I’m taking a Master’s class about Executive Leadership and my assignment last week was to put together a presentation about an executive leader in the entertainment business. Lots of names came to mind, but I chose Paula Deen because she represents what I call an “overnight entrepreneur.” And, she’s a mom.

Paula Deen is an original mompreneuer. She’s enjoying success today because of a lot of hard work in order to take care of her sons. Here’s why Paula is an inspiration to women and moms.

• Devastation Leads to Action
  After 20 years of marriage, Paula Deen was faced with a devastating divorce, and the need to find a way to make a living to support her two young sons and teenage brother. All she’d know to this point in her life is how to cook and care for people, but she needed skills — and fast. Money was tight; she only had $200 and no business skills. This didn’t stop Paula from digging down deep to survive with the only thing she knew; cooking. (source: Paula’s Story.)
• Overcoming Obstacles
  She had no money, no formal education, and a disease that kept her indoors. (source: Paula’s Story.) A New York Times article quotes Paula on her agoraphobia:

  Some days I could get to the supermarket, but I could never go too far inside,” Ms. Deen said. “I learned to cook with the ingredients they kept close to the door.”

• Believing In Herself
  Paula believed in herself and self-published her first cookbook. Since that time she has had multiple cookbooks published along with a new memoir and is the Editor-in-Chief of a magazine.
• Taking the Good With the Bad
• Take Control of Your Life
• Do What You Love

Paula sums it up great on her Web site:

But, you know what, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t of taken the good with the bad, embraced both the heartache and joy, and taken control of my life when I thought it could not have gotten worse.”

Related:

• PaulaDeen.com
• NY Times article about Deen.
• Cooking With Paula Deen magazine.
• Top 5 recipes from Paula’s magazine.
• Paula’s The Lady and Son’s restaurant.
• Paula on Food Network.

A friend of mine gave my son a “Little People” house as a hand-me-over. It’s in great shape so I can’t really call it a hand-me-down. She got it from a friend and her daughter already had one so she gave it to us. Well, my son loves this new toy. Daily we have to “play house” together.

We’ve brought all of the Little People that live with us into this new house, but the dining room table that it comes with only has chairs for the Mommy and Daddy of the house. Poor baby has nowhere to sit. And, the guests that come over have nowhere to sit.

So, genius that I am, I decide to go on eBay to look for an extra dining room table and the high chair for the baby because “nobody puts Baby in a corner!”

Well, as I’m searching though all of these stranger’s listings, I am hit with a wave of nostalgia. Most of the entries on eBay are for vintage sets.

Vintage= old

Old= the houses I used to play with as a kid.

I’m looking at the lime green ’70s chairs, the patio loungers and the black and white dog with freckles on his snout. I remember the people too, they didn’t have arms back then. I played with these toys. Suddenly I am transported to a small child, playing with my favorite toys.

And, here I thought that Little People was a new concept.

Related:

• Find out what’s changed in “Sesame Street” since the ’70s.
• Fisher-Price’s Little People Web site.

I found an excellent article called “The Guilty Mom Entrepreneur,”on the struggles that entrepreneur moms face (or any working mother) with trying to balance work, life and some type of career or job. The article mentnons the book: Mommy Guilt: Learn to Worry Less, Focus on What Matters Most and Raise Happier Kids, which highlights seven points for “guilt-free mommy-living”:

1. You must be willing to let some things go.
2. Parenting is not a competitive sport.
3. Look toward the future and at the big picture.
4. Learn when and how to live in the moment.
5. Get used to saying “yes” more often and being able to defend your “no.”
6. Laugh a lot, especially with your children.
7. Set aside a specific time to have fun as a family.

Kind of matches a post I read the other day, “Live Like a Toddler: Six Ways to Change Your Life,” from the “Catch Your Breath Blog.” Karen Murphy outlines six key concepts that toddlers do instinctively that we can all do in our daily lives to make things a bit easier. One of my favorite pieces of toddler advice is number 5 on her list: “let someone help you.” Most Moms I know try to do it all and we need to stop and ask for help when we need it. Read all of Karen’s post here.

I have a love/hate relationship with the ever-popular bunny book, “Guess How Much I Love You?”

The first time I read it, I have no clue what I am in for. I am thinking it’s just some cute book about bunnies. I have no idea the tear-inducing effect it will have on me or how it will close up my throat as if I am having an allergic reaction. Hand over the Benadryl, please.

But, read it I must.

Tear up I do.

Swallow hard.

Keep reading.

Enjoy every minute of the it.

He’ll never know how much I really do love him.

I found an interesting article the other day that speaks to me as a mom. It’s about the need for career-minded professionals to have a “second life.” I’m not talking about the Web site Second Life, although that certainly can foot the bill in terms of having an alternative to your day-to-day.

Get another life,” by David D. Perlmutter, on Chronicle.com talks mostly about educators and how they balance life on the tenure track with having a family or a hobby, but easily translates to motherhood and the importance of having outside interests.  This could be outside your career or just outside your role as a mother.

David Heenan, a management scholar, makes the intellectual case for having multiple lives — career, personal, communal, spiritual, and even artistic — in his 2002 book Double Lives. He documents how some of history’s most successful (and busy) people found it both necessary and enriching to devote time to alternate forms and forums of creativity that seemed, on the surface, to have nothing to do with their more famous vocations …

Heenan argues that even those of us whose career ambitions are on a lower scale than saving the free world should find a similar “second life.”

Bottom line is this … outside interests have the ability to cleanse the mind and fulfill needs that you may never get from an employer. For SAHMs it can be the window into yourself … doing something you love that has nothing to do with being a mother.

When choosing your “second life,” Perlmutter gives advice, summarized here:

• Whatever you choose, be passionate about it …
• Don’t let your second life be all-consuming …
• The joy of escaping into that second life can lull people into thinking that it can or should be their only vocation. Don’t be like the assistant professor who spent so much time playing computer games and daydreaming about designing new ones that he failed in his tenure bid, and then didn’t find a job in the video-game industry, either.”

Read his full story here.