Mums who can juggle running their own business with family life

Karmel wants to help mums become “more than Mummy” and get their working lives back on track. Hence her new book: Mumpreneur.

She’s well-placed to help mum-based enterprises. She built her business empire at her kitchen table, publishing 39 books which sold more than three million copies globally.

Over 24 years on, her Complete Baby and Toddler Meal Planner regularly features in the top five cookery bestsellers. She has created supermarket food ranges, weaning equipment, healthy snacks and smartphone apps.

Karmel’s first bit of key advice for anyone starting a business is: have a compelling story.

“Your main objective is to move people (prospective customers) to take action (buy your product). All the persuasive tools at your disposal won’t move people to take action unless there’s an emotive reason to do so, something that connects with them,” she writes.

Her own ‘why-this-business-exists’ story is pretty powerful. Her entrepreneurial journey was driven by tragedy — losing her first daughter, Natasha, as a baby. Karmel wanted to create a legacy in Natasha’s memory — and she wanted to give her second-born fussy-eater, Nicholas, the best start in life. She began developing recipes he’d find irresistible.

“There’ll be something in your life you’re dissatisfied with, where you can’t find a solution. Find it. When you do, other people will want it too,” Karmel tells Feelgood. “Look for a niche and find something you can do better [than already exists].”

Her niche was mums of fussy eaters. Her something better was tasty baby food. “There were no good books for feeding babies. Everybody said babies like bland food.”

On holiday in France, a doctor introduced Karmel to recipes with aubergine and basil and “all kinds of weird and wonderful ingredients”.

It was a light-bulb moment — by using tasty combinations of interesting ingredients, Nicholas started eating her home-made meals. Karmel shared her recipes with other mums of fussy eaters. They encouraged her to write a recipe book and that was her second light-bulb moment.

She urges mumpreneurs to have confidence. “As a mother, you have amazing organisational skills. If you’ve reasoned with a toddler having a tantrum, you have amazing people skills. These skills are transferable.”

She acknowledges starting up a business is no walk in the park. “The more people you talk to, the more chance you have of getting your idea off the ground. Don’t say to people ‘this is my idea, what do you think?’ They’ll just say it’s wonderful. Say ‘this is my idea, why do you think it might fail?’”

Self-employed mothers with youngest child aged five or under numbered 13,000 in Ireland last year. ISME CEO Mark Fielding puts the rise in mumpreneurs down to a mix of economic and opportunistic reasons.

Women are home minding children, yet highly skilled in the work they’d done before. They want to use their brainpower and they have time to research a good business idea.

“But returning to full-time work is economically challenging when you’re putting junior in the crèche. There’s an emotional cost too at not seeing him from 7am to 7pm. And technological advances make it much easier to manage a business without the accoutrements of an office,” he says.

CREATING NETWORKS

Mum of two Samantha Kelly is author of Tweet Your Way To Success and founder of Tweeting Goddess, which helps people to use Twitter as a marketing tool. She finds women often start businesses following a traumatic event. She set up Funky Goddess in 2011 when she was hitting 40, her marriage was breaking up and her dad had just died.

“I was in that frame of mind — ‘you only live once’.” Her idea was a first period pack to welcome young girls to womanhood.

“When my first daughter reached that awkward milestone, I went looking for something nice to get her but I couldn’t find any starter set. After Dad died, it gave me the push to create a gift pack myself.”

She got a starter bank loan, went on radio and appeared on Dragon’s Den. Her sister set her up on Twitter.

“When the kids went to bed, I went on Twitter. I built up a community. I started doing blog posts about life with pre-teens. A friend’s wife passed away, leaving him with three teenage daughters. He wrote about his experiences and the dads came out of the woodwork. Separated dads, who had their daughters at weekends, started buying the starter packs.”

Finding she wasn’t making money, Samantha sold Funky Goddess in 2013 — it’s still in business. A big stumbling block for mums starting home-based enterprises is getting out to network, she says.

“How can mums get to Chamber and business breakfasts at 7.30am when they’re trying to get kids to school? I had 6,000 Twitter followers. I said ‘look guys, we need to help each other — why don’t we have an IrishBizParty? Tell me what you do and I’ll retweet it’. It started trending on Twitter. I saw sales happen. We were networking in our pyjamas.”

Being associated with such a positive movement raised Samantha’s profile. Big companies approached, asking her to run their Twitter accounts for them. She founded Tweeting Goddess last April.

“Now, I’m making money and seeing the rewards of all the hard work.” Her top tip to wannabe mumpreneurs is to reel in support, particularly from other female entrepreneurs who’ll ‘get’ what you’re about.

Mairéad Kelly, founder of Mumpreneur Support Network, says mums starting in business often suffer from isolation.

“When women have a baby, they think they have to do it all themselves. They transfer that attitude to running a business.” She distinguishes between asking for help and letting someone else take over.

