Spotlight: An Entrepreneur Bringing Women Together

Meet Jill Salzman, Founder, The Founding Moms, and all around fun lady.  From her site, here is how Jill describes Founding Moms:

The Founding Moms®  is a real, live and local monthly meeting where mom entrepreneurs can exchange, connect and learn from one another. Incredible women living right in your backyard meet up to swap start-up stories, interact with renowned business experts, build profitable companies and professional connections within the ever-growing network of mom-owned businesses.

Founding moms now claims over 3,500 members with meetings in 30 cities worldwide and is constantly growing.

I loved my conversation with Jill because not only did we delve into her process of brandbuilding and business development, but I also got to learn about some of the near-universal issues Jill has recognized through attending a wide variety of Exchange meetings in different cities run by different women hosts.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the most common general theme she's noted is fear - of making a big business move, of not following a mentor's advice, or of trusting one's instincts in general in running a business.  

Read on to learn more!

ES: Hi Jill, It’s Erica.  What are you up to today?  What are you working on?

JS: We’re trying to get together this product that we’re launching next week, which is really awesome but it’s been soooo much work to get it to launch so fast.  It’s called The Founding Kit, and it’s a bundle of services.  If you need graphic design or a website or business cards or attorney time or CPA time, you can buy one of our bundles to get all that stuff for yourself at a really affordable price.

ES: Wow!  How does that work?  Did you find a lot of providers and they’re discounting everything?

JS: Yeah, we partnered with the providers and they’re offering the services and we’re hoping it all goes really smoothly.  We came up with it about a month ago and then partnered with all these providers and now it’s actually happening, so…

ES: That’s one of the great things these days – so much is virtual and it’s amazing how fast things can come together.

JS: Yeah, it’s at light speed.  I need a vacation!   

I started the first meetup 

when I was running two other companies, 

and it was just supposed to be 

a little coffee meetup, 

probably in late 2009.  

And about 6 months later 

it started getting pretty serious 

and I noticed there were a lot 

of people coming. 

ES: How long have you been doing this, and now that the organization has been going for a while, what keeps you busy day to day?

JS: Well, I started the first meetup when I was running two other companies, and it was just supposed to be a little coffee meetup, probably in late 2009.  And about 6 months later it started getting pretty serious and I noticed there were a lot of people coming. 

So in April of 2010 I formalized it into “The Founding Moms” and it became a real organization with a whole bunch of chapters, and since then I’ve been growing it in all these other cities.  So we’re in just over 30 cities, which means that we have about 25 hosts because some hosts host a couple meetups in neighboring towns. 

But we’re also in Australia and Canada and the Netherlands and it’s growing like crazy.  It’s awesome.

A lot of my day is serving as the manager of all these hosts.  I make sure that they all have information, that they’re happy, that they’re growing, that it’s working for them.  If they have logistical issues or other issues, I help out.  I take care of my hosts so that they can keep growing their Founding Moms Exchanges. 

ES: How is this your job?  How do you make money from this business?

JS: That’s why I’m so excited to launch this product!  Because until now, I haven’t really made much money from it, if we’re talking big money.  In certain cities, the host won’t do it unless we charge money.  So in New York City, she won’t do it unless we charge $5/head per meeting, and the same goes for a handful of other cities.  But that really just keeps the whole thing running. 

We also have started in the last year or so to get a lot of sponsorships, so that’s been another bucket of money.  Bigger brands will come in and sponsor our newsletter or sponsor our events, or a variety of things within the organization. 

But until I launch this kit, there are no millions to speak of because I have always resisted charging people to attend.  I’m your typical member, and I would like to treat everyone else the way I would like to be treated. 

I kind of knew I was building the brand, and I knew there would be money down the road with different things we’d be doing, like last January I came out with a book, which was also a nice little stream of income.  And I do lots of paid speaking engagements, and that’s really nice because I love doing it. 

But my main job during the day is managing these hosts, but there are lots of other things I do to keep things up.

ES: How have you been vetting the hosts?  I’m sure it’s important since they’re the face of your organization in all these cities around the world.

JS: Well they have to fill out a little questionnaire so I can figure out if they’ve ever done anything like this, or if they’re, sort of, not very social. 

Then I get on the phone with them and talk to them, and if they don’t sound crazypants, I sort of wing it and say, “Let’s do it.”  And some of the people fizzle out; some of them are amazing.  It’s very much an open source organization.  Some people think that I’m crazy because I don’t really monitor every little thing about how the brand is being controlled. 

