Report by KAuf­mann Foun­da­tion Anatomy of an Entrepreneur

The very def­i­n­i­tion of an entre­pre­neur is for many some­one who sim­ply goes their own way, and define their own path to success.

And no ven­ture, and no entre­pre­neur, is pre­cisely like the other. But why do some make it and oth­ers, in spite of the best of inten­tions, do not?

I came across the 2009 report “The Anatomy of an Entre­pre­neur” by the Kauf­mann Foun­da­tion, based on a sur­vey of 549 com­pany founders across a vari­ety of indus­tries. The study seeks insights into high-growth founders’ moti­va­tions and their socio-economic, edu­ca­tional, and famil­ial back­grounds. Key find­ings are sum up what suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs seem to have in com­mon, in terms of back­ground, level of edu­ca­tion and motivation.

As an entre­pre­neur in the start­ing blocks of scal­ing up my busi­ness, I was of course curi­ous to see if I fit­ted the pic­ture and have what it takes.….

So here goes:

The aver­age and median age of com­pany founders when they started their cur­rent com­pa­nies was 40.

Tick! OK, I was 35. Not too far off the mark.

95.1 per­cent of respon­dents them­selves had earned bachelor’s degrees, and 47 per­cent had more advanced degrees.

Tick! With a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree under my belt, I fall in the lat­ter category.

52 per­cent said they ranked among the top 10 per­cent in High School. 

Yes Sir. I did. Can’t deny I was one of those book­worms with the glasses. Quite sur­pris­ing find­ing though, I had the stereo­type idea of the free-thinking entre­pre­neur that went so much against author­ity when grow­ing up, that his or her tal­ent wasn’t seen in school.

Less than 1 per­cent came from extremely rich or extremely poor back­grounds.

Tick! I cer­tainly lacked noth­ing when grow­ing up, and got the chance to travel, study, play and sport. But extremely rich: no. Extremely poor: luck­ily for me, no.  

15.2% of founders had a sib­ling that pre­vi­ously started a business.

Tick! My  brother has a rent-a-doctor busi­ness, Addoc, that he started a few years’ ear­lier than I took the plunge. For him, it is a side­job next to his ‘day job’ as a sur­geon, but nev­er­the­less, his ambi­tion and guts cer­tainly inspired me. 

69.9 per­cent of respon­dents indi­cated they were mar­ried when they launched their first busi­ness.

Tick again. Yes, I was mar­ried and I can’t stress enough that with­out the sup­port — and salary, let’s be hon­est — of my hus­band Han ten Broeke, I would never have been able to even think about quit­ting my job to start­ing develop a prod­uct full time. And those times when things seem to not go my way no mat­ter how hard I try, he is the one who inspires me to take that extra step. Again, again and again.

59.7 per­cent of respon­dents indi­cated they had at least one child when they launched their first busi­ness, and 43.5 per­cent had two or more children.

This cer­tainly chal­lenges the stereo­type of the entre­pre­neur­ial worka­holic with no time for a family.

As far as I am con­cerned: Tick again. Stronger: with­out my daugh­ter, there would never have been a busi­ness idea. Thus — no busi­ness.
Hav­ing a child also made me long for more flex­i­bil­ity in my pro­fes­sional life. Hav­ing a busi­ness does not mean work­ing fewer hours, for sure, but I can much more eas­ily com­bine this work­load with fam­ily.

The major­ity of the entre­pre­neurs in the sam­ple were ser­ial entre­pre­neurs. The aver­age num­ber of busi­nesses launched by respon­dents was approx­i­mately 2.3.

Nope, here I don’t fit in. With a past as a diplo­mat, I was about as far from an entre­pre­neur one could come, I guess, when I started this ven­ture. Let’s hope this is not an indi­ca­tion that I have 2.3 busi­nesses to go before I may count myself successful.….!

74.8 per­cent indi­cated desire to build wealth as an impor­tant moti­va­tion in becom­ing an entre­pre­neur.

