Being a Mumpreneur – Page 7 – Business Plus Baby

May 8, 2014

How to stay healthy when you’re working from home

If you’ve got children, a business, clients, friends, family and a house to look after, it’s easy for your own health and well-being to come last. There just aren’t enough hours in the day, are there?

But it’s important for mum to stay healthy – otherwise who else will do all these important jobs?

So (keeping in mind that this message is as much a reminder to myself as it is to anyone else who may be reading!), here are five quick and easy tips for staying a healthy work at home mum

1. Eat. Obviously, you don’t have a lot of time to eat, but this is essential to staying healthy. The good news that it’s OK to snack, as it helps keep your metabolism going and your energy levels up – so no need for crash dieting. Just make sure you snack on healthy things like yogurt, fruit and nuts rather than chocolate, biscuits and crisps. Not that I ever eat any of those things, obviously *cough*. Fruitdrop – who deliver fruit to offices so that employers can help their staff keep healthy – have this great recipe for fruity energy bars which are perfect for keeping you going while you work.

2. Drink: Water, that is. In addition to eating healthy foods, you need to be drinking water throughout the day. (Note to self: 15 cups of tea don’t count)

3 Exercise: Although you may find yourself busy throughout the day and exhausted at the end of it all, it’s important that you squeeze in at least 20-30 minutes of exercise each day. There are several ways you can do this. For instance, you can go on a walk, play Xbox Kinect/Nintendo Wii games with your family or take the kids swimming after school.

4. Be Happy: As women and mothers, we tend to overload ourselves with work, family and worries. There isn’t much time to focus on being happy. However, this is important too. Studies have shown that, generally, happy people are healthier people. In order to become happier, set aside a little time for yourself every day – or week – to do something you like doing. This time will help you feel refreshed and become happier.

5. Sleep: Getting a good night of sleep is essential to your overall health. Sleep is when your body recharges itself. So, if you aren’t getting enough sleep you aren’t operating on a full battery, which means you’ll wear out quicker. It also means your body will too, which depletes your immune system. Plus it means you’ll be irritable and less likely to be happy (see tip 4). Can’t fall asleep? Here are some tips.

So I’m now going to take my own advice and get an early night. Night night!

If you enjoyed this post, why not make sure you stay in touch by joining my mailing list? I’ll also send you a copy of my e-book Running a business around a family: 9 steps to success.

Image: Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

March 13, 2014

Do you buy or sell on eBay? Make sure you check out eBay’s new Collections

I’ve been a regular eBayer for over ten years now. Wow, time has flown! I’ve mainly been a buyer but I’ve sold things from time to time too.

eBay has really grown up over the years. Long gone are the days where it was just a place to buy and sell second-hand items, although you can still do that of course. These days plenty of big brands have eBay outlets where you can pick up absolute bargains. And there are plenty of small home-based businesses like ours there, too.

The latest innovation at eBay is the ‘Collections’ feature. Collections are groups of eBay items hand-selected by eBay members, mixed and matched around a theme, concept or passion. A collection is like an online pinboard of items available on eBay. You can either be inspired by someone else’s collections or you can create your own. You may even find items you’re selling appearing in other people’s collections.

Collections are social, too. So you can follow the collections of people with the same style or interests as your own and they can follow yours. That’s great for the bloggers and social media fans among us!

I was lucky enough to be asked to create some collections before the feature was made available to most UK eBay users. You can take a look at my collections here.

As you can see, I found lots to collect! I’ve got a collection of bags for mums – some stylish, some big and practical for all the bits and pieces we need to carry around. I’ve created other collections to help you work from home, from the gadgets I can’t live without to the perfect work from home wardrobe. And did you know you can pick up some bargain business books on eBay? Neither did I at first, but now I’ve found them but I’ve got a collection of those too!

What I like best about these collections is that they show the many aspects of working at home as a mum, from having an office that doubles up as a family space to keeping your kids happy while they’re on the move. After all, a work at home mum doesn’t always work from home!

Think you don’t have business skills? Think again!

Are you thinking of starting your own business but fighting your own self-doubt? From time to time we all have those voices in our heads telling us that we’re not good enough, or that we just don’t have what it takes to succeed.

This can be a big problem for mums in particular, because our business role models are mostly wealthy, extrovert and male. It feels like there’s a huge gap between the dragons in the BBC’s Dragon’s Den and our everyday experience of feeding the kids and getting them to school on time.

But believe me, you have a lot to offer. Here are just a few examples of the valuable skills you’ve picked up as a mum:

Negotiation

If you’ve ever tried to convince a screaming two-year-old back into a pushchair or a three year-old that they don’t want chocolate for every meal, then believe me you have excellent negotiation skills!

Networking

Mums are fantastic networkers. I’m always amazed by how a group of mums can connect with and motivate many others to raise money for charity, get all hands on deck for a school event or help out another family that is having a tough time.

Event planning

Birthday parties, weddings, school events and fundraisers. There’s always an event in the diary if you’re a mum. And most of us are great at organising them, often with limited time and resources.

Patience

True, you may not feel like the most calm and serene person in the world when faced with the prospect of removing glitter glue from your carpet. But motherhood definitely teaches you that you can’t have everything precisely when you want it. Sometimes you have to get to work then wait a while before you see success.

Getting things done

Since I became a mum I’ve dropped my standards. And that’s a good thing! My inner perfectionist used to stop me from tackling some projects because the time wasn’t right or I needed to take yet another course first. Dealing with the chaos that comes with small children has shown me my timing will never be just right, I will never be organised enough and I will never know everything I think I need to know. These days I just get on with it. Maybe you’re the same?

