Nothin’
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.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I’m not so sure if the same thing happened to my wife that my kids would have that answer right. Kids are programmed to respond to their own sometimes small scope of how they define things…what’s tangible…what’s classified as work…or they are used to seeing dad (or mom) go off to the office every day at 8am and return at 6pm. So when someone asks them what their daddy or in many cases mommy does, they can say in their sort of basic scope of perception…my daddy works for the fire department.
Using myself for an example, that was what I did until I left to start my own business. Now both myself and wife stay home and work. Having worked for 20 years at the fire department, my kids are programmed to respond that way…even though I am home now, they will say my daddy works on his business. What does your moomy do? The response would most likely be nothing but it couldn’t be farthest from the truth. She is the COO of the home and she DOES everything while I go down to the local coffee shop to work on my business. She also does medical transcribing and odd jobs here and there.
Many families now a days are duel income families but still there is that stigma kids pick up in school that you are here to educate yourself so you can get a job and go out and be qualified to work for someone. Being an entrepenuer isn’t really covered in school and most kids don’t grasp the concept until something tangible comes about…opening an office or a store or getting paychecks on a regular basis.
Thats my 2 cents, anyway