Running a business is all about matching up what you can offer with what the market wants. So as 2012 began, I decided to talk my market and see how I could best help them.
My plan was that I was going to start out as an internet marketing consultant. I wasn’t planning on just offering advice and information, I planned to provide services too. So if a business needed a mailing list setting up and managing, I would do that for them. If they needed a new website complete with copywriting and SEO, I could do that too. I didn’t plan to do everything myself, I would work with a team of freelancers (after all, I know plenty of mums offering these services!)
Back in January I kicked things off by offering a free consultation to one of the members of my mailing list. (I send things to my mailing list that you don’t see on Business Plus Baby, so you might like to sign up here?)
When you first started your home-based small business, you probably imagined how great it was going to be to be your own boss, how much freedom you were going to have, and how comfortable it was going to be to work from home. After a few months, you probably came to the realization that it takes a whole lot of work to run a successful, home-based small business, and the stress probably set in. If you’re committed to the success of your business, you’re not only going to have to work hard. You’re also going to have to take care of yourself properly because your business is only going to be healthy if you stay healthy, both mentally and physically. Here are some of the things you can do to stay balanced as a home-based small business owner:
1. Only work in one section of your home.
Ideally, you should be working in some kind of home office, a room with a desk, chair, and a desktop computer. All you should do in that room is work, and you shouldn’t work in any of the other rooms of your house. Why? It’s difficult to separate your home life from your work life if you work in all areas of your house. At the end of the day, you should shut off your computer, and go spend some time with your family. If your laptop’s open on the couch, you’re more likely to get distracted by all the things you need to do for your business. It’s easier to maintain a healthy work/life balance if you don’t associate all areas of your home with work.
2. Stick to a schedule
As previously mentioned, at the end of the day, you should shut your computer off and spend the evening with your loved ones. It’s difficult to do this if you don’t have a set schedule. For instance, you might want to dedicate the hours of 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. to working each day. As a small business owner, you may not be able to just work 8 hours a day, but you do have the power to make room in your schedule in the evening for yourself and your loved ones.
3. Set realistic goals
When you own your own business, you don’t have a boss setting goals for you. You set your own goals. And, if you’re self-motivated, you probably set a lot of goals for yourself. It’s important to step back sometimes when you feel overwhelmed and reassess your goals. You can’t do a million things every day, and you can’t make a million dollars every day. Be realistic about the amount of work you’re able to put in and what type of results you’ll see.
Running your small business from home isn’t always everything you dreamed of, but it can be quite rewarding as long as you take care of yourself and keep your cool!
Author’s Bio: Carolyn is a guest blogger on the subjects of small business management, small business tools, and order management in the ecommerce industry that involves Shopify, 3dcart, and BigCommerce.
I love running live, face-to-face training sessions. I love the internet too, but there’s nothing like talking to real people who are in the same room as you!
I’ve been thinking of running a live workshop for a while, and although I haven’t got anything planned (well, it’s just one of the many projects on my list!) I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground for budget training venues. So I thought I’d share my ideas just in case you need to run a session too.
Even if your business is basically home-based, you might find you need a venue to train a your team or to run a promotional event. Many mums are now offering live internet marketing or social media workshops to local business, too. Workshop venues can be quite expensive, but with a little creativity, you can find some for much less.
That said, bear in mind that the venue will affect the people who will attend and the price you can charge for a ticket. For example, if you want to attract people who would normally expect to attend a business event held in a hotel, they probably wouldn’t show up to an event in a village hall, even if the ticket price was a bargain. In fact, a cheap ticket price would probably put them off. Your choice of ticket price and venue are part of your brand (whether you do it intentionally or not), so going for a low-price venue might not be the right option.
So here are some low-cost places you can run training events or workshops:
Village halls or community centres
These can be a really good value option. Some centres have a main hall plus a smaller meeting room suitable for around fifteen people. One of my local community centres even has an IT training suite. Facilities vary widely from one centre to another (as does the decor!) so it’s worth checking what is in your local area.
Sure Start Centres and charity/voluntary organisations
Sure Start Centres are usually very well equipped and happy to make a little extra income by renting out a meeting room.
Business ‘incubators’ and enterprise agency centres
Look at the organisations in your area that help new businesses get off the ground, such as enterprise agencies, as they often have low-cost meeting facilities. If you need a room on a regular basis, virtual office packages sometimes include discount meeting room hire.
Independent coffee shops
I’ve not tried this one personally (yet!) but I think that working in partnership with an independent coffee shop could work really well. You could promote each other (your leaflets could sit on the counter of the coffee shop and their coffee shop’s address will be on your promotional materials) and it could be a really nice venue with great coffee!
Anywhere that has a meeting room that isn’t in use
Get creative and think of any organisation that might have an under-used meeting room. Even your local doctor’s surgery!
Hotels and pubs
OK, this is probably one of the first places that comes to mind, but it’s worth mentioning that a) prices could vary quite a lot depending on the time slot you want, b) it’s worth seeing if you can negotiate the price down from the one advertised and c) make sure you find out the prices of refreshments in advance so you don’t have any surprises.
If you have any other ideas for workshop venues, please do leave me a comment!
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.
Having a shop on the internet is the holy grail for many mums. It’s a flexible way of earning a living, low cost, you can sell things you love and you can work from home at any time of day or night.
