Robin Chase is the epitome of The Modern Mompreneur. She is a mother of three, the founder and former CEO of Zipcar, and the founder and current CEO of Buzzcar, a peer to peer car sharing service. Robin acknowledges that being a mompreneur is challenging and there are daily struggles in balancing the worlds of business and family. She provides the following tips to mompreneurs:
Tip #1: "Have a partner -- That can be a spouse, partner, friend who will be your support through thick and think.
"And since this audience is mompreneurs, if you have children you absolutely have to have someone who is going to take it up for you... When you are a CEO, you are working around the clock and so they have to do more than 50 percent. I honestly don't see how you can do it without having someone who can pick that up. My children are now 20, 23,26 and they are spectacular because my husband did a terrific job and I did a terrific job. Over the course of time, we traded."
Tip #2: "Have intellectual honesty about your skill set, what your customers think of what you are doing, how things are going, and then become a learning organization."
"We all, as CEO of start-ups, are constantly selling, selling, selling. Selling to customers, employees, investors... but, in your heart, you need to know what is working and what is not working. And don't drink your own Kool Aid! When things go wrong, correct them absolutely as fast as you can. That's how we beat out big companies. You have to do it constantly. You have to be realistic, when it is broken it is not going to get any better. You have to fix it right away. You don't have the money, resources, or the time to sit on broken things."
Tip #3: "Persistence."
"Its going to be incredibly hard."
Mompreneur Mantra: "You can have everything in time."
"When I was just a mom I was pissed off that I had lost my ambitious self. And then when I was in my first year at Zipcar I was doing both and I was a terrible mother. And then for the next two years my husband took over as the primary caretaker and that was much better. I could personally not do both things at the same time. I was a great mom on the weekends, but Monday - Friday... I think every woman is different, the children are different, the situation is different, the ages are different. But for me personally I could not do both well."
For more guiding principles from Robin and other successful female entrepreneurs, click here.
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