Spotlight: Entrepreneurship: Fun Parent-Tot Lessons

The MileStar Babies Logo Dog

I recently spoke with Chelsea Duggan, Director of MileStar Babies.  MileStar subscribers receive a lesson in their inbox each day tailored to their child's age and development.  Chelsea came up with the idea as an educator frustrated by the lack of an organized resource online that would give families a fun way to share learning experiences with their kids in short daily bursts suitable for the attention span of a newborn-to-three-year-old.  

In speaking with Chelsea, I not only learned all about the development of MileStar (a play on the word "milestone" that, as parents, we hear all too often when it comes to our kids' development), but also about how she manages to get her work done efficiently as a working mom.  And boy, does she have some great expertise to share in this area.  

Read on to learn about how MileStar lessons incorporate cutting-edge research on multiple intelligences, how the British education system might differ from the States' in early childhood (from Chelsea's experience), and how Chelsea uses Timothy Ferris' "4 Hour Workweek" plan to get it all done.

Chelsea and her older son

ES: Hi Chelsea!  Let’s talk a little bit about MileStar Babies – I’d love to hear about how you decided to start it and what it’s like being an entrepreneur.

CD: Well, I’m an educator by background.  I had my first son back in 2008, and as he was getting bigger, I was trying to keep him interested and keep him developing.  The government kind of outlines all the things your kids should know by the time they go into school, and I definitely wanted him to go into his first school experience already knowing his alphabet. 

I think they have a huge confidence boost when that first school experience is a little bit of review, especially if you have a child who might be a little bit on the shy side and is unsure about being left somewhere without you.  I just wanted him to feel confident.  So we did little games and activities. 

We were in a couple different playgroups, and I would always ask my mom friends, “what do you do?”  There’s always this talk when they’re little babies about the milestones they reach – are they sitting up, are they crawling?  MileStar Babies is kind of a play on that – it’s more academic, are they reaching those “MileStars” – are they able to know their colors and shapes and alphabet?  And how can you get them really thinking about things and about the way the world works?

MileStar Babies is kind of a play on that –

 it’s more academic.  

Are they reaching those “MileStars” – 

are they able to know their colors 

and shapes and alphabet?  

And how can you get them really 

thinking about things 

and about the way the world works?

I realized when I was doing my own research to find activities that there’s a lot of free activities out there.  There’s a lot of information available.  The problem is, just like you said yourself, that you’re busy.  It’s hard to find time to go through a lot of the information that’s out there. 

And a lot of what I was finding, especially on some of the more educator-centric sites, were lesson plans, which from a parent’s perspective, if you don’t have a teaching background, can be a little confusing or overwhelming to get through. 

MileStar babies is the culmination of that – it’s about building creative and confident kids, and building learning memories so that when your kids look back on your childhood, they say to themselves, “Oh yeah, my mom and I used to do this and it was so much fun.”  And it’s a learning memory.

Currently my kids and I are having so much fun with this one: every night when it’s bathtime, we play “sink or float.”  We choose an item each day, and we sort of vet it to be sure it’s okay, and we throw it in the bath.  And we make a hypothesis – will it sink or will it float?  And we have a little chart on the wall that we keep, and we note, “Hey – these are similar – they both floated.”  Or, “These are different – one floated and one sank.” 

They make their opinion of what they think is going to happen and they throw it in.  Well you know, that’s scientific inquiry, and it’s so easy to do.  It didn’t take me any extra time in my day.  That’s why at MileStar babies, we’re looking to make it easy.  We’re not looking for burned out babies and “drill and kill” worksheets. 

We’re about making those moments where you can really connect, because I’m sure you’ve had this happen, where all of a sudden it’s dinnertime and you think, “Where did the day go?”  It was just so busy and so crazy, and we have to be careful that our days don’t all turn into that.

So we say, “Here’s this 15-minute thing you can do with your kid today to engage them and to have fun, and not have a pressure-filled situation.”  That’s really where MileStar Babies came about.

On the entrepreneur side of things, I had no idea what I was doing.  So I reached out to some friends who had started businesses and started conversations, and I started my research and put together a beta test.  And again with my education background, I understood how curriculum works and I built the curriculum, beta tested it, and got some good feedback. 

And through my connections, I built a good team to work with and we built the site and put it out there.  That’s been scary.  It’s been a big risk to say, is this something people really want? Will they use it?  And even if you have a really positive beta test, you kind of never know.

Then we officially launched in September 2012, and it probably took about a year building it prior to that – in terms of building the curriculum and the site and all that.  So far it’s going really well – we’ve had great feedback, people are really excited about it, and we’re just pushing forward, taking steps each day.

ES: What is your primary age target for kids?

CD: Right now, our system is for 0-3 year olds.  Once you hit that third birthday, you’re sort of cut off.  We’re planning to expand up to 6 years old and we’re hoping to have that launch before the Summer holidays.  We don’t have plans to go beyond 6 years of age for the reason that the curriculum diversifies too much for us to kind of customize it.  So we’re really trying to reach those pre-school age children.

ES: Do you literally have a lesson for every day, if someone wanted it, from the day a child is born up through age 3?

CD: We do, but the lessons are 5 days/week, so we don’t have lessons for Saturday and Sunday.  The great part about it, especially with our pricing, is that if you go somewhere like a Gymboree or somewhere you take your child to for classes, what you pay for a term there would get you a full year of our service.  And it’s something to do every day.  So I think we’ve really been able to make it cost-effective for parents. 

ES: Are the lessons available to parents on the computer, or their phones, or what?

