Being a working mom is no easy feat. It is a balancing act between being there for your family and working towards professional growth. Kenneth Choo, the founder and CEO of KC Creative Marketing, made it his life’s mission to help mothers become entrepreneurs. Having worked with mompreneurs almost his entire career, he realized how powerful Mompreneurship is to working moms having problems balancing their family and career, leading him to write the powerful book, Mother Industrialist. In this episode, he joins Amy and Jamie Honey to share the story behind the book and the lessons he learned from meeting amazing mompreneurs all over the world. Kenneth also shares the biggest driving force that helps create successful mompreneurs and how you, too, can do it!
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Listen to the podcast here
Mother Industrialist: The Power Of Mompreneurship With Kenneth Choo
Mompreneur Host And Coach
I am so excited, Jamie, because we have a guy that I have known for years.
Me too. I have seen his name.
His name is Kenneth Choo. He is the author of Mother Industrialist: Perfecting the Balance between Motherhood and Business Success. He is the Founder and CEO of KC Creative Marketing. He is a speaker on Mompreneurship and work/life balance. He has been working with mompreneurs for many years in the area of advertising, media, sales, and marketing. He has been helping his Mompreneur community build their businesses through his creative marketing consultancy.
He has been invited as a speaker in Mrs. Singapore and Classic Mrs. Singapore 2019 since 2018. Kenneth has also been producing events and workshops for his Mompreneur community. He has spoken on tons of stages and tons of online platforms about parenting and mompreneurship. I could go on and on but let’s learn from him. I would like to know from Kenneth himself. Welcome, Kenneth.
Thank you, Amy and Jamie. I am honored and excited. I woke up so early because I was afraid that I might sleep in and miss this. That is why I scheduled my alarm two hours before so that I have enough time to wake up and we need to get connected. As you know, technology sometimes fails. It is always good to be early to check in with you guys to find out more. I am excited to be on here and see both of you for the first time. We have been hearing each other’s names all around, knowing about our presence and that we are rocking it and doing amazing stuff. I am blessed to be here with both of you. You are amazing people.
Why did you choose women, especially? Why did you become so passionate about championing women, especially mothers, to become entrepreneurs? It is so interesting to see a guy. Usually, you see women do women’s empowerment but we are seeing a man. I love having a man as a voice for us. We could use more voices. What got you here? Tell me about that?
In fact, every time I come on a podcast interview or media, they always ask me like, “Why is a man so passionate about empowering mothers and women for now?” The reason why is I have to bring all of you back to many years ago when I was working for a parenting magazine, which is called Motherhood Magazine. I was working as an Advertising Sales Executive. That was my first sales job.
I was handling account management and servicing my clients. I realized that most of my clients are mothers and started their businesses because they want to spend more time with their children, get out of the rat race or felt that they want to pursue something that is more meaningful to them with a purpose.
That is why they started their business to achieve that work-life balance. Long story short, I have been working with all these mompreneurs in the space of advertising, sales, media, and marketing. Years ago, I’ve got laid off by my previous employer. My clients said that, “Why don’t you start your own marketing agency so that you can continue to service us?” That was when I started working with my clients. Most of them are mompreneurs and need help in their marketing because they are juggling both work and life balance. To try to achieve that, the only way is to outsource your marketing to someone who is the expert and is familiar with the industry, especially parenting.
Most of them who started their business started from the experience of motherhood, the products for the baby, baby essentials, and all that stuff. This is an industry that I am very familiar with and know how to market. I know how to reach out to the parents, and I knew the medium. In that case, running a business, as all of us know, is not easy. My first year was good. Everything was good. In the second year because the economy was not that good and they have lost sales. The first thing that most business owners cut is marketing. It is not supposed to be that. In fact, you should even pay more but most of them would take away the marketing or reduce the marketing.
The first thing that most business owners cut is marketing. It is not supposed to be that. In fact, you should even pay more. #HoneyDARElove Click To TweetThat was when my business and my income were affected. That was when I went the creative way. I went to upgrade my skills. I went for seminars and workshops, and that was when I met our publisher Gerry Robert of Black Card Books. He showed me on stage that we can use our book to send out the message that we want to send out.
