Statistics recently revealed by Intuit (published on the Enterprise Nation blog – click here for source article) reveal that the number one challenge for Freelancers is finding clients (41.8%), closely followed by project management (24.5%).

Yet, a whopping 64% would recommend Freelancing to a friend, with 50% stating they plan to carry on themselves.

The stats make interesting reading and indicate that despite the challenges, it is still considered to be a great career choice – especially for us mums.  The number one reason for Freelancing was to have a better work life balance.

So, the number one problem – finding clients! Not altogether surprising given that Freelancing figures continue to show a steady growth during these economically challenging times. (See PCG’s report, “UK Freelance Workforce” published for National Freelancer’s Day November 2011. http://www.pcg.org.uk/)

The Freelance market is fast becoming a saturated one and the only way to survive is to stay ahead of the game.  But as frantic Freelance mums juggling work and family, we barely have time to market ourselves properly and this is part of the problem. There’s a strong correlation between marketing and having plenty of clients to keep us going. Let your marketing slide and you’ll end up with peaks and troughs. Wouldn’t you prefer more work than you can handle?

Here are 5 top tips to get you started:

1.  Do your homework – know your customer: We’ve heard it all before, yet it is apparently the first mistake most of us make with selling our service. If your service doesn’t fit your client, they won’t buy. Who needs your services? What sector of the market are they? Have this clearly defined and you’ll have a better idea where to find them.

2.  Pick up the phone: This happens to be my favourite as it works for me as a writer. The ‘old fashioned’ approach of picking up the humble phone and courting your prospective clients is in my opinion by far the best approach. Few people like cold calling, but oddly enough, it works. And it works precisely because so few people bother to do it.

On the subject of approaching new prospects, Leif Kendall in his book “Brilliant Freelancer – Discover the power of your own success” suggests that the simple approach works best.  “Cold calling isn’t about being a hotshot sales person. It’s about making gentle introductions to new people who are likely to need your help.” \

Jot down who you would like to work for, and phone them. Karen Cornish (www.karencornish.co.uk ) freelance writer, editor and proofreader finds that the direct approach works best for her. “So far, all of my work has come via word of mouth and me phoning magazine editors directly”, she says. So give it a try. It won’t feel scary after the first time!

3.  Develop Credibility: Be known as the expert in your field. You can do this by guest blogging, writing articles for trade magazines, sending freebies to prospective clients, or why not go the whole hog and offer a one off presentation to show your prospects how your service should be done. People buy from whom they know and trust, so the quicker you can get your name out there and under their nose, the better.

4.  Be Different: Or in well-known marketing speak, be the “Purple Cow”. In an increasingly crowded market, the only way to survive is to carve a niche. I know of a Freelance Journalist who specialises in writing about dogs (Elaine Everest www.thewriteplace.org.uk ). It’s not the only thing she writes about, but she is well known for it. Or the Social Media Marketer who specialises in local food events and green issues (Twitter @DMinTransition). I don’t know if she considers herself a Freelancer, but it is an excellent example of a niche service.

5.  Collaborate: Who can you partner up with? Is there another Freelancer within the same field who could help you win a larger project? Sometimes partnering with others improves your credibility. But don’t partner up with anyone just for the sake of it. Think of this as forming strategic alliances to fulfill a common goal.

Small Business Mentor, Lorraine Allman (www.speedmentorcentral.co.uk), gives some excellent tips on this very subject. In her blog post “Collaborate to Accumulate”, she says, “be clear from the start about what you want from the collaboration in terms of furthering your own business objectives and make sure that these are complimentary (they don’t have to be the same) to the company you are partnering with. The whole point of collaboration is to achieve a very specific quantifiable goal (e.g. secure a public sector contract, increase client numbers) rather than just a general mutually agreeable relationship with no clear focus.”

While the temptation is to simply busy yourself with the busywork, these five simple yet effective marketing tips will help you hone your ability to find clients – fast.

Mary

Surround yourself with people you trust to tell you the truth at all times. You need that support network to help guide you, be a sounding board for you and above all to be a positive influence that you need to take your vision of the company forward.

Names:   Cheryl Ryder and Gillian McDonald

Names and ages of children:   Sophie 4, Craig 2, Callum 1

Name of Business:   Dribble Delights

Location:   Glasgow, Scotland

Website:  www.dribbledelights.co.uk

Crowdfunding website:   www.bloomvc.com/project/Dairy-Free

1. Tell us about your background

I’m a web designer and marketer and Gillian currently works in an International bank and has a background on HR. I’ve worked on some major brands in the past and have a real passion for marketing. Between the two of us we have some great business skills. Gillian has always had a passion for cooking and has that amazing ability of walking into a kitchen, having a few ingredients and flinging them all together and making something yummy!

