Starting a Business as a New Mother: Business Cards, Childcare, and Other Things You Need To Know
Starting a business can be an excellent way to build a new life for yourself and your family. However, it's also a major challenge – especially if you're starting from scratch with a baby on the way. Today, Ferguson Inspired outlines some of the resources, tools, and strategies to help you navigate the transition into parenthood while keeping your business growing. You’ll be a flourishing mompreneur in no time!
Finding Tools and Resources
A wealth of tools and resources are available to new mothers starting a business. The most important tool is a supportive network of family and friends. Other useful resources include online resources such as websites and forums, books, and in-person classes and workshops.
In addition, as Signpost points out, local business organizations often support new entrepreneurs through mentorship programs, networking events, and discount rates for membership dues. Online resources such as Google AdWords and social media platforms can also help you market a new business.
Making a Business Plan and Choose Structure
Once you've gathered some resources, it's time to start planning your business. If you don't already have one, create a business plan. This document will outline your goals, strategies, marketing plans, financial projections, and more. It will be a vital roadmap for launching and running your new venture.
Give careful consideration to how you’ll structure your business. An LLC will provide flexibility and tax benefits, as well as reduced paperwork, and your personal assets will be protected in case there’s ever litigation against your business, and an online formation service can easily help you start an LLC in your state.
Getting Childcare
You'll also need to find childcare to focus on growing your business. If possible, find someone you trust, such as a friend or family member, who can watch your baby while you work. If that's not possible, look for licensed childcare providers in your area. When interviewing potential babysitters or daycare providers, ask about their experience with infants, their policies on screen time and discipline, and their availability on nights and weekends.
Developing a Schedule
As a mompreneur, it’s essential to make a schedule that allows you to be productive while still spending quality time with your baby. There's no one-size-fits-all solution here; you'll need to figure out what works best for you and your family. Here are some tips to get started:
Batching work so that you can spend more time with your baby when they're awake.
Setting aside specific times each day or week to work on your business.
Taking advantage of nap times to get things done.
Start Marketing with Business Cards
Marketing is a crucial component of any successful business, but it can be difficult to keep up with the most efficient and effective methods. Business cards are one of the most important and effective tools for marketing your business. They provide potential customers with essential information about your company, such as who you are and what you do. With a business card maker, it is easy to create your business card design quickly, cheaply, and efficiently. Business cards can be used to increase the exposure of your brand and to promote new services or products that you offer. A well-designed business card will make a great impression, helping you grow your customer base and build relationships with potential clients.
Another valuable marketing technique is content marketing. It has a multitude of advantages, allowing businesses to reach their targeted audience and increase brand awareness, create relationships with customers, improve website traffic through search engine optimization, and generate leads. Through content, you have the ability to share your unique voice and capture the attention of potential prospects from various online resources.
Choosing the Right Apps
There are endless apps out there designed to help parents juggle the demands of work and home life, but which ones are actually worth using? To help you sift through the noise, we've compiled a list of our favorite free apps for running a business while caring for a newborn, all of which are available for iOS and Android:
Asana: Asana is a task management app that lets you create to-do lists, set deadlines, assign tasks to team members (if applicable), and track your progress over time.
Hootsuite: Hootsuite is an essential tool for managing social media accounts. Lifewire explains that you can use it to schedule posts in advance, track who's talking about your brand online, measure your success over time, and more.
RescueTime: RescueTime tracks how much time you spend on different apps and websites to get an accurate picture of where your time goes each day (spoiler alert: it's probably less productive than you think).
Wrapping Up
Starting a business is hard enough – starting one while also managing the challenges of escaping domestic violence and caring for a newborn can feel impossible. But with the right resources and strategies in place, you can flourish. Take time to gather the resources you need, create a comprehensive business plan, develop a schedule that works for you, market your business, and implement the other tips above. And be patient with yourself as you commit to this massive undertaking. You’ve got this!
