Building relationships in business as a stay at home mom.

Introduction

Welcome to the last part of the be the best mom ever challenge, also known as the stay at home mom challenge.

If you are just reading about this challenge for the first time you may want to read my first post where I started with dealing with a stay at home moms money mindset.

I went on to give tips on how to raise a child, before I bumped into time management skills.

The 4th part of this challenge dealt with caring for your self.

This challenge is to help stay at home moms who have a home business to deal with the different departments of their lives that affect their home business.

If you want to get the free worksheets, prompts and tips I provided for this challenge please sign up below.

Today, I teach you how to start building relationships in business.

When you became a stay at home mom that runs a home business, the last thing on your mind may be building relationships in business.

You were probably glad you get to be your own boss that you did not think it mattered.

The truth is that a lot of relationships suffer when you become a stay at home mom.

This is because you enter a whole new territory that is probably different from what you are used to.

If you are a first-time mom, you will relate to this very well.

The relationships you built while at the workplace may not suffice, because you now have a different focus now.

The relationships you had with your girlfriend who perhaps is unmarried will also suffer, you are now in a different zone.

So if you decided to start a home business, you now see that you are not in a good place as it pertains to business relationships.

Relationships take time and investment.

Sometimes between the change of diapers, cooking, and cleaning you are simply too exhausted to reach out to find new relationships.

This means that your circle grows smaller.

What do you now do as a stay at home mom who runs a business?

How do you go about building effective business relationships?

Businesses thrive on relationships so if you don’t have one, you may not grow.

Relationships open doors for new opportunities and growth.

So, it is important that you take time out to build relationships in business.

3 Types of Relationships

There are 3 kinds of relationships that you will always find yourself dealing with which ultimately affects your home business.

Relationship with your self:

This has to do with how you relate to yourself( dealt with in the self-care portion of this challenge)

Relationship with your family:

How you relate with your family which consists of spouse, kids, siblings and close friends.

Business relationships:

How you relate to business contacts, customers, and business partners.

The way you approach these relationships will affect how well your home business will perform.

If you are neglecting any of these relationships, the end result will show up in your home business.

In this post, I will deal with business relationships only.

Steps To Take In Building Relationships in Business.

1)Understand Where You Are In Your Life.

Building relationships especially business relationships takes time and effort.

So before you seek to build one, you must understand where you are at in your life.

For example, if you are a first-time mom who is still in her first trimester after baby birth, you are not a place to be seeking new relationships.

This is because your new job is to cater to your newborn.

If you bump into someone and you just hit it off, that’s great but you are not seeking to build new business relationships.

The real reason is that you won’t have any time to commit to a meeting or calling that person.

When I had my first baby, sometimes I may not see my phone for days. Some text messages that were sent to me got answered perhaps weeks later.

Newborns require a lot of attention, so you may be too exhausted to have the time to build effective relationships.

2)Take Stock

Sometimes we may want to build relationships in business but we do not know what we require.

So you often find yourself in a business relationship that you have no business being in.

Taking stock of what is missing out is realizing what type of business alignments you may need as a business owner and deliberately reaching out to such people.

Of course, those business relationships you seek to cultivate are those that you share common values and can help each other.

This means that the relationship adds value to your business.

3)Detoxify Your Relationships.

Detoxify your relationships.

If there are business relationships that you are in now that are draining to you both on a personal level and on a business level, its time to detoxify yourself by cutting off from such.

You need to be in a good mental state in other to build and run a successful business.

If you surround yourself with naysayers, mockers, and people who do not believe in you and what you are doing, you will soon talk yourself out of your business.

So even if they are family members, detoxify yourself from them.

Where you are closely knit that you cannot cut off, then quit discussing your business with them.

In fact, the general language for any inquiry about your business is we are doing well by God’s grace..…

They are not the ones you tell your struggles in business, they will only talk you out of it.

4)Build New Ones

When you are done detoxifying your relationships, it is time to build new ones.

