Article Contributed by Hazel Mae
You want to be an always-available mom to your kids, and yet you also want to maintain your economic independence and continue to make contributions to the house bills and living expenses. How can you achieve these two goals without having to sprout an extra body to assist you? Being a work-at-home mom may be the answer to your dilemma.
Small Home-based Business
Setting up a small home-based business may be harder, but definitely more gratifying, since the benefits of your hard work all flow directly back to you. As owner of your business, there will be no middle man to take a cut off your hard work’s pay, plus, it would look great on your resume if in case you ever want to hit the job market again after the kids have grown up. Being CEO of what’s-your-company sounds productive and pretty impressive for a stay-at-home mom.
Here are some small businesses you can start at home:
- Daycare Center/ babysitting services
– Not all moms have the choice to be able to stay at home to take care of their kids. As a work-at-home mom, you can offer piece of mind to other parents who have to work outside and leave their kids by having your own daycare center/babysitting services. Let their kids stay with you and your kids, caring for them all as you would your own brood. Other parents in your neighborhood would be surely relieved from worrying about finding the right sitter and will be willing to pay for a work-at-home mom they personally know to take care of their babies right.
- Laundry Services
– Parents who work outside have to deal with travel time on top of all other tasks at work and those that they need to accomplish for their family. Maybe you can offer to check “laundry” off their to-do lists by offering this service. You can even offer the added perk of delivering right to their doorstep if you start marketing around the residents living in your neighborhood. Makes good exercise and exploration for you and baby, too. Just make sure you have your baby harness ready so baby doesn’t wander off while you’re busy transacting.
- Mini canteen/eatery – people can be so busy nowadays, but now that fast food has earned such a scorching reputation, you can offer your own healthier alternative without the steep pricing of other high-end, so-called “healthy eating” restaurants/catering services.
- Consultation/Tutoring/Coaching services – if you’ve had a specialized career before, especially if it’s related to law, health care, physical education, or if you know a foreign language or can at least teach basics such as reading, math and science, setting up your own consultation/coaching/tutorial services business might be right for you. Sessions can either be done via skype, email correspondence, chat, phone calls, and personal appearances, or a combination of all, whichever suits your client and your curriculum best.
Set up your home-based office
Setting up a business means you’re going to need some time and space isolated specifically for business or work purposes as opposed to mom or home duties. This sets a space that allows you to focus on getting things done.
What you’ll need:
- Appropriate furniture
– Since this will be an at-home office, you don’t need to worry too much about getting expensive or designer furniture. Just a comfortable work desk and chair will do fine. Also, a computer desk beside your main work desk, or a convertible computer-writing desk will do just fine.
- Wifi router
– This is a powerful force any business aiming to get big must not be caught without: an Internet connection. If online gaming is not going to be connected in any way to your business, then opt for a connection that’s decent enough for you to, in the very least, make video conferences with. If you can afford it, pick a wifi router that you can use at home and have a portable wifi device you can lug around with you when you have to go outside or travel.
- Desk lamp
– Waking up earlier or sleeping later than everyone else in the household is a common way work-at-home moms actually get some work done after family duties time. Having a lamp ensures that you can keep a light on when you’re trying to get productive without disturbing the rest of the household. This is especially useful if you’re setting up your office or desktop near your child’s room or letting your child (especially if he/she is still a baby) co-share in your room. This also lets your spouse sleep undisturbed if your home office is sectioned off in a little corner of your master’s bedroom.
- Smart phone
– As a business owner, you’ll more likely need at least two or more of the following necessities: an organizer, a calendar, an alarm, a notepad, a voice recorder, a mobile communications device, a portable document-editing device, a camera, video camera, a portable wifi-ready device, and the like. To have all these needs answered in one place, the best solution would be to get a smart phone with decent specs that you can use to conduct your business tasks with even when you’re on the go.
Emailing, texting, chatting, checking your social media updates, online conferencing, maneuvering apps, processing payments, setting up to-do lists and reminders on your calendar, recording pictures/videos of stuff for potential clients or business ideas, can all be done without cell phones, of course. But do you really need all the extra bulk of carrying around multiple devices? Just one do-it-all investment can help you achieve most of these things.
- Decent laptop or business computer setup
– Have a desktop set up at home in your office that’s preferably separate from those for-home-usage devices. This ensures that your business files will be safe from the risk of getting wrongly accessed or getting lost due to malfunction.
Sharing computers or laptops with the household could expose your pertinent files to certain risks, especially if your kids play online games, browse in high-risk sites or download content from various unknown sources. To avoid getting your business information compromised, invest in getting your own for-business-only desktop or better yet, a good business laptop, for added portability.
- Business phone line
– To avoid embarrassing encounters with clients calling and your children or tired spouse answering your professional calls, again, if you can afford to, invest in getting your home office a business phone line separate from your home line.
- Mobile signal booster
– having a mobile signal booster ensures that you never run out signal or encounter communication problems. Running a business is a hectic job and you’re going to need all the stability and reach-ability you can get, especially when it comes to communication.
- Website
– Just like having a decent business laptop and internet connection is a necessity, having a website now is also an investment any business owner would be wise to make. In fact, nowadays, it’s par for the course. Set up a website so you can have a platform for you to market your business to the world without worrying about advertising costs (unless you plan to do sponsored ads or posts).
A website must be an easily accessible portfolio you can showcase to more potential clients and it can also function as a passive advertising tool for you. You can go to bed, spend time with the kids or with your spouse, but your website will still be there, full of searchable and browse-able content that you don’t need to actively promote ALL THE TIME.
- A business email
– Fullname@company.com looks more professional than hottiemommyloveskids@hotmail.com doesn’t it? And actually getting a reply from katanderson@toddlertutorials.com or at least, katanderson_toddlertutorials@gmail.com looks more promising (and reassuring) to a potential costumer than hottiemommyteacheskids@hotmail.com now, doesn’t it?
- Financial management software
– You’re going to need all the invoicing, money tracking and budgeting help that you can get. But to avoid hiring extra work force, you can opt for time-saving and money-saving software that can be found for free, or at least a more reasonable cost on the internet. App marketplaces have a lot to offer such as Wave Accounting software, Expensify, Mint.com, Square, InDinero and the like.
Conclusion
With the right information and tools together, all that’s left for you is to persevere against the ups and downs of owning a business. Do not give up early in the game, when it’s more difficult and you’re only just beginning to get a handle on things. Rely on the staying power of your will to carry you through the challenges of managing both career and your parenting duties for the longer term. You just might become the next mommy mogul on the block that your kids will look up to.
About The Author
Hazel Mae does financial information research and editing full time for a multinational ratings company. She has also been a freelancer with at least 10 years of experience and is currently working as a content creator and marketer for MyAmplifiers, a leading provider of mobile signal boosters for small business and personal use. She also writes for Sourcing Pen and enjoys topics on business, technology, economics, finance, psychology, careers, productivity, motivation, music and writin