Five Things I Learned as a Work-At-Home Mom and The WAHMderful Year Starter

Ever since joining the wonderful world of WAHM entrepreneurs, specifically the world of bazaaristas, it has been a wild, fast-paced but learning-filled ride for me and my family. But before I embark on that story, I’d like to share with you first why I resigned from a very stable work-from-home job at Balsam Brands. Online casino Ireland. ###

First off, Balsam Brands is a very good place to work. I’m already out but I’m still singing its praises. The management is fair and compassionate towards us. They never fail to show us that we are an important part of the company. We are never treated as outsourced contractuals but as one who play an important role in the company.

I was already enjoying the benefits of a regular employee, had just received a big raise, and was comfortable in my job as Social Media Analyst until two major things happened – I had a major operation and subsequently lost my house help. Not having a helper at home put us all in a bind. I was struggling in all areas – homeschooling, working, and managing the home. I worked from morning till early the next morning with only 4-6 hours of sleep daily. When we had a helper, I had the time to take the weekends off to relax. Without a helper, I used the weekends to get the necessary chores done. I was going on and on and on with hardly any rest in between. I was exhausted and burnt out. Add to that the worry we had because we had debts to pay due to my large hospitalization bill.

Having grown up in a family of businessmen, I knew what I really wanted to do was to get into business for myself. I knew that with the same hours working in Balsam or even less, I could earn more. I know myself to be a very hard worker and I had the confidence that I could take it on.

So with a lot of prayers for guidance from the Lord, ensuring that I had enough money to start up my business, and knowing what I wanted to do, I sent in my resignation letter. Though some people would just go AWOL on the company, I did not want to do that. I wanted to exit the company gracefully and still have my bosses and co-workers as my friends, if only on Facebook.

To end this, I’d like to share with you some important points on being a work-at-home worker that I learned while in Balsam.

1. Always be on time. Whether you’re attending an online meeting or a face-to-face meet up, it pays to be on time. It’s better to be early so you can settle down. If it’s an online meeting, it’s still better to be early so you can test your audio or video, prepare your documents and make sure you’re internet is working at its best.

2. Invest on a very fast internet service. No, don’t be content with just the basic internet service ( I actually don’t know what that is), but it should be a minimum of 1kbps. Anything less than that will slow you down, limiting your effectivity, thus affecting your work output.

3. Be as polite and courteous online as you are offline. This was a hard lesson for me to learn because I was called a few times for this. At the beginning, I was getting comments that my emails seem rude/angry. I, of course, couldn’t believe it, being a blogger for years. My excuse was that I was always very busy with work so I couldn’t be bothered with niceties on email. It wasn’t a good excuse and I learned this the hard way. It always pays to be polite, especially on email or text where you can only communicate with words sans the facial expression and body language.

4. Blink your eyes, stand up and walk, play with your kids every hour. Don’t allow yourself to be so caught up with work that you are just staring at your computer screen for hours. It’s not good for the eyes and not good for your general well-being.

5. Finally, remember that the reason you’re working from home is so that you can still be with your family. There were days when I would get so caught up with work that I let my children just do their own thing. There were nights when hubby would come home and I’m just working. I was no longer attending to their needs. Work is necessary, but so is time spent with our family.

If you would like to explore the work-at-home life or are already a work-at-home mom/dad, come join us at The WAHMderful Year Starter where you’ll learn about time management and branding. Speakers are  Ms. Martine De Luna (MartinedeLuna.com) and Teresa Dumadag (FullLifecube.com). Click on the image to find out more.