WomensNet Newz for The Woman Entrepreneur!

I love summer - and I love working from home, but the two don’t always seem compatible this time of the year!

I will be the first to admit that when the sun comes out I don’t want to be sitting indoors on the phone or the computer. The great outdoors beckons and the pool calls loudest of all! My natural inclination would be to chuck it all and ‘make hay while the sun shines’ but…from a monetary perspective that is not always practical!

Thanks to the wireless age, though, I can handle most of my calls from outside, and even handle a lot of the daily email communications from my laptop, although I admit that I do have to sit under the umbrella to do this.
Hey - it’s tough - but we make sacrifices right?

There was also a time though, when you would never have admitted to your clients that you worked from home, and often went to some pretty silly extremes to hide the fact. Now, though, it’s almost a badge of honor, and on more than one occasion, I have actually told a client that I was conducting the call from pool side - and frequently discovered that they were sitting by their pool as well!

Times have changed and it’s made being a home based entrepreneur acceptable, and even enviable. With all of the technology available today, there is little need for offsite locations, or staff. Virtual assistants can help with the paperwork, automated phone services can answer and even route your calls to you where ever you are, and online fax services are much cheaper than buying an expensive (and short-lived!) ‘all-in-one’ printer. (Don’t get me started on those monsters - we do NOT get along!)

I will admit though that I tend to start my day earlier and work a little later at night in the summer so that I can take off hours during the sunny time - and that’s the best part about my online business. I don’t watch much TV anyway, and I would rather bike or run or play tennis while the weather is nice, so I just swap out the off time according to the seasons.

So, what do you do in the summer? How does your work schedule change or does it?