The Life of a Homewoker

Hi, my name is Emma and have achieved what I set out to accomplish many years ago, with the support from my family and Inspire.

I started my career in travel at the age of 16, as an apprentice for Lunn Poly in my small market town of Alton.

Despite getting married and having a family young, it didn’t stop me to continue doing what I loved so much.

By the age of 23 I was the branch manager at Lunn Poly, whilst juggling four children under the age of 7. To this day I have no idea how I managed this, but I do remember something had to give, yet I didn’t want to give up my career and become a full-time mum.

I made the decision to start my own business as a homeworker. For 14 years I experienced working for two different homeworking consortiums. My business grew steadily, I had a really good work and family balance.

Over time, my workload became too much for one person, so I employed both of my daughters, who still work for me now and help grow and sustain our family run business.

Pre Covid, sales boomed, I was starting to feel I needed extra back office and admin support. During the pandemic I had time to evaluate what we needed to support us in a unique way, I started to look at other consortiums to see if I can obtain a better ‘package’ or a company that will adapt their support to provide what I and the business needed.

In April 2021 I joined Inspire, and I wish I made this move years ago. The systems are dummy proof, the support is second to none, whatever I need they make sure they provide, from a very thorough admin support, IT assistance, marketing tools and daily training. Now I really feel we can focus on the sales, opposed to dealing with the admin. Our sales have boomed the past year, all thanks to Inspire.

We start our working day at 6am! Out of complete choice, and we need to, to be able to keep on top of the demand.

A typical day

  • The girls arrive and between us we respond to any messages via Email, Facebook, Instagram and text. We then have a brief meeting to discuss ‘Today’s’ tasks and assign the ‘To do list’ to each of us.
  • We get to work, each of us in our own space/rooms. I did have a cabin built in the garden during covid to use as an office, but to this day, I haven’t worked a minute out there. I am too used to sitting at my dining table. The girls work in the offices upstairs. We tend to deal with queries/questions first before focusing on enquiries.
  • I like to get out for an hour, I either go for a walk with the dog or head to the gym. By this time I would have had the ‘queries’ all dealt with, so on my return I can get stuck in with the enquiries.
  • We then congregate in the kitchen, making lunch, discussing quotes, queries etc that may have been received that morning. During this time we establish whether any of us can add those to our lists, or if we need to add them to the next day. We also plan social media content, discuss if any of us have seen some great deals or memes to share on our Insta/Facebook.
  • The girls finish at 3pm, so they are busy making sure they tick off their list and also get deals/memes posted and scheduled to our social media. They also make sure they have called clients that we have sent quotes to in the past 48 hours to gather feedback, see if we can assist any further.
  • The girls have gone, and I will pick up anything they haven’t been able to do, continue to monitor/respond to messages received and sending out quotes.
  • I am winding down, but never switch off. I am available to all my clients 24/7 but do tend to completely shut the computer off by 8pm.
  • Tomorrow we will do the same again, but every day is different. We love the diversity, the not knowing of what will come in overnight. We never have a moment when we are twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do, there is always something. Even if its brainstorming ideas for social media posts (where we get most of our business from), sending thank you cards to clients for booking with us, welcome home cards for those who have returned and setting targets: Daily, weekly and monthly.

Join Homeworking by Inspire

Give us a call or contact us online and download the brochure

0161 465 6096