Moms have always worked hard and juggled too many balls but never before have so many started businesses right in their living room. From "mompreneurs" to designers and bloggers, straddling the line between stay-at-home motherhood and working mom is tricky business.
Meg Mateo Ilasco (also author of Craft Inc. and Creative Inc.) and Cat Seto wrote Mom, Inc. to share the wisdom they've gained from their own experiences launching businesses from home as well as the collective wisdom of other moms who have sailed these seas and charted the waters. Profiled moms include fashion designer Cynthia Rowley, blogger Gabrielle Blair (aka Design Mom), event planner Amy Atlas, designer Courtney Novogratz, Christiane Lemieux of DwellStudio, Lorena Siminovich of Petit Collage and more.
The women in the book inspire, but the bread and butter here is the practical information: business basics, creating a business plan, the legal stuff, how to price your goods or services, protecting your work, etc. - all the nitty gritty stuff you've wondered about (or maybe even worried about). And, of course, you'll find advice about perhaps the hardest part of all - balancing your business with motherhood.
Here's a fun video trailer Meg and Cat put together for the book launch:
• Mom, Inc.: The Essential Guide to Running a Successful Business Close to Home (Chronicle Books, 2012)
8 Secret Spots to Hide Valuables at Home
The Live/Work Studio of Robert Siegel Handmade Ceramics
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Howard Butcher Bloc...
10 Easy Vacation Meals to Feed a Crowd
Recipe: Chopped Brown Rice Salad with Grapes and Pecans
Confusion sparked by the work at home v. work from home moms.
I'm so over the 'mom' gear.
I like the idea of mothers learning about smart business practices, but does everything they do have to be defined by their mom status? Can't they just be business people? Plenty of women and men balance parenthood and professional lives without making it a big deal.
i like it. as a designer who's stayed home for a few years with little ones, I related well to the video. will look into it!
It's only tiresome to ppl without kids, me-thinks ...
... the 'mom' reference that is.
I like the sound of the book but hate the video... I find it annoying that it shows a mom laying around and enjoying tea and magazines, and then completing an easy project, all with no kids in sight. This seems like a mockery of the real struggle it is to get anything truly professional done from home and with kids underfoot even a fraction of the time.
Show a woman who hasn't slept well for a year while trying to juggle it all and is trying to finish a business call while her toddler is having a meltdown.
Krikkit, that's right, a video like that would make the book more attractive in my eyes. Hey, here's the unperfect life you have and how you can still do it... Moms seem to get so much crap in the news lately, how about we refrain from bashing each other? I don't always want to hear about the minutiae details of a friend's job, or how x friend is still working on that diet or boyfriend. We all have friends who's conversations sometimes drone on, but somehow people love to really get on the let's trash Mom bandwagon as if it's uniquely boring.
I own Craft, Inc. and like it, although I've never actually jumped in and started a crafting business or any business for that matter. I thought I might want to work from home while being a stay-at-home mom, but now that baby is here I realize how silly that thought was. It is hard enough completing one online college course each semester with baby. Even if he is napping or occupying himself, he is still my top priority and my brain cannot seem to focus enough on any other task. I guess I'll get better at this as time goes on (my little one is now 6 months old and things are easier than they were at one or two months). No one prepared me for the "mommy brain" thing either. You know, you go into another room and then forget why you went in there. I cannot go to the grocery store without a list anymore either or I will even forget the one thing I really was going after anyway. And when I leave the store and get into the parking lot, trying to remember where I parked is a challenge. This is all very weird to me, the one who normally has these things together and reminds everyone else of things. Kudos to those moms out there who have it together and applause to those moms who can actually run businesses out of there homes with kids underfoot.
I'm going to jump in and add that I think the video is cute, and is trying to suggest (successfully I think) that once you're kids are a little older (youngest is now in all-day kindergaten, for example), you might find yourself with a little free time after dropping them off at school. Maybe you're not ready to work outside the home yet -- kids are done at 3pm, still need lots of care... but maybe between 10 and 2, while you enjoy some tea... there might be a real opportunity to pursue your own interests and passions, while also turning a profit. It's a niche. Let's not stress about it.