It’s not just mums, though. Plenty of people are looking for a way to cushion their income against the risk of losing their jobs. Plenty more want to have a little project on the side that they can grow and eventually leave their jobs completely.
I wrote this post How to start an online shop over a year ago. I mentioned starting an online store on my Facebook page and a few people replied with “I’d love to do that, where do I start?”. So I wrote down the steps I’d take to start an online shop on a really small budget. It’s been one of my top three posts ever since! When it went live it was shared widely on Twitter and it’s had hits almost every day in the last year.
It’s not that hard to start an online shop, but it can be hard to make money from it. There are plenty of reasons for this, but the big ones are lack of knowledge and not having a proper process. Whenever technology makes something easier or cheaper, the barriers to entry go down. In many ways that’s great, of course. But the problem is that if something is easy and cheap to start, we tend to dive in without much preparation and that increases the chance of failure.
Now it’s fine for me to sit and talk about ‘barriers to entry’ and ‘lack of knowledge’ in a cool and distant way, but the truth is that it’s bitterly disappointing to dip your toe in the world of business and fail. True, being able to deal with failure is a valuable, probably essential, skill.
But people need this income to keep a roof over their families’ heads. One little business success can lead on to much bigger businesses (and our economy SERIOUSLY needs this, doesn’t it?) Plus I knew I had some knowledge that could help people get their first online business off the ground and earning an income.
So what was the answer? I decided to create an e-book and sell it as widely as I possibly can. My plan is that this will expand my ‘how to start an online shop’ post into a lot more depth, but the price won’t be a barrier to anyone who wants to start their own online store from home. I have a feeling that some people might want a little more support than an e-book can provide, and if this turns out to be true, I’ll write an e-course or set up a coaching group based on the same series of ten steps. I’ll still keep this affordable, though.
The e-book is almost finished now and I’m planning to launch it in the next couple of weeks. So if you know anyone who wants to start their own online shop, please do let them know. I’ll be posting the details here at Business Plus Baby, but if you want to make sure you don’t miss anything you might like to sign up for my mailing list.
Today’s ‘I started a business with kids’ comes from Carey Conway and Fiona Haldenby (left) , directors and owners of Crafts4Kids, which sells crafts, educational toys and gifts for children.
They’ve also given Business Plus Baby readers a 15% discount of your first order at Crafts4Kids – just click this link: Crafts4Kids.co.uk and enter the code BPB15 (note: code can only be used once per person).
Tell us a little about your business
Crafts4Kids offers a stylish and contemporary range of Creative & Educational Children’s Toys, Games & Gifts that are both a pleasure to give and a pleasure to receive. Our products are selected to not only delight your children but to also help them learn. Crafts4kids range is selected from award winning brands and new inspirational brands with something just a little bit different to offer. With over 1000 products to choose from and excellent customer service, Crafts4kids is just perfect for the discerning online shopper – Great Gifts for Kids that you won’t easily find on the high street.
What was your job before starting your business?
Carey – HR and Business Process Consultant
Fiona – Director and Project Manager of commercial software solutions
Carey Conway
How did you go from your old career to your new business?
Carey -Having nearly frazzled myself trying to be a full time professional in the corporate environment and wanting to be a brilliant Mum. I resigned from my job and dabbled on a part time basis in some freelance writing and project managing the start up of 3 after school clubs while taking some time to consider what business might provide the opportunity to ‘have the best of both worlds’.
Fiona – I was working part time and managing work/mum balance but wanted a change. I was able to support Carey on the technical and operational aspects of the business but kept up my other role for a couple of years.
What were your reasons for starting a business?
Definitely wanting to be able to work more flexibly and to be able to spend more time with the children.
Did you use any childcare?
Yes , it was important to have a few hours a day to be able do business when others were doing business so we supported this with childminders but apart from that it was a lot of evening work.
How did you get your business idea?
It was clear that ecommerce was a growing and attractive opportunity with relatively low cost of entry. Our decision to embark upon Crafts4kids was heavily influenced by the types of activities we liked to do with our own children and the awareness that good children’s toys were becoming increasingly difficult to get on the high street. Independent toy sellers were struggling. ToysRus and the Entertainer were the dominant players in many towns and character branded toys appeared to be taking over!
What were your challenges and how did you overcome them?
Well we knew very little about running an ecommerce business and very little about being retailers so it was a case of trusting our intuition on product range and making cautious investment decisions in areas where our knowledge was limited. There are so many people out there trying to sell you services that don’t achieve very much. Inevitably we made mistakes. It was a really steep learning curve (and still is) but keeping a cool head – learning from your mistakes and taking new things on board in bite size chunks has seen us make good steady growth in turnover and profitability over the last 5 years.
What training, information or advice did you need to get started?
Between us we had sufficient business knowledge to get started – our respective skills complimented one another’s. In terms of getting to understand ecommerce, seo and all other online marketing activities, we have read a lot, developed good relationships with suppliers and as a result learnt a lot from them, attended exhibitions and seminars.
If you could give one piece of advice to a mum starting a business, what would it be?
Do something you are passionate about – it’s easy to find that extra energy for a spot of late night work if you are buzzing about something!
To get your 15% discount of your first order at Crafts4Kids just click this link: Crafts4Kids.co.uk and enter the code BPB15.
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