These two entrepreneurs are helping other moms start businesses

While there’s plenty of talk about building an MVP and being cautions about giving up equity, entrepreneurs are often looking for tips on how to balance startup and family life.

With Moms as Entrepreneurs, Tammira Lucas and Jasmine Simms are showing how motherhood can fit into the process of starting a business.

MAE is now running an eight-week academy that provides entrepreneurship training. As the first cohort is running, the cofounders have seen a publicity boost with a launch at Startup Soiree during Light City, and a feature in the Warnock Social Innovation Journal.

Lucas runs the Business Doctor consulting firm, and Simms is the founder of Scrub Nail Boutique in Fells Point. The two were introduced by Simms’ stepfather, Omar Muhammad, who runs the Entrepreneurial Assistance and Development Center at Morgan State University. Along with being mothers who started businesses, they also both grew up in the Penn-North/Sandtown area of West Baltimore.

“I always get the question of, ‘How do you do it?'” said Lucas. The duo set out to show the logistics of following one’s dreams, she said.

After organizing a conference at Morgan State around entrepreneurship, they realized there was an opportunity for more impact. Moms as Entrepreneurs began as a podcast to provide resources. At the Monday night academy at Gesthemane Baptist Church, Lucas and Simms are providing resources to help other moms follow their dreams right in the neighborhood where they grew up.

Twenty moms currently partake in the sessions. The academy is split into modules in areas like customer acquisition, team building and finance. They bring in experts to teach some of the sessions. Specifically for moms, they include sessions on time management, and “how to put themselves first without feeling guilty for doing so,” Lucas said.

For moms building businesses, Lucas said the network they build is equally important in both areas. They look to build that with a resource day in the final week of the academy where they identify what they need, and a closing expo to connect with the wider community.

The first expo is set for May 23 at Pixilated Photobooth’s HQ in Morrell Park. MAE is planning two more cohorts this year, with the second starting on June 6.

In case you need more evidence that they are entrepreneurially minded, Simms and Lucas are also selling T-shirts that raise money for MAE.

Anyone who wears it can be a proud Ph.D.: Pretty, Hungry & Determined.

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