How Mompreneurs Use Elance to Find Clients

I’ve been familiar with Elance for years and although I’ve never utilized it I’m aware of many situations where entrepreneurs and clients have connected to do great things together. What is Elance you ask? Here’s how they describe themselves: “Elance is an online workplace where businesses find and hire people “on demand” to get work done quickly and cost effectively.”

Elance recently posted a series of 3 mom articles about mompreneurs that utilize Elance to keep business rolling in. The most recent article was about Sue Kristoff who started her business, The Kristoff Group LLC, after she had a couple of children and decided to trade in her daily commute and co-workers for her family. Her freelance technical writing business is doing well and she spends about 10 hours a week serving clients right now while her kids are young. Sounds like a great plan to me!

The other two articles offer glimpses into two other moms that have decided to take control over their time and destiny. They can be found on the Elance blog here:

Successful Recipe for Mompreneurs and How Lisa uses Elance

We salute these moms who are living the WAHM dream.

Little Lady From Ohio… NOT!

When I read Jackie Billiter’s story (in which she refers to herself as a “little lady from Ohio”) I just couldn’t wait to share it with you. There are so many lessons to take away from her recent experience dealing with celebrities.

Jackie is the owner of Cutie Patootie Diaper Cakes and her unique diaper cakes were discovered last year by some of the Huggies people (Kimberly-Clark). They found Jackie’s business online and it turns out that they were looking for a special gift for Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who was preparing to leave the popular TV show, The View, to go on maternity leave.

After discussing the options with Jackie they decided on a 5-tier custom Cutie Patootie diaper cake for Elisabeth that would be given to her live during the TV show on ABC. Needless to say Jackie was beyond thrilled at this unexpected opportunity for some publicity.

But, as happens so often things went anything but smoothly. Elisabeth moved her departure date up by a full week and this didn’t leave enough time to ship the extremely large and heavy diaper cake to ABC’s studio in New York city. Overnighting it was out of the question because it would have cost far more then the gift itself. So like any successful entrepreneur Jackie took matters into her own hands. She and her husband loaded the diaper cake into their car and went on a road trip from their home in Ohio to New York city! They drove 9 hours straight and delivered the special gift personally. And like most entrepreneurs they turned around and drove straight back home so as not to waste all of the profits on an overnight stay in NYC.

This exceptional entrepreneur was called on again a couple of weeks later to deliver a couple of cakes to celebrities in Chicago, which she also delivered in person. Clearly, Jackie has what it takes to succeed: A quality and unique product, a strong desire to satisfy her clients, a willingness to do whatever it takes, and perseverance.

Way to go Jackie!