Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Did I ever tell you about my brother John? He’s a piano player in Chicago and has an amazing repertoire of thousands of songs. When my daughter Tessa was born, I found this song in my mailbox (before the days of mp3s!)

Now I’m trying to convince him to expand his horizons and offer his creative services to podcasters and website owners. What do you think?

First Time Home, copyright John Zamojcin (all rights reserved)

One Christmas a cousin bought us a retro “Smokin’ Baby” and it was the hit of the day. This little guy really does smoke! My daughter and husband were on a field trip, and came home all excited because they met the “real smoking baby!”

Actually, there is an art museum in Massachussetts that has some really cool and HUGE pieces of sculpture. It’s called the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park. It’s worth a look.

This shot one of my all-time favorite pictures of my daughter with a kitty we found in our yard. The poor thing and her brother were abandoned and near starvation when we found them. My girls are crazy over kitties - who couldn’t fall in love with this one? I found them a very good home - much to the dismay of my girls. Not to worry - another showed up a few weeks later and we kept him!

Hustle - work - downtime is the phrase my husband coined for the cycle of work in his freelance photography business. He needs to pick up the phone and start hustling to find new work. Then he produces - shoots, processes, prepares files, delivers, cleans up the studio, and bills. Then comes the wait. Will the phone ring? How long to wait? Pause. Time to pick up the phone and start hustling again.

That’s the first lesson he taught me about freelancing. Once you are in the loop, work can usually be turned over in 30 days. If you’re new or out of touch, it can be 90 days. And don’t forget the 30-60 day window for payment once the bill is sent. You certainly need to learn to manage money because you can go months without a paycheck. Still, the bills need to be paid.

Over the years, I’ve tried to hire people to help me with the unsteady volume of work I pump through my office. As with most freelance jobs, it’s feast or famine around here. When the work is here, I can never find the bottom of my desk. When it’s quiet, it’s almost scary. The problem for me has been keeping a steady flow - I rarely have enough to keep two people busy full-time, yet the work I do have requires someone with Calculus-level math education. You don’t find many people like that looking for occasional work.

Training is a challenge. When the work is here, I’m so busy that training and reviewing someone’s work is nearly impossible. When it’s quiet, training someone with no work on the horizon seems so pointless. Will they remember what I taught them by the time a job comes in? Will they understand the highs and lows of the freelance world? That I need to feed my family first, and hand over work that’s overflow after that?

In an ideal world, I’d be out selling all the time and my happy, brilliant worker bees would be producing steadily. Is that what I want? Is it realistic? Is the grass greener in that world?

Today I have an amazing, energetic wahm heading over for training. She’s bright, energetic, has her own business ventures going…and she knows more math than I do. To top it all off…it’s quiet here and I’m changing things up and seeing if we can get it right this time. Maybe after 14 years, I’ll figure it out.

Happy outsourcing!

Treece

Do you have a podcast? It seems that all of the wahms I chat with lately have podcasts. Honestly, my work is so intense that listening while I work is nearly impossible. I’m on a mission to learn what you are all about and to be more involved in the community. So, if you have a podcast and wanted someone new to listen to, what show would you recommend? Is there one that you are particularly proud of? Is there one that stands out? I don’t care if it’s the most fun, the most informative, or the most revealing about your topic. Where would you have me start?

I got the idea listening to Latara Hamying’s Vegan Family Living show about tofu and realized how many shows are out there and I just don’t know where to begin!

Come on, girls! Give me your links!

Arika Liddiard from TheyCallMeWahmmy recently asked me “What one thing, that you know now, do you wish you had known when you first started working from home that would have made things easier for you?”

I wish I knew how valuable my time really was. When I first started at home, I was terrified to ask about money. I had no idea what to charge and was scared to ask. Of course, the client’s job is to get work done as cheaply as possible. I just didn’t grasp that it was all a game and that my job was to push the envelope and get as much money as I could for my time. I got pushed around a lot and I believed in people. I trusted those that provided me work. In hindsight, I know that my time is worth much, much more than I was charging. I charge significantly more today and am still considered reasonable, but at least I know that I’ve tried!

Making the transition from work-outside-the home to work-at-home is full of challenges. I think moms often have the “I’ll do anything to stay home with my kids” attitude and will work for less than they are worth. Same goes for stay-at-home moms wishing to add income to the household. We all have talents - don’t be afraid to ask for what you are worth. Just because you work at home doesn’t mean you don’t have expenses. Computers, second phone lines, internet access, software, office supplies and equipment, utilities all add up! Don’t forget to include them in your thinking when first starting out.

Alice Seba commented on the “I’m just a wahm” syndrome, (But I’m a…)  talking about how many people use that as an excuse not to spend money on their businesses.  I think in the wahm community there are just as many fearful women, refusing to ask for the money they are worth because of the “I’m just a wahm” attitude.

Treece

I had been a work-at-home-mom long before I ever knew the acronym “wahm” existed. When I saw the term, I was elated! Wow, there are people online out there, willing and wanting to talk about work at home life, just like me! Or so I hoped. What I then realized is that I was actually doing it, while the majority of women I met wanted to do it.
I answered posts requesting help with enthusiasm. I gave suggestions on places and ways to find work and offered advice on working at home with young kids – mine were 21 months and newborn at the time. Soon I realized how much time I was spending on the message boards and how little I was getting out of it. My business wasn’t growing. In fact, I was actually being taken away from work that needed to get done!

Times have changed and I have since met many brilliant, energetic women who love business as much as I do and want to share the work-at-home experience with the rest of the world. You still need to be careful. Many sites that were originally designed to be helpful are full of spammers. The internet is full of friendly people offering advice on how to get started. I got tired quickly of sites where women whine constantly about no sales in one post and on another try to sell you “the best way to stay at home with your kids is to join our team.” When did wahms start preying on other wahms?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure 99% of these people are truly trying to do the best for their families. Starting a business at home is no small feat. Many of us who live in rural or depressed areas of the countries are so lucky to have Internet options available. Still, I got so tired of hearing the term “wahm.” While there are many, many great sites available to wahms, there are ten times as many wannabe sites offering the same information. The same links. The same articles. The same resources. All run by women who truly have not BTDT. Am I anti-wahm as my friends nicknamed me?

Hmmm…maybe. But I also like to think of myself as an “auntie”. Someone who really has something to say and something to offer both wahms and wahm-wannabes. I’ve been in business since 1994, and have always turned a profit, even in my first months. I work full-time, although I flex my hours to catch field trips, volleyball games, and in-school activities with my girls. I know what it’s like to have no business and lie awake all night wondering where my next job is coming from. I know what it’s like to have more business than I can produce myself and worry about letting a big client down. I’ve had two kids with chicken pox, pulled my back out and still had to work 10 hour days. I’ve used daycare, no daycare, swapped childcare, hired help, used freelancers, crashed computers, lost power…heck, I used to send hundreds of graphic files using a 14.4 modem.

So, if you want to work at home – do it! Read everything you can! If it looks too good to be true, it is. Don’t pay for a job opportunity. If you have a job, don’t quit it until you have enough money in the bank to last a few months with no income. Read (and search!) the message boards before asking questions. Ask specific questions. It was hard enough for us to dream up our own businesses – don’t ask us to come up with one for you! Surround yourself with experts and supportive people. Most of all, be realistic. Can you truly afford to be a wahm? Can you afford not to?

Treece