by The Happy WAHM
Had a pretty exciting week. Friday last week, I was on a call with the founder and CEO of an organic, nutrient-rich, cold-pressed juice company in the US, and their business launch is happening soon.
And why am I telling you about this?
Yes, you guessed it. I joined their team on Monday!
While preparing my independent contractor’s agreement, I got to thinking. What can I do to help their business launch a success?
And so I came up with a list of things a business owner should consider when launching a business and decided to blog about it.
A business launch can both be exciting and challenging. Getting started means the possibilities are endless. You have nowhere to go but forward. And opportunities abound.
On the flip side, because it’s new, most of the things you need to do and attend to are possibly overwhelming to you. So many tasks, so little time. And If you spread yourself too thin, you risk getting nothing done and not meeting your goals.
You probably have a lot on your mind and aren’t sure where to give the most time and attention. The following ideas will help you identify what you should be focusing on as you launch your business. Make these items a priority, and you’ll be on your way to creating a long-lasting and successful business that you can be proud of.
Hiring A Team
That CEO of what’s to be America’s favorite juice did the right thing right the first time. He sent me an email and asked if we could talk. And we did. So now he’s taken the most important step to success. He’s taken in some help.
You may be the boss and the person with all the ideas, but you can’t possibly have the time to do all the work yourself. Instead, you can opt to hire a team of professionals who can help you execute your business plan. Hiring mistakes can be costly, so make sure you do your homework and only make offers to people who you feel are the right fit. Set expectations early on and schedule performance reviews so you can track your staff’s progress.
Attracting Customers
Have you done your homework in identifying your target market? How are you going to attract your ideal customers?
It would help if you can be ready with a marketing plan. Build a strategy that includes elements such as having a blog and running paid advertisement campaigns. If you need help creating and distributing these ads, you can learn more about setting yourself up for success in this area. There’s a lot of noise to cut through, so you need to get creative and ensure you’re spending your marketing dollars wisely.
Your Competitors
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
It’s the same thing in business. Know your customers, but know your competitors better.
Know what your competitors are up to. What strategies are working for them? How? Why? Find out where they’re falling short, so you can step in and fill in the gaps in these areas. Study them so you know what you’re up against and what products or services you should be working on and developing next.
Future Growth
When you’re starting, there’s nowhere to go but up and forward. Keep your eyes on the prize. Growth is inevitable, so plan ahead. Be ready to expand.
I just finished an online course on Business Continuity Planning, and it was awesome. It reinforced my belief that we should always have a plan. Coz when we do, we are not just preparing for growth. We are also preparing for business setbacks, like a pandemic, for example.
Having a solid plan will allow you to make adjustments to your course of action. Educate yourself on what to consider when planning a business expansion, so you’re ready when the time comes to move forward or pivot your business.
Conclusion
Launching a business can be tough and it will require a lot of your time and energy. However, if you do your due diligence preparing for it, it’s going to be a walk in the park. Have a solid plan, then get some A-rated help. Know that you’ll make mistakes along the way but instead of dwelling on them use these setbacks as learning opportunities and keep powering forward with optimism.
by The Happy WAHM
Back in 2011, I wrote about my home office set up. It wasn’t much, just a table in the corner of our tiny living room.
If you are a WAHM like me, having a home office is almost as important as having clients.
Maybe I’m exaggerating there, but that’s how I felt when I was starting. Even when I only had a computer table in the first three years, I made sure that “that” table was treated like a real office.
No talking to Mommy when she’s in the office.
Stay really quiet when Mommy has her headphone on.
Yeah, took me three years to save up for a custom-made desk. Remember, we were paying off huge hospital debt when I braved it out to become a WAHM. And the desk doesn’t look much, really. But what makes it special is that I have all the drawers I need for all my office stuff.
This WAHMing thing? It’s a lifestyle. Bed to office in under a minute. No need to spend on wardrobe and your hours are up to you. But a critical part of making it work is discipline. You need to keep a schedule. You can’t afford to feel lazy. And having a well-organized home office will certainly put you in the mood to work. Having that sense of being in a real office space makes work more enjoyable and more efficient.
Here are some tips to get you started.
Organizing Your Desktop or Laptop
Back up all your files frequently and store important items on a cloud-based service. I personally use an external drive which I sync with my desktop computer at least once a month. Saved me a lot of heartache in the past years, most recent was only last December when my 7-year desktop conked out on me. Only had a half day of downtime, which we used to shop for a new desktop and install applications and security.
Create folders and subfolders for your files. I partitioned my PC in a way that all program files are in C, and data files are in D. The data files have three main folders: Home Office, Homeschool, and Personal. Inside each main folder are subfolders, like inside Homeschool, there are two subfolders, Bea and Jude. And more subfolders for subjects, teacher guides, curriculum, projects, etc.
If you are like me, who works on a laptop away from home, you would want to have your oft-accessed files in a cloud. You can use either Google Drive or Dropbox.
