Set Boundaries for your family

One of my favorite parts of working from home is that I don’t have an office outside our house to go to. What is one of the most stressful parts of working from home?  Yep, you guessed it.  I don’t have an office outside our house to go to.

While I usually love showing up to work in my pajamas, taking a nap in the afternoon, and being able to fix myself my favorite mid-morning snack, working from home can be very stressful when my family doesn’t realize that I am not available during normal business hours.  When my family wants me to deliver forgotten items, wait for the cable man, or let the kids play Club Penguin on my laptop, I find it, frankly, a little disrespectful.

I’ve found, though, that with proper training, your family will happily (most of the time) adhere to your work rules, if you follow these suggestions:
Make the rules concrete.

Set specific guidelines. These can be simple to understand guidelines like “You may not come in Mommy’s office when the door is closed” which even the youngest children can understand.  You can set a more specific schedule for older children such as “I am not available between 10-2, Monday through Friday.” The more specific your rules, the more readily everyone will abide by them.
Reward them for compliance.

Bribery works! In extreme cases, I will readily agree to play a despised board game, take the gang for ice cream, or let someone else control the TV remote in exchange for an hour of uninterrupted work time. Don’t be afraid to reward your family for a job well done. If you have a specific project that you need to get done, remind your family of the rules, and let them know that you appreciate their understanding by giving them something to look forward to. Help them be a success, too!
Refuse to break the code.

No means no, not maybe. If you give in to whining or pleading, you’re only training your kids (or spouse) to whine and plead. Not a good thing. Before you give in, ask yourself what you’re training your family to believe about your ability to set limits. Then act accordingly. Teaching children to respect the rules, your rules, is a lesson for life.
Hold up your side of the bargain.

If you tell the kids you’ll be off the computer at 5 PM and spend some time playing Duck Duck Goose, then you’d better be goosing it up at 5:01. Pushing out the timeline or going back on your agreement is no good. This only sets the stage for an argument. The next time you insist on a specific rule regarding your office time, you will have much less leverage as you try to defend your position. Your word is your bond – keep it.
Be available when you’re off the clock.

If you want your family to respect your work time and space, then you need to respect family time. No checking the BlackBerry at the dinner table. No taking business calls in the middle of Junior’s school play. No sneaking off to your computer to send a few emails when the rest of the family is gathered around the TV, watching SpongeBob. When you’re “away” from the office, make sure you’re really away. You set the rules – you need to follow them, too.

Share, Tweet, Re-post….ship this one to the nearest biz mom.

No means No

After being a work-at-home entrepreneur for over 7 years, I can attest that the toughest item on this list for me, personally, is learning to say no to potential clients or customers. When you work for yourself – especially in the early days – you’re not always sure where that next paycheck is coming from. And even when the customer roster is full this month, you can’t be positive the same will be true next month or the month after, so you tend to take on more work than you can comfortably perform. After all, isn’t a few nights of burning the midnight oil well worth the benefit of having a little more padding in the bank account?

The problem is, working too much to stay ahead causes us stress and job burnout – and it also makes spouses and families a tad angry! So we just exchange one stress point (finances) for another (overwork and family pressure). There is a solution, although you’re not going to like it. Set a limit and stick to it.

I know, I know, this is easier said than done. But I can honestly say that I’ve never had a customer or client disappear into thin air when I told him or her they had to wait a few weeks or months to work with me. In fact, it often shows that you’re in demand and that you can pick and choose who you work with, and when. And that’s a valuable trait, particularly when you want to command top rates for your expertise.

Think about the busiest restaurant you know of: the Hard Rock Cafe, the Cheesecake Factory, etc.  The advance reservations notice these establishments require actually increases their mystique and reputation. Making your customers and clients wait can do the same for you!

Decide how many products you’re going to release, how many interviews you’re going to do, how many coaching clients you’re going to work with, how many articles you’ll write, or how many hours you’re going to work per week, and then stop. That’s it – no more.

One of the best ways to keep your work commitments at a tolerable level is to make a commitment to your family. You can start with committing to attending every softball game, every Scout meeting, and every recital. You can promise dinner each evening, or read out of a chapter book every night to your children.  This will make you accountable to your own scheduled work day. You may feel a momentary pang of regret or anxiety when you tell a potential client “no” or “wait.”  I’m willing to bet it will soon fade when you realize how much less stressed you are on a day-to-day basis, and how much happier your home life is!

You’ve set boundaries for your commitment to your clients. You’ll say the words “no” or “wait” to a client when the time constraints of a new assignment don’t fit within your agenda. You have now become the boss of your time.  Does your family know that?

