How Our Home Based Business Saved Us
If you had asked me two years before my wife and I began ourhome catering business whether I would consider being my ownboss, I would have laughed out loud and scoffed at the idea. Thecompany I worked for seemed to be doing well and I wasrecognized for the “creative genius” that I was. I was contentedas a Web Developer in a multi-national corporation, lost in myown world in cyberspace. The pay was alright and there wasn’tany reason to think of other means of income. Looking b...
...ack, Irealized that I was in a comfort zone and being there shut myeyes to all the opportunities that were knocking at my door.Things were about to change though.The signs were classic of a company in trouble. Emailsinstructing us to take cost-reduction seriously, profit sharingwithheld, no year-end bonus, a freeze on all pay rises. Then, itwas crunch-time. There was talk of “staff re-designation”. Oneyear later, it became a full blown staff elimination exercise.No retrenchment benefits, no nothing. My wife didn’t really think I was serious about the companybeing in trouble until I started having the “classic” symptomsof Middle-Aged-Man-With-Job-Threatened-Syndrome. I couldn’t eator sleep worrying about how we would make ends meet on my wife’ssalary as a kindergarten teacher, which wasn’t much. The stressand fear were taking its toll on my health. It became clear that there was no way the company would keep mefor more than a year and with job applicants half my age workingfor even lesser pay, my wife and I did some serious talking. Wecame up with a couple of ideas we thought we could do to earnextra cash and prepare us for the tough times ahead. Weeventually decided to start our own home catering business,cooking and delivering dinner to people who were either toobusy, didn’t have the time or the liking to cook. Armed only with the confidence that my wife was a great cook, westarted. Our first obstacle turned out to be our minds. We wereso caught up in our comfort zone for so long that every littledecision seemed like a monumental task. At the back of ourminds, we didn’t want to be in the position we were in. Westruggled with the fear of change and the unknown, but wecarried on, telling ourselves that even if I did get anotherjob, it was only a matter of time before the same cycle wouldrepeat itself. We HAD to take this step and take control of ourlives and our earning power. We made countless mistakes in our first six months, but let metell you… when we got our first customer, I felt such relief Islept like a baby that night. It was my first night of peacefulsleep in a year. It wasn’t the sixty dollars profit that wemade. It was the fact that we had finally started to chart ourown destiny, free from the whims and fancies of corporatemanagement. A year into our business, the inevitable happened. I wasapproached by my company to discuss “re-designation”. I toldthem that I knew what they meant and I was prepared to leave. Iwas the last one in my division to finally say goodbye.Thankfully, my wife and I saw this coming a year ago and readiedourselves for it, so when the time came, we just let go and setour sights on our home catering business.It’s been almost two years now and we’ve gone through somereally trying times learning the ropes of managing a homebusiness. We’ve had to adjust our attitudes and daily lives butwe’re doing fine, and our financial situation has gone fromhopeless to healthy. What started out as a way to earn extramoney has turned out to be our main source of income.I hope my sharing gives you the encouragement and inspiration toNOT LOSE HOPE. I wouldn’t recommend waiting until you were introuble before you considered starting your own home business,but maybe like us, it takes a storm to help us break free of ourcomfort zone.
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