Working From Home: An Interview with Mary Peters, RN, Business Owner
US: “Mary, can you tell us a little about yourself?”
MAR: “Sure. I’m the mother of 9 children. My youngest is 11, my oldest is 27. I have 2 grandchildren and I have a background in nursing. I practiced as a Registered Nurse for 17 years.”
US: “I understand you own your own business. What made you want to go into business for yourself, and how did you get started?”
MAR: “Well, I do own my own business and actually it sounds kind of funny hearing myself saying this because I never really saw myself as a business person. I always thought that people in business needed to be good with numbers and I had trouble balancing my checkbook. So I felt that being a business owner was rather scary but I do own my own business, I actually have an international business that I have owned for 15 years. And the reason I went into this business was because we had a huge financial need. I was a Registered Nurse about 30 hours a week. I was doing two 12-hour shifts on the weekends so my husband Mile would work all week while I was home with the kids and then I would go to work on the weekends and he would be home with the kids. So we avoided having any daycare costs; and Mike and I would always be home with the children but we sacrificed time together. We had no family time. We couldn’t even go to Mass together as a family. I would have to get up and go to Mass early in the morning and then go off to my shift and Mike would go later with the kids, so that really put a dent in our family life. I was also doing diabetic teaching during the week so that was something else that also took away family time. I was really spinning my wheels with all that. So even with all the work I was doing, and Mike was working 40-50 hours per week, we still had a lot of debt. We were really blessed with the number of children we had but we felt that God needed to provide us another way to feed our family. So that was the reason I got started: we jumped into this business with a lot of faith and trust. Like I said, I never had any business background and I just thought, ‘Well, I’m going to learn as I go along.’ I started in this business with 7 small children (our oldest was 10) while I was working 30 hours a week Nursing. I started working from home with one 15 minute period a day, then ½ hour, then an hour per day and eventually my business grew to the point where I matched my nursing income. Then my husband suggested I quit nursing so I could work from home exclusively and put more time into the business. So that is what we decided to do; what started as a leap of faith proved to be an answer to our financial prayers.”
US: “So you work from home? What do you like best about working from home? "
MAR: “I think the thing I love the most is that I’m always available to my family. Since starting this business 15 years ago, we have had two more children. So I’ve done this business around infants, toddlers, grammar school kids, and teenagers, and now we’ve had 6 of our children leave for school and some of them are married; we only have 3 at home right now. So because my family’s needs are always changing and with all the different ages the thing I love the best is that I have flexibility. I can drop everything and go have lunch with my college-age daughter who just needs to talk or I can go help out at my younger daughter’s school. And I love that I can be available to my parents who don’t live too far away. In fact, today my mom just called and asked if I could pick up my Aunt from the train station because my mom wasn’t able to pick her up. So I was able to bring my Aunt over to my mom and dad’s house and we could all have lunch together. I was able to change my schedule around to be with my parents and my Aunt. And so I think the thing I love the most is the flexibility of this type of business. One other thing I think I really appreciate now is that as a really busy mom I have to use my time well. I was forced to become more and more organized with every child I had. I had to learn to use my time more efficiently. Now in my business I teach and train other distributors to do what I’ve done. I teach them to become successful and empower them to begin to build their own businesses. And then I receive a percentage from all of their sales. I am rewarded financially for the efforts that I put into people. It’s a business where you invest in others. When I’ve done that, when I want to go and spend time with my family, my distributors that I’ve taught and trained are building their businesses and at the same time I’m providing financially for my family. I’ll give you an example. When my daughter got married the whole day was spent on the wedding festivities. A few days later I actually checked to see what my profits were that day because I’m able to do that on the computer. And I saw that all of the orders that went in on the day that my daughter got married profited me $500. So here I was spending time with my family and I made $500 to help provide financially for my family. So I see this home-based business as a great way to leverage my time. And that’s what I hope to do in teaching other families because I know if people really knew what this was about—and this business is almost too good to be true—it’s a great way to leverage your time as a really busy mom.”
US: “What challenges are there in running a business out of your home?”
