Summary: WAHMoms/WAHDads host Deborah Carney is joined by guest Fanny Seto who is a blogger and author who works from home. From Fanny: I've been working from home for about 7 out of the past 12 years. I run a frugal living blog Living Richly on a Budget and recently wrote an ebook Eating Organic on a Budget. My daughter is 15 months old. I've worked as a wedding videographer, in search engine optimization, and in online marketing. When I was laid off the 2nd time in a row, I found out that I was pregnant. And I knew that I wanted to stay at home with my child. So I worked at building up my blog to earn an income from it. I felt I had the skills and experience to make it happen. And although it's challenging at times, there's no other place I'd rather be than at home, raising my daughter. Here is a section of a transcript of the podcast: Deborah: What’s the biggest challenge that you think you face as a work at home mom? Fanny: Finding time to work. At this age she’s walking a lot and running and doing things and she won’t let me be on my computer. Every time I’m at my desk she’ll come over and start playing with my mouse and the keyboard and I really can’t get any work done while she’s awake. It’s not like when she was crawling or when she couldn’t move and I could just work a couple hours during the day when she was awake. Now all my attention is taking care of her during the day while she’s awake and when she sleeps that’s when I work. The challenge is actually finding time to work and being more productive with my time. Deborah: Yes, so time management is a big thing with you? Fanny: Yes. Deborah: That’s a challenge that probably every work at home mom and dad has even when their kids are older and off in middle school or high school. Then they don’t demand your attention by playing with your mouse and keyboard but all of a sudden they need to be driven here, there and everywhere. How are you balancing that? You said you work when she naps. Does she have a schedule that she keeps or do you just have to wait for her to get tired? Fanny: She takes one nap during the day so sometimes I do some social media work during that time and I also take a nap. I work at night when she’s asleep. I get most of my work done when she’s asleep. She sleeps at about eight or nine and then I get a few hours of work done. I kind of work two to four hours a day on my blog. Actually to get my book done it was challenging because I couldn’t do it on those time constraints. What I worked out with my husband is he would take her out during the weekend on a Saturday and I would get some writing done during that time. Writing a book you can’t just do one hour or two hours. You have to do a big chunk of time to get something done. That’s how we worked it out. Otherwise I don’t think I would have been able to complete the book. For the rest of the interview, listen to the podcast or download the pdf of our interview. Website https://www.facebook.com/livingrichlyonabudget Thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting all of our podcasts. Visit them for more podcasts about marketing and working from home. Also visit the JoinWOMU Message Board for Women Entrepreneurs