Oups. Tough one. Hand on my heart, I found it so dif­fi­cult — in the begin­ning — to admit that yes.… I WANT TO MAKE MONEY! Why? After 10 years in devel­op­ment aid, it was very hard to wear the hat of some­one who thinks in terms of profit. It’s sim­ply a bit of a dirty char­ac­ter­is­tic in my old cir­cles. Also, Mum­my­Mug of course has a higher ben­e­fit than being a money maker: I sin­cerely do it also for the kids that will be saved the pain of scald­ing burns, if their par­ents are smart enough to use my inven­tion.  but this said, and cer­tainly since I have investors on board, and since I real­ize how enor­mously hard it is to make that profit: yes, I want to make money. And yes, if I do: I will have deserved it! 

Only 4.5 per­cent said the inabil­ity to find tra­di­tional employ­ment was an impor­tant fac­tor in start­ing a business.

Tick tick. I left my life­time safe employ­ment at the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion for my dream.No lack of employ­ment in the past thus!

Entre­pre­neurs are usu­ally bet­ter edu­cated than their parents.

Nope, I’m not! very proud that my father has even two degrees — in busi­ness admin­stra­tion and in med­i­cine. My mother is not far behind with an advanced teach­ing degree.

Entre­pre­neur­ship doesn’t always run in the fam­ily. More than half (51.9 per­cent) of respon­dents were the first in their fam­i­lies to launch a business.

I kind of am. My father is since a few years work­ing as an inde­pen­dent con­sul­tant, after he got tired of the real­i­ties of employ­ment in the pub­lic health­care in Swe­den. But while I grew up, my par­ents were both work­ing in the pub­lic sec­tor and I’m the first one try­ing entre­pre­neur­ship at the scale Mum­my­Mug nec­es­sar­ily entails.  

The major­ity of respon­dents (75.4 per­cent) had worked as employ­ees at other com­pa­nies for more than six years before launch­ing their own com­pa­nies.

Tick and no tick! Does 10 years’ work expe­ri­ence, albeit in a very dif­fer­ent field and for a pub­lic insti­tu­tion count.…. ?

Last but not least: Net­works count. Pro­fes­sional net­works were impor­tant to the suc­cess of the cur­rent busi­nesses for 73 per­cent of the entre­pre­neurs in the study. In com­par­i­son, 62 per­cent felt the same way about per­sonal networks.

Cer­tainly agree. Net­works are every­thing. With­out them, you don’t get for­ward and you have noth­ing to fall back on when need be.

All in all — that’s quite encour­ag­ing, actu­ally. At least if I can prove to make some­thing out of this good start in life that I got ;-)
Who lives will see…

And in the mean­time, tell me: what is your out­look?

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CE-marking: not the most inter­est­ing sub­ject for a cre­ative entre­pre­neurs, who’d rather spend time on design, mar­ket­ing plans and chal­leng­ing online conversations.

But for any­one who plans to law­fully intro­duce a prod­uct on the EU mar­ket, like we do, CE-marking is of course not an optional sub­ject to tackle.
You sim­ply have to know which norms that your prod­uct must com­ply with, and make sure you take the nec­es­sary steps to met the stan­dard — or you could be fac­ing a costly recall and see your dream dis­ap­pear from the mar­ket faster than you can say ‘hepp’! That is a risk no entre­pre­neur should take.

For Mum­my­Mug, we started look­ing into this quite some time ago, and I must say that the quest for the answer to the magic CE ques­tion has been long and wind­ing.
It has taken me through erratic google searches, dis­cus­sions with var­i­ous labs, insti­tu­tions and experts; and even some brave attempts to chew my way through dense source texts of EU legislation.

I’ve had dif­fer­ent answers from dif­fer­ent experts and been pointed in all sorts of direc­tions, leav­ing me feel more con­fused each time — and not one step closer to where I had to be: with a well-structured Tech­ni­cal File ready for inspec­tion should some­one ask for it.

In the end, the solu­tion was just around the cor­ner: with fel­low entre­pre­neur Han Zuy­der­wijk who runs the online busi­ness CE-Marking.net from a base in The Hague.

Han  has a really fresh approach to CE-marking that can save every­one in prod­uct devel­op­ment a lot of money: the Do It Your­self CE-Certification.

Han is an expe­ri­enced CE-marking lawyer, who used to work for the Big Estab­lished CE-Marking Lab­o­ra­tory. Over the years, he saw how the CE-marking indus­try cre­ated a kind of mys­tery cloud around the whole CE-marking process, mak­ing clients feel that CE-marking is some­thing very com­pli­cated — which it is.

