The Life of a Homewoker
Hi, I’m Emma, and with the support of my family and Inspire, I’ve achieved what I set out to accomplish many years ago.
I began my travel career at 16 as an apprentice for Lunn Poly in my hometown of Alton. Even after getting married and starting a family young, I kept doing what I loved.
By 23, I was managing a Lunn Poly branch while raising four children under the age of seven. I still don’t know how I managed it, but I knew I didn’t want to give up my career.
That’s when I decided to start my own business as a homeworker. Over 14 years, I worked with two different homeworking consortiums, steadily growing my business and maintaining a good work-life balance.
Eventually, the workload became too much for one person, so I brought on both my daughters. They still work with me today and help run our family business.
Before Covid, sales were booming and I realised I needed extra admin and back office support. During the pandemic, I took the time to reflect and began looking for a consortium that could offer the right package and adapt their support to suit us.
In April 2021, I joined Inspire, and I only wish I had done it sooner. The systems are easy to use, the support is exceptional, and whatever we need, they provide. From admin and IT to marketing tools and daily training, they’ve allowed us to focus on sales instead of admin. Sales have taken off this past year, and that’s thanks to Inspire.
We start our working day at 6am, entirely by choice, to stay on top of the demand.
A typical day
6:00 am
The girls arrive and between us we respond to any messages via Email, social media and text. We then have a brief meeting to discuss ‘Today’s’ tasks and assign the ‘To do list’ to each of us.
7:00 am
We get to work, each of us in our own space/rooms. I did have a cabin built in the garden during covid to use as an office, but to this day, I haven’t worked a minute out there. I am too used to sitting at my dining table. The girls work in the offices upstairs. We tend to deal with queries/questions first before focusing on enquiries.
9:00 am
I like to get out for an hour, I either go for a walk with the dog or head to the gym. By this time I would have had the ‘queries’ all dealt with, so on my return I can get stuck in with the enquiries.
12:00 pm
We then congregate in the kitchen, making lunch, discussing quotes, queries etc. that may have been received that morning. During this time we establish whether any of us can add those to our lists, or if we need to add them to the next day. We also plan social media content, discuss if any of us have seen some great deals or memes.
1:30 pm
The girls finish at 3pm, so they are busy making sure they tick off their list and also get deals/content posted and scheduled to our social media. They also make sure they have called clients that we have sent quotes to in the past 48 hours to gather feedback, and see if we can assist any further.
3:00 pm
The girls have gone, and I will pick up anything they haven’t been able to do, continue to monitor/respond to messages received and send out quotes.
5:00 pm
I am winding down, but never switch off. I am available to all my clients 24/7 but do tend to completely shut the computer off by 8pm.
Tomorrow we will do the same again, but every day is different. We love the diversity, the not knowing of what will come in overnight. We never have a moment when we are twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do, there is always something. Even if its brainstorming ideas for social media posts (where we get most of our business from), sending thank you cards to clients for booking with us, welcome home cards for those who have returned and setting targets: Daily, weekly and monthly.
