This blog post is shared in partnership with Shopify.
Juggling Motherhood & Entrepreneurship Panel
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to NYC in partnership with Shopify and moderate a panel at their Mother’s Day event. The panel was focused on running a business while also being a mom. It was a wonderful and vulnerable conversation with three inspiring entrepreneurs, Alex Zagami Ng, the founder of PiccoliNY, a New York-based children’s boutique, Denise Woodard, founder of Partake Foods, a company offering gluten-free, vegan cookies free of top allergens, and Kristen Tomlan, founder of DŌ, Cookie Dough Confections, the world’s first edible and bake-able cookie dough.
A few questions I asked included:
- How has motherhood shaped your perspective on being an entrepreneur?
- What has been the toughest thing about juggling motherhood and running a business?
- It really does take a village to raise children (and even more so to have kids and run a business). Who are your go-to people or services?
- How do you balance work + mom (and personal) life and is that even a thing?
- What’s one piece of advice you would give someone who is just starting a business and has children?
It was such a wonderful, insightful conversation that turned into whole audience experience. Laughing, crying, sharing stories and struggles and learnings and more. It was really special and wonderful! Shopify also had a gorgeous retail space with products curated from mom and caregiver owned businesses – it was so cute and well done! Overall, I was reminded of how important in-person connection is and how validating it is to feel seen and heard by others who are ‘in it’ (in this case, fellow entrepreneurs who are also moms or caregivers) with you.
One of the best parts of the weekend was getting to bring Lucy with me to the event and on a ‘just us’ 48 hours in NYC together!
My Personal Experience with Shopify
In November 2019, after a very inspiring family trip to Morocco that fall, I launched my own textile shop! Back then, it was really just a creative experiment or ‘textile collection’ with 50 handmade Morocco pillows I hand selected and purchased from someone I met in Morocco. My daughter Lucy wasn’t yet two and I was seven months pregnant with Winnie, as well as juggling my digital marketing business and finishing up grad school. Things were crazy at the time but I felt really passionate about this and wanted to test out how/if pillows I curated would sell. And…they did! At the time, I was using a different platform to host my shop and kept running into some challenges as my shop continued to expand. There were shop functionality things I wanted to do that weren’t possible, and after the recommendation of other small business owners, I decided to make the leap to Shopify. I hired Kelli of Ame Creatives who was INCREDIBLE. She moved all of my inventory and site content from the old site to Shopify and created a brand new customized website: shopluckycollective.com. For the customer, the website powered by Shopify is now way more user-friendly, visual, and easier to navigate/filter and find textiles. On the shop owner side, Shopify makes my life SO MUCH EASIER. 👏🏽 Here’s five ways I use Shopify for my business
- Shopify easily integrates with other payment providers (like PayPal), Pinterest, Instagram, Google Analytics, and many more platforms. This makes it easier for me
- There are so many customization options via Shopify apps and themes. I use Back in Stock Shopify App for restock alerts, Klaviyo for email marketing, Shipstation for shipment and order fulfillment, and many other apps that make it easier for me to run my business
- The Shopify Help Center is so informative and they have a VERY hands-on support team. I’ve had many live chats with the support team (a real person!) and gotten problems resolved answers I needed quickly
- The Shopify Tap and Chip Card Reader makes it which makes it seamless to accept payments on-the-go at events.
- Overall it is just a super user-friendly platform for a business – it’s easy to navigate and do things myself, even without a developer!
My shop can be found at shopluckycollective.com and via Instagram @shopluckycollective and Pinterest /shopluckycollective. I also have more blog posts about my textile shop here and here.
10 Mom-Owned Small Businesses I Love
I wanted to share 10 mom-owned businesses that I personally love! From coffee and clean beauty products to cute kids clothes and businesses that makes #momlife easier, there’s a lot of great shops below that I love supporting. 💛 You can find all of these businesses (and more) saved to this Celebrating Mothers and Caregivers Pinterest board!