Better to finish an imperfect project than to never start a perfect one.

Taken time out of your career?

Don’t overlook all the skills and experience you gained in your LBK (life before kids), whether that was archiving documents at the office or handling patients in a hospital!

It may seem like you’ve forgotten it all, but with a little practice it all comes back. You may not want to go back to the career you had before, but there will definitely be skills you can adapt and use.

If you take some time to think about what you’ve learned from being a mum, I guarantee you’ll have a goldmine of skills and experience you can use in your new business.

(This article previously appeared in My Family Magazine – read it online or grab a print copy in supermarkets and many other places across the UK)

February 11, 2014

Is being a virtual assistant a good choice for a work at home mum? The answer might surprise you…

This is a guest post from Caroline Wylie of the Society of Virtual Assistants.

In Emma Jones’ book “Working 5-9” being a VA is the very first job she recommends for people wanting to earn money at home in the evenings. As a mum myself, it is a great job to run alongside your family commitments such as the school run or bunging on a load of washing. But with almost half of married women doing 13 hours + of household chores each week, it’s no surprise that our businesses sometimes suffer from working from home… (Source: Institute for Public Policy Research 2012).

I wanted to know just how much an impact being a mum had on home businesses – the results are a pretty interesting read. The Virtual Assistant industry tends to be typically female dominated with a stereotypical VA being a mum with young children juggling childcare alongside running her business – that’s the picture that gets painted time and again when people talk about VAs.

But when you look at the numbers, is The Mummy VA a reality or is it a Mummy Myth?

Each year we take a snapshot of the VA industry in the UK Virtual Assistant Survey – a survey of real VAs which looks at everything from how much they earn to what marketing methods work best.

One of the issues we researched was to do with working mums. Firstly, are VAs typically mums? Secondly, are they working without childcare in place juggling their commitments? And lastly, does it affect your income?

We’ve now asked these questions three years in a row – and the results are fairly consistent:

Just 35% of VAs are mums with young children.
The percentage of WAHMs who have no childcare in place is 1.5% of the industry – which has fallen in the last 2 years from 4%.

So “The Mummy Myth” (as I call it) is just pure fantasy – it’s actually comparable to the amount of men working in this female dominated industry at just 1%. The drop in VAs without childcare in place would also suggest that it’s not sustainable to run a VA business without childcare – these VAs have clearly either left the industry or put some childcare in place.

What we also wanted to know is: Are these mums earning less?

We looked at the rates mums charge compared to the non-mums – the mums without childcare were earning over 24% less than the average VA rate.

You could argue that the hours available to work are hampering their earning potential – that is, until you look at what other VAs working the same amount of hours earn, and the mums without childcare are still earning 20% less than those working similar part-time hours.

Fact: If you want to earn a living from being a VA – you need childcare in place.

But it’s hard when you’ve perhaps voluntarily opted out of the traditional workforce in order to look after children. You have to be able to justify the increased cost of childcare vs your (hopefully!) increased income. This research would suggest you can charge more if you have more consistent working hours in place.

The full UK Virtual Assistant Survey can be purchased at £25 from: societyofvirtualassistants.co.uk/va-products/

April 10, 2013April 10, 2013

How to keep your children safe when you’re working from home

As mums we are usually nothing short of obsessed with the safety of our kids, but I don’t often see safety discussed in the business mums’ community. Perhaps we assume we’ve already taken care of safety because we’re working from home? Anyway, I thought it might be good to share some tips here…

– I’m going to start with a really obvious one…make sure you have an up-to-date and complete first aid kit. It’s surprisingly easy to forget this and find you’ve got nothing but Peppa Pig plasters in the cupboard. Er, yes I’m off to update my own now!

– Make sure children don’t get hold of any materials or equipment they shouldn’t have access to. For example, if f you’re running a craft business, take care with small objects such as beads or tools such as sewing machines. In fact, I know of some mums running jewellery businesses who have a strict ‘toddlers and beads don’t mix’ policy, so the crafting only begins when the kids are asleep. There are plenty of other tasks that can be done while the kids are playing, like answering emails.

– If possible, have your own work space. Many of us don’t have the luxury of having our own office or studio, so your work space might be the kitchen table that has to be cleared away at the end of your ‘working day’. Which might be just before the school run or midnight!

– If you’re working on a laptop while supervising kids playing, be careful of trailing cables and tripping over piles of books or files. Of course, there can be hazards about even if you’re not a crafter. Although the kids can have trip hazards too, which you’ll already know about if your kids are into lego. Ouch.

– Make sure the kids can’t get up to too much mischief If you’re distracted by a phone call. My three-year-old managed to get our front door open and accept a parcel from the postman while I wasn’t looking. By the time I got to the front door I found a rather surprised postie looking at me and a small boy with a parcel in his hands! I’m just glad I found that my little one showed me he knew how to open the door at a time when he wasn’t in any danger. I now hang the keys on a high hook.

– Of course it’s not just cuts and bumps we need to worry about these days. There’s more to safety than just making sure you have all the first aid supplies you need, you now need to think about online safety too. Be careful about how much information you share about your children online, as once it’s out there on the internet you no longer have control over how that information used and by whom. If you’re uncomfortable about putting the address of your family home on your website, then think about getting a virtual office instead. It’s now cheap and easy to get a dedicated business phone line – see do I need a business phone line? for more info.

So there you go, some tips for keeping your budding entrepreneurs safe while you’re working! Do you have any tips to add?