Through having three Dairy Intolerant children and frustration at the lack of Dairy Free choice for baby food we decided to embark on our Dribble Delights journey together in October 2011. We are currently engaged with a top Scottish University to get our products to an internationally recognised Dairy Free standard as we know the importance of building up a relationship of trust with our target audience and hope to launch officially in April 2012.

2. How and why did you start your business?

Dribble Delights has been created to fulfil a need in the Free From market. Dribble Delights want to bring to the market place a range of baby main meals for ages 1 to 3 and a range of snacks, called Dribble Nibbles for ages 1-5, aimed at the parties and treats market.

Due to my personal experience of living with three Dairy Intolerant children I struggled in providing my children with a variety of foods. I fell into the trap of feeding my children ‘safe’ foods that I knew were good for their tummies but lacked variety. It didn’t get any easier for me as each child came along and the signs were there that they were Dairy Intolerant. It wasn’t until my sister stepped in to help that it got better. She has that amazing ability of stepping into a kitchen, flinging a few things together and making an amazing meal! She started to make loads of yummy food that my kids loved! The best was when she made a character princess birthday cake for my daughter’s 4th birthday. Sophie was ecstatic and so was I 

3. Were there any challenges? Either when starting up or now?

We’re still at the early stages of our business but with such amazing and exciting opportunities and challenges coming our way, 2012 is planned as the year of our official launch. We want to see our products in local supermarkets to try and help other parents with children who are Dairy Intolerant.

Our plans are ambitious but we know we are aiming high, you have to, and we’re doing this to help other parents and hopefully taking away some stress they may feel over nutrition, variety and taste of the foods they are feeding their children.

The biggest challenge we have right now is time management. There are never enough hours in the day to do everything we need to get done, but we work around this by planning everything to the max!

4. How did you fund your business?

We’re currently embarking on a Crowdfunding venture with Bloom VC. http://www.bloomvc.com/project/Dairy-Free

Crowdfunding is a new way of looking at getting essential funds for your company while offering ‘rewards’ or ‘incentives’ for people to make a promise of funds. The easiest way to look at it is you have a marketing avenue to engage with potential consumers of your products, while getting your marketing message out while raising those essential funds to take your company forward.

There are two ways to Crowdfund, through Venture Capitalists, where people get a share of equity of your company in exchange for funds or the way we decided to go through Bloom VC (Venture Catalyst) where we retain equity but offer rewards for promises.

We need to raise these funds to help for a variety of reasons. We want to engage with our target audience and we’re offering rewards for people to engage with our tasting panels. This is essential research for us and will help us decide what products to launch first.

We’re also offering rewards of actually naming up to 5 limited editions of our Dribble Nibble snacks, and for this we want to reach out and interact with our consumers. We are a company born out of frustration at the lack of foods for children that need to be Dairy Free and we want our consumers to feel ownership of Dribble Delights and to have an active role in making available what they want to see on supermarkets shelves.

7. What advice would you give to other mumpreneurs about funding?

Plan, Plan, Plan….Research…and Research some more. There are lots of opportunities out there but don’t expect them to find you. You need to look for them. Networking will also help in learning from others about their funding situations. Don’t be scared to talk about money, it’s probably the most important part of running a business after coming up with the idea in the first place!

8. How do you manage your working day with your childcare arrangements?

It’s a great juggling act, I have to be honest, but I have a great family network around me that makes all this possible. I also don’t get a lot of sleep! Seriously, though, we know that the hard work and determination will pay off in the long term and the children’s ages help too. Being so young they are great at adapting to situations and will happily spend afternoons at their grandparents and having all the same bedtime it gives me those few hours at night to really get things done.

Meetings can be interesting but I am honest with everyone and with them knowing my situation I don’t feel guilty when meeting’s get cut short as I leave to do the nursery run! I regularly have to answer phone calls then deal with feeding and changing nappies, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. This business gives me the chance to spend time with my children while trying to help others in the same situation.

9. What projects are you working on now/ have you worked on recently?

Being a mother who has lived with Dairy Intolerant children for the past 4 years, I know and understand exactly the feelings, the emotions and the life changes it can have on the family. It’s no longer easy to eat out, or visit friends, planning has become key and knowing where you are going and what food will be available has become a part of life.