CD: The way it works is when you sign up, the lessons are emailed to you each day.  And it looks sort of similar to a newsletter.  So you have a one-page letter saying, “Here’s what you do.”  And, “Here’s what you need to get ready, here’s a good time of day to do it, and here’s what you do.”

We sort of understand that not every child will like every lesson, but you also might get a lesson that your kid loves.  So we have extensions that say, “Hey, if your kid loved this activity, here’s a way to take it a step further.”  So your 15 minutes may turn into a half hour, or it may carry over to another day.  But it’s up to the parents to see what your kid enjoys and if they want to take it further or not.  It depends on your situation.

ES: It sounds really fun.

CD: I think when the kids get to that toddler age, it’s so hard to come up with new things to do all the time.  And I’m not super-crafty – I get a little bit overwhelmed with all the parts and pieces.  So there are different types of lessons.  There are certainly craft lessons in there, and there’s a lot of singing and dancing and just playing.

The great thing about it 

is that the lessons are all built 

to use what you have at home...

If your child really likes cars, 

you can substitute cars in.  

If they like dolls, use dolls.

The great thing about it is that the lessons are all built to use what you have at home.  They’re built so that you can use what you already have.  If your child really likes cars, you can substitute cars in.  If they like dolls, you can use dolls.  It’s really easy to use things you have and not have the stress of “I have to pick up this or that, or I have to glue this here…”  It’s easy ideas.

ES: Do you diversify, like “Mondays are science”, or how do you schedule the different types of lessons?

CD: Good question.  The lessons are built on a multiple intelligence theory structure, and we have to thank Dr. Howard Gardner for that.  Multiple intelligences says that people learn in different ways. 

You might have a very kinesthetic learner, somebody who learns by being very active.  Or you might have a linguistic learner, someone who learns through speaking about it and talking about it.  Or you might have a logical learner, somebody who thinks things through mathematically.  Or a musical learner, somebody who    understands music, songs…  There’s a reason why the alphabet song is so popular – kids really can understand and relate to that.

So really what we’ve tried to do is we’ve taken the content that we feel kids should know by the time they’re school age and developmentally ready to do it, and we’ve approached it so that we’re teaching that content in all of the different multiple intelligences ways. 

What that means is that if you were to do our whole program, you would start to see patterns of how your child learns.  I think what’s really awesome about that is that then when your child is school age, once they start to get into that 8-10 year old stuff, you might start to see that they might start to struggle in a certain area.

If you know your child is a really musical learner and they’re struggling with some science content in school, you as the parent know that you need to present that to them in a musical way.  So you might get together and make up a little song to remember the science information they need to know.  And so then, they’re going to have this confidence because they had success and solved this problem.  They learned it in a way that’s familiar to them.

If you know your child is a really 

musical learner and they’re 

struggling with some science content in school, 

you as the parent know that you need to 

present that to them in a musical way...  

Then, they’re going to have this confidence 

because they had success and solved this problem.  

They learned it in a way that’s familiar to them.

ES: That is so interesting.  I mentioned that my husband is starting this school, and it is focusing on multiple intelligences, but it’s interesting to hear specific examples of how it could apply to different kids.

CD: I remember in high school, going in to see my math teacher every day and saying, “I don’t understand.”  And every day he would look at me and say, “I don’t understand why you don’t get this.”

And it was so devastating to me because I felt so stupid.  And it wasn’t my problem; it was his problem because he could not explain it any other way.  He could only explain it one way, and if I didn’t understand it that way, it was my problem.

But that isn’t really what education is about.  Education is about reaching everyone, and everyone is different.  Everyone has different ways of learning.

I think another benefit of doing multiple intelligences with children is this: I don’t know if you’ve been to any of these parent-child classes, but there’s always that kid who’s racing around…

ES: That’s my kid!  Running in circles.

CD: Those kids who are super-active need active activities, but they also need opportunities for those quieter activities.  Because the thing is, when they’re school age, they’re going to be expected to sit and do circle time.  And if they’re always racing around, it not only affects their education but also all the other kids’.

I think what’s great about this is that, hey, it’s only 15 minutes.  So you’re able to control them and say, “Let’s focus on this and do this short activity together.”

Dr. Gardner is working at Harvard and there’s some really great research coming out right now, but it’s talking about how kids really need those focused periods of time, especially in this 0-3 year age range.  It’s critical because that’s when their brain architecture is forming.  So it talks about how if they get these great experiences, it helps them reach their genetic potential.

It’s great to think about, especially compared to when we grew up and we were kind of in a playpen, ignored for a lot of the day.  It’s exciting to see the research unfolding.

ES: I guess for people who grew up thirty or so years ago, when we did, if you excelled in the conventional academic environment, you know, fine.  But for people who kind of fell through the cracks and didn’t get the attention they needed, maybe it wasn’t recognized that they could have learned better in a different way.  Those kids are the ones who could have really benefitted from this new research about multiple intelligences.

CD: Also now, it’s so common for both parents to be working and people are super-busy.  And if you consider the dad’s working all day, they might only see their kid for 20-30 minutes a day.  So they can say, “We’ve only got this short time together.  Let’s make it really count.”  Let’s do something fun, let’s do something educational.

And if you consider the dad’s 

working all day, they might only see 

their kid for 20-30 minutes a day.  

So they can say, 

“We’ve only got this short time together.

Let’s make it really count.” 

And like I said, we focus on creating those learning memories where the kid can say, “Remember when daddy and I did this together,” and it can really make a difference to them as far as what they remember.

