Are You a Delusional Work at Home Mum?
A few days ago I was reading a post of Jonathon Fields on ‘The Four Delusions of Entrepreneurs’. It’s very interesting reading and relates well to us as Work at Home Moms.
In his post Jonathon discusses the four reasons why most entrepreneurs leave the security of ‘working for the man’. Those reasons are:
– Freedom
– Control
– Money
– Passion
Not so different from being a WAHM is it? Only we can usually add that we want to be at home for our kids, yes?
Jonathon goes on to discuss:
They dream of working their own hours, not having to report to “the Man,” skipping though fields of money, loving what they do every moment of every day and changing the world. All great aspirations.
Question is –
How much is real, and how much is outright fantasy?
Wow. That question hit me right between the eyes. Like every one of you I had good reasons for working at home – my biggest reason turned 12 just last month.
Yet the four reasons stated by Jonathon were there right behind her. And as I, and most likely you, have found those four things don’t come easily – if at all.
What do you think? Have you been able to fulfil your reasons for starting/running a work at home business?
We all have expectations before beginning something, how have your expectations been met, exceeded or dropped as you’ve progressed with your work at home business?
Knowing what you know now, would you do it all again?
Melinda is the founder of SuperWAHM.com and started this site to share her best work from home ideas to help other Work At Home Mums become more financially independent and able to spend time with their families.
@ Rana, patience? What is this ‘patience’ of which you speak? LOL! I don’t know anyone that I can think of whose business now looks as they thought it would. Businesses seem to take on a life of their own, and it’s up to us to keep it running in it’s own direction.
@ Grace,
Very well said. I’m sorry to hear about your bad experience, and really happy to hear that you were able to get over it (and pay it off) doing what was right for you. 🙂
Absolutely would I do it again. Even though my business looks nothing like it did when I started, it has been incredibly fulfilling. It took me a few years to be in profit. You have to be patient as you grow. That was the hard part for me.
Hi Melinda, I think we all have high hopes as we begin the journey of entrepreneurship. Ten years ago
I started a catering company. We built a licensed commercial kitchen in our home and we were on our way. It has been fine, however along the way I let myself get distracted from my original intention of being a WAHM and while taking classes on business, I listened to advice from others about what my business should be and made a huge mistake and opened a coffee shop.
For me, that was a tremendous mistake. It put me in a huge amount of debt, defeated the purpose of working at home, and the only one that benefited was the bank that made the loan to me. Long story short, I took a beating, left as soon as the lease ended, and spent the next few years repaying the loan. I returned to my own kitchen, working at home, doing what I had intended to do all along.
The lesson, I let others interpret my dream, and persuade me to take a path I had never intended to take. All along, I had that nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that it was a mistake but I ignored it. We need to be strong enough to trust our own instincts and resist influence that feels wrong.
A piece of advice I would like to offer, build your dream slowly as you can fund it, using other peoples money is not a good plan. If you can have the patience to do a slow build, all your profits will be yours, and you will be building a business that has a sound future.