Fast forward a short 3 months later. How quickly the roller coaster can dip down!

My first dose of reality was the speed with which businesses were responding to our outreach. Those who did respond did so with overwhelming support of the mission for Moms Out Loud – to help local Moms find information, share tips, connect with each other, and celebrate their lives. But there were others that were: on vacation, swamped with kids out of school for the summer or their own summer camps, swamped with other business stuff, or – gasp! – not interested in advertising until the site is proven out (what?!?). So, while our business partnerships have been building steadily, the rate at which they are building didn’t meet my initial expectations. (OK, so I was told my people who’ve been in this kind of business much longer than me that I was a bit unrealistic in those expectations, but am I not building the most amazing Moms web community ever?!? )

My second dose of reality was unrelated to the business entirely – well, kind of. It is how much I enjoy being with my kids. The only explanation I can give to this revelation is “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Tucked away in my little (well, OK, it was big) office in corporate America for 45-50 hours a week, I thought I had an idea of what my kids were doing every week day between Grandma and their Montessori school. BUT, in reality, I didn’t. And now that I have the chance to participate more in their daily lives – wow. It’s nice. Being able to go home at 3:30pm to take my boys swimming after their nap (instead of getting home at 5:30pm just in time for a little rough-housing before dinner) is pure joy. Makes me want to do that a little more often…… like every day.

My third dose of reality was the actual result of my 10 weeks and multiple thousands of dollars of investment in a web development company that was supposed to deliver my product. I had had a sinking suspicion I’d made the wrong choice from early on in our build, but brushed it off as to my overly controlling personality and inexperience in web development projects. Turns out my intuition was right. They are now fired, and I have a new team in place, but unfortunately because the code was so bad, they’re having to start over on the build.

So, with my new frame of reference, I spent the July 4 weekend contemplating all of these developments. (OK, so I also sketched out a book to write a book next year about Mompreneurship and its challenges, but most of the time I was contemplating what this was going to mean for me and Moms Out Loud.) How would I respond to the hard realities of the start-up business world? I’ll tell you how:

By Being an Orange!

For the literalists among us:

By Succeeding Despite These Challenges!

I won’t lie: the thought of walking away did cross my mind. For a split second.

But then I got mad. (And for me, getting mad is a sure-fire sign I’m going to make something work.) I got mad for the obvious reasons: because a crappy web guy had taken my money and delivered a horrible product…… that because of that crappy product, we were going to have to delay the site launch….. that my personal financial situation was going to be even more pinched than we had expected because of the delay.

However, I got the most mad at myself, for even contemplating for one second not pursuing my dream and building my business, which in my three-year-olds words, is simply “Helping Other Mommies.” Giving up? Yes, easier. But then I wouldn’t have the web-site that I have been craving since I got pregnant with that three-year-old. And no other Moms would have it, either.

To me, the promise of Moms Out Loud and what it can offer for Moms in our area is worth a bit of a struggle. Nothing worth having is easy. This won’t be either. It may be harder than I thought, but in the end, the gain is more than worth the pain. So I re-doubled my commitment to making MomsOutLoud.com a smashing success.

BUT – don’t be surprised if you see me with the boys at the pool this afternoon.

But, before all of you with totally normal kids stop reading because you’re thinking this blog entry is about gifted children, let me stop you. It’s not. I believe the “rage to master” is actually more common than experts might say – or at least varies by degrees.

And I think every young child has it. Especially my 1 year old, Luke.

What exactly is the “rage to master”? To quote from a quite interesting blog post on the topic from Wandering Ink: “it is the intrinsic motivation of gifted and talented children to master an area of interest; it’s absolutely obsessive in nature, driving the child to focus intensely on that subject matter and voraciously consume new information and skills.”

For those of you who have parented young children, you probably remember these moments of extreme obsession. Periods in a child’s life when they are acquiring new skills and can’t – it seems – waste time on anything that’s not propelling them toward mastery of the challenge. These “rages to mastery” happen around every major milestone: learning to roll over, learning to pull up, learning to crawl, learning to stand.

And, the obsession we’re witnessing right now: learning to walk.

I should have seen this one coming. Luke was an uncommonly happy baby (one of the main reasons we actually think we could handle a third). If presented even the slightest challenge by a toy being out of reach, he would proceed to entertain himself by playing pattycake or staring at a ceiling fan. He was happy to just observe. And with our household of grandparents, parents, 1 big brother, 2 dogs, 2 cats, and various neighbors and friends coming and going, there’s a lot to observe.

