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EPnews -- from The Entrepreneurial Parent
a work-family resource for home-based entrepreneurs
@ http://www.en-parent.com
April 25, 2001
Lisa Roberts, Editor:
epideas@en-parent.com
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_______________CONTENTS_______________
... The Funny Things EP Kids
Say & Do
... National Work@Home Father's
Day -- June 15, 2001
... EP Times -- "Re-connecting,
Regrouping and Recouping in Recessionary
Times" by Lisa Roberts
... What's Happening at EP
... Help Wanted!
________________________________________
Editorial Note: EPnews is published
on the 4th Wednesday of every month,
except during the summer (at which time it is OPTIONAL!). The
Entrepreneurial
Parent web site (en-parent.com)
is a hub of community and career resources
for Entrepreneurial Parents -- come visit often. Welcome all
new subscribers!
_____________________________________
THE FUNNY THINGS EP KIDS SAY & DO!
Submitted by EPnews Subscriber,
Holly Upson, WP & DTP
(mailto:hupson@rochester.rr.com):
On one particular night I was
having a hard time convincing my 5-year old to
stay in bed. My husband finally told him if he got out of bed
one more time,
he would lose his Game Boy privileges for the next day. Not 15
minutes later,
my son came downstairs, so my husband followed-up on his warning,
reminding
him that there'd be no Game Boy the next day. To this my son
replied, "But
you said if I got OUT of bed...I wasn't even IN bed!"
======
Why work at home? So you can
hear the funny things your EP Kids say
throughout the day. Share with the EP Community something your
child said or
did recently that made you smirk, giggle, or LOL. Send your submission
via
e-mail to:enparent@aol.com.
And if you need a stockpile of smiles to get you
through your EP day, check out Grace Housholder's heartwarming
"The Funny
Kids Project" at www.funnykids.com.
On those stressed-out EP days, you'll be
glad you did!
Grace's coffee table book is
also available at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0963871536/theentrepreneuri
______________________________________________
WORK@HOME DAD CONTEST FOR FATHER'S DAY
ATTN. EP DADS:
June 15, 2001, is National Work@Home
Father's Day. Scheduled for the Friday
before Father's Day each year, it is the one day each year set
aside to honor
and celebrate those working fathers who have elected to work
from home either
as home-based entrepreneurs or teleworkers as a means to improve
family
interaction and professional satisfaction.
In its inaugural year, the event
this year will feature the contest, "Why I
Work@Home: A Dad's View." Entrants must submit a 250-word
essay on how
working from home has improved the balance between their family
and
professional lives. Winners will receive a "Father's World"
T-shirt; a copy
of the award-winning CD-ROM, Your Profitable Home Business Made
E-Z, and the
book Safe@Home: Seven Keys to Home Office Security, (both from
Jeff Zbar).
Entries must be mailed to P.O.
Box 8263 Coral Springs, Fla., 33075-8263, or
emailed to contest@fathersworld.com,
and postmarked or emailed by June 1,
2001. For complete details and rules, visit www.fathersworld.com/contest.
_________________________________
EP TIMES -- AN EDITORIAL
"Re-connecting, Regrouping
and Recouping in Recessionary Times"
© 2001 by Lisa Roberts
As my kids would say, "Are
we there yet?" Has the New-Economy-Fallout
Recession officially hit the U.S.? In my case there's no need
to check
newspaper headlines -- email and voicemail have already relayed
that message
loud and clear. For the past two years, my top revenue stream
has been
freelance writing, and within three weeks I heard from my top
clients that my
steady "gigs" were over -- one from a re-org and the
other from a company
closing its door for good. My reaction?
Hmmm...after denial comes anger,
then... No, actually, I surprisingly skipped
from disappointment straight to acceptance. Real fast. In fact,
lately I've
been waking up with a whole lot less on my mind, and I'm feeling
more
physically healthy and professionally hopeful than I have been
in a long
time. Could be because amidst this news I also happily turned
in the
manuscript for "The Entrepreneurial Parent: How to Earn
Your Living at Home
in the Internet Age and Still Enjoy Your Family, Your Life and
Your Work" --
which for the past 9 months has alternated between being the
most exciting
and the most overwhelming project I have tackled in a very long
time.
Ironically enough, the publisher's deadline was April 15 -- a
date I had
requested last year to ride the productive energy of annual tax
season, but
which I didn't realize at the time happened to fall on Easter
Sunday in 2001.
