Ready to Learn Mom

Any work-at-home-mom will confess that owing her own business is as challenging as it gets. While the rewards are bountiful, the word easy is not one used to describe small business ownership.

Many moms who work out of their home also have to multitask tending to the needs of their small children. In fact the reason many parents choose to work at home is so they can be available to care for the kids. Keeping up with household maintenance and child rearing is a full time job. So how does one find time for her business?

The answer to that is simple. You don’t find time; you make time. Okay the part about making time may not be that simple, but it is very much doable. The most important factor in making time is your mind set. Remember RYBLAB – Run Your Business Like a Business. Assuming we’re talking about a bona fide business and not just a little something you do periodically to earn a little extra cash, then it’s important to manage your time.

Click Here to read more…

Ever since OPEC vexed Jimmy Carter into wearing a cardigan, telecommuting has been touted as a fix for what ails the US office worker — the agony and expense of commuting, the drudgery of cubicles, the shortage of family time. Long before the advent of the Web, evangelists were confident that cordless phones and faxes had already made the office a relic. “Working from home holds the promise of a new American dream,” Paul and Sarah Edwards gushed in their 1985 manifesto, Working From Home, in which they extolled the virtues of commuting from breakfast nook to den.

Two decades later, however, most workers still trudge to the office. Though a third of the more than 150 million working Americans telecommute at least occasionally, most do so just a few days each month. Only 40 percent of companies permit any sort of work-at-home arrangement, which means most insist on full-time attendance. According to a 2006 survey by the Telework Exchange, the top fear among resisters is that they’ll lose control of their employees, whom they doubtlessly envision frittering away the hours between 9 and 5 playing Minesweeper and munching Cheetos.

Working from home is now viewed by a growing number of people as their ticket to realizing their full potentials. For parents of growing children, a home-based business is a chance to create a better balance between family and career. For others, it also means freedom from the daily commute to work, or the traffic.

For a lot of people, however, the financial benefits of working at home are very attractive. The amount of money that you could earn is now directly proportional to your own performance, without waiting for a boss to give you a raise or promotion. Whether your business provides your sole means of support or a secondary income, its earning potential now depends on your ingenuity, determination, and willingness to work at it.

Click Here to read more…

Why do you want to work from home? Do you know for sure?

I have been seeing and reading a lot of information about why a woman would want to work from home, and it has really made me sit down and take notes about the real reasons I have a home-based business.

Before going from a job outside of the home, to working from home, it is very important that you have some clear goals in mind, as well as your motivation behind those goals. Without knowing where you are and where you would like to go, you may fall into some of the stereotypical routines that befall (and fail) many home-based working moms.

Click Here to read more…

One of the biggest questions I get, from men and women alike, is how in the world did I get started working from home.

Know what?  It just happened.  Well, I mean, staying home was intentional on my part – but, most of my work fell in my lap, and I was smart enough to see a good thing when I had it!

Before we had children, my husband and I decided that one of us would always be home, to raise the kids.  I honestly didn’t care which one of us stayed home, but both of us working outside of the home was not an option for us.  Our future children needed the stability of at least one parent, always.  My personal reasonings were because my folks died at such a young age that if I inherited their genes, I wouldn’t live to see my children grow up – and I wanted to give them all that I could, before that time potentially occurred.  For my husband, it had more to do with who was parenting the kids – giving them the core values that we held ourselves up to.  That should only come from a child’s parents.

Click Here to read more…

It’s hard to avoid feeling the impact of the current financial situation. It can be felt in increased expenses and possibly a decrease in customers. But there are a few easy steps you can put in place to help slow the flow of money going out the door.

Printing Expenses: Find free printing offers, such as Vista Prints e-mail offers. After your first order, you get frequent e-mails with offers. Sales include:

• Free stationery
• Business cards
• T-shirts
• Postcards

Click Here to read more…

• Plan to do something fun each day for the kids: host a lemonade stand for a few hours, have a pie or water fight, do the water balloon toss, create a chalk masterpiece on the sidewalk, have a picnic lunch at the park, go to the beach for a few hours, take a hike, ride bikes — the more you make it fun the more they are willing to let you work. 
• Empower them into the process.  Find things that they can help you with for your business! From adding postage on mailings, to helping balance the checkbook, answering the phone, helping me think of things to tweet about, to being involved in video blogging, add them to the team! My kids know my email backlog and will often ask me how many I am behind and they motivate me to get caught up and celebrate when I can get catch up! They will challenge me to get say 20 more done and then we can play!
• Work around their schedule so they still have summer fun activities:  take them to swimming lessons and bring the blackberry; have a picnic in the park for lunch and if you end up spending more hours playing, make up the hours before they get up or later after they are in bed.
• Find backup: a college student or high school student to help during days when you simply can’t be interrupted during conference or client calls and media requests.  Find sitters that your really kids want to “play with” who are home with you while you are working in another room. 
• Set the boundaries with your kids and explain they get to be at home with you, rather than at a daycare all day, but this is a privilege that can not be abused or off to daycare they go.  If you have older kids who have never experienced a daycare, see if you can do drop off service for a few hours and then ask them to make the choice:  home or daycare.  They might like the activities of playing with a room full of other kids and if that is the case, try to build in this drop off service as a once a week treat, depending on your budget or they might love being at home and help to work hard with you to make this work.
• Have a safe area where you can see kids playing outside.  They sit outside my work window and have tea parties on the covered porch and make that into their playhouse while I working inside or they drive up and down the driveway, outside my window on their bikes or dribble the basketball up and down the driveway or play catch where I can see them!  If they are playing in the backyard, away from my window, I grab some work and take the phone in the room that I can see in the back yard.  While they are in the house, I fold laundry in the same room that they are in and make it into a family activity!
• If I am on the phone and snap my fingers they know they are being too loud and I explain to my clients that I work from home around the kid schedule.  I can make their lunch while I am on the phone and multitask with only my kids knowing that we are all in the same room.  I have done conferences from the car, using my speaker phone and letting them listen to the conversation from the backseat, playing their hand held video games with the mute on their sound and they like to hear what is going on in the business.  They often get to listen to my phone messages to give them a taste of what running our family business is all about! I ask their opinion and make them feel a valued team player because they are — they are made up if the demographic I am trying to reach.
• Network with other work-at-home moms and do day swaps — I will have all the kids on this day if you can take them on that day — no money changes hands and it is a win/win for you all.  Many times the other kids occupy your kids and you can actually get a bit of work in between the fun!

Smiles – Stacey

Stacey Kannenberg
“Ready To Learn Mom”

I received an email from a customer, politely wondering about the status of her Kindergarten book order and immediately emailed her and called her to tell her that we would priority ship another Kindergarten book and include the First Grade book at no additional charge and that if the book showed up, to pass it along to a friend. 

In the conversation she mentioned her business and before you know it we shared information, leads and became instant friends!  Three weeks later, when ABC Nightly News was interviewing her for her big break, she gave the producer that extra Kindergarten book that had finally showed up.

Smiles – Stacey

Stacey Kannenberg
“Ready To Learn Mom”

Whether you’re looking to contribute to your family’s finances or earn some cash to cover special or unexpected expenses, many people want more ways to make money at home.

From freelance to full-time gigs, we have a range of fields and resources below to help guide you in discovering the options that exist. Only you can decide if an opportunity is right for you.

During a Take Control Tour last year, Tory Johnson helped Skye Starner, a Colorado mother of three, find a job she could do from home.Don’t limit yourself solely to responding to advertised openings. Sometimes the best way to land a home-based job is by calling someone you’d like to work for and offering your services.

Click Here to read more…