CEO and work at home mom don’t conjure up the same mental picture at all.
The CEO is sharply dressed in a business suit with polished heels and coordinating jewelry. She endures a daily commute to her corner office on the 10th floor, has power lunches, and can take the time off to go to her child’s class play, but returns to work when it’s over.
Work at home mom brings up images of a women sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop, more likely in her pajamas, and at least makeup-free. She endures daily wars over who had the Matchbox car first, eats a PB&J with her kids for lunch, and hand sews all the costumes for the class play.
While their working environments may be drastically different, as work at home moms we make our lives a little easier when we start thinking of ourselves more like the traditional skyscraper CEO.
No, it’s not necessary to get out of your pajamas, or even leave your house if you don’t want to. But despite the contrasting environment, you are the CEO of your work at home business.
And, your business is just as important as the skyscraper CEO’s company, with as much if not more earning potential for you.
Even though moms often start their businesses as more of a side hustle or a hobby, thinking of it like a “real business” will make it more profitable, easier, and more fun.
Here’s five helpful ways you can live like a work at home mom but think like a CEO.
1. Integrate Your Schedule
The CEO has a paper calendar, or more likely a digital calendar, that both she and her assistant can access so that everyone on the team knows what she’s up to and when she’s available.
As CEO Mom, you have two jobs: your business, and your family. Put them both on the calendar.
It may seem a little weird and too rigid at first, but if you write down all of your business activities and appointments and then think, “I also need to do laundry today,” you’ll either never get to the laundry, or never get to the business tasks.
Schedule the laundry, the kid pickups, dinner prep, vacuuming, et cetera the same as you would a client phone call. It will help you keep all the balls in the air.
2. Set Expectations
If you’re a stay at home mom, you’re probably already familiar with this one. For some reason, the world thinks you sit at home watching TV or playing Facebook games all day to fill your time.
You’re always the go-to person, and always expected to be available.
Even if people know you have some “business thing” going, they undoubtedly don’t take it very seriously.
Work on making expectations clear to everyone.
If you were at work outside the house you couldn’t randomly answer the door or take personal phone calls or make a batch of cookies on a moment’s notice. And you can’t when you work from home either.
Just because you’re home, doesn’t mean you’re available.
Make your work obligations clear to your family and friends, and your family obligations clear to your work colleagues, who tend to think that because you work from home, you’re available 24/7.
3. Hire Your Family
Truth is CEO Mom is way different from skyscraper CEO, thank goodness. A good piece of advice for the traditional CEO is to not bring your work home.
Naturally, this is impossible advice for the work at home mom. And one of the beauties of working at home is you don’t have to do a 9 to 5. You can work around your family’s schedule.
But what often happens is either your family starts to complain that you work all the time, or your business goes nowhere because you can’t find any time to break free of the family and work.
Because you can’t separate your work from your home, don’t even try to. Get your family invested in your business. Get them excited about how happy it makes you and the potential extras it will bring to enrich the entire family’s lives.
The best way to do this is to give them a part in the business. Talk with your accountant, but this can even mean paying them to do the simplest of tasks like filing and cleaning your office area.
The specific tasks will have to match your kids ages, abilities, and interests, but it’s not hard to come up with things that make them feel like they’re helping. And as they get older, they actually can be a big help.
The key here is getting them to see that what you do is just as real and important as what their friends’ moms who drive to work do.
4. Get Help
One of the best things about being CEO is that your job is to drive the ship to the planned destination. Someone else is responsible for making sure the ship is in good order, has gas, and gets cleaned.
Others are even responsible for big decisions like charting the proper course, making sure all the right people are on board, and avoiding collisions.
You are the overseer with ultimate responsibility, but you certainly don’t run the company alone.
And this is perhaps the biggest way us moms need to start thinking more like skyscraper CEOs.
For some reason, work at home moms think they have to be a one-woman show. Maybe it’s because they have trouble seeing their business as a “real business,” or they’re afraid to spend money hiring someone, or where would this someone work anyway?
Fortunately, you can run a multi-million dollar business with only virtual employees or independent contractors, and you can start as small as you need to from a budget perspective.
We’ve talked about how to hire people to help you in your business in detail on our blog. Reading and following that advice should be one of the first things you do in your work at home business.
5. Choose Your Tribe Consciously
As a skyscraper CEO, you seek connections with business men and women you think can help you.
Maybe they can bring you business, or they have a product or service you need, or they’re connected to the “right” people to help your company get ahead in some way.
Whatever the case, they form a tribe of connections that become the people in their virtual rolodex that they can depend on.
You’ll also need your tribe, although it will obviously look a lot different to you as CEO Mom.
Seek out and surround yourself with people who believe in your ability to build a “real” business, who also operate in the virtual space, and who don’t find it “unprofessional” if you have to reschedule due to a sick kid, or excuse yourself on the phone for a minute to silence a little background noise.
CEO Moms have haters. These are almost always people who in reality hate themselves because they don’t have the guts to try what you’re doing.
Ignore them and find your people. They’re out there. In fact, we’re right here at Kids Party Characters.
And that’s one of the things that makes Kids Party Characters such a great business opportunity. If you haven’t started your business yet, or aren’t convinced you’re in the right one, check out this special offer Kids Party Characters owner Cheryl Jacobs has designed for stay at home moms.
No experience is necessary and you’ll get step-by-step training from Cheryl, who started out as a mom much like you.
If this opportunity resonates with you, set up a free chat with Cheryl and she’ll answer all your questions and help you get started if you choose.
Also learn more about the magic you can bring to children’s parties with a Kids Party Characters business by joining us on Facebook for daily updates.
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