For this work at home Mom feature, we get to meet Trisha, one of the “head MEOs” of MomDot!
Not only does Trisha run MomDot, she also is the creator of some beautiful Tutu Hairbow Holders at Bambina Ballerina! Trisha was great and answered some questions for you about being a work from home Mom!
1. You are a very busy Mama! Tell everyone a little bit about yourself.
My name is Trisha and I am a 30 year old, full time work at home mom. I am also a stay at home mom, a play at home mom, and a blog at home mom. I am not sure that I sleep and Im pretty sure my brain lives in another dimension 23.5 hours out of the day. The other part, I am eating.
2. Where did the creation of Bambina Ballerina come about?
I started doing crafts, I love crafts, but I never found something I was totally good at. Bambina started about the same way. Just making crafts for my daughter and then I wanted to make a new one, so I sold the one I made on ebay, and that went round and round and round and I was gettin 100% feedback on it and as soon as I put one up, it would sell. And i said, well, im going to open my own business online and see what happens. The worst thing would be, that I lose $12 on hosting. I continued to sell on ebay for quite a few months while I built up stock online and got my brand known. I also had a long way to come in perfecting the item from a craft to a business.
3.What is your favorite thing about being able to work from home? Least favorite? My favorite thing is that I don’t have to get out of my pajamas, I get to talk to other moms all day online while I am connecting, and I also have a big office with a desk and a new computer that I somehow justified to my DH. The worst part is that I have no one but me, so if I don’t work, I don’t make money. I get exhausted after working so many hours, doing every detail alone, and my days are usually around the 15 hour a day mark. I miss out on park visits, hanging with my daughter and DH at night watching movies, and some of the day by day things.
4. Where did the idea for MomDot come about and what is your main goal?
MomDot has been a LONG LONG time coming. I have been involved in online communities for many years, about 4. I have tinkered in HTML, website building, forum building and over the years, became pretty solid in my knowledge. My dream has always been to have an all inclusive mom site where there was cross promotion, chatting, networking, and content and that moms can help each other promote each other, all for free. While I was doing Bambina, everyone wanted a piece of me…free products to talk about me, being paid to talk…and I thought, why are we not just helping eachother succeed? While MomDot does charge for some of our front page banner space, we do list all blogs and boutiques for free, we constantly do posts and links for other businesses, and we do NOT require a review to run a contest on our page like some blogs kept asking me to do. As a small mom business, it was hard to give up a review AND a contest winner, it was breaking my budgeting, so I wanted a place that didn’t do that. If someone contacts me for a review only, I often try to persuade them to go to a contest only, not a review, because I feel more attention comes from a contest. I definitely do not need free products, that’s not my goal here.
5. For those thinking of starting their own business or working from home, what tips do you have for them?
a few things
1) That whole it takes money to make money thing is true..you will hit a point where you have to purchase items wholesale to continue to increase your profit. You will most likely have to invest all the money ou made back into it and some days you work for free. There was a point where I had to bite the bullet and spend almost a grand buying things I needed. I made it all back in a month.
2) Take time to brand yourself. Come up with a name and a style you can live with long term. Its very hard to change midstream because people get comfortable with who you are and hate change
3) Talk to others that run businesses online and network. Anytime someone emails me and has a product that i am impressed with, i ask THEM how they got started. Knowledge truly is power and its important to keep growing
4) SPECIALIZE. I see a lot of people that do about 25 things. Its like getting a hamburger at a taco joint. If you specialize in something, you will become good at it, and be the go to person for that item. THe more you work on something, the better you become. I dont think i could have did hair bows AND bowholders AND tutus, because they all would have suffered. Sure, I would have sold some, but they wouldnt be the best. Almost a year later, I can say that I am the best at what I create.- do anything 40 hours a week for a year, and you will be too. 🙂
Now that you’ve gotten the chance to learn about Trisha and her creations/goals for MomDot-head over there and check it out!
2 Comments
WONDERFUL INTERVIEW!!
ehm.. u have email from me….hope u are still up to being a sponsor of the holiday party at NBP.
I enjoyed reading that! Thanks