how to work from home
successful home working
New Year’s business resolutions – how to stay on track to achieving them
212 days ago
by Judy
in Home business
Today’s guest post is a welcome reminder from Claire Habel of Inspiring Futures in the dull days of January:
Have you started 2012 with vigour or are you still trying to pick up the pace? A few weeks in, now is a good time to do a bit of a sense-check on how those ideas and plans are panning out.
No doubt as January approached you spent a bit of time thinking about your vision, goals and resolutions for your business. The key as we all know is then being able to turn that thinking into results through planning and action, which is where things can start to get tricky.
Unexpected e-mails drop in, tasks over-run and before you know it, you hear yourself saying how busy you are. So, although you may still be steering your ship, it may not be heading in quite the right direction at the speed you had imagined.
So, here are some helpful tips to help you stay focused and on-track:
- Nobody wants to become a ‘busy fool’ but it’s amazing how easily it happens. The key to avoiding it is to avoid fooling yourself about what you’re busying yourself with. Plans and action are vital to achieving results but only if formed and focused properly…
- Before you dive into writing long lists of things to do, start with the end in mind i.e. your goal/objective and ‘plan back’ from there. Then move onto writing your to-do lists, ensuring you focus on the most important and urgent things first.
- Action takes you towards results but is not an end in itself. Ask yourself whether you are more focused on actions or outcomes.
- To keep focused, ask yourself each day: “Am I concentrating on the most important and urgent things first?” Take a moment each week to consider: “What one thing could I do this week that would have most impact on moving me closer to my goal”.
- If you need to revive and refocus, get back in touch with your ‘personal business drivers’ by reminding yourself what all of this is for. Keep that front of mind and ensure all plans start from that point. You’ll find yourself far more motivated if you do!
Profile: Claire Habel is the founder of Inspiring Futures through which she helps her clients develop personal business plans and winning marketing strategies for their businesses.
Entrepreneur or home business owner?
23 days ago
by Judy
in Home business
Sometimes an idea will knock around inside my head for a while until I realise it would make a good subject for a blog post. Today it’s been drawn out by a conversation with my marketing consultant, Claire Habel. We were talking about being an entrepreneur and my immediate reaction was that I’m not!
My definition of an entrepreneur is someone who has doing deals and making money in their blood, who was the kind of kid who was selling sweets to the other kids in primary school. I was perfectly happy with my pocket money. Making any more never occurred to me and anyway it would have meant putting down the books I permanently had my nose in.
My profile in the Wealth Dynamics system, an ‘entrepreneur profiling test’, is Mechanic, someone who excels in putting systems and processes into place and making sure they work efficiently. After initially sulking for turning out to be the most boring out of the eight profiles (knowing that Mark Zuckerberg is a Mechanic makes it no more attractive), the penny dropped that this was why I ran a very profitable cleaning business for 12 years and sold it as a going concern.
I introduced systems for everything, from recruiting staff to checking the loo cleaner and changing dirty dusters, and it allowed me to make exceptional profits. But I think that makes me a good business owner, not an entrepreneur. The definition in my Penguin English Dictionary is ‘somebody who organises, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise’.
Very definitely yes to the first two, but I’m far too cautious for the third. What do you think? Are you an entrepreneur? Do you even like the word or do you think programmes like Dragons Den have given it a bad name?
Home workers celebrate Jellyweek
21
Further to my post about the necessity for home workers to keep connected in order to stay positive, I should mention that this week is Worldwide Jellyweek, in which this unique business event is being celebrated all over the globe.
Fortuitously, yesterday just happened to be the day on which Frome Jelly falls, and here is an artist’s impression of a couple of the attendees in a (rare?) moment of concentration between laughter and cake eating. The artist is Sarah Godsill, who is usually to be found capturing much grander events like weddings.
Jelly brings together random groups of people from many industries and professions. As well as Sarah, yesterday’s Frome Jelly at The Old Church School consisted of a trainer and coach, two IT specialists, a legal consultant, a PR expert, and an international development and human rights professional. Wow! I highly recommend Jelly as a unique way of:
- getting out of the house
- meeting new people you’d otherwise never run into
- picking up bits of advice, particularly on those aggravating IT glitches that can hold you up
- helping out other people and realising that they respect and value the experience and knowledge you possess, which you probably normally dismiss as obvious and commonplace
- clearing up some boring old jobs that have been pushed down the to do list for weeks
- catching up on local gossip
- having a good laugh
- gaining a whole new perspective on your life and work
- eating cake (often homemade, yum)
All this with no requirement to stand up and talk about your business or listen to other people boring on about theirs. I’m pleased to see there’s lots of buzz on Twitter about new groups starting up in places all over the UK. To find out more and for help in setting up your own Jelly, check out my Jelly guide.
I know lots of readers are already committed Jelly-goers. Have I missed out any other Jelly benefits?
Why is an inferiority complex so often a home worker’s default setting?
231 week ago
by Judy
in Beating isolation
I’ve spoken to many home workers and freelancers over the last few years and one of the common themes that comes up time and time again is the speed at which the human brain spirals down into self-doubt and lack of confidence when left too long to its own devices. And solitary time is usually a big chunk of a home worker’s week, even if they are careful to plan for meetings and coworking.
‘Too long’ can mean a few hours of struggling with a piece of work, an hour of guilty procrastination, or a minute or two spent reading about other people’s achievements. From the dining table room table or spare bedroom it can quickly start to appear that other people ‘out there’ are cleverer, better connected, lavishly funded and possessed of a dauntingly impressive client list.
Our own horizons and ambitions shrink proportionately – how can we, with our family commitments and our small local clients, possibly compete? By squeezing that time alone to the absolute minimum, I’d say from my own experience.
This time last year I was co-organising The BIG Jelly with Jan Minihane and Fay Easton. It took far more time and energy than any of us anticipated and we experienced setbacks throughout the six months of planning, in fact right up to the day itself. There were many occasions when I wanted to cancel, but regular contact with Jan and Fay kept my spirits up and fortunately there was never a time when all three of us were down at the same time! The event was a huge success and I think all of us were thrilled and amazed by what we’d managed to achieve.
So I believe the best way to achieve your potential when you work from home is to stay connected, whether it’s through coworking, Jelly, networking or forming partnerships with other small businesses. Yes, it means drawing on skills we don’t have to use if we pursue the solitary life, but it also means the opportunity to learn both from other people and what we’re really capable of.
PS As usual this post is written because I need to hear it 
Home working neighbours
4
We moved to the mill nine months ago and part of the pleasure of living here is the wildlife we spot from our windows – no need even to put on a coat and go outside!
There are no sheep at the moment, they were moved after the ram had done his business, so we’re looking forward to their return with lambs in a couple of months. The chickens are the sole occupants of the field and very straggly some of them are. I keep meaning to find out if they are battery farm retirees. If so it must be a mind-blowing experience to come from a cooped -up existence to all this green freedom.
I have see the occasional fly and ladybird in the house throughout the winter and today there are midges dancing in the sunshine over the mill race. Long may this mild weather last.
A has seen a kingfisher flash past, and enjoys the dippers as they chomp up insects in the wall along the river, but the king of the mill is the heron, pictured here from our kitchen window waiting patiently for fish. It’s used to us now and doesn’t fly away immediately when we leave the house, pausing for a while before flapping languidly away upriver to settle on a treetop and wait for us to leave it in peace. I say king, and we always refer to it as a he for some reason, but it could equally well be a sheron, couldn’t it?
