20 Practical Tips for Working Your Business Around Young Children
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by: CathyMahady
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I have been working exclusively from home for five years now. My daughter was six months old when I began my home business and she is now 5 1/2 years old. I have been a full time mom to her (and her older brother) while successfully reaching top leadership positions with my company.
Has it been easy, no. Are there challenges, yes. But is it doable, absolutely. You CAN have success with being both a mother and a professional.
This article will offer practical suggestions of HOW to work a business around young children.
Now these are things that I personally implement. Some tips may not be what a time management expert would suggest — but then I found that advice is not written by real moms with young children who have to improvise and do things a little differently.
For instance, I don’t have set office hours. I am not able to segment my work from taking care of a young child. I need to have a back and forth flow between the two. It is impossible for me to say that I am taking this hour to exclusively work my business– as there will be MANY times I will be called from my work to meet a need of my young daughter. I move from taking care of her, to taking care of the house, to taking care of business, and then circle on back throughout the day.
1. So my first tip is to be flexible with your time — don’t be too strict in compartmentalizing work and home. Your potty training toddler doesn’t care that you set the hour aside for blogging. You need to be able to attend to their needs, then flow back into the task you were working on. Does it take significantly longer to complete work this way, absolutely. But it’s the way it is in my world. There will be times (many in fact) that family moves into business time.
2. Yet on the other hand there will be times that work should not move into family time. Block off times on your day planner that MUST be given priority time for family. Look at the month in advance and then don’t schedule work tasks during that time. For years my son played three competitive sports and I rarely missed a game. Business always shut down when the whistle blew for game time. And I frequently volunteer for my daughter’s preschool field trips. These are times that my children know are reserved just for them.
3. Purchase a cordless phone or a headset phone so that you can move about freely. This is one of my greatest tools. It allows me the freedom to get up from the desk to assist my daughter while not breaking stride. Sometimes she just needs me to open a box for her play things or get something for her that is out of her reach. I can easily walk over to help her while maintaining my conversation. I don’t then have to repeatedly ask my caller, “Can you hold on a second.”
4. Utilize every spare minute. Your time is your most valuable commodity; don’t waste it. Learn what tasks can be performed quickly when you can steal a moment away. In the old days, I use to take a whole afternoon to clean my house. Now I don’t have large blocks of time like that (to do anything) with a young child around. So I work in small segments of time — one 10 minute block allows me to dust the living room or gather and prepare supplies for making information packets later. Then when I get another free ten minutes I assemble the packets for mailing out to potential business partners.
5. Be prepared. Carry things with you, just in case. Most of the time when at the park, I am my daughter’s playmate. But then she may find someone else to play with and suddenly I find I have time to read a few pages of a book or training materials or return a quick call. Or if I find I arrive early for an appointment, I can utilize that time if I have things with me.
6. Listen to audio trainings on an MP3 player during your children’s activities. You are still able to watch what they are doing, as opposed to having your eyes down in a book. And sometimes we don’t have to be real conscious while listening, it is still powerful to have the information going into your subconscious. I save the training that I want to take notes from for when I have to just wait in the lobby for her to finish a class.
7. Make lists of things to do. Prioritize on the importance of the task and then sub prioritize based upon the amount of time you have allotted. When you have a significant block of time, tackle those most important tasks. But if you only have a small segment of time, than choose a task of secondary importance but can be completed in the time you have.
8. Teach your children some simply sign language so that you can quietly communicate with them while on the phone. Even very small children, with limited verbal communications, can learn the sign “wait.”
9. Realize that it’s okay to let your potential business partners ’see’ you being a mom. If I am interrupted, I simply respond with a giggle, “See, I told you I work from home.” This allows the potential partner to see the business fitting into their life as well. It demonstrates that everything does not have to be perfect to have success.
10. Discuss with your children your expectations about their behaviors while you are conducting business. Let them know you are about to make an important phone call or meet with a customer and that you need them to be quiet for a few minutes. You know it is affective when you find your toddler role playing with their own toy phone and commenting, “Shh, I am on the phone, I need quiet.”
11. Then be sure to praise them when they have done a good job and allowed you to make it through the phone call or personal appointment without interruptions. Acknowledge their success. They’ll be more willing the next time to repeat that behavior when they know you will offer your attention and praise when you are done.
12. When you are a full time stay at home mom, realize the QUANTITY of time that your children DO spend with you. It’s okay not to be involved in every activity once other family members come home. Allow the young children to spend time alone with older siblings or your spouse — without feeling guilty. It’s good for them to develop stronger bonds while you use that time to maximize your business efforts.
13. Make office space among family space. My office is not a hidden room off the back of the house. But rather it is adjacent to our family room, where my daughter can play and I can work. But my favorite spot to work is at the kitchen table on my laptop. I choose to work in the midst of our living. This makes my time much more efficient. For example, I can grab five minutes to answer an email while the pot of water boils for dinner. It doesn’t take a fancy office. My team does $180,000 retail a month and I work this business successfully from my kitchen table!
14. Do not attempt to work when your kids are showing you their neediness. The more you attempt to make it happen, the worse the behaviors can become, the more frustrated you become, ultimately escalating you into bad behavior. Often times it just takes putting work aside for 15 minutes to concentrate on them. You know how long children’s attention spans are. Just a few focused minutes on something they want to do is enough for them to give you some quiet time to work once their needs have been met.
15. My daughter seems most ‘occupied’ while I am on the phone if she has a snack. If I can set her up with something healthy prior to getting on the call, then the chances are less that she’ll try to manipulate ice cream out of me when she knows I won’t be having a conversation with her on the topic while I am talking to a potential business partner.
16. Save the times when your children are not around for those important phone calls to leads, when you need to be your most professional. Save phone calls to your sponsor or other team members when your children are around. They are more likely to understand that you are a mom first, who happens to also run a business from home. They are typically in the same situation and don’t mind at all when you have to go take the little one for a potty break.
17. Communicate with your team through newsletters, yahoo groups, forums and chat rooms. These methods allow for you to communicate on your time. So it’s okay to be pulled away by the needs of your children or to answer questions after the family has gone to bed. Quality phone time is the most difficult to achieve, so use it wisely.
18. Set up play dates with other children. With my daughter being an ‘only child,’ I don’t have the luxury of her entertaining herself with a younger sibling. It’s great if she can go visiting a friend cause then I really have uninterrupted time to work. But even having a friend over to our home, gives me time to accomplish quite a bit while they play together. The two of them together require less of my attention than one bored child with nothing to do.
19. Make sure that everyday you get out of the house — to get away from the computer, away from the phone, even if it is only to run errands. We go to the park often and she rightly expects me to give her my undivided attention then. It also lessens my feelings of guilt on really busy business days when I know that the next day I will be able to take her somewhere special and spend quality time with just her.
20. And I have to admit we do use the television (more than I would like) when I need to be present for long periods of time, such as moderating a training call. But at her young age of 4 years old, most everything she watches is educational for her. So I have to not beat myself up for allowing her TV time in order for me to move my business forward.
Well, hopefully that has given you some ideas about how you can work around young children. Don’t ever sacrifice your children, they are only young once. But then don’t use them as an excuse not to run your business either. The things we do to run a home business will also demonstrate valuable skills to our children as they watch Mommy being a successful business owner. It just takes a little planning and ingenuity — but you CAN be a MOM and a BUSINESS OWNER too!
About the Author
Cathy Mahady has been a successful Mentor for more than 18 years. Her passion is to teach others to find the life they desire. Visit her "Coaching the Dream" Blog to get more tips. http://www.candles-delight.com/blog
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