Mommypreneur: Lessons from World Class Multitaskers

by Dena Stern

Mommypreneurs might be the unsung heroes of the small business world. These ambitious women somehow manage to juggle running a home and the care of small & large children (and sometimes their husbands!), and the complex tasks of building and running a business.

My mother Kathy is a Mommypreneur. She single handedly started and ran a successful Beauty Salon for over 35 years. (She of course started doing this when she was 10, sorry Mama I didn’t mean to reveal your age!). She did everything, cut hair, ordered and tracked stock, marketed the business , balanced the books, learned new innovations in the field, provided exceptional customer service and everything in between that is required to run a successful sustainable business for over 3 decades.

I think her least favorite part was balancing the books. This book balancing usually happened late at night, after a hard day on her feet working and it usually happened while she cooked dinner, helped me with my homework, entertained my father and cleaned the house. I swear she had 8 arms. I still remember seeing that thick black ledger spread on on her crossed legs, one hand poised with pencil, the other one rubbing the bottom of her (no doubt aching) feet.

I think that image is how I ended up here. With online financial tools like WorkingPoint, she no longer needs to spend so much time on those books! She can spend that time with her family instead or doing the more fun parts of running the business, like building lasting relationships with her clients (some have been coming to her for over 35 years, some commute hours to see her) and learning the latest cutting edge styling tools and techniques.

In honor of my Mother, I am going to start sharing some strategies which I saw her use to sustain and grow her business each week. I hope they help and inspire those of you with the entrepreneurial (or mommypreneurial spirit) to be successful!

Kathy’s Relationship Building Rule #1: People like to feel special.
For Kathy, this meant that anyone who came to her more than 3 times in a year got a Holiday present. This also meant that as soon as I could wrap a present I was recruited to wrap hundreds of bottles of hair products (mother daughter bonding time!). She remembered what products people liked or if they weren’t buying products from her, what products would work best for their hair. This meant that she usually got more product sales (people couldn’t live without them when they tried them!) but also that her clients felt that she knew them, remembered them and cared about them.

She also kept detailed client records on what they purchased, what colors she used on their hair, and their birthdays and would call or send birthday cards to everyone.

These days, technology makes it easy to track all of these details for your clients. There are tons of great free applications you can find now to track birthdays of your loyal clients, I like to use a Google Calendar which will work with the new WorkingPoint Google App!