Tell us a little bit about yourself and your entrepreneurial journey.

My journey is a bit complicated to say the least. After many years in the graphic arts and advertising I decided I needed a major career shift so I went back to school and got a Masters in Montessori Education. After receiving my credential from Loyola and the Montessori Association International (AMI) I worked with children between the ages of 2.5 and 6 in a Montessori school.

A dream come true, I had always dreamed of one day having my own school, yet as I worked with the children I realized parents often had many questions and always wondered why their children were so different at home then in their Montessori classroom.

I offered home visits through the school and helped parents understand how their home environments could be altered to help their child be more at peace, independent and self-disciplined at home. I realized the impact I was having and was encouraged by some parents to pursue this as a business model.

The rest is history; I am truly passionate about the information I share with parents as I do workshops, talks and private home consultations as well as Skype consultations, for expectant parents and parents with children from newborn through six years of age. (more…)

Tell us a little bit about yourself and you got into writing, producing and directing.

Growing up, I was a very poor student and never thought of myself as a writer. In my wildest dreams, I never imagined that I’d be making a comedy series which BuzzFeed would compare to Curb Your Enthusiasm and Louie or that I’d be trying to crowd-fund from my audience. Visual art was gentle and slow and solitary. It came to me naturally. As soon as I got out of college, I saved up money from waitressing and went to Paris to live in a maid’s room, so I could study at the Beaux-Arts. I wanted to learn to draw like Leonardo da Vinci.

A few years later, as a graduate student at the Mason Gross School of Rutgers, I was studying to be a sculptor and making what the second year students referred to (derisively) as “free-standing monoliths”.  Goaded by their ridicule, I was determined to figure out conceptual and performance art: fortunately, the performance artist Joan Jonas came out to visit for a day as a living example of what a smart and driven woman artist could do.

I eventually, put together a performance but it nearly killed me. The logistics were very difficult between the 8mm film, the slide show, the audio track of “American Birdsong: Volume 2″ and five or six of my classmates in drag.  And then once it was over, there was only a poor- quality video record. What I loved about performance was that it had the three dimensions of sculpture plus the possibility for written and spoken words and performers, and that all of this could take place in time. (more…)

By Holly Reisem Hanna

Are there really people making money by working from home?

I get asked this question all of the time. And while I may seem like an anomaly, I’m not. There are tons of women from all walks of life who are successfully working from home. Some of them are telecommuting for a large corporations, others are involved with direct sales companies, and others have launched their own home-based businesses.

So why do so many women struggle with finding work at home opportunities?

Haven’t Taken Initiative:

When individuals ask me how they can work from home, I often give them these 10 steps to work at home success that they should apply to their work at home job search. They read the article, maybe complete a step or two, and then email me back saying that they just can’t find anything. When I ask them what steps they’ve taken I usually get this sort of response, “I haven’t had the time to do that”. (more…)

By Deborah Sweeney

The best part about making the switch from working in an office to working in your own home is getting to be a part of the family action. You get to wake up every day to the sounds of little feet pitter pattering to the kitchen in anticipation of the morning’s promise of Cheerios and orange juice. After all, that’s why we make the switch, right?

With the mom facet of you being fully fulfilled now, you need to work on keeping the mompreneur within you satisfied as well and finding the perfect home based business to work at while staying close to the family goes hand in hand with this. If you aren’t sure what kind of company you’d be able to run from the comfort of your home, here are my three home-based business suggestions for the one-part mom, one-part business woman: (more…)

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your entrepreneurial journey.

Two years ago, after staying home with my son for 2 years, I decided I missed the part of my brain that worked.  The problem was I had no desire to return to anything I’d done before having my son.  I had worked a lot of different jobs, but they were all just jobs, nothing that really spoke to me anymore.  I spent a lot of time researching online things I could do from home, and found A LOT of scams.

Finally I came across oDesk and thought – yes this is what I’ll do. I used a lot of the skill I’d developed in previous jobs and was able to work from home; the problem was I still wasn’t fulfilled.  I decided to step away from oDesk and create something for myself. So, in July of 2011, I launched my virtual assistant business.  (more…)