Have you become disillusioned with your career? Or maybe you’re currently on maternity leave and toying with the idea of starting your own business so you can work from home. Being part of other mumpreneurs online is possible – but you need to choose wisely to ensure it works for you.

The mumpreneur meaning

A mumpreneur is defined as a woman balancing the role of mother and entrepreneur.

However, some women in business don’t like the title due to feeling their business is defined by the fact they’re a mother. In many instances, their business has nothing to do with being a mother. As an online marketing and sales funnel coach, my business doesn’t have anything to do with motherhood at all. The longest bow you could draw is that by helping women develop systems in their businesses they can afford to spend more time with their families.

Other women may sell products tailored to helping mums with babies or provide meal planning for the family. These often fit into the “mumpreneur” title much better.

Whether you decide to use the label to describe yourself or not, what I have to share in this post will certainly help you in your journey to becoming a woman in business who can still balance time with family.

What mumpreneur businesses are best?

This is a really big topic and many women have differing views over what’s the best pathway. All I can provide here is what’s worked for me and what I’ve witnessed coaching many women in business.

Service-based mumpreneur business

Kellie O’Brien Media actually started as a PR agency called Mum PR. It was purely service-based, providing public relations services to other mumpreneurs online. The problem I ran into with this business model was that I burnt out. There is so much time needed to run someone else’s PR campaign and often it was easier for the business owner to be running the campaign themselves. So if creating a service business appeals to you, really consider the time investment versus what you’ll get out of it.

Courses for mumpreneurs online

Creating and selling online courses was where I decided I could create more leverage in my business, while still providing PR services. This was far more successful and I continue to help women create and launch courses on launching, meal planning, business coaching and Facebook advertising today. The key to this business model working is ensuring you have:

• a strong product developed that your ideal client most wants
• a clearly written sales page that articulates the features and benefits of what you’re selling
• a smart online marketing plan to ensure the right people are attracted, nurtured and then invited to buy your products

The course I created was Publicity Alchemy and, in the early days, I launched this regularly. Today an evergreen campaigns has been created to ensure it’s making sales regularly without me having to spend time launching. If you already have a successful course or offering, you can learn how to gain help to build your own evergreen system here.

Coaching business model

This is where I’ve ended up – as an online marketing and sales funnel coach. And I’ve stayed in this lane for a few reasons.

Firstly, it’s not as labour intensive as straight “service-based” work. Although, I do have a couple of clients I do service-based work for still. However, I’m more selective now on which projects I take on.

Secondly, the women in business I tend to attract as clients gain better results from going through my 1:1 coaching program and women’s mastermind group, because they know their business better than I do.

Thirdly, overheads are low and profits are high. When you’re in a bricks and mortar service business, you have huge overheads you need to cover each month. Similarly, if you’re running an ecommerce business, you have stock you need to purchase upfront and “hope” they sell. With coaching, you can put an offer out tomorrow and, if no one buys, you lost nothing. You simply refine your package and relaunch again.

Fourth, you can work with and help more women. Even if it’s more “consulting” than “coaching”, you have more space each month to take on more clients and help more people. My mission is to help as many women as possible build automation into their businesses to leverage their time. I want women to be able to close the lid on the laptop at 3pm each afternoon and not open it again until the next morning. I want them to have the ability to take a full Friday off for self care. Or to know that the weekend is theirs.

So what are some mumpreneur ideas?

There is a wonderful exercise you can do to find your coaching or course business – it’s called finding your ikigai. It’s a Japanese term for “reason for being”. This is what it looks like:

Here are the questions to ask:

• What do you love doing?
• What does the world need?
• What can you get paid for?
• What are you good at?

I knew that after 16 years as a journalist, 5 years running a PR agency and as a published author and blogger,

• that I loved sharing other people’s stories,
• that women in business needed to get their stories out into the world to attract their ideal clients to them
• that women would pay me to coach them in how to find their business stories, package them into a clear marketing framework and build a sales funnel that attracted, nurtured and converted using business storytelling
• that pulling out people’s stories, writing them into captivating stories and building marketing strategies came easily and worked.

What about YOU? What have you done in the past and how can those breadcrumbs from the past help you create a business that is uniquely you?

Starting with a mumpreneur blog

There are many successful mumpreneurs and endless mumpreneur success stories you can read. But when it comes to finding YOUR success, you need to define what that looks like for you. For some, it’s about the dollars their business makes. For others, it’s the lifestyle they’re able to achieve, often fitting their business around family – rather than the other way around.

But first, you need to determine how you’re going to start.

My business started off the back of a blog – a mum blog to be specific. I started writing about public relations to help fellow bloggers and ended up attracting a mumpreneur who wanted me to do her PR for her. At that point, I was on maternity leave, happily blogging and with every intention of going back to journalism.

But this lady was persistent. And so, eventually, I gave in. She gained some great media coverage and went on to recommend me to others. Who recommended me to others. And so my business was born.

You need to determine what your “core marketing channel” is going to be and become consistent with that. Blogging has been my core marketing strategy from day one and it’s allowed me to build my business with short term and long term results.

Getting support in your mumpreneur journey?

If I’ve learnt anything since starting my business in 2010, it’s that the past nine years have seen the most success during times when I had support. As mumpreneurs online doing business mostly alone each day, being part of a mastermind particularly where I was surrounded by other women who were at a similar point in their business to me, was one of my smartest investments. When I’m in masterminds, it’s when I see the most growth in my business. It’s the accountability the group provides. It’s the support to get me unstuck when I feel I’m spinning my wheels with indecision and the training that continually improves my business and marketing skills.

Each time the investment has always been a bit scary – one that takes me out of my comfort zone. However, I’ve never once regretted it.

You can find out what style of support you need by taking this quick and fun quiz…

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Want to go deeper?

If you’re ready to start your business journey, you have an idea of what you want to do and now you need the support to get it off the ground and get your systems set up to ensure it works from the outset, I’d love to invite you to chat about The Online Marketing Mastermind.

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