Costco Connection

Susan Dunk , who created the T oddler-Coddler to keep her kids from slumping in their car seats, was prodded by friends and family to put her invention on the market. “I didn’t have a patent at the time, and I was scared to death. I worked up the courage to go to a children’s industry trade show, and came home with orders totaling 118 units!” Four years later, ToddlerCoddler is recommended by chiropractors for healthy spinal alignment, and it has won several awards from parenting groups.

MICHELLE GUILBAULT

site ( www.mompreneursonline.com) dispenses advice and provides resource links to more than 7 million women each month. WebMomz (www.webmomz. com), which was recently endorsed by none other than Dr. Phil, has helped thousands of women to start online businesses. And Moms In Business Network ( www.mibn.org), an online, women-only networking group, represents the interests of the 60 million working mothers in the United States.

No one definition

What do these entrepreneurial moms look like?

They have begun businesses as at-home advertisers, authors, attorneys and alpaca raisers, bakers and beauty consultants, chefs, cleaners and crossword puzzle makers, dress, diaper and decal designers, employers and engineers, financial planners, fitness trainers and furniture designers, genealogists and graphic designers, home decorators, information specialists and inventors, jewelry makers, lifestyle coaches, marketers, news producers and nurses, organizers, painters, pet sitters, potty trainers and private investigators, quilt makers, real estate agents, singers, skin-care specialists and speech therapists, taxidermists, T-shirt designers and toymakers, virtual assistants, Web designers, wedding planners and writers.

“A mom entrepreneur is anyone who is able to work from home and make a living,” says Costco

Laurie Zerga

left the world of high finance to be closer to her two middle-school-age children.

When she couldn’t find existing culinary or cooking classes for teens to support her daughter’s interest, she combined her business knowledge with her passion for nutrition and culinary arts, and held her first youth culinary camp. Now, Laurie’s Culinary Camp has assembled a team of locally renowned chefs to teach courses for youths, teens and adults that cover nutrition, the science of food safety, cooking instruction, table etiquette and tours of food businesses.

member Kristie Tamsevicius, founder of WebMomz, a work-from-home resource community, who has operated a Web design business from her home in a Chicago suburb for the past nine years. “Someone who telecommutes to work from home, operates an online-based business or home-business franchise, or does direct sales and network marketing opportunities. Or someone who takes her corporate job and does it from home.”

“I am a mompreneur in three ways,” says California resident Laurie Zerga, who left the business world to become a chef and culinary educator ( www.lauriesculinarycamp.com). “First, I stayed home to be closer to my children. Second, my children inspired the business idea. Third, my business supports a role once held by stay-at-home moms: teaching their children the culinary arts.”

Women’s reasons for becoming entrepreneurial moms are as varied as their businesses. Some were Fortune 500 business successes before becoming moms, and they don’t want having a baby to force them to leave the business world behind. Others have time and creative talent on their hands, and a need for extra income. And an increasing number are putting their specific parenting needs into production, inventing and manufacturing child-care items that they simply couldn’t find anywhere on the market.