Having this life experience makes Dribble Delights different from others as there is no dedicated complete range of Dairy Free main meals and snacks exclusively for ages 1-5. We know what this life is like and we want to help others in the same position. We’re planning to launch later this year.

We’re concentrating on our Crowdfunding at the moment but also keeping on track with our co-ordination of our academic research and gaining our internationally recognised standard of Dairy Free food.

10. Who or what inspires you?

My children are our inspiration and drive to make Dribble Delights a success. They make each day interesting and challenging as life is pretty busy with the ages that they are at. However, they are the harshest critics and if they don’t like the food they are pretty vocal about making sure we know about it!

11. What do you hope to be doing in five years’ time?

We hope to have, in five year’s time, our range of Dribble Delights baby main meals and Dribble Nibbles party snacks in major supermarket stores across the UK.

12. What advice would you give other mums thinking of starting a business?

Surround yourself with people you trust to tell you the truth at all times. You need that support network to help guide you, be a sounding board for you and above all to be a positive influence that you need to take your vision of the company forward.

Dream big, plan small bite size steps to take you forward and execute the plan to precise detail but sometimes you just gotta take that leap of faith!

Believe and Do!

According to the latest Word Audit Report carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (Jan 2012), the rise in self-employment is less down to a zeal for entrepreneurism, but more likely a desperate attempt to avoid unemployment.

Some of the findings of the report:

• By the spring of 2010 self-employment was higher than at the start of the recession in 2008 and by the autumn of 2011 had reached a record level of 4.14 million (14.2 per cent of total employment). At the latter date, the level of self-employment was 0.3 million (+8 per cent) higher than in spring 2008, compared with a corresponding fall of 0.7 million (-3 per cent) in the number of employees in work.
• The additional self-employed since 2008 are unlike self-employed people as a whole in terms of gender, hours of work, occupation and sector of employment.
• Although well over two thirds of self-employed people are men, women account for more than half (184,000, or 60 per nt) of the net rise in self-employment since the start of the recession.
• Whereas over two-thirds of self-employed people work more than 30 hours per week, almost 9 in 10 (88.8%) of the additional self-employed people since the start of the recession work less than 30 hours per week
• Almost a quarter of the UK’s self-employed people work in construction but the number of self-employed construction workers is currently lower than in 2008. By contrast, sectors with relatively small shares of self-employment – notably education, information and communications, financial and insurance services and public administration, defence and social security – are among those which have seen the biggest proportional increases in self-employment in recent years.
• Skilled trades-people – typified by ‘white van man’ – have the single largest share of self-employment (almost 30%) but account for less than 1 per cent of the net rise in self-employment since the start of the recession. People performing elementary (i.e. unskilled) occupations account for more than 20 per cent of the net increase, with those in administrative and secretarial and personal services occupations also registering large proportional increases.

Dr John Philpott, Chief Economic Adviser at the CIPD, said:

“The typical self-employed person in Britain today remains a skilled tradesman, manager or professional working long hours on the job, but since the start of the recession the ranks of the self-employed have been swelled by people from a much wider array of backgrounds and occupations, including many ‘handy-men’ without skills, picking-up whatever bits and pieces of work are available.

It’s good that these self-employed ‘odd jobbers’ are helping to keep the lid on unemployment in a very weak labour market but their emergence hardly suggests a surge in genuine entrepreneurial zeal. While some of these newly self-employed may make a long-term commitment to being their own boss, or at least gain the necessary experience to do so, it’s likely that most would take a job with an employer if only they could find one.”

A copy of  “Work: The rise in self-employment” is available on request from the CIPD Press Office.

I personally disagree with the notion that self-employed people are desperate, unskilled and have no choice!  In particular, the report has ignored the many of us who choose self-employment or freelancing as a viable means of flexible working.    We’re self-employed by choice and helping to generate economic growth in the UK.

What’s your take on this.  Do you agree with Dr. Philpott’s comment that newly self-employed people would most likely take a job with an employer if they could find one?  What’s your experience of being self-employed?  Love it, hate it, ready to jack it in?

I’d be interested in your comment.

It’s a common problem for us as Freelancers – at least when we first start out.  How much should I charge?

And sorry to break it to you ladies, but this is largely a girly problem.  Time and again, when comparisons are made, we tend to undercharge or give away too much of our time compared to our male counterparts.  (Perhaps it’s the Venutian in us. We favour nurturing and caring over the more practical, tinkering of our Martian mates).

