Mompreneur or bust

This having a germ of an idea to turn into something interesting and profitable stuff …well, it’s hard. I read the incredible success stories of women like Sandra Wilson (Robeez) and I get excited that my mompreneur friend Leslie (http://www.pixiepieces.com/) might meet with some of that same success. Or I see a documentary about the most successful woman entrepreneurs of our time and wish for women like my mompreneur neighbour Rima (http://www.undinejewellry.com/) to get her moment on Oprah for be-jewelling Hollywood’s next mini-celebs.

It seems I’m surrounded by success stories of women who’ve managed to balance family and a great idea. They all inspire me in a woman to woman way, but I worry maybe I’m lacking the gene that would bridge my desire to be like them to actually being one of them.

Despite my worries, I’ve been doing a steady inventory of my talents and skills in hopes of finding that germy idea of worth. First I thought maybe I could offer marketing consulting services…but I just don’t have enough energy at the end of the day to do that properly (that’s not to say I couldn’t still do it, but I couldn’t do it easily). Marketing has to be done well or there’s really no point.

So, I thought about my other big job – mom. What business or service would make a difference for me? Well, I spend a heck of a lot of time obsessing about food with my kids. All three of them are what you could call “picky eaters” and I’ve spent a zillion hours trying and tossing food ideas. I keep thinking that if I could just give them a buffet of choices all at once, maybe I’d have a better idea of where to focus my cuisine. That and, maybe if I’d just figured this out while they were toddlers, I wouldn’t be in such a mealtime battle.

And so “Tastings for Toddlers” became my mompreneur idea. I would invite a group of moms to come with tiny tots for a mid-morning snack-time tasting. Moms would have sparkly drinks in fancy plastic glasses and the tots would get to peruse a buffet of choices.

I polled everyone I knew for buffet and serving suggestions based on their own experience. I heard all about the children who are grief-stricken at the sight of anything larger than the smallest sample at the grocery store. I also heard about consistency, colour, shape and “what is that?” issues from one child to another. My enthusiasm was unwavering. This was an idea I could sink my teeth into (pun intended – corny I know).

It was when I put myself in the customer’s shoes that I began to see some issues with my grand mompreneur wannabe plan.
First concern – I didn’t think that if I did it out of my home moms (other than my supportive friends) would want to come and pay to participate.
Second concern- finding a location that wouldn’t want a large portion of the profits and would be willing to accommodate the food issues is tricky.
Third concern – food and health safety vs. insurance is a bit of a slippery slope

If I figure out solutions for each of my concerns, maybe you’ll see me on Oprah. In the meantime, this mompreneur wannabe has some serious research to do over the summer.