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Kim: This is Kim Constable, CEO and founder of the work at home mums network and I am
extremely, extremely excited to introduce this woman to you today, I have followed her
for a long time and Karen is an inspirational presence at the internet at the minute. She
is a free lance creative director and a copywriter and she is mom to 2 beautiful children. She
also writes a blog of Chicago Now called Baby Side Burns and her Facebook page also called
Baby side Burns has over 90,000 followers it is phenomenal.
She is also Co- author of I just wanted to pee alone which is an absolutely amazing book.
My sister brought it for me on my birthday and let me tell you I laughed my whole way
through it so I am very excited to present Karen to you as our expert work at home mom
interviewee so welcome Karen, it is great to see you here today.
KAREN: thanks Kim
KIM: So Karen we are going to jump just right in, so I really just want to know can you
just tell me a little about yourself.
KAREN: Well I was in advertising, I am still in advertising for over a decade and then
I had my first daughter and ended up doing to other free lance so I can stay at home
with her and work which is no easy task. So now whatever company wants to hire me I do
all the work from home.
KIM: How difficult do you find working from home.
KAREN: (). My mom just happens to be here today which is great but usually I do it when
the kids are napping or when they are sleeping at the night and try to juggle everything.
KIM: and tell me what a typical day is for you?
KAREN: well somebody wakes me up usually hopefully after 6 am but last night somebody fell out
of the bed. But you know wake up feed the kids, you know there is usually some activity
in the morning be it school from a 4 year old or taking them to gymnastics or some thing
and the come home for lunch and then usually by 1 I get them down for naps although my
4 year old is starting to shake her naps so that is getting difficult. Then the second
I get them down I go to work until the second they wake up.
And then we are hanging out in the () and then dinner time and then when my husband
comes home I jump the kids on him and get back to work again.
KIM: do you have plans to grow your own business I mean to get some child care or to take it
to some different level.
KAREN: you know I always mean to get child care, I always get names on my desk, I have
always ().com ready to find somebody but I never going to get around it seems. I like
being with my kids so I haven�t gone that route yet.
KIM: tell us about the history of baby side burns. It started with the history of it,
it started with the blog is that right. Yes it was just an average mums blog, its some
thing that 4 million moms have blogs it is like some crazy number so I couldn�t be
the only one that did not have a blog so I started one and wrote one for myself at first
and soon I got few members and soon I think it have 170 members when I wrote a blog that
just went viral and then I wrote another blog I think last week () that went viral and last
week l () 100 thousand, I figured out what to do with 100 thousand things.
KIM: wow it is incredible so you really actually not taking anything away from, you didn�t
plan anything like you did not have some kind of strategy for in your Facebook page, it
seems you dedicated your time for your love.
KAREN: I did not have any plans for the blog itself, I mean the blog itself was fun, I
didn�t expect it to get these many followers, once I started to get followers I realized
I needed a Facebook page which I was glad I posted before I posted one (). As soon I
saw that my numbers were increasing so much I realized this could actually turn into something
and I worked my channel off to (), its taken a lot of work.
KIM: sure and how do you come up with your content.
KAREN: 75% of it my kids provide it to me just by being () they are and then it just
comes to me like current events, it just pops into my head I had time periods when I am
not having ideas and then I have weeks when I am just exploding with ideas, I write every
thing my life is about, you know I have 9,000 poster notes lying all around my house.
I know plenty of writers who like to think of ideas in shower, you know people think
of them in car, I like to lie down in my bed and write my ideas so it tends to me that
when I am awake in the morning between 4-6 am and not sleeping, that�s when I write
down the ideas I have. So yeah It take a lot of time and then its not funny, then I make
it funnier so that hopefully people will laugh some times they do and you know sometimes
KIM: you know it is impossible whenever you have that amount of exposure that you do,
not to get the haters as I call them, how do you deal I mean that must be tough.
KAREN: you know I have 2 philosophies, either ignore it which is very easy to do or I respond
to kill the kindness, I feel like if you have got that much hate, if you control the internet
to write negative comments I am not going to entertain that, I don�t have that hate
me, I am going to be friendly about it. Yesterday I had a really rude one, I responded to the
post that was directed at her but every once in a while I say a little something just in
a funny way not in a mean way.
KIM: you have a 100,000 likes on your Facebook page which is probably your main hub of activity
at the minute aside from your blog, do you feel like a certain amount of responsibility
towards your fans. If I try you on how that feels, you know it would feel good but there
would be a pressure there too. Do you find that?
KAREN: there is a lot of pressure, I mean right not I feel like I have been working
so much on the book I haven�t been writing as much on Facebook yet which is really tough
you know, I get a lot of emails from people saying you know �thank the lord you are
hear I wouldn�t have made it here without you.� Or you know �my father died last
week and I never thought I would ever laugh again� any thing I do those email bring
cheers to my eyes, I cry at times.