If you have ever struggled with charging your true worth, you’ll know how debilitating it can be in business.  It is purportedly one of the main reasons why female owned businesses struggle (I emphasise one of the reasons, not THE reason).  It could be the death of your business if you don’t get a handle on it.  

So, are you new to Freelancing?  If you are, how much should you charge? 

Here are two very simple tips which can be applied to any sector of the Freelance market that you work in:

1. Be results orientated.

It is so important to be results orientated.   Your clients are not interested in the job that you are doing, but what you are achieving.  Essentially: 

• What’s in it for them and
• What problem are you solving for them.  

So, if you feel nervous about charging your true worth, create a long list of the results your clients get when they use your services.

Example:  You’re not simply a copywriter.  You produce exciting copy that leaps off the page.  Or you produce winning copy that converts to sales.  Or even better still, “By using my copywritng services, my clients doubled their response rates.”

Exanple:  You’re not just a Virtual Assistant.  What problem are you solving?  You’re  saving clients’ time.  Now try quantifying it.  How much time?  How much time each week?  How long have you been saving them that amount of time each week?  

Which statement do you think sounds more powerful?   “By using my services, 20 clients saved on average 100 hours each month”   or  “I’m a Virtual Assistant with 20 clients on my books”?   

2. Research, compare and add a bit more.

If you are new to the freelancing market, you may feel more comfortable charging roughly the same as others in your market or geographical area (and there really is no hard and fast rule about that).  But it is absolutely imperative that as you gain more experience, your rates move and grow with you.

Just think, what message are you giving by always charging the same? Indeed, by charging the same as everyone else, aren’t you simply saying that you are the same as everyone else?  Think niche.

Check what your competitors are charging.  Now go back to your list and determine what your niche is (and by the way, the value you are giving your clients + your unique take on it = your niche), then charge a bit more. You’re worth it! 

While you may be wary of inflating your worth, by charging more, you are making the statement that you are worth more.  People really do respect and value something when they have invested more in it.

Mary

Why not subscribe to our quarterly magazine, with more Freelance tips written by our experienced Freelance contributors.

Workingmums.co.uk is holding its second London exhibition, on Tuesday 27th March 2012 at the Business Design Centre in Islington – and this year it will be bigger and better!  It’s a unique event on everything related to flexible working.

This year’s event will feature even more space for more employers, franchises and support organisations to exhibit and guide women back into the world of work and small business.  Key note speaker, Joanna Gosling, BBC Newsreader and author of Simply Wonderwoman will open the event before a range of interactive seminars begin, advising on returning to work to setting up your own business.

The first exhibition, held on 8th March 2011 (aptly held on International Women’s Day) was a roaring success. Over 4,000 people pre-registered on the website before the event and on the day the centre was buzzing with activity.

Many employers had stands, including John Lewis, Santander, H&M, Hobbs, UBS and sponsors Deloitte. Their aim was offer job opportunities to and meet up with talented and experienced professional women who want to work flexibly or in a family friendly way.

There were also a host of support and advice organisations on hand, including Working Families, the National Childminding Association and The Daycare Trust and for those keen to retrain, Home Learning College led a section on courses and training.

Workingmums.co.uk‘s founder Gillian Nissim welcomed everyone to the event, and introduced TV presenter Fiona Phillips who gave the keynote speech this morning about her experiences of balancing a challenging job, two small children and two parents with Alzheimer’s.

Fiona’s session was followed by a series of seminars on everything from starting a business to negotiating flexible working, with top class speakers giving advice. Microsoft and Lloyds Bank also gave sessions on starting a business and CV and Interview Advisers provided a free CV clinic.

To pre-register for the event and to order your FREE Tickets, please click here

Without a doubt, one of the first things you learn when you move from working in an office to working from home is that it’s a lonely life. If you’re used to the buzz of an office it can be hard to adjust to a new, solitary working day. Without regular periods of human interaction, depression can creep in and home workers often find they end up completely demotivated.

A 20-year study published in May 2011 by Tel Aviv University found that office workers with weak social interactions had a significantly higher mortality rate than those with stronger social ties. Also low levels of social engagement have been linked to dementia in later life.

It is easy as a home worker to let yourself slip into the life of a recluse and accept loneliness as a consequence of your lifestyle choice, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, getting out and socialising will improve your mental health and do wonders for your business too! Here are some ideas on how to boost your social life.