MAR: “I think one of the biggest challenges is setting priorities. There is always a lot to do in the home. And as your business starts to grow, there is a lot to do in your business. And so you have to set priorities as to what has to get done first. It’s a judgment call. You have to begin to make those decisions. So the way I’ve become more organized is that every day I get a clean sheet of paper and fold it down the middle. And on the left hand side I put down all my family responsibilities: grocery shopping, picking up my mom, writing a letter to a friend. I have to start preparing for our family Christmas party even ‘tho it’s not even Halloween yet! And then on the right hand sheet I put down all the things pertaining to my business: my business appointments: this interview is on that list right now. And I have an appointment at 11:30 a.m., and one at noon, and I have it all scheduled. The challenge is working your business alongside your family responsibilities. So you need to become extremely flexible. I have a cell phone, most people do, and I also have an ear piece and I find that if I have to go to the grocery store or the post office or whatever I have to do I plan on doing some type of a call. It might be just a follow-up call. So I find I have become very flexible in squeezing this into my home errands, the errands that I have to do for my family. And I’ll give you an example. I had to pick up my son from basketball practice, and when we were driving home I had a call come in from a distributor who had a question about figuring out an order. So I just answered her questions and told her the best way to help her put together her order and I have my ear piece in, both hands are on the wheel, so I’m being safe, but after that was done my son asked me ,” Mom, was that a business call?” and I said, “yes.” And he said ” Now, how much were your profits from that call?” and I figured that it was about $100 profit that I had made. And he kind of laughed and said, “Well, you just made $100 driving me home from basketball practice, and now you can buy me new basketball shoes!” and I just laughed and said, “No, I’m going to be buying groceries.” So I think that is what has happened to me, the challenges of fitting in things like getting kids to sports, grocery shopping, post office, spending time with my parents, all of that I try to do while I’m going to or coming from something, or let’s say I go to the grocery store and I challenge myself. I won’t go into the grocery store until I make myself make three follow up calls while I’m sitting there in the parking lot. So the challenges are doing it alongside family life. I did start this with infants, I think this is another thing you get used to; I’ve done this with babies in my arms, while I’m rocking them and walking around the house kind of pacing the house, trying to keep them quiet, I’ll be doing calls and again I have my headset for that, and becoming extremely laid back because there would be times when I’d be on the phone on an appointment and the kids would get the cereal, pour it on the rug, and start dancing on it and I would just have to keep my cool and just be OK with that for that moment in time and think, “they’re having fun” in order to be able to continue with my phone call. And I think, ‘ I’m just going to relax and I’ll clean it up later.’ In that way I became much more laid back, I would say.”
US: “If you could share one key time management tip with our readers, what would it be?”
MAR: “I can only speak from the perspective that I am a mom first. That’s my first job; I’m a mom. I know another person reading this may not be a mom—he might be businessman or a single person; but the reality is that whatever our vocation is, you are most likely going to start doing this business around something else you are already involved in such as a full-time job, or maybe you’re really involved in the Church and now you’re going to start this home-based business. Yes, you should be organized, but the tip is, don’t wait for the perfect time to come around where you’re going to sit at a desk and do this business, because the perfect time will never come. You just need to dive in—just seize the moment-- and take every opportunity you can. I’ll give you another example. I was at the grocery store and one of my distributors called me. She was bringing in a new distributor and again needed help figuring out what products she was going to order. I could have said to her “You know what, I’m grocery shopping, and I’ll call you back in ½ hour and we’ll talk then” but I kind of figure, I’ve got her on the phone now, I’m just going to seize the moment and we’re just going to do it right now. So I pull my cart over to the side and I get out my calculator and a piece of paper and I’m writing on top of a pasta box or whatever is in the grocery cart, and I figured out the order with my pencil and my calculator and put together an order and told her what it was, and it probably took 10 minutes and then when we were done, we were done. Now, was that the perfect moment, was I sitting at a desk? No. But I felt like I needed to take advantage of that situation because my distributor called me at that moment when she really needed me and I needed to just be available to make things happen. So I think that my tip would be, just seize the moment and don’t wait for that perfect time because it might never come.”
US: “What advice would you give to someone who is looking to start their own business from home?”
MAR: “Well, I think that now that I’ve done this for 17 years, I understand the value of repeat business. I really didn’t understand it before, but it’s very valuable. Whatever home-based business you’re looking at, make sure it has products that are first of all consumable and secondly that appeal to a wide range of people. You see, the work that you do today will continue to pay you for the rest of your business life because people will use your product up, they will run out of it, and they will have to reorder. You will have repeat business. Make sure your product is something that everybody needs rather than targeting more specific groups. Find something that’s good for young people, for pregnant moms, for people up into their nineties. If you’ve got a huge market base you can draw on, the products really attract a wide range of interest. So if I can’t use it, maybe I have an Aunt that could use it. That’s the first thing. Something else that’s really important, although it’s more internal, is that you have to have a commitment that you’re not going to quit. Life has its ups and downs so you’re going to have to persevere during the hard times. I think that is the biggest reason why I’ve been successful is that I’ve been very committed to my home-based business and I decided early on I wasn’t going to quit. The other thing is you have to have a really huge “Why.” (Why am I doing this business?) Because if you don’t have a big enough reason to do a home-based business you’re not going to want to overcome the obstacles that crop up. You’re going to say “Oh, forget this, this is too hard.” But I can guarantee you that you’re going to have problems and obstacles and you’re going to have to overcome them. My big “why” was I had a lot of mouths to feed. So I needed to help put food on the table and that was my original why. And then once I did that, I was able to start paying the mortgage. After that, we were able to do some extra things like take vacations. So make sure you’re getting a bigger “why” as you reach personal goals in your business.”
US: ”What role does your Faith play in how you run your business?”
MAR: “When I first started doing this, I started going to family and friends right away, but then I also went to friends at church. I wanted to go to those I knew, loved, and cared about; people with whom I shared the same faith. I also am very appreciative of Catholic media, because when people respond to advertising, whether it is me reaching out to media, or people responding to an ad, the people that are going to be calling and inquiring are going to be those that most likely share my same values. There is right away a sense of trust. When you’re teaching and training people how to do what you’ve done, there has to be an element of trust because you’re going to be working very closely with people. So I believe that when you share the same faith and morals you don’t have to worry about compromising your ethics or your morals because the people you’re working with tend to have the same viewpoint that you do.”
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