Work at Home & Be Your Own Boss

So, you want to be your own boss?  Unless you plan to open a brick and mortar business, you’ll work at home. I knew I’d work from home when I left my 35-year corporate career.  But, I hadn’t really thought about what that meant. 

In my previous job, I had worked at home occasionally.  On days that I was in the field, working at home made a lot more sense. I could head to my house and get stuff done remotely, rather than drive the extra distance in LA traffic to get to the office. Driving my own productivity brought me a lot of self satisfaction.

It was easy to do this when I worked for someone else.  I had all the tools I needed at my disposal.  We were provided all the internal programs and intranet.  My position required me to do specific tasks and in specific timelines.  I had deadlines. 

Why do you want to work at home & be your own boss?

Ah…deadlines.  The arbitrary, time-specific, expectations put on us by someone else.  Having that one person, usually a boss, who establishes a false sense of urgency for the sake of getting their own job done, to meet an arbitrary deadline set by their boss. This was probably the number one reason that I wanted to work for myself.  I didn’t want to work to someone else’s timeline. I wanted to create my own plan and set my own deadlines. 

 It’s important to establish your “why”.  Why do you want to work at home, and why do you want to be your own boss?  You should write these things down on paper and post them in plain sight.  It will help you to remember these. What is your why?

Beware of the “Ooh Shiny” syndrome

It’s easy to become distracted.  I actually quit my job before I even had my business running.  I didn’t have a fall back plan.  This was it.  You’d think that I would have been plenty motivated to figure this thing out.  But there were so many pretty, shiny, distractions! 

I had to sell my house and pack.  We had to find a new house and unpack.  Decorating, the holidays, a serious illness in the family, my commute to LA for chorus every-other-week, and vacations kept me from getting started. 

All of these were important activities. Therefore, I told myself that THIS was why I wanted to work at home for myself, to work on my own time. Except, I wasn’t working. Not. At. All.  

A friend, and talented coach once told me that I had ADOS.  She wasn’t being disrespectful of the mental health community.  She used humor to gently tell me that I had “Attention Deficit, Ooh Shiny”. I was allowing distractions to affect my performance, and she was right!  Thanks Lori.

Keep Moving Forward

I wasn’t completely starting back at square one.  Over the 10 months from the time I first had the idea to become a blogger I had taken some baby steps. I had decided on my writing niche, came up with my name and tagline, and purchased the URL. A friend of mine is a talented graphics designer, so she created my logo. I even had business cards made.  I was making progress. 

We bought furniture in the new house and set up an office where both my husband and I could work.  He “retired” too and was setting up a consulting business to become his own boss.  It was easy to feel as though we were working toward our goals.

My Wake-Up Call

One day, I got an email from the blogging community I had joined almost a year prior.  The course is designed to teach bloggers how to become profitable in twelve months. As a result, they offer it only once yearly.  This self-guided course comes with lesson plans and videos set in a particular order to enable students to be successful as quickly as possible.  Had I started back when I first invested in the course, I would be nearly finished by now.  I suddenly felt left behind. 

This totally lit a fire in my belly.  It was the wake-up call I needed to start working the plan.  I spent the next three days setting up my domain with Bluehost and WordPress.  I chose a free theme and got to work writing my landing and my “about me” pages.  By the weekend, I had something concrete to show my closest friends, and get some initial feedback. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive, encouraging me to keep moving.

While on vacation, I followed a “How to Build a Blog” online course, as well as a blogging Facebook Community. I wasn’t actually working during my vacation, but I was becoming more excited about what was to come.

Be Relentlessly Self-Aware

And then, another distraction.  When we got home, the governor issued a stay-at-home order.  I spent my days trying to put groceries into the house from decimated grocery shelves.  Over the next month, I watched webinars and listened to podcasts, all under the guise of education.  Even though I filled my time, we were stuck at home. I started to feel like Cinderella.  My days were spent cooking meals, planning for the next meal, and cleaning my house.  I had lost control of my plan.

Set Your Fire Ablaze

I’m a night owl, and I frequently sit in bed at 1am, catching up on what I missed on social media.  So, on one particular Monday night, I popped into my Facebook blogger community, and saw a recording of the owner doing a Live talk. She encouraged us to act like business owners, and show up every day.  I realized that I could be spending this time doing the work, rather than preparing to work. Thanks Ruth!

I had a flash-back of my former boss complaining about our sales team and their “Sales Avoidance Activities”. I realized that was exactly what I had been doing – avoiding the actual work I signed up to do – writing! Dang it! Thanks Kevin!

Look Ma, I’m Gonna Work at Home!

On April 14^th I got up, showered, did my hair and I put on earrings and lipstick. I felt more like “me” again.  My commute from the bedroom to our home office was great! I got to work, and went from Module 1 to Module 2 in a day. Each day, I continue to take consistent steps to move forward.

Eighteen days later, on May 1^st, I posted my website to my personal social media pages.  In under 3 weeks, I had completed 3 modules in my course work, and written 10 blog posts. 

Stay the Course

I have a fairly big social tribe, and I was worried about telling friends about my website without a way to allow people to subscribe.  So, during online “Office hours”, I asked this question a couple of different times because I had not seen any reference in the coursework about email management (or marketing) tools.  Visions of having to individually email each subscriber each time I have a new post, or newsletter, had me worried. 

Because I worried about the emails, my progress stalled. I hesitated to actually hit send on those first announcements because I was afraid of losing the chance to invite subscribers. As a result, I veered off course and bought email marketing software.

It wasn’t time to implement the email tool. There are reasons for layering of the steps for learning purposes, but I couldn’t help myself.  I did it.  And I’m not sorry.  Virtually overnight, I had over 40 subscribers, and they received a beautiful welcome letter with promises of more to come.

The Consequences of Being Me

Oh my gosh!  More to come!  That means I’ve got to write more content and figure out what to do with this EMS before I’m even ready to figure out what to do with it.  Oh…now I get it.  Well, if I haven’t mentioned it before, now would be a good time to mention that I need to work for myself because I’m a terrible subordinate.  I’m a terrific partner, but I don’t take direction very well.  I’m an ask forgiveness later type of person.  Can you relate? Well, those are the consequences of being me.

Five Work At Home Productivity Tips

So here are some additional tips for working at home. 

1. Get up and get going near the same time every day
2. Take a shower, do your hair, and get dressed, even if you wear a ponytail, shorts, and a t-shirt. Do it. You’ll feel more professional.
3. Put on earrings, lipstick, whatever makes you feel like you 
4. Make your coffee/tea, eat breakfast – don’t provide an excuse for a distraction
5. Make a schedule
   • What days do you plan to work?
   • How many hours each day?
   • What is your time schedule? Set it out for each workday.
     • You’re the boss – set your own schedule
     • Remember, this is your business, so treat it like a job
     • Stick to your schedule

Enjoy the Journey

There is a ton to learn about building an online business.  It is incredibly hard to stay focused and to keep my blinders on and to learn what I need to learn in the order I need to learn it.  Sometimes, I get distracted and do what looks pretty and shiny.  But, the reality is that each time I do that, I get off track, and I get even further behind my own timeline. Believe me, I’m keeping notes on what I wish I had done in the beginning, and what I can do going forward.

I’m having a blast coming to work every day, and doing what I love to do, in my own time, completely self-motivated.  My plan includes creating an income stream.  If working at home and creating your own online business sounds like something you want to do, I want to help.  Stay tuned for more on that in the future.