Initially, my thought was, “I want to talk about my life, and because of my career, I went through depression. I came out of that and started my business.” I thought that I might be writing about my life journey, which I find is quite dramatic and something that could inspire people, especially people who are depressed and not happy in their job. They might find some light in that.
When I talked to our publisher and our publishing team, they say, “Kenneth, I do not think anybody will be interested in you yet.” That hurt. They said, “It is okay, Kenneth. Let’s discover further and find out more and see if there is anything that we could come up with better?” That was when they helped me to connect back the dots and say, “Years ago, you connected with all these mompreneurs. All the while, you have been connected with them. Why don’t you interview them, share their story, and you also share your insights with the readers?”
I was like, “That is a good idea.” It was very easy. I sent a text message out to about 30 of my mompreneurs. A chunk of them agreed to be interviewed and featured, and then three more joined in. That makes fifteen of them in my book, Mother Industrialist. They gave me the idea, and I started interviewing them. That was when I realized that, “Mompreneurship is so powerful because that is the solution to a lot of moms who are not spending more time, especially for working moms.”
The more I dug into it, the more I interviewed them, and the more research I did, I realized, “This something could solve a lot of problems that a lot of my working moms are having.” They always have the guilt of not spending more time with their children. They are always stuck with their work because their bosses require more things.
When I interviewed them, I had this idea, and I realized that there is more to it. The perfect way to balance it is when you have control of time, and you can manage your own time because when you are working for someone else, your time is your boss’s time. Your time is your employer’s time. You have no time for your own.
That is why a lot of moms, especially working moms, are having guilt. This guilt for mothers out there, you will know that this is killing you inside. Sometimes leads you to depression. It leads you to a lot of other things that are not going to work in life. Why would I say that? I see the goodness, the happiness, and the balance in all these mompreneurs that I work with.I saw the other side of the coin. I saw that 90% of working moms are struggling and suffering from guilt. A lot of them are not finding peace and not finding happiness but on the other hand, I saw all these mompreneurs I worked with that are achieving that.
Sometimes they have more children. The average, in Singapore, the mothers will have 2 kids or most of them have 1 kid. When I look at all these mompreneurs, they have 3, 4 kids, some even have 5 kids, and they can juggle a business. Some of them are handling and have multiple businesses. That is an amazing thing that they are doing. I want to share it through my book to give another perspective.
I love the fact that you, yourself, had this marketing job when you were helping all these mompreneurs, and then it stopped. You had the experience of depression, sadness, and struggle. It’s because you had that emotional experience, you knew how 80% of mompreneurs felt when they were struggling with not being able to make it work. There was the 20% that you were working with the word gaining success and not have that heavy feeling that you had experienced, and you could see other mompreneurs having because you were able to connect those two and then create a result or the solution that is in your book that people can grab.
The Kindle version is just $2.99. Grab it and get connected with this information. If either you or you know someone that is a mompreneur, working from home or wants to be, here is a phenomenal source you can connect with. Being able to take all that knowledge of those people that were getting the lifestyle that this other 80% wanted yet were struggling to get now, here is a process, tips, and helps to enable them to be able to create that life as a mompreneur successfully. That is beautiful.
I also think of us as entrepreneurs, as women being a mom and an entrepreneur as well. I was a single mom growing up. I could have used you in those years. When we get into business, the funny thing is especially entrepreneurial women, we think, “I have got this great idea, and I am going to do it.” I opened a brick and mortar gym. I do not recommend that at all to anyone when you can do it from home. I went into it going, “I have got the skill and a passion. I am going to go for it.”
I was not a business person. I did not know how to create a business plan. I was not a marketer. I was not a scheduler. I certainly was not a babysitter, which is what it came to be. I ended up having to put on all these hats, and it is frustrating because you are like, “I know this is great. I want to do this. I have got the passion,” but we do not think about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. When I owned my gym, I bought myself a job. My employees made more than I did. It was how it worked.
You had a passion for it. Kenneth knows with all these moms out there that he has helped have success, they had a passion and knew they had a product or service, or something that was valuable to other people out there, yet the other people out there did not know they existed. That is where he steps in with his marketing experience and his knowledge to help them go, “Do not worry about other people getting to know you exist. You focus on your passion, and I will help them get to you.”
That is great because if I had to have somebody like that in my corner, it would have been a lot different. My other question for you is whether this is geared toward women. Do you find men are still attracted to what you do?
