You might have heard this word of late, but you’re going to be hearing a lot more of it:  Mompreneur. It’s an exciting time to be a modern-day mother and even if you want to keep your main job title as “CEO – My house”, you can still create additional revenue streams and passive incomes by turning your passion projects into profit-making ones but so often we think that being a mom either hasn’t equipped us to be businesswomen too, but we’re here to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth.

SO, HOW DO YOU KNOW “WHEN IT’S TIME?”

Timing is everything and before you go and spend precious resources on turning on your doggy-bed hobby into a multi-national conglomerate, there are some things you need to get down first.  Some key questions to ask yourself are:

• How am I going to turn my passion project into a business?  And by how, we mean the literal how.  This is where you need a good business plan.  Note to self:  “good” doesn’t necessarily mean long, lengthy, and laborious but you do need to start laying out all you already know about what it is that makes your product or service unique, sellable, and desirable.  When you know these things, now it’s time to move onto how much it costs you to make or produce one unit of your product.  Document everything. Stationery, electricity the works – this will become the foundation of your costing model and help guide you towards understanding how much you need to charge for what you’re doing to turn a profit.
• What parts of my skillset are missing to make this happen?  Women get put off from starting businesses because they think that to do so, they’ll have to leave their families and return to school or college, and this prospect is sometimes enough of a deterrent to stall everything before it’s even started. But you don’t have to start getting those Harvard applications out just yet. So much of what you need to get your business started is hiding in front of you right now and a quick search through the internet can reveal amazing sources of training and skill-building programs that you can do at home, and some are even free.

When you can answer these questions and create something resembling a plan, you will know what your prospective launch timelines are going to look like.  

WHAT TYPES OF BUSINESSES CAN YOU OPERATE FROM HOME?

We’re big believers in supporting local businesses in America and this trend is starting to heal the economy in many small towns all over the country.  The possibilities are endless and will ultimately depend on your skillset, knowledge, and access to marketplaces.  It can sound intimidating, but it isn’t.  All that means is that you have to know what you’re doing, how you’re going to do it, and who you’re going to sell it to.  Anything from home baking and produce, to handmade crafts, items, and clothing to secretarial and assistant services can all be done from home.  You’re also going to want to start thinking about how you’re going to reach your intended marketplace and technology is a good way to help you get ahead of your competition in the future, but if you’re just starting out knowing what options exist for you will help you to start training your brain towards that future.

HOW TO “BUILD IN” EFFICIENCY INTO YOUR BUSINESS

At every stage of your business starting with the launch phase, you’re going to learn that time is money and so the more you can optimize your processes, secure reliable and competitive pricing for your raw materials, or streamline your ordering, document tracking, and logistics, the more money you’re ultimately going to see on your bottom line.  You don’t have to have an MBA to do this either.  Simple hacks like getting your bakery to deliver the bread you need for your afternoon “moms tea parties” save you effort, time and allows you to focus on creating a better experience in your garden, for example.  If you’re thinking about starting a secretarial or virtual assistance business from home (all the rage right now by the way), you’ll want to be thinking about you can offer these services to other busy moms and highly-occupied managers or CEOs, so get creative with your thinking.  Think about electronic document signing to save you travel and delivery/collection times and for this you might want to consider DocuSign vs hello sign.

EACH ONE, REACH ONE

As you begin to figure this way forward out, you’ll start to see many opportunities where you can also start acting as something of an inspirational figure in your local network and community and this is not just an altruistic action, the more opportunities that you can create around you simply by doing what you’re doing, the greater the likelihood that these can become beneficial for you too.  Win-win.

The point of this post is to show you that it doesn’t have to be complicated or intimidating.  By just answering the questions in this post you’ll already have a clearer understanding of where you’re at and where you need to be and what you need to do to get you there.