Hello and welcome. I’m your host, Laura Greco and you are in the SuperPower Mommas Show today. I’m so excited to bring you to this topic of what is the secret to balance for mommypreneurs. Today, we have a very special guest who has been working with mamapreneurs for such a long time, and he’s written a beautiful book, which is what he’s best known for, and that is for his outside-the-box thinking. He offers creative and beneficial solutions to his clients’ marketing campaigns. His book, Mother Industrialist, helps moms to become entrepreneurs and to keep that perfect balance between motherhood and business.
And so he shares in his book many different experiences of how moms have been able to kickstart their business even in a part-time way, and still maintain some balance in his life. So I am excited to introduce you to Kenneth Choo. So here he is. Welcome, Kenneth.
Hi Laura. Thanks for inviting me as a guest on SuperPower Mommas. Thank you very much. I’m really, really excited to be on the show and on the podcast.
We’re very excited to have you here, because today, so many moms are looking to this avenue. Before we get started on all the things about you, I’d like to first ask you, what is your superpower?
My superpower is the ability to be sensitive to people’s feelings and emotions.
My superpower, I would say, is the ability to be sensitive to people’s feelings and emotions.
And how do you use that?
I use that because I work with the Mompreneurs, because mothers and women are more emotion. They feel the emotions and they want to be felt. They want to be heard of. So to be able to help them or to work with them, I need to be more sensitive to their feelings, their emotions, because as mothers, day to day, you face different challenges, with your children, with your business. And the feelings, the emotion, will just come.
So most men would not be able to feel that, and being a man, I’m also a husband. I’m also a daddy. I have a nine-year-old daughter, so I would say, ever since I was born, I was surrounded by a lot of women, really a lot of aunties at the same time. So that’s why I began to feel and being sensitive to their feelings, because you would not want to hurt their feelings, especially if they are my clients. They are the Mompreneurs. So that’s why I would say that that’s how I use my superpower, to make them feel good, to make them trust me, because I feel for them. I hear them. I hear what they want to say, because most men will just shut them up and they will not listen to them, and they will feel hurt.
So that’s why this superpower helped me a lot in dealing with Mompreneurs, getting their business done, getting their marketing out. Because I’m marketing consultant, so this superpower is really, really something that I hold tightly, and in the past 10 years, I’ve been working with the Mompreneurs, on and off. I would say on business and off business, as a friend. So they will share a lot of their parenting challenges, and for me, I can share mine, also.
So that’s why I would say this superpower is something that I really hold onto myself, that I really treasure. If not, I will not be able to interview 15 Mompreneurs and feature them onto my book.
Very, very nice. That’s so encouraging to hear, because it made me curious when I realized the business that you’re in, why you chose this business for yourself. Do you have a little background story you’d like to tell us?
Yeah, I would say it’s not I chose the business. The business chose me, in certain way. In fact, my book is called Mother Industrialist: Perfecting the Balance Between Motherhood and Business Success, so every time when I give talks, when I have speaking gigs, the audience, most of them mothers, will be wondering, “Why is a man writing a book about mothers?”
So I always start off by asking, “I believe that all of you must be wondering, why is a man writing a book about mothers?”
That’s exactly what I thought.
Yes, correct. So I will always lead them back to 10 years ago, because 10 years ago, I was working for a parenting magazine called Motherhood Magazine, as an advertising sales executive. So most of my clients, they are mothers. They are mothers who start a business after they gave birth to their first-born, after they became a mom. And the reason why they start a business is because they want to spend more time with their children, because in a job, it would not be really possible, because they are not in control of their own time, because their time is their bosses’ time. Their time is the company’s time. So they are not in control of their time, and hence, a lot of them do not have much time for their children, and over the time, they will feel guilty and be depleted emotionally, physically, and mentally.
So that’s why, for them, they have that desire to really, “Hey, I need to live life on my own terms.” And I always say, the best way is to start a business, and to start a business that is revolving around motherhood. So a lot of my clients, they deal with a lot of baby products, diapers, organic skin care, baby skin care, milk powders. Things that have to do with motherhood. Or even baby carriers. So they do distribution. They do online business like that. So that they can work from home, at the same time, attend to their children.