So it just makes me so happy to do that I do for people so when I am not providing them
the content I feel bad that I am letting them down. So that�s why I kept my channel off
to keep it going. We will see, I think I might have to take a little high () to finish off
my book which scares me but we will see, I will always be writing something for everybody.
KIM: I think you can write anything and they would like it, it�s really wonderful to
see you have a real base of fans.
KAREN: they are great it is awesome I mean you write and get thousands of likes and you
know a post is not as good when it does not get thousands of likes, I know that kills
me, but yeah my fans are so loyal, you were asking about the haters earlier right, you
write a hateful comment on my page and you are going to get ripped in your one. My fans
come to my defense like I can�t believe it.
KIM: and how has if affected your family, like say your husband for example, is he totally
behind your success and everything you do.
KAREN: I don�t read anything about him that I think would be offensive, there are certain
areas I kind of stay away from, like I don�t talk about our sex life too much, a little
bit but not too much. You know I try and be respectful of the family and believe it or
not as much as I divulge there are lots of stories I don�t share that I think the kids
would be very upset about if I share. He is my best cheerleader. Oh god he is going to
kill me for calling him a cheerleader, hahaha.
KIM: we know what you mean, and tell me do you have a good support network of friends.
KAREN: I do we have great friends; we have a mothers group here in where I live, and
I think there is probably 40 of us now, it is a big mom group is a big social network
online and we meet up all the time and we have girls night outs you know some one has
a hot tub and we go over there we do,�.
KIM: 40 of you??
KAREN: yes all 40 of us, hahahaha.
KIM: no we keep it to like 20. You know 5 or 6 of us and we rent out a book in the () for
a night, we go to get the nails done at the same time, I think it is so important to keep
my sanity, you know we even do classes for kids together, its grown I think it was about
15-20 months that it started since it is getting bigger and bigger and more time we are getting
everyone together. But it�s nice we all have kids around the same age, we have second
children around the same age, some of them are doing thirds and fourths, not me, hahahaha,
but yeah it is really important to have great friends like that.
KIM: and tell us about your book what we can expect when we buy it.
KAREN: I think my children are going to disown me for this one,
KIM: well that is a pre requisite of any book really.
KAREN: it is going to be fun you know, like I am going to organize it, right now when
out see a blog come out of me there is no primary reason for it, they just come out
in whatever the ideas are, I am trying to figure an outline to put the together, there
is going to be one chapter that is all the holiday stuff a lot of holiday posts.
It is like to kick start the project, like funding the book and there are so many fans
behind it and am so excited about them, a lot of them have requested to be in the thank
you section of the book so its going to be fun putting it together, working all this
you know people who help me make this happen. It is a really nice project to do for that
reason.
KIM: that is great and when do you expect the release date to be?
KAREN: I gave myself a July deadline which is really fast, it is eating me up inside,
I ma awake at night thinking about it, and am trying really hard to make the deadline,
in the worst case scenario it would be August, but I think it would be July.
KIM: that�s great and wonderful. Tell me what your plans are for the future.
KAREN: hmmmm,
KIM: Do you have any?
KAREN: hahahaha, I don�t even know what I ma doing in 2 hours.
KIM: you are like in 10 minutes I am taking my kids to school and after that I am not
sure.
KAREN: I would love to do something in writing with the television, it has been a huge dream
of mine, and I have never pursued it. But I would love to do something like that at
some point. But who knows it is such a pipe dream.
KIM: it is wonderful and you know dreams are important, who knows watch this space we will
be seeing your name coming up in the credits.
KAREN: yes my credits, not my face. I will be behind the camera.
KIM: I know it is actually funny because you have such a huge persona but yet there have
not been very many times that people have connected with you in person.
KAREN: yeah I am starting to get a couple of videos now, yeah I am starting to get recognized
every once in a while and it is really creepy. It is really not my thing, I am really happy
when people come up to me and say something, it is really nice and I prefer that that just
staring at me weird but it is not my thing. You know I like my pen, I like my paper, I
like sitting in my computer, I am not great in the limelight so.
KIM: I feel truly honored that you have chosen to spend time with us today and it has been
really wonderful to get to know the Karen behind the baby side burns.
KAREN: thanks Kim, it was fun.
KIM: and you can check out www.facebook.com/babysideburns i highly recommend that you do that and you
hit like button because you are going to love her posts in the news feed. You will laugh
your socks off every single day.
Karen Alpert thank you so much for your time, it has been an absolute honor and I really
hope you will bounce in the discussion board of forums at some point in the future if you
ever find some time maybe drop in some pros of wisdom for your members.
KAREN: or (),,,
KIM: ha-ha-ha-ha. No that would be absolutely great. It I wonderful, thank you again for
your time, I hope you have a great day enjoy the rest of it and take your kids to school
on time.
KAREN: ha-ha, Bye
KIM: Bye-bye, take care.
***************** THE END *****************