In building new ones you are deliberate about how you reach out to them. You want to relate with them because their message resonates with who you are.

For instance one blogger I respect a lot is Sarah Titus.

Her message resonates with me so much not because I have been through what she has been through, but because of our desire that every woman should have the opportunity of staying home with her kids if she desires to without losing her income.

I read her email letters, I have written her once.

Another person I relate to is Elna Cain of Twinsmommy.com, I have learned so much from Elna Cain, her humble way of going about her business and her simple advice that has made an impact on my blogging business.

It was because of her teaching on how to make money from your blog that I went into freelance writing as an income source.

That income source has become a steady income for my blog today.

I am thankful to her, I may never have met her or even written to her, but her mentoring through her FB lives and posts have made all the difference in my business.

5)Understand What You Need Per Time And Go For It

Relationships, especially in business, are needed for specific stages of business.

If you are at the starting stage of your business, you need a different type of relationship than when you have already started and you want to scale.

For example, if you are a newbie blogger, you should be building relationships with people who are a step ahead of you.

They have been through the newbie stage and are now seeing results.

Their results will help you stand strong and continue to work it out until your results come in.

When I started blogging, I did not know the power of consistency in delivering my posts and newsletters.

Until I listened to other bloggers talk about the content calendar, scheduling and posting at specific times.

Then, I understood that blogging requires discipline and consistency to see results.

I still struggle with all these issues but I am making appropriate adjustments to see that I overcome it.

One of the reasons I went into blogging is to teach other people and help them change their lives.

But guess what?

Blogging has two sides, it changes those you are teaching and it also changes you.

So, in building business relationships it is important that you are deliberate and consistent for you to see results.

How to Build Relationships In Business

Join communities

Join online communities and facebook groups that cater to your niche and the business interest you are pursuing.

For instance, if you want to help newbie bloggers or serve them, join a newbie blogger facebook group.

That way you can offer solutions and help when they need it, from being active and offering solutions you will build relationships that will lead to sales

Join groups where you get to learn what is already working and apply it to your business.

Above, I mentioned how Elna Cain’s group helped me to consider other ways of making money from my blog.

Rather than getting fixated on affiliate income alone.

Attend conferences

Even though online groups are good, nothing beats life meetings, you should attend a conference in your home business niche once every year.

Not only do you get to connect with people in real life, but you also get to learn what is working now.

Reach Out To People You love Their content.

To reach out is something we are often scared of because we fear rejection.

But I believe that for you to be in business you must be bold and audacious.

So be persistent in reaching out to people you love their content via emails or even mentioning them on your social pages.

Such reach outs often open doors for collaborations which will boost your business and help you to build credibility.

You cannot overemphasize the power of networks.

We live in a world where one word or tweet from the right person can send your home business spiraling in the right direction.

I remember how Oprah Winfrey used her platform to help small business owners.

It was incredible how her book club and favorite things sections helped struggling business owners to hit the limelight.

Networking with people who are on the same journey with you and also above you will help push your business forward.

Make a Plan

So you have identified all these various aspects and you are ready to go before you move.

You need to make a plan and consciously follow that plan

That is where my planner the stay at home mom planner will help you

It provides you with a definite section where you get to plan your relationships.

The stay at home mom planner is a well thought out planner that helps you to build a successful stay at home mom life by dealing with each aspect of your life as it affects your home business.

Click here to get one while it is on sale.

Conclusion

The Be the best mom challenge officially ends here, yeah but the lessons we have learned are timely.

I have learned from this challenge as much as I have thought you.

This challenge is not about perfect stay at home moms who have it all together.

It is about understanding how the different aspects of our lives impact our business lives either positively or negatively.

Our business life is not different from who we are as a stay at home moms, so if it affects our lives, it will definitely affect our business.

If you want to get to the very beginning of this challenge in case you missed it.

Join my newsletter list here and you will get all the training, worksheets and solutions sent to your inbox over a 5 day period.