Happy Entrepreneurship Day and Enriched Family Turns 3!

Happy National Entrepreneur’s Day! Shout out to all the small business owners out there. I see you. 2020 has been hard. Pivot seems to be the word of the year in the entrepreneurial world and I’ve been doing a lot of pivoting at Enriched Family. My baby business also turns three this month. Thanks to all of you for believing in and supporting this labor of love. 

For those of you who are new to Enriched Family, here’s a quick recap: After much brainstorming + dreaming + planning + scheming, Enriched Family was officially launched in November 2017. My aspiration was to support other busy, professional parents with all the things by drawing on my 20+ years of professional experience as a researcher and project manager. I wanted to help bring more peace and order to the joys and challenges of modern parenting by supporting parents with the information, tools, and systems they need to organize their families to thrive. I also wanted to solve my modern parenting problem of being a household of two professional parents who traveled a lot for work and had two little girls to care for and no family in town. I desired much more flexibility and control over my schedule than what public policy consulting (my past life, more on that later) had allowed. Hence, Enriched Family was born. 

I’ve spent the past three years supporting families in the difficult work of balancing the professional and personal. I’ve provided parents with custom, family-focused research (education, camps, and enrichment activities); created tailored organization solutions (particularly family systems, including meal planning, household schedules, division of labor, and daily routine and chore lists for kids); and coached small business owners, particularly women, in balancing their work and family goals (goal planning, productivity & time management coaching). It’s been the happiest and most fulfilling time of my career. 

And it has also been hard. To put myself out there, to face the possibility of failure, to do the hustle, to make my career goals a priority. Nevertheless, I have learned and grown so much as a person and business-owner, and when I hear the pride in my daughter’s voice when she tells people that her mama has her own business, I am profoundly moved and satisfied. 

Then 2020 happened. My kids were home doing remote schooling; my husband and I were both trying to work from home. and be teachers. and parents. and counselors, all at the same time; and I was spending many insomniac evenings doom scrolling in the middle of the night as I watched our world fall apart. As most parents like myself were simply trying to survive, family organization and coaching was not at the top of most folks’ minds (understandably), and Enriched Family business precipitously dropped. And frankly, for the first few months of the pandemic, I was fine with that. Everything felt so overwhelming and fraught that I honestly couldn’t take on that much more. I spent the summer trying to entertain my kids without camps and creating resources for the many working parents whose worlds had been completely upturned, especially working women. I spent hours researching and writing blog posts on summer camps, including online camps, in-person camps (both indoor and outdoor), overnight camps, free or reduced cost camps, and other childcare options. For each category, I highlighted the safety and sanitation measures each camp stated they would follow, as well as CDC guidance about reopening camps and child care locations. My goal was to provide parents with the information they needed to make the best decision for their unique family circumstances. I also did a post on parenting with anxiety, rounding up resources for parents and kids. I did an extensive post on alternative schooling options for the fall as parents faced the prospect of ongoing uncertainty and remote schooling; a post on kids’ and family activities that could be done at home, online, or socially distanced; and a post on back-to-school family organization amid COVID. While I love doing this work, as I don’t accept any advertising on the Enriched Family website, the many hours that I spend researching and writing does not generate any direct income. 

Now, I want to say that I am incredibly lucky. I have a spouse with a good job and we are exceptionally fortunate that he has kept his job in all the crazy of 2020 and is paid well enough that my lack of income generation was not a complete crisis for our family. We also have our health and a safe place to live and are so grateful. Nevertheless, I enjoy working and making my own money. I am also fortunate that my husband supports my aspirations and is well aware that building a business solo, from the ground up, takes time. 

All this to say, come fall, I was still starting to panic a bit about my lack of income generation and about losing the momentum I had created in my business. So I pivoted. Throughout the past three years as I was building my business, I would occasionally take on public policy consulting work (research and writing) from my old life to balance my entrepreneurship. In August, I took on a fairly full-time consulting gig doing research and writing on the state’s COVID response in Texas. Since then, I have only been sporadically present on Instagram; I have completely stopped networking (not even remote networking); and I haven’t written an Enriched Family newsletter or blog post. 

So, if you are wondering where I have been, that’s where. I recount all this to remind myself and y’all that entrepreneurship is hard. Motherhood is hard. Remote schooling is hard. Doing all three in a pandemic is crazy. It’s easy to focus more on what we haven’t done, than on what we have done. So, whatever pivot you have made this past year for your family, and work, and business, good for you. I respect your decisions and know they weren’t easy. Right now, we are all just trying to keep our heads above water and sometimes that is enough. I am so grateful that I’ve had this public policy consulting work and steady income. As the project comes to a close in the next couple of months, I promise I will be back at the blogging and resource development. In the meantime, I encourage you to take a pause and remember all the things you have accomplished this year. And happy entrepreneur’s day!  

Enriched Family is a unique, custom research, coaching, and consulting business dedicated to providing families with the information, tools, and systems they need to live more organized and joyful lives. Services include: Custom family-focused research (child care, education, health and wellness resources, camps, and enrichment activities); family organization solutions (stuff and family systems, including meal planning, household schedules and division of labor, daily routine and chore lists for kids); and small business consulting (goal planning, productivity & time management coaching). I offer a free, 30-minute initial phone consultation to all new clients to discuss matching your needs and priorities with my services. I invite you to check out my services and click the "Let's Get Started!" button below to contact me with any questions.