Sarah Deveau, owner of Cater Tot Consignment and mother of three, had her first child in 2005.

“I knew right away I didn't want to go back to a full-time career,” she says. “We knew we would have more kids, too, but I didn't want to be a stay-at-home mom. I wanted the best of both worlds.”

What she really wanted was a career on her own terms: something that would allow her flexibility to spend time with her children and earn an income.

A consumer who already shopped at used clothing and thrift stores herself, Sarah decided to open a  children's consignment store – the kind she wished was already available.

“I'm very frugal,” she says. “I never understood the allure of buying new. The second you walk out of the store, it's worth half of its value, or less.” She also likes the personality that used stuff has. “You get stuff with a story.”

She researched her market and asked other moms what they liked and disliked about stores. What would they have in their ideal baby consignment store? She took the information she gathered and developed a plan.

Calgary, where she lived, already had a few consignment stores. But Airdrie, Alberta, just 15-minutes north of Calgary, was a growing city of 35,000 people that didn't have any kids' stores at all, let alone a child-centred consignment store. This, she felt, would be an ideal place for her store.

She and her husband took out a personal loan because it was quicker than getting a business loan, and Sarah wanted to open the store right away. She opened Cater Tot consignment on Kate's first birthday.

“I worked like a dog for eight months,” Sarah recalls. She put in 60 to 80 hours per week. “I  slept at the store some nights because we lived in Calgary at the time and I didn't even want to spare the time to go home.”

She was able to spend so much time on it because, she says, ““I have a great husband,” adding, “It's extremely important when you become an entrepreneur to have a strong network.”

Her husband works a very demanding job too, but he understood she wasn't going to be home for dinner and there was no more maternity leave where “I stayed home and played with the baby all day and then made him a nice warm supper and cleaned.” Instead, he picked up their daughter from daycare, and their house was a mess, and he had to make his own supper and do bedtime and bath time by himself.

“Now we have three girls under the age of six and he is amazing,” she says.

Sarah emphasizes that if you're going to open a business, you need a strong network, whether it's your husband, or a daycare that's flexible, or your parents and friends. Whoever you network is, make sure they understand what you're getting into, and how it's going to affect them. It's also important that you understand what you're getting into.

“The saddest thing I find,” says Sarah, “is that I talk to women who are starting businesses and they really underestimate how much cash flow they're going to need and the time investment a business takes at the start.”

Sarah notes start-up can be three months — or three years – of hard work, and everyone thinks they're going to be the three-month person, and they'll be able to take their kids to work with them, or they can work from home right away and turn a profit. They don't understand that there's a lot of work, time, and stress involved in running a business. Her work is unpredictable, so she hired a live-in nanny. With nine part-time staff at the store, if someone calls in sick at the last minute, she has to drop everything and cover the shift.

Being an entrepreneur, she says, is not for the faint of heart.

When she started, Sarah was faced with the struggle of finding peers. If you work in an office, she explains, you have a tight group of people that you talk to everyday. But when you start a business, “You feel lost because you don't have anyone to turn to when you have questions,” she says.

Sarah eventually found a retailer in another town who was willing to talk to her. They hit it off so well, they became the best of friends and their families even vacation together. They built up a support group of women retailers who meet every two months for dinner, and chat on Facebook.

“We share ideas, tips and tricks,” she says. “I felt very lonely in my business [when I started], but since I built up a network of sharing people, it's been great.”

Being a Mompreneur with three kids can be challenging. For example, now that Kate is older, she can go to the store with mom, but like any child her age, she wants everything she sees.

“She thinks I have non-stop access to every toy she could possibly want,” Sarah says. One of the lessons they're teaching her is that there are boundaries, so no, Mom can't bring every toy home for her to play with.

Then there is the challenge of making time for work and for family. Sometimes Sarah spends the whole day with her kids and doesn't turn on the laptop or even answer the phone, unless there's an emergency at the store. Other days, it's all work, and she may leave the house at 7 am and not return until midnight.

“There's this elusive balance that everyone is looking for,” she says. “I see it as a teeter-totter.”

In fact, she sees her life as a multiple of teeter-totters because in addition to the kids and work, she also wants to spend time with her girlfriends, her husband, or do things together as a couple with their other friends.

One thing that's changed since she had kids is that she's toned down on multi-tasking. She used to try to do several things at once, like work on her business and play with the kids, but one day her oldest daughter asked why she didn't play with them anymore. Surprised, Sarah said, “but I was playing with you all day,” and Kate replied, “You were on your laptop all day.”

So now Sarah has an egg-timer. If she has to 'take a minute' to check her email, she sets the timer and makes sure she follows through on her word and really only takes a minute. When it goes off, then it's time to put work away and focus on the kids.

“If I have expectations of them, they have expectations of me,” she says. She also does a lot of work after the kids go to bed.

Sarah notes that if she was working 60+ hours a week at the store it might be even more successful than it already is, but this way, the store is doing well and she has time to be with her kids.

“I don't think I have a perfect balance,” she says. “But I'm really happy with where I am and what I'm doing.”