Motivational Monday: Interview with Mel Brennan
This morning, our interview is with Mel Brennan, a work at home mom who is dedicated to helping other moms get started in business and be successful as wahms.Mel has been very open about the struggles she`s faced as a wahm and I think we can all learn something very important from her answers to the questions . . . you have to look after yourself, too!
Not only did she do this interview, but she`s offering a special 20% discount to all my At Home Mom Readers who are interested in purchasing from her business, WAHM Biz Builder! Very generous of you, Mel! You`ll find details on how to get your discount at the bottom of the page.
What is your business?
I’m a Business Coach for WAHMs.
How did you get started?
In 2002 I was a single mother needing to work and hating the idea of putting my four year old into day care again. Someone suggested bookkeeping, so I did a course and then set up my own business as a bookkeeper. Within the first three months I realised that I didn’t enjoy it, however I kept doing it for about four years as the money was ok and I was able to be at home. Those things were more important to me than loving what I did.
I started Coaching in 2004, and my first coaching business was as a generalist Life Coach. During 2008 I realised that over two thirds of my email list was WAHMs, and the main topics I was coaching clients on were WAHM related. I split the two groups in mid 2008 and ran two Coaching businesses for about six months. In January this year I closed down the Life Coaching and am now solely focused on working with WAHMs.
What mistakes did you make when you were starting out? What did you learn from them?
I think I made almost every mistake there is to make! LOL! I think my biggest mistake was not having a tight, focussed niche to start with. I fluffed around for a long time with the Life Coaching, trying to market to everybody and getting nowhere. It cost me a lot of angst and money with very little results.
My other major mistake was not having a business plan in the beginning. I had been coaching for about two years before I actually wrote a business plan and that’s when things really started happening for my business. I was really caught in writing the ‘perfect’ business plan, so I never started it. When I did finally write one it was far from perfect, it didn’t look anything like the hugely detailed business plans I’d read about, and would have been thrown out if I’d taken it to a bank! However, it worked very well for me and for my business, which is the whole point of a Business Plan – that it’s individual and focussed on YOUR specific business and needs. I’ve since written a talk entitled “Not Your Banks Business Plan” that I’ve given to groups of WAHMs and it’s amazing how so many of them are nodding and agreeing when I talk about it!
How long have you been working from home? (was this your first business or have you had others where you worked from home?)
I’ve worked from home for seven years now and been coaching for five.
What are your tricks for balancing work, kids and household chores?
Don’t do housework?
I’m fortunate that our daughter is older (11yo) and very good at entertaining herself. I can shut myself in my office for an hour and she knows not to come in unless it’s urgent. I tell her that it’s only urgent if the house is on fire or there is blood pouring out!
I’m a great fan of Flylady www.flylady.net and follow her routines to keep the house reasonable. I would never win a clean house award, however we are all nicely clothed, well fed and loved. I’m happy to let go of needing to have a spotless house all the time in order to reduce stress and keep things flowing smoothly.
I have routines for working as well. There are certain tasks that I do each day, such as drafting a blog post, reviewing another blog post, working on products, etc. Then I have tasks that I do at a specific time each week. Monday morning I take about an hour to do my bookkeeping for the previous week, Friday afternoons I do my filing and any other administrative tasks that need doing.
These routines also incorporate the tasks I need to do as a mother, wife, housewife etc. For example, I don’t do a lot of work on Wednesday’s, if any, as that’s my shopping and outing day when I catch up with friends. I have one specific day for that as I found that I was losing too much time otherwise!
Keeping order and routines is essential to getting everything done. Write everything down, have a large calendar and write everything on it (yes, you will need to train your spouse and kids to do this), and make sure you keep time for your family as well. Strong boundaries are necessary at times to make sure your business doesn’t encroach too much on your family.
How many children do you have? How old are they?
We have one child, a daughter who has just turned 11.
When do you usually work?
I do most of my work while DD is at school and evenings after she has gone to bed. When I first started with the bookkeeping DD was only four and I would work in short bursts while she played nearby and then after she was asleep. I did a lot of very late nights and some early mornings back then.
During the School holidays I work when I can. I try to schedule coaching clients during times I know she won’t be here and if that’s not possible then I check with the client first and let them know that there may be interruptions. That hasn’t been an issue yet.
I also put her into Holiday Care a few days a week, which may not work for everyone. While one of the main motivations of being a WAHM is that we can be there for our kids during the holidays I found that after a few days of being home she would get bored. Holiday care gives her time with other kids, they do activities I wouldn’t or couldn’t do with her and it gives me a break as well as work time.
What is the best part of being a mompreneur? And the worst?
Being at home when DD comes home from school, having the flexibility to be able to go to school events when I’m needed. I’m totally passionate about what I do as well, no other job that I’ve ever had has motivated and excited me as much as coaching with WAHMs does.
Also, with the hours my husband has worked the last few years and his current overseas deployment, being able to work at home has dramatically reduced the amount of stress I’m under with having to manage everything myself. I’m truly not sure how well I would have coped if I had to go out to work every day.
The worst part is the lack of adult company. I go to school two nights a week, and part of my reason for doing that was to get out of the house to be able to talk to others. My husband is a man of few words and I learnt very early on in our marriage that I needed to keep my social life alive with girlfriends and not rely on him for long in-depth conversations. WAHMs absolutely must make sure they have a social outlet to get out of the house regularly.
What are your plans for the future of your business?
I’m actually in business recovery mode at present. 2007/08 were very hard years personally and that was reflected dramatically in my business. In 2007 we were dealing with Unexplainable Infertility, moving interstate where I knew no-one (military husband), my father-in-laws death and my husband was working horrible hours and hardly ever home. I ended up depressed and it took around 18 months to recover from that. 2008 was better, however after another interstate move, we spent a lot of time settling in and it took a lot of effort to get back to actually being able to work effectively on my business. I took on waaaay too much work and ended up taking an enforced sabbatical for the last three months of 2008 after my husband was deployed to the Middle East for six months –he’s still there until May 2009.
During my sabbatical I was able to sit back and really look at what I was doing, what I wanted and needed to do in my business. I started this year with a completely new plan and direction for my business, a new website and renewed energy. While taking the sabbatical was very hard on my ego at the time, it ended up being one of the best things I could have done business-wise.
Very simply, I intend to spend the first six months of this year laying a strong foundation for my business in regards to blogging and articles, info products, marketing and getting my name known in the WAHM community. After that, I plan to expand into teleseminars – free and paid, live speaking and training events (that makes me nervous in a good way!) and group coaching. I want to write a book for WAHMs within the next two years and am already drafting out suggestions and outlines for the content.
I’m also studying Auslan (Australian Sign Language) two nights a week. Eventually I want to begin coaching the Deaf in their own language. That’s a few years down the track though!
What advice would you give new work at home moms?
Plan everything out thoroughly first. Make sure you have enough funds before you begin. Take the amount you think you’ll need in your first year, double it and then double it again – that’s probably a more realistic figure! Plan for what you’ll do on the days your kids are sick, there’s a teacher’s strike, or school holidays. Stopping your business for those times is fine, as long as you’ve planned for it and have structures in place for getting back on track afterwards.
Above all else, have fun doing whatever your chosen business is, and remember that you’re working to benefit your family – they come first always.
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To get your discount (valid for the next 14 days) all you have to do is click on the link below to go to the website. At checkout, enter the code AHMB into the shopping cart and you will automatically be given 20% off!
WAHM Biz Builder – Where Business Growth and Personal Development Work Together
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