Initially, because I have been doing this ever since I published my book, it is not easy being a man promoting this and advocating mompreneurship. I started in Singapore, and it is my home. I thought that many people will be able to see this. In fact, when I first had my Mother Industrialist Facebook page, I had someone that came in, challenged me and started questioning me, “Who are you? What makes you think that you can help all these women? What is your agenda?” All these questions were coming. I have to address that.
Being new to the Facebook page and all this book promoting, I did not know how to handle it. I was being very nice. I was answering his question and saying all this stuff. He just went on. That was when I first knew what a troll was. That was my first time. I went back to our publisher because I am not experienced. I asked them, then they told me, “Kenneth, you should block him.” I was being passionate. I wanted to share it with people. I thought that he needs that information. That is why I share more with him. I blocked him.
The next moment, he went onto my reviews and gave me one star. He said, “Kenneth blocked me and all that stuff. He is not answering my question.” It turned out that this guy is an anonymous account or a keyboard warrior account. I was enlightened that there are a lot of people that do not know me, although I have worked with over 1,000 mompreneurs in the past. Only the mompreneurs know about me. The working moms or the stay-at-home moms do not know about me. That was when I started interviewing people, doing podcasts like what you guys are doing. I interviewed mompreneurs from all around the world.
I was asking the mompreneurs that were featured in my book, “Why don’t you come onto my podcast and share your story?” I have done 87 episodes, and I am still going. I’m now on season five. I am going to hit my 100th episode, and I can say that because I did this, I do not have to convince anybody, even guys or mothers, who come and ask me, “Kenneth, what is your agenda? Why are you doing this? Is there something creepy behind it? What is the reason?” They cannot get it. They are more skeptic. I told her, “I did this podcast.” I send them the link, and I do not have to explain anything that I am the authority because which mompreneur in their right mind will be interviewed by a man?
I have done over 80 mompreneurs and coming to 100 mompreneurs being interviewed by a man. If it is not legit, not passionate and not championing women, people would not hop on and be interviewed by me. All this I have been documented now digitally it is there for life if the internet still exists. A lot of guys, especially in Singapore, are not agreeing with what I am doing but slowly, with the Law of Attraction, I am attracting guys, especially those who believe in being a stay-at-home dad or being a dadpreneur. It is a very small minority.
Men can benefit from your book as well who find themselves in this same position.
It is better not to start the business because your why is not strong. Your passion is not strong enough to drive the purpose you want and profit. #HoneyDARElove Click To TweetYou talk about how men can benefit. In fact, some of the husbands buy it for their wives because their wife is pregnant and they do not want to go back to work. They bought my book to pass to the wife to read during maternity leave. That is something interesting like what Jamie had mentioned.
There are 88 podcasts out there.
Is there a name for your podcast?
It is called Mompreneur Space Podcast. It is available on Spotify, Apple, and a lot of other podcasts.
Go check that out. You’ve got 88 interviews which you can gain information from. Grab the book, flip through it and play a game where you highlight a word every time it is mentioned on the podcast like, “Bingo.”
Sam says, “Very legit, friendly price range for your amazing book. I will be purchasing. Thank you so much for sharing.” They’re going to look those up. There are a couple of other books down there that are zero. You can still get Bradley Nelson’s, The Emotion Code. I have Rich Dad Poor Dad on there for zero. There are a few of them that you can get for free. The Fearless Entrepreneurs is also $0.99
It is great that you are sharing the knowledge of what it is like from the male perspective in business. I do know from my own experience as a male that sometimes, when you try to speak up for a balance in the universe and equilibrium where women get equality, some people are like, “What is the angle?” It is not this side saying there is an imbalance. The other side also sees there is an imbalance. When we can create a balance in all things in life, when there is a balance, it works better. If you have an imbalance in water, you either have a drought or a flood. We do not want either. We want that balance.
Balance is very important. Women are starting to come back to more balanced equality. That is starting to happen more and more so now, which is good. I had not realized a lot of different things where women were kept down. Even in the United States, it was not legal for women to own their own credit cards until 1974. That was in my lifetime, and it is crazy to me to think that because I was adopted.
