One More Step Forward!

We got our phone system up and running! It took half the day...actually, Joni started the hookup process already last week but finally today, after many phone calls to the phone company, trial calls to the business phone, it was finally set up. Our little tricky piece now is, with Joni in her seven-child household and me in my six-child household, and having the official office for now, at Joni's with the backup phone answerer being me, we may have a little difficult time sounding professional. We already have it planned that if a kid lets out a war-whoop or "MOM!" in the middle of a phone call, we will laugh and say, "Sorry, I'm working out of my home office today!" (....and every day....) We just want to make sure that we aren't starting in over our heads with costs. Then, when we get so busy that we need to start hiring outside help, we actually have a hand full of people that want to work for us when we get to that point. Then about the time that we need to start thinking about hiring people we don't know, we will have to have some office sites picked out to look into leasing.

One thing though that we both want to make sure is that we don't let our business come in front of our families. Actually the reason we decided to go ahead and get into it now is to hopefully get to the point we can get our husbands home full time and then hire good enough office staff that we can just be in and out, doing marketing, opening clients, and then working some out of the main office and lots out of our home offices. It will be interesting to see how it really goes though. I'm pretty sure we are realistic in thinking that it will become very busy at some point because I know that the need is there. Just to see though how it unfolds will be interesting.

Another thing we've decided is that our kids and husbands will always be as much a part of this endeavor as possible and as much as they want to be. My oldest daughter already has designed one of our flyers...I have to say, it's pretty cute and we've already put some of them up, along with ours. We will have them help with tasks such as stuffing envelopes, putting labels on envelopes and folders, printing and copying things, stamping envelopes, etc. Even tasks such as running down to the office and turning the printer/copier on to warm up or carrying the laptop to the office for Mom has been a high-esteemed job to them. It makes them feel a part of it all from the start and makes them feel important. That's how we hope to have it!

Well, on to business!