ES: I think when you do something worthwhile, it stands out in their memories and they may mention it later, multiple times.  And then talking about it reinforces that learning too.

CD: Sure, and like I said, it’s really meant to be fun.  For example, you have this toddler at home, and you probably have a sorting toy with different shapes or colors.  But if your kid’s active, they may be tired of something like that quickly. 

A game we do a lot with my youngest is we put a piece of colored paper on the floor, and we go on a treasure hunt.  We try to find as many things that are red as we can and put them on the piece of paper.  So it’s active, he’s having fun, and it’s reinforcing his color understanding.  He’s active and running around but he’s also learning to sort and be critical. 

ES: How did you go about developing this volume of lessons for the kids?  It sounds like such an overwhelming number.

CD: You know, a lot of them were things I was doing with my first son every day.  I went through education research, what should they know, what should they be able to do.  And I just figured that kind of thing out and made sure it kind of went into the timeline of their age chronologically.  Again, there are a lot of great resources on the internet – there are lots of things online you can find to do, so some of it was going through that information and changing it to fit our needs so that you didn’t have to have specific things or toys to do it.

It’s not necessarily rocket science, all the lessons.  There’s baking lessons – here’s how to do some measuring and cooking together and here’s an easy way to do it.  I won’t say that’s necessarily the pinnacle of our lessons, but it was taking activities like that and making them our own.  And then really taking steps to make it creative and fun.

I have a music background as well, so there are a lot of original songs we put in there, and again, it was stuff we were doing with our kids when they were little.  I don’t know if you ever have this problem, but I was shocked when I saw on Facebook how many friends were posting that they took their kids to the dentist and they had to have their teeth pulled because they weren’t brushing their teeth, and the parent has really struggled to get them to brush their teeth.

We have a song that we’ve always sung when our kids brush their teeth.

ES: We don’t always sing the same song, but we also discovered that if we sing a song while we brush, he’s totally distracted. 

CD: There are things in there like that, that take advantage of the time you’re already spending together.

But otherwise, I did build all the lessons and it’s pretty cool because when you receive a lesson, as a parent, you can click at the bottom on whether you liked it or didn’t like it.  So we constantly go in and change lessons and update them and make sure that our content is the best that it can be.  And that’s certainly something as an entrepreneur that can be tricky.  I have an end vision in mind, and this was what I could get out there to just begin and to try it.  But I’m constantly working to build and to upgrade and make the lessons the best you could have.

There’s sort of this curtain with education, where you go in and have your parent-teacher conference and the teacher tells you how your kid is doing, but the truth of the matter is, you know your kid better than any teacher ever will.  And I think you have to invest the time and know where to go, because there’s nothing worse than getting to the point where your kid has a problem.  I think you have to be proactive and instill that sense of confidence in your kid, because if they’re confident, then school is so much easier than when they’re feeling unsure.

I think you have to be proactive 

and instill that sense of confidence 

in your kid, because if they’re confident,

then school is so much easier 

than when they’re feeling unsure.

ES: You mentioned some government guidelines about what kids should know before starting school.  I didn’t know about that.  What are some of them?

CD: Sure – basically Washington puts out a set of core standards, and they have all their doctoral educators put that together.  And then that gets diversified to each state.  If you google “Illinois State Learning Standards”, it will come up and you can go through each subject area.

So, generally, English Writing and Mathematical are sort of what they consider the core standards, and then they’ll have fine arts and Science and Social Studies, and sometimes they’re getting into secondary languages.  And basically that outlines everything your kid should know and understand: what should your kid know and understand by a certain point.  For example, by Kindergarten.

That list talks about what they should know by the end of Kindergarten.  That list also talks about “early standards”, what your child should know before starting Kindergarten.  But all kids are very different.  That’s why I like working with this multiple intelligences theory.  Because your kid may crawl at 6 months old.  It may take mine until 8 months. 

The truth of the matter is whether or not they get the actual content isn’t as important as the experience.  I think eventually they do get the content, and that’s why we work in this structure, because the content shows up again and again in different and new ways for them to try it out.

So that’s where you can find all the learning standards.  I will say, surprisingly, I was living in London up until the end of August of this year.  And I used an international standard of learning, not just the United States state standards.  So I went through all of the US State standards for early childhood, but I also went through the European standard to be sure that we were on par with where you would be worldwide.  Because we do have a site in the UK as well.

It’s been great because you’re not only learning to just do what’s required here, but eventually you want to be competitive in a worldwide market.  Although I don’t necessarily believe that if you don’t do this, your six year old will not be able to get a job in Europe eventually.  But I think it’s more or less just making sure that you’re on the same page in terms of what everyone’s trying to reach.

ES: Did you find differences in terms of what European kids would be required to know before school and what Americans would be?

CD: The difference is interesting, and I found it less in the research, but more with my son’s experience.  He started at age three, and he went three hours a day, five days a week in a very traditional British school.  Now that we’ve moved back to the US, and due to his birthday he’s essentially the baby in his class here but we wanted him in that class because it would be a continuation of where he was over there.  In his current school here in the US, he’s doing all of the information he did last year in the British school, but a year later.  So they definitely push the academics earlier there. 

I’ve noticed that here, people are much more into part-time, they don’t want kids to go every day, whereas they go five days a week right from the start and that’s pretty typical.  I found it to be more academic than it is here.  I can’t speak for everyone.

Also, my school is still too young for the public schools here, and he was also not in a public school in England, so it’s somewhat subjective due to the schools we’ve enrolled him in.

