How did this happen? Well, I have to thank Marta Frey, the Director of the Small Business Development Center at the Collin County Community College District. When Moms Out Loud was but a speck of an idea (and I was still employed, which must not have conveyed into the article), I met with Marta and “pitched it” to her for her reaction. She very politely told me that it sounded like a great idea, but that I may be a tad too aggressive in my assumptions on how fast it could launch and take hold. (Me? Expectations too high? Strange, I’ve never heard that before.) Anyway, she, and the SBDC, have remained a great resource as I’ve gotten my business going. On her recommendation, Kim called me for an interview.

So, I met with Kim Nguyen over a Starbuck’s blended lemonade last week (a great reason to go to Starbuck’s…like I need another reason to go to Starbuck’s) and had a wonderful discussion. She wove it into a nice article profiling the trend of Moms (like so many I now know) opting out of corporate life and into something they are passionate about that provides them more flexibility to balance their family and career. Overall, I think she nailed it, even though there was some appropriate “poetic license” used (on my part, at least). And now I feel like I have four more comrades on this entrpreneurial ride I’m on, which is great. (Check out the Teacher Depot in Frisco, Dawn Michelle Photography, Homemaker CEO, and The Executive Organizer.)

There is only one place I feel like I really have to correct the article, which says MOL is targeted to Moms who stay at home. In fact, Moms Out Loud is targeted to all Moms, not just those who stay home. One of the great things about the way we’ve scoped Moms Out Loud is that any Mom can find something useful in it, whether it be the reviews of local businesses, the local events calendar, the Mom/parenting content, or the social networking. And every mom as an individual will probably use it differently than other Moms. So, I hope every Mom from every walk of life will use it and find it helps solve some of the hassles in her life.

And thanks again, Kim, for a great discussion and for spotlighting some of the great Mom-owned businesses here locally.

Name: Jill

City: Plano

Marital Status: married

Mom to: Samantha (“Sami”), 15-month old girl

Occupation: Attorney. However, I have started my own business, Sweet Cheeks. I specialize in monogrammed diaper covers, onesies, bibs, burp cloths, etc. for babies and small toddlers. I also carry other speciality items from vendors I personally love, like Swankie Blankie and Elegant Baby.

What is sitting on your bedside table right now?

A lamp, a decorative plate with writing pens and paper on it. A glass of water and coaster (of course!). I think even a wrapper from one of Sami’s snacks. I have a pile of sam’s books on the floor that won’t fit on the nightstand because we read each night in my bed before she goes to bed.

What is the last thing you told your children that your own mother told you when you were a kid?

I love you.

What was the last meal you cooked from scratch and when?

Does breastmilk count? BECAUSE I DON’T COOK.

What was the best piece of parenting advice you got? Who gave it to you?

My mom gave me the advice. You have to put babies on a schedule! My daughter is wonderful at bedtime and sleeps well. She is a very happy girl and I’m happy to think that I contribute to that happiness in many ways!!

What are three products that you could not live without?

Blackberry (soon to change to my new i-phone!), a car, toothbrush and toothpaste!

If you could put one product on the market that doesn’t exist today, what would it be?

I am soooo sick of traffic. I think I would invent a space travel option on my NEW i-phone (a machine would be too large to haul with me everywhere and I’m already pretty attached to my blackberry). You could simply enter a location and you would be “beamed” over there. (I guess I’m showing my age using the word “beamed”!!!) Then I wouldn’t care about the price of gas!

Has your definition of success changed since you became a Mom? If so, how?

Absolutely! I can’t really describe it. I think you have to experience it to truly know what I am talking about. The best way to describe it is “a change in focus”. I focus on my daughter’s successes! If she says a new word, if she’s happy, if she learns a new skill….those are now my success stories.

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.

For them.

Their world is pretty much black and white. They have no hidden agendas (or at least ones so hidden that an adult can’t pretty easily figure them out). They have two speeds: high gear (for running on the playground and eating birthday cake) and dawdle (for getting to bed and for when you are trying to get them out the door for pre-school).

And, apparently, there is another simple reality in my 3-yr old’s life. It is the absolute power of the four magic words: “Please may I have.”

It’s happened gradually over time, almost without us noticing it. At first, they were sweet statements of what he wanted – or at least, comments that when stated in that toddler boy singsong voice, sounded sweet. “I want some milk” or “I want to go outside.” We soon helped him turn those statements into requests: “Can I have some milk?”, or “Can I go outside?”. Without thinking much about it, the requests were granted (when granting was easy to do, and when you only have one child to worry about, it almost always is).

Then, we remembered we should be teaching him about the magic word: Please. So we coached our little man to say “please” along with his requests. “Can I have some more juice, please?” or “Can I have some more Veggie-Tales, please?” He got the hang of that so easily that we quickly moved to a more proper way to state his requests: “Please may I have [whatever object has his attention at the time]?”

But somehow, almost imperceptibly, his requests have evolved back into statements based on the belief that the four words “please may I have” will unlock every door, open every cabinet, and get every toy.

While I’m often proud that we have successfully taught our son the grammatically perfect, and politically correct, way to ask for something, I’m also often stunned at how much faith he puts in those four words to make whatever he wants magically materialize.

