Parenting can feel like a competition some days. Is you house spotless? Are your kids off to school with shiny shoes and tidy hair? It can be particularly bad at the end of term. Have you made cakes for the school fair, donated a bottle for the tombola, attended the end of term play and made it to parents’ evening? You can end up  feeling under pressure.

This week, the Family Friendly Working blog is looking at coaching. You may think that coaching is all about achieving perfection, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Sometimes you just need to decide what are important goals, and then also make a conscious decision that some things in life are NOT important. In her post, Fake It ‘till You Make It, Aussie Mumpreneur Karen Miles has some tips on how to fake parenthood when you need some breathing space:

1. Catch an episode of Play School and copy one of their art projects (even download their website templates) then marvel at your early childhood education skills. Your toddler will bask in your greatness.

2. Keep wicker baskets in every room to toss toys into at the end of the day and call your decorating style ‘country eclectic’.

3. Hide the laundry pile at the back of a cupboard when friends or family come over and enjoy your ‘tidy’ home for a few hours.

4. Better still, ‘home-bake’ some mini apple pies for mother’s group / school courtesy of the local bakery. Sprinkle a dusting of icing sugar over the pies after taking to them with a rolling pin (to squash them up a bit to make them look ‘truly’ home-made).

Karen says: “Cut yourself some slack. Laugh at the chaos of your life (you may as well), and give yourself the space to be ok as you are. Cut the smaller corners that will help you get through the day. Often your own expectations of yourself far exceed those of your kids or other people.”

 So, when the pressure to be a perfect parent is mounting, ask yourself what is really important. Shove the laundry under the counter, send in bought cakes (with a little bit of home made icing on top ;)), sit back and spend some time enjoying family life.

Sue Atkins, 48, is athe Uk’s leading parent coach and runs her own business, Positive Parents=Confident Kids. Sue is married, with two children, Will age 16 and Molly, 14. She lives in Lingfield, Surrey.

Sue says, Sue says, ” I was working as a Deputy Head, after 22 years in teaching when both my parents began to have serious illnesses, and I needed to take time out to look after them. When they died in the same year it was traumatic, and made me look more closely at my own life. There are two books which started me on the journey to becoming a Parent Coach. Fiona Harrold’s Be Your Own Life Coach and Suzy Greaves’ Making the Big Leap. The exercise in Suzy’s book where you look at where you might be aged 80 made me take a really hard look at my life and where I wanted to go next and I realised I didn’t want to work in teaching for another 20 years. I was very lucky that my Dad gave me the gift of self esteem: so my passion and mission now is to work with parents to help them give their children the same gift.

“In order to work as a coach, I joined the Coaching Academy which lead on to a diploma in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). I then took Paul McKenna’s NLP Master Practitioner and Trainer qualification. I went on to join Tony Robbins’ Mastery University, and still attend for training every six months or year. I see it as vital to get coached myself: every coach should have a coach. I see it as vital and very empowering to get coached myself : every coach who takes their work seriously benefits from having a coach to help them move forward.

“Once I was working as a coach, I was invited to write Raising Happy Children for Dummies, which was great honour and a super experience as one of my childhood ambitions was to become a journalist. I loved writing and that has become a key part of how I promote my products and services. When I looked at what high profile coaches like Tony Robbins, Paul McKenna and Bob Proctor do, they all offered products and run workshops. I now have a range of Parenting Made Easy products available through my website. I can be lying in bed and people in Australia, China and Canada are buying my products and getting the benefit of my work. I’ve studied all sorts of marketing and in particular permission marketing where you give a free e-book, ecourse, report or newsletter to encourage people to sign up for your information and then you have their permission to market regularly to them. Coaching is a business and you have to see it as such. I’ve sat up many a late night studying Search Engine Optimisation, field sales, google adsense and Twitter so I know people will find my website and now I’m really excited to be creating a parenting club on my website with a forum, to give people a community.”

Sue has some tips to help if you want to become a coach:
1. The impression is often given that to become a coach all you need is a phone, and you’ll make lots of money. In fact it is not that easy to become a high profile coach.
2. Don’t leave your day job right away!!
3. Get well trained.
4. It is all about marketing yourself, following up leads and creating products.
5. Know your niche: I’m passionate about developing self esteem for kids through working with their parents and also empowering parents with their own parenting self confidence
6. To be successful you need a team: I couldn’t have done this without a webmaster and a brilliant publisher.
7. You have to run a tight ship: if you don’t have clients, you can’t put petrol in your car!
8. Be systematic. I set goals every night for the next day, it’s really important to walk your talk!.
9. Take regular small actions every day to make a big difference to your life over time.
10. Look back every month or year to see how far you’ve come.

11.Network for England to make long term great relationships as these people become your sales force too !

Come back to the blog tomorrow: as part of this week’s Friday Giveaway you can win a copy of Sue’s book and a 30 minute session with her.

