BALANCING BEING A MOM AND LAUNCHING A NATIONAL GREEN HOUSE CLEANING FRANCHISE

I like the term Momtrepreneur. It is an obvious mash up of Mom and Entrepreneur. I definitely like the fact that Mom comes first in the mash up, because for me, being a mom has always comes first. My first child Nadia was only a year and a half when we started out. We had sold our prior business when she was born. I had thought I would not work or run another business for awhile, but that obviously did not happen. It is just in my blood to build and create businesses. In fact I worked in my families business from a very young age.

I wanted to create the kind of business that I always wanted to work at, a place that made a difference. I wanted to create a career for myself, and other like minded women (men are welcome too, that was just my founding vision). I founded Better Life Maids in the summer of 2008 with these goals in the front of my mind.

What started out as a way to help increase our families income, quickly grew to something larger. We soon realized that Better Life Maids, had the potential to be something great. Matt and I soon decided that this would be what we put our energy and time into and began to build the systems that would soon validate our franchise model. Within 2 years of launching Better Life Maids, Matt was able to leave his job as an airline pilot and work with me full time to grow our business. He focused his energies on building the legal and marketing framework of the franchise system, while I continued to focus on the daily operations.

Those first 2 years, prior to Matt joining me full time, were challenging. I was running the day to day business on my own. Matt supported me as best he could on the road, and slowly built our systems and technologies, while I focused on the operations. I also learned to outsource some tasks so I could focus on being a mom. One of these was our sales process. I moved away from in home bids, and started over the phone sales. I also found a call center that would integrate with our software.

I really believe that moving to over the phone sales, and finding a call center that was willing to integrate with our systems was critical to my early sanity. I could let them answer the inbound calls. If it was a sale they would book it, if it was one of my current clients seeking support, I would immediately call them back. This was a great filter for me, so that I was always prepared for any phone call, and could quickly resolve problems if they arose.

The call center model is also what we are going to offer our franchisees. I know some of them will also be balancing time as a mom, and starting a new business, so this will be a critical piece to their success, and their sanity. I know it helped me to know that I could focus on my kids. The phone can be a really stress if you are trying to balance both. Just knowing that no calls are missed is a huge relief. This is so much better than an answering machine.

Another thing Matt and I did early on was to clearly define our roles within Better Life Maids. In fact we created an organizational chart with all the positions we would need to have filled. Their were a lot of positions, and just two names to fill in early on, Matt & Myself. We diligently chose the roles that best suited us, and served the business. I chose the customer service roles and ultimately my highest purpose in the business is to create an excellent experience for our clients.

While I realize that we can’t be perfect all of the time, I do push for excellence in every possible way. Do we every fall short of that? Yes. But I believe strongly that how a company responds to its mistakes, says the most about how it serves it clients.

As a mom, it has been a tightrope sometimes. Balancing work, and building a business, and a brand. But for the most part I think it has been a challenge worth undertaking. I think one of the most common questions you get as a mom is do you work or stay home. For me, I walk between both worlds. I think owning your own business, really is the best of both.

Angela Ricketts
Vice President of Client Experience