Mom on a mission.

No one will ever tell you that parenting is easy - and they certainly don't hand out manual's.

Check out this wonderful article from INC.com about a woman who seems to have mastered it all. West Point grad, CEO, Mom, and more. This gal might be figuring it out as she goes, but she's making it look pretty darn good.


Check out the article by either following THIS link, or see below.

Cheers!

The Way I Work: Jamie Latshaw of Lexicon

Jamie Latshaw is a stay-at-home mom. She also runs one of the fastest-growing companies in America.

As told to Liz Welch |  Mar 1, 2011

Before they are  Before they are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, many U.S. troops get a cultural crash course from Lexicon. TheEl Cajon, California-based company provides translators and interpreters for the military, helps create military training sites designed to look like Middle Eastern villages, and provides native speakers to act out various roles in those villages. CEO Jamie Latshaw, aWest Point graduate who spent eight years in the Army, founded Lexicon in 2005 with her husband, Leroy, a retired Army helicopter pilot who recently started his own company. Lexicon, which has 50 full-time employees and annual revenue of $14 million, landed in the No. 4 spot on last year's Inc. 500, with three-year growth of more than 14,000 percent.

Although the company has two offices—one in El Cajon and the other in Vienna, Virginia—Latshaw, 35, works from her home in Stevenson Ranch, California. The arrangement lets her spend more time with her two children, James, 4, and Leah, 1. During the day, Latshaw schedules conference calls around trips to preschool. She often works late into the night, writing proposals so the company can land more government contracts.

I feel so blessed that I am able to stay home and be with my kids every day, even though they're constantly barging into the office while I'm working and spilling juice on my laptop. It's nice to be able to stop what I'm doing and help with a puzzle or look at an art project my son wants to show off. I know there will come a day when I will wish they were taking my hand, wanting me to play.

In the morning, I basically have a human alarm clock. Around 7 a.m., I hear Leah calling, "Mommy!" through the baby monitor. My husband, Leroy, meanwhile, has usually been up since 5 a.m. and had three conference calls by then. He recently launched his own company, GT Training, which handles tactical training for the military.

Leroy spends most of the day on the phone. He and I share a small home office, with two desks back to back. The bulk of my work is writing proposals for government contracts, so I need quiet. Leroy travels a lot, but when he's home, I often have to move to the dining room table, because he's so loud.

He and I were both Army officers when we met. During a rare break from the action, we played in a volleyball tournament. Leroy, who was one of the team captains, said, "I'll take the tall girl." I'm 5 foot 11—I played basketball at West Point. We've been together ever since.

We have a babysitter, Carmen Arias, who comes over Monday through Thursday, so I can get some work done. My parents help out sometimes, too. I'm usually still in my pajamas when Carmen arrives at 8:30. I take James to preschool three days a week. It starts at 9. I'm often late and show up wearing yoga pants. Then I get back to work.

At Lexicon, we typically have four or five contracts going on at once, usually at military bases around the country or on the other side of the world. Since our employees are spread out, I have several conference calls throughout the week to make sure everyone's on the same page.

Depending on the mission, our linguists typically act as translators and interpreters or, through role playing and training, instruct the military on the culture and the language of the country to which the troops are being deployed. We may send, say, 50 linguists with secret or top-secret security clearances to Iraq or Afghanistan to work with the military as interpreters. One of the other things we do is help create mock villages that the military uses for training. Our goal is to make the most realistic scenario, so soldiers feel as if they are in Afghanistan or Iraq. In fact, we hear from soldiers all the time that it is just like being there.

We have a contract now with Marsoc, the Marine Corps Special Operations Command. For that contract, we provide three to five training exercises a year. We just finished a rotation at Fort Polk, Louisiana, where we provided 186 role players who acted as Afghan shopkeepers, tribal leaders, members of the Afghan National Army, and insurgents. Our set dressers made the village feel realistic, down to the meat hanging in the market and the license plates on the vehicles. We also did pyrotechnics—simulated improvised explosive devices inside vehicles and houses—and provided the insurgents and the Afghan police force with AK 47s loaded with blanks. For this exercise, we also did simulated combat wounds, so the medics could practice treating battlefield injuries.

After we started having kids, I wanted to become less involved in daily operations of the business. That meant finding the best possible people and trusting them to do their jobs. I hired Terry Sharp, our chief operating officer, and Todd Gould, our vice president of operations. They both had long careers in the military. I check in with them regularly, but they're the ones who make sure everything runs smoothly.

Working at home, I feel guilty all the time. Sometimes I feel like I am not spending enough time with our leadership staff and employees. Other times, I feel guilty about being cooped up in my office when Leah is pounding on the door. Plus, a lot of times I'll be groggy because I worked all night, and I'll feel terrible that I am not as present for my kids as I could be. Sometimes I miss being more involved in day-to-day operations.

I visit our El Cajon office about once a month, just to say hello. It's near San Diego, about 170 miles south of where I live. In that office, we have 30 employees, including four recruiters, all of whom are either Iraqi or Afghan. We opened an office there because El Cajon has one of the largest Iraqi-American populations in the United States. Our recruiters are deeply embedded in the Arab and Afghan communities. Our HR director, Saif Alchi, is a former role player. We always try to promote from within—a lot of the directors and managers started as role players. Before we hire anyone, we have to conduct very intensive background checks.

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