We are Rethink- Fran Hill and Sarah Grant with an average age of 39 ½!  We each have two children, our boys, George and Cameron are in the same class at school (both 6) and that’s how we met- school pick up time.  We got together because we share a common vision of helping women after they have had children in deciding what they want to do next.  We both found motherhood a time of huge change and personal reflection and both moved into different careers after children; Fran is an antenatal teacher with the NCT and Sarah is a life coach.  As Rethink we run group life coaching sessions for mums who are facing a crossroads; back to previous career? Stay at home with the children? Start a new business?  It’s not about telling mums what to do- that wouldn’t work, it’s about giving mums the opportunity to explore in a confidential and supportive environment, their options for moving their lives forward.

We started Rethink in July 2008 and have run a pilot course with mums recruited from the school gate- it proved very popular and buoyed up with lots of positive feedback we are running further courses this year.  These are early days and we would say that our biggest challenge so far is getting our name and what we do out there to mums.  We have a fabulous product- now we need to tell the world (well more specifically, Oxfordshire where we are based!).  We have had some great articles in the local press and some well place adverts and leaflets are bringing in enquiries. 

For more information visit www.ineedtorethink.com

As I’ve  got older I have become more aware of the role of hormones in how I feel.  I’m particularly interested in the changes I have experienced personally, and seen in others, after having children as it seems to unleash creativity in women.

And have you ever let rip in the week before your period? Some people may call that PMT, but it can also be a useful way of addressing lurking issues and clearing the air.

You may or may not feel that your hormones change the way you work but I’d certainly recommend The Optimized Woman: Using Your Menstrual Cycle to Achieve Success and Fulfillment: If You Want to Get Ahead, Get a Cycle to help you find out more.

I spoke to Miranda Grey about her personal experiences which lead her to write this book. Miranda says, “After doing a science degree at university I did an illustration course and half way through it I set up as a freelance illustrator. It was very obvious to me, painting 24/7, that my creativity changed with the phases of my cycle. Also I found it easier to do some things towards running the business at certain times of the month than others. From discussing these experiences with other women and looking for images of women from the past to find a system to relate to, I wrote my fist book Red Moon: Understanding and Using the Gifts of the Menstrual Cycle back in 1994. It was very successful, translated into 5 languages, and I gave talks and workshops on the contents. It is about to be reprinted too.

Miranda then moved on from traditional illustration into electronic graphic design and set up a multimedia company with her husband. She explains, “Over the last 15 years I have worked for clients ranging from large international corporates to small startup businesses. A few years ago it occured to me that although I work to my strengths in my cycle that there was no knowledge of this practice in mainstream work and the menstrual cycle is still as much of a taboo in mainstream society as it was back in the early 1990s. Also, having finished a course on life-coaching and having tested a range of different success and goal achievement  methods, it became obvious to me that they were based on a consistency of experience, motivation and ability that women do not have, making it difficult for women to use them to achieve their full potential.”

This moved Miranda to develop The Optimized Woman . She says, ” The Optimized Woman is designed to show women how to recognise their Optimum Time abilities and to apply them practically to three main areas of their lives: well-being, goal-achievement and work enhancement. It answers the question ‘What use is my menstrual cycle?’ and shows it as a powerful resource when we adapt activities, expectations, motivation, and success and goal-achievement methods, in line with our changing phases.

Miranda is in her 40s and lives in Southampton, England, in a scheduled ancient monument. As well as running a multimedia business with her husband, she paints children’s book illustrations, teaches Reiki, runs women’s workshops and facilitates an online women’s course. She has a degree in Geophysics and has written a correspondence course on using crystals for well-being. Find out more about the Optimized Woman at www.optimizedwoman.com/ or buy The Optimized Woman book for £10.79 here.

Name of Business: mylifesupport

Your Name and Age: Anna Martin - 44

 Tell us about your family: I’m divorced and share custody of my two sons - Alexei is 12 and Remy is 16. I currently live in West Sussex but may be moving again later in the year.

What did you do before coming up with your business idea and how was it making the transition? I was/am a freelance journalist (20 plus years experience) but during a difficult period of my life I decided to retrain as a Life Coach. However, because I am also an Empath I have incorporated my skills so that I offer an Intuitive Life Coaching service, as well as Future Life Progression (FLP), Past Life Regression and other complementary therapies.

When did you launch? My Intuitive Life Coaching business launched in 2005, and FLP was introduced into my practice in Oct 2008. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just stumbled upon a nice little tool from Google to help you with keyword ideas. Have a look what happens when I search on ‘mumpreneur’ here. Instead of getting just a list of results, I get a ‘wonder wheel’. It’s a bit like a mind map: just enter your term, then click on the suggested similar terms to find even more possible keywords.

To find it, do your usual search, then select ‘options’ on the left of the blue bar running across the screen above your results. Then, scroll down to click on ‘wonder wheel’ in the left column. Then, you can have fun looking for new keywords which people might use when searching for your products or services.

In April, I reviewed Starting and Running a Coaching Business: The Complete Guide to Setting Up and Managing a Coaching Practice which proved to be one of the most popular articles I have written on this site. If you checked out the book, you’ll be delighted to hear about how author Aryanne Oade  got started as a life coach.

