I saw the whole thing happen. It came at me in slow motion. Frame-by-frame.
Like witnessing a train wreck, I was powerless to stop it…
Last weekend, I met with some other hard-working home entrepreneurs at the neighborhood park. We do it as regularly as possible. It’s a chance for us to pull ourselves out of our basement workshops, our spare-room offices, and our attic sew shops and grab some fresh air with the kids.
So, we were sitting at a bench discussing the thirty million things we did that morning when a young girl approached my friend’s daughter.
They talked. How cute, I thought. They were making friends.
Then we heard the young girl say, “My mom works for the city… what does your mom do?”
I started to get up. Then I froze.
Inside, my mind screamed out the proper answer, “My mom is a home business entrepreneur! She markets! She sells! She plans! She designs! She writes! She cooks and cleans and shops and helps with homework! My mom is a home business entrepreneur. A home biz…”
It was too late. I could see the lips of my friend’s daughter form her one-word reply…“Nothin’.”
Noooooo!!!
My friend looked crushed.
Needless to say, it dampened the spirit of our outing and we trudged back home to the hours worth of nothin’ that waited for us.
The next morning, as I prepared lunch for my children, I tucked a piece of paper in their lunches. On it, I wrote the following talking point: “If you are ever asked what your mother does, the correct answer is EVERYTHING."
I think I made my point.
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Startup Stella contributes to this blog from her two-dimensional world, which you can learn more about by visiting this cartoon strip StartupNation created to share Stella’s quirky but classic entrepreneurial epiphanies with you.
