Screen Shot via brightlittles.com
An a-ha parenting moment inspired entrepreneur Tara Ballentine to pursue her most recent enterprise, one, she says, that is her most meaningful.
Stopped in her car at a red light in Austin, Ballentine’s 4-year-old daughter asked what the sign held by a man at the corner said.
“It was a homeless man with a sign,” Ballentine says. “I told my daughter it says, ‘Have a nice day.’”
It was probably a pause or change in Ballentine’s tone when she answered, but her daughter, even at 4, sensed that explanation wasn't sufficient. The little girl wasn’t buying. What does it really say, the little girl asked?
“I had this moment: ‘Oh, my, God, what do I do?’” Ballentine recalls. Mom leveled with her daughter, telling her the truth. The man with the sign was hungry and he said he needed help.
“And, she said, ‘Why don’t we help?’” Ballentine says of the conversation that followed. “I told her that I didn’t have the answers right now, but let Mommy think about it and get back to you. That’s emotional. What do you do? How do you meet her where she is?”
After discerning her parental challenge, Ballentine and her daughter had a talk and decided they could do something. So, that weekend they cleaned out closets at home and donated clothes to a shelter. They did the same with the daughter’s toy chest.
But at that very moment, something even bigger happened. Ballentine vowed that from that moment she would not merely protect her child but also prepare her for the things she will inevitably encounter in life, and at an increasingly younger age. Well, not only prepare the child, but the parents as well for these moments. It’s better to meet the issues head-on rather than out of the blue and blindsided while stopped at a red light.
One problem: There were very few products for parents such as Ballentine to do that. She found a number of products for older children, like teenagers, but “I was struggling trying to meet her where she was, and I couldn’t find a product to do that.”
Leave it to an entrepreneur to fix that. Born out of this moment was Bright Littles, a card set — they’re called “Convo Cards” and come in a box — that acts like a game for children but asks big questions, and thereby stirs conversations with parents, about diversity, safety, self, nature, and health for children 4 years old and younger.
Who can touch your body? What do you do if you find a gun? What are a couple of ways you can help your community or neighborhood?
A card under "Self" recommends an activity for parents to work with their children to develop their own “super-secret” code word that they can use when they are feeling unsafe. This can be used at home when there are guests in the house, or they could call you from a play date or a sleepover.
The cards are available on the website. Some small boutique stores are starting to sell them, too.
Ballentine has also created a free SMS text platform that delivers topics weekly through questions, tips, activities, and challenges. That, too, can be accessed through the website.
As an entrepreneur, Ballentine says she has “had some wins and had some losses.”
“I’m a creator,” she says. “Each time I think I get a little better at it.”
She owns a marketing business strategy firm, FNCH, that was heavy in the hospitality industry. When the pandemic decimated that industry, it did the same to her business.
Bright Littles’ start-up has been self-funded. Ballentine says she had a rainy-day fund from FNCH that she has used as a runway. She has contracted with a freelancer to design the cards and found a company that produces playing cards.
There have been hiccups, too, with the supply chain, but since kicking this off early in 2021, she now has what she called a warehouse full of Convo Cards.
“It was scary,” she says. “I had to buy a bunch of them. Startup is expensive, but [not doing this] wasn’t an option. I had to do this.
Of her startup enterprises — Ballentine had a fashion and hemp business (two different businesses) in Los Angeles before moving to Austin — this one has been the most meaningful, particularly because her daughter is involved with it.
The early reviews from consuming parents have been good, she says. In the works are topic specific interactive journals. She hopes to eventually get all of these into classrooms in multiple languages. Educators can register right now through the website to receive a simplified version of the questions for free in English or Spanish.
“I made something parents need, but they don’t know it exists. People don’t know to look for it. Word of mouth has been powerful,” she says, specifically pointing to the “mom community.”
“It takes a village to raise a family, and a village to raise a company.”