Be A Mumpreneur – 5 Tips To Help Mums Start Their Own Businesses @HelenLindop
When you became a mum, you may have found your old job no longer fitted your new life. Do you want to spend more time with your children? Do you struggle to find affordable childcare? Are school holidays a headache for you?
Then why not start your own family-friendly business? Here are five things you’ll need to think about:
1. Decide what you want from a business. If you want the equivalent of a full time income you need to approach it differently from if you just need a hundred pounds a month to top up the family budget. Using party plan as an example, you may be able to supplement the family income with a few parties a month, but in order to earn a full time income you might need to recruit and lead a team.
2. Look at your skills and experience and see if you can use them. I’ve spoken to several mums lately who went into direct selling or bought a franchise because they assumed they had to do something completely different from what they’d done before. In fact, using your existing skills can be the fastest way to start generating an income.
3. Develop a Niche – be unique and different. Look at competing businesses and be clear about how your business is different. It might simply be that you are bringing something new and different to your area, or it may be the way in which you offer a service.
4. Look at the times you have available to work, your childcare and family situation. I considered running children’s parties, but realised that in the time I’d kept my kitchen clean enough to satisfy the local council’s environmental health team, I could have done a lot of work on an on-line business instead!
5. Look at your business model – does it just depend on trading time for money. This can be a problem if you are a time-poor mum! If you have a skill that people will pay you for, that’s great, but look at ways of making it available that doesn’t just depend on you putting the hours in – think e-books, online courses, tip sheets, group teleclasses.
You can find more business tips and ideas for aspiring mumpreneurs in Helen Lindop’s book,Start a Family Friendly Business
