As we promised we go today to interview one of the leading experts in Spain in online entrepreneurship focused on mothers. It is about Azucena Caballero Bernal.
Azucena is a mother, coach, entrepreneur, businesswoman, teacher and homeschooler. She is the mother in charge of the International Online Community for Mothers Multitasking of “Educarpetas”, from where she helps other mothers to fully develop their abilities and reconcile all facets of their daily lives, as well as to successfully start their own businesses in the net.
She is also the mother in charge of “School folders” where she offers global services for homeschoolers, and shares her 12-year experience as a teacher and home educator. She is also a writer, and among others, is the author of the Best Sellers "Organize your home in 30 days" and "Fundamental tools for successful online entrepreneurship".
What are the advantages of working from home in your own online business?
The biggest advantages are reduced to one, freedom, freedom of time, freedom of location, and if it works well, financial freedom. This freedom makes it very easy to reconcile your professional and family life with ease, so the advantages are countless.
And the disadvantages?
If you do not have the necessary tools and know how to properly manage your time and personal productivity, you can spend many hours locked up at home and work excessively. On the other hand, if you do not focus your business correctly you can lose a lot of time and not have the expected results, with which you can get discouraged and even leave it.
How did you start thinking about undertaking online?
I started thinking about it because it was a way to combine my time with my children. I educate at home, we are a homeschooler family, and it was important for me to be able to generate income without having to go out to work outside the house every day.
How have you learned?
On the one hand through experience, trial and error, and on the other hand doing both face-to-face and online courses on entrepreneurship, business management, online marketing, coaching, etc.
What online businesses or jobs have you developed?
I have been tutoring homeschoolers families for 10 years by mail, chat, social networks and videoconferences. Then I started with a store of downloadable educational material, which resulted in creating an online community for multitasking mothers, and from there offering multiple services aimed at improving the lives of entrepreneurial mothers. This September the community will celebrate its first anniversary and to celebrate it I am preparing various activities, one of them an intensive live coaching program in Atapuerca, Burgos, to be able to combine it with cultural and family activities, since I am addressing mothers.
What led you to want to help other mothers to look for their idea and to undertake it?
I realized that I have always been good at having ideas. I always come up with business ideas and opportunities to undertake as soon as they tell me about their interests or detect their talents, it is something innate. Because of my motherhood, I wanted to share my ideas and everything I had learned with other mothers. I want women to be mothers do not feel they have to give up something in their lives, it seems that if they work they give up their children, if they stay with their children they give up developing a career or having economic independence.
The truth is that motherhood transforms you, awakens you multiple intelligences that it seemed you had asleep.
Motherhood makes you a more capable and powerful woman, and that can be exploited in many ways. For me, a way of not giving up anything, or your cultural or labor concerns, or your intense desire to enjoy your motherhood is to start an online business related to something you love, you can enjoy the best of all those facets that are part of you, and you will be with your children all the time. To write an email or respond in a forum you can have your child suckling on your lap while you write with one hand those lines, it is compatible, and be able to feel that without giving up your motherhood you can have your own project that you are passionate about and that allows you prosper and offer a better life to your family is priceless.
Did the First Multitasking Maternity Congress have that motivation?
Sure. That was also one of the reasons that led me to organize, together with different experts on maternity issues, the First National Congress of Multitasking Maternity held at the Polytechnic University of Valencia on the Campus of Gandía on June 9 and 10, with a great diffusion thanks to the opportunities that the internet gives us, and that allowed us to reach mothers from all over the planet, and that had the participation of professionals and experts such as José Mª Paricio, Emilio Santos, Laura Villanueva, Alejandro Busto , Ramón Soler, Mónica Álvarez, David Plà, etc. The Congress contributed so many positive things that we are already launching the next one, for May 2013, and we are already looking for volunteers to organize everything. All those interested in participating in the II National and I International Congress of Maternity and Multitasking Paternity should only write to [email protected] and may participate in the organization and development of this event.
How can a mother choose her business well?
The first thing you have to think about is what you would most like to do, and who you see as your ideal customer, focus on a specific type of customer, and address only that customer, define well what products or services you are going to offer, and throw yourself at it. Of course you need a website or blog, manage social networks well, create a communication channel with your potential clients, and differentiate yourself, but all these things are learned.
What basic tools should entrepreneurs learn to use online moms?
At least to manage a blog, a mailing list and use Facebook and Twitter well, this is the most basic, along with knowing how to use PayPal to make online payments easily. From there, many more things can be used, but that is essential.
Can they learn everything or do they have to pay someone to take their page?
They can learn everything, moreover, they can develop a successful business model using exclusively free tools. Another thing is that they want to delegate part of their tasks, in that case paying someone is fabulous.
Is the future online work and personal entrepreneurship for those of us who want to live more freely and with more time for family and personal life?
Online work is not the future. It is the present.
I believe that the future has arrived and every day we are more those who choose to work online and thus have more time for our family and for ourselves.
We appreciate this interview he has given to Babies and more to Azucena Caballero, one of the greatest experts in Spain in online entrepreneurship for multitasking mothers and we hope that it has helped you to have things, if you are thinking of doing it, clearer.
