Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep # 119 From Mommy Blog to Nonprofit: The Atomic Mommy Foundation Story
Bootstrapping a business takes more than just passion—it demands planning, resources, and support. That's what Kimberly Pangaro discovered through her remarkable journey from struggling single mother to successful entrepreneur and nonprofit leader.
On this enlightening episode, Kim reveals how her personal brand "Atomic Mommy" evolved from a simple parenting blog to a digital publishing company, and ultimately inspired the Atomic Mommy Foundation. This nonprofit organization now provides crucial support to aspiring entrepreneurs through scholarships, grants, and practical business resources.
Kim doesn't shy away from sharing her lived experiences—homelessness, poverty, single parenthood—and how these challenges shaped her understanding of what entrepreneurs truly need to succeed. Her foundation fills critical gaps by offering not just financial assistance but partnerships with attorneys, tax preparers, and business coaches who provide essential guidance to grant recipients.
We dive deep into why so many new businesses fail within their first years. As Kim explains, many entrepreneurs focus exclusively on setting up their storefronts or social media without developing comprehensive business plans or understanding operational realities. The Atomic Mommy Foundation addresses these gaps by offering practical resources like guides to forming LLCs, tax preparation assistance, and mentorship from established business owners.
Perhaps most valuable is Kim's personal evolution from "manic entrepreneur" working around the clock to a business owner with systems that allow for work-life balance—especially important as a mother of four daughters. Her story demonstrates that entrepreneurial success doesn't require sacrificing family or personal wellbeing.
Ready to support or benefit from the Atomic Mommy Foundation? Connect with Kim via email at hello@atomicmommyfoundation.org or on Instagram @atomicmommy. Don't miss their upcoming networking event on June 14th at Red's in Carlstadt, NJ—an opportunity to build genuine connections that could transform your business journey.
Atomic Mommy
Kimberly Pangaro
hello@atomicmommyfoundation.org
atomicmommy.net
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast brought to you by Bergen Neighbors Media Group. Today we are joined by Kimberly Pangaro. Kimberly is the founder CEO, or I guess you have a board president. I guess is a better title of Atomic Mommy Foundation. Welcome to the show, kim.
Speaker 3:Hi Doug, Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Speaker 2:So Atomic Mommy Foundation I'm going to read your mission is committed to empowering aspiring entrepreneurs in their pursuit of business success, so there leaves a lot there to speak about. So why is it called atomic mommy? Is it just empowering women, uh, and mothers, or what is? What is the mission, uh, beyond what I just described?
Speaker 3:okay, okay. So Atomic Mommy is actually me. It's how I started out on social media. It's how I started on when I started my little company, way back when it actually started as a mommy blog and it was dedicated to moms. And as my LLC grew, the brand grew. But really it's just an homage to myself, because I'm sort of that way too honest sort of person. In terms of the foundation, it just made sense to have the brand follow what it was I was trying to do and it's really open to everyone, it's not just to mothers.
Speaker 2:It's not just to mothers, okay, so tell me about your podcast, and you know your Instagram content. So Atomic Mommy. So what was that about?
Speaker 3:So, like I said, atomic Mommy really started out as a way for me to share parenting tips and helpful stories authentic stories to other moms, and then it branched from there to include all parents. As feedback grew and as my mommy blog went from just being a blog to a digital publishing company and then to include a podcast, it just made sense that all the struggles I went through starting my business, it'd be really helpful to help other aspiring entrepreneurs, to help them get their businesses started, and I know that one of the biggest things that comes up for people who want to start a business is where do I come up with the money to do it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's kind of like why this show exists, because the Good Neighbor podcast is modeled after a podcast I listened to called how I Built this, which is interviewing entrepreneurs and business leaders about how they built their business or how they built their career, and it kind of talks about the travails and trials and tribulations of the journey of almost like the hero's journey, of the struggle and the triumph and the you know, maybe the misbelief that you only go through one struggle and once you climb that mountain you're never going to have another Valley, and that's just not the case with being an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:So what I like people who are on my show is to talk about that experience and maybe you know, talk to people about what you know, maybe any tips that they can give them. So I love the fact that you you know that's what your kind of brand is all about and you know I want to dig into some of the things, like on your mommy blog, which I guess your Instagram page is somewhat of an extension of that you know how to grow your child's vocabulary. But other things like how to support someone experiencing anxiety, it's not how do you handle anxiety yourself, it's how to support others experiencing anxiety. It's not how do you handle anxiety yourself. It's how to support others that are experiencing that. Now, some of these things that you have here, like you know, relationship tips and motherhood like these are just from your personal experience.
