Small Business Ideas

Work from Home Business IDEAS for moms

The superheroes have cornered the market on multi-tasking. A newspaper photographer by day becomes a flying strongman by night. A millionaire playboy moonlights as a crime-fighting rodent. And they still find time to squabble with each other.

Batman v SuperMom? Place your bets, folks. My money’s on the real heroes. I have watched my best friend make Pad Thai one-handed, the other occupied with a squirming baby, while remaining fully immersed in our conversation. She’s a stay home mom, a student, an artist, a maker, and an entrepreneur.

I try to imagine my own capacity for motherhood: how could I possibly add another thing to my already-hectic life? I don’t have time to shower most days, and the home-cooked-to-takeout ratio leans heavily on the latter.

But moms everywhere are making it happen, simultaneously nurturing small businesses and small humans – both 24/7 jobs. And they’re killing it. (There’s hope for me still.)

Since I can’t speak from experience, I enlisted the help of Jill Salzman – serial entrepreneur, speaker, podcast host, community rouser, and mom. She’s the brains behind Founding Moms (her third business venture), a collective of online resources and offline meet-ups that help mom-slash-entrepreneurs connect to build better businesses together.

“I started it because I was running unrelated businesses and merely wanted to find other women building businesses and raising babies at the same time — because how were they doing it? Apparently I’m not the only one wondering these things.”

Jill Salzman

So how are they doing it? Easy: moms are made to be entrepreneurs – the skillsets required for each are remarkably similar. Business owners often have to “make it up”, Jill says, employing cunning and resourcefulness to get things done, and learning along the way. The same is true for parenthood.

“Ask business owners and they’ll likely tell you that, at any one time, they had no idea what they were doing. Many never feel like they do. Similarly, when parents raise a child, they also have no idea what’s coming—minute-to-minute."

A Founding Moms meet-up

My own mother (Hi, Mom!) was, for the majority of my childhood, of the stay-at-home variety. Though she didn’t “work” for many years, she was still a working mom – her business was us. She raised three kids, volunteered for a women’s shelter, led our Brownie troop, organized our bowling league, chaperoned our school trips, sewed costumes for school plays, and still had time to make milk-carton boats and butter tarts and crocheted Christmas ornaments from scratch.

I'm cute, yes?

We were incredibly lucky to have had our mom there all the time. If she had owned her own business, maybe we’d have missed out. Or maybe we’d have just traded crafting sessions for entrepreneurship lessons. Our experiences may be different, but the children of mom entrepreneurs can have upbringings just a rich as my own.

Forget about mom-guilt, Jill says:

“I was plagued all day long while working by the thought that I was a terrible mom for sending my firstborn to childcare too soon. One Saturday during a playdate, I overheard my daughter talking to her friend, suggesting that they try playing a new game. She asked, “Do you wanna play ‘Let’s Go To The UPS Store?” and then waved her friend over to get into her imaginary car. It was my working mom moment of revelation: my daughter was not only unaffected by my being a working woman, but she was encouraging her friends to join her on her own imaginary work day. Guilt? Gone.”

9 Successful Businesses Run by Moms

This Mother’s Day, we’re honoring the countless mothers who run successful stores on Shopify. I chatted with some of these badass, multitasking super-moms.

Here are their stories:

1. Laura Thomas

Founder of Pretty Presets, Photographer, Mom

Pretty Presets is an online shop selling pre-made alterations for Lightroom that save her customers tons of photo-editing time. It’s a business that Laura started on a $100 initial investment:

“My encouragement would be to not throw yourself and family into a financial bind, but to be thoughtful and deliberate about every purchase.”

Laura’s story:

“Seven years ago, after a few failed businesses, I was feeling stretched, tired and wishing for more time with my family. I was at the end of my rope and had nothing to lose. I started my current business on a generic blogger website almost overnight. The inspiration? My kids. My husband was away for work often and I had two toddlers at home. We had just moved to a new town and I didn't know anyone there. It felt as if everything was stacked against me. What I learned through the process was priceless.”