Pittwater Online News

Two ladies who are for, about and by working mums are Banika Smee and Dianna Holwerda. Discovering a unfilled niche, that which works in with the times and routines of other mums, caused them to found Mumpreneurs, a networking group for ladies running or beginning their own businesses who really want to talk with other women who are trying to be mums, run homes and run a business.

These girls are down to earth at the core. They’re not turning up to meetings in high heels and with hair done, they’re turning up in work clothes, perhaps with a stain or two from children. they have learnt how to stand up and speak in front of up to 30 others and found that making lists worked and how when they do ‘stuff up’ it breaks the ice.

Computers and our online world is recreating a ‘common meeting ground’ in an electronic form that is then leading to creating a physical common meeting ground and abating a lot of the isolation where women are stuck in houses and in routines with no time to meet and talk and share experiences and insights. It all began on Facebook…

Diana: when people meet on the Mumpreneurs Facebook page it breaks the ice, and so when they go to a Event or Speakers Evening they can meet people they’ve been speaking to for ages. I think with some they have watched for a year to test wether we’re here to stay. For us it has worked in a positive way; and has created an opportunity to test the waters; to check somebody out in 360 degrees.

Banika: we’ve had people coming recently or the last few months who tell us they’ve been watching us on Facebook for the last year and then decided to come. For some of them it’s time management, being able to come. We’re also catering now for single working mums; by starting a morning group for those who can’t come at night or work at night. Our feedback was, as we do surveys with all of our members; I just can’t come to your events because I’m a single mum (and time poor). Getting the feedback from our surveys has really helped us take the next step.

Diana: another example of this is the Business Hour which originally we had from 7.30 to 8.30 and I thought, I keep missing this, and until we did the survey on that and the feedback was it needed to be later, because it’s too early. We moved it from 8 until 9 and now, oh, that’s so much better; we listen to them straight away and adjust it so it works.

To finish our March long celebration of women we asked a few questions...

How do you cope with being mums, looking after children, running homes and running businesses ?

Diana: I don’t think we do always cope I struggle a lot with looking after the kids while doing something on the computer for a client. I do a lot of my work at night. Last night I don’t think I finished until 1 am, which is a struggle in the morning. My daughter wakes up at 5am. Then we have a work related (Mumpreneurs) event ever month. And that’s going to increase; starting next month we’re having a morning Event/Meeting; so we’re having two events each month.

Banika: when we’re asked about our work/life balance we respond that we’re always trying to find answers to this. We’re always adjusting things as each day constantly changes, with children, family and business; so it’s never steady, it’s always changing.

Mumpreneurs; where did that come from?

Banika: it started with Diana

Diana: I’ve been in business since 2008 and for a while there were some girls who were inviting me to come to networking events but they were all too far away; in Sydney or further away. We were on the one income at the time, and so we didn’t have enough money to actually pay for these events, some were $60.00 or more, and then there was the travel involved, we only have one car; so who’s having the car and all that stuff, and then there’s the child; so you have to wait until they go to bed at night, so it was very hard for me to get out before six o’clock at night.
And one day I was on Facebook and mentioned how I would love to have a local network, something that’s free, something that’s accessible. I met Banika on Facebook, who said the same thing and that she’d love to join me. And next thing we knew we’d started up the Mumpreneurs Northern Beaches network. We started as a free network.

Banika: I was still in the early stages of my business then and I knew that I needed to talk to somebody trying to do the same thing as me; running a home, a husband who has his own business as well; even though I could talk to him he didn’t have the same worries as me, bringing up children (and all that’s involved in the mum’s role), getting them to Day Care and all that day to day tasks; So it was good being able to talk to another mum. I needed that, and that’s why we formed Mumpreneurs. And that’s what we started with.

The network meetings that occur once a month, what happens in those ?

