Shannon Venable of Venable Editorial Associates
Shannon Venable is the Publisher and Owner of Venable Editorial Associates, which is an editorial and educational services firm that publishes Italiakids.com, an online resource for international families in Italy, and operates Arte al Sole, a summer art program for international kids in Tuscany.
5 Questions is a series where online business women are asked 5 questions about life as a mom and entrepreneur. To be featured, please contact me.
1. What or who inspired you to start your business?
My children inspired me to start my own business, coupled with a heavy dose of loving support and encouragement from my husband and family and friends. From childhood, I’ve always been the type who likes to innovate and come up with business ideas, but making the full leap to becoming an entrepreneur can be scary. As my daughters grew to school age, I began a real process of self-reflection about where I stood in terms of my own personal goals in my life as a woman. I suddenly had an epiphany that, although I had worked throughout my children’s infancy and toddler years in the publishing industry feeling very fortunate to be able to telecommute, when I really took stock of my career I had the sense that I was not progressing in a way that was meaningful. This realization led to both a surge of entrepreneurial creativity in which I would chat late in to the night with my husband about business ideas, and also, quite frankly, self doubt. What finally led me to dive right in was the fact that I wanted to pursue my dreams both for my own fulfillment and for the sake of modeling what that means to my daughters. It might sound too profound for a 6 and a 9 year old, but you would be surprised: they really get it, they are two of the best little supporters a mompreneur could ask for!
2. What motivates you?
This question alone is so important, because motivation is essential to the growth of any business. In articulating a business plan for both Italiakids.com and Arte al Sole, I took a “social entrepreneurial” approach because having an effect on people’s lives and the world we live in is equally as important to me as producing profits. From this viewpoint, as my ventures grow in terms of revenue, my company’s ability to give back and contribute to positive social change will in turn increase. This is not as straightforward an approach as a business model geared strictly toward generating profits, yet I have found that it strengthens motivation because the daily rewards of contributing to society in a meaningful way are equally if not more powerful than the potential material rewards.
3. How do you balance being a mom and an entrepreneur?
It can be so challenging at times to be my own boss and be queen of my castle, especially in the current era in which technology creates an environment that supports being “online” all the time. I am constantly working on maintaining the boundaries between family life and work, usually by setting my own guidelines such as limiting work on the weekend and not answering any emails after 6:00 pm. Prioritizing is important as well: being a mom is the number one priority, so that helps to put things in perspective.
4. What do you love most about what you do?
As a child, when confronted with questions related to school or other pursuits, my dad used to say “just be sure that if someone asks you ‘who are you and what do you do’ that you always have an answer that you can feel good about.” This is a very simple bit of advice, yet in raising my own kids I see the long-term implications of instilling this in them. So, to get to the answer to your question, what I love the most about what I do is that it incorporates so many of my own passions and allows me to collaborate with a community of clients, coworkers, and friends who share many of these same interests and goals.
5. What single piece of advice would you give someone who is starting out?
You need much, much more patience and faith in yourself than you think. Persistence, creativity, and constant reassessment of your goals are crucial to establishing the viability of any enterprise.
You can contact Shannon at shannon_at_italiakids.com, follow her on Twitter: @ItaliaKids, or check out Italiakids.com.
Please visit our 5 Questions page or feel free to contact me for more information.
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I loved the responses that Shannon h Venable gave to her questions. I found them motivating and inspirational!