5 Reasons to Send Business Christmas Cards
The holiday season will soon be upon us, which means that it’s time for businesses to start thinking about Christmas cards. If you’ve never sent business holiday cards, or don’t make a point of sending them out every year, here are five reasons why you should start:
1. Meet Expectations. Although the adage, “It’s better to give than to receive,” is a sentimental favorite, those with whom you do business expect to be remembered during the holidays. Holiday greeting cards help smooth your business relationships during the rest of the year by meeting expectations during the Christmas season.
2. Improve Customer Relations. Whether you have a business-to-business enterprise, provide a professional service, or own a retail store, chances are that your success is built upon maintaining relationships with your customers and clients. Christmas cards show your customers and clients that you appreciate their business, and that you want to share the spirit of the season.
3. Cost Effective. Perhaps you already buy holiday gifts and remembrances for your best customers or clients, but business holiday cards allow you to reach many more people for relatively little money. You can purchase personalized business holiday cards for as little as $1.40 each, including options to select among many different styles and verses, several colors of ink, and imprinted envelopes. This is an excellent investment in your business.
4. Excellent Return on Investment. Chances are, you and your company receive business Christmas cards from your vendors and suppliers. So, you understand the warm feelings that arise when you read their holiday cards, and you probably experience a “carryover” positive impression when you do your purchasing in the New Year. If you doubt that business holiday cards generate an excellent return on investment, ask yourself this: All other things being equal, which company would you choose to do business with – the company that sent you a holiday card every year or the company that only contacted you when it was time to reorder or collect payment?
5. Limitless Choices. With the rise of Internet and ecommerce, companies have an unprecedented opportunity to select business Christmas cards that reflect their company’s image and values. The best online sources for business holiday cards have a wide variety of high quality card designs. In addition, the best online greeting card companies offer a free choice of verse, free coordinated foil-lined envelopes, free samples of Christmas cards, and a multitude of choices for personalization.
In today’s business world, you need to take advantage of every opportunity to differentiate your company from your competition. Sending business Christmas cards is a small gesture than can mean improved customer relationships and an excellent return on investment. You really can’t afford not to send holiday cards to your customers, clients, and associates.
6 Work Life Balance Tips for Chronically Overwhelmed Parents
If you’re working from home, you’re probably accustomed to the steady stream of interruptions and emergencies from your family. Here are 6 work life balance tips for chronically overwhelmed parents.
1. Schedule Uninterrupted Work Time
Set aside hours when the kids know that you’re working, and they can only interrupt if it’s a real emergency. You may have to explain to them exactly what constitutes a “real” emergency. If the house is on fire: emergency. If Timmy won’t share his toys: not an emergency.
2. Explain the Importance of the Family Business
If you launch your home-based business and you’re off and running, you suddenly have less time for the children. If you don’t take the time to tell them why the business is important and why it takes so much of your time, they’re bound to interrupt a lot. Sit them down and explain the many benefits of the family business, and how they can help by minimizing interruptions. With that said, being a parent is a higher priority and the most important job you have.
3. Take Turns
If you and your husband are working together in the business, you may have to take turns giving your children the needed and desired attention they require. Work in shifts and take turns managing and playing with the kids, while the other one is working on the business.
4. Involve Your Children
Even if you have very young children, they can still be involved in the family business. Young children can learn to stuff envelopes or help clean the office. Older children can learn simple bookkeeping tasks and even answer the phone for you. Pay your children for the work they do, and it will help them to learn to appreciate the family business (and understand the importance of it all). You can also assign household chores as part of the “business” tasks that they complete. Every dish that’s washed and put away is time that helps you work and contributes to more family time together at the end of the day.
5. Set Up a Rewards System
If you meet all your business goals for the week, take the family out for some special time together. Let the children know that they can help earn these treats for the whole family by being responsible, completing all their chores on time and minimizing interruptions while you’re working.
6. Schedule, Schedule, Schedule
Your schedule doesn’t have to be set in stone. In fact, it can’t be since you’re working from home. However, having an overall schedule for the whole family can help balance work and life issues. Post the schedule in an area where everyone can see it. Have a set routine for each day of the week, and include times for each child. It can list everything from independent coloring time to chores and more. No matter what subjects go into the schedule, setting a routine for the kids will help teach them responsibility, and it will keep them occupied.
Remember, you’re running a home based business for the benefit of your entire family, not just yourself. Keep this in mind and remember that there has to be a degree of flexibility when you implement these work life balance tips. If there’s a short-term family crisis, be prepared to lose a little sleep if you have to in order to continue meeting your business goals.
Love this post, originally written by Daphne Mallory at wahm.com
New campaign releases pool of talented parents to business
This is fantastic news – hiremyparents has partnered with WinWeb to launch the ‘Supporting Parents In Business’ campaign. The campaign will call on business to tap into the talent of parents that have chosen to spend more time at home to raise a family. Talent that is being disregarded in general and representative of every field imaginable. Through the campaign we will make companies aware of the opportunities to employ these parents flexibly, through our job board, and the partnership with WinWeb will ensure maximum exposure to small businesses throughout the English speaking world.
Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs use WinWeb’s OnlineOffice package, the Small Business Infrastructure which provides them with a micro business eco-system. Through this network WinWeb will be able to inform them of the campaign and hiremyparents’ service directly through their newsletters, blog and website.
Stefan Töpfer, chairman and CEO of WinWeb, added: “Winweb is about enabling people and businesses to maximise their potential. Home working parents represent a huge pool of talent that businesses are under-utilising, meaning that both the parents and the businesses are working less efficiently than they could.. It is right that many parents decide that raising their child is their major priority, however, this campaign offers those parents a flexible way to earn an income as well as maintaining their career skills. At the same time businesses can tap into a talent base that they haven’t previously been able to access, giving them top quality skills at economic prices.â€
Parent Professionals can take advantage of a free lifetime membership to hiremyparents right now to find flexible work – from freelance to full-time.
Businesses can post an unlimited number of jobs and projects for free!
Online Tutoring
In the last few years the tutoring business has exploded! With teachers overwhelmed and overburdened by all their duties inside and outside of the classroom, parents and students have turned to the help of private tutors and supplemental education. Some parents do this as a way for their child to get ahead or just stay current with their studies.
Students are also overwhelmed with not only their academic responsibilities but trying to balance extracurricular activities and their home and social lives as well. As a result of busy schedules but still needing to fit in time with a tutor for additional assistance, the rise of online tutoring is overwhelming!
Parents are finding it easy and effective for their student to meet in an online classroom and have a personal tutor work with them from the convenience of their own home. By meeting ‘online’ parents save on time, running around and fuel without having to sacrifice their student’s learning.
Students feel much less intimidated and comfortable working online with a tutor. It also is a time saver for them and allows them to focus right on the help they need. Because they are meeting from their own home, the likelihood of having to cancel or running late for a session almost never happen.
As hiremyparents is all about offering parents choice and flexibility this seems like an ideal service to add for our members. We are currently talking to 3rd party providers about discounts for our members and will soon be adding an option for tutors to offer their services directly to parents who post requests, just as businesses currently do to our parent members.
Stay tuned.
How To Start A Business..Safely
Firstly I want to draw your attention to an excellent article on starting a business by Kathryn Hopkins at the Guardian website – link below. It gives some excellent advice on the nuts and bolts of taking an idea, testing it and running with it.
What it also draws attention to is the risk factor – what happens if you plough your savings into a business and it falls flat on it’s ass. With today’s economy you can’t just say ‘ah well’ and go and get another job. Saying that – how safe is your job at the moment? Big picture? I’d say there hasn’t been a more ideal time to start your own business in the last 15 years than the present time – but do it safely.
Safely? By its very nature starting your own business isn’t safe – it’s gambling – literally. You take a load of money and place it on your hard work and instincts to win. With luck you succeed and of course there are always safer bets than others. For instance – if you’re an accountant setting up your own firm serving small businesses it’s a good bet – business has always needed accountants, it has a tried and tested structure and as long as you do your research right chances are it will make a profit. However, if your life-long dream has been to be a magician then the whole profit and loss comes down to a wing and a prayer and your sheer persistence and fight. When I went to my bank manager and said I wanted to start a business supplying flexible work opportunities to parents she looked like I’d just pulled a gun on her. It was outside her knowledge base, it was an unknown and so too risky to place a bet on. It was an idea without a triple A rating from a company that the bankers pay to triple A rate things – I’ll stop there before I start to rant.
As it turns out I have that banker to thank for my present circumstances – I am a few weeks away from launching my company with hundreds of parents and companies already in the mix ready to post jobs and fill them – I have absolutely no debt assigned to the company – and a couple of business partners that are as passionate about the company as I am. How did I pull this off? I did it safely.
What do I mean by safely? I mean that I didn’t place a bet, I took the risk out of it and replaced the risk with hours of hard work. For the last year and a half I have been paid to do what I know – which is small business – and have advised start-ups on every aspect of their structure, marketing and funding. When I’d finished that for the day I went home and built another page or wrote another script for this website. I had cash coming in but at the same time I was slowly building an asset in the background until I was ready to fully commit and press the button. And that’s how you make the break.
Do not make the mistake of just chucking it all in and going for your dreams…your independence. That’s a fools methodology. Take it slow and give yourself a second job and focus on the outcome further down the road when you can go for it with a good foundation. Because you might just lose the bet.
This is where hiremyparents can help. We have all sort of flexible jobs on offer, part-time, job share etc. but we also have hundreds of freelance projects available that could see you through to starting your own business. If you’re in marketing and recently became a marketing parent and want to spend more time at home then apply for the marketing projects on the job board and build a customer base while being paid. When you feel the time is right send all those companies an email with your new company’s logo on it saying you’re open for business as a legal entity. They know you and they know your work so you’re off to a head-start. If you sent them an email without forming a relationship before-hand you’d have been deleted before they read the subject line.
There is no way to start a business with complete safety – that’s not the nature of things – but you can limit the risk by lowering the bet and building a customer base through completing specifically targeted projects in your business to-be’s market and forming relationships with the companies that will be your life-blood in the future.
Let me know your comments on this post and anything you’d like me to expand on. hiremyparents isn’t just about offering the opportunities for parents to work flexibly but also about supporting them in their endeavours. Let us know what you want and we’ll try and deliver the resources you need.