Banika: we have a nightly one which is on the first Tuesday of every month at Cheeky Monkeys at Warriewood (now at Innovation Space) . It starts at 7.30 and we have a guest Speaker. So we introduce the event to everyone, and then each member that attends introduces themselves and their business; some just tell us about themselves, some of them tell us about their business, some people just come with a business idea and don’t really want to share their idea right now; they’re attending for inspiration, help to get by, to the next stage in their business.
So it depends what level everyone’s at; everyone gets up to 30 seconds or a minute to talk about their business, and then we have a guest Speaker from the local area and they will talk about something to do with business.
So we have an Accountant at our next one, he’s a local accountant and he’s going to address getting taxes ready for 2012 end of financial year; what we need to know, an update.
They talk for around half an hour to an hour, we have a question and answer time and then we have networking where everyone just mingles.
Because we’ve already done the Introductions at the beginning everyone knows who they might want to talk to; they’ve met online, they’ve been talking online, we have a ‘chat’ online function, and so they know ‘I’ll go talk to them’.

Diana: we also have tags at these Meetings, business tags, so they can identify each other more easily.

Mumpreneurs is for women. Why did you think you need something solely for women?

Diana: to be honest, because we are; we are women, we are mums; that’s the other thing; we had some ladies come up to us and say ‘well, we don’t have children’ and we said that’s fine, we don’t care, but we called it Mumpreneurs because we are mums.
You’re at a different part of your life. I never knew what was going to happen to me until I had my first child and realised that my whole world was upside down and even though it’s a lovely world it’s also a different world. At one point I didn’t have much understanding for other women with children. when I had mine I realised ‘ok, I do run late’ and that I will never get certain things done because when you have children that just happens(your priority is them) and we also recently found out that we don’t have to invite men; if they want to come we can’t say no (but it is primarily to address the need for mums to get together and support each other and help each other with insights on how to develop their businesses alongside being mums.)
We’ve had some couples because their used to working as a couple, the men support their wives; but we think differently, we do business differently, and I think some women do get intimidated if there’s a man, so that’s why we focus on women.

You’re planning to take this to the rest of Sydney, open Mumpreneurs in other local places ?

We’ve begun talking to consultants in different areas who are mums in business and they want to be a part of this but they can’t come to the Northern Beaches. So we said, how about we use the same Program that we’re doing and call it, for example, The Hills or the Eastern Suburbs Mumpreneurs Network and we help you start it up and get it all going and expand it under our umbrella.

Do you have people in each area already ?

We did start looking around but then people came to us. One lady approached us a year ago to run an event; she can’t make it here.

So once again it’s distance and time restraints that are being addressed ?

Both; yes.

Banika: and once again they’re realising that all the different Network Groups are not at the right time for them; the time we do, 7.30pm, it is later then most of these but for us that’s the perfect time…the kids are in bed and settled.

Diana: also ours is a lot more affordable; we only charge $2.00 for one event. I also think that some of the other ones are very business-like and obviously a business event. We have ladies who come straight after work; they’re still in a uniform.We’re not going to say you have to be dressed in a certain way, we’re not going to judge you…

We have a Business Hour on our Facebook page, which was Banika’s idea, and is set from 8-9pm each night where people can ask questions and get recommendations on who to approach for varying aspects of their business and what they need; eg Graphic Designers etc.

People can also post and advertise their business. They can only do that once a week; so if they did a post on Monday night you have to wait until the following Monday to do another post.

The other thing that we recently started doing is the markets; so we’re going to be doing a market on the 4th of May, just before Mothers Day, at The Beaches Market from 8am - 2pm.

Do you think the person running the business IS the business?

Diana: When it comes to small business, yes.

Banika: Diana’s business is a service business where I have a product based business; so there’s two totally different ways of doing business.

What is your favourite place in Pittwater and why?

Banika: Narrabeen lakes; the paths are great for families.

Diana: Narrabeen Pools; we had our wedding pictures taken there and it’s also great for the kids.

What is your ‘motto for life’ or a favourite phrase you like to live by?

Banika: Don’t harp on the past, just move on to the future…. Don’t have any regrets

Diana: My vision for life is ‘to live in the now, have no regrets and to always keep moving forward.’

For Mumpreneurs:  To Connect, Motivate and Inspire