So that is how I started, and at the same time, my wife was pregnant at a year when I joined Motherhood Magazine as advertising sales, and I’m a new dad. So imagine that my clients are parents. They will share a lot of parenting tips for me, as a new dad. So I gained a lot of knowledge. I also had a lot of baby product samples, like diaper samples and milk sachets and all that. So in fact, benefit a lot of freebies from all my Mompreneurs clients.
And not forgetting that I’m in the Motherhood Magazine. So as advertising sales, I need to consume the content in the Motherhood Magazine. That means I will need to know about patient. I need to know about breastfeeding. I need to know about pre and post-natal. I need to know about hormonal changes. I need to know a lot of things, because all this knowledge, all this consuming of the content, allows me to sell my advertisement space in the magazine. For example, if a client is selling stretch mark cream, I will need to find out, okay, when is the article writing about prenatal? And that’s where the advertisement on the article can be at that chapters, in that page.
So that is also the reason why I need to consume the content. At the same time as that, I’m consuming a lot of motherhood content, which help me in the way to assist or to help out my wife during her pre and post-natal. And I know more things than her, because I’m consuming. I’m also talking to my Mompreneurs. I get a lot of parenting tips from them.
So that’s how everything started, and I would say, in the past 10 years, because I’m a father, also, of a nine-year-old daughter. So in these past 10 years, I’ve made friends with my Mompreneurs. We became friends over the years, and although in this past 10 years, I’m in media sales and marketing, but I still kept contact with them, because a lot of my clients are in baby shows, parenting exhibition, that I will visit them at their booth, maybe to patronize them, to buy some stuff. But even though my daughter grew up, I would still go to their booth and catch up with them, to talk to them and really understand them, because we are already friends.
So about three years ago, I was searching for something and I met my publisher. Initially, I wanted to write a book about myself. I thought, “My life is really like a roller coaster. It’s very dramatic.” So I talk to my publisher. “Maybe we can write something about my life.” And my publisher was telling me, “Kenneth, nobody is interested in your story yet.” So they say, “Why not we start to connect and start to research more. And what would the topic be?” And when we start to research more and we start connecting back the dots to my motherhood days, he say, “Hey, you are connected with all the Mompreneurs. Why not interview them, feature their story into the book, and give your insight about it?”
And that’s where Mother Industrialist was born. And I would say it’s not I found a book or I found this business. In fact, the business found me. So to me, I’m really passionate, because immediately, when my publisher say, “Oh, Kenneth, you can go and find a mompreneur to interview immediately.” I sent out messages. One of them agreed and to be interview and feature on my book.
So I would say that it’s so natural. I would say it’s pretty relatable, and I’m always inspired by their story, and like you mentioned in the beginning, a lot of mothers, they want to be able to balance both work and parenting, and I see that a lot of Mompreneurs, they are able to achieve that through entrepreneurship. And that’s why I want to share this piece of information with them, that they can do that, especially the working moms that are struggling from the guilt of not spending more time with their children, and they do not know a better way out.
So this book, Mother Industrialist, with the story, with the 15 mompreneur story, together with my blueprint of Mompreneurship, which I call it a three piece, the three pillars, which is passion, purpose, and profit. And with this three P, mom can kickstart their business, even on a part-time basis.
Every mother can have a shot at entrepreneurship in today’s time.
And last but not least, also to leverage on something that maybe 10 years ago they would not be able to, which is the current Internet and technology environment. A lot of people say that, “Kenneth, not everybody can be entrepreneur.” They are right, but the problem is, every mother can have a shot at entrepreneurship in today’s time.
So that’s how everything comes about, and that is why a man is writing a book about mothers.
I love it. That’s really an interesting story, and I am excited to dive a little bit further into it, especially your three Ps, and how our listeners today have the opportunity to benefit from some of the wonderful things that you’ve already been able to not only experience through the interviews that you’ve done with women, but also the research, and how you’re helping them today.
So we are talking … We have to take a short break, Kenneth, and we’re talking with Kenneth Choo. I would like you, please to tell people where they can find you.
Okay, they can search on Facebook, which is Mother Industrialist. Or you can follow me on Instagram, but Instagram will be Kenneth_Motherindustrialist, as one word. So they would better look for me there.
Beautiful. So you are listening to the topic of what is the secret to balance for mommypreneurs? Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
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