Boxing the ms. up and shipping it off on Good Friday, being free
to shift
focus wholeheartedly to my family and the holiday weekend the
next morning,
set my heart and spirit at ease. It could even be said that I
felt like a
part of me has been "resurrected."
And now that all this has come
and gone, the subtitle to the EP book carries
with it a whole new dimension to me. With the "Internet
Age" currently
fraught with large holes to trip over or fall into, how does
an EP "still
enjoy one's family, life and work"? What does an EP -- an
independent worker
who can be subject to *several* "pink slips" all at
once -- do during
recessionary times? I have a three-pronged approach, which I've
already set
into action. In my case, I am:
---> Re-connecting.
Among my "2001 New Years
Resolutions" was the following item:
"Meet all my deadlines this
year without stressing everybody else out."
Needless to say I failed this
resolution miserably. I don't remember another
time in my EP-life that I have made a bigger mess of things in
the wake of a
heavy EP-workload. Over the winter months I have angered, frustrated,
insulted or otherwise miffed just about anyone who had to come
within the
perimeter of my calendar -- relatives, friends, neighbors, academic
teachers,
extra-curric. teachers, doctors, home improvement vendors, you
name it. All
this commotion was not due to head-on confrontations but rather
careless
scheduling conflicts. As I laser-focused on deadline dates, I
feel like a
1001 other dates fell through the cracks. And every time I realized
I slipped
-- from a missed birthday party to the night I forgot it was
my turn to
homeschool my son's religious ed group (!) -- my heart dropped
a beat.
So my first "order of business"
after this last deadline crunch is no
business at all. It's reconnecting with everyone around me. It's
cleaning up
after my mess -- not with broad strokes but slowly, one phone
call at a time.
And most important, it's earning my trust back in *myself* before
I could
expect the same of anyone else.
---> Regrouping.
The week after Easter my four
kids were off on Spring break. The week prior
to Easter I hadn't time to even open my mail. Everything, and
I mean
everything that was on a piece of paper and did not relate to
office work
piled up on the dining room table - school papers (from three
different
schools!), mail, magazines, newspapers, library books, receipts,
cards and
invitations, and more. When my mother invited us to stay a day
or two during
vacation at her house in Long Island, I found a big empty cardboard
box and
dumped my whole dining room (minus the furniture) into it. I
could barely
lift the box into the trunk of the van. Once at my Mom's, I requested
two
hours of time alone in my old bedroom, dumped the box's contents,
and started
sorting,Ķ.and dumping. By the time we packed the car
up to return home, the
box was filled with organized piles of information, clipped or
rubber-banded
together. The box felt lighter, and so did I.
Some day soon I will take that
now-empty-again box and fill it back up with
my office papers. They too have piled up, with a good many no
longer useful
as I shift from building on prior assignments and editor relationships
to
acquiring new ones. The sooner I start organizing and dumping,
the even
lighter I will feel. As a long-time EP, the process of "regrouping"
is a
familiar one, and a cycle of development I consider professional
progress.
And keeping an eye on progress is key to turning transitional
times into just
that.
---> Recouping.
Yesterday it was an unseasonal
85 degrees out. A friend and I headed for the
town beach and took in an afternoon of sun while my five-year
old tried to
bury himself in the sand. After a long winter of pressing deadlines,
professional upheavals and a calendar heavy with missed appointments,
a
"sabbatical" of sorts feels just about right,Ķat
least right now. My primary
agenda for this Spring and Summer is to recoup -- spending the
Spring in
celebration of my son's First Communion and three children's
graduations, and
the last Summer of being a mom to an official "pre-schooler"
-- and then
charging full-speed ahead into the Fall work season when all
my children (or
nearly all) will be in full-time school.
While I am aware that I am lucky
enough to have the option of *not* working
for a few weeks or even months, I am also aware that as a family
we've become
dependent on my second income and so my "sabbatical"
needs to be short-lived.
However, before diving into another cycle of enjoying my "work"
I need to
take a well-earned stretch of time out to enjoy my "family"
and my "life."
After all, that's what our book...and being an EP...is all about.
==========
Care to comment? Has the recent
downturn in the economy hit your bottom line?
Share your "regrouping/recouping" stories/solutions
with fellow EPs -- email
"enparent@aol.com".
(Unless otherwise indicated, all submissions will be
considered for publication in the next issue of EPnews, subject
to editing
for clarity or space.) Thank you!
