It's true that a business is like a baby -- unless you're an entrepreneur who actually has children. Then you start to realize quickly that during all those years you ran a business and kept referring to it as your baby, you didn't know what the heck you were talking about. Oh, sure, there are similarities, but a business never gets colic, there are no diapers required (unless your business is manufacturing them), and if you're working on your company at 4 a.m., that's generally your choice. Let's put it this way: if you go to bed without taking care of important business matters, even if that makes you a bad entrepreneur, you aren't going to be hauled into a police station for neglect.
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Molly Chen knows the difference. In fact, she knows all too well. For the last year or so, she has been trying to add fuel to her startup business, Bibs and Match LLC, which sells baby bibs and matching onesies, and for the last two months, she has been working on her business while being a mother to a premature baby.
Two months ago, she gave birth to Morgan, who, as it would turn out, decided to arrive two months earlier than planned. The doctors still have no idea why the little girl couldn't wait -- but in any case, they were able to successfully deliver the three-pound baby. Morgan is now out of the hospital and weighs seven pounds.
But Chen has spent most of the last two months living in relatives' homes at night and spending the days with her baby daughter every day at one hospital (two hours from her house) and then another (90 minutes away). During that time, Chen saw her husband and two sons when she could, and she did work on her business during this postpartum period, but let’s just say that Bibs and Match wasn't her top priority.
"It hasn't hurt my business, really," says Chen. "This is a passive process. It's not like opening a store where you have customers to wait on, and inventory to constantly fill. There's a lot of back and forth over email and the phone, getting quotes from manufacturers and taking care of logistical issues. There's a lot of placing an order -- and then waiting."
Lately, Chen has been looking for a manufacturer and has finally found one overseas -- although not in America, to her chagrin -- but she's still entertaining the idea of using an American company down the road. But for the last several weeks, she has been discussing those aforementioned logistical issues with her new manufacturer. Those issues include everything from shipping, and all of the costs that come with it, to what's incurred going through customs and what it costs to ship freight, and whether Chen will have a big enough order that it'll come in its own container, or if it'll be shipped in a container with another company's products, which can add to the cost.
Chen says that in the past, she chose shipping methods that were easier, but not necessarily cheaper, and that she has a friend in shipping who has been giving her advice. "I'm trying to see what it'll cost if I take on more work myself, and how much work it will involve," says Chen, since, after all, time is also money, too.
So for now, Chen is in an email-and-wait mode and taking care of Morgan, who is destined to be a future customer of Bibs and Match LLC. "She's a little bit too small for my smallest size because she's a preemie," says Chen, "but not for much longer, and I look forward to that. She is doing great."