14 July 2006
The Modern Working Woman in Business, at Home
So here’s the typical mom in America today: baby on knee, small business down the street, with rifle in Pakistan.
Your Business Blogger(R) wrote a column for Small Business Trends a while back. About the highlights — and I’m not talking hair — of a typical mom. Yes, women have always been producers — breeding babies and businesses since Eden, but this is something each generation has to discover for itself. See Women’s Future in the Small Business Labor Force.
Helen, second from left
with rifle “consulting” in Pakistan
“How do you it all?” Accomplished women with kids constantly get this question.
Helen Philbrook, married and mother of three, from Raleigh, NC, has the answer.
Your Business Blogger(R) sat down with Helen and her husband David to learn the secret.
Helen:
GARDENING WITH CONFIDENCE™
She’s a former Vice President of an environmental testing firm, and perhaps the world’s first female “Smoke Stack Sniffer.” She’s run a number of start-ups.
But Helen says she’s now “followed her passion to gardening.” One of her first companies Tiger Lily’s was an award-winning firm and her current company, Gardening with Confidence gives her what she needs most:
Flexibility.
She was well-prepared. Helen has an M.S. in Environmental Engineering and Science, studied Garden Design in London, and completed a series of international consulting assignments. In a male-dominated business. Where she learned:
Negotiation.
The greatest challenge women face in business is learning to negotiate.
But she also negotiates with her clients. Hard. She establishes upfront contracts with the explicit understanding that her family will come first.
She is an advocate of “sequencing” for women — marriage, children, work. Helen says a woman can always have an “ambitious career.” After the kids are in school. She knows she will anger feminists.
She has advice to young women starting out. Where the fear is that they will get behind the power curve. “Not so.”
Helen says, “Your career is still waiting for you.”
After your children.
Was this helpful? Please comment.
Thank you (foot)notes:
Full Disclosure: Helen is my sister.
Follow Your Business Blogger(R) on Twitter.
No Speed Bumps has Women in Engineering.
Alas, a blog has Homeward Bound.
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