Esther Eisenhardt has set an example – in two respects. The business economist and mother has put an end to the exhausting life of a mother between office and family in order to start her own business. She founded Mompreneurs, a network that seeks to connect self-employed mothers across regional borders. A network that was born in 2014 and hit the nerve of the time by a hair’s breadth. Often, in fact, the beautiful idea of reconciling family and career bursts in a part-time solution.

Professional Restart Or Return To Work

On the one hand, it makes it possible to return to work. On the other hand, however, it regularly and all too clearly has its limits, which are: Mom has to pick up her offspring from daycare at 4 p.m. – even if the important project kick-off begins at 4:30 p.m. (and then without her). Starting a new career despite having a child is difficult. This guide reveals how moms can make the leap into self-employment.

Even though flexible working hours are becoming increasingly common in the workplace, starting a family usually means that some things change in the job as well. Many women then opt for self-employment.

A New Start At Work – Making Sure There Are Clear Rules

The first step in becoming self-employed as a mother is to create clear rules. After all, mom becomes self-employed means: mom works – even if she probably does so from home in the early days. And it doesn’t mean: Mom is always approachable, even if she has closed the door, has a headset on her ears and is frantically trying to sketch something. This demarcation is a learning process – and for the mother herself and the family members. The woman must likewise demarcate herself and become aware of her role as entrepreneur, founder and CEO. The family must learn that the mother is physically in the house, but signals through clear signs – for example, the locked office door: And now I am only there for my business idea. And the “only” means a lot in this context.

Using family time effectively with the offspring prevents a guilty conscience from overtaking the start-up idea.

A New Start In Business – Relying On Professional Equipment Right From The Start

Admittedly, it is a quite normal way of thinking that as long as there is no incoming money, no money is spent. But: Exactly this frugal behavior can also lead to the fact that the time span between start and success becomes clearly longer than desired, or, that by ignorance mistakes happen. These useful features, programs and tools are part of the basic equipment:

• • The provider Lexware offers individual programs for wages, salaries, bookkeeping, accounting as well as complete commercial solutions. The advantage: Even the latter are available in different model variants: lexoffice online, especially for start-ups, Lexware financial office as a complete commercial solution and Lexware business as a model with even more features. This means that – practically packed into one program – all commercial topics can be professionally processed, starting with order processing, invoicing and accounting, the classic tasks in a start-up, and not ending with merchandise management, accounting, payroll accounting and travel expense accounting. If you also put together a portfolio of common templates – for invoices, for example.

– You can prevent regular tasks from eating up a lot of time.

• • When it comes to organizational tools, everyone has to test for themselves which program suits them best. Many swear by the powerful notebook Evernote, which is supposed to bundle all thoughts, notes and processes and can later also network a team. Trello is the Orga tool that enables effective, clear and user-friendly project management – and can also be extended to different team members.It is also particularly suitable because documents can be integrated into the individual tasks. Different views mean that no one will ever miss a project deadline again. Dropbox offers less project management, but rather a large database, in which all documents can be stored centrally. It takes a while to get to know all the functions and also to be able to use them.

• If you want to dance at several social media weddings or have to do so for business reasons, you should get help from an automated “distribution service”. The BufferApp is an example of how to play to different social media channels. Hootsuite also offers similar functions.

Of course, this list can be extended at will or will vary depending on the business model and content orientation, but the following still applies: If you save on IT equipment, you will miss out on the opportunity to pursue the start-up idea in a targeted manner due to additional work or more complex processes.