The story below is from our March/April 2021 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
How mother-daughter duos inspire each other at home and in their shared businesses.
When these daughters connect with their mothers – to plan or create or cook – the deep bond that has brought them this far bubbles up, their eyes crinkle at the corner, and they laugh – happily, easily, genuinely. Then they get to work.
In the Roanoke region, mothers and daughters roll up their sleeves together as real estate agents, writers, financial planners, restaurant partners, insurance brokers, store owners, farmers, outdoor guides, interior designers and more. They feel privileged to labor alongside each other and share a level of trust hard to find in many places of business. They are, often, each other’s biggest cheerleaders.
Is it tough to add yet another dimension to the already intense relationship mothers and daughters can have? No doubt. But the rewards far outweigh the risks, the pairs interviewed for this story say.
“There’s something unique about the mother-daughter relationship,” says Jordan Kantor, who joined her mother’s skin care company straight out of college. “You have each other’s best interests at heart.”
Four mother-daughter duos paused from their busy days to describe what it’s like to work – and sometimes also live – together. These are their stories.
Food. Art. Love.
Chantal Ittah, 59, grew up in Morocco, then moved to France when she was 16 to study art. She traveled the world. And when her only child, Maya Ittah, 32, was born, Chantal traveled with her. Africa. Spain. Italy. Israel. Canada. When Maya was 14, the pair landed in Michigan, where they stayed long enough for Maya to learn English and graduate high school and try her hand at college. But they were movers, so they kept wandering — to Florida, then upstate New York, and finally to Floyd.
By then, Maya was a licensed massage therapist with a master’s in nutrition. She had two kids of her own and an interest in holistic wellness. Maya was massaging clients and talking with friend and acupuncturist Katie Clifton about joining forces, when the pieces fell together and the two opened The Haven on 5th, a wellness center in Roanoke’s Old Southwest neighborhood.
On the ground floor, there was an open space, and the women began brainstorming how to fill it. At that time, Chantal was making French crepes at the Blacksburg farmers market. It made sense to bring that nourishing food to the Haven. The crepes, they decided, could be supplemented with super food lattes and soups and grain bowls.
In 2017, Garden Song Eco Cafe was born, with Chantal as cook and Maya handling the business side.
“Working with Maya, for me, is amazing,” Chantal says. “I can trust her. If I tell her something, she grabs it right away and she does it very, very well…. And also, we have the same ideas.”
Aaron Spicer
Chantal (right) and Maya Ittah at Garden Song Eco Café
Over the past year as COVID-19 has rocked restaurants, Garden Song has tried to stay creative and nimble.
“For awhile it was just the two of us,” Maya says. They were cooking takeout only, and had been forced to lay off all employees. “We started making tacos. She and I just tag teamed. It was pretty fun.”
These days, Maya is working with massage clients, Garden Song is open three days a week for takeout, and she is creating take-home meal kits, with different themes for each month. In March, she’s cooking up curries.
“We’re looking to make it easier for people to feed themselves healthy food,” Maya says.
Maya’s advice for making a mother/daughter business work? “Have a plan of action that is the focus, that is discussed, that you stick to.”
Chantal’s is simpler. “Make sure to love. Always love. That is the most important thing that makes everything work.”
After a lifetime of living together, Maya cannot imagine not working with her mom. “Maybe for the next phase of our journey we’ll turn into nomadic artists,” Maya suggests. Chantal — who has recently begun making jewelry — can think of nothing she’d like more.
A Business of Beauty
Jordan Kantor was nine years old when her mother opened Skin Care Consulting, in Roanoke’s Old Southwest neighborhood.
She and her younger sister grew up in the lush studio, a swirl of rose-colored ceilings and thick fabric chairs and bottles of elixirs and certificates on the walls.
After high school, Jordan headed to Virginia Commonwealth University’s art program, majoring in painting. She soon realized the life of a starving artist wasn’t for her. In her search for financial stability, she became interested in permanent makeup and paramedical tattooing. Which circled her right back to her mom’s business.
It’s been five years, now, that Jordan, 25, and Melinda Kantor, 58, have been co-workers — offering top-shelf skin care and makeup products, providing brow shaping and skin treatments, and tattooing brows and breasts — as well as daughter and mother.
There’ve been challenges — such as when Jordan urged her mother to update to a digital payment system or build a website for the business.
Tom Lim, Courtesy of Melinda Kantor
Melinda (left) and Jordan Kantor have worked together at Skin Care Consulting for five years. This spring the business will move to a new location – still in Roanoke’s Old Southwest – where the duo’s shared aesthetic will be on display.
“I was a little stubborn at first because I had been doing things a certain way and was successful,” Melinda remembers. “But when I sat back and reflected on her maturity and her education and what she’d accomplished so far, I had to say, ‘Yes, you’re my child, but I respect you as an artist and as a professional.’ ”
Melinda had to re-learn her role as a mother, too.
“In the beginning, I was still in mommy mode, thinking I needed to manage her,” Melinda remembers. “When, really, she was doing a great job managing her own life.”
Mostly there’s been a gradual realignment, where mother and daughter each embrace the other’s skills and strengths.
“I’m inspired by how she works on a canvas that bleeds and swells and changes,” Melinda says of Jordan’s tattooing of areolas on women who’ve had breast reconstruction surgery after cancer.
These days, the two have largely divided up the services they provide: Melinda focuses on skin care and brow shaping, while Jordan performs the permanent makeup and tattooing.
