Cecilia Frederick is a mother of two children, ages 13 and 10. She runs a work at home mom advertising and resource site, Wahmteam.com, and publishes Team Ezine weekly from her home office in Baltimore, Maryland.
In January of 2004, at the age of 40, I decided to start a home business. I only wish I had thought of this sooner. I truly have a desire to work from home and my “why” are my two sons, Andrew and Tom. Let me tell you a little about my situation as all of us working moms have different situations and lives. I have been a single mom for the last 8 ½ years. I am raising my two sons and working a full time job as a Biochemist. In 2004, I had a desire to try something else- something new. I became an Avon Representative and have never looked back. I love what I do with Avon. In January of 2005, I bought WahmTeam.com from a woman that I had known through the “Work at home mom circles” on the web. WahmTeam.com has become my passion. As a mother and a woman in business myself, I have a deep desire to help other women in business. WahmTeam.com is an advertising and resource site for home businesses. I also publish a weekly ezine, Team ezine. Every Thursday Team ezine is delivered to about a 1,000 home business owners and it is full of all original business building articles and ideas.
I want to discuss Time Management in regards to home businesses. The number one key is organization. I cannot stress this enough. Find a system that works for you. Everyone is different. I am a list maker. I would be lost with out my lists, but they keep me organized. When you are organized you are so much more productive and use your time wisely. My second organizational tool is a calendar. I have at least four of them! One at my desk at home, one in my purse, one at my desk at work, and one in the kitchen for everything that has to do with the kid’s schedules. Tool number three would be to make office hours at home and stick to them. Your office hours can be when the kids are in school, say from 9-3pm, or in my case from 7-10pm at night, but only after the kids have had dinner and homework is finished. I do want to make one thing clear, my children, of course, do come first. I also work my businesses on the weekends around my children’s schedules. I will say that I have it easier now that they are older and more on their own. Set Goals. This may seem hard to some, but ideally if you sit down Monday morning for ½ hour and decide what you need to accomplish for the week, I believe this will help keep you focused and on track. It is a good idea to write out those goals on a piece of paper and then every morning cross off the ones that have been completed from your list. Crossing off items that have been completed gives me an enormous sense of accomplishment.
I think one of the major distractions to working at home is also one of the main ingredients to working at home. Let me explain. As a work at home mom, most of us are members of various networking groups. This is very important and can be very effective and you need to do this. The problems come when the groups become all chit chat and no work. So, just be careful of this. This is a major time management no-no. When you find yourself wondering where the day went, maybe it is time to work more and email less. As much as we need our computer to work from home, it can also be the biggest distraction. Discipline is the keyword here.
Now that I have been working from home for almost 2 years, I could not imagine ever not doing this. I love this time in my life. I love being my own boss, making my own business decisions, setting my own hours and getting paid from my business success. Three years ago I had only dreamed of this, now it is my reality, and I thank God that I am able to do this. I look to the future with joy and anticipation of what is to come.
http://www.wahmteam.com