Speaker 3:Oh God, you know, I am a once divorcee. I have four kids.
Speaker 1:My husband.
Speaker 3:My second husband is a stepdad to my older daughters. I've had a lot of experiences for someone way too young, I mean, I have been. I have been poverty struck, I've been broke, I've been homeless, I've been living on a couch with friends and family like I've been through all of it. So a lot of the things I talk about are from personal experience, and one of the things I like to do is bring other people onto my Instagram or onto my podcast or even through publishing blog posts is to share their stories as well, because there are people around the world that go through this that maybe they need an extra tip, that they don't know about or they haven't been told before.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it's just reassuring to know that you're not alone.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That what I'm going through is not just, you know, special to me. It's not something that I'm doing wrong or something that I can't handle. It's anybody who's been in the same shoes, whether you know if we want to talk about entrepreneurs or you want to talk about parents, but let's just talk about entrepreneurs. You know, whether you're selling advertising or you're starting, you know a content business or a pediatrics office or a chiropractor or whatever. Many of the experiences that we go through. Everyone, regardless of the vertical category that they're in, experiences that in some similar way, one way or another, and I think it's reassuring to know that you're not alone, even if you're not getting any tips, it's just knowing that, ok, I can do this, because they've been through the same thing. Look where they came out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree 100%. If you have a community, you feel supported and you can grow from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, All right. So now you know. That explains kind of your journey, of how you became Atomic Mommy. So now the foundation. What do you guys do exactly in terms of like empowering people?
Speaker 3:So how we so? Our first programs are scholarships and our grants, and the scholarships are for students who are looking to maybe start a business straight out of high school or they want to learn the aspects of entrepreneurship in college. We also have the grants for underprivileged parents, and what that is is for parents who want to either start a business maybe they want to leave their nine to five, maybe they had kids and they don't want to be in that corporate corner anymore and then we also have a secondary grant called Second Chance Grant, and it's for people who maybe had a business and for some reason or other, it failed and they just don't have the funding anymore to start a new business again. We're also starting to partner with local business owners, like attorneys, tax preparers, career coaches, to sort of provide free resources or discounted resources to these entrepreneurs that get awarded scholarships and grants from us, so that this way they have access to a lot of the answers that maybe they Google but they don't get a straight answer or they need something more in depth.
Speaker 2:Okay, so where does the funding come from? Like, where are these financial resources coming from for your foundation?
Speaker 3:So a hundred percent right now is public donations and that's from people like you and me, you know, parents, anyone who's really interested in helping this different groups of people to start their own businesses.
Speaker 2:the second part of it is through local business partners that we've partnered with and are willing to donate their time got it now donate their time so they can act as a mentor or as a business coach, help them with like how to create a business plan, how to budget, uh, for certain things, or maybe how to run payroll or whatever it is. Things like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, because, listen, I meet a lot of new business owners and it's commendable that they're following, you know, following their passion, and you know I wanted to. I wanted to have this big shop, you know. But a lot of them don't think about it beyond that. They focus on getting. Maybe it's a storefront, maybe it's an office, maybe it's just getting their website and their social media set up and then that's it. And then they somehow magically think that business is going to come rushing through the door because they have an Instagram page.
Speaker 2:You know very few people I've talked to who start a business really have a budget to operate. They're more of like a solopreneur who has a dream. But you know, ok, I'm going to make cakes or I'm going to walk a dog or I'm going to open a chiropractic business Like there's. They're good at what they do, but few of us have been trained to be entrepreneurs, you know, unless you maybe were a consultant for like EY or Bain or somebody like that, where you actually went in and examined companies' books and looked at the, you know, holistic point of every company, most of us don't really know what it means to run operations the financial part, paying the bills, and then the marketing People forget they have to buy their customers. They're just not going to walk through the door. So what types of leadership do you provide when it comes to things like that?
