BellaOnline Forums Family Work & Family Welcome: Come on in and introduce yourself

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the new Work & Family Forum. Come on in and introduce yourself.

I'm so happy to have you here. I'm looking for feedback on the new Work & Family site. Would you please take a look at it, read the "Welcome" story to get an idea of what I have planned and give me your feedback? This is your forum, so feel free to offer suggestions and feedback and to start conversations with other moms who are trying to balance the many roles of work and family. We can all benefit from each other's experiences.

And, while you're at the site, how about subscribing to the new Work & Family News e-newsletter?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Take care,

Sonja

<img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hi, here is a brief introduction. I'm Anita, I'm 22, and I have not made a family of my own yet. However, I am engaged, so hopefully my fiance and I will have a family of our own in the future. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

As far as my parent's family... growing up I had two siblings, a sister who is less than two years younger than me, and a brother who is four and a half years younger than me. We were very close growing up and we are still very close. My parents recently (about a year and a half ago) adopted my other siblings, who are now aged 3 and 1; they are brother and sister to each other by birth. My father is a telecommunications specialist for the US dept. of defense, and my mother is a housewife and has been one since I was a baby.

I am starting law school in the fall but I would also like a big family of my own! Therefore I am interested in ideas about both areas.

Other than that, I like to read and write, and I am the Literary Fiction Host here at BellaOnline. I also enjoy running, skiing, listening to music, and doing crafts such as needlepoint, cross-stitch and crochet.

I am looking forward to meeting the rest of you, so please introduce yourselves. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Do you plan to work as a lawyer when you have kids? You'll probably come up with lots of ideas for balancing work and family! I guess one thing about being a lawyer is that you are actually self-employed, right? Can you set your own hours, etc.?

By the way, you have a good site started here at Bella. I'm sure people can get a lot of good information about literary fiction there, and some inspiration to do more reading!

Sonja

Hi, i'm Jodi, host of the Soapmaking site here @ BellaOnline. i have a somewhat unconventional family. i'm divorced, have three children, and share custody with their father. He has custody during the work days and I have custody in the evenings and every other weekend. This has worked well for us as I used to work outside of the home and he works from his home.
I lost my job a few weeks ago and am now trying to REALLY get my soaping business off the ground as well as find a new job. I'm making finding a new job the priority, as the soaps, they are just not selling.
Any advice on how to sell them?

Well, selling products for the first time on your own is a hard thing to get started, but it can be done. My personal experience has been that it's always best if you have some other source of income too, or at least a good bank account, in the beginning. Most businesses, even very good ones, often start out losing money before they break even and then make a profit.

Do you have a Web site to sell your soaps? That's one avenue, and if you learn a lot about marketing and can stay in there for the long run, you could make some decent sales that way.

I've come to the conclusion that to make it big with selling a product, like gifts or maybe like your soap, you need either a lot of time or a lot of money for advertising. For example, you could pay to have brochures for your soaps inserted into your local newspaper or you could mail them out in bulk ... but you'd need a pretty big advertising budget.

If you don't have a big budget, I'd say go with the "lots of time" angle... give it time, don't give up, start small, keep it personal (I bet lots of people in your town would love to buy soap made by someone they know or could bring their questions to), keep striving to make it bigger with your Web site and with whatever advertising you can do when you get a few extra dollars. Making it personal will differentiate you from big retailers who sell soaps.

You could also look into offering free stories about soap-making to various other Web sites in exchange for free bio boxes and links back to your soap site. And see if you can barter in your hometown... offer free samples or free services in exchange for free advertising or free recommendations/signs in shops.

Well, those are just a few idea, some of which you probably already knew.

Good luck, and please share any successes you have! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Sonja

Greetings!

I will pop back to your site and check it out after introducing myself.

I am a 29 year old wife and mom to three. Up until a little over a year ago, I considered myself a stay-at-home mom. Now I help my husband to run his martial arts school which has become a full time job for both of us.

I certainly do feel as if I am juggling my roles in life as a wife, mother and woman.

Welcome... good to hear from another mom of three. I've heard from a lot of SAH (stay-at-home) who eventually look to a home business to try to earn money with a more flexible schedule for taking care of their kids. Has it worked well for you?

By the way, I love the quote you used at the end of your message. :rolling:

My move from sah to small business owner was more about my husband's choices rather than my own. When he was laid off from his job and found his field to be very slow, he turned to his passion and made a job of it.

Running the office was not very demanding at first but as the karate school grew, it became more of a task to manage. It got to the point where my husband could not handle instructing the classes while running the office. So it's something we do together.

The children are with one of us at all times (the exception being time spent with relatives and friends of course). I can continue to educate them at home which is important to us. And they are getting hands on lessons about life and business.

It's very different for me. At times I really miss the slower pace of being at home more. I do enjoy the challenge the work brings though so it balances out.