So in certain cities, the culture’s very different from other cities.  In Seattle, they do it very differently from San Francisco, which is extremely different from how we do it here in Chicago, which is clearly different from Mexico. 

Once we have the host and their group, 

I say “It’s yours.  Run with it.  

Have a good time – you figure out 

what your members need 

and respond to that.”

Once we have the host and their group, I say “It’s yours.  Run with it.  Have a good time – you figure out what your members need and respond to that.”  And I usually gravitate to people who say, “Oh wow – I get to do this and this is my thing!” 

So the brand basically has an overarching strength in that I keep on top of the hosts, but in terms of the nitty gritty stuff about what’s going on and I don’t really need to.  It’s very grassroots.

ES: So what do you think the big differences are between those cities you mentioned?

JS: I have visited the New York City Founding Moms Exchange, which is so ridiculously different.  Our host there runs it a little bit more formally.  I like to do mine extremely informally – if you’re wearing sweats and you have spit-up all over yourself and you have to bring your baby, it’s fine.

In New York, they get dressed up in their suits and they all show up right after work.  They’re sort of power-mamas who have a similar meeting – everybody has similar issues everywhere – but it’s sort of run differently and there’s a different temperature in the room and different feel for what’s happening with those members and how they connect with each other. 

I know that in San Francisco, the host there does an amazing job – she runs it out of a library.  I usually recommend that my hosts not do that, but she knows her crowd really well and she said, “Jill, we really have to do it here.”  And she has some of the biggest turnout of anybody I know anywhere. 

ES: I remember that the last time I attended the Chicago Founding Moms Exchange, we were almost outgrowing the pastry shop and that was a while ago. 

JS: It’s kind of depressing to me!  I got so used to, and love, the tiny Exchanges with 5-10 people and we’ve been having 20-30 people the last few meetings, which drives me nuts.  I don’t know how we’re going to fix that.  In January, we’re going to have a third one per month here at our new space.  Maybe that will spread the love a little bit.

I think it’s because the group is known enough in Chicago now, and if there’s only one spot to go to once a month, that’s too infrequent.  I think we’re going to have two in Chicago in January and if that helps quite a bit, I’m thinking that in more places I should get more hosts.

ES: So how do you find the speakers for your events?

JS: I used to go after lots of people who were recommended to me or chase down people through the internet, but at this point it’s really nice because they sort of come to me.  Some member will say to me, “I met so-and-so and they’re really great.  I think you should have them speak.” 

And because we’re a month apart, and because I like to alternate and have a speaker one month and what I call a “sounding board” the next month where it’s just us chatting about a certain topic, I only have six months to book speakers.  So we book way out.  Way, way out. 

I don’t really have the same criteria and oddball questions as I do for the hosts.  If someone’s been recommended, I pretty much say, “Come on in and speak.”  And for the most part, it’s been really great.  I’m shocked.  Very rarely we get real losers, but that’s my fault.  It’s a learning experience.  I think I know better now how to coach them before they come.

ES: Do you find that the women who join are from all sorts of industries?  How do you categorize them?

JS: Yeah, yeah.  All sorts.  The one thing I find in common among members is that virtually everybody who comes is within one to five years of launching.  We have very few outliers who are like, “I have an idea and I want to start exploring something” and very few people who show up having run a business for fifteen years.  So you’re usually in your first one to five years, and in Chicago we usually have the younger moms who show up with their infants or toddlers. 

In the burbs, and I’m not including Oak Park because I live there and I don’t want to call it a suburb, they’re on the older side – they have kids in elementary school or high school, and we have grandmas who show up.  So very wide age range depending on geographic location.

I’m going to say it’s about 70% service-based businesses and 30% product-based.

ES: That makes sense – it seems easier to launch a service than a product.

JS: It’s interesting – in Chicago right now, we actually have a whole bunch of folks who are launching products.

ES: Maybe they come from a CPG background from one of the big companies around here…

JS: Perhaps. 

...It’s pretty much the first company 

I ever launched where I wasn’t 

making money right away, 

but at the same time, it’s the first time 

I launched a company knowing, 

“this is so much bigger 

than anything I’ve ever done.” 

ES: So when you started Founding Moms, were you just concerned with brandbuilding or were you concerned right away with, “how am I ever going to make this into a viable business?”

