Beth Adams spends the day fulfilling people's to-do lists, everything from cleaning closets to picking up prescriptions to buying flowers. Then the co-owner of a Baltimore-based personal assistant firm and mother of four returns home - where she runs errands at no charge.
"I'll have to take someone to the game, or I'll have to take someone to the orthodontist, or 'How come no one told me that we're out of dog food,' or 'When am I going to get my husband's shirt from the cleaners," said Adams, who could use a break this Mother's Day from her jobs running both My Girl Friday, Baltimore and her own home.
Adams is among a growing sector of moms who are combining business dreams with multitasking skills to create an economic niche without leaving home. These entrepreneurial mothers - some call them mompreneurs - are infusing the marketplace with novel goods, services and approaches to customer service.
According to the Virginia-based Center for Women's Business Research, the number of women-owned businesses increased 32 percent from 2002 to 2008. During the same period, revenues generated by those businesses increased 48 percent and employment by such firms went up 27 percent.
Working from home and capitalizing on low-cost marketing tools such as the Internet to build their companies, some have all but abandoned the corporate world. Meanwhile they try to ensure that their family lives don't suffer; some even involve their young children in the creative process. As they are not among the millions currently looking for work in the private sector, the entrepreneurial moms may end up helping to turn around the economy.
All while leaving time to get dinner on the table.
Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who directs the Gender and Policy Program at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and wrote The War Against Parents, says some mothers are starting businesses because the family sacrifices of more traditional work no longer seem worth it. Particularly on Wall Street, an area Hewlett has been studying, "with this downturn, not only is the money less, but women don't like the fact that this is a newly disrespected sector. Women like to be proud of the goods they make and the things they sell."
"A lot of people have been disenchanted with the corporate world because of layoffs, and instead of looking for another job, they've said that it's time to start something on their own," said Patricia Cobe, co-author of Mompreneurs: a Mother's Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Work-at-Home Success.
