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At the time she was running the company from a bedroom in her house, with no childcare. When she was desperate to make a call she would ring her husband, Brad Kofoed, an executive in a software sales company just a few minutes’ drive away. But as she grew more successful and began appearing on the talk-show circuit, she found it impossible to cope with the volume of work, so she hired a nanny. More recently her husband quit his job to work with her, as director of sales. She persuaded a DIY television team to convert their garage into an office, at almost no expense to themselves. Now she sits in a crimson suede armchair in her large office, wearing a crimson embroidered shirt and crimson lipstick, and looking every bit the successful executive. On the wall are photographs of Monosoff with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Friendly and easygoing, Monosoff seems genuinely motivated by a desire to help other mothers rather than to make money. “I conceived of [the company] as an educational resource: my purpose was to create collaboration. Then Brad said ‘This is great, but we have to make some money’.” So recently she launched an eBay store that sells her products and about 30 others, also created by mothers.

She has also started running Saturday telephone seminars, and is writing The Mom Inventors Handbook.

Monosoff grew up in Carmel, California, the daughter of two psychologists and the youngest of five children. The entrepreneurial spirit was manifest from an early age. “We lived three blocks from the beach. When I was 9 I decided to sell brownies and lemonade on the corner as I realised that people walking up from the beach were hot and thirsty. My parents helped me to set up a table with a bouquet of flowers and we all made brown ies. At first I sold them for 15 cents, then 25, then 55. People began saying ‘My, that’s expensive’, but bought them anyway. When Mum found out she was upset with me. I was like ‘Mum, they’re buying them’.

“On my third weekend a police officer leant out of the car and said ‘Hey, little girl, how much money are you making?’ I was so excited I said: ‘$300!’ He said ‘Oh my God, you need a licence, you have to go home’.” After leaving school, she did a Master’s degree in psychology, then a doctorate in International and Multicultural Education.

She and her husband met the Clintons while working as volunteers on the 1996 presidential campaign. The Clinton staff were so impressed by Monosoff’s efficiency and enthusiasm that they offered her a job assisting Hillary on the campaign trail. After the election she held various jobs in the White House, including Senior Communications Associate to the President’s Initiative on Race. “People say ‘The White House to toilet paper. How did that happen?’” But it makes sense; it’s all problem-solving.”

I ask if she enjoyed the early stages of motherhood. “No, I thought I’d made a grave mistake. I was used to using my intellect and having everything neatly planned. I found it extraordinarily difficult. My first baby had reflux and threw up all the time. I was in tears all day long.”

As we talk, Monosoff is making her daughter a peanut-butter sandwich, a perfect opportunity to show off her latest gadget: the Good Bites Crustless Sandwich Cutter. With one deft push she has a perfect, crustless sandwich. “And it seals the bread, so the filling doesn’t come out,” she notes.

As for the Shoe Clues stickers, the mother who came up with that idea just wrote it down and sent it to Monosoff. “She sent me a concept page, which she had spent less than an hour on. I looked at it and said ‘I can make that into a marketable product’.”

The idea was to have a sticker inside the heel of the shoes, each depicting an animal looking left or right. If the animals were looking at each other, the shoes were the right way round. The problem was finding a material that would adhere to the shoe properly. “The last thing I wanted was a sticker that got gummy in the shoes,that would be frustrating. So I went to a bicycle store to find what material they used for patches on tyres.”

Some ideas are non-starters. “We choose products carefully,” says Monosoff. “We said ‘No’ outright to one, a restraining thing for kids.” Because of the non-disclosure agreement, she can’t be specific. “I took one look and thought: ‘Are you out of your mind?’”

And there are some who think her products are pointless. “Older people say ‘Just tell your kids not to fiddle with toilet paper’ or ‘Just make them eat the crusts’. What I say is you choose your battles. Why not come up with fun solutions that prevent you from having to scold your child?”

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