======
Lisa Roberts is the mother of
four, Site Producer of The Entrepreneurial
Parent and author of "How to Raise A Family & A Career
Under One Roof: A
Parent's Guide to Home Business" (Bookhaven Press, 1997).
"EP Times" is a
continuation of the "Home Business Diary" essays originally
created for her
book, which is available for purchase at:
http://en-parent.com/order.htm
and through Amazon, at:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0943641179/theentrepreneuri
_________________________________
WHAT'S HAPPENING AT EP
---> Help Wanted!
For a long time now I have considered
the possibility of delegating the task
of building the National Association of Entrepreneurial Parents
(NAEP) to a
fellow EP who feels as strongly as I do that such a membership
organization
is vital to the EP Community -- both online and off. As I re-evaluate
my
personal workload, business goals and professional aspirations,
I would like
to invite anyone interested in striking up a dialogue with me
to come
forward. For anyone interested, please consider and/or answer
the following
questions, and then write an email to me at "enparent@aol.com"
with your full
contact info, including phone #. (For more information about
NAEP, please
visit http://en-parent.com/NAEP.htm).
Thanks in advance to all those
interested!
1. What is your current business
(or business plans), and how long have you
been working at home?
2. What skills do you currently
use that would lend itself well to building a
national membership organization? What skills/talents do you
have in your
past (whether work or volunteer experiences) that you may like
to re-connect
with and/or strengthen?
3. What is it about NAEP that
excites you?
4. Please name the Top 3-5 ways
a national membership organization for
entrepreneurial parents could benefit your own home employment
+ parenting
workload.
That's it -- looking forward
to hearing from you!
---> EP-T's are finally in!!!
Wear your "EP-T" out
on errands, at the gym, to pick up your kids at school,
and anywhere else you can think of that can lead to conversation
about your
home biz. (Just remember to carry a few business cards in your
back pocket
whenever you wear it!)
All NAEP members who requested
an EP T-shirt will be finding theirs in their
mailbox within the next 2 weeks. If you'd like one and are not
a NAEP member,
you can put in your order online at the following URL, or send
a check for
$15 + $3.30 s/h to "The Entrepreneurial Parent", POB
320722, Fairfield, CT
06432.
http://en-parent.com/mbrstr.htm
Psst...EP-T's also make great
nightshirts -- especially when you have a
business dilemma to work out in your subconscious ;-)!
---> The manuscript for the
EP Book made it safely to the publisher. ;-)
Co-authors Paul & Sarah Edwards and I would like to again
thank all who
contributed to "The Entrepreneurial Parent: How to Earn
Your Living in the
Internet Age and Still Enjoy Your Family, Your Work and Your
Life." We will
certainly keep you posted on the progress, production and publication
of the
book, currently scheduled to be released in 2002.
____________________________________________
MAKING MONEY MATTERS
Being available to your kids
and managing a career under one roof sounds to
many like the best of both worlds, but without pulling in some
kind of income
what's all the effort for? Making Money Matters!
Want to spread the word about
YOUR business in EPnews? We need more EPnews
Subscribers to profile -- so let's hear how YOU earn your keep
as an EP! Just
copy the questions below, hit Reply to this email, change the
subject heading
"MMM Survey," and answer the questions. Thank you!!
1. In a 2-3 sentence statement,
explain what your home business is about,
including your target market and "mission statement."
2. What are the most popular
products and/or services you sell? How much do
you sell them for (or what's your hourly rate), and how did you
find the
right price/fee schedule for them?
3. What are *your* favorite products
and/or services? Why do you like to sell
them?
4. Tell us a bit about your marketing
campaign. When did you start noticing
your first sales (after which marketing technique), what marketing
efforts
have you noticed yield the greatest results, and how do you make
your first
contact and subsequent sales (via online, phone, fax, mail, face-to-face)?
5. Any additional comments are
welcome.
_____________________________
CONTACT/SUBSCRIPTION INFO
The Entrepreneurial Parent, LLC
is not engaged in rendering legal or
financial advice. If expert assistance is required, the services
of a
licensed professional should be sought.
This newsletter may be redistributed
freely via the Internet. Re-publishing
of separate articles for your print publication needs approval
first; write
to: Roberts@en-parent.com
for permission.
© 2000, The Entrepreneurial
Parent, LLC
Editor: Lisa M. Roberts
POB 320722, Fairfield, CT 06432; http://en-parent.com
Ph/Fax: (203) 371-6212, Email: office@en-parent.com
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