The online business revolution & the last six years

In the past six years there has been a revolution amongst entrepreneurs growing their businesses online. I hadn’t really, really realized it until I attended Pioneer Nation a couple of weeks ago and saw firsthand how many businesses had been started around online audience building, information products and business coaching in the past few years.

So where was I?

Six years ago, I was 8-months pregnant and attended the Online Marketing Summit conference in San Diego, my first introduction to the groundbreaking effect social media was about to have on business. Facebook had just become big. Twitter, not yet known by the masses, had just been founded.

I was there to build my business, but I also had other things I was building.

Namely, my new life as mother of two children, soon to be three.

My first child was born in 2005. But In May 2008, my daughter was born while my husband had just started up a new business. In 2009 we moved our family from the OC to picturesque Sonoma. And in 2010, my third child was born. In those six years that blogging became a mantra, the iPhone and tablets were invented, selfies became the norm, and Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest became household words, I was building a new life for myself as a mother of 3 children, running a full time web design business, and focusing on local community and travel to round out what I considered the perfect mix of work, family, giving back and inspiration.

I was busy changing diapers, watching first steps, teaching my kids to ride their bikes, taking toddlers to see their first snowfall, figuring out how to run a busy web design business on 2 hours of sleep some nights, and supporting my husband as he started up two businesses during the same time.

I was, essentially, keeping the fort down.

For the past six years I’ve been a successful, career entrepreneur making six figures steadily while giving my all as a mother of three children under the age of five. I was focused on how to be a mother and entrepreneur while creating a lifestyle that included travel and giving and creating with my new family.

And while I was busy building my work-life balance and attending to the needs of my web design clients, others were busy creating a new kind of business through the revolution that has been growing these last six years.

Last week at Pioneer Nation, I was newly inspired by people like Shenee Howard, Nathan Barry, Tara Gentile, Willo O’Brien, Chase Morgan, and others, who during the same time I was perfecting my motherhood/entrepreneurship work-life balance, were blogging and building an audience that led them to not only understand how to capitalize on that audience, but then turn what they had learned from this process into an opportunity to teach others and make that their business as well.

Timing couldn’t have been more perfect, because for me, now that my youngest child is 4, I’m finally ready to come back to the party. My last six years as a business owner have been far from unproductive – I’ve grown my business offerings and honed my skills as a web designer to service larger and larger clients… but I’ve hit a wall.

The same wall that so many attendees understood at Pioneer Nation. At some point, you realize that if all you do is offer your services based on an hourly value, you’re growth model hits a plateau, and you start to consider who you really want to serve with your knowledge and services.

I’m ready to push past that plateau. I’m ready to re-join the revolution and create my own.

The last six years have not just been about refining my skills and keeping the fort down. They’ve given me a fresh perspective on entrepreneurship. I am no longer just an entrepreneur, I am also a mother. And successfully maneuvering the balancing act between my love to create and my love for my family, while going after all the things that make us whole along the way, is a difficult and constantly wavering pursuit.

If you are also balancing more than just being an entrepreneur, or if you are a mother who wants to make an impact in a meaningful way whether it is through work or other ways to serve others, I invite you to join me as we support each other and join the revolution – as parents, creators, and as Pioneers.

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