Three women talk about their paths to becoming mompreneurs — and how you can do it, too

Whether they want to break free of their 9-to-5 schedules, spend more time with their children or expand upon a hobby, today’s moms are exploring entrepreneurship as they look for flexibility and an opportunity to call the shots.

While the path to “mompreneurship” isn’t necessarily smooth, these New Hampshire moms say the rewards are worth the few bumps along the way.

Writing her own story

Tiffany Eddy, 50, of Dunbarton, appeared on television sets across the state as a top news anchor for WMUR-TV between 1998 and 2013.

A recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence, and a threetime Emmy nominee, Eddy interviewed hundreds of luminaries including former President Barack Obama, Barbara Walters, Robin Roberts, Adam Sandler, Tom Bergeron, Steven Tyler and Dean Kamen, just to name a few.

She loved her job and worked her entire career to reach this level of success as a broadcast journalist. But she was missing out on her kids’ soccer games, plays and assemblies; toward the end of her tenure at WMUR, her daughter was 8 and her son was almost 5.

“I was the 11 p.m. anchor at WMUR and left to have hours that allowed me to spend time with my kids,” she said. “While I loved telling people’s stories and making a difference and my career was extremely important to me, the stories that were most important were the ones I was missing out on at home.”

She only had one client lined up when she left to start her own marketing communications company. Still, she left her dream job to launch Focus First Communications, which grew to include other clients, including the state’s Highway Department, for whom she worked on the memorable “Driving Toward Zero” campaign to discourage texting while driving.

She changed the name of her company to Tiffany Eddy and Associates and helped raise the visibility of companies and organizations in the state, such as Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and has worked on marketing and media campaigns for political candidates, banks, national energy firms and higher education institutions.

Although Eddy has enjoyed helping organizations get their messages out, she said she missed the storytelling aspect of her former job. To satisfy her desire to share others’ stories, Eddy recently launched Smart, Strong, Sassy. Also known as S3 (https://smartstrongsassy.com), the new venture showcases women’s stories and the lessons they’ve learned to help inspire others.

“For me, Smart, Strong, Sassy has become my internal mantra — it’s aspirational and motivational. I believe all women are smarter than they give themselves credit for, stronger than they realize — and when you put those two together it allows them to be Sassy and empowered,” she said.

Eddy continues her PR, media training, and coaching work through Tiffany Eddy and Associates in tandem with S3.

Taking the leap into mompreneurship has rewarded her personally and professionally.

“I appreciate the flexibility of working for myself, which allows me to be present for my kids when they need me,” she said. “I was fortunate that I was able to work at a great place where I loved doing what I did and had such an ability to make a difference in other peoples’ lives.”

Eddy credits WMUR for giving her the visibility and contacts to build momentum in her first solo venture, but she urges other women to “take a deep breath and do it,” if they are interested in building a business on their own.

She suggests making a list of people you admire and reaching out to them for quick Zoom meetings or advice. These virtual coffee meetings can help you formulate ideas and build your network, she said.

From fitness to beauty to donuts

Stephanie Olivera, 40, of Newfields, worked for 13 years as an MRI technologist at Boston Children’s Hospital before she met her husband, Michael Olivera, 39, a Stratham police officer.

When she moved to New Hampshire to start her life with him, her workdays stretched to 15 hours with the commute. Something had to give.

A back injury put Olivera out of work for eight weeks.

During this time, she met a friend who happened to be selling Beachbody ® fitness products.

Stephanie Olivera at work (below), and with her family. COURTESY PHOTOS

Anxious to get physically fit again, Olivera initially lost 30 pounds by following the workout and nutrition program, so she started selling the streaming video workouts and nutritional supplements from home as a side gig. Over a year, she lost 50 pounds, and began to think that she could parlay Beachbody into a full-time job.

“I grew a team of five to seven people over the first six months. I had never done anything like this before and had no business background,” she said. “I also knew I could never grow my income at Children’s unless I became a manager — which I didn’t want.”

The Oliveras got married and soon were expecting their first child, Cash. Olivera also became a stepmother to her husband’s twin sons, Logan and Cooper, now 10.

To prepare herself for the leap into entrepreneurship, she earned as much as she could as a Beachbody coach while still working in Boston. She paid off debt, saved money, and resigned her MRI tech position at the end of her maternity leave.

At the same time, her husband, on paternity leave, was up late trying out donut recipes. After 12 weeks, he was considering going into business for himself. His mother had always talked about opening a family bakery before she died from cancer. This meant he would be leaving his decade-long law enforcement career.

