successful home working
Posts tagged stories
Entrepreneur or home business owner?
21 week 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 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?
A bad day in the home office
71 month ago
Today has been a bad day, ‘one of those days’, when it seems everything you try to do goes bad and you achieve nothing. When you work with other people you can have a good moan and get some help. When you work at home you can’t get away from the frustration and anxiety about not being productive.
But I think there comes a point where the best possible response is to literally get away. For me it comes when my head is stuffed full of all the things I have to do, many of which I can’t progress with (usually due to misbehaving technology) and the thought of doing any of them feels utterly beyond me.
Today I initially got out of the office and did the pile of ironing that’s been waiting for days. I know lots of people hate ironing, but I find it soothing and it cleared my head enough to be able to go back to my desk and get a few small things done.
Then I decided to use the remaining daylight to go into town with A, who had a meeting, and potter about on my own, breathing some fresh air and with luck getting some perspective back. I spent half a hour in the library reading The Times, the only paper you can’t browse online, and then I succumbed to a cappucino chocolate cake that was beckoning to me from the shelf in M&S with its seductive yellow label whispering ‘Reduced £1.’ Very bad I know, but sometimes a home worker’s gotta do what a home worker’s gotta do.
I’ve decided to have an almost work-free evening despite my long to do list. Wish me luck for tomorrow.
PS I pinned this on my Pinterest board a while ago. I really needed it today!
Home working good days, home working bad days
53 months ago
Are you having a good day? Yesterday I had half and half. The first job on my list, to transfer some money online, should have taken seconds but the pages wouldn’t load. After several attempts I didn’t know whether the transaction had taken place at all or if I’d done it multiple times, which would have had a catastrophic effect on my balance. (Do banks have systems in place to stop this? I’d rather not have to find out).
So I called the technical helpline and after a short wait I at least knew the transaction hadn’t happened, but not why or how to improve the situation. After repeated failed attempts resulting in a blank screen, tech hero A decided it was time to check out our broadband, having experienced several similar problems recently.
Which involved a lengthy wait for a web chat with a BT adviser. Ever tried this web chat lark? You think you’re typing perfectly clear questions, but the answers that come back seem designed to ever so slightly evade the issue until you are longing to type in JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION OK! After unhooking everything and doing some diagnostics, the answer was that in fact our broadband is better than even BT claim. Ah. Better keep quiet about that.
While poor A was tied up with this life-draining stuff I decided to tackle the piles of papers lurking on and around my desk. I cleaned the desk, keyboard and monitor, and do you know, I suddenly felt purposeful again and ready to finish my long-neglected accounts. And then, just before we went out for our daily fresh air, I had one last try at the money thing…and it worked!
So in the end, although my first job wasn’t finished till gone 3 pm and my iDoneThis entry for the day was a trifle thin, I’d made some significant progress. What have your best and worst home working days been like?
Work from Home Wisdom Facebook page
17 months ago
So now you know I’m no expert on social media but one thing I am trying to do with the Work from Home Wisdom Facebook page is to create a useful resource for home workers. As with everything I do with social media, it’s not my own idea. I’ve copied it from The BIG Jelly Facebook page I created with Jan Minihane in the build-up to the event in March. Jan, who is a social media expert, suggested I post links to articles and sites related to Jelly, coworking and small business. When The BIG Jelly was over, it finally dawned on me that this would be a good idea for my own page, where I was already posting new blogs and occasional comments.
It’s a good place to post bits and pieces more or less related to home working that I stumble upon and enjoy, but don’t have the time or inspiration to turn into blog posts. Now I have somewhere to share them with other home workers that’s more permanent than a quick tweet. Sometimes they make it onto the website as well, like Yuvi Zalkow’s funny video about the sleek, minimalist desks he admires online, and his own, erm, slightly less sleek and minimalist table. I was worried I might be overdoing the photos of gorgeous workspaces, so it struck a chord.
Do let me know if there’s a subject you’d like me to cover more (or less) often, and I’ll see what I can find to oblige. I have some favourite sites that are mines of slightly offbeat posts, and return to them again and again. And please let me know your own favourite destinations, whether they are information sites, blogs, collections of photos, whatever, as I’m always looking for new resources to plunder!
(Facebook icon by YOOtheme, http://www.yootheme.com/icons)
Home working in Greece
439 months ago
Today’s guest post is by Kalliopi and Diona, an electrical and computer engineer and freelance translator, two work-at-home Greek mothers who got to know each other online. Finding out that they were both working from home, they decided to join forces and create a blog, Mammas Work At Home, sharing Greek content for work-at-home mums. Here they explain how working from home is slowly becoming a more popular choice in Greece in response to economic and social changes:
‘Traditional choices for young families in Greece, especially during the baby’s first couple of years, have been to entrust the baby with the grandparents or hire a full-time nanny so that the mother will return to work. During the past few years these choices have been changing due to a number of reasons.
‘Grandparents are still working; families move mainly to bigger towns and hiring a nanny may not be the most affordable option. The country has been going some very important financial changes which affect not only the state affairs but households and individuals too. Long hours keep parents away from their home and family beyond the 9-5 schedule. Mothers do not always fit the ideal corporate profile and may not be the preferable candidate choice.
‘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. Working from home seems to be gaining in popularity taking small but steady steps. 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.
‘Especially since the country has been facing the reality of a new economy, our blog has been receiving an increasing number of emails from mothers who wish to know more about the options they have to work from home. It is indeed very moving to see how mums communicate their concerns about work as well as personal and family matters. And it is really inspiring to see how women seek career solutions beyond the traditional work opportunities set out for them overcoming the somehow old-fashioned view that working from home might be regarded as less professional.’
The UK is also facing big changes – how do you see home and work life changing in the future?
