Any harm done in gazing over the fence occasionally to check the grass color? Anything wrong with daydreaming about the patches of green that surely are there? Only, I think, if I let that derail me. If I spent hours of time at it, I would later be frustrated beyond belief by the consequences of that time usage. After all, I CAN return to the corporate world if I so choose and the choice is mine.

So if it’s truly a consideration, all I have to do is (mentally) put myself there for a brief period of time. I wouldn’t be at home right now. I’d be doing someone else’s bidding on their schedule. I would have to answer to others (in addition to myself). How does that feel? No thanks. My independent streak bristles at the very thought.

This exercise works for me. You can do the same thing if you’re contemplating the transition from employee to work at home mom, just reverse the tables. Imagine yourself working at home. How does it feel? You probably don’t have enough particulars to think about what it would look like. Just focus on the feeling. Go ahead – flirt with being a work at home mom .

It was more the foray into network marketing…an often misunderstood and often under-appreciated business model. It wasn’t even considered a valid business model by some. I was affected by these perceptions of other people, and I know of other work at home moms and would-be WAHMs in the same boat. For myself personally, I find it tinged with sad humor in retrospect. The advance of home-based business is now touted as a driving market force, and it has been a wonderful fit for me.

But I think there are still some professional women out there who are stymied by this old stigma. To them, I would say: do your due diligence. Educate yourself on the current state of business affairs among the forward-thinking. Be careful who you allow to be your “who saids” (who you listen to in forming your self-picture). And then remember these wise words from a man who is the Director of International Business Development for a highly successful network marketing company: “Any major change is ridiculed, opposed and then becomes self-evident it would happen anyway.”

There are often questions of legitimacy about various work at home options, sometimes coupled with the issue of money. I mean, if you spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a franchise license, you know it’s legitimate, right? Having to invest a large sum of money seems to give an undertaking credibility. And if you want to work at home producing and/or selling something clever you create, like (…well, I’m not a clever creator so I can’t even name anything, but think crafts or sewing ) you would need to invest in a beginning inventory at the least (and maybe production equipment and more). But is it necessary to have that kind of financial positioning to legitimately branch out on one’s own?

No, of course not. It depends on the type of at-home work you’re interested in, naturally. But there are many legitimate work at home business opportunities that do not require a lot of start-up capital. If you begin a home business offering a particular skill or talent that you have (pet sitting, website development, home organization, party planning or any other of an almost endless list of possibilities), you may have minimal start-up costs, like advertising, a basic record keeping system and maybe a computer and/or website. But those costs are not likely to be high.

The same holds true for many internet marketing work at home options, like affiliate marketing, where you advertise the products or services of one or more companies (say, on a website you own on a related topic) and then receive a commission on sales from your advertising. In researching other work at home mom blogs recently, I have seen many affiliate marketing home businesses in action.

Another home-based business for the work at home mom that is certainly legitimate and does not require a great deal of start-up capital is in the arena of network marketing, an industry with the upside of franchise operations (business processes and infrastructure that are already in place) coupled with the flexibility of being a self-directed entrepreneur and the advantage of being positioned to capitalize on the marketing potential of the internet.

OK, I’m probably a little biased. This is where I have happily landed as a work at home mom. And to get comfortable here, I actually had to overcome some pretty significant prejudice against the legitimacy of this type of home-based business. But I did my due diligence, broadened by horizons a little bit, and am better for it in many ways (and all without having to invest a large sum of money to have a successful business!).

You too can certainly have a legitimate home-based business as a work at home mom without investing a great deal of start-up capital. So don’t let the money issue deter you!

I had the audacity to think she looked funny…and certainly not like a professional. Professionals wore heels and moms at home, or those who had to work on their feet all day, or women playing sports wore tennis shoes. I sort of admired her chutzpa – most of the women hurrying to and fro wore the same uncomfortable heeled shoes I wore – but I never had the guts to follow suit, or rather…shoe.

Now, twenty-something years later, I just laugh at my foolishness. As the owner of my own business working from home, I can look whatever part I want. And I want to be a woman comfortable in tennies (or sneakers as we called them where I grew up!) or heels.