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I too have three small children and work from home. (Major applause for the ladies who take on home-schooling as well! I`m impressed!!!)
Shortly after my first child was born, I invented a baby product and naively thought that starting a home-based business to manufacture and sell my product would be a great way to run a family and run a business. But I quickly discovered that trying to do both left me feeling like I wasn`t doing either very well at all. Discouraged and feeling like a failure, I realized that in order to be a successful mom and an entreprenuer, I had to change my approach, my expectations, and my perspective.
APPROACH: The first thing I did was change the business. I licensed the product I had invented and turned the manufacturing, inventory, sales, and so forth over to the licensing company who would pay me a royalty for every product sold. I would not make as much money on an individual sale, but the volume is higher and the work is significantly less. I decided to scrap the idea of having an official "business" that required me to have large pockets of time, proactively go after new business, market, sell, and be available to people at all hours. Instead, I became a freelance entrepreneur - working for only a few people at a time on projects I could manage. I did some freelance product development (inventing), freelance writing, and freelance IT work. I even sketched and designed teddy bears for a year or so. Finding clients didn`t come all at once, it took years of experimenting and trying new skills in various ways.
EXPECTATIONS: I came to the realization that starting a business is contrary to the whole reason I had quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom in the first place. In order to do both effectively, I needed to hire help with the kids. I am not judging people who do that, but it wasn`t what I wanted for me and my family. My kids are very little and it won`t always be this difficult to do both. But while they are young and need me incessantly, I need to stay focused on my original goal and trust that what little work I am able to do is part of a bigger objective. I truly believe that when the kids are older and no longer underfoot, I will primed to truly flourish as an entrepreneur. Until then, I patiently do what I can, when I can.
PERSPECTIVE: For years, I felt like I had failed as an entrepreneur. I hadn`t been able to sustain that first business, spent thousands in inventory that I never recovered, paid too much for a web site, and so forth. I knew my reasons for taking a different approach were justified and important to me, but still I wondered if I could have done things differently. Then I gained perspective. In his book, The Million Dollar Idea in Everyone, Mike Collins explains that everything you do should be considered an experiment. You can`t possibly know what it is like to be an entrerpreneur until you are one. You won`t know if you like working from home, or making sales calls, or whatever it is you try, until you try it. And if you take that approach, then the business misfires aren`t mistakes or failures, but lessons learned. When I looked back over my history, I realized that I had learned a great deal and had used many of those skills from the first days of starting my own business to help others, to grow in my own ways, and to excel in subsequent roles.
So to all of you who are trying to do it all and wearing yourself out in the process, I would encourage you to think about what it is you are trying to do. See if you can change the nature of the business in some way so that it is more family-friendly. And if you can`t, learn to be patient. The kids will be gone soon and we will be begging for noise in the background of a conference call, for boogars on our one good business suit, and for someone to interrupt our train of thought to give us a sloppy kiss. And if you do feel like a failure as I did, remember that it is just an experiment and you are going through it so you can learn.
Good luck!
