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Work At Home Mums Around The World

A couple of weeks ago I had an email from Diona Moustri and Kalliopi Fountoulaki-Hanioti of Mammas Work at Home, a website for work at home mums in Greece:

Starting a home based business or working from a home office are emerging choices for mothers who wish to spend more time with their family and continue their career or pursue a new one. The community of Greek WAHMs is growing and at Mammas Work At Home we try to provide an online meeting place to exchange all kinds of information from practical details and tax regulations to creative activities for the kids and inspiring success stories.

Mammas Work At Home was created by an electrical and computer engineer and a freelance translator, two work-at-home mothers who both wished to share their WAHM experience. Kalliopi and Diona first got to know each other online visiting and commenting on each other’s blogs. Finding out that they were both working from home, they decided to join forces and create a blog sharing Greek content for work-at-home moms.

Diona and Kalliopi said there isn’t that much Greek content out there for WAHMs and could they please translate some of the Business Plus Baby articles and publish them on Mammas Work at Home?

I was happy to say yes and the first article was published last week – it’s a translation of Viv Smith’s story of how she started Poppy Sparkles. (Here’s the Greek version and here’s the English one.)

Of course it’s brilliant to be found and contacted from the other side of Europe, but the main reason I’m so happy is that I’m connecting with another community of mums in business. We’re all women who are refusing to accept the normal work choices for mums of small children and are doing it our own way instead. And isn’t it great that we can get together and help each other out?

When I started Business Plus Baby I made it very much UK-focused. That’s because I thought I wouldn’t have a lot to offer WAHMs in other countries because the logistics of starting and running a business would be so different across the world. Not to mention maternity pay and maternity leave (which is confusing even if you are in the UK judging by the number of hits I get on BPB’s maternity allowance articles!)

But I’ve found that mumpreneurs, mompreneurs, WAHMs and business mums/moms around the world are remarkably similar. Just lately I’ve connected with mums in business from Canada, Australia, USA and Dubai as well as Greece and we all want to know pretty much the same things. How can I run a business from home around kids? How do you start and run an internet business? Am I crazy to think I can do this? How do other mums manage it? Plus the big challenge for all small business owners – getting your marketing right.

So if you’re feeling a bit isolated and stuck at home behind your computer, just remember you’re one of a huge group of mums around the world who are building a better future for themselves and their families.

Makes you feel proud, doesn’t it?

Creative Commons License photo credit: kthypryn

 

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I Started a Business With a Baby: Rachel Bloom of La Fee Noire

Tell us a little about your business

Lafeenoire Maternity is an online boutique featuring a unique range of funky and functional maternity clothes which tend to be my own taste. The collection includes dresses, tops, lingerie , jeans and swimwear etc but my unique selling point is Hug-a-Bump SPD Maternity Support Band. Created to address a desperate need in the market for a wearable and effective pain relief for pregnancy back pain and symptoms of SPD. This condition now effects up to 1 n 3 pregnancies and in fact almost every pregnant woman can benefit from it as backache is so common place during pregnancy. I commissioned my design to be manufactured and after a 6 month wait it was launched  following successful trials with SPD volunteer sufferers I found on the mummy forums and was lucky enough to grab some fab PR in the Daily mail in April 2009 and the band flew.

What was your job before starting your business?

Executive Recruitment for the previous 10 years (headhunting) within the luxury goods marketplace. Self employed and working from home already (for the last 3 years of that time) so the transition into something else from home was not difficult. I was completing an assignment two days after my baby arrived and realised then something had to give!

How did you go from your old career to your new business?

I gave myself a short break and began gathering stock for my website when I saw how quick I could sell my own maternity wardrobe online after I had finished with it. A friend suffered SPD and had been given nothing effective to relieve the problem and I myself struggled with back ache due to a particularly large baby bump due to a fibroid. So the seed of Hug-a-Bump began….I found it far less stressful buying and selling ladies maternity clothes than juggling candidates and clients at every turn…so instead of life with a phone strapped to my head , I now had a tiny baby strapped to my chest!( metaphorically speaking !)

What were your reasons for starting a business?

