Take four young children at home, combine a mom with little
business and marketing experience, and add a mother's desire to
launch a new business. What do you have? The ingredients for
potential entrepreneurial failure.
This is exactly the prospect Tina Parmigiano faced several
months ago. "Opening a new business isn't easy to
do," says Parmigiano, who began planning Reputable Home
Services LLC, a network and referral service for home improvement
contractors, in 1999, before quickly realizing she needed to learn
more. "I felt I needed more information. I didn't know how
to get the marketing off to a good start, or work with my children
around."
Enter the "Mom's Home Business Kit" from
Home-Based Working Moms, which Parmigiano considers the cookbook
for success. The organization debuted the product last year in
response to calls from mothers around the country seeking insights
and information on launching new businesses, says Lesley Spencer,
founder and director of Home-Based Working Moms (http://www.hbwm.com ).
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The kit includes checklists, a year's membership in the
organization, a monthly newsletter, resources and Web sites for
entrepreneurs, and books on starting and marketing homebased
businesses. Most important, the $89 kit can include a career
assessment with a professional business coach for $79 more. The
assessment is designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs find the work
that best fits their experience and lifestyles, says Spencer.
"It brings everything together in one package,"
explains Spencer, who left work as a golf school tour coordinator
upon the arrival of her first child five years ago. She launched
the organization soon after in 1995, and has logged almost 700
members at $44 a year since.
Spencer created the kit last November in response to the
questions she frequently fielded on home business start-up. She
realized if she packaged her insights, she could sell her knowledge
and some powerful tools to her customers and members, instead of
spending hours on the phone answering the same questions.
Parmigiano, for one, says the insights have been invaluable.
From the marketing and business-start-up tips to networking with
fellow work-at-home moms, the new entrepreneur has what she needs
to get her new business off to a strong start.
"The kit is well worth the money, and the Web site offers a
lot of continued support," says Parmigiano, who has
recommended the kit to fellow at-home moms--"especially the
moms who want to start a business, but just don't know how to
find the right one."