How to find the balance between work at home freedom and security.

When you begin to consider leaving a lucrative job for a work-at-home career, it may seem as though your choice comes down to a simple trade: Are you willing to give up the security of traditional employment, in exchange for more freedom to manage your work and your life according to your own agenda? Finding a work-at-home career that enables you to keep your security while negotiating your freedom requires superior balance. There are times when doing so can feel a lot like boiling an ocean—as though you are performing an impossibly complex task with a dire prognosis.

When my son was asked to write a story about his mom, he noted, “My mom has brown hair and black eyes. She works at the airport.”

That told me all I needed to know.

Now, I work mostly at home, and you can, too.

I lost more than a few hours of sleep weighing the freedom-for-security trade before I decided to start my home-based business in 2007. I had already enjoyed some work-from-home freedom for several years, employed by a large international company where more than a decade of service had helped me to earn roles that allowed for telecommuting. These jobs also required me to travel several times each month to company and client sites in the US and Europe, however. I enjoyed my work, but the pressure to travel increasingly became a chore that also had an impact on my family. When my son was asked to write a story about his mom, he noted, “My mom has brown hair and black eyes. She works at the airport.” That told me all I needed to know. When my employer could not honor my desire to travel less and be home more, I began to plan for a different future.

Evaluating a range of work-from-home options with my family, I decided to start my own training, team-building and coaching business, building on the valuable expertise and networks I had developed in my field. In addition to creating a traditional business plan, I also built a personal “vision roadmap” with a singular goal in mind: to build a business that would enable me to realize my work and life goals by balancing a desire for more free time with my family with the need for financial security. Then, I began to boil my proverbial ocean, one cup at a time.

I created a mini-version of my vision roadmap that I kept in the back of my personal planner. It has provided focus about the specific actions I need to take to achieve my goals from family, financial, operational, client relationship, marketing, and personal development and well-being perspectives. There are days when some aspects take precedence over others, but every day that I work toward these goals, I’m negotiating that balance between freedom and security in all these things. I still travel to client sites to deliver world-class training, but I do it on my own terms and I devote more time to tele-coaching clients. I manage my practice on a 24-hour time clock to ensure I’m where I need to be for my family and my business at all times. Even though I still need to head to the airport on occasion, my kids no longer think I work there.

My roadmap has gone from my paper planner to my laptop, but it remains integral to the growth of my business, and serves a constant reminder of how much ocean I’ve already got boiling and how much closer I am today than I ever was in my quest to balance freedom and security. There are still days when equilibrium eludes me, but the combination of focus and flexibility fostered by these tasks keeps me on track.

In my travels, I meet and I coach people every day who are at various stages of similar journeys. More than anything else, charting a realistic, manageable course for wherever it is you want to go, while limiting the fear that keeps you from making the changes you need to make to get there, is half the battle. Whatever you are trying to balance in your life, having a plan you can believe in makes most any change a little less frightening. You already accomplish amazing feats of skill every day—from curing booboos with band-aids to finding seemingly “lost-forever” car keys and socks. You already have a track record for performing small miracles. Just remember there is power in positive thinking, and greater power still in focused action.

Five Ways to Achieve Work at Home Freedom AND Security

Crystal Schaffer is the owner of Nu U Consulting, LLC (www.nuuconsulting.com) and the mother of three boys. She can be reached at: info-at-nuuconsulting.com.

Freedom Versus Security.

How you can enjoy BOTH by Building a balanced work at home career one steady step at a time.