Find your passion, find your WAH (Work At Home ) Career

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If you have ever heard the expression, “do what you love and the money will follow”; then you understand the basic concept of finding a passion for your WAH business. You might spend a good deal of time working your WAH (work at home) business, so it’s important that it’s something you feel passionate about.

How can you find your passion?

Think about the things in life that bring you great joy. Is it your kids? Your crafting? Your cooking? What do you enjoy doing the most? When you get a small pocket of time that’s not scheduled with other activities, what do you choose to do?

Also, think about the things you enjoyed doing before you were a mom. The things you did on the weekends when you had time. What did you do? What brings you joy? You might even mentally wander back to the first job you had when you were truly happy.

Your answers to the questions give you a sense of what your passions are. Then think about how you can turn these in WAH businesses.

Turn that passion into a business

If you are an excellent cook, you might turn your passion for cooking into a personal chef business, a catering business, a business that supplies muffins and treats for offices, or even a menu planner (where you provide other moms with pre-planned menus that they simply follow each week when cooking for their own families).

Let’s say you adore children, yours and others. You can’t get enough of them and enjoy each moment you spend with children. It’s not your desire to “get away” from them to work, but to include them as much as possible. In that case, your WAH business might center on children in some fashion. You might tutor kids, or open a home daycare.

If you are a crafter or woodworker you can turn that passion into a business of many different sorts. You might make your crafts and wood crafts and sell them at craft shows, or on Etsy.com or even on eBay. Some crafters have trunk shows in their home where they sell their wares. This works especially well if you are selling fashion accessories or jewelry that you make.

What if you don’t have a passion?

You might think about the things you like doing and realize that those things don’t translate well into a business. What then? Then it’s time to reexamine the things you like to do. That is, you might find that your passions do lend themselves well to a WAH business.

Are you passionate about watching television? If so, you can turn that passion into a blog that might get a good number of readers. You might find a job reviewing your favorite shows for a funny or irreverent site.  Think about what you like – reading, hunting, fishing, etc.

There are sites that pay for book reviews; if you are a passionate reader, you might write book reviews that net you some pay. You can also set up a blog that is written for passionate bloggers. Learn how to market it and you could have a nice little income for yourself from that blog.

If you are passionate about fitness, you might find a WAH job as a personal trainer, providing you have adequate equipment and space at your home. You might also find a niche for yourself as a personal fitness motivator, providing customers with detailed and customized fitness plans and motivation.  There are many self-improvement coaching areas you can enter.

Finding a business that is rooted in your passion isn’t hard once you examine your basic skill sets and combine that with your passion. You’re sure to do well when you start with the things you love doing.

Examine your skills: What can you turn into a WAH business?

As you think about the myriad of work-at-home opportunities, you could be overlooking one important thing – you have skills that you can turn into a career. Although it’s easy and sometimes tempting to sign up with a company or to begin selling a product, there are many skills that each of us brings to the table that can help us to create our own successful at-home enterprises.

Before you settle on a work-at-home job, carefully examine your skill set and determine if you can make a solid at-home work opportunity out of your skills. Though there is no harm in joining an already successful company, many mom/dads are more interested in starting their own businesses. If you are that kind of person, consider your skills first so you choose the right at-home business for you.

Money

Have you ever worked as a cashier? What skills did that require? If you had to reconcile your cash drawer, you have some experience with bookkeeping. You also likely have some customer service skills. Many people work at home as bookkeepers or as assistants to accountants.

Office skills

If you have ever worked in an office, you might have a long list of beneficial qualities that would help in an at-home job. These include phone skills, customer service skills, software experience and perhaps even some marketing or public relations skills.

Office skills and experience (as well as any training you might also have) can be used in a variety of ways with at-home jobs. Many people work at home as virtual assistants, for example, which require customer service skills, software experience, and basic office training.

Other people with office skills can work at home for a local business. To save money, local businesses are more likely these days to hire people to work from home to handle calls, mail and basic clerical duties.

Technical skills

Those who have worked in graphic design and in website design are perfectly positioned to take advantage of the work-at-home job market. That is, you can easily turn your graphic design and website design skills into an at-home business. Your services will likely cost another business less than using an in-house designer and if you provide the same – or better – quality, you can create a niche for yourself that others might not be able to easily fill.

Other technical skills that might be useful for at-home businesses include computer repair, specific software application training and other skills that you might have learned in a previous job, in college, or that you took specific classes for.

Entertainment

Many people have had success in turning their entertainment skills into an at-home business. Your ability to put on a beautiful party can be turned into a business that puts on tea party birthdays for young girls. Or you might start a catering business from home. Or you could become a personal chef. Some people start successful home businesses that are borne out of their theater or singing experience, or teach those who want to learn.

The key to turning your skills and experience into a successful home business is, to be honest about your skills. Know what you can do and what you are weak at. Perhaps you know that you can run a lucrative web design business, but you can’t handle money. Maybe you can hire another WAH person to do your bookkeeping for you. In that way, you help yourself and another person at the same time.