But what he really did not like, was that the estab­lished lab­o­ra­to­ries all seem to have agreed on a well-kept trade secret: namely giv­ing clients the impres­sion that there is no way around hir­ing the expen­sive The Big Estab­lished CE-Marking Lab­o­ra­tory to get the CE-marking organ­ised. And luck­ily, there cer­tainly is away around that costly process.

Han’s recipe is sim­ple: he starts with stat­ing the sim­ple truth that in almost 90% of the cases, the CE mark­ing reg­u­la­tions allow prod­ucts to be self-certified for CE marking. 

In other words, you can sim­ply do the CE mark­ing your­self. He does not say it is easy, but for a very rea­son­able fee, he does pro­vides a rich resource base, a pro­fes­sional scan and a prac­ti­cal tool­box with tem­plates and check­lists to help you help your­self: to struc­ture your work and process, with every­thing from under­stand­ing the basics of CE mark­ing, map­ping the norms applic­a­ble, make a plan for con­duct and prop­erly doc­u­ment a con­fir­mity assess­ment and set­ting up the nec­es­sary paper­work for your Tech­ni­cal File, that even­tu­ally will result from all this hard work that lies ahead of you.

Because hard work it is: using CE Marking.net is no short­cut. As for so many things that come an entrepreneur’s way, choos­ing for Do-It-Yourself-CE Mark­ing means sim­ply roll up your sleeves, put in the hours and the effort and get it done.

What makes CE Mark­ing dif­fer­ent is that it takes a fresh per­spec­tive to some­thing that seems com­pletely impos­si­ble at first sight. And per­haps even more ben­e­fi­cial is that CE Marking.net empow­ers you to know your game, know your prod­uct and become even sharper for the next prod­uct you hope­fully will develop some­time in the future. Not putting it in the hands of an expen­sive con­sul­tant that will bill you every time you call.

And the ser­vice helps you save up to 80% of the cost you would have had by using a 3rd party.

This, ladies and gen­tle­men, is why CE-Marking.net should be stan­dard included in your entre­prenur­ship toolbox.

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Today, I met Navah who runs Tag-On; a com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­sul­tancy that devel­ops prac­ti­cal, hands-on Social Media Strate­gies for brands and com­pa­nies. We were sit­ting next to each other the blogger’s group that meets up every two weeks at the busi­ness cen­tre where I am based, the Women’s Busi­ness Ini­tia­tive in The Hague: a great way to get some dis­ci­pline in the blog­ging, share best prac­tices and — get blogging!

But most impor­tantly, it gen­er­ates real-life encoun­ters, like this one. Nor­mally, I fea­ture Mumpre­neurs who have invented a prod­uct, but this time, I make way for Navah.

Navah is a recent Mumpre­neur who has a three-year old daugther and started her busi­ness this year. Her pas­sion is to share the insight that

“no mat­ter what busi­ness you are work­ing in, there is always a way you can ben­e­fit from social media!” 

Her blog is a stream of good tips and links to use­ful resources, such as her lat­est post which is a con­cise descrip­tion of how Facebook’s new pri­vacy con­trols work, illus­trated in a sim­ple screen capture.

Fol­low Navah on Twit­ter , check out her blog and Face­book page!

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As Swedish as I and the Mum­my­Mug are, we also have another root, namely the region of Twente in the East of the Netherlands.

Why there, you would think? Well, you are look­ing at yet another lovepat; as I fol­lowed my Dutch hus­band Han back to live in his home town Haaks­ber­gen in 2007. Haaks­ber­gen and Twente  is thus where I started devel­op­ing my idea for the Mum­my­Mug. As a new arrival in a new coun­try, I lit­er­ally had to start from the begin­ning: learn­ing the lan­guage, build­ing my net­work and try to work out how on earth to start the adven­ture of trans­lat­ing the idea for the prod­uct con­cept Mum­my­Mug to a real product.

Today, the regional news­pa­per Tuban­tia has pub­lished a fan­tas­tic fea­ture arti­cle on Mum­my­Mug. It is unfor­tu­nately not avail­able online, as it has been placed in their spe­cial peri­od­i­cal De Onderne­mer (‘The Entre­pre­neur’). I take it as a great honor: not only is it great pub­lic­ity, it is — know­ing the Twents cul­ture — a real token of recog­ni­tion. And in Twente, it takes time and effort for a new­comer to earn his or her place.