“Grab as much help as you can,” she says, citing support options such as Local Enterprise Office mentoring services and free events run by business groups.

Her clients are generally 35 to 50-year-old women with at least one school-going child or a preschooler.

“Either they don’t want to be away from their child or they’re unhappy in their current job. Some realise how much they don’t want to go back to work full-time after having a baby. They see they have a skill, realise if they worked 15-20 hours a week, they’d get by and be less stressed.

"For some it starts as a hobby. I’ve met women who started businesses when their husbands were made redundant in their 40s or 50s and were considered unemployable.”

Kelly has mentored/coached/trained about 200 women in the last few years. Mum-based enterprises range from fitness/health/wellness to the food industry, from jewellery-making/supply to fashion, from interior design to digital marketing and social media. She says women often feel they’re not good enough to start a business.

“Men go ahead and do something before they’re ready. Women get everything perfect and often miss the boat. An idea can have a short life span — market demand can quickly move on.”

Women also “seriously limit” themselves by not asking enough for finance. “There’s often more money available than they dare apply for.”

She counsels getting advice from an accountant experienced in representing people looking for finance. Doing your research pre set-up is vital.

“Just because your friends buy from you doesn’t mean you’ll have customers. Make sure there’s a market for what you’re selling.”

HOME OFFICE

Cork women Michelle O’Riordan and Vicki O’Callaghan started www.BabyBoo.ie , an online business selling double-layered bandana bibs last October. Vicki’s 15-month-old daughter, Ruby, has severe eczema and acid reflux, causing her to drool a lot.

Vicki’s mission to find a highly-absorbent 100% cotton bib failed, so she came up with a solution – the bibs sold by www.BabyBoo.ie  are 100% cotton in the front, 100% polyester back and the cotton layer extends inside the neck.

“So if your baby has eczema like my little doll, the polyester won’t come into contact with the neck [thereby avoiding irritation].”

“We’ve been friends for over 20 years. Neither of us had experience in this type of industry or in setting up business,” says Michelle, a stay-at-home mother of four children aged under 10.

“I worked in HR up to eight years ago. My husband, Paudie, travels for work. I needed to give up work for the family. It wasn’t an easy decision. Since last year, I’d been looking to return to work full-time but the hours didn’t suit.”

With BabyBoo, Vicki does the marketing and manages their social media and website.

“I receive orders, check order fulfilment, take care of the financial side,” says Michelle.

A supportive husband is vital.

“Paudie wants to make it happen for me. We’ve done a couple of baby shows at weekends and he minds the kids. The ‘good’ room is taken over as my office. I get up at 7am, do an hour before the kids get up for school. I start work in the evenings at 7pm when the smaller ones go to bed. I could work three or four hours a night.”

The business partners got good advice from their solicitor — put a partnership agreement in place immediately. “A lot of businesses go a year down the road when problems arise.”

Sales have taken off but they aren’t paying themselves a wage yet. “We just want the business to grow. We’d love it to be a huge success.”

Mairéad Kelly says mums’ definition of business success varies.

“Some want to stay small and local. Others want brand awareness nationally and internationally. For others, winning awards is important or being recognised as experts in their field.”

So why do some wannabe mumpreneurs not make it? “They discover ‘this isn’t for me. I thought I wanted to be my own boss but I don’t like it’. They don’t like not knowing where the income will come from. You need to be disciplined. You have to be sales, accounts, tax and PR person until you can afford to hire someone. Some women never foresaw the time it would take from family life.”

Mumpreneur: The Complete Guide to Starting and Running a Successful Business, Annabel Karmel, €21.99.

Samantha Kelly will run a #BizParty Inspires conference in Green Isle Hotel, Dublin; April 15 — cost €40.

Starting a business

Annabel Karmel points out in Mumpreneur that you may need financial support during the start-up phase. Karmel herself is reportedly living in a £20m home in London, so it’s probably fair to say she has had a good degree of financial cushioning.

Most wannabe mumpreneurs find themselves with a more mundane and challenging economic base.

So – what funding assistance is available in Ireland?

* Back To Work Enterprise Allowance: if you’ve been unemployed and are now starting up a business you can retain full social welfare entitlements for one year, with reductions thereafter.

If setting up a limited company, Start Your Own Business relief may be available — refund of income tax applying to last six years.

Back to Work Family Dividend payment — due in June — will offer financial support to jobseekers with children and One Parent Family Payment recipients who end their social welfare claim to start self- employment.

If setting up limited company, three- year corporation tax exemption up to a certain threshold may apply to you.

Small businesses can borrow up to €25,000 from government-sponsored Micro Finance Fund, which doesn’t look for collateral or personal guarantees in the way banks do.

A feasibility study grant may be available for someone with a business idea/plan to help them check the market and see if their idea is a runner.

Contact Local Enterprise Office — www.localenterpriseoffice.ie