My birth mom was kicked out. She got pregnant with me. She was having an affair. She got kicked out by her husband, so she was on the streets. I called her up and said, “Mom, it was not legal for you to own your own credit card when I was born.” She goes, “I know.” I said, “You were on the streets. You must have been so scared.” She is like, “I was.” It is insane. Sam is requesting a hardcover book of your book, Kenneth.
For a hardcover copy of my book, you can go to www.MotherIndustrialist.com. Over there, they can purchase a copy of it.
You do not have it up for sale on Amazon?
No. For those that purchase the book, it comes with bonuses. The bonuses will be a one-to-one consultation with me, especially for mothers. Even for anyone who wants any consultation, be it for business, be it for life, and finding direction because it is always about self-discovery. I help a lot of mothers to have that self-discovery because, in my book, I talk about passion, purpose, and profit. To combine these three became the Mompreneur Blueprint.
This is what I have discovered. That is why I put it there. This is the framework that I use to have mothers achieve, create, and build their Mompreneur Blueprint. For anyone that purchased the hardcopy, you will have all the bonuses, and there are a lot of other bonuses that you can find on the page, which is MotherIndustrialist.com or you can go to Google and search for Kenneth Choo. You will definitely be able to find me through the channels.
I have only heard great things about you.
It is funny because I feel like I know Kenneth but we have never spoken. It was funny because right before we jumped on here, we did a mic check and I was like, “We have never met.” I feel like I know you because we have been running in these same circles of people. We are in groups and masterminds together but we had never spoken to each other. It is so cool.
This is a great opportunity for us.
Sam says, “It is great to always balance with the routine and the same routine I feel in about everything in life. Passion, purpose, and what else?”
Profit is very important. In my career, I have seen successful mompreneurs and non-successful ones. A lot of times, why they are not successful, not because their business is not good. It is because of the profit part. They are not making enough to pay the bills. They are not enough to make themselves feel happy because of their worth. A lot of mothers are not charging that much or they are not charging at all because they are so kind. They have to go-giver heart. They want to give and give. They are depleted over time. Their husband or spouse will be asking them, “Darling, why are you spending so much time, effort, and money on the business, and you are not profiting?”
Sometimes these words from the spouse crush them but when I talked to the mompreneur, I say, “I am a man and a husband. From my perspective, I want to protect the love of my life, and I want you to be happy.” Imagine when you run your business, and you are not happy, what will happen? I do not want my love in my life to be not happy. You married me for a reason and happiness. We are here to protect you. We are here to help you. We are here to work together to have a happier life.
Let’s say your business is not working. It is making you grouchy, angry, and temperamental. Do you think that we, husbands, want that? That was when I shared another perspective. As Jamie mentioned, from the perspective of a man and me being the bridge. A lot of times, mompreneurs come to me, “Kenneth, why does my husband do this? Why does he say this?” I am the interpreter for them that like, “Men are from Mars, and women are from Venus.” I am in between.
Super managers make a very good entrepreneurs. #HoneyDARElove Click To TweetI became the bridge for men and women, especially for mompreneurs to understand the perspective of men but I am using the language that they understand. I work with mompreneurs. Not just mompreneurs, my whole life, I am surrounded by women. In fact, I studied fashion design. I graduated. I am the only guy in my fashion design class.
Jamie is very much like that too, I am a big picture person. He is a detailed person. He is like, “Amy, that color does not go with that. You need to wear something.” He will dress me. When I go to Macy’s or go to pick out a suit, I am FaceTiming him from the dressing room. He is like, “No, not that one. That does not fit you. You need to get this color. This is not going to match that.” He helps me like that. It is interesting.
It is all about energy and flow. I love the fact that because you have had so much experience helping the mompreneurs, you also know what it is like to be a husband and a man. You can go, “When the guy is saying that, he is not saying that. He is saying that because of A, B, and C. What you are hearing is just A. Here is what B and C mean, which means, “I want to support and help you. I do not know how, so I am saying this.” If you can do this, that will open the doorway for him to be able to connect with you, communicate better, and support you because he wants you to be happy.” I love what you said, “You married me to be happy. How can I help you be happy?”
There is always a saying, “A happy wife is a happy life.”
That is true, but if you think about the way that women and men create, it is a little different. Men are transactional and women are relational. They are looking at the transactions and do the numbers make sense. Women are relational. We create relationships with everything. We create relationships with our childhood home, my car, and my tumbler. What makes it different in creating is that we need pleasure. We create through pleasure. You think about like the fact that we have the ability to create an entire human but women do not do that for ourselves enough because we are not wired that way. We are wired to take care of everybody else. We are not wired to take care of ourselves.
