Female Founders: Michelle Mintz of Baby Blooming Moments On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

More women should share their incredible ideas with the world, especially ideas they have for other women. Who knows better than women to help other women?

As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Michelle Mintz.

Michelle Mintz, M.S., CCC-SLP, is the creator of Baby Blooming Moments™, a unique, one-on-one parent coaching experience empowering parents, siblings, grandparents, and nannies to enhance the way they interact with their babies and toddlers. She helps transform everyday in-the-moment interactions into fun, dynamic moments to increase communication and brain connections during those crucial early formative years. As a Personal Baby Bloomer, Michelle develops personalized, proactive strategies and hands-on activities to integrate throughout the day which enrich early attachments and social development, and helps all babies and toddlers bloom. She is also the author of All Done Binky!, a book to help support families with babies and toddlers weaning off pacifiers. Instagram; Facebook; LinkedIn

As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Michelle Mintz.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

For over 25 years, my passion had been connecting and communicating with parents, siblings, grandparents and nannies and their babies from birth through five years old. Guiding both the children and adults during my speech therapy sessions provided me with great joy and pride. To be present for the beautiful moment when a mom hears her child speak a word they had never spoken before was an inspiring and exhilarating shared experience.

Throughout my years of experience as a Speech-Language Therapist, I had discovered that teaching those who spend the most time with the babies and toddlers, such as the parents, siblings, grandparents and nannies, to be able to integrate my proactive strategies into their natural daily activities is the most valuable way to help all babies bloom.

My therapy experiences inspired me to create my company, BABY BLOOMING MOMENTS™.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

I coach on strategies on how to increase words and language from babies and toddlers. One strategy is the need for excitement in the tone of voice to make it more enticing for a baby to repeat it. One mother told me a story about how she was trying to teach her son to say his first word “dog,” so every time she saw a dog in a book, on the street, or from the car, she would say “dog” in the hopes her son would say it back to her but to no avail. One day, she was cooking in the kitchen and she cut herself with a knife and yelled with excitement and a large, loud tone of voice, “OH S***!!!” and she heard her adorable son repeat from the other room, “S***!” So, her son’s first word is s***, and every time she has to complete a history form and it asks what was her son’s first word, she needs to write s***!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I first started, I would have all the toys, puzzles and books all around me and easily accessible to the babies. As I was attempting to engage a child with a particular activity, that child would simply crawl or walk away to grab another toy because I was taking too long to give it to them as I was trying to implement strategies that would help build their vocabulary. The child would move to another interest instead of staying with me, so I was constantly trying to reach after them to stay engaged.

Since then, I have learned that I only have one toy or book or puzzle or activity with me at a time so we can focus together and make the most out of that interaction.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I am so grateful to my mother for continuing to believe in me and offer her support, incredible thoughts and ideas and her patience.

Baby Blooming Moments has been around in various forms throughout the past years with numerous strategies for marketing and development. My mother has been listening to my Baby Blooming Moments proactive strategies and all that comes with it for a long time; not just listening, but playing a major active part in its development and creative ideas.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?

It is challenging for many women to have confidence and strength in a male dominated working world. Many women have incredible ideas and thoughts on how to improve the country, but it takes a certain type of woman to have the brevity to speak up and be strong in what she believes.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

Allow and support women to have a voice, stand up for themselves and bring their superb ideas and creativity to the world. Start supporting that bravery, strength and confidence early in young women’s lives…much earlier that one would think. It actually begins during the early years; that sense of safety and comfort that a baby feels affects their entire life and who and what they become. Using strategies from Baby Blooming Moments to make a productive impact in babies and toddlers lives actually impact the future of the world.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

More women should share their incredible ideas with the world, especially ideas they have for other women. Who knows better than women to help other women?

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean.

There are myths that women cannot be powerful, strong, independent, worthy or a leader. This is absolutely false and has been proven so by the mighty strong women that have demonstrated this in the past. Strength and confidence comes from within and begins very early on in life. Providing paths for young individual women to develop their courage and strength during their young years is so important so that they can bloom and help the future of our world.

Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?

Organization

Strength

Confidence

Ability to delegate

Ability to lead

Ability to listen

Ability to be flexible

Ability to admit need help

Ability to admit wrong

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)

1. That I would need more money than I had originally estimated to start a new business. I knew that money would be essential to starting and growing a new business. However, I didn’t anticipate the amount of funds that I would need to allocate to external hires and support. I was fortunate enough to be able to use an inheritance to hire the people I needed to get my business off the ground, which enabled me to preserve my day-to-day livable funds.
2. That there will be many people who will disappoint me by not doing their job. There were many people that I needed to hire in order to start the business, and I quickly learned that some of them were unreliable and or didn’t follow through. I felt like I ended up wasting some of my investment money not hiring the right people.
3. How much I’d need to delegate to get my business going. I thought that because I knew my particular business quite well, I would be able to get it up and running without much help from anybody else. I was wrong. Although I am an expert in my own field, there are other areas of business that I had to hire people for, who were experts in the areas I was not an expert in. I came to learn I could not do it all for this to be successful.
4. That it may, and probably will, take A LOT of time to get my business to where I want it to be. I definitely see the critical need for my business. However, the message of why somebody needs me or my company is not always easy to pass along, and therefore, it may take a longer than I had hoped for in order to create my brand awareness.
5. The amount of patience, persistence, dedication, perseverance and never-ending hope I would need to make this business happen. There have been many versions of my business over the years, and with the highs come the lows. However, my dedication to the importance of my business for society keeps me pursuing my dreams of this business becoming a reality!

How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

I have used my success throughout the past 25 years and now, especially with covid, I believe there is an urgency and necessity to implement Baby Blooming Moments into every household with a baby or toddler as there is a syndrome of “development delay.”

My techniques help bridge the gap that currently exists as babies and toddlers have not been able to socialize with other children their age, which is necessary in order to develop the skills needed for this age range.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

The movement to begin instilling successful feelings during the early years of life. It is so very important to focus on the birth to five population and helping those who raise those children to learn how to be the most effective and productive for the success of those children.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Kate Middleton 100%. I so admire her dedicated focus on early childhood intervention. She launched the The Royal Foundation Centre For Early Childhood to “change the way we think about early childhood, and transform lives for generations to come.” Kate understands the importance of the earliest years of a child’s life and how it shapes the person they become. She also designed the Royal Horticultural Society Back to Nature Garden, a playful woodland oasis inspired by childhood memories and focuses on children’s sensory, learning, play and exploration.

Kate’s dedication to raising awareness of the importance of the early years and helping parents and others learn how they can help embrace the opportunity to create happier, healthier (mentally and physically) and more nurturing lives is so inspiring and in line with Baby Blooming Moments.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.