Entrepreneur opportunities for stay-at-home mothers

When they have children many women naturally want to stay home to care for them, but staying at home does not mean that women cannot become successful entrepreneurs. A stay-at-home mother may have a great business idea, but how can that idea be turned into a flourishing business?

Types of business opportunities

The internet has made it possible to run many businesses from home, such as selling goods on auction sites, community sites or on your own website. You may have acquired valuable skills in the workplace which you could use to sell services online such as website design, developing software, animation work, writing articles or creating information products. Stay-at-home mothers can also offer private mentoring, teaching or coaching. Product testing and review writing can also generate income.  
The first thing that budding entrepreneurs need to realize is that transforming their good idea into an actual business is going to require hard work.

Two approaches to business

There are two approaches to running a business from home. The first is to take your idea and create your own business. In order to do this you will probably need to get a loan from a bank, which will have to be backed by a personal guarantee. It is hard to find the money, but unless you have family members who are prepared to invest you will have to take on a loan.

The other approach is to start a business and then get venture capital to build it up. Once the business has become reasonably successful it can be sold. Equity investors in general are looking for a way out of the business eventually. The most logical way of achieving this is to sell the business, but you have to be careful, few businesses run by women have turnovers in excess of $1 million.

Whichever approach you take you will need to be able to put together a cash flow to show how your business will make money and how much it will cost to run. No investor will be prepared to part with his or her money unless you can demonstrate that your business idea is viable.

Develop your skills

To be a successful entrepreneur you need to develop your own brand. If you went out to work before having children then you will already have experience of the workplace, interacting with people and working in a team. If you can, continue with your education from home and get into networking online. Websites such as LinkedIn can help you develop your personal skills and help you to meet people online who might be able to help you.

Finding someone who can act as a mentor is useful and you can learn many valuable skills from an individual who has already created a successful business. Finally if you can find some business or entrepreneurship classes in your area you can learn valuable skills that will help when you come to set up your own business. You will be able to find courses in entrepreneurship in California and many other states. These courses can give students hands-on experience and help them to become comfortable assuming leadership positions and working in teams. Many will encourage you to develop your ideas into real business ventures after graduation.