That is true. A lot of the clients and the corporations that I have worked with, the women CEOs are like, “Everybody needs to benefit from this.” A lot of the men CEOs are like, “What is the end profit line that we get here?” You get a bigger profit line down the road if you look at what the female CEOs are saying, “We are getting everybody to benefit,” because then you will create a passion wave then that is what you are going to be able to ride your company on. It is going to push it forward as opposed to an immediate win which then will start to drop afterwards. There is a different vibe that I have personally experienced out there.
Sam says, “We all have to always find our passion in life for us to all succeed emotionally, financially, and spiritually. Everything after will flow from there, in my opinion.” That is accurate. I have a quick question for you, Kenneth. You talked about successful mompreneurs and unsuccessful mompreneurs. What do you think is the driving force or the biggest difference between whether they make it or do not make it? What is the biggest thing?
It’s their why and desire because those that do not make it do not have a very strong why, they start the business of escape. They wanted to escape from the corporate. They want to escape from the people that are causing them pain and that is why they hop into business. They are starting a business for the wrong reason or not for the right reason.
All these reasons are not enough to drive them to continue what they are doing. For example, that is why I talk about passion but there is impassion. I dive deep. The first question I ask them is, “Why do you want to start a business?” I keep asking that question when I coach them. I keep diving and if they say, “It is about money.”
I say, “It is better to not start the business because your why is not strong. Your passion is not strong enough to drive the purpose that you want and to profit.” Those that are successful, they will do whatever it takes to achieve what they want. There are no excuses. There is no plan B. It is only plan A, and they will find ways and be resourceful. I realized that the successful ones are very resourceful. They will start a business with little to no money. They do not believe in jumping hundreds and thousands of dollars into starting a business. The other thing I realized is that those that are successful are solving motherhood problems.
For example, the common thing will be, “My kids have eczema. They have skin problems. I cannot find a product in my country. I went to other country. I use it on all my children. It solved their problem. My mommy friends saw it. They asked me how and I started introducing them. I realized that is a market. That is a demand. I bring in the supply and became the main distributor. It started the whole thing of mompreneurship about helping people.” The why is very important. This is the thing that drives. The reason why I came up with the three Ps is Passion, Purpose, and Profit. The last P is Parenting, which is the secret formula. Why are you doing what you are doing? Is it for yourself? Is it for money or is it for your kids to craft a better future for them?
That one thing that you mentioned where they are focused on escaping their past, “I want to get away from that,” but you do not have anything that you are heading to, so how can you gauge your success or whether you are getting closer to it? That is one of the things we talk about. “When something bad happens, what happened. Let’s not stay any longer here. Our next step is what do you want?”
Back to what happened, really quick, just facts. No story. If somebody punched me in the face, it is like, “He punched me in the face.” I do not want to make up a story, “He did not like me. He looked at me cross and he does not like me anymore.” It is what happened.
It is the physical act of what happened. One sentence of the facts, then we go into, “What do you want?” Now are focused on a future possibility, which with your process, which is your why. Let’s get deep into the why. I have found that with some of the things I do, 5 to 7 times, you have got to ask a person why to find out and for them to also realize what their why is. Most of the time, we are saying what the social environment has conditioned us to expect to be heard or expect to say. We are saying what feels right from society’s perspective as opposed to what is deep inside our hearts why.
An example of this is a guy who, when we were trainers and owned our gym. He was like, “I want to lose weight. I want to look better. I am sad that I do not have someone who loves me. I want to love myself.” I am like, “Now, we have got your why.” It is not about wearing smaller clothes or looking good on the beach. It is about connecting with someone on a soul level and connecting with yourself in a way that you feel happy when you look in the mirror. It is like, “We can work with that because now you have got something that you are passionate about because it is connected to your soul and your heart.”
We go, “What happened? What do you want? What can you do?” You can connect with Kenneth Choo for one thing. You break it down into action steps for moving forward. I love that and the fact that you have got your three Ps, your Passion, Purpose, and Profit, which are all supporting Parenting. It is the three Ps but there are four of them.
I am hiding that P because if you can’t pass those three Ps, do not talk about the P.