You see: liv­ing in Twente is not just liv­ing in yet another part of the King­dom of the Nether­lands.  It is liv­ing in Twente.  This region and its proud inhab­i­tants, call­ing them­selves Tukkers, really have a sense of spe­cial com­mu­nity and many have lived here for gen­er­a­tions. There is even such a thing as a move­ment for the Free Repub­lic of Twente (in Dutch) — that  even hands out Twentse pass­ports to peo­ple who swear alle­giance to the Twentse flag. Yep, this is pos­si­ble in a coun­try like the Nether­lands, built on the prin­ci­ples of accep­tance and lib­erty. The Tukkers speak a spe­cial dialect — Twents — that really is so dif­fer­ent in vocab­u­lary and pro­noun­ci­a­tion from  reg­u­lar Dutch, that it is dif­fi­cult for some­one who has learned reg­u­lar Dutch to  under­stand it. And no won­der: an online dic­tio­nary of Twents count almost 1,700 spe­cific Twentse words!

So in today’s blog, I want to return the favour: I am also very proud of Twente!

The first per­son I came in con­tact with was Mar­tin Gre­vers, who designed the con­cept of the Mum­my­Mug. Read more about this cre­ative inven­tor and our coop­er­a­tion here. Dur­ing an inten­sive first year of prod­uct devel­op­ment, I also got to know a range of other cre­ative part­ners, such as the design bureau Indes in Enschede, teach­ers at the Indus­trial Design Depart­ment at Sax­ion Hogeschool and at Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­siteit Twente , and sup­port and advice from the Indus­trial design Cen­tre that have helped me come in con­tact with the right peo­ple at the right moment. I even got per­sonal advice more than once from the Mayor of Enschede, Mr Peter Den Oud­sten.

Wher­ever I have come, I have felt the cre­ative and entre­pre­neur­ial spirit of Twente and am very grate­ful for the con­tri­bu­tions of all part­ners that have helped and encour­aged me along the way. With­out the warm wel­come that Twente offered to a newly arrived Swedish woman with not much more than a good idea in her pocket, the Mum­my­Mug would prob­a­bly never have got­ten off the ground. And although I am based in The Hague nowa­days, I go to Twente often and still work reg­u­larly with my Twentse partners.

Thus — I’m proud to say, on behalf of Mum­my­Mug: Wij Zijn Tukkers — and proud of it!

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Spot­ted on Spring­wise: Readeo; an online com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool to allow chil­dren and their fam­i­lies to read together in real time over the Inter­net. It com­bines a video chat with online vir­tual children’s books to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence that the team behind Readeo calls BookChatTM. If you sub­scribe to the ser­vice ($9,95 per month) and both you and your kid have access to a com­puter and a web­cam, you can share a bed­time story even if you hap­pen to be at the other side of the world.

I must admit that I’m not a big fan of expe­ri­enc­ing a book through a dig­i­tal read­ing device. I have no urge what­so­ever to jump on the iPad train and will never — ever — exchange my wall of books I have dragged around for a mem­ory stick hold­ing 5,000 vol­umes. I pre­fer a good ol’ book, prefer­ably a heavy one, rest­ing on my lap. Also when read­ing to my daughter.

But — my mother also refused for years to instal a microwave oven in our kitchen in the early 80’s.… Turns out she was only a slow adopter, because now she could not imag­ine a kitchen with­out it. And I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all — so who knows, per­haps I’ll be read­ing sto­ries from a screen soon enough.

And for some­thing like Readeo, I would be will­ing to give it a go. I really see the use  in  pro­vid­ing an oppor­tu­nity for fam­i­lies who are apart to simul­ta­ne­ously share a story moment together. That read­ing moment is in our fam­ily — as I believe also in so many oth­ers — one of the cosiest parts of the day.  An oppor­tu­nity for inter­ac­tion, for teach­ing, lis­ten­ing to each other. And re-living those child­hood mem­o­ries through pass­ing on the sto­ries we our­selves loved when we were kids.

When I travel, this is one of the moments I miss the most. And I dare to bet my daugh­ter feels the same way.

