Ready to Learn Mom

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.

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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.

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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

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• 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”

By Sandra Martini

Remember the commercial of the woman in a business suit top, pajama bottoms and bunny slippers while on a conference call? Way back when, I used to think that symbolized home office life. Ahhh, the joy of it. 

Remember the commercial of the woman in a business suit top, pajama bottoms and bunny slippers while on a conference call? Way back when, I used to think that symbolized home office life. Ahhh, the joy of it.
 
Once I started running my business from home, however, reality set in very quickly!

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You know you picked the wrong business partner when…

• They don’t believe in the power of the internet!
• They wanted to stop our website, after we had invested $10,000 to get it to be a self-sufficient, traffic producing and income generating site!
• Didn’t want to overnight product samples to the Boston Globe, per their request to be reviewed and place in the Sunday Book Review Section.  The cost of overnight samples:  $13.  The Value of the placement:  Priceless!

Need I say more?

Smiles – Stacey

Stacey Kannenberg
“Ready To Learn Mom

I am a Home Based Working Mom as well as an author, publisher, consultant, speaker, motivator, keynote, spokesperson and Mom CEO.  My publishing “house”, Cedar Valley Publishing, has sold over 60,000 books and was just voted as a top 50 Children’s Publisher!  And I mean “house” literally!

Here are my tips on how to work at home with kids and balance it all:

• 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!
• Take time to practice balancing!  A tight rope walker doesn’t just wake-up and walk around a rope, 500 feet up in the air without first practicing!

Smiles – Stacey

Stacey Kannenberg
“Get Ready To Learn Mom

I am the queen of using all the free marketing techniques available.  These tips helped build my own company with a phone, computer and shoestring budget to a national platform; selling over 60,000 self-published books, being reviewed by over 700 mom bloggers and profiles on over 40 + social networking sites to become a top 50 Children’s Publisher for 2009. 

My top 7 marketing techniques:

1. Take “Google Alerts” out for your name and company and also on “keywords” that target your marketing niche.  I have Google Alerts on “kindergarten” and “Let’s Get Ready for School”.  Everyday Google sends me a list of free leads that tag all the stories and blogs that include my key word(s). 
2. Post genuine comments on those blogs contributing to the conversation, not “buy me, buy me, buy me.”  Such as, “I see you are worried about your son going to Kindergarten; I would love to send him a set of my books to enjoy!”  It works, and those 700+ mom blog reviews are priceless!  Yes, giving away products will come back to you!!! I want those bloggers to have my books to see and touch and share with someone else!  Those blogs are amazing, many with pictures of their kids with my books and actually quotes from the kids playing with them!  They will live forever on-line and increase, as I like to call it, your “Google Footprint” or the number of records on the search engines.  This is free and natural SEO.
3. Elevate your platform by networking with movers and shakers in your industry.  If you want to be an author, start reviewing your favorite author’s books on Amazon.   Put yourself in a position to network with and meet other authors!   I reviewed Jim Stovall’s Ultimate Gift and a few years later he emailed me asking if I would like an advanced copy of Keeper of the Flame.  A few weeks ago he sent me a nice note with The King’s Legacy.  PRICELESS connection that elevates my platform too!
4. Belong to all the free sites for media leads:  www.helpareporter.com; pitchrate.com; and reporterssource.com, to name a few.  I have been interviewed on hundreds of radio shows, over 30 parenting magazines, over 30 television segments and 15 newspapers!  Can you say free credibility?
5. Develop a platform to be bigger than you – for me it’s about educating preschoolers at the core to empower parents, kids and teachers to all be involved.  If you teach a child to wear their seatbelt they will re-teach and train everyone to wear it, too.  If you teach a child what they need to know for preschool, they will empower their parents to be involved in the process every step of the way!  “Mom, let’s practice shapes and colors because I need to know them for Kindergarten!”  I am creating a brand that will live long after me!!  When parents, kids and teachers think Kindergarten they are starting to think of my books!  So my goal is to be the Good Night Moon of Kindergarten!
6. Become the expert and pitch your local media to develop long-term relationships and start your media platform.  The local media can help you grow to the national media.  Many of my favorite local media stars are now some of my biggest fans!!  I would never have gotten this far without all their support!
7. Create social networking profiles on all the sites that match your target market as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  I am on over 40+ sites.  Even the sites that I am not active in get traffic.  I have one that has over 24,000 page views, another over 5,000, 6,000, 150 — now times that by 40 and that’s free exposure for YOU!  The more people than know your name, the bigger you will be!

Hope that helps!

Smiles – Stacey

Stacey Kannenberg
“Ready To Learn Mom”