Parenting is a lot. It is so much work to take on being a parent. I was a parent at a young age. I was pregnant at nineteen, and I raised my daughter by myself. I am amazed at women that have the heart that Sam does to be stay-at-home moms and devote their life to their six kids. That is a big take on. That is not a little feat.
I want to applaud Sam because, having six kids, you are an entrepreneur. Why? It’s because it is like you are running 6 businesses with 6 different types of personalities. You are a super manager. Super managers make a very good entrepreneurs. For Amy and Jamie, when you run your own business, you understand that you are all over the place, and you need to be very good managers, and you will need to be very good at the dedication. If you can manage six kids at peace, you are amazing. If you can apply the same skillset to business, you are amazing and powerful.
You applied the business of parenting into a business to make a profit.
Women are going to be the change maker of the new economy, especially mothers. #HoneyDARElove Click To TweetIt is also great for the mental health of the parent to have something outside that is their passion and their flow, that they then get a reward and a financial reward as well.
Sam says, “Parenting is a blessing and I love my job. It is like 28 jobs into 1, no joke. I feel the best thing in life is to invest in our kids. Our babies are our future.” That is true. They are. You do so much more than I had initially thought. There is so much more to what you are doing. It is incredible. How great that you are such an advocate for women. That is incredible. What is your normal day like? What is your normal life? You get up, and now you are on a show but what is your normal day like?
My normal day starts when my daughter goes to school.
How old is your daughter?
She is twelve. She is getting independence. She is getting a bit of personality. She is getting a bit of the young woman vibe now, looking pretty and keeping long hair. In Singapore, she is having her examination, the Primary School Leaving Examination. That was challenging for her and she was so stressed that all her pimples were popping up. She is amazing. She is one of the reasons why I am doing what I am doing because when I champion women, I am also crafting a better future for her. I am able to leave a legacy, whether she wants to consider the take it over or she can build a nonprofit from this, which I have intended.
She can handle the nonprofit because of her personality. She is kind, nice, and innocent. She has been going to charity work with me because, in the past, I do a lot of charity work and bring her along. She loved it. She asked me, “Daddy, when is the next time you are going to help people?” I know that the nonprofit part is going to be her. Whatever I am building, I will build a nonprofit, and she will be the CEO or the chairman that is going to take over that. Championing women is not just for me, it is for a lot of people out there.
As Amy mentioned that women are on the feeling side, if you can see in recent years, there has been a paradigm shift that women are being more educated. They are also being more practical now, and men are also being more sensitive. That is why, for example, in the past, you do not see daddy’s kissing goodbye to their children, but now, you see the daddy’s kissing goodbye to their children. I am one of them because we do not get that love from our dad back then. Now we are passing it forward. This is what we want to do more. That is a shift that I see.
That is why I believe that women are going to be the change maker of the new economy, especially mothers. Mothers have that maternal love. They have love, compassion and empathy because we are seeing a lot of women leaders that are leading. Some of them are amazing mothers, and they are leading the country or the organization with love, compassion, and empathy. This is something that we and the world need now.
Let’s go back to your day. Your daughter leaves for school. You kiss her goodbye. That is awesome. What does your day look like?
Typically, after she goes to school, I will spend one hour for myself either to write my journal. I will write down my thoughts because, in the morning, your mind is in the subconscious. That was when my ideas all flowed. I will write them. I always have my phone beside me in the middle of the night. If I have any ideas, I would do the same thing in the morning. This is something that I have picked up and realized that this is a very good routine because, after that one hour, I feel refreshed. I will start work at about 10:00 AM. I am always about efficiency then productivity because I get my job done very easily and fast because there is no distraction at all.
Normally, I will start replying to all the emails, checking all the emails, and then I will work on my content. Every week, I am running my podcast, so I will prepare and follow up with the Mompreneurs. From 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, I will be doing my work and from 12:00 PM, I will have a break for lunch. I will spend that one hour to focus on lunch. I will start work back at about 2:00 PM. Normally, I schedule all my meetings from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM. After 6:00 PM, when my daughter is back, she has a lot of immediate classes. Normally, she came about 4:00 Pm or 5:00 PM back home that was when I would spend time with her, and we will spend time with Dina.
