Stable Solutions: Mom’s business creates work for the kids in Pescadero
by Gwen O’Neill
Ronnie Hodgkinson at work. Photo courtesy of Monique Hodgkinson.
What do you do when you’ve lost your job, really tried but couldn’t find another one, and needed to help support your family?
Faced with that dilemma, Monique Hodgkinson started a business called Stable Solutions, which creates handmade soaps. The equestrian theme was a natural choice because of the family’s interest in riding. As that business was growing, she drew on her strong background in computer graphics and started Screen Caffeen to help other entrepreneurs build Web sites and create e-marketing campaigns.
Hodgkinson says: “My husband is a programmer now, but we started in video production after we both got out of art school. Dean had met a microsurgeon who asked us to do a video back when microsurgery was just beginning. We made videos at a San Francisco hospital of a surgeon reconstructing someone’s knuckles and another sewing an artery smaller than a pencil. That’s when we got started with computer graphics.”
Screen Caffeen offers Web design and blogging services, search engine optimization, and online strategy development — and also helps people use the new social networking tools. This second business has given Hodgkinson an opportunity to hire her children, whose interests and skills also gravitate to online activity.
The children have been around computers since birth. Hodgkinson said, “I remember one day when I was working at Silicon Graphics, I had my five-month-old with me sleeping in a car seat and someone walked in and said, ‘Oh my God, there’s a baby in here!’”
She has many stories about her computer-savvy children. She said: “When 14-year-old Alec was 3, he started banging on the computer. Our whole house was wired and the X10 window was open. Lights suddenly started going on and off. It was quite funny.
“These days, we may be watching TV and we all have our laptops open and banter back and forth on Facebook. We end up laughing hysterically. I will see comments like, ‘Wait ’til she sees this!’”
Ronnie, now 16, started using Facebook before Hodgkinson; when Hodgkinson finally finally set up her page, Ronnie said, “You have ‘a’ friend and I have 329.” One day Ronnie greeted her mom with, “Look what I did for Stable Solutions today.” She had set up the Stable Solutions Facebook page.
Hodgkinson said, “Ronnie is good with applications and picked it up at a young age. She creates the graphics for her pony club and is also proficient in Excel and open source software. Ronnie will help me this summer handling images for some of my Web site jobs.”
In response to our questions about what she likes to help her mom with and what excites her about the Internetbusiness, Ronnie said, “I initially helped her set up the Stable Solutions Fan Page on Facebook. I like social media, and know a lot about MySpace, Facebook and texting, and things like that.
“I think the Internet business is really neat, because not a lot of moms have started up a graphics design business like that, and it’s pretty cool that she knows about the codes and stuff required to be successful at it. Two years ago when my pony club team went to championships in Kentucky, my mom taught me how to use Photoshop to create the team’s horses’ identification cards. This summer I hope to help my mom with some image resizing, too.”
Starting a business can be an adventure — and it creates unique problems and rewards. For many families, it can offer a way to stay connected that would not be possible working a 9-to-5 job for someone else.
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