It’s takes a village to raise a child.

 
Mom’s need a community of like-minded moms to help them survive and thrive the crazy world of…well, motherhood. But, take that idea to the Nth degree and I believe one of the most important place to have a community is entrepreneurship and specifically for Mama CEOs.

Raising a business is like raising a child and we need a community of like-minded moms to help us survive and thrive.

 
I love, love, love being a soloprenuer, but my business took off when I started meeting regularly with a group, and specifically a group (or two) of business moms. Napoleon Hill devotes an entire chapter in Think And Grow Rich to the importance of the mastermind group as one of the key steps to business success. But where do you find your village? Here are the 4 places I have found mine (and how you can too.)

Business Retreats

In April, my business partner Beryl and I, had the amazing pleasure of welcoming 5 business mamas to Maryland for the weekend at our inaugural Well Balanced Mama Business retreat. This retreat came after Beryl and I had each attended our own business retreats (shout out to the ladies of PG#3).  While we loved every minute of our own retreat experiences, we instantly saw the need for a business-focused retreat for mom entrepreneurs. Coming together with the Well Balanced Mama ladies proved our intentions.  Each woman had her own story, but we were all bound by a common theme – motherhood and the desire to create something bigger for our family and ourselves.  For some of these ladies, it was the first time they traveled away from their family, or even the first time they had been able to vocalize their entrepreneurial dreams.  Others had established businesses, but needed the time away from their mommy obligations to be able to fully focus on themselves and their business goals, not to mention finish a hot cup of coffee.

The weekend retreat was amazing, but what was more beautiful was the community that formed because of it.  The Well Balanced Mama retreat experience included 4 months of virtual business coaching.  After meeting in person, the next 4 months were a wonderful opportunity to get to know each other better, share struggles and triumphs and have a support team always in your corner. I know this group will continue to be this for each other long after our designated retreat experience ends.

If you are looking for your own community of business mamas and looking to build and grow your business as well, we are gearing up for our next round of the Well Balanced Mama Retreat.  This time we are heading to my neck of the woods to the beautiful Coast of Northern California.  We’ll be masterminding, learning and drinking hot coffee from a beachfront home in Dillon Beach, California. If you’d like to join us in October, click here to learn more.

Facebook Groups

If you don’t want to travel away from your computer, you can make great connections online with mamas from all over the world.  Facebook groups are a great place to connect, collaborate, and sometimes commiserate with a group of like-minded moms.

But where do you find these facebook communities? Well, if you are a mom business owner, I’d love to invite you to join my community, The Mama CEO Club.

We are a growing group of supportive, non-judgmental Mama CEOs who get what it is like to raise businesses and babies.  We have fun days like Mamavation Mondays and Blog Post Thursdays and even the Mid-Week Mom Tip to help us all balanced our business and home lives.  You can click here to join.

If you are looking for another or a different type of facebook group, my Friend Jackie Johnstone (another buddy from my own retreat experience) explains in this post how to use Facebook’s graph search tool to find a perfect group for you!

Online Courses

Another great way to find a community is taking an online course.  Most courses will have a facebook or other social group for you to join to discuss the material in the class and brainstorm with other students.  This can turn into an ideal place for support and guidance even after the course is over.

The people in these groups tend to have varied backgrounds and expertise.  Need a suggestion for the perfect testimonial plug in or how to handle a difficult client situation?  These groups can be a treasure trove of great suggestions. Another awesome side effect of these groups, you often connect with a few people more closely and create another opportunity to form a mastermind group.  I connected with my now good friends Maggie and Suzi after taking an online course together and knowing each other from some larger business facebook groups.  We now talk and mastermind on a regular basis about our businesses, as well as our mom balancing act.

After knowing these ladies for over a year, we get to meet in person next week in Portland, Or at the World Domination Summit.  (Along with getting to connect with a whole host of other online friends in real life.)

In Person Groups

As much as I love my online life, nothing beats face-to-face connections.  This is why I am so looking forward to my trip to WDS.  This is also why I enjoy participating in local, in person communities as well. Check out local groups on facebook or sites like meetup.com to find local masterminds or groups to join.

Also, check out your local mother’s club.  What starts off as a group to support moms through the crazy newborn time, also probably has members who are looking to connect with other mom business owners or, like my own mother’s club, might even have a formal business off-shoot group.

Just because your are in business for yourself, doesn’t mean it has to be by yourself.

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Join a community and watch your personal enjoyment, not to mention your business success sore!
 
I’d love to have you in MY community.  Click here to learn about the Well Balanced Mama retreat and click here to join the Mama CEO Club.