Tiny Tot Innovations - Guest Blog
I am so excited to introduce our guest on the blog this week, Cortney. She is a mother, a pharmacist, and an entrepreneur. Cortney along with her husband created products that are innovative and needed. As a mom who breastfed (no shame or judgment if you didn’t or wanted to and couldn’t), I know firsthand how many plastic milk storage bags you go through during that period of time in your motherhood journey. Cortney and her husband came up with an idea and eventually a product which then turned into a multi-product company that sets out to help you be less wasteful when it comes to products for childhood. These are products they stand behind not only because of the great quality but because they can make a difference, like Cortney says, saving the planet one single-use storage bag at a time! I can’t wait for you to check out these products as well as her story and if you happen to know anyone who is pregnant, nursing, or with small children that would be interested in this company and the wonderful products they have to offer, please share this with them. Empowered women empower women and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for this beautiful person and her company! Enjoy—and as always, happy reading!
Hi! I am Cortney and I am so excited to bring you this guest blog and introduce you to my family and business, Tiny Tots Innovations, LLC. I met Katie through our workout group, Lexi J Wellness. We connected over our mutual journey of entrepreneurship in the child product and motherhood space. My husband, John, and I own Tiny Tot Innovations, LLC. Our business is based on baby/child feeding products and our goal is to bring quality and affordable products to parents that they will LOVE and are also sustainable whenever possible. Besides running our business, I am a pharmacist, and my husband is an engineer. We live in Fayette, MO (small-town USA). We are high school sweethearts raising two of the sweetest girls on the planet.
I would like to start by telling a little story about how our business came to be. My husband has always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I, on the other hand, have not. I can remember in 2005 when John pitched me his first business idea. He wanted to make chapstick that was shaped like an oval instead of a round tube. His reasoning was solid. He always had chapstick in his pocket and it would eventually wear a hole in his jeans where it rubbed against the material. He wanted one that would follow the contour of his thigh so it wouldn’t ruin his pants. This was the first business idea of his that I couldn’t support. There were many others and all of them, while valid, were just not ideas I could see becoming a business. While it may seem that I am harsh and unsupportive I do have my reasons. My parents are entrepreneurs. They had 5 jobs between the two of them when my brother and I were kids. 4 of those businesses were ones they owned and operated. I knew firsthand how much time and effort went into running your own business. It is definitely NOT a 9-5 gig with lunches and breaks! Their business ventures taught me at a young age what it means to have a strong work ethic, integrity, and to be motivated. It also taught me you don’t start a venture unless you can be 100% dedicated to it, even when it isn’t fun. Because let’s be honest, there are a lot of days being a business owner is not fun.
The years went on and the business ideas came and went until the one fateful day that John asked me, “what would you change to make your life easier?” We were sitting at a Logboat Brewery, and it was one of our first times alone since having our second daughter. My parents had offered to keep the girls for the afternoon so we could go on a much-needed date. Being that we were very much in the newborn stage of life most of my brain activity was devoted to breast milk, so my answer was immediate! I wanted to change breast milk storage. With our first daughter, I used the traditional 6-ounce plastic bags to store my milk. I was very blessed with the amount of milk my body produced. So much so that I had to buy a freezer to store it all. However, that also meant we were using an insane number of plastic bags. I have never really been a huge fan of single-use packaging or plastics, but it never bothered me too much until I managed to fill a freezer with single-use bags. It was just so wasteful! There had to be another way! I did eventually find a breast milk storage tray, which is what we used with our second daughter. The concept was great! Freeze breast milk in 1-ounce bars that can then be stored in larger containers. That’s a win, right? It was—except the execution was terrible! The trays leaked, they were made of a hard plastic that made it impossible to release the milk bars, and they were not dishwasher safe. John being the engineer he is said “we can fix that” and so we did. We worked up a design and came out with a breast milk storage tray that is made of food-grade silicone. The tray can store 10 one-ounce bars. It has a deeper bar form, so it doesn’t spill as easily. It has a lid that seals better than the competition and because it is silicone it is very flexible making the release of bars much easier! You can check them out here:
We have since created more products for various stages of baby/childhood including breast milk collectors, reusable food pouches, and children’s travel utensils (linked below). But the one thing that they all have in common is that they are designed with parents in mind. We do not create products for the sake of having another product in our line, everything is designed to be useful and to solve a problem.
As any small business does, we have evolved. We have had successes and we have faced many hurdles. Though we have faced them together and I think that is what makes us special. We have very different strengths, and we bring the best of each other into this business. I am the “idea person.” I will randomly spout off something we should make while we are eating dinner, going for a walk, or in the grocery store. John is the one who tracks those ideas in an ever-growing note app on his phone and then delicately tells me when something will and will not work. I still haven’t quite figured out how we have switched roles from where we were 17 years ago, but it works for us so I am not going to question it too much.
Another part of my entrepreneurship journey that has surprised me is how much I enjoy the “peopling” of it. I was always an avid anti-networker before owning my business because it felt so ingenuine to me. Now, I can honestly say that it is what fills my cup. I guess I needed to find something I was passionate about so I could feed off the energy of like-minded individuals, like your lovely blog host Katie! I love to meet parents who are in the trenches so to speak, I love hearing about your parenting journeys and challenges. My goal in business, and life, is to help make life a little bit easier for those around me. I love sharing creative solutions I have found for problems—a good mom hack, a funny meme, breastfeeding science and support, and of course products to make life a little bit easier.
I would love to hear feedback from any of you who had a product that you LIKE but would have LOVED if it had a little tweak or modification. Or, let me know if there is a product you wish you would have had. I want to continue making small ripples in the huge (and often overwhelming) ocean that is parenting. Eventually, those ripples will form a wave of eco-friendly, user-friendly, and helpful parenting products! I often say that we are going to save the planet one single-use bag/food pouch at a time! I hope you have enjoyed learning about our business.
We would love to invite you along our journey on our Facebook, Instagram, and blog.
Tiny Tot Innovations Facebook Page
