Tammie Aaron-Barrada
Widowed Mom in Dire Circumstance Creates Business Success!
Website(s):
http://www.PottieStickers.com
Written by : Laura Smith Bonner
Tammie Aaron-Barrada’s husband grew up believing that he was sterile and would never father a child. Yet when they married in the late 1990’s, it wasn’t long before Tammie became pregnant with their son. They were overjoyed and felt truly blessed to be given this gift, and soon after discovered they were about to have another child, this time a girl, Laila. Aaron-Barrada states, “Everything was fine and he was a happy, healthy daddy and then I got pregnant with my third child and I wasn’t feeling good. I felt extremely sick for about a week and I said ‘God, if there’s a reason that I’m not supposed to have this baby, or if there’s something wrong now and I’m not going to be able to take care of this child, then Lord, please just take him from me now.’ And within 30 minutes I miscarried. God knew my limits were having two children and not three.” And it was not long before the reason for this was made evident to the young family.
Shortly after her miscarriage, September 11, 2001 occurred. And the day after the World Trade Center came crashing down in horror; Tammie Aaron-Barrada’s world also fell apart. Her husband was diagnosed with cancer: A cancer caused from his exposure to asbestos 30 years prior while working as a civil engineer and a cancer with no known cure. Her husband spent the next two months in and out of the hospital undergoing treatment while they searched in vain for a cure that did not exist. Tammie states, “He was diagnosed on September 12th and died on December 8th, so at least we had that time to talk about the children and things of that sort. If he was in an accident and just taken, we would not have had that quality time together.”
A former owner of an advertising agency, Aaron-Barrada had been working on a toilet training reward system before learning of her husband’s illness. She states, “I had designed the system and was in the middle of writing the patent and putting all this stuff together. I was starting to use them on my son Omar right before my husband got sick, and it was my son who started calling them "PottieStickers".
Tammie had already begun training her son with the PottieStickers system and because it was completely portable, she was able to continue with the daily trips to the hospital to visit her husband. Aaron-Barrada stresses the importance of consistency when trying to potty train a child. She states, “When you’re a working family, or one of our family-on-the-go lifestyles, you’ll come across the problem of the daycare doing it this way, and mom or grandma doing it that way, and the kids are confused. We developed one system for the experience of potty training to be consistent. With PottieStickers one package includes three sets of the boards and corresponding stickers so this enables all three people to be on the same page.”
A few years older than her, Tammie’s husband did not believe in life insurance; therefore, when Aaron-Barrada’s husband finally passed, the family was left in an obvious financial quandary. Her children were now trained, and she was left with a handful of unused stickers and wondering where to begin to pick up the pieces of her life. Since the stickers were such a big hit and everyone loved them, friends suggested that she use them to help other women with their potty training experiences. And that’s exactly what she did.
Tammie commenced to design a whole line of stickers and put together a CD as well as various other interrelated products to aid in the toilet training process. Determined to succeed, she moved back to Pennsylvania to be with her family for help with the children and incorporated Aaron-Barrada, Inc. in 2002 as a tribute to her husband. Her business plan won the Write Idea contest in 2003 and Tammie used the monetary award for seed money to get the company off the ground.
For Aaron-Barrada, some of the biggest challenges were finding the information she needed to launch this business, while simultaneously keeping her family intact. She confides, “There wasn’t a ‘How to Guide’ on how to be a mother and father and entrepreneur all at the same time. Having to start a business as a single parent with all of the stress that we had, while we were grieving and trying to work through our grief, trying to do all that on our own was very difficult.”
For assistance Tammie states that, “Wonderful friends and family were our #1 support.
Someone once told me that you should surround yourself with intelligent people and make use of them as resources.” So she found a bunch of friends that were business owners and used them for feedback. She integrated additional investors and made them all sit on her Board of Directors to help guide her through her decisions. She relates, “Actually, this whole thing started when I invented a board game for children. When I took it to those people they said, no, we like the other thing you talked about with the stickers. You should develop the toilet training system. So we came up with the rewards system, which included RewardEmStickers, along with the PottieStickers. They helped me develop more ideas through to the end by being my sounding board.”
The portability of Aaron-Barrada’s training system is what makes it truly unique. All of the systems on the market at that time were either heavy cardboard or a wooden board that you mounted on your refrigerator. This was not an item that could readily be carted about in your daily travels with your child. So she came up with a colorful background on extra thick paper that folds and you can place it in your purse. They come three to a pack so there’s one for home, one for mom’s purse and one for daycare or grandmas. Each set has a coordinating set of stickers that are thick enough for toddlers to handle on their own. The reward certificates that accompany the system have been found to be even more motivational and kids just seem to love them.
Prior to last year, the system was primarily available only by downloading it from their web site. However, a major turning point was actualized when Tammie realized that they could expand by translating everything into both English and Spanish on CD. This enabled people who did not have access to the Internet, or simply preferred not to download from the web, the opportunity to take advantage of the system as well. Aaron-Barrada states, “We presented the plan for this last March and then rolled out the product in April. We’ve tripled our business every year for the past five years and this is our best year yet. God has truly blessed us.”
At present, Aaron-Barrada is delving into licensing because the response from a radio talk show she hosted which discussed mom invented products was so overwhelming. She is co-authoring a book on that very subject and is also analyzing the possibility of putting a women inventors’ school on-line. The toilet training system she invented is currently being explored for eventual availability in major book stores and this single-mother mompreneuer does not stop for a beat in her endeavors. As for Tammie herself, I think she said it best when she confided, “Now if we can just find a man. We’ve decided we’re ready to try dating again.” And for this resilient, tenacious Mom-on-the-Move, we trust that only good things can follow.
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| Shelby Berry |
Nominated by Shelby Berry, co-worker and friend to Tammie. Shelby writes:
“In the weeks following September 11, 2001, Tammie’s life changed forever. She was living in Alabama, pregnant with her third child when her husband was diagnosed with cancer. She was also trying to potty train their two toddlers – TALK ABOUT STRESS! Being a creative mom, she designed a portable potty training system that her three year old son started calling “PottieStickers”. Shortly after this whole circus started, Tammie miscarried their third child and her husband lost his battle with cancer. She was alone in Alabama, thousands of miles from any family, and her husband had no life insurance. So, Tammie got creative again. She moved back to Pennsylvania and turned PottieStickers into a business. Now, 5 years later, Tammie has a whole line of children's products. She also supports cancer research by donating a percentage of every sale to several different Cancer Organizations.
Tammie has an inspiring message to share with other mothers and entrepreneurs that when life hands you lemons you really can make lemonade.”
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