JS: It’s funny because it’s pretty much the first company I ever launched where I wasn’t making money right away, but at the same time, it’s the first time I launched a company knowing, “this is so much bigger than anything I’ve ever done.” 

I think I always knew, we’re going to figure this out at some point, but right now, I just want to build a community.  And it just hasn’t stopped growing.  It’s not like we got up to 200 members and then it was really stagnant and I got panicked or anything.  Getting up to 3,500 members everywhere, people are hearing more and more about it more often…  I’m a big believer that if you build the trust up and build the community up, money will follow. 

I’m pretty confident about that with this.  I’m going to launch that kit next week.  It may be a giant failure, but then there will be something else.  I’m so not concerned that I shut my other companies down to do this.  I’m pretty confident that this will be fine at some point and I don’t mind being broke until then.

ES: Have you had any good mentors along the way who have been able to give you some guidance?

JS: You know, I lean on a lot of people for advice in small ways but I haven’t really talked to anybody who has done anything like this on a huge scale.  There’s this website that I talk about at every meeting, this site called MicroMentor. 

It’s like Match.com for mentors and mentees, and I posted this ad a couple years ago that said, “I’m opening up chapters all over the country and I don’t know how to handle it.  Can anybody out there help?”  And this guy responded and said, “I’ll work with you for three months.  I ran Radio Shack for thirty years and I kind of know what it’s like to do something all over the country.” 

We had such an amazing time working together that we ended up doing it for a year and a half.  So in terms of an official mentor, he’s probably the one.  His name is Jim.  He’s the one that I would say was my best mentor.  But there were a lot of people along the way that helped with various bits. 

ES: I think it’s one of the most challenging things for an entrepreneur, finding a good mentor, because businesses are unique and aside from a service like MicroMentor which a lot of people (like me) may not be aware of, there’s not an obvious way to find someone to guide you.

JS: I love talking to those folks who have kind of done it, but done it a different way, but I haven’t sought out anyone besides that experience with Jim.

I’ve gotten so much bad advice.  
It wasn’t necessarily objectively bad 
in every situation, 
but it just wasn’t working for me, 
and I had to say, 
“I’m just not going to listen to you.”

ES: If you know that something is working and moving along in the direction you want it to, then that’s the most important thing.  And if this is providing you with the credentials to get lucrative speaking engagements, then even if it’s not generating income on its own, it’s still providing you with a source of income and the legitimacy to be seen as an expert.

JS: Exactly.  I’ve turned it into more of a brand, and there is something I definitely believe in called “mentor confusion.”   Someone might say, “If you’re not making X dollars by X date, then you should just shut it down.”  Or, “Hey, you shouldn’t be growing this quickly because X, Y, and Z will happen.”

I’ve gotten so much bad advice.  It wasn’t necessarily objectively bad in every situation, but it just wasn’t working for me, and I had to say, “I’m just not going to listen to you.”

ES: I don’t like that idea of, “do this by this date or else.”  What’s some other bad advice you’ve gotten?

JS: Oh god, I’ve gotten a lot.  A lot of older men have told me “If you’re not making X amount of money your first year, or by year three or whatever, this is ridiculous and this is not a business, it’s a hobby.”  That’s ridiculous.  I don’t know how they can say that when there’s tons of businesses out there like Facebook or Twitter that for years weren’t making any money, but were just spending investor money, and those are businesses.

A lot of people have also told me to take the word “mom” out of everything I do.

A lot of people come to another person’s business idea with their own filter, and if their experiences were X, Y, or Z, they’re going to tell me that.  I’ve learned along the way to stop listening to every single person and say, “Wait a minute!  That doesn’t apply to me.”

I do notice that at a lot of our meetings, women will lean into whoever is speaking like that’s golden advice because she’s standing up there speaking.  It just doesn’t always apply to everyone, and then they think, “I’m not doing exactly what the speaker said,” when the speaker may not have been speaking to them directly.

ES: It depends how you measure success.  Your site isn’t necessarily generating revenue.  But it’s generating revenue for you by getting you the speaking engagements, so who cares?

JS: Right – and I love the organic growth bit.  I have a serious background in the music biz.  I was in charge for years of building up street teams for my artists.  All that is very slow-process.  It just takes a lot of time.  Everyone else is in a big hurry for me.  I have to say, “that’s lovely, but we’re not there yet.  We’re getting there.”

ES: Do you have any employees or do you do this on your own?

