Carolyn Baron | Villagechat
Founder of Villagechat
Carolyn Baron is the founder of a mobile app, that is designed to connect parents based on their kids' shared GPS locations. Carolyn shares her journey from real estate to tech, the challenges of growth, and the lessons learned along the way. Her story is a testament to resilience, problem-solving, and the drive to turn an idea into reality.
What Businesses Do You Run?
Carolyn Baron is the founder of a mobile application designed specifically for parents of teens and pre-teens. This innovative app connects parents based on their children's shared real-time GPS locations. Think of it as a modern-day 411 or white pages for parents. In today’s world, where everyone has a cell phone but limited ways to connect with other parents unless they already have their contact information, this app bridges that gap. Whether it’s a travel sports team, an event, or homecoming, parents can directly message each other to confirm details, organize rides, or ensure someone is home—all without the need to exchange numbers.
How Did You Get Started as an Entrepreneur?
Carolyn’s entrepreneurial journey didn’t begin with her mobile app. Her day job in real estate laid the foundation, requiring her to wake up every day, find clients, and make deals happen. For the past 30 years, she’s been a living, breathing entrepreneur, solving problems on the fly, whether related to transactions, schools, or properties.
However, deciding to tackle a problem that hadn’t been solved before marked a new chapter. She describes entrepreneurship as something that gnaws at you from the pit of your soul—an idea or solution you believe in so deeply that you feel compelled to bring it to life. Despite the challenges, Carolyn’s problem-solving mindset from real estate seamlessly transitioned into her new venture.
How Do You Think About Growth in Your Current Business? How Do You Plan for the Future?
For Carolyn, growth isn’t just about scaling numbers—it’s about resilience, adaptability, and continuous problem-solving. She acknowledges that entrepreneurship demands mental toughness. The journey is filled with naysayers, and rejection is common. Drawing from her advertising background, she’s learned how easy it is for people to critique but how rare it is for them to offer positive feedback.
What Advice Do You Have for Aspiring Entrepreneurs?
Carolyn’s advice is simple: Do it. If you believe in something and it fuels your passion, take the leap. Entrepreneurship requires wearing many hats—CFO, operations, decision-maker—you’ll be entirely in charge, and there’s no better way to learn.
However, she emphasizes caution. Before diving in, consider the costs—not just financial but also the time away from your current job, family, or personal life. Dedication is key. You have to love your idea enough to sacrifice for it. If, after asking yourself the tough questions, the passion still burns brightly, keep going.
“If you believe in something and love it, get out and do it—because you will wear more hats than in any other job, and you’ll learn more than you can doing anything else.”
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Carolyn Baron 00:02
Hi, I'm Carolyn Baron, and I've developed a mobile application that is for the parents of teens and pre teens. It connects parents to each other based on their kids shared real time, GPS location. I like to say it's a 411, or a white pages for parents nowadays, because we all carry cell phones, there's no way to reach another parent if you don't have their number already. So this is a way to connect to parents that's built around our kids shared activities. So if I don't know you, and you don't know me, but our kids are together, I can direct message you. So whether it's a travel sports team or they're at an event or it's a homecoming, we can connect to confirm details or make sure someone's home or organize a ride, whatever it is, but I don't need to get your number from someone else. Well, my day job, when I'm not wearing my mobile app cape is I'm a realtor, and I've been a realtor for almost 30 years. So while that's not a entrepreneurial function, the nature of finding, getting and killing work is completely entrepreneurial. I have to get out of bed every day and make it happen. I've got to find my own clients. I've got to make deals happen. I've got to be motivated. So in some ways, I'm a living, breathing entrepreneur for 30 years, but in terms of saying I'm going to fix a problem that hasn't been solved, that's that's something I decided to take on, although I would argue in my day job, that's all I do is solve problems. The phone rings and people have a problem with a house or a transaction or school or I got to figure it out. They want an answer. My finger is on all of those things, and so I'm constantly trying to solve problems, but I would, I think I would say to people thinking about starting a business, particularly as someone who has had one that had a lot of time and energy and fail, you do it because you feel it and you believe it and it, it feels right to you for whatever your cause is, but it's deep in the pit of your soul, and it gnaws at you to be done, and so you do it. But I think in doing that, you have to be cautious. You have to take stock of what might this cost me, and that's not just the financial investment, which is always significant, but it's time. It's time away from your current job that pays the bills. It might be time away from your family or your girlfriend or boyfriend or your pets, whatever matters to you, it's gonna take a high level of dedication. And so you have to believe you love it and are inspired by it that much to put everything into it. And if that bell is still ringing after you've asked yourself all those questions, I think you gotta keep going. It requires a lot of mental toughness to be an entrepreneur, because there's a lot of naysayers out there. It is super easy to get people to say no. I think I mentioned I worked in advertising for 11 years, we'd hold focus groups. You can get people to complain about anything about your product, but ask them to say something nice, and they're all kind of like they really have to think about positive qualities. So when you are pitching your idea to people, you gotta have mental toughness. You gotta have resiliency. You gotta have patience, because people are gonna say no lots of times, and you have to be able to take that criticism, review it, tumble it around a bit, take what's meaningful, apply it, iterate and go back out again. I mean, the first thing I would say is do it. I mean, do it. If you believe in something and love it. Get out and do it, because you will wear more hats than you wear doing any other job. Whether you're already out of college and doing this and a job, or you're in high school and thinking about doing this, you're gonna wear the CFOs hat. You're gonna wear your operational hat. You're gonna make all the decisions. When do you get to do that? You will be completely in charge, and you will learn more than you can learn doing anything else. It's your baby. You run it, you own it, you take care of it.
