CAHM vs. WAHM – Top 15 Work at Home Differences for Moms

What is the difference between a Career at Home Mom (CAHM) and a Work at Home Mom (WAHM)? I’ve put together a “top 15″ table for comparison – the ‘level of commitment’ turns out to be the distinguishing factor in comparing the two, and this list is based purely on my own experience, on both sides of the fence.

What do you think? What are some other differences or perhaps similarities between CAHMs and WAHMs?

Top 15 Differences Between a WAHM and CAHM

	WAHM	CAHM
1.	You’re working for money, right now.	You’re working for money now, and many facets of your work are investments in future income and success. You are personally invested in the success of  your efforts.
2.	Most likely you’re performing a service or selling a product for someone else, and while you have a flexible schedule, you are dependent on your employer.	Most frequently you’re creating or building your own portfolio of services or products, with a serious eye towards independence.
3.	Typically seeking supplemental income.	Typically building a primary or entirely secondary family income.
4.	Most often reselling something, for a fee or percentage.	Often selling a direct product or service, and defining your profit.
5.	You’re learning very discrete, incremental skills that don’t always transfer to other opportunities.	You’re truly building a professional career, broadening and deepening your knowledge, experience, reusable and current skills, relationships.
6.	You’re typically a team of one, not many are directly dependent on you, nor you on they, for income-building assistance.	You’re building a team of advisors, partners, employees, contractors and freelancers, while building a client and community base – you depend on many, and many depend on you.
7.	Your work is not necessarily associated with your education, past work experience or future career aspirations. Your work is likely administrative in nature.	Your work is directly related to your education (or continuing education), your career strategy, and your professional goals.
8.	You work hard, but work doesn’t interfere with your personal pursuits.	You work hard and aren’t always able to make every social/friend event.
9.	You’re sometimes building a personal brand, and usually representing other brands.	You’re most definitely building a personal brand, and creating or enhancing other brands.
10.	You use Facebook and Emails for most online communication – you participate in online conversations and communities.	You balance professional communication, representation and networking among the most appropriate online channels – LinkedIn for professional relationships, Facebook for social marketing and communities, Twitter for professional real-time notifications and response, email across several different segments of your extended network. You create online conversations and communities.
11.	You work almost entirely at home, save perhaps for sales calls or meetings, and pickup or distribution of products and supplies. You typically have routine babysitting help.	You work mostly at home, but manage a more complex schedule of meetings, interviews, and service delivery functions both virtually and in-person, requiring a lot of time-management skills, online conferencing skills, and flexible babysitting assistance – but most importantly a Blackberry (or some other PDA with email capability).
12.	You exercise at home.	You exercise at home, and try not to let others on the web videoconference see your push-ups.
13.	Your spouse is frequently able to help in your work.	Your spouse may be less likely or able to help, since your business and career may be quite different than theirs – though when it’s similar, you’ve got a significant built-in partnership to leverage.
14.	Your primary objective is supplemental income vs. building a career or business	Your primary objective is promoting career/business.
15.	You are ‘under-paid’ with regards to your skills and experience, accepting what others pay, with little negotiating room. You’re not satisfied with your professional success.	You are compensated fairly for your efforts, and set your own rates or prices. You’re more satisfied with your professional success and future.

Comments? Additions? Let me know – let’s make a definitive guide.

Get Busy in Your Career at Home

Are you busy? Really?

With regards to achieving professional balance, and with emphasis on an actual “profession” – three kinds of “busy” come to mind: “smart” busy, “required busy” and “simply busy” – the secret is to be busy in all three ways, but with significantly more focus on the “smart” way.

“Required busy” means those activities you must do, as obligations of parenthood, being a spousal partner, and generally contributing to the material upkeep, health and welfare of yourself, your family, friends and social context. I could certainly spend ALL of my time doing “required” things, with my four children under 11, and the un-ending demands of housework, school support and volunteering, after-school activities, shopping for essentials, managing the family finances, general parenting, etc. I could also spend a significant time doing “self-required” things such as decorating, gardening, hobbies or entertainment, blogging, exercise and the myriad of other opportunities to occupy myself at home. Do this – try to cut down and prioritize things you feel are “required”, focus on the basics – material upkeep, health, family management, happiness and welfare – and always put your family and health first.