From then onwards, until she goes to bed at night, I am not at work. I am with her or with my wife spending time. At night, I will start going back to work on the business and follow up. If it is Monday, I will have my show at 10:00 PM. If not, I am either meeting people, scheduling a meeting or I will be scheduling him meeting with people that are on the other side of the planet as the people in the US and UK. That would be in the afternoon or in the morning for them. I will end my day at about 11:00 PM or past 12:00 AM. My last meeting will be at 11:00 PM, and by 12:00 AM, I will go to bed. That is how my whole day went.
You do a lot of work in the US. When I messaged you, I had no idea you were in Singapore. I thought you were in the US. I did not even know because you are so prominent here.
The Singapore moms will be more skeptical about what I am doing. When I started doing a podcast and interviewing people from all around the world, mompreneurs from the US were very receptive to what I was doing. They will say, “Finally, there is a man that is championing women, especially mothers.” I was like, “I never hear that in Singapore.” I felt that, “Finally, someone understands what I am doing and why I am doing all these things. I do not have to explain much. They see and understand it. They say, “Kenneth, you should do this.”
One of the reasons why I can keep on interviewing and keep the ball rolling and do over 80 episodes interviewing mompreneurs is that, the mompreneurs from around the world, except Singapore, are telling me, “Kenneth, you need to continue to do this. We need more stories to go out there to inspire more moms.” The mompreneurs are busy building that business. They have no time to advocate, spread the word, and share their story. That is where I came in. I realized that in all these stories, as long as there is one story that resonates with the mothers, my job is done because I need one life to change the time or to be transformed.
I realized why a lot of mothers, especially working moms, are afraid to jump into business because, in their life, they do not have an entrepreneurial mom, entrepreneurial parents, relatives or anyone around them that can influence them. When Amy said, I am all around, especially online, in the US because a lot of my interviews started off in the US because of our publisher. Some of our other friends are moms and it started from there.
Moms love to share. They say, “Kenneth, do you know this mompreneur?” I say, “I do not know. Maybe you can connect us.” That was when it started rolling, and I have more referrals. For now, it is coming in October. My next few podcasts are already packed until November because of all these referrals. I am very thankful for them.
When he was explaining his day, did you notice how he dedicated specific time to action? He was not half present with his daughter. He was fully present with his daughter. Whatever is happening in your business, it can happen after 9:00 PM or tomorrow. Now, the love, the beauty, and the family are more important than anything else, so you work with that, then you do the work times in between the times you have scheduled for it. You are not half doing this and that job, which means there is no job getting done at all.
Can I add something to that, Jamie, about the 100% presence? That advice came from one of the mompreneurs that shared it with me, and I implement and use it in my coaching. Imagine, because of the podcast, I am 80 times wiser with all the information in my head. Now, it naturally comes out. The reason why the 100% presence and is very important, is that a lot of times, especially parents, we are always multitasking. We are either at home but we are thinking about work or if we are at work thinking about home. We are never 100% present. As you know, children are very sensitive human beings.
They can sense whether daddy or mommy is there listening to them. If you are not listening to them, over the years, consciously, they know that, “Daddy and mommy are not listening to me. When mommy and daddy want to talk to me, I am not going to listen to them.” This is the subconscious part. That is why 100% presence is very important because children feed off your energy. If you are not there, your soul is not there, when they grow up, they are not listening to you. That is why until now, my daughter still talks to me. My daughter still shares things with me even if she is now maturing and going through puberty because the connection is already there.
100% presence is very important because children feed off of your energy. If you are not there, your soul is not there. When they grow up, they are not listening to you. #HoneyDARElove Click To TweetWhen she comes back home from school, I will spend time. Sometimes I will cook dinner for her and we will watch her favorite cartoon together with her and start conversing. My daughter has a flair for drawing, which is her creative side. We do have a lot of common topics. That was when I was 100%. I keep my phone away. I will not attend to my phone.
This is something a lot of parents find difficult but in the long run, it will help you because this is about time-blocking. You are blocking your time for your family. Your family will appreciate that. Your family knows that they are important, especially your children and spouse. This is what I want to add to emphasize the importance of 100% presence, be it for or kids or your spouse.
I have got one little quick little question because Kenneth is an author, a speaker, a podcaster, a coach, and internationally known. What is one of the fun little moments that you have experienced in this life? One little thing that stands out that is like, “This was fun.”
