Follow Friday: The Mompreneurs

by Sara Mahmood

The “mompreneur” movement, full of women trying to balance being a mother and an entrepreneur, is fairly new. The following women are just a few of Canada’s talented mothers making their way in businesses.

@herbadmother (Catherine Connors)
Catherine Connors is a freelance writer, one of the co-founders of The BadMomsClub.com, a contributing editor at BlogHer and a former managing editor at MamaPop.com. She is also the host of Blissdom Canada, the country’s only social media conference for women, and holds a PhD in political science. She is probably most famous for her blog, Her Bad Mother, which made the top 10 of Babble.com’s Top 50 Mom Bloggers. Although it may seem like Connor can’t get enough of being a mother, she actually struggled with postpartum depression before, during and after her first pregnancy. The depression lasted until Catherine’s daughter turned one, but resurfaced during her second pregnancy. Catherine needed an outlet, so she started HerBadMother to help with her struggles with depression and motherhood. Her Twitter lets followers know when the popular blog has new content up and she also posts pictures of what’s going in her day via Instagram. Her tweets are honest, quirky and hilarious: Catherine definitely doesn’t try to sugarcoat the ups and downs of being a mom!

@Beeskneesbaby (Tammany Atkinson)
When Tammany Atkinson’s first-born son started crawl, she noticed his knees were getting red and bruised. She asked other moms and they all had the same problem, and soon Tammany had an idea: She could design pants with neoprene pads sewn into the knees to protect crawling babies. Just as Tammany was starting the business, which she decided to call Bee’s Knees, she found out her son was profoundly deaf. She had to stop working on Bee’s Knees so she could take her son to appointments so he could have surgery. After the rocky start and a successful surgery, the company started growing, with Tammany selling store-to-store, until she landed a deal with Kushies and was able to get her products on store shelves worldwide. Tammany now designs new lines of fashionable pants, markets her products and visits stores to see how they’re displaying Bee’s Knees. Even celebrities like Kate Hudson and Courtney Cox have used Bee’s Knees to protect their babies. Tammany uses her Twitter to link to articles on parenting and marketing advice. She also lets her followers know when there’s a new line of Bee’s Knees pants coming out soon.

@LiceSquad (Dawn Mucci)
Dawn Mucci had some pretty horrible experiences with lice as a kid. Now as an adult, she wants to protect children from the potential dangers associated with the abuse and overuse of pesticides to remove lice. She also wants to break the stigmas associated with having head lice. Head lice are actually a huge problem in Canada, especially among children. Dawn and her company, Lice Squad, provide discreet, at-home removal services that are painless and do not use harsh chemicals. The company also provides free information and education to schools, camps, families and daycare centres. The Lice Squad has gone from a small part-time business to having 17 franchises in Ontario, one in Nova Scotia and another one in British Columbia. Dawn didn’t always think she’d be nitpicking for career. She used to manage a health and wellness store, drive big rigs and a garbage truck before she started Lice Squad. She now uses her Twitter account to inform followers about her business and lice talks and to post links to interesting articles about people’s experiences with lice.