“Simply busy” means those activities you do out of boredom, to pass the time or “relax” that really don’t end up in productive outcome of any sort. Like watching most TV, chatting on the Internet or phone, re-re-decorating your house, round-trips to Starbucks, reading for entertainment, shopping for non-essentials. I’ll be direct, (since you’re trying to be) – there’s very little time or value in being “simply busy” (assuming your goal is a career at home).

“Smart busy” are those additional things you do (on top of the “required” ones) that result in significant contributions to the wealth and success of you and your family, without wasting time or becoming “simply” busy activities. Examples include focused training or skills-building, professional networking and research, actual productive, reusable work – more on that later, personal productivity improvements (like reorganizing your computer or office), updating your email and contact lists, providing extra homework or educational opportunities for your children, etc. Every minute of your day can be a “Smart Minute”.

Get busy – again, like you were at work – but now at home.

Own a Business? Practical Guidance on Getting Started with Social Media

Here’s some good guidance from a KME Internet Marketing Volunteering Contributor and SME (that’s my official term for my husband) regarding how to get social media cranking in your company, large or small. The key is – look for someone to help, who’s already doing it (unpaid).

Initiating a Corporate Social Media Presence – Unleash Your Inner Star Power

Excerpt:

Social Media’s a scary animal, especially for companies or organizations that are accountable to stakeholders, policy, law or any other governing entity that exists to mitigate risk. Also, social media is an online collaboration channel and tools domain that’s most appropriately and effectively utilized by humans, i.e. individual personalities (preferably employees) – vs. corporate personas or third-party services. So how does a company begin to use social media, break into and contribute to the online dialogue, and avoid reputation issues while maintaining appropriate accountability?

Find, identify, nurture, coach and ultimately unleash your employee social media stars – they’ll be the face of the company, the purveyors of online dialogue, and will most likely do a great job at it. Why and how?

Read More…

Babies & Big Butts

Ok, really, this isn’t a topic that I want to discuss with my kids. I really would prefer that they learn this in Biology class at school and then we’d never have to discuss it at home. I know, every friend that I have has said “I can’t believe you haven’t had this discussion with your kids – don’t you want to control what they and how they hear about it – they need to be informed, blah, blah, blah”

The truth is – no- I don’t want to discuss it with them.

Here is the latest discussion on this topic in our car, which happens a little too regularly:

- C (age 5): Mom, how do babies get out of your tummy?
- J (age 9): C, trust me, you don’t even want to know….
- M (age 7): I think they come out of your butt …. no wait, I’ve seen C’s butt and there is no way that a baby is fitting through there
- J (age 9): M, you’d be amazed at how big girls’ butts get when they get older
- Ted (my husband, to no one in particular): No kidding….
- Me (ageless): Thanks, Ted…

The Professional At-Home Mom Lifecycle – DINK, COHM, SAHM, WAHM, to CAHM

As I’ve worked my way through all of the women/mom acronyms, I think that I’ve covered all bases….I’ve been a DINK (dual income no kids) a COHM (Career Outside the Home Mom), a SAHM (Stay at Home Mom), a WAHM (Work at Home Mom), and a CAHM (Career At Home Mom). Trying to live that perfect Mom, Wife, Work, Life balance, I think I’m getting pretty close with my current status as a CAHM. I’ll try to sum up my perspective of each one:

DINK:  As the name implies, plenty of disposable income to spend on things that related to ‘me’ (and my husband), plenty of time to go to the movies, go to restaurants, lay around the house on a Saturday, go on vacation, etc. But, if I’m really honest, we always felt like something was missing, and we spent a lot of time talking about and planning for children (how many, what would name them, how much fun they would be….)

COHM:  Guilt. This basically sums up my experience with continuing to work while raising children. I had guilt about leaving my newborn with a nanny, I had guilt about always having to leave the office before everyone else, I had guilt about my work colleagues having to adjust their schedule to accommodate my ‘new mom’ schedule.

