We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Claire Holmes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Claire, thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.

Honestly, serving “underdogs” (as I sometimes think about it) is one of my passions in life.  And with my business Mama Collaborative, I focus on supporting working mothers because unfortunately, the cards are stacked against us.

Though women have made great gains in workforce representation, burnout is still on the rise – and a huge debilitating factor for women with both families and careers they love.And there are plenty of stats that show how working moms face an uphill battle:

97% of millennial moms feel burned out by motherhood (at least some of the time).*

89% of mothers feel unsupported by society.*

1 in 3 women have reported considering leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers.**

And there are plenty more surveys and data where these come from.,

It’s a shame and something to be angry about. And something for which we should be bringing to the attention of companies and our government until we get the change we want.

But in the meantime, while we wait for those changes to take hold, we as working moms must learn how to set ourselves up for success.

Because unfortunately, no one else is going to do it for us.

So Mama Collaborative was founded to do exactly that.

The resources we’ve developed and Instagram community we’ve cultivated aim to provide working moms with simple yet effective strategies, routines and mom hacks to help make the whole work-life-baby balance thing more attainable.

In particular, our flagship online course – “How To Set Yourself Up For Success As A Working Mom” – is a comprehensive resource library for any working mom who wants to embrace working motherhood with confidence and a plan.

Mama Collaborative will also soon be launching new working motherhood support groups to foster the connection, troubleshooting and camaraderie working moms truly need.

Everything Mama Collaborative has done and will continue to do is to support working moms, a population who are vastly underpaid, underserved and underappreciated.

*Source: Motherly’s 2020 “State of Motherhood Survey”
**Source: McKinsey’s “Women in the Workplace” 2021 Study

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am Claire Holmes, a marketing consultant and founder of Mama Collaborative.  I am a proud mom of three beautiful boys. I am the CEO of my household. And I have a professional career.

Each of those roles is important to me but each is a full-time job in and of itself. And there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. Plus, society has stacked the cards against women, especially working moms. We are underpaid, underappreciated, and over-exhausted.

Like many people reading this, I’ve watched my friends and family members go through working mom guilt and burn out and I’ve experienced it firsthand as well. When my oldest son was one, I felt a major bout of anxiety, stress, and fatigue. I hit a wall of burn out. My well had completely run dry.

Perhaps it was running on fumes at work because I was up all night with a baby. Maybe it was getting the dreaded phone call from daycare that my son had one too many “loose BMs,” meaning I had to leave work immediately to go pick him up.Or it’s possible that the weight of society’s expectations for what a “good mom” looks like and acts like was crushing my soul and spirit.I mean, honestly… take your pick.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what pushed me over the edge but I wanted to do something about it: both for myself and for other working mamas.

Enter Mama Collaborative. Mama Collaborative is dedicated to helping working mamas set themselves up for success in their personal and professional lives.

Through our comprehensive online courses, tools, resources and support groups, Mama Collaborative empowers working mamas to make smart, streamlined and strategic choices about successfully managing their lives – and finding fulfillment.

For over a decade, I’ve been a marketing consultant, project manager, and training developer in the consulting, legal, retail, and non-profit industries. Leveraging that and my personal experience, my goal is to move away from stress, overwhelm, and anxiety to find satisfaction and purpose in life…and I want to share my learnings (and those of other experts!) with other mamas along the way.

If Mama Collaborative can help just ONE working mother with just ONE positive change in her life, I will consider all of this effort to be a huge success. To help even more moms…would be a dream come true.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I started the Mama Collaborative Instagram account in March 2021 by inviting existing friends and family to follow it. I jumped to around 150/200 followers pretty quickly from that and then it was up to me to continue to grow it organically. Today, I have almost 5,000 followers. And no, that isn’t necessarily a “high” number by Instagram standards, but it feels to me like such a great place to be in because most of those people are wonderfully engaged and a true community who actively like, comment and share posts as well as respond to my Stories and message me. I love the camaraderie of it so much. But as most small business owners know, Instagram (and all social media) can be fickle and frustrating. The rules and “algorithms” seem to change daily. And it is easy to get down on it all. So here are a few tips given what I’ve learned along the way:

Amplifying other accounts and people is a great way to get exposure.
Share posts and stories from other like-minded accounts — always making sure to tag them so they know you did so and so your followers can easily get to their accounts or pages. Not only is this helpful to your audience to introduce them to accounts and content they may not have known, but a lot of times, those people you tag could re-share your share, meaning you get exposure to their audience as well.

Find ways to get engaged with your audience.
Engage with your audience in your Stories, Posts or Comments by asking direct questions — and always replying to them.

Tell your audience what you want them to do.
If you want someone to share your content, say that in your post. If you want them to comment or share helpful tips, ask for that. If you want them to send you a private message with their thoughts, make that known. If you want them to download your freebie, say that in a super obvious way (and make it easy for them to do so with a link). Always be clear with your CTAs so they know exactly what to do next.

Follow social media coaches and accounts for inspiration.
If you do want to up your social media game or get new ideas, try following Instagram or Facebook-specific social media coaches or experts who will give you daily tips, hacks and ideas for how to get better, more streamlined, and more confident using the various social media platforms.

Don’t let the numbers and metrics ruin your day.
Just because someone has 10,000 followers and you only have 200 doesn’t mean they are better than you. Your 200 followers may be more engaged than their thousands, and that’s what really counts. Plus, the more people you have “follow” you, the more negativity and trolling you will inevitably get. You have to decide if you really want that.

Don’t be afraid to “fail.”
In my experience, you could work for hours on a post that you think is *amazing* and only get 9 likes. And then the next day, film a 7 second Reel that goes viral and gets 50K views. Or maybe you can only grow your account from 200 to 250 people in 6 months. That’s (more than) okay. Sometimes, there is no rhyme or reason to the numbers so just continue to do you, and don’t be afraid to “fail” as long as the content and information you’re putting out there feels authentic to you.

Remember who you are and why you exist.
Create content by remembering your or your company’s reason for existence (e.g., providing resources and encouragement to working moms) and relentlessly pursue fulfilling that mission with the things you create, post and share.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Getting Things Done by David Allen. The Productivity Planner by Intelligent Change.
The One Thing by Gary Keller & Jay Papasan.
Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mamacollaborative.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mama.collaborative/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MamaCollaborativeFB
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mama-collaborative/

Image Credits
Rachel Manning