“I was like, ‘Babe, I am doing Beachbody, you can’t choose green juices?’” she said.

The potato-based donuts, now a hallmark of the couple’s Donut Love stores in North Hampton and Exeter, feature all-natural ingredients and command a loyal following. Handcrafted by Mike and his team, the donuts sold out at farmers markets and through wholesalers.

Together, the Oliveras opened their first Donut Love brick-and-mortar location in North Hampton in August 2017, just eight months after Mike made his first donut. Olivera was now a double-mompreneur, balancing Beachbody with stints at the Donut Love shop. Relying only on her Beachbody income and donut sales was a big leap for the couple to make.

The Oliveras did not take out loans to start their businesses, instead relying on savings and the sale of Stephanie’s former condo for startup capital. Olivera’s parents often helped babysit so the couple could both put the hours into their businesses.

When Cash was 18 months old, Olivera discovered she was pregnant with their second child, Magnolia, who is now 14 months old.

After stepping back from Beachbody during maternity leave to care for Magnolia, she re-evaluated her business. Burnt out from coaching 60 Beachbody team members, she considered a new venture in 2019. That’s when she joined Beautycounter ® , a company focused on selling all-natural beauty products for women.

“Direct sales has changed my life. It allowed me to be a stay-at-home mom,” she said. “I’ve been there for every little milestone — whether it’s the first time they pick up their paci(fier) or seeing the first time they smile.”

Today, as a Beautycounter consultant, Olivera has 75 people on her team selling products under her leadership. Because of COVID-19, more women have become interested in buying products from home and learning about them at Zoom parties.

She hasn’t stopped helping to run the donut business, either. Donut Love opened its second store in downtown Exeter during the pandemic.

Although it can be tiring balancing a young family with the demands of their businesses, Olivera said it all comes down to the couple’s “why.”

“When I was doing Beachbody, it was to help that girl who was 50 pounds overweight. For Mike, (whose mother died from cancer) it was about honoring his mother,” she said. “When you are tired and you don’t want to work, your ‘why’ will push you forward when you feel knocked down.”

Former CPA helps cannabis companies cash in

Christine DeAngelis, 34, of Rochester, calls herself a “serial entrepreneur.” She’s launched three businesses and has been an adjunct professor at community colleges and universities in New Hampshire.

She began her career in finance as a CPA, eventually becoming a chief financial officer in a privately owned business. She quickly found that motherhood did not gel with 60-hour workweeks.

DeAngelis was putting her 1-year-old daughter in child care for nine hours each day and feeling burned out and guilty when she decided she needed to rethink her career path.

“It just wasn’t the lifestyle I wanted for my family. I love working and I love my career, but I also love being a mom and it’s important for me to be there for my family,” she said.

She started her first business in 2013 that was re-organized into Epiphany Consulting in 2016, which focused on helping businesses with accounting and tax preparation, executive-level coaching and bookkeeping.

DeAngelis started her business when her daughter was 8 months old and while she was going through a divorce.

“For a half-a-second, I thought, ‘Do I go and get a job?’ But that would have defeated the whole purpose. I wanted to be the mother my daughter deserved,” she said.

DeAngelis has extended her financial expertise to help cannabis businesses untangle regulations related to how they manage their finances through Cultivate Consulting.

“Epiphany is changing direction this year to focus on Cultivate Consulting — which will primarily provide accounting and tax services to cannabis business owners,’ she said. “The focus refueled my passion for accounting because this budding (pun-intended) industry has a lot of small business owners I know I can help.”

Like Olivera, DeAngelis has also found success through direct sales. An Isagenix ® coach since 2016, she sells nutritional cleansing products to moms and others interested in pursuing weight loss and healthy lifestyles. DeAngelis coaches more than 2,000 people.

“Isagenix has integrity and is committed to their sales team for the long haul,” she said. “I took a serious look at what it would take to build a business. That said, it’s a great opportunity for someone to make side income and not bartend on a Saturday night, which is awesome, too.”

While all of her businesses are doing well, with Cultivate and Isagenix achieving 20% year-over-year in gross sales, DeAngelis said mompreneurs need to be patient when the going gets tough. It wasn’t until year three that both of her businesses became profitable.

“It’s all mental, too. There were definitely months that my bank was over drafted, and I had to make tough decisions,” she said. “It’s not for the faint of heart. If you don’t have a strong why and passion in the beginning, your bank account is overdrawn, and you don’t know when money is coming in --- it’s easy to quit.”

Women often don’t give themselves credit for how capable they are, DeAngelis said. She encourages women to ask questions, do their research, and lean on others for support as they work to achieve their goals.