Even with a reduced work week (which really meant that my former full-time schedule of 60 hours a week was reduced to a ‘part-time’ schedule of 40…), I couldn’t make this work. My house was a disaster, my toddler ran and jumped in the nanny’s lap when she saw me come home from work, and I really felt like I wasn’t contributing at work as I had during my ‘pre-kid’ days. With baby #2 on the way and the realization that the only way for me to advance at work would be to completely outsource 100% of my personal life, I quit.

SAHM:  Lots of Time, Organized Linen Closet, and In shape. Boy, did I have a lot of time as a SAHM and I discovered that I really liked Sunday nights again – no pre-work angst, just thoughts of what I’d be doing with the kids that week. Though I wouldn’t have admitted it back then, I had nothing but time with 2 kids under the age of 2. We had perfectly scheduled days, both of them napped every afternoon for at least 2-3 hours, which left me with time to have a clean and organized house.

I use the status of my linen closet as a gauge to how clean my house is – I had a linen closet that Martha Stewart would have been proud of, in fact, I modeled it after one of her ‘how to set up your linen closet’ segments, with brass labels on every shelf, scented potpourri sachets throughout the closet, and everything arranged by type, size and color….if I could ever get it back in that condition, I’ll post a picture; otherwise, you’ll just have to imagine it. Lots of naps (yes, I napped at least 2-3 times per week) regular gym visits (I was in the best shape of my life after #2, I ran a lot, I trained for races, and somehow I had my eating under control, or maybe not, I just worked out a lot) – it was a great time. The only thing that was missing was money. With 2 more kids bringing our total to 4, and the desire to sign up for every activity, take a vacation, do more fun, big kid things, I was heading for another status change.

WAHM:  Not wanting to go down the day-care path, I decided to find some work that I could do from home. I went down quite a few interesting paths, trying to avoid scams and other total disasters, or working for below minimum wage – I even wrote an ‘ebook’ about my experience. Anyhow, I tried lots of part-time, work-at-home gigs, including administrative jobs, accounting work, technical recruiting, affiliate marketing, selling stroller accessories (that a whole other story), starting a short-lived but worthwhile computer training business (Whizkids LLC) and finally SEO/Internet Marketing.

It really was a great training ground for my current work situation. I sorted out what made a good work at home experience and what didn’t, I figured out how to conduct a work call while overseeing 4 kids, and I got my home office set up. It was the Internet Marketing ‘gig’ which led me to take on more clients and eventually create my own lasting business (initially “KME Web Design”, and now “KME Internet Marketing & Social Media“).

CAHM:  This is my current status. With all 4 kids in elementary school this coming September, I see this as (hopefully!) the best of all the acronyms. I’m able to control my schedule, I’m doing something that is lasting, challenging and fun, and it turns out that I’m pretty good at it. I’ve got a couple of people on my staff – this has probably been the biggest challenge, finding suitable help, but I’ve got a very good crew right now including my husband, who moonlights with my company “volunteering” after his “day” job.

A More Personal Take on Professional Balance

So it’s time to finally start a more “personal” blog, though focused on professional and family themes, compiled over the past 11 years raising my family. With an Internet Marketing business, I preach about infusing “personality” into social media, blogging, tweeting, etc. to my clients every day….guess I need to practice what I preach. 

Probably the biggest reason that I haven’t started “personal” blogging (I have blogged for some time at other sites), aside from being busy, having too little time, focusing on my kids and clients, blah, blah, blah…is that I’ve struggeled with the “how do you make a blog readable, entertaining, authentic, etc. – without potentially insulting your friends, neighbors or clients?” question.  Then there is also the “how much personal stuff” do you really need to reveal online – a very common question and tactical necessity in the Internet Marketing/Social Media space. 

“Fulcrumpoint” is the term I’m using to describe the focus here, being the point at which balance is achieved for the objective at hand. This idea surfaced in discussion with my husband, and his springboard diving career – incessantly focused on getting the “fulcrum” (pictured above) exactly right.

More to come!