And it was pre­cisely the need to con­nect and share, and the lack of a good solu­tion for meet­ing that need, that lead to the cre­ation of Readeo, which is devel­oped and launched by a Chicago-based startup com­pany. Founder and inven­tor Coby wanted to facil­i­tate the inter­ac­tion between his son and the grand­par­ents, who lived live 1500 miles away.

In other words — another exam­ple of some­thing inven­tive, by par­ents for par­ents, solv­ing a real and hands-on chal­lenge we face in our daily lives. Way to go!

Readeo is cur­rently only avail­able to users in the US, but per­haps some­one will pick up a license for Europe soon enough?? Who­ever gets going: drop me a line, so I can pro­mote my favourite titles for the vir­tual library selection ;-)!

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Yes­ter­day, I had the plea­sure of being inter­viewed by multi-venture entre­pre­neur and Damir Perge for an arti­cle for an online com­mu­nity for entre­pre­neurs, Entre­pre­neur­dex, where entre­pre­neurs can learn, share, social­ize, con­nect and con­duct busi­ness (and have fun!).

Once again thanks Damir for want­ing to tell my story — or rather, that of the MummyMug!

It turned out a real cool dis­cus­sion on the plea­sures and chal­lenges of entre­pre­neur­ship, prod­uct devel­op­ment and life in gen­eral. I am surely curi­ous to see what Damir will make out of it.

Let me sim­ply share one quote of Damir’s, which truly flat­tered me, espe­cially com­ing from an accom­plished prod­uct designer such as him:

‘The Mum­my­Mug is truly beau­ti­ful — the Maserati of Cof­fee Mugs!”

Now, who would not be happy with that?!

Espe­cially if you con­sider that ‘Crafts­man­ship, class-leading per­for­mance and a love of engi­neer­ing finesse: this is the com­bi­na­tion of val­ues behind the Maserati leg­end.’ Even to be men­tioned in the same sen­tence is thus an honour.

How­ever, as the mar­gin on the Mum­my­Mug will be just a tiny bit less than the mar­gin on a Maserati .….……

.…… I must admit that I do hope that the nom­i­nal annual sales vol­ume of the Mum­my­Mug will be some­what big­ger than that of this beau­ti­ful car!.

Photo source: Press Pack AutoRai2007

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In the last cou­ple of weeks, I have had the priv­i­lege of being fea­tured on three online plat­forms for women — for Mums, for female entre­pre­neurs and for those who count them­selves in both categories.

I was fea­tured with a Mumpre­neur Pro­file on Anto­nia Chitty’s Fam­i­lyFriend­ly­Work­ing web­site.….

.… m y sto ry was pre­sented in a great blog post on Mum­s­LikeYou last Fri­day (6,000+ users and 40,000 — 60,000 monthly hits).…..

.….and I was pre­sented as the Mem­ber of the Week of the boom­ing net­work driftig.nu for female Swedish entre­pre­neurs, with 6,000+ mem­bers and a real trea­sure of encour­age­ment and inspir­ing advice.

Of course great expo­sure for me and the Mum­my­Mug to a rev­e­lant audi­ence within net­works much big­ger than my own. The fea­tures gen­er­ated about 500 vis­its to this site and many inter­est­ing com­ments and new leads to help me build my business.

I can only say — thank you! And I here­with return the favor. Please visit the sites above. You’ll not regret it.

Of course it did not hap­pen by itself. Yep, I did make the first cold call con­tact with the women behind these sights and I sim­ply asked for the pos­si­b­lity of being fea­tured. They were all quick with feed­back, gen­er­ous with their time and with their sup­port in terms of lend­ing me access to their platforms.

This is Online Sis­ter­hood in action. The more I explore the online com­mu­ni­ties for women, by women, I see exam­ple after exam­ple of women invest­ing their time and energy in unselfishly help­ing some other woman to find advice, to con­nect, to build their busi­ness, find online friends or a great buy. And, as study after study on the tremen­dous online engage­ment of women, this engage­ment is cre­at­ing real and mutual value; for women per­son­ally, and for their businesses.

Isn’t it funny that we women, who often in the ‘offline’ world are known for the absolute oppo­site to the gen­eros­ity to each other and with­out will­ing­ness to help each other fur­ther on the career lad­der, are engag­ing so gen­er­ously, and at such a mas­sive scale to com­plete strangers online? Per­haps is eas­ier for us women to show this gen­eros­ity to each other when we are meet­ing in the vir­tual world, free from the inher­ent com­pe­ti­tion that occurs when women work or live side by side offline. What do you think?

