Mom Means Business: Dana Morales of The Happiness Bucket

Hi Dana, I can't wait to hear your story! Tell us a little about yourself, business, and family.

My husband and I have been married for four years and have a 2.7-year-old daughter. I own The Happiness Bucket, which works with busy moms to educate, create and sustain systems in their spaces, lives and souls, helping them to gain the happiness and peace they long for.

At what point in your business did you have children?

I had children prior to starting my business.

How did that affect the way you run your business?

I do have to plan around my daughter, ensuring her needs are met so I do a lot on the days that she is visiting her grandparents, on the weekends and at night.

What is one trait of yours that you hope your daughter inherits from you?

My organizational and money management skills.

Have your children influenced the work you do in any way?

In some ways, because an upcoming program I am developing was born from my childbirth experience. There was a lack of information in podcast form, which I really wanted due to how busy I was at the time.

I know being a mom and an entrepreneur can be a tough job.

How do you treat yourself on special occasions? How do you celebrate the small victories? I share it with my husband. I'm not sure I "celebrate" I am just really happy and talk about it with him a lot.

What advice would you give to a mom thinking about starting a business or a business owner about to have children?

Plan ahead as much as you can. Think about the blocks of time when you can get the work in. Set some off limit times in your workday that is strictly family time. Especially when you are starting a new business you are so focused on it that you will often times work longer than you expect to work. I pulled a lot of late nights because I started working after my daughter and husband went to sleep.

Do you use any tech/apps to keep your life together?

Yes I use Evernote religiously. I love zoho as a free app as well for mail and it has a lot of free applications as part of it's platform so it allowed me to look like a big time business without the dollar signs often required with servers and hosting.