Speaker 3:So one of the first things that we're willing to provide and it's definitely going to be free is walking people through getting their LLC started. I've partnered with an attorney who's willing to talk to people, is willing to record some videos so that if anybody has a question like what's a step-by-step guide to start an LLC, that's going to be up on our video gallery, which is coming soon, getting all the videos started. I've also talked to a tax preparation person who will put together some tips to help people file their LLC taxes, because that's something that not everybody knows has to be done, needs to be done or what's due. You know, things like that are going to be offered in the beginning to set up this leadership that they need, and then from there we're working to get partners from local businesses who've already started their business, who are successful in their business that are willing to give back some time to help them sort of grow from there, Because everyone thinks that when you start a business, like you said, that's it, nothing else needs to be done.
Speaker 3:But there's so much on the back end. There's, like you said, buying the advertising, because you essentially in the beginning need to buy customer's attention and if you don't, if you don't have the funding for that, you essentially can't really do it unless you have this huge nest egg just sitting there or you're willing to take that risk of getting a loan, and something I learned early on when I started was that I wasn't willing to take the risk to get a loan so quickly unless I had some type of financial backing, and it took a while for me to get there.
Speaker 3:So we're going to be offering realistic advice and guides and step-by-step processes to get to that next level, and then we're going to be offering mentorship to help them get through the next set of goals.
Speaker 2:That's great. That's great Because I think you know, like I said through my, my experience is that very few people have gone through a full business plan and they don't know what their annual revenue like. Ok, I haven't had a customer yet, so how do I know how much I'm going to make this year? But if you can open a business and if you need a business loan and I guess you cannot get a business loan unless you have a business plan, and part of that business plan would be telling if a bank, this is how much I expect to earn this year.
Speaker 2:I mean, imagine going up in front of Mark Cuban and Mr Wonderful and they ask you you know what are your expected sales this year? I don't really know. I'd be like yeah, see you, buddy. So but I would say a good part. I would say 90% of the people that I speak to who just started a business do not know what their gross annual revenue projection is. They just know I need X amount of revenue a month to pay my bills and then after that, hopefully, in a year from now, I'll be rich. It's kind of like you know that old saying if we fail to plan, we plan to fail, and that's why so many new businesses don't survive two years, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's true. A lot of businesses fail in the first one to three years and by year five. If you made it that far, you're struggling. You may not even make it past that.
Speaker 2:Right, Right, Yep, Yep. So is there anything else like in terms of atomic mommy? Um, so you're a mother of four. You said right. And what are the age groups Like? What are the age ranges? Not age groups.
Speaker 3:So I have four daughters. My oldest is 19.
Speaker 2:Okay, four daughters.
Speaker 3:Four daughters. My second one is 17. My third daughter is 11 and my fourth daughter is actually eight years old.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. So teenagers down to, you know, preteen yeah, that's interesting. I, you know there's, I am, I'm a father of an 11 year old boy, and you know I, um, you know, there's always that people say it's easier having a boy than a girl. I don't know, obviously I don't. I have three sisters, but, um, I think what's important, though, what I seen in my maturation as a business owner, having worked in corporate America for 25 years, is that I'm growing so much more as a person and can be a better role model to my son, because when you work for somebody else and I work for Sony Music and then Viacom, so two really big media companies, there's thousands of people that work there you go about your job every day, and if one day you kind of like skate by or you're not doing much or whatever, you guys went out the night before and you're kind of feeling it the next day, you know, whatever, you know, you're still getting paid. Uh, obviously you can't do that too often or your boss is gonna, you know, reprimand you. Maybe you're gonna get fired, but my point is that you can kind of mail it in and it won't affect your revenue, uh, but when you own your own business. You know there's no mailing it in you.
Speaker 2:With great power comes a great responsibility, as I use that Spider-Man phrase all the time because you want to be your own boss. People are attracted to it because of the freedom the financial freedom, the freedom to set my own schedule, the freedom to be there for my kids. But I just spoke to someone before you on my podcast show who just started her own business and the problem she has is being able to turn off like 24, seven, seven days a week, thinking about my business, picking up the phone, answering emails and whenever I'm totally accessible. How could I not be? You know, I got to get this, I got to be a success, and there's other people that think you can just kind of skate by. So the point I'm getting at is being a role model for our kids.