I think that also, once you get to that three- to six-year old age, they push writing much sooner than we do here. 

And the school my son was at was very very focused on puzzles, that the kids were able to do puzzles.  Part of that, especially in London, is that the schools have very strict and difficult entry requirements.  The kids that were good at puzzles were good at critical thinking. 

If your child understands how to build 

one type of puzzle, 

they’re much more likely to understand 

how to build another type of puzzle.  

And basically, their point was that it transfers.  If your child understands how to build one type of puzzle, they’re much more likely to understand how to build another type of puzzle.  So it would help for those entrance exams.

When you’ve got these toddlers running around, you’ve got so many toys and so much going on that it’s hard to remember sometimes to pull out the puzzles or a certain toy and look at it in a new way.

That’s why I’m going to say, a lot of our lessons are not necessarily the pinnacle lesson, but they may use things you already have, and you can think about them in a new way.

ES: We definitely have a lot of puzzles, and it’s always been fascinating and even a little mind-boggling to me the number of ways there are to do them wrong.  As an adult, I couldn’t even come up with half the ways he does to put a piece in the wrong direction, wrong spot altogether, wrong side, or whatever.  Our brains process these simple puzzles so quickly that we can’t even consciously process what’s going on.

Especially with the shape sorters.  You see the circle, or cylinder, and you automatically know where it would go.  But when you see a kid go at it, you realize, “I had to learn this thing” sometime and there were lots of elements that came together to help me figure out what goes where.

Or with a flat puzzle, I’ve tried again and again to convey the concept of a straight side going on the edge, or a piece with two straight sides being a corner, but that definitely has not sunken in.

It’s amazing how much there is to learn about everything, and a puzzle is just one small example. 

CD: With this brain research that’s coming out of Harvard, it’s astounding what they’re seeing in these 0-3 year olds and how their brains are developing and building, and how much they take in.

That’s again why our lessons are really good, because we’re reminding parents how to play.  You sit down and because you’re thinking of something with such an advanced and developed mind, you just can’t remember what it’s like to sort of think of something with no boundaries. 

ES: That’s the beauty of the way that they think, but also what makes it so infuriating.  You can see the way the puzzle goes together, and obviously it’s not a challenge for an adult, so you want to jump in there but you know it’s better to let them figure it out on their own.

You forget how much information they’re processing, and I guess that’s a big part of what makes being a parent so fun – getting to relive that to some extent.

So to shift gears a little bit, to your experience as a business person, what is your day like?  What do you spend your time doing now that a lot of your lesson plans have been developed?

CD: I’m a big believer in “The 4-Hour Work Week”, if you’ve ever heard of that book by Timothy Ferris.  And no, I don’t stick to it 100%, but there were certain things in my life that I had to automate that made my life so much easier.  For example, laundry is tricky.  It’s easy, so you feel like you accomplished something in the day if it gets done.  But you didn’t actually accomplish anything – at least I don’t necessarily see it that way.  But now I only do laundry one day a week.  And if it doesn’t all get done, it has to wait for the next week. 

I don’t know about you, but we have way too many clothes anyway.  So we just do it once a week.  And that kind of automation has really helped me become successful as a businessperson.

I will say that each of my days is a little bit different.  We have our morning, we make breakfast.  We’ve recently been doing a little bit of yoga in the morning, which has been fun with our two boys.  And then we’ve got our school run.  And I’ve got the younger one with me and a couple mornings a week,           we go do a little activity, and then he goes for his nap which is around two hours. 

I’ve really worked hard to sort of get the email and the Facebook and the Twitter out of my life in the sense that I really work to try to check it only twice a day.  The 4-Hour Workweek sets it up as, “Check it at 12 and 4.” 

So, once my son is down for his nap, I have this two hour block, and I try to focus on working for those two hours, and not checking Facebook or whatever, but getting kind of core content work done. 

On Sunday nights, I’ve got my little planner 

for the week, and I choose one 

critical task and maybe one 

sort of secondary critical task 

so that I’ve got two for each day 

of the week.  

So then I know, this is what I’ve got 

to accomplish on these days of the week.

On Sunday nights, I’ve got my little planner for the week, and I choose one critical task and maybe one sort of secondary critical task so that I’ve got two for each day of the week.  So then I know, this is what I’ve got to accomplish on these days of the week.

For example, yesterday, I had a content revision, so I had a group of lessons I knew I needed to revise and I knew I had to get through them in that two hour time period.  Or I might have a day where I say, “Okay, I’m blogging for the MarketMommy.  I’ve got to get the blog done, and I’ve got two hours.”  So I’ve got to get that done and edit and email it.

I’ll give myself later in the day a 20 minute time to respond to emails and things, but I try to automate that as much as possible.

Because once my son is up, I’ve got to make lunch, and then go pick up the other one, and then we have our afternoon together and at that point, the kids are testing a lot of the lessons.  I try to have something for each day as we’re trialing and building out that 3-6 content.  So my son, who’s now 4, is testing a lot of that content and we see how it goes. 

Then before you know it, we have dinner and bedtime and I do believe in putting them to bed early, and once they’re in bed at night, if I needed more time on email or whatever, there’s time for that.  Otherwise I go back to my tasks and whatever I didn’t accomplish.

I definitely find that by saying, “I’ve got to get these two things done today,” 99% of the time I’m successful at getting those two things done.  Which is awesome, because then you can move on to the next thing.  If you can focus on exactly what it is you need to get done, it’s really helpful.

ES: This is so instructive and inspirational!  It makes it sound so doable.

