Take a few cards, print some interesting conversation starters on them, package together with a bright theme and you’ll see the end result of an idea that started out in a car one day as Cristy Clarke drove to yet another tedious dinner party.TableTopics first hit the shelf in 2004 after Cristy decided to reenter the field of entrepreneurship after a 10-year sabbatical to raise her three daughters. A member of a family with four generations of serious entrepreneurship, Cristy’s wheels never stopped spinning during those 10 years, as she sifted through different ideas and focused in on what she really wanted to do.
And so when her youngest daughter entered grade school, Cristy was ready. “I had lots of ideas and looked at each one carefully,” she said. “Which one could I stand behind? Which one can really contribute to the world?”
Christy Clarke and her husband, David, with their daughters (from left) Kate, Lily and Kelly
The idea she’d come up with on her way to that fateful dinner party, to package conversation starters in a fun, themed way, was a product she felt would not only provide entertainment, but also had the potential of being a valuable tool for family and social relationship development.
It’s important to Cristy that any products she produces contribute something to the world, that she is able to give back and accomplish her personal goals of imbuing everything she does with her values.
After all, she said, “you put in so much time and effort and so much of yourself, why can’t it be something that can cause change and give back?”
“Values aren’t something you practice after the fact, they are something you do all the time, from the moment you open your eyes ’til the time you close your eyes.”
IT’S IN THE BLOOD
Cristy comes from a multi-generational family of entrepreneurs. Her great-grandfather ran a coffee business in San Francisco in the late 1800s. Her father and mother launched several businesses, and her siblings joined in too.
“It really makes a difference when you grow up with a parent for an entrepreneur. It just feels a little more natural,” Cristy said. “I think sometimes that’s the biggest hurdle for women starting businesses. They have an idea, but it really hasn’t been modeled for them.”
“ That’s why I think that one of the best things we can do for our daughters is model for them that this can be done,” she said. Cristy’s eldest daughter seems to be benefiting from her example, as she plans on entering an entrepreneurship program this fall when she goes to college.
GROWING PAINS
TableTopics was a home-based business for the first five years. Cristy feels that entrepreneurs who decide to work from home should realized that it takes discipline to have clear boundaries of what they need to be able to work from home and to hold fi rm and be able to say “no.”
Cristy recently opened an office close to her home, but she still maintains those boundaries she set up to maintain balance between work and life. She works in the office three days a week and works from her home two days.
Cristy Clarke’s daughters Kelly and Kate helped pack boxes of TableTopics products when the company originally shipped all online orders from the family’s garage.
In order to keep her business going, she has learned to give her employees a lot of freedom. “You can’t micromanage with limited time,” she said. In order for her small team to run her growing business smoothly, they have a lot of systems in place, invested in efficiency systems and are able to access and run the business from “any computer in the world.”
The transition from stay-at-home mom to breakthrough entrepreneur was not an easy one for Cristy and her family. The Clarke family dynamics were changing and there was some serious negotiating to be done. Cristy was struggling with maintaining her role as stay-at-home mom while trying to carve out time to start a business.
“One day I walked up to my husband and said ‘I Quit,’” said Cristy. They then sat down, along with their daughters, and redefined their roles as parents and partners and family, helping the whole family to understand better what would work for everyone and where boundaries lay for family and business.
“In a lot of ways this really helped our family,” said Cristy, as she talked about how the whole family has grown closer, become more responsible and more appreciative of each other’s accomplishments.
FINDING VALUE OUTSIDE OF THE BOX
TableTopics are proving to be the products of value that Cristy’s vision foresaw. They have moved beyond being fun accessories for party conversations and gift ideas to becoming useful resources for teachers, psychiatrists, counselors and educators. Available also in Spanish, they are being used by language teachers and as learning tools in the home. With their teen line, they have even become a part of fostering better communication between teens and their parents.
“The single, most important thing TableTopics has brought to my life is ultimate freedom,” Cristy said. “I can set up my life the way I want to set it up, infuse my values into everything I do, align my personal life with my family life and look to the contribution I make to the world.”
Because of the freedom that being an entrepreneur brings to my life, “I can be true to my purpose when the world tells me not to be. Being an entrepreneur has let me build my vision and bring it to life.”
BY DAWN MENA
Tags: Business, Dawn Mena, Entrepreneur, Star-preneur, Starpreneur, TableTopicsCristy Clarke
We play these cards every night at the dinner table. We have one for family, and ones for teens, and I even purchased the ones for college students and sent them to my daughter in college. These cards give you an insight into your family and keeps communication so open. We have good “conversations” when we play these cards…it keeps the family talking!