“It made the boundaries easier,” says Jordan. “We feel like we can be more mother-daughter than boss-employee.”
And owning a business together, just the two of them, has meant they have only themselves to consult if they’d like to take time off to attend a training or a conference.
“That’s something that’s really important to us,” Jordan says, “to continue to learn.”
This spring, the Kantors will begin another chapter together. They’ve purchased a new space in Old Southwest and are renovating it to reflect their shared aesthetic and design.
“It’s been really cool,” Jordan says. “We’re a team, now.”
They Finish Each Other’s Sentences
Jane and Emma Fenton began making up stories as a game they played to entertain themselves. Then, they found they didn’t want to stop.
Jane, 54, and Emma, 24, have always been close. The Fentons moved from Maryland to 10 acres of woods outside tiny Ferrum in Franklin County when Emma was seven. Jane raised her two kids (her husband commuted to the D.C area four days each week) amid chickens and horses and gravel paths and front porch swings.
By 2013, Jane was itching to uncover a dream she’d long-ago tucked away. She convinced her book-loving daughter to join her in a weekend writing contest. For 48 hours, they developed characters and ran with outlandish plots. By the end, Jane was ready to pen her first novel. Emma knew she’d be majoring in creative writing when she entered Roanoke College.
Five years later, Jane founded Blue Morpho Books, a business to self-publish her writing. Emma helped her by reading, editing, and designing the book’s cover. In March 2018, Jane’s debut mystery, Repo Girl, was born. By December, Emma’s own young adult fantasy novel, Throne of Shadows, had been printed. The mother/daughter team produced a book of poetry for an uncle in North Carolina, as well.
Christina Nifong
Jane (left) and Emma Fenton write and self-publish in separate offices. Jane has published three novels, Emma one, and they produced a book of poetry for an uncle.
As Emma’s college graduation neared, Jane asked: Would you want to come work for Blue Morpho Books?
“You don’t have to wait until you’re 50,” Jane recalls telling Emma. “You can follow that dream now and I get to do it too and it will be even more special because we’ll do it together.”
These days, the two women live and work in the farmhouse where Emma grew up. They start their mornings checking emails, looking at sales numbers, posting on social media. Then they head to separate rooms to “write as much as I physically can,” says Emma.
Between them, they’ve written and published four books. Two more are on the way. They credit their success to smart marketing, dedicated writing and the ability to buoy each other.
“It’s so much fun every time we sit down to brainstorm together. It sort of builds excitement,” Jane says.
Says Emma: “I don’t see this stopping even if I move onto other things.”
Collaborating with family is not always easy, Emma warns: “You have to have open communication, completely, in both your personal and professional lives.”
“That’s the key,” says Jane. “You have to start with a really strong relationship.”
But no one is more bought in to your happiness than your mom, Emma says. When you’re in business with your mother, “You know someone really cares about your work.”
Wild Women
Before Erika Johnson, 50, was co-founder of FloydFest, she was a girl growing up in an old farmhouse, with no running water or electricity, at the top of a mountain.
Her mother, Sharon Morley, 72, was a 1970s back-to-the-lander, who taught herself to farm organically, raise chickens, roast goats, run a Christmas tree and wreath-making operation and — with Erika’s help — build the top yurt-making business on the East Coast. (Sharon’s longtime friend Kathy Anderson is also a partner at Blue Ridge Yurts.)
Erika’s and Sharon’s admiration for each other is palpable.
“Anything good about me, I attribute to Erika,” says Sharon, who for 40 years has spearheaded a variety of business ventures from her land holdings in Floyd County.
Courtesy of Sharon Morley and Erika Johnson
Sharon Morley (left) and Erika Johnson have worked together on various projects in Floyd for decades. “Mom is absolutely my hero,” says Erika.
“Mom is absolutely my hero,” says Erika, who, since selling her share of FloydFest, has opened an outdoor retail space with partners in Floyd, called OuterSpace, where she runs Revolution Juice, a smoothie stand that also offers locally-made CBD products.
Erika has been working for and with her mom since she was a teen. She bought her first computer after Sharon paid her 10 cents for each tree seedling she planted. When Erika opened the restaurant and bar OddFellas Cantina in downtown Floyd in 2000, Sharon was her bookkeeper.
Then, 15 years ago, daughter and mother traveled to Big Sur, California, for a race. Erika ran a marathon, her mom, the 10K. They saw their first yurts there. A new business venture was born.
Erika says there is an unparalleled level of job security that comes from working with family. “It takes a huge thing off the table. Nobody’s going to lose their job. Nobody’s going to throw up their hands.”
Today, lumber is stacked to the ceiling of a warehouse on the family property, where yurt orders are cut and prepared for delivery. Less than a mile down the road, two yurts made by the company are tucked among the trees. Erika raised her two kids in them; she now rents them through Airbnb.
“She is fearless of failure,” Sharon says of Erika.
Though the two women are very different — Erika has an aversion to being tied down; Sharon can be nonmaterialistic to a fault, they say — they are continually learning from each other.
“I have a new appreciation for Mom’s grass-roots, build-it-slowly business model,” Erika says. “She’s never gone into debt in any of her businesses.”
As Erika develops her next innovation — renting shipping containers to Floyd tourists — there’s no one she’d rather have in her court than her mom.
“I feel super lucky to have her support,” she says.
The story above is from our March/April 2021 issue. For more stories, subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!