The Story of Mamalode, Mother's Day Eve and Moving Forward

By Elke Govertsen,Co-Founder Mamalode

Once upon a time I had a baby. None of my close friends had babies. They were all in that phase of life where you are thinking about getting a dog but not sure if that is Just Too Much.

I loved that baby more than I knew possible. But with motherhood came a host of mixed feelings—exhaustion, terror, numbness and something akin to buyer’s remorse. Those feelings I kept inside and they threatened to topple me.
I found a group of women all with babies the same ages and we began sharing—the good, the bad, the ugly. It was those honest stories that saved me. Suddenly all of my mixed feelings lost their dynamite. It was all just part of the deal. Hard stuff became funny. Messy emotions were normal. Motherhood was something complex and that somehow made it simple.

I wanted to celebrate those women and thus Mother’s Day Eve® was born—a party just for moms on the night before Mother’s Day. The first year 45 women came together. By year three there were 450.

I was onto something—these women needed each other’s stories. Mamalode was born.

Mamalode started as a free, local PRINT magazine in 2009—which is probably the worst business model at the worst time ever. Our unlikely success came from our readers—they mailed magazines all over the world to friends or moms or sisters and then those women also wanted Mamalode. Within a year of starting a subscription program we had subscribers in all 50 states and 10 other countries.
Now Mother’s Day Eve® is a trademarked event that has been celebrated in 59 communities across North America. Mamalode.com is read worldwide. Our website has over 3000 stories from over 1500 writers—moms, dads, kids, New York Times Bestsellers, huge bloggers and a merry batch of first-time writers. We produced 27 print issues and a special anthology just for dads (Dadalode).
We never had staff writers—our stories came from readers. Their stories are the heartbeat of motherhood. Our story is really a fairytale come true—a little magazine that has chugged along the track laid out by our audience. They believed, so we did too.

And now, Mamalode is for SALE.

It’s a crazy thing to build, love, nurture and grow a business and then realize it’s time to sell it. We are proud and excited to see what this business will do next and know that whoever helms Mamalode next is in for an amazing journey.

Here are some of the biggest learnings from running Mamalode:

The sky’s the limit: We built Mamalode on a shoestring and bootstrapped our way into people’s hearts. With the right resources, savvy and plan, Mamalode can have enormous impact.

Authenticity is a rare currency: I shared the Mamalode story in the Girl’s Lounge at Adweek in New York. The next day I was invited to present to a team at one of the largest ad agencies in the world. The agencies, with all of their brilliant staff, resources, data, and planning wanted what we had: authentic content and trust.

This is an important conversation: Not only are moms one of the most powerful consumer groups in the world, they are also shaping the future. They are running for office, running companies, running marathons, and running households. Being at the center of this conversation is being at the intersection of change and influence.

We are open to any and all discussion about next steps for Mamalode. Our primary goal is to find someone to do the next best thing with what we’ve started. If you want to know more about the opportunity, please direct all inquiries and requests for information to Julie Gardner at juliegardnerproperties@gmail.com.