Del Mar Times: Jan 29, 2015
For 15 years, Jennifer Becker worked in the corporate world. But after becoming a mom, she no longer wanted to work late and travel. She wanted to be home with her daughters.
“When I had my first daughter, I was still traveling and coordinating babysitters,” said Becker, who worked as a supply chain director, first in aerospace and then in consumer goods. “But when I had my second daughter, it just became apparent it was going to be a really hard career to maintain.”
After learning about Moms Making Six Figures, a San Diego-based marketing company that allows women to stay at home and either replace or supplement their income, Becker started with the company in October 2013. By January, she joined the company full time, leaving behind the corporate world for good.
“It was a very male-driven industry,” recalled Becker, who often had to travel across the country and around the world. “There wasn’t a lot of sympathy for women with children. There was always a lot of stress trying to juggle the kids. It was just really hard to balance.”
Becker isn’t alone.
While employment rates for women have been rising in other countries, they have declined in the United States, falling from 74 percent at its peak in 1999 to 69 percent today, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In addition to the downturn in the economy, a lack of family-friendly policies appears to have contributed to the lower rate, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation/New York Times/CBS News poll of unemployed adults ages 25 to 54.
Sixty-one percent of women said family responsibilities were a reason they weren’t working, compared to 37 percent of men. Of women who identify as homemakers and have not looked for a job in the last year, nearly three-fourths said they would consider reentering the workforce if a job offered flexible hours or allowed them to work from home.
To allow women to work from home and either replace or supplement their income, local resident Heidi Bartolotta quit her job and founded Moms Making Six Figures with two other women in December 2009. Since then, Moms Making Six Figures has grown to more than 300 team members.
“The corporate environment is failing families, and moms in particular,” said Bartolotta, a former pharmaceutical sales representative, whose daughters are 9 and 11 years old. “That’s the people we cater to — families looking for an alternative way to create a similar income but have flexibility.”
Although the company launched in San Diego, there are now team members across the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and Australia. Teams have long been established in San Diego County, Orange County and the Bay Area, as well as in Nevada, Arizona, Chicago and New York. New teams have also launched in Atlanta and Nashville.
Bartolotta said her team is comprised of women from very different education levels, backgrounds and work styles. Interested team members don’t have to have a marketing background, but they do have to have self-motivation and the desire to succeed because they make their own schedules and work from home, she added.
“The benefit of staying with a corporate company doesn’t have the pay-off anymore,” Bartolotta said. “You don’t have pensions and other benefits that companies gave back to you for investing so much of your life. That doesn’t really exist anymore for our generation. A company like ours is so applicable to people because they get to design, own and dictate their schedule and their life.”
“When I found Moms Making Six Figures, I was kind of in disbelief that I could still pull a six-figure income and really work around my kids’ schedule,” added Becker, whose daughters are 3 and 5 years old.
Over the last year, Becker has taken her daughters — now in preschool and kindergarten — to school every morning and picked them up every afternoon. She has gone on every field trip and been at every soccer practice.
“I was pretty much just coming in right at dinner and bath and bedtime, and that was it,” she said. “Now, I really get to be the person to pick them up and hear about their day. I calendar everything the kids are doing, and then I calendar work after that.”
Looking to expand her team at home and abroad, Bartolotta encourages interested women to contact her by filling out a form on the company’s website at www.momsmakingsixfigures.com/contact.
“Check it out and see if it’s for you,” Becker said. “Know there’s an alternative.”
For more information, call 858-837-1505 or visit momsmakingsixfigures.
com.
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