Women in Business! Work from home basics

How many times have you wondered ‘How I wish I did not have to spend 2 hours traveling to and from work place!’ or ‘… I am getting drenched here waiting for the buss trip back home… I could have easily have sent all those critical emails from the comfort of my home instead’. Today more and more people are actually giving up full time at office working to a more radical but practical way of working – Telecommuting or even working from home.

Working from home or places other than office (say a coffee shop!) offer flexibility in terms of schedules, attire, comfortable environment and ease of multitasking (eg - finishing off the chores in the leaner part of the day). And it is not surprising to note that more women than men are opting for this method of working primarily because of the humongous multi-tasking that they have to do day in and day out – packing lunch boxes, dressing children, seeing them off at school / bus stop, cleaning the house and dishes, attend office, pay utility bills, pick up children from school or the bus stop, get them to do their homework, orchestrate they gym, drawing and tennis classes, preparing dinner, cleaning up, planning the next day and then falling asleep making a mental list of jobs that were not done today but have to be tackled tomorrow. Too many things to squeeze into the 24 hour day!

Working women who are also home makers can spend the time that they use for commuting for attending to some jobs that clutter up their lives. Working from home is therefore a great option to earn while taking care of all other responsibilities. But there are a few general preparations and attitudinal changes that will have to happen before the plunge is taken. Here are a few:

What to do: Do you have a skill or hobby that you plan to market – baking cakes, making pickles, making handicraft items, designing websites, content writing!! Or you have a special experience in consulting areas of say model coordination, event management, medical transcription etc. Decide what you want to do, how feasible it is as a money generator and is it something that you would like to do for long – before you give your full time occupation a toss.

Place of working: If you are not working out of office, where are you planning to work from – home, coffee shop, cyber café, your garage? Where ever this place is, make sure that it offers you the peace or calmness that you require to produce quality work. You wouldn’t want your kids screaming in the background when you are trying to close a deal with a future client!

Infrastructure: A lot of home based jobs today do not require much – a computer with a printer, internet connection and a dedicated phone preferably with a fax connection. And, for specialized home business like baking cakes your infrastructure would be different. Have the basics in order first. You could continue adding to the infrastructure as and when your business grows.

Organise: The most important step is to organize your day. Compartmentalize your day – allocate the hours that you will work and the hours that you will address household and other chores and most importantly STICK to it. The worst thing that you can do is mixing the two and landing in the same mess that you were in earlier… not having enough time for any thing.

Network: When you start something on your own, it is critical for you to advertise the same. Start with the friends, colleagues and ex-colleagues, clients and ex-clients. Go on to reaching out to friends of friends and others in their network. Make use of the social media to promote your home based work or business! Get referrals and endorsement wherever possible. Update all in the chain when you do something new. And last but not the least, stay connected – aspire to be on the top of minds of the people who could one day be potential clients or users of your service.

This list is definitely not a comprehensive one but one that has helped some of my friends to set up and run some very successful home based businesses giving them a lot of freedom while keeping the cash ringing!!