WAHM biz's - the childcare / housework / work juggling act...

[nickimacrae]

...and ways to retain your sanity?

(appologies to Andreja, Anne and aqny other sling sellers who will have seen me ask this on another forum too...)

We seem to have reached that point. The one where you have grown to the point where its not feasible to just go on bumbling along managing to fit your business in to your spare time around the kids and house. We've done the 'OK lets not do the housework and not have a life' thing now and have now got to 'OK we need a sustainable solution to this' stage. We've also tried the lets let ourselves run right down on stock, not advertise and run at a minimal level (when I needed things quiet after having our third child) - and that doesn't work either as we found we just ended up doing loads of CS for very low turnover . So (even though I'm not totally convinced on the someone else looking after my kids thing, as that was never my intention ) we're looking at other ways to manage right now and also allow room for growth - help around the house, CS help, childcare that sort of thing.

I was wondering what creative solutions some of you have come up with? The pros and cons?

TIA!

[Seren]

whats CS?

[nickimacrae]

Ooops sorry, customer service!

[lajlaj]

I was going to ask that lol!

[stour]

It depends what you want. we've always worked hard to try to ensure that we do the children as much as possible.

This has meant that the customer service hasn't been perfect and that I've relied on family more than I probably ought to have done. Not to look after the children but to 'do' the business.

The things I felt helped was outsourcing the packaging and dispatch as much as possible and persuading people to email us rather than call. Also persuading my dh that he had to be as involved as possible and that we didn't need restful evenings but it sounds like you've done these two already.

We have given up our social lives, and now if I've kept my children happy, my relationships with my ever-supportive parents happy, my marriage just about intact and my business running i think i'm ok. friends have sadly become the last thing on the list and they get very poor treatment. Its crap but something had to give :(.

this probably doesn't sound terribly optimistic does it. I'm sorry.

[Seren]

phew, thanks for the easy question......... pretty much as you I guess although I'm new to this game, will have another think and get back to you as my brain does not want to work right now. so tired

[lajlaj]

Aha. Well my view is that you outsource what you reasonably can. Work out where you really need help. Is it cheaper and easier to get a cleaner rather than pay someone to do the admin/CS/packing for you? Can you get your ironing done, etc.

To move it to an office/unit is a huge financial step. On top of the obvious things like rent, everything that is aimed at business costs a massive amount more than for domestic use. Eg, phones, internet connection, electricity, rates and so on. These are very hidden costs usually because when you work them out you tend to base it on what you would pay at home but you can at least double the costs if not more. If you employ someone remember you need to allow not just their salary but an additional 30% for EMPLOYERS tax and NI - so if you pay someone £6 an hour, generally it will cost you £9 an hour. I almost fell off the floor when I received my first notification from the payroll people of how much I had to pay in employers tax and NI - for three of us, it worked out to be £2.5K per month!! We soon rethought how we took money for ourselves, I can tell you.

I still work very bizarre hours fitting in around the needs of the kids but it does help them being out at school though!

I think sometimes we have ideals but when it comes down to it, those ideals aren't really ideal and so may need a rethink. I now acknowledge to myself that I am not a bad person if I come in after doing the school run and have to sit and work for an hour, the kids are used to it and they think it is "normal" to be locked away in front of a computer. That said, I am getting better at now at not bolting myself in front of the computer when the kids get home from school unless it is on a day like today when I have been out all day.

You just need to find what works for you, do look at getting help around the house, it is easier (and cheaper) than getting someone into the business. Once you have that support in place then look at what can be reasonably outsourced - pr, book keeping and so on, these are quite easy to outsource. I'd always say keep CS because nobody knows your business like you do, but, if this is the thing you struggle with maybe you can look at a virtual assistant taking this over for you.

Hth.

[nickimacrae]

Thanks guys, interesting responses so far :-)

Sorry I should've said we currently employ someone just a handful of hours a month to do the CS that we can easily hand over. Shes actually an asset in other ways as is a devoted slinger so can write website content too, etc if I need her to and she can work the extra hours.

I guess as you picked up my big issue is with the 'kids' bit of the whole balancing act, its interesting to hear about how that works for folks / how your priorities are...

For those who've had help in the home, how does that honest;y work for you? Do you manage to lock yourself away and actually get stuff done?

Lajlaj, we're lucky to have spare space in the house still (a bonus of moving to the Icy North when property was still fairly cheap) so have discounted getting any sort of premises for a long time into the future. I have an office come stock room and have more room I can grew into for the time being... The overheads do scare me! :smiley-fa

[lajlaj]

It works great for me, I lock myself away in my office and let her get on with it, if I went out to work again, I wouldn't be there to interfere anyway so this way I just work my day as if I go out to work. I'm also not very domesticated and so have always had cleaners anyway because I would just carry on stepping over piles of dirty washing until I ran out of clothes, then I'd go buy some more lol!

It is hard with the kids, I used to beat myself up terribly about it but last week, I took two days out to take my eldest DD to interviews, I did three days in London in between, I went to a working lunch with our local MP and then I bolted out of there and down to school in time to see my twins get merit awards. No way on gods earth would I have been able to do that if I worked for someone else. I also get to pick them up at least three or four days a week and I have only ever missed one school event because of a meeting (although as people on here will verify I beat myself up terribly over that one but it couldn't be helped I had a very important meeting booked and couldn't move it). I justify all the long hours, all the time I spend on the computer instead of spending quality time with the kids after school on occasions and so on by acknowledging that by juggling all aspects as I do in this way I keep all the balls in the air and whilst I am by no means an accomplished juggler, the odd dropped ball here and there doesn't make an awful lot of difference.

It is the acceptance that everything isn't perfect that is the hard bit. For me it was finally accepting that if I went out to work, I would miss school events, if I stayed home full time my life would be too involved with the kids lives as I wouldn't have another outlet (I know the type of person I am, I'm already very involved and that is with having other things to focus on) and so this is my compromise position and I have guilt with that too! You get the guilts with so many aspects of parenting, this is just another one and once I acknowledged that, I was able to accept that this does actually work for our family on the whole.

[Dino]

At times when I have been really busy, I have had help with ironing, grandparents having the children in the holidays, outsourced some of my work.

At the moment I don't have any help at all, and my aim is to only work when the children are at school, I know this isn't practical if your children are under school age. For the business to grow, I will have to outsource more of my work, or have a cleaner to help in the house. I worry that I wouldn't be comfortable with someone in the house cleaning while I'm working, but reading Nadine's post, I suppose I could lock myself in the office.

I did use childcare (preschool and nursery) when my children were younger and that's how I coped with working too. If you went to work for someone else you would have to use childcare anyway, so why should it be any different when you're working for yourself. At least I am available if they are sick, have school plays, presentations etc that I wouldn't necessariliy be able to go to if I wasn't working at home.

Karen