As most of you know, I’m a mom and I work from home – that gives me the somewhat dubious WAHM title. A title I try and embrace most days, but sometimes fear that it may give potential clients an unprofessional view of me as well.
Anyway in most of my basic international client dealings, I don’t necessarily have to bring up this fact. Its business as usual – they get their work done, I get paid and everyone’s happy. But every once in a while a really cool client will come along who ends up becoming more than a client. That client and I start to become *gasp* friends! At that point we make a mutual decision to add each other on Facebook, G+, Twitter or whichever medium we feel comfortable in using.
But let’s take this a step further: what happens when that client is local and I need to physically meet them for meetings? Naturally I must work around my schedule of being a mom and running a content marketing business. And here lies the overlap. I cannot always find someone (read: my mom) to babysit my daughter at a time when a meeting is scheduled, nor can I always re-schedule meetings to suit my convenience (for a variety of reasons). In such cases I have sometimes taken my daughter along for meetings! Yes I know it sounds unheard of but there are some ground rules I use to accomplish this without ending up with a fussy child, an indignant client or an unprofessional view of me:
Taking your child to business meetings depends on the child’s age. I wouldn’t have even considered taking her anywhere business-y with me until she was about 3 years old. Before that she was just too unpredictable and without-warning demanding. So the cut-off point for me was post 3 years.
Taking her depends on the number of people at the venue. Usually if it’s a big conference type event and I know there will be lots of people there, I can usually take my kid with me. Reason being that I know she’ll be entertained for a while and I can usually mingle and network for anywhere between 30-45 minutes which is usually optimal for me anyways. See this pic of me taking her to the Blogawards ceremony last year where she was the only child. In this pic you can see that I even took her up on stage with me to receive the award!
Always get permission before bringing her anywhere. That should be a no-brainer but obviously you need to talk this part out with clients. My experience has been all positive so far – I usually only ask clients that I’ve developed a sufficiently profound relationship with.
Always take along some of her toys/reading material. Our staple is usually one small soft toy and a coloring/activity book. That usually keeps her occupied for at least half an hour, sometimes more. In cases where there’s a computer or smartphone available, video games can substitute really well too. Yups that’s how she’s ascended all those Angry Bird levels haha!
Always try to rope in a partner or friend. If it’s the kind of meeting where the addition of one other person won’t matter too much, then I always try and take someone along who can help me take care of her. Usually that ends up being my husband, especially for business-social events, but it could also be a colleague or friend.
It’s easier to do all of the above with people who also have children! I remember once I was in a Skype meeting with a client in Canada when suddenly there was a *thud* and then some crying. Turns out their daughter had fallen out of bed while the dad was on a late-night call with me. Now my daughter has fallen out of bed thrice, so apart from the huge guilt sessions that invoked, I knew exactly how this client was feeling. We were able to continue the meeting after his daughter had been tucked back into bed and was soundly asleep with more barriers! The post-bed-fall meeting took on a much warmer tone and this client and I are now good friends. Mutual kids can be such a great ice-breaker!
There are certain events to which I won’t consider taking a child. Training events would be a good example of those, mostly for the fact that they require intense focus and zero disruptions. Other events would be one-on-one business meetings to discuss scope or budget where the client requires my single-minded focus. Needless to say, it’s not advisable to take a child to most business meetings but the above few are some minority examples of when you can, under certain conditions, manage taking your kid to a business event effectively.
So, have you ever done the unusual in the balancing act of being a parent and conducting business from home? C’mon share some storie
3 years old are to young.
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