Defining My Place, Part III: Don’t Advertise WAHMiness
June 8, 2009So furthering this little series here, I’m moving to the next bullet point: don’t advertise your “WAHM”iness (or “WAHD”iness, if that’s the case.) I’ve read several articles on this piece of advice, and some of the advice I read was so far against letting people know you work from a home office that there are actually CD’s available that you can play in the background when you answer your phone. Said CD’s sound like the chatter of a busy office in the background, so that the caller would have no choice but t believe you worked in a regular 9-5 office job.
Now, I don’t take it this far. All of my clients know that I work from a home office. They know I’m a WAHM. What I don’t typically do is advertise this fact, mainly because I really don’t think it matters. however, there’s a lot of people out there to whom it does matter, and it matters a great deal – and it’s on both sides of the fence. I actually know people who refuse to work with someone who is not a parent, and I know others that – when they find out you work from home – they think you’re lazy and “fly by night.”
Now, this post, I guess, isn’t so much about me wondering what I should do about this situation, because I actually already know what to do, and I do it. I don’t use the fact that I work from home as an advertising point. IMO, it’s pointless. Either the person at the other end is going to hold it against you, or they won’t (and want to swap kiddie stories all the time). Quite frankly, if someone falls deeply into either of those ends, then we probably won’t work well together.
Now, I don’t withhold this information either. At some point, a client is going to hear my son wander in while I’m on the phone with them asking repeatedly who I’m talking to, because if it’s “Nana” or “Aunt Jenny”, then he really, really wants to tell them about the new episode of Iron Man and how awesome it was. I find it much better for everyone all the way around if I don’t hide the fact that I work from a home office. Deception – even by omission – is not a good practice.
P.O. Box 46
I’ve been thinking about this post this week, after crossing paths with a notoriously unreliable WAHM and then commenting to someone that “I think I must be the only female business owner in this town who isn’t a bored mum with a rich husband.”
Unfortunately a lot of WAHMs are just that. They are running hobby businesses, but they like the play-acting of being professional businesswomen. They don’t *have* to work, whereas you and me work because we have a passion for what we do and electricity bills to pay. The gulf in understanding between these two types of WAHMs can’t be crossed.
I think, then, it’s important not to play up one’s WAHMiness if only because so many WAHMs present a very poor image for it. If businesses sometimes take a dim view of WAHMs, is it any wonder?
That’s true. I will say one thing though – although I do have bills to pay, my husband actually handles that aspect of our lives. We aren’t rich, but I KNOW I’m lucky in the fact that my family doesn’t need me to work.
That being said, I also know where my desire for wanting to work stems from: my mother. She, too, has run her own business for almost 40 years now. ALl of the stuff i know and desire is pretty much because I grew up with it. If my business is as successful as my mother’s, then I will consider my own business to be a success.
But I do think the difference between me and the “play-acting” version of things is that I completely understand (and am very thankful) that I don’t need to work. But if I didn’t, I don’t know what I’d do with myself. I don’t have to work because I need the money, I have to work because if I didn’t, I would literally go insane. This business is much more to me that just “something to do” – it’s my passion, my creative outlet, and because it brings in money for extra income (which, in this economy, has been relied on more than it ever has in the past) I don’t feel like I’m not pulling my own weight in the home. I do this because I love it. If I didn’t have it, I don’t know what I would do.
I don’t think knowing whether it is that I work from home, with kids, is really that important of a selling point that I need to use it to market myself. Personally, me personal life is that – personal. A client doesn’t need to know unless that actually need to know. Just like … doe sit matter if you’re gay? Do you need to play up the fact that you are gay to get business? No? Then why bring it up? Why market that? Same thing if you’re a minority – do you need to market that fact? Or would you rather be hired on your own merits? For me, I’d rather be hired, and market, the idea that I do what I do because I love what I do, and I’m good at it. Nothing else should matter.