Author finds businesses go through growth stages, like kids

Her new book, ‘‘The ParentPreneur Edge — What Parenting Teaches us about Building a Successful Business,” uses profiles of people who have been successful in combining running a business with parenting to illustrate her point.

As the founder of a business and parent of two pre-teenage daughters, Kirk, 41, of Damascus, feels qualified to speak about both.

Soon after she gave birth to her oldest daughter, Sydney, in 1995, Kirk quit a job with IBM so she would not have to travel and opened an Internet technology company, which she called Applied Creative Technologies, in her basement.

When she sold the company 10 years later, it was a multimillion-dollar business with 24 employees and major corporate clients.

She compared starting the business to being in labor. When she started her business, she did her own accounting, then she remembered how much she hated it.

‘‘It was like being in labor: you forget and do it again,” Kirk said.

Sections in the book include the headings ‘‘Surviving the Terrible Twos,” ‘‘Disciplining in Anger,” ‘‘Knowing Your Kid,” ‘‘Picking Your Battles” and ‘‘Setting Boundaries.”

Kirk’s company allowed employees flexibility to balance their personal lives with work. Employees also became a family, with picnics and other activities to encourage working together as a team. Kirk calls that growing the business through the baby and toddler years.

As children grow, parents have to trust them to make the right decisions, just as a manager has to let employees make decisions if the company is to grow.

‘‘Children are adults in training,” Kirk said. ‘‘You train [employees] to work yourself out of a job.”

She considered her business a success when it made a lot of money that was unrelated to her efforts.

‘‘[Women] are not afraid to let the human part of our lives enter our business lives. We’re not afraid to integrate the two,” Kirk said. ‘‘Women tend to bring more compassion in the workplace ... Women are naturally good at getting things done through other people, working together, team building.”

Years ago, women overcompensated and tried to be more like men in the workplace, which was a mistake, she said.

Based on awards the company received for its work⁄life policies, Kirk was invited to attend a White House conference of women entrepreneurs in 2002. That meeting led to an invitation to attend a conference in Tunisia in 2005 on Arab women in business. She was surprised that 200 women from 15 countries attended that event.

‘‘I saw we had a lot in common,” Kirk said. ‘‘I decided at the end of the conference to write a book.”

Last summer, John Wiley and Sons of Hoboken, N.J., published the book.

‘‘There are a lot of books on entrepreneurship,” said Deborah Englander, executive editor. ‘‘The fact she was able to say I was using my parenting skills was a clever hook.”

Sales are OK, Englander said. She hopes a large association will embrace the book, which would give sales a big boost.

‘‘More important than book sales are the impact the book can have on those who read it,” Kirk said.

She appreciates notes she has received from strangers that read the book and say it has inspired them to fulfill their dreams and start a business.

‘‘It’s not about staying home or working, it’s about having a fulfilled life, whatever works for you,” Kirk said.

Kirk teaches entrepreneurship and technology classes for women at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her entrepreneurship class was recently named the best specialty entrepreneurship education course by the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship at its annual meeting.

To hear more

Damascus author Julie Lenzer Kirk will answer questions Thursday at the National Association of Women Business Owners as part of its ‘‘CEO Insights” series. The meeting will be held from 5:15 to 7:30 p.m. at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Ave. in Washington, D.C. Cost to attend is $45 for members, $50 for nonmembers. For more information, visit info@nawbo-ncc.org.