Million-Dollor Wife

For Lindsay Holt, starting a business two years ago with her new husband already has paid off in an end run around maternal guilt.

For years, as a single mom working for a catalog company in the San Francisco Bay area, she used to leave for work before her daughter Danni, then in middle school, was awake. Holt helped Danni get moving in the morning by phone from the ferry as she commuted.

"That was just gut-wrenching," Holt recalled.

It was on the sidelines of one of Danni's soccer games that Holt was inspired to start the business that now allows her to make breakfast for her daughter and drive her to school. At the matches, Lindsay and her husband Tate noticed mothers complaining about having to run back home to fetch jerseys, shin guards and other items the kids forgot to pack.

After six months of research and patent searches, they launched Nagtags, electronic checklists that kids can attach to sports bags and backpacks. They put in $50,000 of their own money, excluding salary sacrifices, and raised about $575,000 from investors since incorporating in mid-2005.

The Holts are doing what many parents long to pursue. Being your own boss with the ability to work from home is the holy grail for many families, though the financial risks can be great.

Parents often have to sacrifice the regular income, employer-sponsored health insurance and other tax-favored benefits that make covering bills, planning for contingencies and saving for retirement easier and automatic. But the upside can be lucrative for people who find a market for their product or service, small-business experts say.

Nagtags Inc.'s two employees diverge in their tolerance for risk. "I've been a steady paycheck kind of person for a long time, so it takes some getting used to," said Lindsay Holt.

Tate Holt said he's more comfortable with uncertainty. "Having been through peaks and valleys of consulting for 15 years, I'm used to periods where there's comfort and then periods where there's panic."

Their family is in good company. About half of all U.S. businesses are home-based. Two-thirds of new businesses with at least one employee survive at least two years, and 44% survive at least four years, according to the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy.

Strategies for success

Entrepreneur Tamara Monosoff interviewed 17 successful businesswomen for her new book, "Secrets of Millionaire Moms." Among them was Julie Clark, creator of Baby Einstein, the video series for infants now owned by Disney.

"She said she couldn't do it all," Monosoff said of Clark, who found it increasingly difficult to do housework and grocery shopping on top of running her business. "As her revenue started building up she did take some money out to get that type of support."

Another "millionaire mom," Lane Nemeth, founded and led Discovery Toys for 20 years. The business nearly ran out of money three times but eventually rang up $100 million in annual sales. Nemeth sold that company to Avon a decade ago and is now chief executive of Petlane, a home-based party-plan business that sells pet products, based in Concord, Calif.

Nemeth advises parent entrepreneurs not to expect a home-based enterprise to free up their schedules.

"If you're serious about building a business, you're going to marry that darned thing," she said. "You do have more flexibility, but you don't more have free time."
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