Mompreneur is a new word in business

Puget Sound Business Journal 

May 4, 2007
by Ben Miller Associate Editor

Running a small business is tough.
Running a small business and also running a family is even tougher.

There is a new word for mothers who start businesses and stay at home -- mompreneur (or mommypreneur).

Here's the story: Mom has a full-time job and a child; mom takes the plunge and quits her full-time job to raise her child and start a company; mom looks for help from women who have done the same thing.

In the Seattle area, there's a new group forming to help out entrepreneurial mothers called Northwest Enterprising Moms. The group is sort of like a chamber of commerce for entrepreneurial moms, according to Kelly Sharples, who co-founded the group with Christine Wallace of Gracewinds Perinatal Services of Seattle . Northwest Enterprising Moms is holding its first informational session from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 12 at the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center in Seattle .

Sharples said she worked at the Woodland Park Zoo until January 2006, when she joined her cousin Sara Winnick in starting Blue Dress Press, a paper products company that creates customized greeting cards and other items. She said the decision to leave the full-time world and go into business for herself wasn't difficult, because she wanted to stay at home and raise her son, Gavan.

What was difficult, she said, was the absence of information available for female entrepreneurs such as herself.

"I didn't see a lot of community support and resources out there," she said.

Getting together with other stay-at-home moms/entrepreneurs, women who understand the balance of being a mother and owning a business, was the impetus to start the group and host the information session, Sharples said.

"If you're a mom and want to learn about mom-owned businesses, you can learn about what other moms are doing in the community," she said of the May 12 event.

Another "mompreneur" who's helping promote the event is photographer Della Chen, who quit a full-time job and jumped into the self-employed business world in 2004 to spend more time with her son and work on her documentary photography business.

Chen said she envisions Northwest Enterprising Moms to be "a chamber of local women business owners who happen to be moms." The moms realize that quitting a full-time job, like Chen did when she left her job at Seattle Weekly to raise a child and start a business, can be intimidating.

"Starting your own business is such a huge risk," she said. The hardest part of leaving a regular job is losing things such as insurance and a paycheck every week, Chen added.

Chen stressed that it's important for women entrepreneurs such as herself to find a support network of other mothers. That's why she's excited about the May 12 event.

"I hope it will turn into so many opportunities for women and show how possible it is to run a business and run a family together," she said.