wanna-be entrepreneurial mothers – juggle don’t struggle…

"umbrella" companies can help...

Easier said than done, right?

As you know, we often have a lot to deal with in our daily lives and quite often, all at the same time. Many find it hard to balance business with the demands of raising a family. The good news is that striking a balance between the two is not as hard to do as you may think.

In recent times, many entrepreneurial mothers have opted for freelancing and consulting over salaried employment, as did I when I started. Some of you may have decided to quit employment in favour of starting your own businesses while others may have lost the jobs they had. Being a Consultant and Freelancing offers the flexibility of pursuing business aspirations and/or careers while still fulfilling family responsibilities.

By the same token, thanks to setting up your consultancy by freelancing, wanna-be entrepreneurial mothers no longer have to end businesses or careers once they decide to start a family.

Although starting a personal business is thoroughly satisfying, it comes with a fair share of challenges. Savvy entrepreneurial mothers learn how to meet these challenges while expanding their businesses and raising a healthy family.

Simple, general business tips for working mothers:

  • Effective time management.

Mothers who run their own businesses while bringing up children need to develop effective time management skills. This calls for prioritisation of tasks and drawing up a time-schedule to ensure all important or urgent functions are dealt with first. It is also important to learn how to juggle or outsource various roles to make sure everything is done on time. The one key requirement with this is discipline!

  • Creating boundaries

Another vital skill for working mothers is learning how to set well defined boundaries between their businesses and their home lives. The boundary can be as simple as designating a separate room in the house as the office. Boundaries help to ensure that business duties do not spill over or interfere with running the home and vice versa. They also help the mother to make the mental switch from homemaker to businesswoman.

  • Outsourcing unnecessary tasks

An entrepreneurial mother who wishes to make the most of her business should outsource some of the business functions to external third parties. This would assist in freeing up valuable time and resources to concentrate on business growth and expansion. Outsourcing also allows a businesswoman to complete tasks in a short period, leaving more time for her important business tasks and her family.

  • Working with umbrella companies

Working mothers who do hire subcontractors might find it time-consuming to deal with payroll issues. This can also be the case when being subcontractors, i.e. when freelancing themselves. This is where an umbrella company comes in handy. These companies act as intermediaries between the hiring organisations and subcontractors. They effectively take over administrative and payroll duties, reducing the strain on entrepreneurs.

Additionally, they make all the necessary tax and insurance deductions from the subcontractors’ salaries, saving business owners the hassle of calculating those for themselves.

  • Managing finances

Finally, mothers who run businesses need to know how to manage their finances, both for their business’s and their family’s sake. Other than hiring accountants or financial officers to handle the accounts, a business owner should take the initiative of learning how to embrace cost-effective methods and streamline business expenditure.

Sometimes the umbrella companies will offer to do this for them. Alternatively, there are a number of Online options which may suit.

Entrepreneurial mothers also ought to seek out how to take advantage of any available tax breaks, reliefs or credits they are entitled to receive.

Having just spent the Christmas break reworking the entrepreneurial mothers® Online Mothers Group, it reminded me of just how important getting these tips right, as they are for you. If you’re interested in finding out more about the Online Mothers Group, drop me a line at info@theentrepreneurialmother.com

you have to do the HARD things…

sometimes...

 

Shared a great post on social media during the week and thought it important to share with the entrepreneurial mothers community as well… so here it is:

YOU HAVE TO DO THE HARD THINGS…
and there’s a list of them!

I’m pretty confident in saying that I have agonised over a number of these, if not all, through my working life and I suspect you have to.

Regardless, find a way and do what you need to do…

The things that no one else is doing. The things that scare you. The things that make you wonder how much longer you can hold on.

Those are the things that define you. Those are the things that make the difference between living a life of mediocrity or outrageous success.

The hard things are the easiest things to avoid.  To excuse away. To pretend like they don’t apply to you.

The simple truth about how ordinary people accomplish outrageous feats of success is that they do the hard things that smarter, wealthier, more qualified people don’t have the courage — or desperation — to do.

Do the hard things. You might be surprised at how amazing you really are.

The HUMAN Brand: How We Relate to People, Products and Companies…

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“Social psychologists have determined that primitive humans, in their struggle for existence, developed the ability to judge other people almost instantly along two categories of perception, which are known as warmth and competence. In fact, all humans have a primal, unconscious ability to make these two crucial judgments with a high degree of speed and accuracy: What are the intentions of this person toward me? And how capable are they of carrying out those intentions? […]

We apply these warmth and competence judgments in all our relationships, including those involving commercial transactions. Companies and brands have the same capacity to stir up these hard-wired primal passions as people do, and we engage with them on the same basis. We experience feelings of affection and admiration for companies and brands that treat us well, and we feel insult or even rage when we believe that one of those companies has given us poor service or cheated us. […]

Unfortunately, our studies show that most companies and brands fall well short of customer expectations on both warmth and competence. They are seen as selfish, greedy, and concerned only with their own immediate gain. The constant pressure for faster and larger profits raises the question of whether most of them can ever meet the standards for trust that we all unconsciously expect from everyone we interact with.”

By Chris Malone for ChangeThis.com

make the most of 2014, start at the end and answer what you did…

“To make the most of 2014, start at the end, and answer “what would you like to say you did this year?

What would you like to say you’ve done in your personal life by the end of next year? Knowing that you want to say this is the year you joined a choir, visited Dublin, or started volunteering with the Boys & Girls Club vastly increases the chances that those things actually happen.”

Great ideas from Linda Vanderkam. Find more here

Top of the Festive Season to You and Yours

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May your stocking be filled with all your little heart desires.
Ho ho ho!

ps: 2014 is shaping up to be a ripper… look forward to sharing it with you

Want to be part of a Revolution in 2014?


The very smart and learned colleague, Samantha Jewel www.samjewel.com and www.sickclimate.com, is looking for a trusted PA to make sense of her ever-expanding world-changing life!

Is this for you?

She is looking for someone to come and work at her house, based in Hawthorn, from February 2014 onwards doing:

  • everything Mac
  • administrivia
  • filing
  • Adobe software
  • social media,
  • blogging,
  • article writing,
  • internet research
  • applications
  • speaker profiles
  • and other activities as requested

Times flexible, salary negotiable.

Ideally you will find the challenge of working with this random, crazy mind of an artist and climate change activist the best thing you can be doing for yourself and the planet right now…

Interested? contact Sam at sam@sickclimate.com

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