CD: Yeah, thanks.  It is.  But I think your original question was actually about what I’m working on now.  We’re always working on content revision.  We’re working on building out that 3-6 year old curriculum, which we’re planning to launch in the summer.  We are going to our first trade show at the end of February and we’re planning to launch our first book alongside with that trade show.

So right now, you’ve probably seen our little logo dog.  He’s a character in our book.  We’re having three additional characters designed, and those should be finished by the end of this week.  Then they will go towards illustrating the book that’s been written.  Fingers crossed, I can have it all pulled together to sell as sort of our trial into that market at this trade show at the end of February.  So that’s kind of what we’re working on.  It sounds simple but it’s actually a lot of work!

ES: I don’t think it sounds simple!  It sounds like a ton of work!

CD: Especially the building curriculum.  And I’m also a member of the Chicago Womens Entrepreneur network, and we’re working on getting a panel of women together to do some talks throughout the area, so I have some of those things.  I also have a couple of speaking engagements at this trade show, so I’ve been working on those.  It’s all part of the juggle.

ES: Gosh, you really sound productive.  It’s really putting me to shame.  If I get a list written on a piece of paper and a load of laundry folded, I feel good.

CD: You know, I think it’s actually harder when you only have one child.  Once you have two, you’ve just got to get it done.  I need to be fiercely organized.  I actually write two to-do lists, my business list and my home list. 

Because there are always notes coming home from school: they need a shoebox, they need to bring in a Ziploc bag, they need sugar cubes.  There’s always something to bring in.  I really try hard to deal with things as soon as they come in.  If he brings home a permission slip or a book order from school, I turn around and do it right away.  I keep that family to-do list separate from my work to-do list.

For me, it’s always, “can I get my two things done today?”  For some people, it might be one thing.  But I think the hardest thing is, if you don’t know what you need to do that day, then you go to that list and you don’t know where to start. 

ES: I know, then you’re sort of flailing and nothing gets done.  I also find that making the tasks on the list extremely specific, so you get that sense of accomplishment with each one and you also don’t lose track of where you are in your task, is really helpful. 

Because if a task is too vague, it may involve multiple steps, and it’s not clear a few days later what step you’re on.  You may have left a message for someone and hit a wall waiting for their call back, so you can’t check off the task but you feel lame because it looks like you haven’t done anything if nothing’s checked off.  Then a few days later, you’re like, “wait, what else did I need to do about that?”

It’s all about “divide and conquer” for me.

CD: And I’ve definitely found that as I’ve gotten more specific about what needs to get done, I’ve gotten a better feel for what I can really get done in the time I have.

ES: Right – because if you know you’re giving yourself two tasks to do, you need to be smart about setting yourself up for success and not failure. 

Also, what you were saying about having one kid versus two or more reminded me of the old adage, “If you want something to get done, give it to a busy person.”  When we’re under pressure, we figure out a way to make things happen.  Most of us tend to procrastinate when we have too much time.  I know I do.

Sometimes setting what seems like an absurdly simple goal, like, “I’m going to do one thing today for my business, or I’m going to make one phone call today for my business” is enough to get moving.  It makes the whole thing less overwhelming. 

It’s like saying, “Today I’m going to work out for ten minutes.”  Of course once you get started, you’re going to do more, but you need to set that low hurdle to fool yourself into getting started.

You don’t have to always 

fix the whole thing or solve the whole thing, 

or have that final vision perfected.  

It’s taking one step to move 

the whole thing forward. 

CD: Exactly, it’s taking that one step.  You don’t have to always fix the whole thing or solve the whole thing, or have that final vision perfected.  It’s taking one step to move the whole thing forward.  And that may be reaching out to one person and the information you get there can take you to the next step.

ES: Chelsea, thanks again so much for speaking with us.  I love the direction this has gone and I can’t wait to enroll in MileStar Babies for my own family.

CD: Thanks again Erica, and take care.

Spotlight: Small Business... Online Editing - What's that like?

Jennifer Rotner, Owner, Elite Editing

This week, I got to interview a fantastic small business owner, Jennifer Rotner.  She started award-winning online editing firm Elite Editing several years ago as an extension of a career in editing and PR.  Elite Editing markets its services to students, companies and writers.

Jenny was very candid about the trials of running a business as opposed to working at a firm, and the type of person who can thrive as a business owner versus as an employee.  Read on to learn about how growing up with an entrepreneurial mindset and looking out for inspiration at different moments in life can culminate in a successful career if you're thoughtful and savvy about building your business.

  

ES: Hi Jenny!  To start out, can you fill us in on your business, title, etc. – basic information?

JR: I am the owner of Elite Editing.  We are a writing, editing, and proofreading firm.  We’re a full-service editorial firm.  Basically, we work with businesses who are looking to outsource their editorial needs – companies who don’t have an editorial team on staff; writers who are publishing or who are looking to publish; and students who are looking to have their papers polished before they turn it in. 

Those are our three audiences, and the main things that we do.  For companies, we’re an outsourced service, and for everyone else, we’re an on-demand editorial team.

ES: How did you come up with this idea?

JR: I came up with it at two different points in my life.  I think I’ve always been interested in starting a business.  Being an entrepreneur has always been something that’s pretty much ingrained in me, being in my family.  I’m from a pretty entrepreneurial family.  My sister and I used to write contracts with each other when we would do something as small as trading jeans, so we started early. 

When I was in college, I worked at the writing center as an ESL tutor – English as a Second Language tutor – at the University of Michigan.  I worked at the writing center for two years.  I loved working with the students, particularly the ESL students, who were so thankful and so grateful for our service. 

