Helen – Page 283 – Business Plus Baby

March 29, 2010June 4, 2010

Business Ideas For Mums: Antenatal Teacher or Therapist

Tell me more…

An antenatal teacher helps pregnant women prepare for birth using techniques like hypnotherapy, visualisation, relaxation, exercise or yoga. A therapist might use therapies such as reflexolgy, reiki and massage to do the same.

These techniques may also be used to help women recover after the birth, to adjust to motherhood or get back into shape after having a baby.

photo: gabi_menashe

What are the benefits?

If you are passionate about pregnancy and birth this is a perfect opportunity to work with women at a fascinating time in their lives.
As mothers and mothers-to-be, your clients will usually be happy for you to work around your family.
Working hours are flexible and will often be in the evening or at weekends to fit in with your clients work and family commitments.

Things to consider…

Your clients will only need your services for a period of a few months, so you'll need to think of ways of catching them early on in their pregnancies. Unless you have lots of clients who go on to have big families, you won't get much repeat custom either! But you could encourage clients to recommend you to their pregnant friends, perhaps by giving them discount vouchers.

It's a good idea to make sure your website appears near the top of the search results in search engines e.g. if you're a maternity reflexologist in Coventry, aim to be top of the list when someone types 'maternity reflexology Coventry' into Google. Potential clients will then find you if they have decided they want your service but haven't yet found a local teacher/therapist.

You can improve your cash-flow by selling courses, rather than individual sessions. It means that you know you have covered your costs (such as room hire) at the start of a course rather than having to worry about it before every session.

You could offer several different therapies or courses. This might mean being a therapist with a pregnancy specialism (a reflexologist who also does maternity reflexology) or a pregnancy/birth specialist who offers several courses or therapies (e.g. hypnotherapy and reiki).

Further information

Training:

activebirthcentre.com – teacher training for the Active Birth method

www.hypnobirthing.co.uk – teacher training for Hypnobirthing

maternity-reflexology.com – training for reflexologists who want to specialise in maternity reflexology

birthlight.com – training to teach yoga in pregnancy

Examples of mums who are antenatal and postnatal teachers or therapists:

Soles to Soul reflexology and maternity reflexology

Karma Birth birth workshops, pregnancy and postnatal yoga, pregnancy massage and reiki

No More Excuses pregnancy and postnatal fitness

Not convinced that being a Antenatal Teacher or Therapist is for you? Take a look at other business ideas for mums.

March 25, 2010June 4, 2010

Business Mums: This Could Solve Your Biggest Problems

The number one problem for business mums has to be childcare. If you're running a business around a family, most childcare isn't flexible enough to fit your working life.

Working from home isn't as great as it might seem, either (unless your home office is like the one on the right…). You can miss connecting with other adults, you're stuck sitting in the trail of mess left by your children and you really wouldn't want to invite clients in to sit in it too!

photo: Jeremy Levine Design

If you live in South London help is at hand from May – and I hope it will extend to the rest of the country soon. Let me introduce guest blogger Melissa Talago to tell you about Third Door and the launch competition you can enter now:

Ever since I set up my own PR business almost 4 years ago, I have battled with one thing: Childcare. It has been a nightmare. When the kids were both still under 3, they went to nursery. But the nursery only had Mondays and Fridays available, the worst two days for me to get anything done in my industry. Plus if the kids were sick, they couldn't go and I was left once again not able to work. There were times when I had way too much work and needed extra childcare and other times when I didn't have enough work to justify having them in childcare, but couldn't risk losing my nursery place.

And did I mention the cost!! My pay used to go directly into my bank account and straight out again to the nursery. I should have just gotten my clients to pay the nursery direct and cut out the middle man!

I know I'm not alone in having these issues. Childcare for working parents – particularly those trying to freelance or set up their own business – is a nightmare. But now someone has at last had a brainwave. It is just such a good idea, that I absolutely had to work with them.

Take a look at Third Door – particularly if you're a parent living in SW London.

Shazia, a mum to a 2 year old and 4 month old (so imagine how much sleep she's getting!), decided that there had to be a better way of allowing parents to work remotely with flexible child care that suited them.

So she and her husband created Third Door, where you get flexible work space (a hot desk or meeting room) with on-site childcare (in an OFSTED registered creche) all done on a pay-as-you-go basis.

No more having to stick to certain days assigned to you by a nursery. No more having to pay for childcare that you can't use when your child is sick. No more mad rush to pick your child up from nursery after work – because they're just downstairs. No more wondering how your child is doing, because you can pop in and see them, perhaps have lunch with them. No more working on your own in your spare bedroom without any other adult company as you can network with like-minded parents in your area. No overheads of having your own office.

