you.

4. The Solopreneur’s Million-Dollar Mindset: This woman helps entrepreneurs achieve their business and life goals rapidly and efficiently. She serves as a Success Coach for the nationally known organization, Count-Me-In for Women’s Economic Independence and helps award winners grow their businesses to one-million dollars and larger.

5. News You Can Use: Read this blog from the editor of WomenEntrepreneur.com, Eva Gumpel. Get her thoughts on everything from marriage to the joys of being a woman entrepreneur.

6. Make it Legal: A small business instructor’s handbook on law and entrepreneurship. This business attorney has been in the field for more than 15 years guiding small businesses through legal hurdles they face when starting and running their companies.

7. BizCentral USA – Small BizBlog: This blog is dedicated to educating the small and start up business enterprise. Women and minority entrepreneurs can find trends and comments pertaining to the challenges they face starting out.

8. EntrepreneurHER: A platform for women entrepreneurs who have either considered starting their own business or are experienced entrepreneurs. Find insight and support from other empowered women by learning and connecting.

9. FemalePreneurs: Young women looking to start a business can find all kinds of advice and inspiration here. Teaches women how to expand their business by using the internet and their growing expertise.

10. Girl Meets Business: Get some insight on how women can navigate the working world from the solid advice given on this blog. Mostly for women professionals who want to develop professionally through growth and learning but still want to be mommy too.

11. Forging Ahead: This is the story of Kjerstin Erickson who was 20 years old when she started her company, FORGE. She didn’t have a business plan and she didn’t have a penny but she now works in three refugee camps in Zambia, helping refugees build better lives.

12. Thoughts Of A Mom: Read these observations from this wife, mother, entrepreneur, and woman. She does not hold her tongue about issues that she feels are important to herself and her family.

Budget…
we were ranked # 19, continue reading this post and check it out!

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Entrepreneur Online:
1. Take a break
Have you ever been overwhelmed and feel you can’t stop for fear you will fall further behind? When you’re in a high-stress situation, your thinking is often cluttered making you less productive. Michele Dortch, The Integrated Mother, suggests that you take a break when you become stressed. Whether you choose a 15-minute nature walk or a full day doing activities you love, stopping can actually provide amazing clarity and help you complete your tasks on time. This may seem counterproductive, but it really works!
To prevent going on overload, try the following tips on a regular basis…

2. Take time out to socialize each week
Alice Seba of Mom Masterminds advises taking time out is invaluable to the Mom Entrepreneur. Alice makes a point to have a few opportunities to socialize each week with girlfriends, her partner, or to just have some time alone. It revives her and makes her more focused when she comes back to being a mom or a businessperson. Alice says, ‘All work and no play not only makes you a dull mama, but it makes you a stressed out and ineffective one, too!’

3. Take a few ‘Mommy Minutes’ as often as possible
Ponn Sabra, author of Empowering Women to Power Network, puts herself on ‘time out’ and takes ‘Mommy Minutes’ as often as possible. Ponn sits in a self-made sauna in the bathroom with the hot shower running or enjoys a favorite goodie (she sometimes hides special ice cream sandwiches in back corner of her freezer where no one, even her husband, can find them.) More tips here.

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ContestBlogger:
1. Niche blogging – Niche blogging is fast growing and has become a very lucrative means of using the internet to make money. Become a niche blogger with quality content that will attract interested readers and bingo, you’re making money for writing about stuff you like to talk about.

2. Articles – Submit articles to thousands of article directories for free to market whatever product, service, website that you want to write about. Everyone is up for a good read. As long as you produce thoughtful, quality articles, you will get noticed.

3. Join a GPT site – GPT (get paid to) sites pay their members to complete free surveys and offers. Similar to blogging and article writing, GPT programs have skyrocketed to the top as an free option for stay at home moms to enjoy earning revenue.

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Springwise:
There’s no doubt having a baby is a joyful experience, but most moms would likely agree that it would be a whole lot more joyful if one didn’t have to start off so sore and tired. Aiming to transform the hospital stay into one of relaxation and rejuvenation, Go Home Gorgeous hopes to better equip new mothers for the sleepless times ahead.

Minneapolis/St. Paul-based Go Home Gorgeous offers a variety of in-room spa services for new mothers designed to help them go home from the hospital feeling better than they did when they arrived. Available services include a “foot thanking” treatment for USD 45; scalp, neck and shoulder massage for USD 60; traditional body massage for USD 85; and a postnatal body therapy package for USD 139. Gentle massage, aromatherapy and soothing music are used to transform the hospital room into what the company calls a “Spa-Spital” room, where eucalyptus-infused steam towels, for example, decrease water retention, deepen breathing and increase circulation.

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Moms Can Make Millions:
After her son was born, Lisa Druxman wanted to stay home with her kids, but she still needed a full time income.

One day while walking with her baby in his stroller, she had an “ah-ha!” moment when she realized she could start a business teaching classes that helped other moms get back into shape.

That day, in August 2001 she came up with the name of her company… Stroller Strides.

Lisa Druxman wasn’t aware that her business idea would fill a need across the country. Mothers who needed to get back into shape after having their babies were also looking for support from other mothers. Lisa’s classes would fulfill that need.