Organize Your Desk
Though some folks can organize their desktop according to their own system, others wouldn’t know what to do without their desktop organizer. Some are a simple arrangement of slots made of wire mesh, while others are elaborate. They have room for pens, pencils, staplers, scissors, sticky notes, push pins, stationery, Scotch tape, etc.
Yet, even a desktop organizer needs to be organized. Make sure the papers in the slots are neat, pencils have been sharpened, pens are capped and no stray rubber bands overhang the rubber band container.
For my slightly OC self, I had a desk custom-built back in 2010. I wanted to have drawers that will have all my home office and homeschool supplies in one place. The only organizer on top of my desk now is a tub of pens. All the rest are in my drawers. Although I wish I have one of these desk organizers.
This one, particularly. 🙂
Organizing Drawers
Just because drawers are closed most of the time doesn’t mean they don’t need to be organized. Opening a drawer and seeing a jumble of stuff when you’re looking for something is as dispiriting as a chaotic desktop.
The drawer is where you keep stuff that doesn’t go into the organizer just yet. To avoid a mess, keep everything in its own little box or container. Little metal spice containers are perfect for things like push pins, tacks, erasers, and paper clips because they have glass tops.
My top most drawer holds more pens, craft scissors, craft punches, glue gun, glue sticks, washi tapes, highlighters, staple wires, fasteners, colorful clips and my external drives.
Other drawers hold stationery, notebooks, my official receipts, craft papers, index cards, folders, Manila paper and board papers.
I remember one time when our eldest was in high school and her group met at our house to make their project, one of her classmates commented, “We’re like at National Bookstore!”
Organizing Shelves
Invest in magazine holders for your magazines. Place photos in albums and other important items in boxes. None of these storage items need to be drab. You can now buy them in different colors that match the overall color scheme of your room.
Though boxes can be different colors, it’s best if they’re the same size so they can stack on your shelves. Label containers using a label maker. Or washi tapes. 🙂
Speaking of label makers, they are one of many items that should fit in your office desk drawer. And yes, I do have one. National Bookstore, remember? 🙂
Organizing your home office is not difficult and can be fun. You might even want to get the whole family involved. It will definitely be a pleasure to see a clean and tidy workspace waiting for you at the beginning of your workday.
Disclaimer: My home office, specifically my desk, may not stay as organized as I presented in this post, but I’m still proud to say that there is always one day in a month that IT IS this organized, and then it goes downhill from there until it’s time to clean up, and the cycle continues. One thing is constant though. I LOVE my home office!
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave a comment below, or post them on my Facebook Page.
by The Happy WAHM
Have I ever mentioned here that I sit on the board of a Science High School in our town?
Well, I do. And about two weeks ago, I was asked by the Chairman of the Board to review a proposal by a contractor for the maintenance and upgrade of the units in our Computer Laboratory. The proposal was for the upgrade of the RAM, replacement of the CMOS battery and installation of Windows OS, among others. Apparently, more than half of the units have been corrupted and the solution they were looking at was to reformat the corrupted units. That means having to re-install the OS.
But the process will be costly. And when I asked the technician if the OS he was going to install was licensed, he could not give me a straight answer. So suffice it to say that he was going to give us a cracked OS, which did not sit right with me since we are an educational institution.
Budget being tight for an enterprise license of Windows, we decided to look at open source alternatives. Husband found Ubuntu, and decided to try it out first with our kids’ PC at home. They do have their own PC for their homeschool because it has been a sacred rule in our home that Mommy’s home office is hers alone, and that no other person can use Mommy’s PC. It’s exclusive for Mommy’s work.  🙂
So husband downloaded Ubuntu and installed it in the other PC, and we have been all agog about it since.
The Office Productivity Suite
My first concern was, how will the kids create documents? My PC will continue to run on Windows, of course, so how are we going to exchange documents? Is it compatible with MS Office?
Well, it is. It has a complete suite of office counterpart, called the LibreOffice.  Microsoft Word is called the LibreOffice Writer, Excel is LibreOffice Calc and PowerPoint is LibreOffice Impress.  You can create a document and save it with .odt extension, and your Windows-based PC will open it in WordPad, then you can save it as .docx. Or you can simply save it as .docx with LibreOffice. Why make life complicated?  🙂
Then there’s LibreOffice Draw, which I assumed is the counterpart of Paint, but I’m finding it a lot better. It can produce technical drawings, posters, etc. Making a flow chart using Draw is easy-peasy!  It also allows you to manipulate pictures and images in many ways and save them in a range of image and document formats.
MS Access is LibreOffice Base, but I have not explored it yet, as I have somehow developed an allergy for the words query, MySQL and Dbase.
LibreOffice Math is equations and formula editor. Really neat, as it allows you to perfectly format mathematical and scientific formulas, from fractions, exponents, integrals and mathematical functions, to inequalities and systems of equations. And what’s neater is you can use it as standalone, or you can use it with Writer, Calc or Impress.
I have not tried it yet, but I believe that the counterpart of Outlook is Thunderbird.
