When Opportunity Knocks, Answer the Door

We are pleased to welcome a new Freelance Parent to the blog this week.  Christina Lemmey has been freelancing as a home based Virtual Assistant for a couple of years now and will bring us a look into life as a internet based VA.

I’ve often been asked, “How did you decide to start your own business?” and for me it was a fairly easy decision. After being a stay at home mom for 10 years and cringing at the idea of having to go on interviews again, commuting, and putting my girls in after school care, I just knew that working from home would be the best solution.

The bigger question for me was, “What kind of business should I start?”

My husband and I had always talked about my going back to work when my youngest was in school full time. On the one hand I thought maybe this would be the perfect opportunity to start a career I really wanted rather than one dictated by my college degree but for someone who puts family high above career, I just couldn’t see myself devoting 8+ hours a day to work and missing bringing my kids to their activities.

Despite the cost of gas, I really like being the mom taxi and seeing how much they enjoy their various after school classes.

So I started researching work at home opportunities while my youngest daughter was in preschool. Luckily I had found the Internet Based Moms website and religiously read the forum questions and advice given by Alice Seba, Kelly McCausey, and Mila Sidman as well as the other more experienced forum visitors.

The idea of working in a service industry intrigued me because of the innate motherly gene in me – you know, the one that wants to take care of and help everybody. I didn’t have any products to create or promote and my corporate background was in advertising print production (which I hated) so I knew that helping other people was the way to go for me. The only question now was, “How to get started?”

When you want something badly enough, you need to listen when opportunity knocks, even if it means stepping out of your comfort zone.

By this point I was on numerous work at home mom mailing lists and received a mailing one day that Kelly McCausey was looking for a podcasting intern. Quite frankly, I barely knew what a podcast was but it was my “aha” moment – I needed to learn a new skill after being out of the workforce for 10 years and here was my chance.

Yes, I was definitely reaching outside of my comfort zone because Kelly was (and is) so well known and I felt intimidated sending in my letter and resume. But considering that I had all of 15 minutes to get this done before preschool pickup, I just bit the bullet and hit the send button. After all, to be an intern you’re not expected to know much or anything about the chosen subject. So I figured I was the perfect candidate!

Luckily for me, Kelly and I hit it off in my phone interview and I was chosen as her podcasting intern. While some people might have thought I was crazy for accepting an unpaid position, for me it was a non-issue. The experience of learning how to record, edit, publish, and promote podcasts was worth its weight in gold. And thus I decided on my type of business: multimedia production.

So internships are very powerful and if you learn from the right mentor, they can provide the basis for a new business or long term freelance opportunity.  Pay attention to what opportunities are available to you and go for the gold, even if you don’t think you’re qualified enough.

You don’t want to miss your “aha” moment.