Jill Salzman

Jill Salzman is currently growing her third entrepreneurial venture, The Founding Moms, the world’s first and only collective of offline meetups and online resources for mom entrepreneurs that was named a Top 100 Website for Entrepreneurs in 2015 by Forbes. A graduate of Brown University and law school, she started a music management firm and then launched a baby jewelry company before creating her current venture. She’s the author of Found It: A Field Guide for Mom Entrepreneurs, a co-host of Inc. Magazine’s top-rated entertaining business podcast, Breaking Down Your Business, host of the Tip Top Tips for Entrepreneurs video series, gave her own TED talk on 11/11/11, was dubbed a “mommy mogul” by CNNMoney, a “ Cool Mom Entrepreneur We Love” by MSN Live, and she was recently named one of the Top 50 Women to Watch In Tech as well as a Top 100 Champion Small Business Influencer. In her spare time, Jill enjoys kloofing, baking, and erasing her daughters’ crayon artwork from the kitchen walls.

Some of what we talked about:

Email marketing
Walking into stores asking them to sell her stuff
Trade shows
Bizbuy.com
Started biz 3 on meetup.com and now she’s in 12 countries and 62 cities
3 years she charged zero to build it and lived off of the sales proceeds from her other company.
Now she allows people to join for free but charges $10-$15 to attend meetings
A year ago she launched online and charges $35 a month
She is mostly funded by sponsors and does not pay speakers
Everything that was in her way was her
Incorporated her children into the business like little interns
Scheduled play dates
Did more work after the kids went to bed
…And much more