JS: I do it on my own, but I did meet a recent Kellogg grad a few months ago and we ended up coming up with the idea of the “Founding Kit” idea, so I now have a co-founder for certain parts of what I’m doing.

ES: So you do all your own Twitter postings and newsletters etc.?  Do you use a service?

JS: I actually love it, but I love to write.  For the newsletters I use a service called Mad Mimi.  I LOVE Mad Mimi.  I had a graphic designer design the template, and then I change the content for each newsletter.

ES: What does Mad Mimi do?

JS: It’s so awesome!  Basically, if you’re collecting emails and building up your mailing list, they allow you to collect and house all the emails on your list.  Then you compose the newsletter and set the frequency of when you send it out.  If you want to do “drip” campaigns over a few days, it allows you to do that. 

You can’t normally send thousands of emails without it automatically being recognized as spam, so it allows you to get by those filters.  That’s what all those newsletter providers like this allow you to do.  I highly recommend it.

I read somewhere that email is two times more effective than anything you do on social media.  It’s completely changed the course of my business.  It gets a great response. 

ES: Who are the sponsors of your newsletter these days?

JS: It depends on which newsletter.  Some folks purchase a long-term placement at the bottom of the newsletter, and then some folks say they want to put a little blurb into the newsletter.  Sittercity has been a great sponsor.  Every two weeks when the newsletter comes out, it’s different.

ES: This is so random, but it kind of reminds me of when my a cappella group in college would get gigs.  Some organizations that hired us would just pay whatever we asked, which we kind of couldn’t believe, and then others would be like, “are you kidding?”

JS: It totally depends on who you’re talking to. I used to book bands, and it’s ridiculous – people just don’t value music. 

ES: What have you found to be the most surprisingly fun part of this business?

JS: Probably, honestly, and it sounds like a cliché, but that there are so many women in so many cities who desire to get together and meet up about this stuff.  I can’t believe we’re in this many cities with this many members.  I’m working very hard on building the organization but I’m still shocked when people leave the meeting and are on this high because they feel like, “I connected with someone” or “I learned something.”

So, it makes me feel like He-Man sometimes – “I have the power!”

ES: What are some of the recurring issues people tend to bring up at meetings?

JS: People always want to know how to make more sales.  For some reason, it was shocking to me, but everyone always want to know how to better network. 

And then fear is a big one.  Fear about moving forward, raising prices…  And I’m putting it in those words, but I think guys would call it something different.  But women are always saying, “I’m too scared to do that.   I talked myself out of it.”  A lot of self-doubt.  Traditional women’s issues that come into play in business, and a lot of women sitting around not doing something because a bad mentor advised them not to or a guy said, “don’t do it.”  So that’s my favorite part, just being like, “No, no.  You should go do it.”

[There are] a lot of women sitting around

not doing something 

because a bad mentor advised them 

not to or a guy said, “don’t do it.”  

So that’s my favorite part, 

just being like, 

“No, no.  You should go do it.”

ES: So does it ever get old for you, hearing the same things again and again, or is it still fresh?

JS: You would think.  You would think.  But no.  As long as it’s coming from a different person, it’s okay.  If it were the same person coming five times in a row with the same problem, that would be different.  I don’t know why, but no, it never gets old. 

And I’m doing a lot of radio and TV stuff now, and I get asked the same questions over and over again.  But I know it’s going to be reinforced to some new faces and new ears, and I like that.

ES: What kind of radio and TV things have you been doing?

JS: It kind of ties together with the speaking gigs.  I think the biggest jolt I got was when I did this TED Talk on 11/11/11.  Since then, some TV and radio folks have seen it.  I just try to get a lot of press so people are aware that this thing is in my city.  I got contacted by the CBC yesterday about some interview.  I did one on HLN for a business TV show they’re starting. 

I am chasing down a national talk show, that I hope will happen at some point.  We did just partner with the Ricki Lake show for the month of October and did some cool stuff with some of her meetup groups.  But Ellen, Colbert…  I’ll take it!

ES: So the people that are anti-the word “mompreneur”, what do you say to them?

JS: You know, it only happens with a very small segment of the population.  You have to be over 45, you have to be female, and you have to have been quite a strong feminist who grew up at a time where it was really inappropriate to say anything besides that you’re a “businessperson”, because that’s what equality meant at that time I guess.