Name of Business: Oade Associates

Your Name and Age: My name is Aryanne Oade and I am 42 years old.

Tell us about yourself: I live and work from my farm just outside a small village in Yorkshire.  I keep a flock of 22 pet sheep and run my business from the farm.  Read the rest of this entry »

Coaching helps you get even more out of your life. It saves you time and helps you make even better decisions and enables you to take action by tackling those things which are holding you back. People may use a coach when they are going through change. A new role, relationship or looking for something different but don’t know what it is and therefore how to get it.

Now you tell me how a coach can help Mums?

How to choose a coach

Questions to ask a coach:

• What kind of coaching do you do? - many coaches specialise in a certain areas eg business (executive), life (all round), fertility, relationships etc etc. However a good coach could coach in any area as its not about the topic but about asking great questions and understanding people.
• Can I have a trial run? - what you get out depends on what you put in and how open you can be. Working together for half an hour to see how you feel about that coach is a good idea. It’s a bit like shopping for clothes and trying them on.
• What training and coaching experience do you have? - Look for long term professional training and ongoing professional development. What took them into coaching and what did they do before?
• Whats your definition of coaching? - listen to their answer to feel how this ties into what you want from a coach
• How do you do your coaching? - Do you want to be coached in person, online or on the phone. What way do you learn best? Do they write up notes? 

What Coaching Isn’t

• Therapy - coaching is for people who have the resources to make change. If you don’t due to psychiatric illness then coaching may not be for you.  CBT or other therapy may be better for you.
• Something you have done to you - YOU have to do the work and make the changes. A coach just asks the best questions to allow you to know what to do.
• Mumbojumbo - there is plenty of research evidence to show how coaching improves feelings and performance when given appropriately
• Someone telling you what you should be doing - Its not context specific. If you want to be given advice a mentor may be better suited.  
• Expensive - some people don’t feel they deserve spending money on themselves when they have a small income or no income at all. Does your life have price? How much would you pay for more happiness and fulfilment? Doing nothing has an even bigger price to pay when you are missing out on the opportunity of a life time.

 By Sam Pringle of www.beeleafconsulting.co.uk, Belief: the first step to success

Life coaching helped me move from employment to running my own business. You can use coaching to help with any aspect of your life, from developing your skills as a parent to improving your health, fitness and satisfaction with life. This is why the next week is themed on coaching.

Watch out for some fantastic tips from Life Coaches, as well as profiles of sucessful coaches. On Friday there is a great giveaway too with FREE coaching sessions and books.

Almost five years to the day after their launch, LittleStuff is finally flashing a new ankle at its browsers. Amidst all the doom and gloom, they are a tale of success - with over 200 companies listed on the site, their witty, honest and knowledgeable reviews are on the regular read lists of net-mums-who-know; they are often called on by features editors to provide filler items and images at the last minute, and they are much loved by some of the top names in the nursery industry (and by many of the tiny fabulous boutiques too)… and run by two mums who have only ever met twice, and who very rarely speak.

Laura Hitchcock

Laura Hitchcock - married to Courtenay and mum to Cameron (10), Joe (7), Toby(6) and Ella (2) -and Katy Owen, married to Peter and mum to Jacob, 6, and Ben, 2 - met for the first time just 6 months ago when LittleStuff founder Laura and her family made the 160 mile journey from Dorset to Northamptonshire to stay with Katy and her family. “It was mad - we’d never really met, and yet it was completely natural, like we’d only had coffee the day before!” smiles Katy.

The two mums have been ‘cyber-friends’ since they met on a parenting website birth board in 2002, Katy pregnant with her first son and Laura with her third. Katy joined LittleStuff 18 months after Laura had set it up, and combining their skills has seen LittleStuff leap forward, increasing its traffic to the current 9,000 visitors a month.

Katy Owen

 ”The business day starts and ends with iChat,” admits Laura. ‘We have a constant conversation running every single day, picking up and leaving off whenever necessary as we juggle the business around school runs and toddlers and laundry and the like.”

With its fresh and innovative ‘kitchen table’ look, the new LittleStuff is a huge step for the pair. Not only is it entirely different to anything else in the market, but for the first time they have moved away from a web design company. The new site is entirely designed and run by the pair themselves ‘It’s terrifying!’ laughs Katy, who is in charge of All Things Technical “we no longer have a grown up to run to if it breaks!”

The pair both have backgrounds in IT, so it wasn’t a huge leap into the unknown - more taking back the control, and was the next logical step.

 ”Designing it was exhilarating, actually,” continues Laura (in charge of All Things Design) “we knew that eventually we had to simply stop worrying about what we ‘should’ be doing with the site, and design it just for ourselves. Because at the end of the day, we are our own target market.”

And sure enough, the instant feedback has been enormously enthusiastic. Still covering the task of helping busy parents to find what they need as fast as possible, new visitors just can’t help stopping longer than they expected, simply to discover the hidden secrets on the home page, read the latest reviews and just have a mosey round the site. As the home page says: ”Come, pull up a chair, here’s a cuppa…”