Kia Abrera calls herself an EduCreator and Creative Entrepreneur. On the social media app TikTok, she has 137,500 followers who look to her for wise and practical tips on being brave through creativity, branding, and purpose. Anyone will pick up a thing or two just by scrolling through her videos.
Kia’s passion to help businesses build their brand has allowed her a foothold in the creatives industry. She is a video marketing strategist and producer, and the co-founder and CEO of Braveworks Inc., an 8-figure social impact marketing agency that specializes in human-centered communication and creative strategy designed to uplift society. She is also a business coach for starting creatives in developing countries starting with the Philippines.
In this feature, we share Kia’s tips for fellow mompreneurs, based on her personal experience in balancing motherhood while making an impact in the Philippine creatives scene.
Ask for — and accept — help
Kia is an incredibly busy woman but she relies on her family to get through long days and heavy workloads. She says, “It depends on my workload – but I always start my day with a lot of cheek squishes even if my baby’s still asleep. I would check my phone and see what I need to prioritize that day. A normal workload for me would start after lunch all the way to about 11pm or midnight (or even past) because my clients are US-based. On crunch times, my sister would come over and take care of her.
Of course, my baby is usually the boss so if she knocks on the office and checks on mama, I usually am incapable of refusing – so I stop what I’m doing for a few minutes and talk to her or play with her. We pray the rosary every night, usually with my family on the phone. Most of the time, I tuck her in at night. On a particularly heavy workload, my husband or my sister tucks her in and I make sure to make up for it in the morning.”
Plan ahead. Empower others.
“I basically found a way to integrate my current work into my life. The most important thing for me is to ask for help. In our two businesses, we try as much as we can to buy back our time so we delegate to good people and get systems and automations as much as we can to make things efficient. If I can predict that my schedule will be busier than usual, I ask help from my husband, my sister, or both. If I need to rest, my daughter will have someone we trust to take care of her – usually that’s my family. It’s amazing too because her tita (my sister) is her favorite playmate and she loves her lolo and lola visits. The most important lesson I learned in my mompreneur journey is to answer the call that needs you the most, and to always have contingencies in place.”
One day and one project at a time
“In the process of running our business, our purpose just grew. It used to be just needing to survive, or needing to get experience, or get our first sales. In the process, we just kept uncovering what mattered to us. We listened to our instincts and to our clients, our audiences – and all these just allowed our purpose to grow. We now have an advocacy – problems that we’re passionate about solving. It took us years to get here – in my case, it was close to 20 years. What keeps us going now is the fact that the advocacy that we chose – Filipino creatives – have growing and changing challenges. As long as we want to help them, we know we will need to keep improving. We need to be a few steps ahead so we can be better educators. I also know that looking ahead will mean we will be exposing ourselves to more and more challenges, which means we will need to build the skills, grit and mental fortitude to face them head on. Then we can teach them lessons that we learned and validated through actual experience.”
Eyes on the prize. Keep working towards your goal.
“My goal as a mom is to raise a good child without losing myself along the way. I’m someone who had support growing up, and my parents gave me permission to pursue my dreams even if they never had deep pockets to begin with. My parents taught me to prioritize who I become along the way. That’s the same thing I want my child to be exposed to. At the same time, I still want to honor those smaller pockets of time that I can take for myself. As a mompreneur, I just want to set a good example for my girl. I want to become someone who helps Filipino creatives become more human-centered entrepreneurs, and to reignite dreams that have been lost to fear, to toxic environments, or to any other dream-killers. If my little girl can witness what mama and papa can do with our creativities, and she also sees what others can be capable of when they embrace their creative potential, then she also understands what’s possible for her.”
Root for other mompreneurs
“It’s okay to start low and slow. Work with what you have. Entrepreneurship, especially as a mom, is a big risk. Do what you can to lessen the risk associated with your starting point because you still also have mouths to feed – and there is no problem with that. Don’t pressure yourself to go after results that you’re seeing others have – they have different starting points, different access to resources, different experiences and perspectives. Start low-risk, embrace the possibility of failing, think about what you can gain AND what you can stand to lose. It’s all part of the process. Just start, do the small steps, ask for help, find rests in between, celebrate every single small win, and give yourself grace. You’re doing great.“
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