Home Biz- What does it mean?

Home Biz- What is that?

We started this adventure, this “home biz” quest, many years ago with our own hands and our own dreams.

What does it mean to “work at home”? When people ask me what I do, and I tell them I work at home, they usually ask, “but, what do you do?” So I try to give the simple answer. I’m a glass artist and my husband does copperwork, and we have a business at home- a Home Biz.

I’ve heard everything from “So are you retired then?” to “Oh, it must be nice to not have to work.”

For me, working at home means the freedom to do what I know I’m wired for. That means I spend a lot of time raising my animals and gardens. I subscribe to “slow food” taking the time to bake and make broths and sauces, sourcing good healthy food if I can’t raise it myself. I take time to learn the ins and outs of good nutrition so we can stay healthy and heal ourselves. It means planning and budgeting money and time, and trying really hard not to be wasteful.

On the daily business side

The business side of it, for both of us, means working late nights and weekends . . . often. It means designing and creating product, sourcing materials and researching markets to stay fresh and diverse. It means tracking, recording and reporting sales, looking for new ways to advertise, constantly learning to keep up with new technologies, photographing, listing our products and writing in depth about them so that they can be found by potential customers.

It means stepping out and learning new techniques and sometimes even a whole new artform to include in our work.

It means the buck stops here and we are solely responsible for customer service. It also means we take the risk of failure when trying new ideas. But along with that it means we’ve learned self reliance, we’ve learned to be content, and we have a stronger trust in each other and a growing faith that holds us up.

It doesn’t mean we spend the days in our pajamas, or get bored and wonder how to fill our time. It doesn’t mean we have pictures on the wall of our dream car and strive to put money in the bank to visualize that goal. It doesn’t mean we’re finished with work and will now be living on a tropical island.

It’s not for everyone; some like to go to work where they can punch in and out, and be done with it all at the end of the day. But for us it means we have made a choice to “live a quiet life, minding our own ‘business’ and working with our hands.”

If you work at home, how do you answer the questions when they come to you? If you don’t work at home, but wonder what it means to others, I hope this post helps you understand a little better.

Thanks for reading,

julie