Home business workbook for moms
Andrea Coutu from ConsultantJournal.com has written a guide directed at moms who are looking for ideas to start their own home business. If becoming a “mompreneur” is something that intrigues you, but you don’t know where to get started…then this home business idea workbook is for you. Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur – For Moms will help you take stock of your own interests, skills, experiences, and personal strengths.
Using the exercises and questionnaires in the workbook, you can get ideas for possible home businesses in line with your unique skills, interests and background. Once you have analysed this, the workbook helps you to start determining what kinds of home businesses would be right for you.
And of course, you need to assess your entrepreneurial spirit. As Andrea wisely points out, starting any business or financial endeavor involves some risk and may not be the best fit for you.
Strengths of Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur – For Moms
This workbook is strong on the process of self discovery. Andrea provides lots of worksheets and information on various fields of work – the type of information that you can probably find in any book on entrepreneurship. But there’s two things that set Andrea’s workbook apart from the others:
1) she has a knack for simplifying information, so that you have enough but not too much
2) she takes your role as a parent into consideration. Throughout the workbook she reminds you to consider how much time you realistically can devote to your home business.
35 Suggestions for work from home businesses
I really like the section that provides 35 suggestions for work from home businesses. These are good practical suggestions, often supported by examples from home businesses that she knows about. Here’s just a few of the suggestions:
- Buy an existing business. Find a business owner who’s looking to retire and buy out their business or client list. Dentists, doctors and accountants discovered this trick years ago.
- Cover a market gap. Are home improvement stores too busy to offer decent project advice? Set up shop as a home renovation consultant.
- Fill a shortage. Too few carpenters? Become a carpentry project manager.
- Capitalize on a switch in the market, such as when people move to HDTV and need help with mounting the TV on a wall.
- Invent a new service. Some young men in my city started a holiday lighting planning and installation service. The idea wasn’t new to the world, but it was new to our city.
Another excellent section in Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur – For Moms is the part about how to overcome or mitigate barriers to entrepreneurship. As Andrea points out, you need to have entrepreneurial spirit, but you don’t have to be a hard-selling wheeler-dealer type to succeed as an entrepreneur. Andrea lists the following barriers to successful entrepreneurship and provides practical advice on how to overcome those barriers.
Potential barriers to a successful home business
- Not a leader
- Disorganized
- Not competitive
- Lacking in energy
- Not a risk taker
- Need money right away
- Hate administration
- Lacking family support
- Need better interpersonal skills
- Bad credit
Weaknesses of this workbook
If this workbook has a weakness, it’s in the market research and competition area. From my experience coaching small business owners, the biggest mistake they make is choosing a home business idea that no one wants to pay money for. Or going into a field where there is too much competition. These are important parts of your research and are barely touched upon in the workbook. So be aware of that.
Overall review of Discover Your Inner Entrepreneur – For Moms
I like this workbook and would recommend it to parents who are at the beginning stage of thinking about what kind of home business they would like to start. You can purchase Discover Your Inner Mompreneur here.
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