Lisa initially started offering classes to a few moms around her San Diego neighborhood. One day the local news called her because they needed someone for a new story the next morning. In the news interview she was able to pitch her small Stroller Strides business. Because she was just starting out, she had to put her personal email and phone number on the screen of the T.V. When she got home she had 75 emails.

She realized this was a great opportunity.

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Business Opportunities:
23 year old Amber Kastenschmidt isn’t a talker, she’s a “do-er.” After feeling the need to express her creative side and love for yoga, Amber started the Bolder Yoga Mat Company and began designing yoga mats.

The Bolder Yoga Mat Company’s non-toxic yoga mats are printed with bold designs from top to bottom. Each yoga mat is heavy metal and phthalate free, making them both eco-friendly and stylish.

The extra thick mats are printed with ink that is just as sticky as the mat, and Amber claims whether it is a soothing mantra or spicy design a yogi is after, The Bolder Mat Company has a design that fits.

The Bolder Mat Company also offers a nation-wide yoga mat Recycling Program that takes old mats for cleaning and refurbishing.

After Amber cleans the mats by hand with a special disinfectant, she sends them out to charities across the United States. The need for yoga mats is astounding from safe houses, rec centers, etc. Amber currently has hundreds of requests to fill and could use more donated mats. After donating a mat, customers receive $5 off towards a printed Bolder yoga mat.

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OttawaCitizen:
Susy Pardo calls herself the CBO of her company. Chief Baking Officer, that is.

Having attended Sheridan College for journalism, and worked as a project manager at an advertising agency, owning flourgirls, a specialty cupcake and cookie shop in Milton, Ont., is far from where Pardo, 35, imagined her life would be.

Born and raised in Canada, Pardo married an American and moved to New York for several years where she worked remotely for an advertising agency in Toronto.

While food, specifically desserts, had always been a passion of Pardo’s, it was the “circus of food” in New York combined with the desire to meet people in a new city that brought her to enrol in cooking school at the French Culinary Institute in New York City.

And once she walked through the door on her first day in the kitchen, she knew she was where she belonged.

“I just loved it. I just loved the feeling I got from being in the kitchen,” she recalls.

“If someone had told me 15 years ago that I would’ve ended up at cooking school in New York, I wouldn’t have believed it for a minute.”

Read full story.

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PR Web:
Downward trends in the stock market, housing foreclosures and massive job layoffs are creating a tight squeeze on family budgets across the country and the globe. But while budgets have been reduced the entrepreneurial spirit hasn’t — especially in the growing “mom owned business” sector. As much as one-third of moms recently surveyed (Allen & Gerritsen, 2008) say they have had to find new sources of income to deal with the impact of the current economy. Women’s small business consultant and mentor, Nicole Dean, understands this kind of pressure all too well and decided to do something about it.

“When I started working at home several years ago I was pleased that I could pay things like the car note. Eventually I was able to pay the mortgage. When recent economic changes hit our household I was pleased that the income from my home business had grown so significantly that I could cover all the bills myself. Women thinking outside the box and choosing to become entrepreneurs to save “the family farm” isn’t a new phenomenon but it is a trend being fueled by the Internet and the marketplace access it offers to new business owners. That’s why I created the service http://showMomthemoney.com”; explains Dean.

Dean created showMomthemoney.com to help women sift through the borage of make-money-at home-offers that have proliferated throughout the Internet and that often target vulnerable audiences like cash strapped women who are at home caring for children. Dean’s showMomthemoney site offers a wide range of resources, guides and information many moms have turned to recently not just because of the resources offered, but because of Dean’s respected profile in the work at home mom community.

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news.newamericamedia.org:
When An Pham immigrated to the United States from Vietnam in 2004 at the age of 40, she left behind her career as a college teacher. New immigrants from Vietnam like her often found entry-level jobs in the nail industry. But Pham sought a different path.

She wanted a new career, but thought “I’m too old to go to school.”

While reading a Vietnamese language newspaper, she said she saw an ad from Anew America Foundation about a business incubation certification training, and decided to sign up.

”At first, I [thought] I get a job,” said Pham, who said she eventually wanted to start her own business. “The program,” she said, taught her, “how to do a business plan.”

Pham’s first venture was opening a store in San Leandro, Ca, that imported and sold pottery from Vietnam. The pottery in Vietnam is “beautiful and cheap,” she noted. “I thought, why don’t I bring my pottery here to sell?”

As she grew her business, Pham took ESL classes at Berkeley City College, eventually earning an associate’s degree in international business. She’s currently enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program in international business at San Francisco State University.

Pham has moved onto her second business, and founded Global Investment for Trade, LLC., through which she promotes business and education exchanges. Pham was honored last Thursday by AnewAmerica Foundation with the “Entrepreneur of the Year” award for her work to connect businesses in Vietnam with power from solar and wind.

“Our entrepreneurs are not only connected to the local economy, but the global [one] too,” said Mimi Nguyen, AnewAmerica Foundation senior program manager. “An, she’s creating jobs on three continents…” Read full story.

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