Speaker 2:I think being an entrepreneur. It gives them a great example of like you are what you eat, you know you reap what you sow and all these other you know phrases, these other phrases I could tap into. But I think it's much more visceral when it's your company, because you could hear those things all the time when you're in school and you're in college and you get a job, work for somebody, but it's not until you live it that you can really see the effect of your hard work, or the opposite, and I think that's a great example for your kids, do you like to your daughters, to your older daughters? Are they involved in Atomic Mommy Foundation at all and what has your? Obviously you said you've gone through some. You know some issues, some interesting, you know life stories. What has it been like for them coming out on the other side and seeing you triumph?
Speaker 3:So they're not officially involved in the Atomic Mommy Foundation, but they are involved on the other side of it. They've been on my podcast as guests, especially during the pandemic. I interviewed the two older girls about what it was like to be out of school, how it affected them mentally.
Speaker 3:They've been in my social media posts and they've all been pretty positive and supportive about that and about wanting to be a part of it. In terms of the visceral experiences, they have certainly witnessed many of my ups and downs in running the. You know the company. So I've got my media company on one end and then I've got the foundation on the other. I've got my media company on one end and then I've got the foundation on the other.
Speaker 3:They have seen me work 24 seven, never giving myself a break, making myself sick, that first couple of years to the point where me starting to realize, well, I need a break, I need to set up systems. They started to see that you can be successful at being your own boss and but also make time for the family and also make time for yourself. So I can say for a hundred percent fact that they have witnessed me grow from being this manic entrepreneur business owner to someone who has developed systems and a path that effectively allows me to be their mother, be a wife and be a business owner without having to deplete myself entirely mentally, spiritually, physically, etc. And on that same token, even when my older girls were younger, seeing me not being, I had to leave school to be able to raise them, because I had them really young. I had them at 22 and at 24. So I.
Speaker 3:I had to, you know, abandon all my dreams just to be their mom, and at that time it was a single mom, so it was a very difficult path, but they have been so supportive and over the last I'd say, five to 10 years, they have truly, truly come to understand that everything, that everything that happens to you in life isn't some random coincidence. It's all based on choice, and you absolutely have the power to own your choices and then to change the outcomes, and I think that them witnessing me finally understand that and start to achieve everything I've ever set out to achieve. They're starting to realize the same exact thing goes for themselves, and I think that that's a legacy that I'm extremely proud of of leaving them, all of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that you say that because there's a uh, one of my first guests on the show. He's a chiropractor by trade but he goes by the name of Dr Synchronicity. He wrote a book called Synchronicity and he has a saying of something like you know, things don't happen to us, they happen for us. And you know, it's kind of like the saying of it's not what happens to you, it's how you react to it. And obviously a lot of bad things can happen to us. And it sounds easy to say if your life has been, you know, Pollyannish and nothing's ever gone wrong. But you know it, it.
Speaker 2:It's interesting when the synchronicity of it all seems to um, you know, when that's saying everything happens for a reason. I'm not quite sure I buy into that. When somebody tragically dies among, what was the reason for that? But there are so many things that are interconnected that maybe we don't see it at the time. But, to your point, your actions are. You know you behave yourself into the logical outcome. So you know something's not happening necessarily all the time by accident. When people play the victim, you know sometimes it's hey, man, it's you kind of brought it on yourself and you know you can't say that all the time, but I think it's incredible for you to you know, for your daughters, to see that there is another guest was on my show. I had two co-founders of an organization you may have heard from about called Wonder Girls USA. Have you heard of Wonder Girls?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so Natalie and Irene were both on my show I met them years ago but you know that that specifically is for girls. I mean, it's called Wonder Girls, but it is about empowering young women, young girls, you know, in the high school age range, to to believe in themselves and to be uh, to know that anything is possible, but then also to give them the tools and the mentors, uh, and the ambassadors to help them, you know, realize those dreams. So, uh, you know it's very related to what you do, even though that's specifically for girls, but it's just about, you know, empowering people, right? I mean, I think that's what we, what you guys, stand for and what a lot of good things in the world come from that. It's not about belittling people or putting them down that seems to happen a lot today. It's more about how do we raise them up, how do we give you a chance?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's very true. A lot of times the belittling in the world can sometimes really keep somebody down. So I think empowering and rising people up is essential to driving such growth and development across the board, across the entirety of society.