I found that with the ESL students, they would start hitting a wall due to the language barrier but they were so smart and they were so willing to learn and so caring about their grades. 

So I saw a business niche there.  Here’s this group that certainly had the motivation and really cared to improve themselves, but they’re looking for this service and for a lot of people it doesn’t exist or they don’t really know how to get to it.  And they would appreciate or look for editorial help. 

I was 21 or 22 at the time and I bought my first URL.  And it wasn’t “EliteEditing.”  I’ve bought about 30 domain names over time.  It was going to be completely student-minded and completely about serving a student base. 

Luckily, I was smart enough not to start a business at 22, which I always discourage people from doing, because when you’re 22, you just don’t know anything.  Unless you luck into figuring something out really young, I think you do need business experience.  So I got a couple of really cool jobs, which led to my last big job, which was with the marketing agency for New York City called NYC & Company.  It was under Bloomberg but it was a hybrid organization. 

I started there as an editor.  I basically was one of two people who started the editorial department there.  I was very lucky to get in on the ground floor of a very cool company at a very cool time. 

I ended up running the copy department, which is essentially what the other arm of my business is.  It’s an outsourced editorial firm. 

So it ended up being a very big editorial staff and it was always rolling and whenever we’d have big projects come in and it would be overwhelming, I would think to myself, “wouldn’t it be great if I could just call one person and they could just give me people on demand, as opposed to me having to call all my freelancers?”

Freelancers are tricky.  They’ve got their own lives, and they’re not yours.  There are a million schedules and they’re people – they’ve got a lot of things going on.  Sometimes we would need them to work until midnight, and they weren’t our employees, so it was tough. 

I learned immediately that there was that kind of need.  Hiring full-time proofreaders and editors and writers doesn’t really make sense for a lot of businesses because often they just need these kinds of employees on a project basis.  And I saw us as someone who could fulfill that need.  Sometimes we come in a few times a year.  For some companies we do it rolling.

So those are the two different arms of Elite Editing, and I found them at different points in my life.  But it was at NYC & Company that I decided I wanted to do this for various reasons, and I quit of course in the middle of the recession.

ES: But it seems like it’s working out okay.

JR: It is working out okay.

ES: And like you said, with the student population you’re targeting, especially international students – they’re still here, often paying full tuition, and they’re not as affected.  It’s nice that this seems somewhat recession-proof.

JR: Definitely.  There are some businesses that are kind of recession-proof.  This time of year, especially October/November, a big business for us is admissions essay editing.  There is a certain level of clientele that is always going to use that. 

The parents want to get their kids into college and they want to make sure their kids are on track with their essays.  They might put a little bit of money into that essay but in the end, getting into the right school is the most important thing.  So there are certain things, not to say they’re recession-proof, but you can survive through a recession.

ES: They’re less sensitive.

JR: And students – you hit the nail on the head.  It’s an ongoing business.  Same with theses and dissertations.  Theses and dissertations are another arm of our business.  You know, people are publishing the biggest document they’ll ever touch in their lives.  It’s indicative of their entire academic career.  They need it to be right and they’re willing to put money towards it.

It’s usually pieces that are going to implicate something for their future – that’s usually where you see students put their money.

ES: So to be clear, you do not write term papers for people or anything in that arena – you’re just editing other people’s work.

JR: Definitely.  There are plenty of other people out there that do it.  We absolutely do not write any academic material.  We only edit.  We do a ton of copywriting for businesses.  But we have requests for that [by students] and we are very clear with people: the content for students is their own. 

We also do not check for plagiarism.  We get asked that a lot.  We do not take responsibility for students’ work.  It’s their own.  We’re there to help them. 

In most cases, especially with dissertations, students are usually encouraged by their teachers or chairs to seek us out.   A lot of times, we’re recommended by specific teachers or chairs.  It’s not necessarily that it’s sanctioned by a university, but it’s known that this is what the students should be doing.  We don’t take any control over content at all.

ES: Does that get tricky with dissertations when the level of discourse in the writing might be above the level of a basic layperson’s understanding?  You’re proofreading for grammatical errors, but is it difficult when the subject content may be over the editor’s head?

JR: Good question.  First of all, we do offer two levels of editing – basic and advanced, which is more copy editing. 

But the reason I’m saying “we” is that you should know, I do none of the editing anymore.  I do project management and running of the business.  I have a staff of over 15 editors and writers.  So in that staff is a team of academic editors, a team of business editors, and a team of manuscript editors. 

One of the things I really take care in is matching the right editor to the right client.  I’m never going to give a technical dissertation that needs to be done in APA style to a manuscript editor – it doesn’t happen.  It’s going to go to one of our academic editors.  It’s going to go to someone who can technically handle the material as well as knowing editing. 

A lot of people in my business hire grad students or people straight out of college.  I absolutely won’t do that.  I usually hire people who have 10+ or closer to 20 years of experience, who are in the later part of their career.  It’s not just that they’re good writers.  I hire editors first, and in doing so I have a very rigorous editing test.

I don’t pretend in any way to be able to handle all the material that comes in, and that’s why I hire people who are better than me.  What I did learn in my experience of being a copy chief was how to hire the right editors and writers and how to train them, how to test them, and make sure that I was putting the right people in place for the job.  That’s the most important thing about this position – facilitating the work.

Jennifer with her Internet Advertising Competition awards

ES: In talking with so many people, it’s become apparent that being a manager is a totally different skill than being good at your craft, whatever that may be.