• If you think you are too busy working to have a social life then you’re just going to have to fit it in somewhere. Making time for friends and family is just as important to your success as the other things on your ‘to do’ list, so schedule it into your working week. Go out for dinner, or perhaps join working friends for lunch once a month. If there are friends who you only ever seem to converse with via email, try picking up the phone every now and then to have a proper catch up with a familiar voice.
• If you really think you can’t spend the time away from work then local business and networking groups are a guilt free way to socialise. They are a great way to meet like-minded people from the same, and different, industries so you can exchange ideas and hopefully get some new clients in the process. The Chamber of Commerce is a good starting point for finding networking events near you. To find details of your local Chamber visit www.britishchambers.org.uk.
• Hobbies and interests always have good scope for social interaction. Join the gym, a local sports team, knitting group, book club, or sign up for an evening class to meet like-minded people. Learning a new language or taking a computing course will also give you an extra skill for your business.
• If you are looking to widen your contacts across the country, then attending conferences or seminars in your field of expertise are a great way to achieve this.
• As a freelancing mum you are probably already in the very fortunate position of having a ready-made network of interesting women. I’ve found that children can also be great ice-breakers!
• If you have some time to spare and want to do something worthwhile in the pursuit of social interaction, why not volunteer with a charity? Charities are crying out for help and you could spend just a couple of hours a week doing something different and meeting new people. It also looks great on your CV!
• Co-working or office sharing is a great way to get that workplace camaraderie and banter back without having to resort to getting a ‘proper’ job. You could advertise for local home workers who may like to share an office, or perhaps you already know some freelancers who would make great co-workers?

If office sharing is not possible or not for you, it can break the solitude of the day to work for an hour or two in a local café. Many have free Wi-Fi these days and for the price of a couple of cups of coffee you can work uninterrupted while enjoying the bustle of human life around you. Sometimes you don’t even have to talk to people – it’s just nice to know they’re there!

A whopping 97% of the British population, making resolutions does not lead to the real changes they are looking for in their lives.

Often we set the same goals time after time, and do the exact same things over and over to try to achieve them…… not a great recipe for success.

So, do you want to know what the 3% who succeed are doing to achieve their resolutions and make positive changes in their lives?

Here are some techniques which can make a difference to how successful you are at achieving your goals this year.

• First of all be specific about what you want to achieve. If you want to” lose weight”, then just losing 1lb would satisfy that goal…… but that’s probably not what you mean, so be brave and put in some details. How much weight? By when? Focus on and visualise the slim, healthy, energised body that you really desire and get specific about it.
• It helps to write your goal down. And not just the goal, but the details as well. Make your goal a positive statement, and write it somewhere where you will regularly catch sight of it. In this way you will get frequent reminders of what it is you’re aiming for. If you want to go one step further, draw or stick some pictures alongside your goal to show yourself what you will have when you achieve it.
• Invest some time in pinpointing exactly what is important to you about your goal. Don’t set out to achieve things that other people want for you, you have to want it for yourself….. understanding what’s important to you will help you to remain focused…..

SUBSCRIBE FOR FULL ARTICLE this is an edited version of the full article, featured in Work Your Way Magazine Issue 3.  To order a single copy or to ensure you never miss a copy by subscribing, please click on the subscribe link in the sidebar.

The government has recently announced a new initiative to help women business owners with free mentoring.  5,000 women are to be trained to become mentors along with a women’s business council.

We think this is great news for new female start-ups, particularly as it comes after news that the numer of women out of work is at a 23 year high!

We’ll keep our eyes peeled for further details so that we can post them here for you.

In the meantime, we thought we’d give you details of other start-up intiatives that we know of.

Young Mums

For anyone under the age of 30, Shell LiveWIRE supports young entrepreneurs with help, advice, monthly and yearly awards.  For further details, visit the website at www.shell.live-wire.org

The Prince’s Trust is another organisation which helps younger people (up to the age of 30).  They also offer downloadable packs from www.princestrust.org.uk

Older Workers

With redunandancy such a sad and common fact nowadays, many mature women are now faced with having to consider self-employment as a very real and viable option to trying to find another job.  Additionally, for many over 50, there is that nagging thought that once out of work, we’ll never find profitable employment again before we claim our pension!  So, for Olderpreneurs, PRIME, backed by Prince Charles, is the only organsation to help the over 50s set up in business for themsleves.  They have free workshops, networking events and accredited advisors.  They also run a loan scheme which helps those who cannot find help from the high street.  For more details, visit the website at www.prime.org.uk

SUBSCRIBE FOR FULL ARTICLE this is an edited version of the full article, featured in Work Your Way Magazine Issue 3.  To order a single copy or to ensure you never miss a copy by subscribing, please click on the subscribe link in the sidebar.

