Yes­ter­day, Susan Fox of 24/7 Moms sug­gested in an inspi­ra­tional post that as Mums, we should start with the end in mind and define a “Mom Mis­sion State­ment”.

Defin­ing a Mis­sion State­ment might sound as some­thing for­mal­is­tic that only orga­ni­za­tions do.

But I agree that it is a good idea. A good mis­sion state­ment indi­cates what the pur­pose of the orga­ni­za­tion is. Par­ent­ing and fam­ily life eas­ily slips into an end­less, daily rou­tine full of end­less activ­i­ties, where we eas­ily lose direc­tion and keep push­ing really impor­tant things out, as we focus on fire­fight­ing the urgen­cies that keep com­ing our way. Mak­ing a Mis­sion State­ment is of course noth­ing more com­pli­cated than stop­ping and think­ing about what the long term goals are  our pur­pose as Mums, and as a fam­ily. The mere process of doing so gives per­spec­tive and valu­able point­ers at every cross-roads for which direc­tion we should take.

A Mis­sion State­ment for Moth­er­hood requires that we ask our­selves what the goal of par­ent­ing and of hav­ing a fam­ily really is.

Susan con­cludes that her Mom Mis­sion is that she wants her chil­dren to suc­ceed in school, to learn to read and study. She wants them to learn to han­dle their finances when they are older, learn to con­sider oth­ers before them­selves and to have a sense of grat­i­tude. To make friends, eat healthy and play sports; to learn that say­ing “sorry” leads to last­ing rela­tion­ships. To cook for them­selves, to do laun­dry and clean a bath­room. She won­ders if her goals for her son should be the same as for her daugh­ter.  She breaks down her ques­tions into cat­e­gories: Aca­d­e­mic, spir­i­tual goals, life skills, friend­ship  and fam­ily fun goals.

I think Susan is off to a great start. What my child should take with her into adult­hood is of course an essen­tial part of what I like to achieve as a Mum and I can sub­scribe to most goals on Susan’s list. And if I had a son, I would cer­tainly not leave out the cook­ing and the laun­dry skills!

But when I keep on think­ing, I con­clude that I am more on a Fam­ily Mis­sion than a Mum Mis­sion.

My Mis­sion State­ment would be about all the peo­ple in the fam­ily — thus also about the goals for Mum and Dad as a per­sons in their own right, and these can­not be seen sep­a­rately from what the kids should learn or do.

The dynam­ics and inter­ac­tion between all fam­ily mem­bers would also stand cen­tral in my Mis­sion State­ment — how we share respon­si­bil­i­ties, share ben­e­fits and how we com­mu­ni­cate with each other. How we bal­ance the time, energy and money we spend on activ­i­ties inside and out­side the family.

I would also not leave out how we, as a fam­ily, relate to the world around us. How ‘green’ we should aim to be, and how we should view our respon­si­bil­i­ties vis-a-vis peo­ple around us.

And finally — I would like to empha­sise the value of liv­ing together in the moment — not only get­ting some­where.

Seems I have to have a good chat to my hus­band and my daugh­ter before I dig any deeper into this!

Thus — to be continued.

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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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I’m very proud: today, the Mum­my­Mug is fea­tured in Collezioni 03 Baby, a styl­ish, glossy Ital­ian mag­a­zine and cat­a­logue for baby fash­ion and par­ent­ing essentials.

Absolutely gor­geous pho­tog­ra­phy, fan­tas­tic pre­sen­ta­tion of fash­ion and acces­sories for the 2010 Spring and Sum­mer season.

Cer­tainly worth an on-screen flick-through! 

In a spe­cial sec­tion, the Mum­my­Mug is pre­sented among other cool prod­ucts and a fun­da­men­tal detail for the smart Mums.

‘Home at last! And time to relax with a cup of cof­fee. Mum­my­Mug comes to the res­cue, a mug with a spe­cial lid, spill proof, to avoid any lit­tle acci­dents. Mum can sip at will, leav­ing a safety valve to do the rest… because mums also deserves a moment’s peace and calm.…

… or oth­er­wise expressed, sound­ing even bet­ter in Italian:

.. anche le mamme mer­i­tano un attimo di serenita tutto per se!

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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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After a few months of blog­ging and div­ing into the online Mum com­mu­nity, I am more con­vinced than ever that the Mum­my­Mug should be brought to mar­ket together with other online Mums.

Mums who are already in the game for a while; estab­lished as blog­gers and per­haps have a pro­fes­sional back­ground in marketing.

Mumpre­neurs, who obvi­ously would be shar­ing in the finan­cial suc­cess they will hope­fully help cre­ate, by blog­ging and pro­mot­ing the Mum­my­Mug to mums.

But who also would lis­ten and crowd­source  ideas for what the Mum­my­Mug should evolve into, and feed that infor­ma­tion back so I can tune the prod­uct and the brand into the real needs of the Mums using it.

Thus some­thing going way beyond clas­sic affil­i­ate mar­ket­ing. Some­thing really rid­ing the social media wave!

So — are you the Mum­my­Mug Mum I am look­ing for? Then I can’t wait to hear from you ( cecilia@mummymug.com ) . Together we can put the magic into the Mum­my­Mug brand!

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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.
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Are you an aspir­ing (Mum)blogger but not sure where to start and how it is done?

I’ve got a good tip for you. Being a begin­ner myself, I have signed up for the Mum-bloggers E-course, run by Erica from Lit­tle­Mummy.

Divided into three courses of 10 weeks each (Begin­ner, Inter­me­di­ate and Advanced) she takes you step by step through the basics, such as start­ing a blog, posts and pages and com­ment­ing eti­quette, basic SEO, join­ing groups and reviews and com­pe­ti­tions — and more. She tells me that the Inter­me­di­ate and Advanced courses will cover  Slideshows, video, analysing blog data, pod­cast­ing, mon­e­tiz­ing, Email list build­ing, newslet­ters .… and finally e-courses and ebooks, so you can end up know­ing how to share your knowl­edge as well!

I am about two thirds through the Beginner’s level. the obvi­ous plus-points is that for free, it is infor­ma­tive and — it is extensive.

What I most like is its struc­ture and care­ful avoid­ance of infor­ma­tion over­load. Thanks to the weekly pace, you actu­ally not get more infor­ma­tion than you can digest dur­ing the startup of a blog.  I see the E-course email in my inbox, it takes no more than 15 min­utes to inter­nalise what it says. Because it is not more infor­ma­tion than I can digest, the mes­sage actu­ally sticks.And I am encour­aged to apply and try what she is talk­ing about.

Also, Erica’s style is to the point, informed and has a friendly tone.

So, thumbs up for Erica — and wish­ing all you prospec­tive blog­gers out there some happy reading!

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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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Hi every­one! I hope you have had a relax­ing and good Christ­mas break and feel refreshed and ready for the new year. I hope 2010 will bring you health, hap­pi­ness and all other things you wish for your­self and your family.

I’m just back from a trip to Swe­den, which com­bined nice relax­ation with the fam­ily with use­ful meet­ings and con­tacts for Mum­my­Mug. Really look­ing for­ward to a new year, which will cer­tainly bring lots of hard work but also a lot of fun, I am sure!

As one of my New Year’s res­o­lu­tions is to start vlog­ging, I decided to start right away!

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