I need to be my own boss and work around my family commitments as they are priority and the cost of childcare outways the income of most new businesses so it made sense. I already worked for myself and knew I wanted a quieter less stressful life now I had a child. My intention was always to be a stay at home mum when it happened and what girl doesn’t love buying clothes! Hug a Bump is a passion for me as practically every customer who buys it gives me fabulous feedback and is really grateful so the stress of having it made and protecting its name and design is worthwhile. My testimonials sometimes make me well up with the thought that I have changed someone’s day to day life during their pregnancy simply by reducing the pain. It is also now sold globally and is endorsed my UK midwives and international maternity reflexologists too.Now my baby is at school I can work more or less full time on my business so should see a growth

What were your challenges and how did you overcome them?

I self-financed the business from my previous income and am slowly recouping this initial investment. I figure you need to speculate to accumulate but have never used a bank loan. Credit cards are useful of course! I started with a pretty poor home made website and tinkered for a long time before investing in a designer and am now on my third (and for sometime final!) design and I am now delighted with the image of the site. In creating a home-made site I did benefit from becoming quite proficient in HTML, links and general SEO so I do all of these mundane tasks myself to save money. I feel I have the time so use it wisely to save myself money

What training, information or advice did you need to get started?

Basic IT, I am self taught and read and read until I understand how to do the things I need to do myself. IT support and SEO services cost a fortune so if you learn you save. Information is out there for all to use and is generally free.

If you could give one  piece of advice to a mum of a baby or toddler starting a business, what would it be?

Don’t skimp on a cheap looking website…it will look cheap to everyone and your shop window will let you down. It is false economy. Don’t overload yourself with trivia and be sure to find a niche. There are hundreds of Maternity clothes websites but only one Hug-a-Bump SPD Maternity Support Band. Find your niche and push it. I had recent interest from a well known retailer following my own introduction to the product but given the margins involved to get a product into retail, be sure you keep focussed on the end goal and control before you leap into handing your ‘baby’ over to someone else!:-)

You can visit Rachel’s website at www.lafeenoire.com

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Can You Start a Business With No Money?

No money? Don’t despair, today I have some tips on how you can start a business even if it looks like you’ve got no money to invest. I’m also going to tell you about some of the pitfalls of starting a business on a very tight budget.

But first, here’s the challenge. You don’t need much money to start a small business from home, but the chances of a bank lending you this money may still be pretty small. Plus you don’t really want to take on (more?) debt right now. You’re already on a tight budget because you’re a) not working b) working part time or c) spending a big chunk of your salary on childcare. So you don’t really want to spend money on a business that should be putting food on the table or clothes on your kids.

You can start a business on a small budget, but you can’t do it on no budget at all, so what should you do? Here are some ideas: Continue reading “Can You Start a Business With No Money?”

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Don’t miss this 0% on balance transfers deal!

Did you know Barclaycard are offering 0% on balance transfers for 20 months? That’s the the longest 0% balance transfer offer in the market today. If you’ve got a credit card balance to pay off then moving it to a card with an interest free period like this could save you quite a bit of money in interest payments.

Even if you have been careful with your cash, the chances are that buying all that baby gear plus a drop in income for a few years (whether that’s time away from work or outrageous childcare fees!) will have left you with a bit more on your credit card than you would like. By moving the balance to a card offering a 0% balance transfer, you can pay off your debt faster or cut down your monthly repayments.

If you’re a new customer signing up to Barclaycard  between 15th March and 3rd May 2011 you can also take advantage of a 25% reduction on the handling charge when transferring multiple balances from other lenders – the highest balance transfer will incur a handling fee of 3.2%, with any additional transfers seeing effective handling fees of 2.74%. This is available on Barclaycard Platinum and Barclaycard Platinum Purchase products.

As well as helping you out by cutting the cost of borrowing money, Barclaycard also offers the easiest-to-use rewards scheme in the UK. Known as Barclaycard Freedom, it gives you Reward Money in pounds and pence in thousands of retailers UK-wide and online, without the need to carry any additional reward card or vouchers.

You have up to 60 days from the date of your application to transfer your balance.

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