JR: I’m also a control freak, so it’s been so hard to let go of the reins and learn how to be a delegator. 

The hardest position that I’ve had to hire for is another project manager.  It became too much for me and I had to hire another person to do the same thing that I do.  I should have done it a year before I actually did it.  But when you’re creative and you’ve worked in a creative space, you’re not necessarily the best business person.  And that’s what I’m constantly working on – thinking like a business person and not like an editor. 

I also think that people who try to start a business because they’re a really good businessperson but they don’t necessarily know what they’re doing…  It’s like, you shouldn’t start a restaurant if you don’t know how to cook. 

I can’t imagine – if I couldn’t jump in in an emergency; if I couldn’t communicate the jobs and how they needed to work with my clients; if I couldn’t understand the natural progression of the editorial process and the production calendar; I could not imagine doing this job.  I think it’s so important to be a good businessperson, but also to understand the business you’re running.

ES: I think the people who are mismatched – they excel at their craft but they’re not good managers, or alternatively they’re good managers but they’re not good at their craft – don’t get as far, and it’s a rare person who has both.  You also have to have the security to hire people who are better than you in order to build a strong team.  It’s a challenge for most people.

JR: That’s so true, and that’s why I feel it’s so important to hire editors who would beat me.  I need to feel confident that I’m hiring people who will kill it.  I don’t worry about where I am compared to where they are – I need to get the best of what’s out there. 

Really because of the recession, the amount of freelance talent that’s out there is amazing.  I have access to talent I should never have had access to.  Finding a good editor is like finding a diamond in the rough, and since 2008, I can toss something out there and get an enormous response, and I still get at least three resumes a day.  And they’re all good.

It’s bad for the world, but it’s good for me.  And I’m doing the best I can to keep them working.

ES: Has your work segued more from the academic work you started out focusing on into more of the other arms of your business?

JR: It’s still actually very student-centric.  I still do a lot of work for students, especially this time of year.  That being said, I see the work changing more towards online content and social media.  We do a lot of online social media and creating websites for businesses.  We do a lot of writing blog posts and that sort of stuff.  I’ve had to hire more writers in the past few months and I’m really ramping up that side of things.

I’ve started creating packages on the website where instead of people calling and needing quotes for everything, I try to make it so that people can just purchase.  That’s how it is for editing services, based on word count, so people don’t need me to get a quote.  I try to make as much as automatic for people as possible. 

I want people to come on and feel like they can just buy as easily as possible, and I’m trying to do that more with writing as well – so that small businesses can just come on and purchase a certain amount of writing, whether it’s press releases or blog posts or tweets.  That’s something we’re in the process of doing right now and I’m looking forward to seeing how it works.

ES: So when you were getting started, versus now, how did you decide to do what for marketing?

JR: I knew that I really wanted to focus on growing traffic to the website.  I’m constantly at odds with myself because there are two ways to really grow the business, and that’s through networking and referrals.   I do have certain businesses where we are their editors of record.  We have contracted with them and we do all of their editorial work.  And obviously, having anyone on retainer is good. 

But I’m constantly at odds with trying to grow more of that side of the business, which requires more of me – more networking, more project management, more taking care of the client – and then more of my hands-off work which is people submitting through the website. 

The website acts as an e-commerce portal and people can just find us on google, and they can submit, and the work happens basically without me.  And I have to tell you, it’s the latter that really excites me. 

There’s nothing I like more than waking up in the morning and seeing that I made sales while I was sleeping, because that’s the goal. 

Because my goal is to have a solid website that’s constantly generating new business for itself, I work on website traffic, I do a lot of advertising with Google AdWords, and I work a lot on my SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to have the website produce as much as possible.

ES: How do you do your SEO – is that something you outsource?

JR: That’s actually something that I actually do for other people.  I hired people at the beginning so I could learn from them, but now people hire me to do it. 

ES: I know you’ve won awards for your website and your work.  Is that something that you pursued or did it kind of just fall into your lap?

JR: It’s something that was brought to my attention, [which I then] pursued.  From an SEO perspective, to be honest, it’s a great way to get your name out there.  And also, it did exactly what you just said – even with my friends and family… it’s amazing how it changes people’s perception.  Being able to add it to the bottom of my pitch, “Oh, in case you didn’t see, last week we won this big award,” it really helps with our credentials and helps give credibility. 

[The Stevie Award] was a really big international award and was really flattering.  I absolutely recommend to other business owners to pursue awards.  It brought a huge increase in our credibility overnight.  It’s very time consuming and it costs something, but for me it gave me a jump start.  Some people go after it year after year, but I don’t have the manpower to do that.

ES: Can you elaborate on what you mean by saying, “it costs something?”

JR: Awards are [generally] for profit, and you have to pay to enter as well as pay for press releases etc.  But the money was 100% worth it.  I don’t blink an eye at it.  It was nominal. 

If I had the manpower, I would absolutely go for it every year, but it’s very consuming.  The Stevies are also just a really good organization.  I’ve met amazing people in the room with them.  They asked me the year after I won if I wanted to judge, and then the next year they asked me to chair a committee of judges.  They’ve also had me speak at certain events. 

They’re very supportive of their winners and their people.  I continue to support them.  If I were to go for an award again, I’d go through them because they have a lot to offer. 

There are other organizations where I feel like I won something, and I got a plaque.  The Stevies are a really mutually beneficial relationship and it continues to grow.  I look forward to doing more with them. 

Jennifer attends the Stevie Awards

ES: I think it’s fabulous that you won and that the organization has been so worthwhile.  Are there tons of categories that they give out?

