Scents and sensibilities
Any aspiring entrepreneur can start a passion-fueled business. Without the right tools and knowledge of business processes, however, building and sustaining a business can be financially and emotionally frustrating.
Lei Ermitanio, a mother of three, wanted to help other mompreneurs to fasttrack their business without the inconvenience and difficulties she had experienced while she was starting out. That’s why she formed the group MOMpreneurs Club PH, an online community where members can crowdsource ideas, give recommendations, and even promote their businesses.
Looking back, Ermitanio wished she was able to count on such a group when was going through harsh experiences: the loss of her family’s business, an accident that injured her husband, a bout with depression, and a house burglary. These events pushed her to make a new beginning in the metro, where she became a provider of personalized scents. Finding the right mix
For Ermitanio, creating MOMpreneurs Club PH was her way of paying it forward. To date, MOMpreneurs Club PH has become a community of more than 4,000 who want to make profits out of their passions. The group’s members include foodpreneurs, craftpreneurs, resellers, and even professionals seeking or giving advice. From time to time, Ermitanio herself conducts webinars to help her fellow mompreneurs gain expertise.
“What I share in the group are what I needed before, I needed motivation, I needed social media know-how. I also felt the need to introduce business opportunities given that they have no capital, they stay at home, and they can only go online to earn,” Ermitanio said. “It’s rewarding to see an exchange of opinions in the group. Sometimes I would just read threads and I already learned a lot.”
Drawing from her own experiences, Ermitanio understands that balancing work and family can be a challenge. A study published by global employment website Monster showed that having a family interferes with a woman’s career, with almost a third of Filipino women saying that they feel that they have missed out on career opportunities because they chose to have a family.
By leveraging the accessibility of digital tools, Ermitanio wants to inspire other women that they can be their own bosses while being a full-time mom. While Ermitanio only runs a team of three and creates her products at home, she’s able to market her products and manage transactions online. Sharing the formula
As a way of bringing her business to the next level, Ermitanio is currently trying to tap other markets and expanding her pool of suppliers. To do these, she signed up on UnionBank GlobalLinker, a free digital platform where she gets linked to 23,000 entrepreneurs who could expand her network of potential suppliers and customers. UnionBank GlobalLinker also gives Ermitanio access to exclusive deals on marketing and leadership courses, workshops, hotel bookings, and credit card deals, among others.
Aside from these benefits, UnionBank GlobalLinker gives Ermitanio the tools to start her own ecommerce store or website. The platform also curates different articles, some of them written by the platform’s users, to help sharpen her expertise.