The benefits just go on and on. Like I said, a brilliant idea.

The company is launching in May in Wandsworth, just up the road from Cupcake Spa for those of you who know it. And to help celebrate its opening, Third Door is running a competition that I genuinely think will change somebody's life.

The prize includes:

30 hours of free workspace and childcare
Third Door membership
a Business in a Box package that includes logo design, company name registration, business cards, letterhead and website creation
3 hours of consultancy from experts in finance, legal, marketing, PR, technology, social media and business coaching
a laptop
a smartphone

Basically all the tools you need to start up your own business or enable you to work part-time, freelance or possibly build up a blog. Sometimes in fact, all you need to be able to change your life is some child-free time to think, a blank screen to tap ideas onto, a strong coffee and someone to talk to. If you win this prize, you can do exactly that!

So if you want to enter, go here. And please help spread the word about this to anyone who you think would benefit from it.

Melissa Talago is the owner of Peekaboo Communications

March 23, 2010April 15, 2012

How Long Until I Get Paid?

Photo: HowardLake

This is a sponsored post (what does this mean?)

Starting a business when you’re on maternity leave is tough on your finances. Your maternity pay is about to run out, your savings are a distant memory and your credit card is feeling the strain.

So when deciding on your business, it pays to think about how long it will take before you make some money. (By ‘make some money’ I mean your pay cheque.) Then you can start paying off that credit card bill!

Freelancing is generally the fastest way to get a pay cheque if you work for yourself. But there are a few ‘ifs’.

If you have a skill that’s in demand

The trick is to offer people a skill that they need now. Maybe they have a big project and need extra help. Perhaps you have a skill that they don’t. Freelancing isn’t going to be a fast earner if you go back to college for a couple of years to get the right skills.

If you market yourself

You’ll have to go and find the work because it won’t find you. (Unless you’re very lucky or already have a good network of contacts.)

If your clients pay up on time.

This one is difficult to control. The best you can do is to have a clear set of terms and conditions and make an educated guess about the reliability of your client.

Don’t be put off though, as you might already have a skill you can turn to freelancing.

The types of work that spring to mind when you think of the word ‘freelance’ may be web design, graphic design, writing, public relations and other skills you might offer to companies. But it could also include office admin, dog walking, alternative therapies and gardening. You could also help out your ex-employer with a project if they need an extra pair of hands.

The down side of freelancing is that you’re exchanging each hour of your time for a sum of money. There’s a limit to how much you can earn as there are only twenty-four hours in a day. The smart way around this is to build up a steady income (well, as steady as freelancing can ever be) then start another income stream that doesn’t involve a direct exchange of time for money.

At the other end of the ‘how long until I get paid?’ scale is inventing a new product.

Why? Well, you’ll need to have a good idea, do extensive market research, build a prototype and test it, possibly get a patent, get a loan or invest your own money (or both), research manufacturers and materials, get the product made, market it and sell enough of it to pay back your loan or investment. Then you can start to make a profit. You’d be lucky to see a pay cheque in less than a year.

The big advantage of the new product is that you’re not exchanging time for money, as you are with freelancing. So you could make a lot more money. But the risk is greater and you could lose money too.

Somewhere in between these extremes are the other business types.

So if you’ve got a great business idea, don’t forget to check if it’s a good match for your family finances. You don’t want to run out of money before you start to see an income from your business.

March 18, 2010May 22, 2010

Starting up as a business mum: don’t miss the Start Up Donut blog

If you need to know about being a mumpreneur, check out last week's Start Up Donut blog. And I'm not just saying that because I was one of the contributors! (My post is 'What's my greatest challenge as an aspiring mumpreneur?')

All last week, Start Up Donut had a mumpreneur theme, with blog posts ranging from tax tips by Business Plus Baby guest blogger Amy Taylor (Amy is rapidly becoming the business mums' accountant) to Zoe Brown explaining how having four children focused her mind on business (yes, really!). My personal favourite was Rachael Dunseath's 'Not for the houseproud'. Like Rachael I'm starting a business with two pre-schoolers at home – something has got to give and guess what, it's the housework!

Start Up Donut is a seriously useful website for anyone starting up a business. I especially liked 'how I started up on a shoestring' as I think most of us start-up mumpreneurs can relate to that. Plus it has some creative ideas for getting what you need to get your business of the ground if you have very little capital. And as the article says, the less you spend, the less you have to lose.

March 16, 2010March 15, 2010

Information, Inspiration and Opinion

…is what you’ll find at this month’s Business Mums’ Blog Carnival over at Mum’s The Blog.