We recently bought a new (to us) minivan to fit our growing family, and when the nice salesman asked the simple question, “what do you two do?” my husband happily answered that he worked in maintenance and that I was a stay at home mom.
This isn’t entirely untrue, I do stay home and take care of our three (almost four) beautiful children, but I also run several businesses as a work at home mom.
Has this ever happened to you? Maybe someone answered for you and ignored the fact that you work, or maybe you weren’t really sure what to answer since you don’t have a traditional job.
“What do you do?” has become such a regular part of conversation, it’s smart for us work at home moms to be prepared with how to answer this question!
So Work at Home Mom, What Do You Do?
Keep It Simple
Trust me, most people won’t understand you if you decide to say that you’re a “content curator” or a “mompreneur”. If you really want to keep it simple, just say that you work from home.
Most people are only asking this to make polite conversation, so they probably won’t push for more details. If you’d like to give a bit more information, keep it as simple as possible. You could say that you’re a blogger, or to keep it even simpler than that you could just say that you’re a writer.
If you have a direct sales business you could just say, “I sell kids products” (or whatever it is that you, in fact, sell).
You can tell them that you’re a virtual assistant, or you can simply say that you work online helping other online businesses.
When I’m asked I either say “I’m a writer” or “I run my own business working from home” depending on who is asking.
Stay Kind
As difficult as it may be, always stay kind during these discussions. If you tell someone that you’re a blogger, and they say something like “that’s cute” or “right, but what do you do for work?” try to give them some grace.
The blogging world is still relatively new and a lot of people don’t understand that you can really make money blogging.
If you tell someone that you work in direct sales and they go on a tangent about pyramid schemes, accept that nothing you say will likely change their mind and do your best to stay polite.
People can often be rude about things that they don’t understand, so as much as you’d like to argue with them about the validity of your work at home job, resist the urge. Put your relationships above your pride and do your best to have grace.
Have an Elevator Pitch
Okay, this may seem like the opposite of the previous advice, but I promise I’m not crazy. While lots of people will be completely uninterested in your work at home job and others may even mock you for what you do, there will be some people who are genuinely interested in what you do.
If they ask for more information, you better be ready to give it! You never know who your next client, customer, or partner will be. An “elevator pitch” sounds cheesey, but really all it means is having a short (think, time it takes to ride an elevator) few sentences that gives an idea of what exactly you do to and makes it clear to a stranger.
For example, if I tell someone that I sell Fundanoodle kids products and they ask for more info I could say, “As a homeschooling mom to three active boys I am always looking for products to help my kids learn without realizing it, and Fundanoodle gave me that. Now I share the products with other moms and bring in an income from home!”. That’s an elevator pitch. You give them enough info without being pushy, and you may just gain a new customer!
So that’s how I handle it when someone asks me what I do. For more work at home mom tips be sure to check out the first day with links to the whole five day series here! And if you’re looking for more to read, check out the iHomeschool Network Summer Hopscotch by clicking on the picture below!
I’m a writer and a homeschooling mom, so people ignore that I work all the time. Either they ignore that I work as a homeschooling mom, because I don’t get paid for it, so apparently it’s not work, or they ignore that I’m a writer because apparently that’s not a real job. I’ve learned to let these things go. People will judge us no matter what we do, so we might as well do whatever the heck we want.