I have a story to tell of three friends.
They work together in a corporate environment. They ‘do lunch’, complain about their supervisors and compare hair dressers.
One by one they get pregnant all in the same year. All three decide that they want to stay home with their new babies.
The first, we’ll call her Sam, is married to a well established insurance broker so they are easily able to adjust their budget to manage without her income.
The second, who we’ll know as Liz, is married to a soux chef and giving up her income is going to hurt a lot.
The third, let’s call her Mary, is single and moved back home with her parents to have the baby.
Mary’s parents encourage her to take some time and go back to school. While researching her options she learns about ways to make money from home and she takes some of the info back to Sam and Liz.
All three end up excited about the possibilities and each take off with an idea that sounds like fun.
Month by month, they work on their ideas. They get together with their babies for ‘high power business lunches’ around the coffee table and share their plans and enthusiasm.
Six months later – Sam has really only succeeded in spending a lot of her husband’s money. She has a guest room full of product and she’s lost her enthusiasm for the project.
Liz is finding out that her business choice involves a lot more hard work than she ever expected and she’s thinking about switching over to another business idea.
Mary is enrolled in school part time and she’s earning a small but steady income from her business. She still had lots of ideas for growing it and has as much enthusiasm as she did when she started.
Their latest ‘power lunch’ turned sour when Sam and Liz wanted to spend more time complaining about their businesses than work on ideas to improve them. Mary’s lack of griping almost seemed to irritate them.
Things got worse the next week. Sam’s husband was angry over the credit card statement that showed she had spent $500 on an advertisement for her business website. Liz’s husband was making noises about her looking for a job.
Mary had good news to share but when she did she was sorry because Sam picked out a small detail and critisized it. Then Liz made a disparaging remark as well. She left lunch feeling really bad about herself and wondering why her friends couldn’t just be happy for her.
Have you ever been in this situation? It happens more than you imagine. Misery likes company and Failure hates to hear about Success.
The smartest thing Mary can do at this point is stop talking business with Sam and Liz.
Tue, Jan 16, 2007
Working at Home