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By Little Mummy, December 16, 2009 3:38 am

Open University

I’ve now completed the first section of study on the Open University course and submitted the first of four TMA’s (tutor marked assessment). The first TMA was only 500 words which I thought was a bit ridiculous, the first assessment for the social science course was 800 words. I completed the case study and submitted it for marking, the results came back and my first reaction was dissapointment, I did far better on my first TMA on the social science course, however the comments from the tutor were pretty good and friends (ex-students) have said that it was fine, it’s also only worth 10% of the overall mark. I got 66%.

I’m now working on the section covering human resource management, which has been hard going it’s not the most interesting (for me) topic, although I did enjoy the bit about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I’m now in the process of writing the second TMA.

The Degree

In November I applied for an entrepreneurship and marketing management degree at a university in Edinburgh. To help my chances I updated my application to include four other associated courses and last week I received a response – five unconditional offers.
To say I was flabbergasted was an understatement. I’ve accepted my first choice and look forward to enrolling in September

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By Little Mummy, December 14, 2009 7:53 am

I once read that if your comment on a post is longer than five lines then you should write your own post. Here is my response to Living with Kids post Pink doesn’t Stink! This shouldn’t be read as a personal response to that post, rather a general response to the idea that Katie Price is a successful businesswoman and thus a good role model for our girls..

But while I’m sure they wouldn’t view the likes of Katie Price, the princess of pink, as a positive role model, she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman.

I’m not sure about ‘pink stinks’ but I know that Katie Price’s success is built upon one thing. Agreed the money she’s made from it has been ploughed into other ventures but it doesn’t change the fact that her initial success came from parading herself around half naked. Now I don’t mind people parading themselves around naked, live and let live. In this economy first priority is to earn a living and put food on the table. However let’s not confuse this as real ‘business success’.

Katie Price made a lot of money doing what she does best, it was the money she made from doing that, that funded her other business interests and no doubt they are run by proven business people. Do you think KP does all this herself? Of course she doesn’t, she’ll have a number of advisers telling her what to do next, and how best to capitalise on her intial success as topless model and general girl-half-naked-around-town.

Don’t think I’m ripping into KP, she’s not my cup of tea but I wish her all the success in the world. She works hard no doubt, and pays a certain price for her success, but if we’re looking for business role models Katie Price certainly doesn’t fit the bill in my opinion.

Do we really want our girls believing that the route to business success needs to be built on a foundation of glamour modelling? I don’t, which is why, for me, Katie Price is not an ideal role model.

As I came to my conclusion of this post I tried to think of successful, young, businesswoman in this country that are in the media spotlight, and do you know what, I couldn’t think of one. How very sad. Please help me out here there must be some young successful businesswoman (excluding reality tv stars, glamour models, IT girls), you know someone that has invented something, started a business from scratch or created a not for profit, or something amazing… Anyone have any suggestions?

If you could choose a female role model (under 35) for your daughter, who would it be?

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By Little Mummy, December 10, 2008 3:34 am

Today I’m wondering if there is a sea of change in the world of work for mums.

A very rudimentary timeline;

Pre-1980′s (?) Mums stayed at home to look after children, whilst father earned the ‘daily bread’.

1980′s – Noughties Mums managed careers and family simultaneously. Supposedly ‘having it all’.

The Future

The landscape is changing, many mums are accepting that they wish to be a stay at home parent, if not in full, then in part. Mums also accept that they a) cannot survive on one wage and b) have ambitions of their own. Mums have realised that they cannot ‘have it all’ without ‘doing it all’. The answer is in work/life balance. Up until now ‘work/life balance’ was office talk for ‘we’ll let you leave at three, if you come in at 6am…’ or ‘you can request work/life balance, but you won’t get it, because the business comes first’.

Mums are starting to look for new ways of working, mumpreneurs are popping up all over the place with businesses that allow them to work and enjoy being a parent. Some mums are franchising to allow them to be self employed. Others are looking for opportunities online to make an income. Even the high-fliers are going freelance.

Multiple Streams of Income

One of the ideas I’ve been considering lately is that of multiple streams of income. I think this may hold the key to the way mums will work in the future and a real work/life balance.

The realisation that doing one job that earns £1000 is exactly the same as five revenue streams that earn £200 each, should make us all evaluate what we really want from life and aspire to settle for nothing less.

Example

Erica works as an office clerk. She earns £1000 per month and works thirty hours a week. She must be at the office 9am-4pm each weekday.

Versus

Erica spends 20 hours (one time) producing an ebook. She sells it online and earns £200 per month (around 20 sales of a £10 ebook). She spends two hours a week on admin including promotion and answering emails.

Erica works as a waitress part-time (she enjoys the social aspect of this). She spends seven hours a week working. She makes £200 per month including tips.

Erica does some freelance writing on Bukisa and a couple other sites. She makes £200 per month in residual income, she has just over 100 articles on Bukisa. She usually spends around three hours per week building a back catalogue, which will continue to earn and grow.

Erica also has a blog, she has begun selling some advert spots and has been doing reviews for a while. She makes on average around £200 per month. She spends around five hours per week on the blog writing articles and promoting.

Erica (from not working at the office) saves travelling costs of £4 per day (bus fare), lunch costs of £3, monthly collections of £10, work clothes £20 (per month), and childcare costs of £420(12 days x £35). Erica saves well over £200. She ditches the ridacard, eats low cost lunch at home, saves £10 to treat herself/husband/child, wears jeans and a t-shirt which doesn’t need replacing too often and looks after her child herself except for two days a week when her child goes to nursery to socialize whilst she works from home.

Total Earned (and saved) = Over £1000
Time spent working = 17 hours

Many of these hours can be worked at any time of the day or night. I have left out a zillion other possible income streams (small ebay business, freelancing with a skill you have, childminding, selling crafts on etsy, the list goes on…). The earnings also don’t account for the growth in residual income ie. increased ebook sales, adding Bukisa articles etc…

I believe this is a realistic picture of how many mums will make a living in the future. I plane to prove or disprove this theory. My next post will describe how…

For now, what are your thoughts?