Now that your children are in school and you have a little extra time on your hands, you may be thinking about ways in which you can bring in some extra income. Ideally, you would like to find work that would allow you to remain a stay-at-home mom, right? This is what an old college friend and I were thinking about a year and a half ago when we decided start our own at-home business. We wanted our business to make use of our previous work experiences combined with our current jobs as stay-at-home moms. Eileen�s background was in marketing and advertising, and mine was in journalism. After batting around ideas, we came up with Planet Mom�a company that sells flattering apparel embroidered with irreverent expressions geared toward women, especially moms. Right away, we came up with some of the lines we would have emblazoned on our shirts, pants, and hats: �Whine? No. Wine? Yes.�, �I need a playdate�, �Secretary of Transportation�, �Nanny Deprived�. The ideas just kept flowing as we thought about various aspects of motherhood that all moms could relate to and laugh about. Eileen�s marketing background came in handy immediately. She suggested we make some prototypes and wear them around, using our communities as focus groups. Whether we were at t-ball games, book club or out to dinner, the response we got while wearing our shirts was amazing! Women�and some men, too�would read the lines on our shirts, laugh, and start a conversation. It was a bonding experience in many ways. Confident in our product, we decided to approach stores about selling our shirts and also designed our own Web site where we could sell our apparel. Several local stores agreed to sell our shirts, and we had the first of what are now 22 retail accounts across the country. At the same time, we signed up for Yahoo�s Small Business Merchant program which provided us with a (huge) handbook of directions on how to set up our Web site. Eileen�s artistic background and computer experience were pivotal here, and my writing skills enabled me to write the copy on the site that Eileen had designed. We immediately realized that we needed to get the word out about our site, www.PlanetMomTShirts.com. We emailed all of our friends asking them to pass on the site address to all of their friends. That was a good start, but we knew we needed publicity. Having worked as a segment producer in television news, I had been inundated with pitch letters from publicists wanting our show to feature their client in some way. Now, I was on the other end, pitching our product. Because of my background, I knew how to pitch a product and what producers, editors and writers are looking for. A month later, our shirts were featured on ABC�s �The View� as part of a t-shirt fashion segment. In the following months, our apparel was talked about on NBC�s �Today� show and various radio shows and publications. Eileen and I were also interviewed on Fox News Channel�s �Fox & Friends� around Mother�s Day the following spring. Getting good publicity has been paramount for the success of Planet Mom. We knew that having a celebrity wear our apparel would bring us even more publicity. Comedienne Kathy Griffin was appearing in our area last winter, and being fans, we went to see her. We brought along a couple of shirts for her and managed to get backstage and give them to her after the show. Months later, while watching her reality show, �My Life on the D List�, we were thrilled to see her wearing our shirts! She brought so many of her fans to our site, and we�ll forever be grateful to her for that. A year and a half later, we are busy fulfilling orders and continue to come up with new ideas and products to sell at www.PlanetMomTShirts.com. Fortunately, the day-to-day trials, tribulations and joys of motherhood inspire us to come up with new lines! We can be found at our computers at all times of the day and night�except when it�s time for homework, dinner and saying goodnight to our kids. Having an at-home business is definitely a juggling act. I often have to tell my kids to search through a big pile of unsorted and unfolded, yet clean, laundry for something to wear, and I may run out groceries more often, but I think we�re sending a great message to our kids. We�re two old friends who put our minds together, came up with a goal and worked hard to achieve it. We�ve both celebrated our 40th birthdays during the last year and a half and feel like Planet Mom is a good start to this new phase of our lives. Elise Nappi and Eileen Schneidman are the co-founders of PlanetMomTShirts.com. They have five children between them and have been friends for about twenty years. Click here to visit MomToMomChat.com! SALE ITEMS CANNOT BE RETURNED. ALL SALES OF LONG SLEEVED SHIRTS, HOODIES, HATS, PANTS, BRIEFS, PERSONALIZED BOXER BRIEFS, APRONS, ROBES, TOWELS AND ON-SALE PLUS-SIZED TEES ARE FINAL. Questions? Custom order request? Want to know when we get new stuff? Please email us! Photography by Kristin Burke of Peter Baker Studios. 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 & 2010 Planet Mom. All Rights Reserved.