Savvy Mom Media Co-Founder, Sarah Morgenstern Shares Details of Mom Entrepreneur of The Year Contest

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We’re please to introduce you to one of our newest members, StartUp Princess Sarah Morgenstern of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Sarah is Co-Founder (she’s the lovely brunette in the photo) and Publisher of Savvy Mom Media, savvymom.ca SavvyMom Media is the publisher of SavvyMom Today, a twice-weekly e-newsletter for moms across Canada. In addition to the national edition, they publish local editions in the Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Calgary markets.

This Summer while I was checking my Google alerts for “women entrepreneur” (free service) I became aware of the Savvy Mom Entrepreneur of The Year contest (Canada only) and contacted Sarah for more details and see how StartUp Princess can promote the contest and get involved in 2008. We enjoyed a great chat that covered a variety of subjects including child care to how they decided to develop a contest to support Mom Entrepreneurs. We asked Sarah some details about her contest and also to fill out a StartUp Princess profile. Enjoy getting to know Sarah and her company better:

Please tell us about Savvy Mom’s Mom Entrepreneur of the year contest:

Since we launched, we’ve always looked for ways to support mom entrepreneurs and we have covered many of them in our editorial over the last two years. To take it to the next level, we came up with the idea of finding Canada’s top mom entrepreneur through a readers’ choice contest and brought together a group of prize partners to provide the winner with an $18,000 package of cash, office equipment and business advisory services to take her business to the next level. We launched the SavvyMom Mompreneur of the Year Award in June and it runs through September 16, 2007 at www.mompreneuraward.com.

What benefits have you seen so far from the contest as a business owner and also for your community?

We’ve been thrilled with the response to the contest – with over 300 nominees and over 20,000 votes cast, we have definitely seen a great increase in the number of subscribers to the SavvyMom Today newsletter but even more thrilling for us has been the chance to provide a showcase for all these great mom-run businesses.

What is your day to day role at Savvy Mom? My official title is Publisher which means I have oversight of the ‘business side’ of the business (rather than the editorial side). So I am basically the CFO, CIO and Sales Manager. Additionally, I do some of the writing for our National Edition and am the chief proofreader when we are in the middle of our production/publishing process.

What inspired you to start Savvy Mom? Minnow, my business partner, and I were both ‘go-to’ moms in our circle of friends, often being sought out to provide advice on all things mom “from diapers to dinner parties and everything in between”. Avid readers of some of the new advisory emails that had come out targeting fashionistas and those looking for the latest trends, we were inspired to bring the best of tried and tested mom advice together with a fun and entertaining format to publish what is now the SavvyMom Today newsletter

How long have you been in business? Almost 2 years

How did you fund it? With savings from my consulting days

Current Business Challenge? How to address Web 2.0 and the new social networking phenomenon to further develop our community of 20,000 readers and allow them to get involved in the content, while still maintaining our editorial angle of expert advice.

What are you doing about it? We’re working on a prototype that we think provides the right balance and hoping to implement in the next 6 months.

Favorite motivational quote: Be the change you want in the world. (Mahatma Gandhi)

Family? Yes, Tess who is almost 7, Adam who is 5 and Laine who is 3 (yes, three kids in 3.5 years!)

If so, how do you balance family and business? Don’t sleep that much! Also we schedule lots of family fun activities for the weekends so we make sure we have good times together.

Favorite book? The Three Martini Playdate by Christie Mellor

What do you do to relax? Bikram (hot) yoga, downhill skiing and read home décor magazines

What do you want to change most about your world? Since I am an online publisher,is it bad to say that I wish the rate of technological change we are living with in the world today would slow down so we could all take a breath and just get caught up with everything?

What are you most proud of? The brand we’ve created with SavvyMom, the numerous jobs we have created for other moms and my kids and their accomplishments (of course)

What advice would you like to offer other StartUp Princesses? We got this advice when we started and I didn’t’ believe it - but it’s true and I wish I had: it will take twice as long and cost three times as much to get the business to where you want it to be so be sure to plan for that.

Favorite Magic Wand (tool/resource)? Google Desktop – it saves me so much time looking for emails and documents

What are your 5 year goals for Savvy Mom? To increase our revenue by 5x where it is today, have successfully established our brand-enhancing social community and to be working a few less hours a week than the 50 or 60 we are now.

Welcome to The Kingdom of Women Entrepreneurs, StartUp Princess Sarah!

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