Speaker 2:Right, and it's not some woke policy of you know that some people want to lash out at that. You know, whether it's DEI or it's, whatever you want to call it, it's it. It just it makes good business sense.
Speaker 2:If you want to look at it from a pure capitalistic framework. It's listen, the more that people can have the skills to go out there and realize their dream. There's dollars and cents to that. There's an economic engine that supports that, so it just makes good sense. And then you know happier people, we eat happier lives and breed happier children and maybe there'd be less crime in the world. And to the music, and here we go. But I think it's great I you know to be on this show. Obviously you have your own podcast To be on this show. Obviously you have your own podcast. This is really for you to spread the word more throughout your own channels, for other ways of people to find you.
Speaker 3:But is there anything we haven't touched on that you'd like us to know about any events coming up? Yeah, so our first professional networking event is coming up. It's on June 14th. It's from 2 pm to 6 pm at Red's in Karlstadt. Honestly, it is our first big event, but more of a casual fun environment where a lot of local business owners can come network with each other. There's going to be fun games to like mingle so that people get to know each other, not to run a networking events Like we're not going to be free.
Speaker 3:What are those things that I can't stand?
Speaker 3:Those like name tags or like the necklace things that always end up in the trash, like I want people to actually like remember each other's names and and and really make deep connections, and the only way to do that is to to not put your name on anything and just go and talk to people and really get to know one another and yeah, go ahead I was gonna say it's just, it's something so important to do that a lot of business owners, especially when they they first start out, don't realize is a huge potential drive for business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. I think it's easier to go to networking events if you go there just with an open mind of wanting to hear what other people are doing. It's not I think there's some at least me, back in the day, be nervous about talking about myself. But if you go to a networking event and just really have the heart of like, I want to understand, I want to know what you do, what do you do, you know what's your journey, and when they start talking about themselves, then they will naturally ask you what you do. So you don't have to feel like I have to come prepared with some kind of a speech in my, you know, on cue cards in my pocket.
Speaker 2:But getting back to activities, I was at a networking event once where they had us sitting at different tables and we had to ask the person across from us what they did, and then we had to stand up and introduce them to talk about what they do. So it made you, you know you, better listen and it was more like okay, to my left is Kim Pagaro and she is, you know, the founder of Atomic Mom, you know so. So you get about five minutes or or, you know, maybe 10 minutes to talk about what each of you do, and then the other person gets to introduce you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean when you're sitting down, if you have tables like that, that's that's a good kind of atmosphere to be in.
Speaker 3:That's a great way to connect.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well. So I said you know, was there anything else you wanted to mention? I mean, okay, you mentioned the event on Saturday, june 14th, from 2 to 6 pm at Red's Restaurant in Calstatt, new Jersey, and there is a fee. It's considering you get food, beer, wine and soda. It's not so bad and it's for your business, so it's $40 or $50. It's a pretty good deal. What else are you looking for, like sponsors, mentors, anything else you'd like to?
Speaker 3:I am looking for all of it sponsors, mentors, anyone who's really interested in being a part of something that's unique, that's all on its own, something that's going to help drive the economic development of the future. You know, essentially, if we all work together, we can not only ensure our own businesses are successful, but we can also ensure that our kids' businesses grow to be successful as well and, like you said, it's one of the driving forces of the economy so that it stays successful. We don't want it to become stagnant or even drop. You know God forbid. We want businesses to grow. So if anyone out there wants to be a mentor, wants to help out in any way possible, please, please, please, reach out to me. My name is Kim, you know. You can send me an Hello@a tomic mommy foundation. org, or you can find me on Instagram, you know, at atomic mommy, and message me there. It's up to you.
Speaker 2:Great, all right, kim. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. We're gonna just uh say goodbye with chuck here, and then you and I'll be right back all right.
Speaker 3:Thank you, doug, for having me as a guest.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it thank you thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.