Building a company on a 14 hour week

I should be clear, I have 14 hours of child free time to work on Woobee. I utilize ever other spare moment within a 24 hour day as well. The problem is - and you other moms out there will understand this - every time you start a task when your children are round something will come up and they will need you, every time. When children are sleeping is the key time to accomplish a task, that is where it gets a little sticky for me. Here is why...



My husband was hurt in an accident when my now 5 year old was 18 months, and after rehab and a lot of pain he was able to go back to work as a chef. So we moved forward with our life freshly rich with gobs of medical debt and planned our second child. While I was pregnant the screws and plates in his ankle started to work their way out. He needed two more surgeries. The first when I was 8 months along and we planned for the last surgery for 2 weeks postpartum. Then our vivacious Lola was born and at 10 days old hubby came home from work revealing that he was not able to ever go back. He just was not physically able to do it anymore. Long story short - he went into a dislocated workers program and is finishing his degree next month:) So I have gone back to waiting tables to be home with my girls during the day, plus it gives me flexibility that I need with our situation. I work on Woobee during the times the girls are at pre-school - which is 14 ours a week - and I use random moments of house harmony to do more Woobee work.



Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining. I still feel very lucky even though I am certainly not where I thought I would be at 36. Hubby will have an education in a field he'll excel at, he has the most amazing relationships with the girls (as do I), and I get to grow a striving company. I will be happy to go down to one job...Woobee...and get a little more sleep. It won't be long now.

Weekends are made for...

Remember when weekends meant busy bars (which were sooooo much fun), breakfast joints at 10:00 am, afternoon movies, and/or naps. Now it seems they are made for working out deals with my husband so I can wiggle more time to work on Woobee business. I try to put aside at least 3-4 hours where we spend time doing something together as a family, but since I work weekend nights and since I only have 14.5 hours a week child free to plot my Woobee world domination I am always trying to squeeze extra time. It's a tricky situation. If my hubby takes the girls the majority of the day during the weekend, and then has all the night time routine (while I am at work) it isn't really co-parenting. We are always trying to create balance and the one thing to get pushed aside is our time alone. I miss my husband even though he is sitting right across from me.

Celebrity Swag for a Tattered Mompreneur

Angele Bassett and me - Angela chose camo & pistachio Woobee blankets for her double stroller.
Alley Sweeny from Days of Lives was so sweet and really beautiful. She choose a pistachio Woobee blanket and bib for her son Ben.

Celebrity swag is an interesting concept that has turned me into a total crazy person. I spend more time than I have searching for that one picture of a big celeb using their Woobee blanket that will propel my company to the next level. I know weird things about celebs, like the color of Shiloh Joile-Pitts stroller. I actually researched this so when I sent sweet Shiloh a Woobee blanket in a 1st b-day gift basket it would match. I tell ya' c-r-a-z-y!

Woobee products have recently been invited to participate in a lot of different celebrity events and giveaways, plus private requests from agents/stylists. I don't know how many of you actually know how the whole thing works, but let me give you a rundown. There is usually a price to pay to participate in an event or giveaway, ie. I was just contacted to do the daytime Emmy's and the MTV awards gifting suites. The Emmy's would cost me $12,000 plus 70 blankets to give away...and yes I said $12,000. The MTV awards would be $5,000 plus 30-40 pieces of product. Essentially you travel down to the event, set-up, and give away the farm to whoever comes by. The hope is that a celeb will graciously accept your product and pose for a picture. It is this picture and the comments the celebs make that you will e able to market. It is key to write down the comments - press want that info.

I know there are those of you out there who are totally bugged by giving free products to people that can afford it (I get grumpy about that too) but let's be honest - I am trying to capatalize on their fame. I am trying to get a piece of their action, which they have no doubt worked very hard for. I have sent Woobee products to the Joile-Pitt clan, Marcia Cross, Melissa Joan Hart, Jason Priestly, and more hoping that one day the Universe will be in line and a photographer will click a picture of them using their Woobee and it will get published in some raunchy tabloid, or better yet US Weekly:) Wow, I am starting to feel a bit like a leech. Anyway, my point is no one is given something for nothing. The celebs get free crap because we want them to help promote us. The only problem is catching the moment if/when they do.

How did I get Woobee in the celeb circuit? I was invited to bring Woobee's to a pre-Golden Globe gifting suite for kids (Big Kids Style Villa). How did I get invited? The pr firm putting on the event read reviews about Woobee's on blogs and message boards - the internet works. Yes, I paid money to be there and gave away loads of product. Yes, that is very hard for me to do since my products are locally made in Seattle and are very expensive to manufacture. Am I happy I went? Yes. The event itself was very disorganized, but the pay off has been good. I also traveled down with BabyLegs and shared a private gifting suite with them which was a blast.

You can check out Woobee at the Golden Globe gig at my site home page www.woobeekids.com. Click on the link to see the pic's and read celebs comments.

Hi Everyone

I am so excited to actually be starting my blog!! As a mom at home with my two girls during the day, working at night, and running my own company during naps and moments of child harmony, starting my blog has been on my list just under "surviving". Clearly I have managed to survive long enough to start the Woobee Mom blog - amazing. I would like to thank my friend Coffee, for who without I would get nothing done.

A little background about myself...I started a company called These Two Girls about 1.5 years ago and I design and manufacture Woobee products www.woobeekids.com. I am a mompreneur, which is one of the fast growing types of micro-business groups. Mompreneurs by definition are women who started a company after having children with ideas inspired by the little rascals themselves. I have to be honest, the name mompreneur sounds a bit silly to me. It lacks a certain seriousness about it, and let me tell you - we are seriously working our buns off.

Although I would now like to blog all day, while my girls are napping I want to enter some items in Quickbooks, which is for whatever reason ridiculously hard for me to do. Not the physical act of entering receipts, but the just sitting down to do it part. I did however finally get a new laptop and learned how to network my home computers and actually set up a remote desktop to the computer with my Quickbooks file!!! I just about cried when it all came together last night. You need to understand that I am NOT techy at all and this simple change will make a huge difference in my life. The time and energy I will save is remarkable.

Hooray, it's time for my afternoon coffee:)