The Software Center
This is the part where I really fell totally in love. It’s overflowing with apps for office and homeschool use! It’s great that they have categorized the apps, since there are literally hundreds of them, into education, books and magazines, fonts, games, business, graphics, etc. Among the apps that we have so far installed are the Periodic Table, Stellarium, GeoGebra, KAlgebra and Scratch. There are also educational application bundles categorized into Pre-School, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary, so you get most of the apps you need according to the level you prefer in just one click.  🙂
I have barely scratched the surface of the features here, and I’m sure you are going to find something for your personal needs.  The RedNotebook for journaling, KMyMoney or sKrooge as your personal finance manager, FreeMind for mindmapping… the list is long!
I believe Ubuntu is a great alternative for homeschooling families and work-at-home professionals who simply cannot afford the expensive license for Windows and Mac OS.  We buy laptops and desktop PCs at such a high price because vendors make the installed OS part of the selling point.  But you can actually build you own desktop PC at a fraction of a branded PC’s cost and simply install this open source OS.  And get a lot of free apps to go with it, too!
I’m now so envious of my kids for having all these cool features in their PC, I’m seriously considering installing Ubuntu in my tablet.
[Photos from ubuntu.com and ubuntuhandbook.org]
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about this post?
Please leave me a message, or post them, at my Facebook Page.
by The Happy WAHM
Before starting your business, one question that you need to have an answer for is: Â Where will you work?
Your home office may be an unused room in your house, or a small corner of your dining room, or any space that can be used exclusively for your business. Â Pictured above is my office in a corner of our living room. Â I’m planning to make our garage my domain, but that will come later, when I have the budget for remodeling. Â For now, I have to make do with the space that I have. Â And this is where everything happens. Â Right next to my kids’ study area. Â I can put in some work while they do their seatwork. Â And it’s very handy when I need to show them pictures. Â (Like this morning, while Bea was working on combining two words to form a new word, the example given in the book was silkworm, and she has no idea what it looks like. Â So with just a few clicks, she was able to appreciate what’s written in her book.)
Having a work area that you can call your own will help you establish your business as a serious venture. Â It also puts boundaries. Like my family respects that space as my office, and they do not just get anything from it without asking for permission first.
Determine what basic equipment you need and invest on it. Â You can either purchase your equipment new, or if you’re on a tight budget, you can buy used equipment and upgrade later when you can better afford it.
Make sure that you have a business phone line separate from what your family uses, especially if you get or make a lot of social calls on that line. Â You will lose business if your customers cannot reach you at the time that they need you. Â With me, mobile phones work best. Â It allows my clients to reach me anytime, anywhere.
Working from home may take some self-discipline, especially in the beginning. Â You may find it hard to remain undistracted by household chores, or the children’s chatter, so setting up your own official office or work space will help you establish a mindset of “going to work”.
by The Happy WAHM
I promised to write about how I evolved from being a transcriptionist to a virtual assistant. So here it is…
Just like how I became a transcriptionist, I was pushed to the virtual assistance niche. After a year of doing transcription, and maybe not doing it properly, I started to have ringing in my ears. It might have been due to the bad quality of my headset, or it might have been due to the numerous bad audio files I picked up from the work queue.
Whatever it was that caused me to hurt my ears, it must have been God’s work. A door was closed. I could not abuse my ears, so there was no question that I had to stop transcribing. But a window opened. I found job postings at Craigslist and replied to a few ads that I felt I qualify for.
After going through some Skype interviews, I finally got hired by an internet marketing company in the UK. The task was to create one-way backlinks from high PR sites to their site. Uh-oh… What’s PR again? And what is a backlink?
Fortunately, the boss only needed someone who could communicate well, dedicated to her work, with stable internet connection, a fast learner and honest. So I qualified. Â He found me amusing, being so upfront about not knowing what he’s talking about and yet there I was, trying to convince him that I was the perfect VA for him.
It was quite an experience, learning SEO and internet marketing hands-on. Like I learned it as I went along. He would give me instructions over Skype, and if there’s something I don’t quite understand, I would just ask. Â No problem.
And then one day, the boss asks, “Do you know how to prepare a wireframe?”
My reply… “Is that the one used for eyeglasses?”
So the boss sends me a link to a site showing what a wireframe is and how to prepare one. Then he sends me a Word file that has information about a business that I’m supposed to prepare a wireframe for. And that was it.
As I accomplished more tasks, I gained confidence that I could learn more and do better. So I started to accept more projects, more clients. Â And in different time zones, too. Â Before our homeschooling days, my Google calendar was set up for schedules at PST, EST and AEST (UTC +10).
At work, when a client asks me to convert M4A files to MP3, I look for a free software that will do that. If I’m asked to take still photos from a video, I find out how I could do that. And so it was an interesting journey with every client, and I enjoyed, and still enjoying, every minute of each trip!
One thing that I can never stress enough is the importance of honesty. While it’s true that I accepted projects involving tasks that I had no prior experience with, I’ve always admitted that fact to the client. My strongest point has always been the ability to learn, and learn fast. And staying true to my work ethic.