Come to think of it, I used to have regular detentions for not handing in homework. It must be Karma out to get me!

How can parents help their kids to get homework done and handed in, and how will this help them to become better workers in the future? Our family already has most of the recommended tactics in place:

A designated homework time. I usually let my boys play and have supper before homework time. I am considering changing that, and having the boys do their homework the moment they come in from school, incorporating a snack. Perhaps they are too tired to work later in the day? A designated time helps everyone to focus and be better organized. They say that it takes three months for a habit to ‘stick’. I know that my mornings are definitely my habitual work times, when I focus best;  if I am not working at nine o’clock I start to feel like something is amiss! And this is purely because I made myself work every morning, for months, until it became a habit.

All the required tools in one place. The kitchen/office is a good homework spot here. There are pens, paper and uncluttered spaces galore for working. I can get on with washing the dishes or chopping veg, while keeping an eagle eye on boys who would rather be painting one another with tip-ex than revising Latin or getting that project on the Civil War. Whoever is working in the kitchen, they can reach for a dictionary, a calculator or a thesaurus, which are all within arm’s reach.

I always try to remember that it’s not MY homework. It’s easy to make homework the parent’s responsibility, and spend hours nagging, looking over their shoulders, and making corrections. But that only teaches the child not to take responsibility for their actions (or non-actions). Getting a detention now for failing to hand in homework is a good thing, because later on, the stakes will be much higher. My son needs to live through the consequences of his disorganization and learn from them, so that hopefully he will be better organized in the future. If I don’t send in a freelance assignment when it is due, the repercussions will be worse than ‘Detention’!

Crime and Punishment? In general, I don’t punish. But I think the PS2 will be taking a time-out until I get a glowing report from my son’s teacher.

Obviously, my son needs more than just the time and space to get his work done. This week, I will be using more great freelancing tactics to help him: I’ll be researching online to find better methods for my son, and I’ll be asking the experts – His teachers, his dad, and other parents like you! Spill it, freelancers. How can I teach great work habits to my kids?

I was excited about setting up my home office in the spare bedroom of our new house and for the first couple of months everything was great. I spoke to colleagues as often as I could over the telephone but soon found it wasn’t the same as exchanging banter across an office and I now lived too far away to join in their social plans. I worked the same long hours and began to notice that aside from walking the dog at lunchtime I rarely left the house. The village we lived in seemed nice but I didn’t know anyone who lived locally and had no opportunity to make new friends.

Very soon I began to feel cut off and when my elderly dog eventually passed away I had little reason to leave the house at all. I was miserable, lonely and lacking in motivation.

This all changed when I was offered some desk space in my husband’s office. The managing director had been a friend of ours for years and was happy for me to set myself up in the corner. Suddenly it was like the sun had come out from behind a cloud. Once again I was included in a tea-making rota and got to join in ‘water cooler chat’ despite my co-workers’ line of business being completely different to mine. I thrived and my work production increased as a result.

I then became pregnant and when my daughter was a year old I left full time employment in favour of freelancing. This greater flexibility meant that I didn’t need to be sat at my desk all day.

My daughter is now at pre-school three mornings a week and I actually look forward to the solitude and silence of working in the house on my own these days! However, I know that when she starts school I’ll be rethinking my working arrangements once again and probably looking for new co-workers.

Many jobs these days involve a laptop computer and little else so you can be completely portable and flexible. The great thing about co-working or office sharing is that you get to enjoy human company and all the buzz of a busy office without any of the politics that come with working for the same business. In fact, sharing with people from different occupations could bring the benefits of different viewpoints and you might be able to exchange skillsets. By being visible in a shared office and getting to know other professionals you are also likely to increase your chances of finding work.

If you don’t know of any other homeworkers, you might be able to find local desk spaces through the official co-working wiki at http://coworking.pbworks.com.    The website also has a lot of useful information and links for people interested in trying out co-working.

Before Christmas a friend of mine, who runs her own cake business, was lamenting the fact that now she is self-employed she no longer gets to enjoy a work Christmas meal. We decided that next year we’ll get together with other self-employed friends and have a party of our own, celebrating the freedom and flexibility of working for yourself.

If you are a naturally sociable person who thrives on company it is definitely worth considering co-working or office sharing to save your sanity.

Karen