With the whirl of constant activity around him providing hours of viewing pleasure, Luke didn’t have the need to move. He was a late crawler, not learning this skill until 11 months. But wow – since then! The whole world has changed. And so has Luke. He quickly progressed to learning to stand, which caused him several late nights and short naps as he practiced and practiced in his crib. And now, a short month later, he is voraciously practicing walking.

Gone is our happy baby who was content to sit and observe. In his place is a determined, one-track-minded toddler who teeters laps around our den/kitchen area until he literally can’t take another step from fatigue. And then, he’s a fussy, discontented toddler who doesn’t understand why when his mind wants him to move, his legs may not cooperate. He’s even more fussy when he gets himself into a corner that he can’t figure a way out of, resembling the Energizer Bunny banging his drum and marching over and over into a wall.

As I watch him, I marvel at his persistence and insatiable desire to master walking.

And I am struck by the parallels in my own life, as a neophyte entrepreneur, with the Rage to Master driving me each day.

The same voracious appetite to master walking in Luke is the same all-consuming desire that I have to realize the vision of Moms Out Loud. I see it in my head, it swirls in my brain, it weaves its way into my dreams and unconscious thoughts making it extremely difficult to focus on anything else. And just like Luke, I find myself at times entirely spent with the overwhelming energy expended on the various aspects of executing against a vision that I feel so compelled to bring to my friends and fellow Moms.

These are the moments when I force myself to stop and remind myself of why I’m doing this business in the first place: to give me more flexibility around moments I can spend with my family, and to build a company that allows my employees – who will, when I’m big enough to hire them – be women or Moms who also want to contribute great things to our world at large….between the hours of 9am – 3pm (or so). And so, I make myself shut down the computer early a couple of days a week, and go home to be with my boys.

And when I do, I spend a little extra time with Luke, assisting in his “Rage to Master” by getting him out of those corners and sending him down a straighter path.

There is an old parable I’ve heard many times about the importance of perspective. It describes how three stonecutters, doing the same exact task, viewed their job completely differently and how their perspective made a huge difference in their personal happiness and motivation. It goes something like this….

One day in the 14th century, a man asked three stonecutters to describe their job.

• The first stonecutter replied with great bitterness, “I am cutting this stone into blocks.

• The second stonecutter replied with no emotion, “I am building an arch.

• The third stonecutter replied with great pride, “I am building a cathedral.”

Entrepreneurship, I have found from even my short experience, is not for stone cutters. I compare many of the tasks I am doing myself now to what I did as a corporate Vice President and laugh. Order my own office supplies? Track my own expenses? Make my own copies? If I took a lot of the work I do daily on a literal basis, I could get bogged down and lose the meaning of the work. These tasks are necessary, and when you’re a 1 person show with limited budget, you do them – all of them.

But that’s not what I’m really doing. I am creating something. Something big. Something I believe Moms need. Something I believe Moms want. They may not even know they want it (though every Mom I’ve talked to about MomsOutLoud.com has gotten “it” immediately), but once they have it, they won’t be able to live without it. That’s what I believe.

I am now trying to staff a small team to help me build Moms Out Loud. For the most part, I am finding people who believe the vision, who believe what we are building is going to be huge and will create a tighter community of Moms in North Texas than existed before – or could exist without something like MomsOutLoud.com.

And these are the people Moms Out Loud needs. The people who will jump in and do whatever task is needed to build the cathedral. The people who will look at a pile of papers that need to be consolidated into a media kit, or a contact log that needs to be managed, and tackle it – all while keeping the perspective of the bigger picture of what we’re building. Here’s to my cathedral builders who’ve signed up so far: Leanne, Donna, Jennifer, Monica, Adonia, Heather, Stephanie, and Missy.

But you know what else Moms Out Loud needs – and in fact, won’t succeed without? Our beta-Moms. Moms who believe that they have something important to share with other Moms: their experience. Moms who want to make the path through motherhood easier for other Moms by sharing their lessons. Moms who want to meet each other because they know this journey is a lot more fun when you’ve got some good friends beside you who can entertain you with a funny story, listen when you need to vent, or maybe even watch your kids when you need a night out with your husband.

So, to all you beta-Moms out there – remember, we’re building a cathedral! There might be some tedious block-cutting along the way (writing your xth review for your kids’ last birthday party place, trying to remember your favorite goodnight book for your pre-schooler), but in the end, we will have something beautiful that will help others. I hope you share the vision!