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<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">Twelve years ago, I turned my back on a promising career at News Limited and became part of what is now a significant movement in small business: the mumpreneurs.</span></p>
<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">Faced with inflexible working conditions, shift work and only average pay as a subeditor, the option to build a business through freelancing was alluring. My husband and I had also walked a long, hard road to have our kids; turning around and putting them in full-time childcare felt like a betrayal of the journey.</span></p>
<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">Working from home with a young child, of course, had drawbacks. I remember clearly the day my monitor went dead during a pressing deadline… because my baby had crawled underneath the desk and chewed through the connection cord. The horror that she could have just easily chomped on the power cord sent me out to buy a playpen.</span></p>
<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">Social isolation was also a significant issue. I didn’t join mother’s groups or lunch with the ladies while any of my three children were at home because every sleeping moment for a child was a working opportunity for me. No other woman in my wide circle of acquaintances worked for themselves or, if they did, it looked nothing like my level of enterprise. I became – and remain – the queen of speed because there was simply no time to waste.</span></p>
<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">Since expanding the business and no longer working from home, I look back on those years with a mixture of amusement and dread. It tickles me that so few clients knew I worked from home, and that my business grew just as fast as my children did. Sometimes faster. I also remember, very clearly, the deadlines worked all night and the stress of needing far more hours than I had capacity. Quite literally, I pressed ‘send’ on work to clients on my way to hospital to deliver a baby. Twice. By the time my third child arrived, thankfully, I’d hired another writer.</span></p>
<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">Last week, memories of my early years in small business came flooding back with a <em>Sydney Morning Herald </em>article on mumpreneurs. The women interviewed were driven to begin home businesses by similar factors: childcare costs and a desire for flexible parenting while generating an income.</span></p>
<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">But that’s where the similarities end. Today’s mumpreneur is part of a growing army. A BankWest study in 2011 found women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men, thanks to the benefits of better technology. Mumpreneurs Online surveyed UK women last year to find that 73 per cent had started their own business – and they knew another woman who was doing the same. AusMumpreneur claims 16,000 members nationwide. And in October, a two-day conference called Mumpreneurs on Fire is drawing hundreds of women to Melbourne. One of the plenary sessions is on how to build a multi-million dollar business. These mums mean business.</span></p>
<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">It’s about time. With Baby Boomers fast exiting the small business – half of all businesses are owned by people over 45 – there will be a glaring gap in our economy unless Generation Y, mums included, steps up to the plate.</span></p>
<p class="AAPARAGRAPH"><span lang="en-us" xml:lang="en-us">Long live the entrepreneurial spirit enshrined in small business, and best of luck to this rising mummy army. I just hope they get more sleep than I did.</span></p>