First a Baby, then a Business

My son is now one year old!  That's also the amount of time that I've been out of the workforce.  I have been calling this time my "family sabbatical".  Like the outcome of many work-related sabbaticals, I have launched a business during mine.  For whatever reason(s), when you leave the workforce, you begin to wrestle with big life questions, like "what do I really want in my career."  For me, something had to be very important to me in order to compete with time with my son.  If you can afford it, it's liberating to allocate true value of your time versus what a company tells you your worth.  I was also motivated to start a business, because I grew very tired of not having a response to the question "What do you do?"  People, men and women, minimize your worth the second you say "I stay at home with my kid(s)."

Like many others who have been out of the workforce for a while, albeit voluntarily or involuntarily, you begin to interview yourself. What are my skills? Who needs these skills?  Very quickly, you also recognize what the market says you are worth.  From there, a series of calculations are made based on your own personal skills, network, guts and insanity.  If you are like me, at the end of all the number crunching and emotional wrangling, you decide to start a business.

Three things happened to me that finally prompted me to jump in:

1.  I got jealous.
During a much needed girls weekend last Fall, my friend SHOCKED me by telling me how well ($$$) her business was doing after only four years.  Granted, she is brilliant and extremely self-motivated, but it was somewhat of an ego crusher to compare my former career salary after seven years to her entrepreneur earnings after four.  My maternal instinct was overtaken by my competitive spirit for the first time since the arrival of our son.

2.  I got bored, really bored.
This one is easy to understand.  After working for seven years and being busy since forever, it was extremely hard to face a daily to-do list of emptying the dishwasher, laundry and tv viewing.  So, I hired a cleaning lady, chucked the laundry and divorced live tv.  My neighbors rejoiced, too.  They were beginning to give me the "go away, you stalker lady" look.

3.  Opportunity came knocking.
I was fortunate to be "hunted" versus "hunting" work, thanks to my social network.  I received a contract from someone who saw my LinkedIn profile status that I had posted six months earlier.  The status said that I'd be looking for short-term engagements in February and they contacted me in January.  That was the final kick in the behind I needed to start my business.

It turns out that I'm getting used to this whole birthing thing.  First a baby, then a business.  I'd love to hear from other moms with similar experiences.