JR: Yeah.  The one I won was at the Stevie Awards for Women in Business.  It’s for international women in business.  They also do the International Business Awards and it’s not just for women.  They also do Customer Service Awards.  The International Business Awards ceremonies are held in crazy places – this year it was in Seoul.

But the Women’s one is always in New York.  It’s really nice, because it’s such a supportive group.  Every time I go there, it seems like people give speeches where everybody cries.  It’s a really good room.  And it’s a really nice ceremony.  I brought my parents, and they got to share in this major success with me.  I won for best website.

ES: It must be so rewarding, to see your work acknowledged, and you hadn’t even been around for that long yet, right?

JR: I had been around for less than a year at the time.  It was overwhelmingly exciting.  But you know, it was exciting to win an award, but now I want to win a new contract.  I constantly feel like I’m pushing uphill.  I don’t feel like I’ve gotten to that downhill part yet.  I still feel like there’s so much to do.

ES: I don’t know that you necessarily want to feel like you get to that downhill part – maybe then it wouldn’t be exciting anymore.  You don’t want to feel like it’s a daily grind and you’re wearing yourself out, but you want to be presented with new challenges all the time.

JR: And one of the things with running your own business – I talk about this with other small business owners – is that I’ll wake up in the morning, and I’ll have an idea.  Totally like, light bulb over the head kind of moment – and I’ll say, “I want to try this.”  Maybe it’s a new marketing campaign, or a new service I want to offer.  And I can put together a meeting with my designer and developer and writer, and by the end of that week, it’s in play. 

I love that feeling of, you don’t have to write up a proposal and pass it by eighteen people, and go through 10,000 changes.  I have an idea, and I do it.  If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.  If it does work, cool!  It’s your world.  It’s your successes and your failures, and when something goes well, there’s nothing like it in the world.

I was never the kind of person who needed the satisfaction of my boss.  There’s no better feeling in the world than when I create my own success.  I think you have to be that kind of person in order to be small business owner, in order to stay sane.  Because otherwise, you’ll just go crazy.  No one’s ever going to tell you you’re doing a good job. 

ES: I think that’s a really good point.  Do you feel from inside that you’re accomplishing something, or do you seek approval from others? 

JR: If you’re the type of person who always needs positive feedback, don’t run your own business.  No one’s ever going to tell you at the end of the day, “You did a good job today.”  There are so many days that are just day after day after day.  And if you can’t just look at yourself and say, “this went awesome.”  Or, “we’re moving along,” it’s not going to work.

ES: Or to shift direction and give yourself a pep talk when things aren’t going well.

JR: Absolutely.  You have to have a certain amount of resilience that you don’t need in an office.  You need to be able to rebound and to constantly rebuild. 

ES: That’s really hard, and it’s probably the hardest thing.  It’s not reliable and safe like going into an office every day.

JR: I forgot what a paycheck looks like.

ES: Some people start doing it and realize it wasn’t for them, especially working alone. 

JR: I feel like small business owners in the tech world often say, “I do this because I want autonomy.  I want this all to be for me.  I don’t want a boss.  I want to control my own hours.”  What that ends up meaning is that you end up working all of the time, never taking a minute for yourself, basically talking to your plants. 

[My friend and I] both had that moment where we realized we weren’t fulfilling all of our goals and our dreams for ourselves, so last March we went to California together.  We tried to see if we could get more people who wanted to do it, but we ended up going with one more person and the two of us, and we rented a house in San Diego and we worked from there. 

It was completely a work trip; it was not a vacation.  We just figured, it’s cold on the East Coast and it’s warm on the West Coast, and we can work from anywhere, so why not be someplace beautiful? 

ES: That’s such a smart idea, to work with someone else for social stimulation and to keep you on task.  Are there any character traits that you kind of discovered through working on your own, maybe things you were good at or not good at?

JR: Definitely.  One thing I always knew I was good at was being able to work alone.  You spend a lot of time by yourself.  I spend a lot of time not in a big office environment with a lot of social interaction.  On the other side, I work hard not to overdo it. 

I work hard not to bring my laptop to bed at night.  That’s my goal.  I brush my teeth in the morning before I check my email.  Sometimes I’ll start emailing and working and it will get to be eleven o’clock and I haven’t brushed my teeth yet, and I’m like, “this is gross.”

I am words, not numbers.  That is my strength.  That is why I have a really great accountant and a great bookkeeper.  I am not part of every facet of this business.  I try and hire people who are better than me.  Those are definitely things I have learned, and I am fine with.  I did not get into this to talk Quickbooks. 

ES: You must have so many transactions with internet sales…

JR: When people pay through Google Checkout and Paypal, that all gets entered automatically.  The bigger thing is my clients who we do work for offline. 

ES: Has it been hard to figure out what to charge?  Did you just research your competition?

JR: Well, I knew what people were charging in the real world, and I had hired freelancers and editors as a copy chief, so I based the rates more off of that than off of my competitors. 

I knew what a good hourly rate was for hiring an editor, and I thought about how many pages per hour an editor should do on average, and I used that.  But instead of giving people quotes, I wanted it to be as general as possible so that people could come on and pay on the site without any human interaction, not because I don’t want it to be personal, but because this way, when students want to submit their papers at 2am, they can.  They don’t have to wait until the next day.

ES: Well, it’s been so inspirational hearing about your business.  I’m thrilled that it sounds like it’s going so well, and I wish you all the best.    

JR: It’s very fulfilling to me, and I want to keep doing it as long as possible.  It seems to be making it.  Here’s hoping.