In Honor of Mother’s Day, Here are 7 Mompreneurs Who Founded Million-Dollar Businesses

Raising kids is hard. Raising kids while founding and managing an eventual million-dollar business is harder. Despite every struggle life threw at them, these seven “mompreneurs” ran highly successful and innovative businesses without losing sight of their families.

Jacqueline Smith — Liquid Palisade.

Jacqueline Smith grew up knowing she’d someday own a cosmetics company. As a stay-at-home mom, she had a hard time escaping her kids for long enough to get a professional manicure, and at-home trials resulted in frequent interruptions and messy polish. From her struggle Kiesque Liquid Palisade was born — the original liquid painter’s tape for nails! Kiesque is now an international cosmetics company whose products are sold at Sephora, BeautyBar.com, and many other fine retailers.

The process wasn’t perfect, though; like most startup owners, Jacqueline had to acquire funding for her idea, and she soon became pregnant with a third child. Now, Jacqueline has her busy schedule figured out, making room for her kids, work, and play: she gets up at 4 am for a bit of quiet work time, and after taking the kids to school, she moves to the office. Jacqueline and her team even leave the office around 3:15 pm to pick their children up from school, take them to afternoon extracurriculars, and enjoy family dinners. While things occasionally get a bit hectic, Jacqueline thanks her Apple Watch for reminding her of scheduled events and helping to keep life a little more sane.

Lisa Greenwald — Chewbeads.

During the first couple years, babies love to tug and chew on anything that catches their eye — including people’s jewelry. Lisa Greenwald noticed the trend, and instead of hiding her jewelry until her son grew up, she decided to try something new: wearing soft, colorful, silicone jewelry for her baby boy to play with. Sure enough, the jewelry not only provided her son with a portable teething toy, but it looked bright and chic as well. At this point, Chewbeads was a no-brainer.

At first, finding a factory that would produce silicone jewelry was difficult. Lisa and her husband ended up using Alibaba to find and form manufacturing relationships and ensure the fulfillment of specific safety requirements. Now Chewbeads operates on both the retail and wholesale level, providing fun and safe products to families worldwide. Lisa’s husband works approximately 50 hours a week on Chewbeads, while Lisa herself works in the evenings (after the kids go to bed) and on the weekends, when the family is relaxing at home. As far as productivity goes, Lisa recommends that new startup owners outsource work they don’t have time for or aren’t particularly great at. “Packing and shipping was taking up so much of our time. When we realized that our core business what designing and manufacturing silicone products, we started spending more time on that and hired someone to do our logistics.”

Kwany Lui — Bundle Organics.

Kwany Lui was working full-time for an organic foods company when she realized she could put her great work ethic and inner entrepreneurial itch to better use. Her female friends, many of whom were going through their first pregnancies, were struggling to obtain the right balance of nutrients through their diets, and Kwany had been told by her doctor that prenatal vitamins (previously the end-all be-all in Kwany’s mind) didn’t meet all of pregnant women’s vitamin and mineral needs. With a bit of experience in healthy eating and fresh-pressed juicing, Kwany and her co-founder John Mascari set out to provide mothers-to-be with rich, nutritional beverages that would help them feel their best. Bundle Organics was the result.

Bundle Organics is the leading maker of caffeine-free juices and teas that help to minimize the unwanted side-symptoms of pregnancy, like heartburn, indigestion, nausea, and cravings. Though the beverages can be purchased online, Bundle Organics juices can also be found at Buy Buy Baby, Babies R Us, and other major retailers. Kwany’s biggest entrepreneurial struggle has always been prioritization — instead of deciding what to do on any given day, it’s normally deciding what not to do until the next — but differentiating “important” tasks from “urgent” ones has been of great use. With a baby on the way, Kwany thanks her husband for supporting her entrepreneurial lifestyle and helping her to clear some “me time” amidst the chaos.

Michele Welsh — SafetyTat.

Michele Welsh, her husband, and their three small children were at a theme park one day when the fear of being separated from one another gave Michele a bright idea. In a frenzy, Michele scribbled her mobile phone number onto her children’s arms, just in case they became lost in a large crowd. She and her husband received several compliments about the concept throughout the day, and in an effort to share their little “safety net” with other families, the basis for SafetyTat was born.