Becoming Moms Pushed Founders to Follow Their Passions
After becoming moms, Little List Founders, Lia and Liz knew they needed to make a change in their professional lives if they wanted to have the balance and fulfillment they desired.
They both left their successful and safe six figure corporate jobs to follow their entrepreneurial spirit and passions of gift giving to start a website aimed at making other moms lives easier.
But Little List wasn’t born out of the happiest place. After having their daughters two days apart, they each fell into their own dark place of postpartum depression, anxiety and severe mom guilt. Here is the story of how friendship and entrepreneurship lifted them to a place where they’ve now helped aid in the purchase of thousands of hand-picked items to make other moms lives easier.
After starting college at Villanova University in 2002, Lia and Liz became immediate friends in a computer science class. After college they eagerly entered the workforce in corporate jobs where they climbed the ladder making good salaries and strong reputations among their colleagues. However, as the accolades continued, they both always felt there was something missing. They longed for something more, something of their own that would help make others’ lives easier.
Twelve years after college graduation, Lia and Lia remained the best of friends, and couldn’t believe when they shared the news that their due dates were only a few days apart. In February 2014, Reese and Alexa (Lia and Liz’s daughters) were born only two days apart. While it was a joyous time but as many mothers can relate, they each had a very difficult time reentering the workforce. Between companies that were not supportive of new mothers challenges of work-life balance and severe mom-guilt, Lia and Liz knew they needed to make a change to something positive.
This desperate sense of needing more lead them to follow their passion of starting their first company together. Little List, a site dedicated to bringing moms the best deals on new products was born during their first maternity leaves in 2014. The site was incredibly popular, reaching hundreds of thousands of women across the country. It was a way for them to feel connected to each other as well as another community of moms and fine tune the entrepreneurial skills they were both excited to use.
During this time with their new venture, Little List, they read several books, talked to mentors and took courses. this helped with their business but also helped them answer for themselves, “how are women supposed to work like that don’t have kids and raise kids like they don’t work?” Not only were Lia and Liz starting up a company, but at the time, they both had full time day jobs, which often involved travel and overnights. It was a lot to juggle, but they knew that if they stayed focused, they’d ultimately be able to fully follow their passions of starting a business while being the kind of moms they aimed to be.
After four years of success with Little List (and a few months after they had their 2ndchildren, both sons, a couple months apart…AGAIN!), Lia and Liz realized there was an opportunity to take Little List to the next level. They took their love of unique products and helping moms one step further by making gifting easy. They have both always taken a lot of pride in their gift giving and have consistently received compliments for the thoughtfulness of their gifts. Now as moms, they are constantly buying gifts, and even have a separate budget line in their monthly budgets for gifts. They understand the constant need for good gift ideas that are different, exciting and within a range of price options for everyone on your list.
Little List readers helped move Little List where we it is today – contact the founders any time, even it’s just to say hi! XXX@CCCCC.com
