Do You Work at Home or Work from Home

Well it might be a fine point, but if you are a Work at Home Mom or wanting to be a Work at Home Dad it might have a big impact on what it is you are wanting to accomplish and be worth some consideration.

Many business opportunities or jobs that are advertised as Work at Home are really a Work From Home situation. This is most particularly true of old school MLM, Network Marketing, direct selling opportunities and there is nothing wrong with it if that is what you want but you need to understand what the difference is so you can be prepared.

Tired of the rat race

We get tired of the commute, the office politics and long hours involved in climbing the corporate ladder. We miss our children's birthday parties, ball games, soccer games, band concerts. We get tired of sitting in traffic jams for hours. We decide to have a family and want to be at home to raise them or be with them but are torn by feeling the responsibility to help out with the finances. So what do we do? We respond to an advertisement or a friend and sign up for a Work from Home Program, maybe a network marketing company or a home party plan so we can have an office at home and set our own hours.

It sounds so wonderful to be able to get up when we want or go to the ball game with our son, or ballet dance with our daughter, to walk across the hall in our pajamas to our office. Oh to have all the extra time and cash to do what we want or be home or travel at will. We find a spare room or a little spare nook in the house and set up our office. We get our phone set up and start making calls. We get our business cards and flyers and hand them out. We put a few ads in the local paper and do whatever else it is that our coaches tell us to do. We got contacts - life just doesn't get better than this.

We get a few parties, presentations or meeting set up and then have to go out. Things are starting to happen (or maybe not) and we realize if we are going to be really successful we might have to up our efforts. Before you know it we are going out for meetings, presentations, delivering our products (in some home party plans) and maybe even travelling around the country. Suddenly we find ourselves away from home more than we wanted. As much or more than when we had an office job at the corporate office or worked on line at the assembly plant and running just as much.

This happened to a business acquaintanceof mine. He had gotten into a home based business or work from home business because he was tired of the rat race and the go go go. Tired of being away from home for long hours each day just to climb the corporate ladder and build some one else's dream. He heard about this fantastic work from home business opportunity and quit his job to go all out in building his dreams from home. It wasn't long before he was going almost every day doing presentations, traveling around from city to city doing hotel meetings and trainings. He was gone more than when he was in his corporate job. Was he working from home? Sure, he had his office there and didn't have to commute (except for presentations and meetings), but he didn't really work at home.

Now don't get me wrong. If you like to be your own boss and like to travel that is great. Maybe you are a busy Mom at home and want a chance to get out. That is great and if that is what you are looking for then wonderful. However, if you are really looking to be at home more and truly Work at Home then you will need to make some adjustments in how you "work" your business. You may have to go against convention and your coaches in how you approach your work in order to truly have more time at home. It is never really good to stay locked up in your house 24 hours per day but neither do you want to defeat your purpose and be gone all the time.

To be successful in any business endeavor one needs customers or contacts and the more successful you want to be the more contacts you need, and lots of them. In the old school of marketing the only way to meeting people and presenting whatever it is you want presented was to be there with them wherever you could meet them. You had to be able to show them your product or service and if you had business associates you had to be able to train them and the only way to do all that was in person with a flip chart, an overhead, a video, a chalk board or white board. Computer technology has changed all that.

With the advent of Web 2.0 technology we can interact on the internet with people. You can actually get customers, contacts, prospects coming to you at your home all via the internet using Social Marketing tools all from the comfort of our homes.

The Stay at Home Mom or Dad can now

• design their own websites,
• post their own articles writting about their products, services or just providing good information
• even training to their contacts
• With digital photography we can post pictures and videos on line to share with others the great things we have discovered.
• Bookmarking sites allow us to post links to our favorite websites, articles and share those with others.
• With places like Facebook, MySpace and many many others we can gather large groups of friends and like minded people who we can communicate with and build relationships with.

With proper training this is not really that hard. Many who have had little (if any in some cases) computer and internet training have done well, and you can too. If you are building a network marketing business you can train and educate your team right at home via the internet, or have one of the excellent on line training systems train them for you.

With the options available now there are choices one can make to truly begin Working At Home.

Even if you want to Work from Home you can make much more productive use of your time attracting contacts to you and building relationships so that when you do go out you have people ready to meet with.

In the case of my business aquaintance, having been in the computer industry he turned to the internet and the phone to build a very successful business and be at home much more with his kids. Today his children are on their own and because he likes to travel he is traveling more again, but that is by choice. He was able to truly Work At Home when he needed and wanted to.

Do you want to truly Work at Homeand spend more time there? Now you can. Do you still like to get out and Work from Home but find you need too expand your market base and attract more contacts to you? The choice is yours. Either way, learning how to use the internet and the Social Marketing tools can greatly boost your efforts and expand your contact base and gives you the true option of whether you want to Work at Home or Work from Home.