Becoming a parent can turn your world upside down. For many mums, the idea of going back to the workplace is no longer something they want to do. Perhaps the cost of childcare is prohibitive, or maybe you just want to spend more time with your baby. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that most of us still need to earn a living.
Many women find that setting up a business to run from home is the perfect solution. You can work flexibly around the needs of your children. Instead of working nine to five, you can work five to nine if you want to!
But what to do? Start with what you know and figure out if it could transfer into a money-making venture. That may be taking transferable skills from employment and putting them into a freelance context, or taking a passion and producing a good or service for others who share that interest. For lots of mums that passion is their children and luckily your passion could help you enthuse and tap into the vast mum economy of other parents.
Here are some business ideas that could just work for you.
1. Baby development classes
Wherever you live in the country you will be able to tap into local classes aimed at baby development. These include baby massage, baby yoga, music and singing, soft play, parenting and much more. To support those opportunities there are training courses and franchise opportunities that can give you all you need to get started. Just make sure that you do some market research to check there is adequate potential demand before you invest in any kit up front.
2. Gifts and crafts
New babies are big business. From the baby shower to the welcome to the world moment the demand for original gift ideas for the new arrival has never been higher. If you are crafty perhaps there is something that you could produce differently or better to help meet that demand. Ideas abound, from personalised announcement cards, to hand-made baby blankets, mobiles, nursery artwork, care hampers, and so on. With craft platforms like Etsy it is very easy to market test different ideas.
3. Freelancing
If you’ve developed handy transferable skills in work, then you might be able to offer them on a freelance basis. You can use your skillset to do gigs for different clients without the time constraints and fixed rate of working for a company. Freelancing ensures that you control all aspects of work, from when you start to what requests you accept to work on. The main kind of flexible home-based work that’s available for freelancers includes virtual assistants, content writing, graphic design, website design, and social media management. Those are all areas that you can get up to speed with online training courses as well if necessary.
4. Data Entry
Data entry is a great work-from-home business opportunity. Not only can you do this job on your personal computer but you also do not have to exert any kind of effort to think or deal with conflicts. You simply have your device in front of you and you type away. Depending on how much data you need to digitalize, you can finish all of your work within the hour and have more time to spend with your loved ones.
5. Personal Assistant
Before the age of the internet, being a personal assistant meant having to go to the office and be physically present during meetings to ensure that you can keep up with the workload.
However, nowadays being a personal assistant can be done remotely since there are different programs and apps you can use to maintain constant contact with your boss, sync calendars so that they are up to date and easily take notes by either listening to recordings of meetings or attending the meetings through video-conferencing software. A PA business will get you a ton of money in no time because everyone knows that a businessman is nothing without a PA to facilitate life.
6. Remote Translation
If you are fluent in more than one language, then you might want to consider starting a translation business. Although machine translation has advanced and most people just look up different words on translation apps if they get stuck on a word, actual translators are required for translating documents properly, and of course, simultaneously interpreting during conferences. More companies have decided to outsource work to remote translators rather than getting a full-time translator since it is more cost-efficient.
These are just some of the best business opportunities that can work for mums who want to work around their children. You don’t need to choose whether to focus on work or childcare. With the right business idea, it is possible to have a life that balances the best of both.