I was lucky enough to write this article for the New York Times, and what happened was, I pitched it to them and it was not supposed to be what it turned out to be.  I said to them, before it went to press, “Just so you guys know, I hate the word ‘mompreneur’ so please don’t use it in this article.”  And then it came out and of course it’s in the title, and they’re like, “Oh, we’re so sorry, we can’t change it now.”  I think they knew it would provoke a lot more controversy so they used it.  But for the record, I hate the word “mompreneur.” 

You can see in the comments that so many people blasted me, “I can’t believe that you put mommy first”, blah blah blah.  I think I responded to every single one.

ES: I think it’s so funny – it’s just an issue of semantics.  I mean, anyone who has kids will tell you that their family comes first.  It is going to affect you to some degree regarless of how you try to work around it, but not necessarily negatively.  It might make you more productive or creative.

JS: It’s really funny – there’s this woman I know here who’s kind of big in the Chicago entrepreneurship scene.  She’s really young; she doesn’t have kids yet.  She just the other day posted somewhere, “Hey, I know you mom entrepreneurs put your kids first and your businesses second, but I’m not sure I’m going to feel that way when I have kids.”  And she was directly speaking to me – she tagged me and one other person. 

And I responded with, “I find it really funny when you assume I put my kids first when kids are in one area of my life, in one bucket, business is in another, and one has nothing to do with the other.  I’m a mom.  I’m a businessperson.  And for the sake of getting women together for coffee once a month at a coffeeshop, I call it “mom entrepreneurship” because that identifies all of us as moms and as entrepreneurs, and we now have two things in common. 

But when I’m working, I’m working, and when I’m mommying, I’m mommying, and it’s not like it makes me a different businessperson or that being a businessperson makes me a different mom.

When I’m working, I’m working, 

and when I’m mommying, I’m mommying, 

and it’s not like it makes me 

a different businessperson 

or that being a businessperson 

makes me a different mom.

ES: It’s interesting – you wouldn’t probably call someone a “dad entrepreneur.”

JS: You know what?  There are actually people who will use that term.  I’ve heard people reference “dadpreneurs”, another word I hate.  But that’s where I think it’s a generational thing. 

If you and I were in a room and someone asked us if we had kids, of course we’d say yes.  But I think for much older women who went through the period of time where you don’t talk about that, you don’t reference your family, if you get pregnant, you just “go away” for a little while… 

I think for them, mentioning that you are a parent is a downer on who you are as a businessperson.  That’s what they were raised in and more power to them, but it just doesn’t vibe with what’s going on now.   Moms are everywhere.

ES: This is reminding me of another interview I did with a lawyer who was telling me about her firm’s parental leave policy.  They offer men the same parental leave as women – of course basically nobody takes it – but it seems like there is this realization, at least in the white collar arena, that if we don’t treat women well and recognize the importance of family, then they’ll just leave.  They won’t stick around to try and make partner or whatever.

And problems retaining women at high levels trickles down to recruitment as well.  If people at the bottom don’t see role models at the top, then they’re less likely to want to work there to begin with and less likely to stay if they do come.

It’s such a difference from the old days when you couldn’t even acknowledge that you had a family.

...this older woman just railed on me – 

“If you ever start this incubator 

for entrepreneurs, you really shouldn’t 

call them mom entrepreneurs.”  

And I wanted to say, that’s interesting,

but at this point I have a community 

of 3,500 of them…

JS: I was just in this conference and this older woman just railed on me – “If you ever start this incubator for entrepreneurs, you really shouldn’t call them mom entrepreneurs.”  And I wanted to say, that’s interesting, but at this point I have a community of 3,500 of them…  But what am I going to teach her?  She wasn’t going to get it.

ES: I think a lot of women who start to follow this entrepreneurial path only get into it once they have children.  They’ve been removed from the conventional corporate workplace/arena, so they have the time to come up with and pursue creative ideas. 

JS: At the time that I started, I was just so desperate to meet another woman who had kids and a company, and obviously I’m not the only one out there who feels this way.  So I think I’ve started to become much more adamant about saying, “It’s okay.  You can call us mom entrepreneurs.  It doesn’t mean we’re worse businesspeople.”

ES: I’m sure a lot of the women are addressing needs that they only noticed after becoming parents.

JS: It’s really interesting – in the past 4-5 months, the Chicago Exchange has had a majority non-moms show up.  We have a lot more entrepreneurs who are young, who have these really cool ideas and they just need a forum to talk about business.  And they keep contacting me, saying, “I don’t have any kids, but can I still come?”  And I’ve stopped saying no.  It’s fascinating.