She equates starting a business with caring for a newborn. “It’s the most terrifying and exciting thing you’ve ever done. You feel like you have no idea what you are doing and then all of a sudden, they just send you home with this little human and no instruction book,” she said.

“Business is the exact same way. You will have people who tell you that you’re doing it wrong and that they disagree with your approach, but stay in your lane and stay passionate. Because just like motherhood, you will have some seriously hard days that make you question a lot about yourself.”

Krysten Godfrey Maddocks is a former journalist and marketing director who now regularly writes for higher education and technology organizations in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Krysten won three awards — gold, silver and bronze — for writing from the Parenting Media Association in 2020.

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GETTING SUPPORT TO LAUNCH YOUR NEW BUSINESS

Whether you need help launching your business or you are just starting to explore the possibility, the Center for Women in Enterprise can provide you the resources you need to succeed.

Headquartered in Manchester, the CWE-New Hampshire is part of a regional nonprofit organization dedicated to helping women start and grow their businesses. In 2015, the CWE took over the Women’s Business Center grant in New Hampshire through the Small Business Administration, which had been offering similar services for women since 1995. The CWE offers workshops, networking opportunities, and no-cost consultations to help women reach their entrepreneurial goals in both online and on-site formats. (In July 2020, all physical CWE offices were still closed due to COVID-19.) Chandra Reber, director for the CWE-New Hampshire, said women interested in starting a business can decide whether entrepreneurship is right for them by taking one of the organization’s foundational workshops, which include personal assessments. These can help you decide whether entrepreneurship is the right fit for your personality and life circumstances, and what types of business might be suited to your skills and interests. For those who already have a business, the CWE offers seminars and multi-week business planning classes and expert consultation. They can even help you find sources to secure funding. During the pandemic, Reber said there has been an uptick in people exploring going into business for themselves as they continue to see instability among larger employers. “How many launch and take off remains to be seen, but there are many still waiting in the wings and who have no idea when they’ll get back to work,” she said. She’s also had conversations with millennial women looking to start businesses they can feel passionate about, or do in a way that makes a difference. “They want to have a more personal impact in a way they wouldn’t as an employee as part of a bigger machine,” she said.

Whether you need help hiring employees, developing advanced marketing techniques, creating a strategic plan, or introducing advanced finance and accounting programs, the programs and expertise of CWE classes and staff can help give you the tools to move your business forward. In July, the center offered a virtual course, A Fresh Start: Reopening Marketing Strategies After Quarantine, that focused on website and social media strategies small businesses might use to attract customers. For more information on classes, business certifications, and networking events, go to www.cweonline.org.

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Tips from a veteran mompreneur

Cynthia Kalina-Kaminsky, a CWE board launched her second business in Texas before member and small business owner, remembers moving to New Hampshire in 2015. As sole what it was like juggling motherhood with proprietor of the Concord-based Process & managing a small business. Strategy Solutions, she helps businesses develop performance strategy, and improve their Her move to mompreneurship was more than 20 years ago when she opened Uniquely supply chains to achieve greater profitability. Yours, a Dallas, Texas-based business that designed custom wedding and evening dresses shares her expertise with CWE management In her role as a CWE board member, she for women. Prior to launching her business, she on business trends and strategy. This helps the worked as a manufacturing and process engineer, but wanted more time with her growing start-up and established business sectors.

CWE provide consulting and training in the family. Some of her advice to mompreneurs “I took care of my family and kids during includes sticking to a streamlined to-do list; the day and worked my business at night,” she understanding what it takes to produce your said. “Now, there are many more resources product; understanding your costs; and figuring out exactly how much profit you make on for moms that give them a chance to build a support system.” each piece.

Kalina-Kaminsky, who has a doctorate in “When you are an individual owner, engineering, moved from dress design and what’s left over at the end of day is what you creation back into engineering when she get paid. That’s a tough lesson to learn — it’s different when you are an employee and you get a paycheck every week,” she said.

She also encourages women to decide what kind of a business they want to own. It’s perfectly OK to build a lifestyle business that offers you flexibility and extra money on the side.

She considered her former business, Uniquely Yours, a lifestyle business that she wasn’t looking to expand. Process & Strategy Solutions, however, is a business that is designed to scale up when it needs to, thanks to deep partnerships and the ability to add contractors.

No matter what your dream might be, the CWE provides a resource for women (and men) to talk about what you want to do and what your dream is — and no one laughs, Kalina-Kaminsky said.

“No one tells you it’s not possible — they help you whittle, narrow, and remold it to make it a possibility,” she said.