This happened in Singapore, and there was a group of Filipino mommies. They came to Singapore. They call it the delicates or ambassadors. They came to Singapore for an exchange program. I knew one of the Philippine mompreneurs, and this mompreneur has been sharing, “There is this book called Mother Industrialist. There is this guy.” They can’t figure out why. When we met, there were about ten of them. I met about nine of them. One of them I didn’t meet because she was somewhere else. They were surprised to see the man behind it because when they heard and googled Mother Industrialist, they saw a man.
It is like, “I do not think this is the author that they are talking about.” That mompreneur chucked it on one side, and when she saw me in real life, she was like, “It is real that a man wrote the book. Let’s take a picture. I want to tell my friend.” I was like, “Okay.” I hear another side story where people are having those questions. They are curious about this author but when they saw the author is a man, they are like, “Maybe not the right book.” This is one of the fun things I realized. The mom is still talking about it like, “I can’t imagine that a man wrote this, and I was there. I saw the person. I saw the author.”
After she knew me, we chatted, she understands, “Now, I understand why.” That is why it is very important for me to share my story out even over at your show. It is better for me to share why I am doing what I am doing so that more people understand and they can hear the story and the reason why I am passionate about it.
Thank you so much for joining us, Kenneth. I appreciate the time you took with us. It has been such a pleasure. Do you have anything else you want to let them know before we let you go?
The last thing that I want to share with everyone is to continue to do what you are passionate about. Live life with a purpose, and last but not least, create a legacy for your children’s children. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Jamie and Amy, for having me on your show. It was exciting and fun. I look upon the next time that we connect. It has been wonderful sharing and hearing from you guys. We have so many things in common. We are like-minded. Thank you, everyone. Thank you to those who are tuning in. Congratulations that you have learned something that most people have not learned. In fact, I share quite a lot of things that I do not share in other interviews.
Thank you so much for your time, Kenneth. You guys, reading is knowledge. Knowledge is power. Read, read and read. Get your kids to read. We will see you guys on the next episode.
Important Links
- Mother Industrialist: Perfecting the Balance between Motherhood and Business Success
- KC Creative Marketing
- Kindle – Mother Industrialist: Perfecting the Balance between Motherhood and Business Success
- Mompreneur Space Podcast
- Spotify – Mompreneur Space Podcast
- www.MotherIndustrialist.com
- Black Card Books
- The Emotion Code
- The Fearless Entrepreneurs
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- https://www.Amazon.com/shop/thehoneydare/list/3DDNJX1XSSHON
About Kenneth Choo
Author of Mother Industrialist | Founder & CEO of KC Creative Marketing Pte. Ltd.
Kenneth Choo is the author of Mother Industrialist – Perfecting the Balance between Motherhood and Business Success, a speaker on Mompreneurship & Work/Life Balance, a podcast host of Mompreneur Space Live Show and an entrepreneur.
He has been working with mompreneurs for the past 14 years in the area of advertising, media, sales and marketing and for the past 6 years he has been helping his mompreneur community build their businesses through his creative marketing consultancy.
He has been featured on CNA938, MoneyFM89.3 and many podcasts to talk about Mompreneurship & Women Changemakers. He has also been invited as a guest speaker in Mrs Singapore & Classic Mrs Singapore 2019.
Since 2018, Kenneth has also been producing events and workshops for his mompreneur community and has spoken on various stages and online platforms about parenting and mompreneurship.
In May 2020, Kenneth & his business partner Jack launched their inaugural programme Stage Closer SHEROes where they mentor female speakers to be the female powerhouses and the leaders in the new economy.
In Nov 2020, he also launched his 1st inaugural Changemakers Virtual Summit for Women where they featured 17 female powerhouses such as Claude Silver (Chief Heart Officer of Vaynermedia), Tin Pei Ling (Elected Member of Parliament in Singapore), Hannah Tan (Media Celebrity in Malaysia) and his female students from Stage Closer SHEROes.
Kenneth strongly believes that Women are the Changemakers of the New Economy because they are towering strengths in their families, workplaces and communities. He also believes that they need more support to become the greater changemakers they all can be.
His vision is to empower every woman in the world with the skills, mindset, knowledge, resources and community to thrive, profit and sustain herself and her family and build a better world with love, compassion and empathy.