Rachael Herrscher is seeking work/life balance not just for herself but for the 30 employees of TodaysMama, the business she co-founded four years ago. She found what she was looking for with the help of tech tools, from smartphones to IM to collaboration. Now, TodaysMama is no longer just a business; it has become a community.
It was the need for a job that would provide Rachael Herrscher, co-founder and CEO of TodaysMama, with the flexibility she needed to care for her two small boys that inspired Herrscher to found her company, which develops resource guides and materials for families.
But it's the tech tools -- from smartphones to IM to collaboration tools -- that enables TodaysMama, with its 30 employees and consultants that work in different offices around the country, to survive and thrive.
"Women are leaving corporate America in droves," says Herrscher. "Technology will allow it. Generation X and generation Y want that balance of family and work. We watched our parents who blazed the trail. But we see what it did to their lives. We need to figure out how to do both."
Having It All
Herrscher is definitely trying. TodaysMama started in 2004, on what can only be described as a whim. Herrscher and friend Stephanie Peterson couldn't find any local referrals for a swim class for their toddler-age children, and as Herrscher says, "We live in Utah, the family capital of the world."
They did some market research: They went to a local bookstore and discovered that there were no resources for families to learn about local activities. So they decided to create their own.
Currently, TodaysMama is in 16 markets around the country with a total of over 150,000 handbooks in print. Plans are underway to add another four in the fall. Revenue for 2007 were about $200,000, and 2008 is shaping up to hit revenue of $500,000.
TodaysMama just launched its first magazine in the California Bay area, recently partnered with newspapers in Utah and the Bay Area, and plan to add several more newspaper and media licensees.
It's TodaysMama's Web site -- which has just undergone a complete makeover and will be relaunched at the end of July -- that has become the heart of the company with its forums, chat rooms, blogs, articles, profiles, and even music play lists.
And it's the virtual TodaysMama world that has enabled this company, populated almost exclusively by working mothers seeking a work/life balance, to achieve the success that it has.
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Leaving Corporate America Behind
According to Herrscher, most of her employees are women who, like herself, left corporate America seeking job satisfaction along with a more flexible schedule. Herrscher formerly worked for the 2002 Olympics committee managing educational fundraising initiatives and as a head hunter for the healthcare industry.
After the birth of her first child she decided to stay home, and it was during her pregnancy with her second child that she realized that her career was slipping farther and farther away. Founding her own business was what she needed to do.
"It felt like a midlife crisis," Herrscher says. "Then I started my own business and I knew things were going to be okay because there's a world of possibility. The rules you thought were in place aren't there because you set your own limits. I compare having your own business to having a baby. You take something that didn't exist and you create it, bring it into existence. It's an incredibly creative pursuit."
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