Amy Barrett keeps her laptop and fax machine in her 9-month-old’s nursery.
Renee Leclercq’s pre-teen daughters are expert sales assistants.
They’re among a growing number of “homepreneurs,” entrepreneurs whose headquarters are their houses.
More than half of the country’s business owners operate their small companies from home. And experts say a slow economy is feeding the trend.
Barrett doesn’t need census numbers or any small business index to tell her that.
The Mount Holly woman earned her master’s degree in nursing in August. Her son, Jack, was born in October.
Then, when it was time to go back to work, she says she couldn’t find a job that fit her advanced education — even in the medical industry many tout as recession proof.
Her old position, with one of the area’s bigger health-care systems, was still available. Promotions weren’t.
It was a far cry from her early days in the profession, when beginning nurses had their pick of jobs and health-care systems competed to offer the best signing bonuses.
“I had to ask myself, ‘Am I going to go back to a job where I can’t advance?’” she says now.
Frustrated, Barrett remembered hearing about someone who was working as a health-care recruiter, helping different practices bring in qualified staffers.
The new mother made the idea her own.
She founded the Barrett Hindmarch Group from home in Mount Holly (Hindmarch is her maiden name).
Now Barrett contracts with small companies and private offices to fill the jobs they have available. She handles the advertising and marketing, matches candidate qualifications to practice needs, sets up interviews and handles reference and background checks.
Barrett also works with job seekers to find open positions and get resumes to the right people.
The health-care homepreneur has placed a handful of people so far. It doesn’t equal much profit, although being able to work-at-home has a different set of rewards.
“I get all the new moments,” she said.
Barrett was there when Jack pulled himself up in the crib for the first time.
She saw his face the first time he splashed in the tub.
She hears all the new sounds he can make.
It’s the cherry on top of the flexible schedule that doesn’t require her to time her lunch or plan vacations around her co-workers’ schedules.
But Barrett doesn’t want to say it’s been easy.
Now working on her master’s degree in business administration, she also temporarily took a part-time job to help boost the family finances.
That’s over now, but the need to make money isn’t.
That, she says, is why working for yourself can be more demanding than reporting to a corporation every day.
Barrett shares office space with the baby, Jack.
“He’s the boss,” she says. “His schedule is the most important.”
It means during his naptime, she’s making phone calls.
When Jack is awake and mom needs to work, she lets him play with her husband’s laptop or one of their out-of-date cellphones. The tech tools work like pacifiers around the Barrett house.
Playgrounds with Wi-Fi are lifesavers, but she still finds herself sending e-mails at midnight when the day is over for the rest of her family.
Not that her husband, Brian, ducks his share of the work. Barrett hands off the baby when he comes home from his full-time logistics job in Charlotte. He gets the baby ready for bed while she heads back to the computer.
And Barrett likes to think of visitors to her home as temporary interns.
“If you visit me during the day, you can plan on sending a fax or watching the baby,” she says.
Maybe it’s payback to all those friends and family members who refuse to believe she has a real job. Barrett says people are always calling to tell her they heard about an opening she might want to look into.
Depending on how the Barrett Hindmarch Group makes it, she knows she could have to take them up on the offer one day. But she will always feel like a success.
“You know when you succeed that you did it and it was all on you,” she says. “It’s like, ‘I did that and now I can do more.’”
The family that works at home
Tim and Renee Leclercq have a work-at-home household.
Renee is a gung-ho Mary Kay saleswoman who says she recently quit a part-time job and declined nursing school to pursue a career with the 47-year-old company.
Tim has been working from home since 2003, always in online and telephone marketing and normally specializing in wellness products such as dental discounts and nutritional supplements.
Both husband and wife sell products and recruit other people to join their networks.
Watching Tim make a living from home helped Renee decide it was a path she wanted to take.
She says companies Tim has worked for, which include AmeriPlan, Zurvita and Chews 4 Health, have taken the couple on a cruise to Alaska and other impressive vacations.
After becoming a Mary Kay consultant in February, she has the red jacket that signifies a “star team builder” in the cosmetics company.
She got that for recruiting at least three other saleswomen. And last week Renee said she was within $100 of earning the use of a Mary Kay car, a Chevy Malibu.
For his part, Tim says during one week in June he and a partner made $4,000.
Both say working from home is about more than dollar signs, however.
They have three children at home, ages 7, 9 and 12. The couple never have to miss a daytime school function.
For Renee, any day can be take-your-daughter-to-work day. When she pitches her product at one of Mary Kay’s ever-common parties, their two daughters distribute the moisturizer and other concoctions with practiced hands.
And Tim is particularly fond of working in his pajamas.
The Leclercqs say they’ve grown as individuals thanks to their in-home jobs.
When Tim began in 2003, he wasn’t an extrovert. Even though he was calling people who had asked to be contacted by the company, he was so inhibited that he got Renee to make the calls for him.
That’s all changed now, one benefit of a do-it-yourself lifestyle.
“It will make you look at yourself in the mirror and realize what kind of person you are,” he said.
Renee, too, worried about rejection before she began to sell and recruit for Mary Kay.
“But my fear of rejection is far outweighed by my desire to provide for my kids,” she says now.
You can reach Ragan Robinson at 704-869-1833.
Source http://www.gastongazette.com
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