We were lucky to catch up with Kate Westlund Tovsen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kate thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I started Society of Working Moms shortly after having my second child and during a seasonal downturn in my communications consulting business; partly out of boredom, partly out of sheer necessity.

Being a mom to young kids can be incredibly isolating, even when you don’t have a clinical diagnosis like postpartum depression. Even when — on paper — you have all the supports in place. In my case, I had a supportive husband, wonderful friends and family (though none super close by), financial stability, flexible work as a business owner. But I was also working and raising both kids pretty much alone while my husband built the house we would eventually move into, more than 4 hours away.

At the time, I was a member of a niche community for freelance writers. I found it so valuable from the work side, but I had this whole other (almost secret) part of my identity that the freewheeling hip, young, digital nomads in that group just wouldn’t understand.

I was not closing deals from a laptop on the beach. I was waking up at 4:00 to try to sneak in a few hours of work before the chaos of the day ensued. I was not taking off for a long weekend at the drop of a hat because I’d smashed my Q2 rev goals. I was making weekend plans (or lack thereof) around two vastly different nap schedules with the sole goal of surviving to Monday. My life is incredibly happy, and incredibly hard. And I knew I was not the only working mom who felt this way.

My background is in communications and video production, so I figured I’d try to create a community and content that was specific to what *I* needed as a working mom. And a place where I could let my mom flag freely. (And a place free from the performative aspects of conventional social media… a place where I could share the wins but — equally or more important — the losses.)

Kate, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve always been strongly drawn to service and I truly feel that every past role has primed me for my work with Society of Working Moms (SOWM). My first job was as a day camp counselor, which naturally progressed to me to leading challenge courses in college. These taught me about facilitation, group dynamics, team building, and fostering a sense of belonging.

Right out of college, I got into video production and I spent several years in various roles at my local PBS station. I also produced some companion events for some of our content. Production — particularly live production — taught me to think on my feet, lean into collaboration, and be willing to completely ditch a carefully crafted plan when shit hits the fan. (This last bit is also motherhood in a nutshell!)

I had a brief stint in between roles at Twin Cities PBS where I was running social media for a my state’s version of the Affordable Care Act. This thickened up my skin real quick, as you might imagine. More notably, it taught me the importance of automation and templatization — both as a way to more effectively serve more customers, and for self preservation.

Now I’m going on 8 years of running Kate Tovsen Media, where I continue to lean heavily into (and expand) my generalist background. I’ve been lucky to try lots of different things, which keeps me interested in the work.

Community building and community management are much the same. One year into SOWM and I’m still iterating every single day. It’s an ever-changing puzzle (and I love puzzles)! Each person who joins the community, or an event, changes the tone a little bit. New tools allow you to bring functionality to the group. Plus there is a very deep well of content, so it’s endlessly inspiring as a writer!

How’d you meet your business partner?

While she is not strictly a co-founder or a partner in a legal sense, Jess Ringgenberg, founder of ELIXR Coaching & Consulting and SOWM Head of Coaching, has been a cornerstone of the community — and one of my biggest hype women and supporters — from day 1.

(I’ll backtrack and note that I’d had coffee with a mentor maybe 1 month before all of this transpired. This person had explained to me that she’d successfully gone into business with a stranger, which initially sounded so wild to me. But I’m so grateful that that seed was planted because it opened a new world up to me.)

Today, Jess provides weekly group coaching inside of the community; a bright spot in the week for many, including myself. It feels like we’ve been friends forever, and I think many members don’t realize that we aren’t, in fact, lifelong besties. We happened to meet at a time when we were both launching our businesses — our third babies — and it’s been an absolute pleasure to watch her and her business grow, inside SOWM and outside of it.

I met her via an online panel discussion for mothers in PR & media mere days before opening up the beta test of the SOWM community. She introduced herself in the event chat as a coach with a soft spot for working moms and the identity shifts that come with motherhood, and so I followed her on LinkedIn. Maybe a week later, she posted about the importance of community for working moms within an organization. I shot my shot and sent her a message. We scheduled time to meet that same week. I knew I wanted the community to somehow include coaching, but I also knew I didn’t want to become a coach myself. Jess wanted a community aspect but didn’t want to build and manage a community. It all felt very kismet.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Word of mouth! But until you have enough “mouths,” so to speak, you need to get comfortable telling your own story.

Despite the community being so incredibly needed, a lot of the testimonial I receive is along the lines of, “I didn’t even know how much I needed this space,” or “I don’t know what I was expecting, but this is better,” or “who knew I had time for this? Now I can’t imagine NOT being here.” So from a marketing perspective, I knew I needed to do a much better job of telling the story to get people in the door.

I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, including from the brand account, but I still have a long way to go on the marketing front (we could always be doing more, right?) Now that I have more members, I’ve gotten better at asking *them* to help tell the story. Working motherhood is a badge of honor so I encourage them to add SOWM membership to their LinkedIn profile and tell their networks, in their own words, why this space is so special to them. And then I try to share more of those user stories online, too, whether it’s on our website, or via social media.

I suppose I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this space to try to grow our member base. So if you are a working mom and any of the above resonates with you, you might find a nice, soft space to land inside of Society of Working Moms! We’d love to have you! You can learn more at working-moms.com.

Contact Info:

• Website: working-moms.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/societyofworkingmoms/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/society-of-working-moms

Image Credits
Tara Kay Photography (for the headshots)