What­ever the rea­son: online, it’s a brave new women’s world.

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Found on Mil­lion­aire­Mom. By Grasshop­per. 300,000 plus view­ers, and counting! 

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One of the main rea­sons many Mums start a busi­ness is to be more flex­i­ble in com­bin­ing fam­ily and a career.

For me, who used to be a civil ser­vant in the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, start­ing my own busi­ness has not exactly low­ered the amount of hours that I work.

But it as cer­tainly made it much, much more flex­i­ble and I am truly grate­ful for the ben­e­fits it has had for the way I can more eas­ily be there my daugh­ter: I decide when and where I work, I try to com­bine work travel to part­ners in Swe­den with pri­vate vis­its to my fam­ily and I can shift meet­ings around to make sure I can also take Eleonore to her play­dates and bal­let lessons. I work from wher­ever I hap­pen to be and a lot on-the-go via my mobile phone. Read more…

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I guess most of us have a dou­ble feel­ing about New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions. Nor­mally they turn into a bad con­science than an achieved goal. And instead of tak­ing us for­ward,  they make us feel like losers who are so pathetic, we can’t even keep promises to ourself.

Shona  Par­tridge from Women Mean Busi­ness is say­ing: ditch the New Year’s res­o­lu­tions! But nevethe­less take stock of where you are and take this oppor­tu­nity to look for­ward. I  par­tic­u­larly like her tip to con­cen­trate on one or two life areas each quar­ter of the year. Con­sider your health, fit­ness, finances, career, home life, rela­tion­ships and per­sonal dreams — but not all at the same time! Start with the one that would make the biggest dif­fer­ence in your life and start there.

What­ever one likes to call them — goals, res­o­lu­tions, ideas.…. I believe that tak­ing stock of where one is, and chart­ing a way for­ward is use­ful, and why not do it at the begin­ning of a new year? When some­thing is out­spo­ken, it becomes more real.  And if it is sin­cerely meant, just think­ing it it will affect you.

So here are some of the inspi­ra­tional New Year’s res­o­lu­tions I have har­vested from the online com­mu­nity of Mums I’m following:

Anto­nia Chitty, an inspir­ing and estab­lished UK Mumpre­neur with sev­eral use­ful blogs such as Fam­i­lyFriend­ly­Work­ing did a mini-survey and got inspir­ing feed­back from women wov­ing to cre­ate vis­i­ble results and more sales in 2010, to have time for them­selves as well as their busines and to pre­vent that the busi­ness adven­ture makes the fam­ily strug­gle for money. But my favourite one from this one is: I’m going to work smarter, not harder!

Frumpy Mom is deter­mined to set use­ful goals that se can acu­tally meet. Such as mak­ing the kids clean up their rooms every day instead of wait­ing until they look like Tokyo after it was dev­as­tated by Godzilla. And to stop ask­ing stu­pid ques­tions, i.e. “Did you brush your teeth?” and instead issue com­mands. “Brush your teeth.” The one I think I will also put on my list is how­ever “Keep a stash of choco­late hid­den from my chil­dren for emer­gency anti-stress appli­ca­tion”. Which how­ever is in strong com­pe­ti­tion with the one “To never, ever take my chil­dren into a gro­cery store again, unless they are 35 years old and spend­ing their own money”.

Kather­ine from One Work­ing Woman’s blog has an inter­est­ing per­spec­tive: make a fam­ily res­o­lu­tion, such as going more green, eat together reg­u­larly or come up with new ways to speed up morn­ing rou­tines. As she points out, a big bonus to fam­ily res­o­lu­tions: When you do it together, you’re more likely to keep each other on track!

Lisa Ciani goes for mommy res­o­lu­tions. Actu­ally, with­out think­ing of them as res­o­lu­tions at all — just a way to reaf­firm the type of mother she strives to be. More patient; not tak­ing her stress out on the fam­ily. Less dis­tracted and actu­ally pay­ing atten­tion to what is going on — which means pri­or­i­tize and plan.  And here is my favourite: “I’ll stop talk­ing about how tired I am. Really, aren’t all moms tired? Some­times I bore myself with my tales of woe about not get­ting enough sleep!”

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