• Like the Saturday morning when he woke up and wanted to go to school: “Please may I have school?” Well, no, Jack, school is closed. That took a long time to explain.

• Like the Tuesday afternoon when he wanted to have a swim lesson with Ms. Tara: “Please may I have Ms. Tara?” Well, no, Jack, Ms. Tara is not teaching today. That one was solved by going to the pool ourselves.

• Like the Thursday morning when he wanted cake for breakfast: “Please may I have cake?” Well, no, Jack, we don’t eat cake at breakfast. We compromised by putting cake sprinkles on top of his cream cheese & bagel.

Recently, I struggled between mortification and laughing out loud when Jack tried to pass this lesson on to another child, a little older than him, at a birthday party. The party was at the Dallas Arboretum, and our festivities were held in an amazing area with a huge expanse of lawn (I think it’s called the Camphouse Patio). Jack had ended up with two play mowers from the toy stash, which – given this great lawn – were certainly prime toy choices. A little girl came up and tried to take one from his hand. Jack held tight. The girl tried again. Jack was firmly NOT letting go.

• “You have to say: ‘Please may I have’,” Jack told her, in total seriousness.

• The little girl looked stunned. She reached for the mower again. Jack pulled it back again.

• “You have to say: ‘Please may I have’,” he said again.

At that point, I was about to step in to make up something to tell Jack about how he needed to share, even if the other little girl didn’t say please, but she decided this was too crazy of a situation and bounced away. The really funny thing was, I’m sure Jack would have given her the toy – had she said “please may I have”. For him, those four words hold absolute power to grant access to any object of desire.

Fast forward 33 years to me. I sit at my computer writing this, wrestling with a decision that is monumental in my little corner of the world….or even the hundreds of small little things I struggle with daily. How I wish “Please may I have” were that powerful. I’d just say them, and then what I want would magically appear. Right?

Wrong.

I can’t just say: “Please may I have a size 8 body?” and have it materialize. I can’t just say: “Please may I have a trip to Hawaii?” and immediately be lying on Poipu Beach. And – though how I wish this were true, especially right now – I can’t just say: “Please may I have an absolutely stunning, working perfectly, totally user-friendly web site?” and pull it up in a flash on my computer.

Unfortunately, life is not this simple, as Jack will soon learn now that his little brother Luke has just become mobile and has a mind of his own. “Please may I have” only works in situations where someone (the person you’re requesting from) has the will and ability to grant the request. Just this morning, Jack asked Luke this morning: “Please may I have the dump truck?” as Luke was playing with it. (Well, OK, this was after I scolded him for trying to take it out of Luke’s hands. Even for Jack, there are limits to his application of manners, and apparently brothers are one of them.) But voila! – nothing happened. Let me rephrase: something happened – a tug of war.

The point – and the lesson – is, even with a “please may I have,” what he desired didn’t automatically materialize.

Jack will have many more years of learning this lesson. The world at large will consistently wear down his expectation that “please may I have” results in anything magical. So for now, when I can do so without undermining other lessons of the day, I will quickly grant all requests preceeded by “please may I have?”. Because even if it doesn’t always work automatically, I do believe he’ll get a lot further with a “please” than with a tug of war.

Today is the first day we go out to officially “sell” MomsOutLoud.com. What that means is I have a meeting with a potential advertiser, and instead of only getting feedback on my media kit (I did tell you all that I really like feedback, right?!), I am taking a contract and am going to attempt to close the sale. I am going to try to refrain from begging, but my fragile ego may not let me walk out of there without a signature, so I can’t be totally responsible for my actions.

I have been repeating this phrase – “Believe in Abundance” – over and over to myself all weekend in anticipation of this week.

“Believe in Abundance” has actually been a fairly constant refrain in my head and my heart since I decided to leave corporate America in January of this year. Around then, I told a contact, who is now a friend, that I was considering leaving to start my own business, and she told me: “Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and believe in abundance.” She still doesn’t know (until now – because hopefully she’s reading this blog!) how much those words resonated with me and how central they have been to keeping my faith in what I’m trying to achieve.

The refrain has helped me get through some overwhelming points on this entrepreneurial journey. It sits in my head, kind of like white noise, a soft buzz that surrounds everything I do daily, coming forward at unexpected times to give me a nudge when I don’t even know I need it. It became pretty loud when I was considering taking an attractive-in-all-other-situations, part-time job working for a wonderful person and friend at a former employer whom I still hold in the highest regard, and helped me make the decision to focus on MomsOutLoud.com fulltime. It hit rock-concert decibel levels when, two months after I became a full-fledged entrepreneur, my husband resigned his own corporate job for various reasons, leaving us with no steady income in the family.

The remarkable thing about me recently living my life following this principle is that it is not my normal tendency. I am a worrier by genetics initially, and by years of practice now. When Jim first met me, I remember asking him when we were faced with any decision: “What happens if everything goes wrong?” To this, my wonderfully understanding husband would always reply:

“What happens if everything goes right?”

So as I am now pursuing something I want so much I can taste it, I am choosing to believe that everything IS going to go right, that there WILL be abundance. I don’t know how much this belief will sustain me on the road ahead; I don’t know how much I will need it to sustain me. But, I choose to believe that, like the water on the flowers above, if I keep my faith in what I’m trying to achieve, MomsOutLoud will blossom abundantly.

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!