Make a list of the skills you have and those you might like to acquire and from that list, create some ideas for your at-home business. You might be surprised how much you bring to the at-home business table.

Do you have the right stuff to be a WAHM OR WAHD?

There are certain qualities that people who work at home must-have. It’s not for everyone, this WAH thing. Some people just handle it better than others. But there are a few qualities that those who work at home should have for this to work:

Organization

Working at home requires good organization. You must be able to handle organizing your business, your home, your personal life and everything else that is in your life. You should be able to handle the myriad of details that your multi-faceted life requires.

Flexibility

If you are rigid and expect everything to go the way you think they should, you will likely be disappointed as a WAH mom or dad. You must be flexible so that when a child gets sick, or the dishwasher breaks or your invoices don’t get paid, you can handle it. You should be willing to say “yes” as much as you say “no” and be able to handle the changes in schedule well.

Ability to say “no”

As much as you should be able to say “yes” you must also be able to say “no”. It’s sometimes hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that a mom or a dad who stays home is working full time, that’s she/he’s contributing in a significant way to the family’s income.

That means that often you will be called up on to do things at school, to watch other peoples’ children, or to do the thing that takes you away from the thing that – during the day – is the most important thing to you, and that’s work.

To that end, then, you should be able to say “no” just as often as you say “yes”. You should find some flexibility and willingness to go with the flow, to change the plans as necessary, as well, but ultimately you should be able to reply in the negative. This quality is a necessary requirement for a successful WAH experience.

Discipline

Do you have self-discipline? Can you work hard when nobody is looking, when nobody might know that you instead spent the day in the bathtub? That quality, the ability to be disciplined about your work, is essential to having a successful WAH business.

Not everyone has self-discipline when it comes to working, and that’s not always deadly in business. Some people just need others around to ensure that they will do the work they are supposed to be doing. But if you work at home, there won’t be other people to egg you on, to encourage you to work, to join in with when it comes to working. You need to find it somewhere within yourself.

Self-motivation

This goes hand in hand with discipline, but it’s a bit different. To make your self-discipline work for you, you must first have self-motivation. You should want to do your job and get to it as soon as you must each day.

Unlike an out of the house job where there might be a supervisor keeping an eye on your efforts, at home, it’s just you. If you aren’t self-motivated enough to get up in the morning with an eye toward what you need to get done that day – without anyone reminding you of your responsibilities – you might not be well suited to working at home. But if you are self-motivated and are able to keep yourself going even in the face of many bumps in the road, you might do well working for yourself at home.

Multi-tasking abilities

Working at home, especially when you’re a mom or dad also, takes a certain level of multi-tasking expertise. You should be able to handle the house, the kids, and the work. You should be able to handle all of it and sometimes all of it at once. If you get very stressed when things don’t go perfectly, or if you can’t focus on more than one thing at a time, working at home might not be for you.

Independence

People who work at home must have a certain level of entrepreneurial initiative. That is, they work independently and are willing to take the necessary risks to achieve some success. If you want to work at home and be successful, you too should have this independent streak.

Working at home take a myriad of personality characteristics, but these are by far the most important. Hone the traits you already have and work to develop the others, and work at home success will be yours.

A Work at Home (WAH) Job I Recommend

If you enjoy writing, you can consider blogging.  There are ways to turn a blog site into a money-making online business.  One way is to use affiliate marketing and promote products from different vendors.  Affiliate Marketing and blogging is certainly an opportunity to make money, perhaps a lot of it.  It is not a “Get Rich Quick” deal though and it takes skills, hard work and patience to build your blog, create great content, drive traffic to your site and promote products in a way that your site visitors will consider purchasing them. 

You will need to learn new skills, such as using WordPress, selecting and implementing keywords and SEO, writing helpful and attention-getting content, choosing affiliate programs and products to use, attracting traffic to your blog and how to monetize your blog.

I know the best place online to learn these skills also.  I would recommend joining Wealthy Affiliates Online University – an online training and hosting site for affiliate marketers.  I have been a member for almost 5 years and can assure you the training is excellent as well as the hosting.  The membership is a paid membership but you can check it out for 7 days FREE and then decide if this training is for you.

Once you decide to become a Premium Member like myself, you will start out paying $19 for the first month and then $49/month after that.  But with discounts, you can get the monthly fees down to only $25/month as I have.  Read my detailed review for more information or you can simply sign up for the FREE trial week below.  You will not be asked for your credit card at this time.  If you do sign up, I will mentor you within the WA community and training.

This Affiliate Marketing training will teach you to create and run your own money-making blog site, and allow you to work from home, ditch the 9-5, and even work while on vacation as long as you have a computer and internet connection.

Find out of the Work From Home lifestyle is for you!

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I love to get comments and questions from my site visitors, you can leave yours below. -Shirley

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