Step 2 To Becoming A Mompreneur: Know Yourself

Now that you're in the right frame of mind for success, it's time to plan out a path.  Most moms think that the legitimate opportunities to earn money from home are just few and far between or even non-existent altogether.  The fact of the matter is that opportunities to work from home are all over the place and the biggest problem that you might face is deciding in which direction you want to go because of the vast array of opportunities that actually do exist.

Today we want to focus on our interests and your homework assignment is to make a list of things that you like and areas in which your natural talents lie.  I also want you to make a list of your areas of weakness.  My lists would look something like this:
     

      Natural Talents

• Artistic
• Finding Bargains
• Marketing
• Sales

         Areas of Interest/Hobbies

• Shopping
• Website Building
• Search Engine Optimization
• Blogging
• Networking
• Beaches/Travel
• Children/Babies

       Weaknesses

• Lack of Patience
• Short Attention Span
• Temper
• Math

Now these list will be highly important in leading you in the direction where you are most likely to be successful.  You may want to keep the list in a place where you can refer to it over and over again.  For any business venture that you consider now or in the future, you'll want to consider your list very carefully.  The areas in which you have the highest chance for success are when you can combine your areas of interest with your natural talents.  You want to either avoid business opportunities that involve your weaknesses or partner with someone who is strong in the areas in which you are weak.

Consider the items that you listed as hobbies.  Ask yourself if there is a way to make money from those hobbies.  For example, on my list of likes I have listed shopping and on my list of natural talents I have listed bargain hunting.  I also have listed sales under natural talents.  Now I would ask myself how could I turn my hobby of shopping into a business while using my natural talents of bargain hunting and sales?  One of the things that I could do is to buy name brand baby clothes on clearance (out of season) and hold them until they are in season.  Then I could either sell them on Ebay or Craigslist for profit.  I actually know of several people who would specialize in buying just Gymboree baby clothes (because the demand was very high).  They would buy the clothes on clearance and then had set up an Ebay store specializing in Gymboree clothes.  Now that would be something that I would likely enjoy, but I'm not sure that I would have the patience to wait until the clothes were in season to get started.  There are, of course, other factors that you would need to consider as well such as time investment, money investment, expenses and potential profit margin to name a few.  We'll get into each of those things in a later blog.  For now, take some time and brainstorm to begin your lists!