Les­ley Pyle

Moth­er­hood is com­plex. Cre­at­ing life is beau­ti­ful, but it’s al­so the hard­est chal­lenge a hu­man can face.

Rais­ing chil­dren is joy­ful, but it’s al­so heart-wrench­ing in ways you nev­er could have imag­ined. Just like there is no play­book for be­ing a moth­er, there is cer­tain­ly no play­book for how to bal­ance be­ing an ef­fec­tive moth­er and en­tre­pre­neur. Maybe that’s be­cause there is no right an­swer. For many en­tre­pre­neurs, this means a con­stant bat­tle or sense of guilt when choos­ing where to pri­or­i­tize your time be­tween your two loves — your fam­i­ly and your or­ga­ni­za­tion.

With the world re­open­ing, re­fo­cus­ing on moth­er­hood and en­tre­pre­neur­ship is im­per­a­tive. What is it about moth­er­hood that makes women so ef­fec­tive in busi­ness? And why do they choose to start their own com­pa­nies in­stead of tak­ing the cor­po­rate route?

Let’s take a look:

1. They are mul­ti­task­ing pros

Be­ing a mom means jug­gling a lot and be­ing good at it. If you’re look­ing to start your own busi­ness one day, chances are that mul­ti­task­ing is go­ing to be key to your suc­cess. When think­ing about start­ing a busi­ness, don’t dis­count your abil­i­ty to jug­gle nu­mer­ous tasks at once — just be­cause you have kids doesn’t mean you don’t have some se­ri­ous skills in terms of time man­age­ment and or­ga­ni­za­tion­al tac­tics. If there’s any­one who knows how to work well un­der pres­sure and think on their feet, it’s moms.

2. They are good at man­ag­ing teams

One unique ad­van­tage moms have is their ex­pe­ri­ence man­ag­ing a team. Ear­ly on, moms learn to jug­gle a house­hold full of peo­ple who all have very dif­fer­ent needs. This is in­valu­able when it comes to man­ag­ing a start­up team.

Be­ing able to build and main­tain strong re­la­tion­ships with team mem­bers is an im­por­tant com­po­nent of suc­cess in any busi­ness and be­ing able to do so while wear­ing more than one hat at once is pret­ty rare. If you’re search­ing for can­di­dates with en­tre­pre­neur­ial ex­pe­ri­ence who are will­ing to take on a larg­er role in man­age­ment, con­sid­er giv­ing se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to mom­pre­neurs. They’ll not on­ly con­tribute tal­ent, but know-how, too.

3. Mom­pre­neurs are great at pri­or­i­tiz­ing

Whether you’re an en­tre­pre­neur at heart or are look­ing to make a ca­reer tran­si­tion, pri­or­i­tiz­ing is one skill that all suc­cess­ful moms pos­sess. When you’re jug­gling count­less re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and tasks, pri­or­i­tiz­ing be­comes an es­sen­tial part of your dai­ly life. You need to know what is most im­por­tant, what can wait un­til lat­er. And once you be­come a mom, this can be ap­plied to al­most every as­pect of your day — even some­thing as sim­ple as get­ting din­ner on the ta­ble in a time­ly man­ner. Of course, it takes time to mas­ter pri­or­i­tiz­ing tasks and set­ting dead­lines when jug­gling work and fam­i­ly com­mit­ments. But with prac­tice and ded­i­ca­tion, moms can use this skill in an en­tre­pre­neur­ial set­ting just as eas­i­ly as they do at home.

Self­care is im­por­tant

The one set­back, I see many mums still strug­gling with – is tak­ing breaks.

Many of to­day’s moms strug­gle with bal­anc­ing time with their kids and their screens. How­ev­er, that jug­gling act is be­com­ing bet­ter with a greater re­al­iza­tion of the im­por­tance of SELF­CARE.

A healthy work-life bal­ance is one where you don’t con­stant­ly feel like you have to be work­ing, but you know what your pri­or­i­ties are and how to take care of your­self. So if it means leav­ing your kid with a fam­i­ly mem­ber for an hour so you can get some un­in­ter­rupt­ed fo­cus time — and then once an hour re­con­nect­ing with your child — that can ac­tu­al­ly help keep both things (work and life) go­ing well.

Time block­ing can be es­sen­tial

Mak­ing sure you carve out time for self-care is es­sen­tial. If you are not fill­ing up your own cup, you will not be able to fill up the cups of oth­ers — per­son­al­ly or pro­fes­sion­al­ly. So make time for what makes you hap­py, even if it means, blend­ing ac­tiv­i­ties like fam­i­ly work­outs !

About the au­thor

Les­ley Pyle be­gan her work-at-home ca­reer in 1996 with the launch of her first web­site “Home-Based Work­ing Moms.” She has con­tin­ued her pas­sion of help­ing moms and small busi­ness­es for over 25 years now. Pyle was named one of “50 Women En­tre­pre­neurs Who In­spire Us” by Self-Made mag­a­zine.

We in­vite you to in­spire our read­ers and

share your MOM­PRE­NEUR sto­ry!

If you are a mom bal­anc­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ship and life, chal­lenges, storms and all;

SHARE to the WE team, YOUR sto­ry!

In­clude pic­tures too!

You may be our next Mom­pre­neur Fea­ture!

Share your sto­ry to email:

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com