There you are sitting at your desk in your home office, available to everyone – kids, spouse, neighbors, friends – at a moments notice. You wanted to work at home so you COULD be available to your family, but what are the limits?  We’ll explore the dichotomy of working at home in order to enjoy the flexibility and availability to the ones you love, and working at home in order to create a successful business which requires focused time away from distractions.

I love to hear your comments and join the newsletter while you are here.

Whatever you do, don’t lose control

If you think back over the most stressful times in your life – illness for yourself or a family member, loss of a job or major client, a death in the family – I would venture to say that there’s a common thread through all of these stressful times: Lack of control.

Because home-based entrepreneurs see themselves as pioneers, we pride ourselves on our take-charge attitudes and get-it-done approach to life. Therefore, not being in charge of what’s happening can cause us a great deal of anxiety. We want to fix things, now. When we can’t fix things, or we don’t know how to fix things, we can become very stressed and even freak out a bit.

When faced with a situation where you’re not in control, here are three ways you can maintain an even keel, despite the foul weather:

Find something you CAN control.

When the world is spinning away from you, it can feel like there’s nothing you can control. Not true! In any situation, there’s SOMETHING you can control. Let’s say your major client is having financial difficulties. You may think you are at the whim of their financial ups-and-downs, but you can start regaining a feeling of control by searching out other clients to replace this financially strapped client if they would need to part ways with you. Or you could get your own finances in order and do some proactive belt-tightening so that the loss of one client doesn’t send your world into a tailspin.
You are NOT helpless, and the sooner you find something to control, the sooner you’ll feel less anxious about the future.
Focus on the moment.

Stress comes when we stop focusing on the here and now and start ruminating over the horrible things we wish hadn’t happened yesterday, or about the horrible things we fear will happen tomorrow. If we ground ourselves in the present moment, we find we’re still alive, still functioning, and still able to make decisions. Once we lose site of that fact, though, the stress seeps in. When your thoughts start spinning out of control, gently reel them back in. Take a few deep breaths, remind yourself that you are okay, right now, and then find something productive to do in this moment to protect against what you fear.
This may be difficult for some people to do because they honestly don’t believe they can control their thoughts. It’s true that when our mind is spinning out of control, thoughts do seem to just keep popping into your head. One method health professionals use to quiet discomforted patients is with visualization and repeating positive phrases. This actually does help to quiet the mind so you can gain control, once again, of your thought processes. Once you have quieted your mind, you can choose to focus on the here and now and take back control.
Remind yourself of your expertise and experience.

Stress also comes when we are afraid we can’t handle the horrific scenarios we’ve created for ourselves when we doubt our competence. If our client goes away, then what? If the economy tanks further, then what? If our website crashes, then what? If we knew we’d be okay in the future because we have the expertise to handle these situations, the stress about the future would be a thing of the past.

One tip to combat that stress is to remind yourself of all the tough circumstances you’ve already navigated through successfully. Think about situations you went through in the past and how you handled them. While past success is no guarantee of future performance, as they say in the stock market, it still is a pretty good indication of how things will turn out.

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When a stay-at-home business mom wants to reach a wide audience, she can turn to a social radio network such as http://www.blogtalkradio.com or other podcast outlets (seehttp://www.podcastdirectory.com for a list of sites). These outlets offer several different ways to spread the word: as a caller to a show, as a a guest on a show or as a host.

As a caller to a show she can let the listeners know she’s out there and available, but it’s hard to let friends, family and business contacts know beforehand.

In order to be a guest she only needs to find her category, click on a host’s name to get to an About page, which will probably have contact info. Once she’s accepted for the show, she can e-mail and Facebook blast the time and place of the interview to her client list, friends and family. If the listener registers with blogtalkradio and posts a picture, it will appear on the host’s page as either a listener or fan. The show is archived and always available to future audiences.

The corporate mom dropout can check the show’s audience by noting the number of listeners and fans. If it’s a small number, maybe there’s a different site to promote her business. I’ve appeared on several shows, and a recent talk about my book, Corporate Mom Dropouts, increased my book sales by 40 percent.

Finally, if she can find the time, the business mom can host her own show. The site is easily set up for the entrepreneurial mom to get on the air. All she needs is a computer and a phone. Also, it’s another way to increase SEOs. And it’s free.

When working on a marketing plan, the home-based business mom has to wring every drop from the social media for the greatest possible exposure, and talk radio is a good way to go.