The Other Side of Lifestyle Entrepreneurship

Many people online sell courses on how you can find freedom and travel the world as a speaker, writer, online marketer, social media manager, website designer etc. They show you pictures of countries they have been and how they live and their new experiences and explain how leaving the corporate rat race was the best thing they could have ever done. 
 In many ways when you see pictures of me at Afest in an exotic location or having fun with my mates from Camp Maverick or doing my soul journey on a walk with the Camino de Santiago — you would think I am one of those lifestyle entrepreneurs. 
 There are other entrepreneurs. You can call them mom-entrepreneurs, they stay home to raise children and they want to earn money for their family either to supplement and for many to totally take care of their family financially. These are the women and men I respect alot — their role is to combine the best of stay home care-giving with the best of their talents. They do anything and everything to make it work. They burn their candles at both ends and they bootstrap. Many may not have a degree and they are very real and great business people. They build communities online and they are great with systems and technology. 
 I am not one of them.. I hope to be when I adopt my child and raise her/him from home. That is why for the last 3 years I have been learning about online businesses and making partnerships with successful online businesses. I launched my first digital product http://www.theamazingyou.com/go/index.php and have begun to write more for blogs and for books to self-publish. I am doing direct sales to consumers for my first time. Before my sales was always business to business. I was a corporate trainer. Different kettle of fish. If I pursued that route to be a success I would be on stage after stage, country after country, hotel room after hotel room. Can I do that? Yes. Does it match my current life path? No….
 What am I? In my remote team, we have members from USA, India and Philippines and Singapore. They are all full time part timers. I am the only full-timer for now. We took this work from home online work to manage the time needed to see to our aging parents. Today I want to acknowledge those types of workers.

The ones who stay home with a family member with chronic illness. Not like a mommy with a cute and perhaps irritable kid. But a person who has to maintain their own positive emotional energy while carrying for a sometimes unreasonable less than adorable and definitely frustrating fellow adult in pain and possible depression.

We cannot tell them what to do. We can with a kid for a little while rather we can hope they listen to us… We have to repeat ourselves and find within ourselves the strength and consolation to support them and our own work.

The ones who stay home with someone who self-inflicts harm or is depressed. They care-give and cannot explain to the world the horrors they see, the alcoholism, the addictions, the abuse — all because it would shame the family or perhaps get social services in when they don’t want to have their family member taken away.

Today I write this with great sadness as Lucille Mae Orque our team member’s mother passed away. Lucille is a young stay home mother with an autistic son, another son and a sick mother. She is very sweet and prompt and a great learner.

I write this for Shweta Chugh who is caring for her dad at 27 in India. Who is ambitious and has so much energy and drive. And is constrained for now by her life choice. As I was with mine at 28 when I first stayed home to care for dad while my friends partied their twenties away.

I write this to respect my best friend and co worker Peter A. Lees whose mom passed two weeks ago. He left his life in Singapore to go back to no job but to care for Mom and now a grieving Dad.

I write this with great compassion for myself and many others too drained with caring for sick and children and running their own business, to have a life-style. I have not truly dated for a while because I barely had time for me. Emotionally down-time. Not just physical time.

I write this to show you the new ways of living and working in the world and help companies remember the importance of part-time work and flexible work hours so we can be family first and work second. As it should be.

Lucille Mae Orque I truly respect you.

And to all who can relate — do comment here.