Greenville Business Magazine 2010 June issue : Page 26
making money from home king money from home Electra Arial Electra’ money from home Electra Electra Arial Electra’s Monograms Gwen Hopkins Celebrations Interior Design Cynthia Boggs The Nanny Connection C 26 GREENVILLEBUSINESSMAG.COM | JUNE 2010
Making Money from Home
Katrina Daniel
Cynthia Boggs hated getting up early and spending her time in morning rush hour traffic when she lived and worked in Washington, DC.
When she moved back to Greenville in the early 90’s she fixed that by launching her own business from the comfort of her own home.
“While living in D.C., I realized that many people had nannies in their homes and they went through agencies that provided screening and matching the nannies for the working parents. I realized that Greenville did not have such a service.” So Boggs launched The Nanny Connection in 1993, becoming one of the first to get on the home business bandwagon when it started to roll.
Since the early 90s, home based businesses have boomed. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there are as many as 38 million home based businesses. Their success rate is 70 percent during their first three years.
The Nanny Connection’s concept os simple. Working couples or single parents are in need of a nanny to care for their children while the parents are at work. They contact the Nanny Connection and are introduced to several prospects. All have been pre- vetted by Boggs, who has done the DSS record and background checks, called the personal references and done the pre-interviews. Only then are the prospective nannies interviewed by the parents.
Recently The Nanny Connection branched out to include eldercare. Boggs says,“Some of my clients had parents who needed some assistance with daily living, running errands, transportation to doctor’s appointments and someone to ensure they were doing well, even if it was only six to nine hours per week.” Boggs says the one of the advantages of working from her home is that she can be available to her clients when their children have gone to bed and they have time to talk at different hours, “Everything cannot be accomplished by email, especially when it’s something as intimate as child or parent care.” It’s a trade–off for Boggs, “We cannot forget the luxury of not sitting in traffic, or having to wait for a parking space.”
As the owner and founder of Celebrations Interior Design, Gwen Hopkins has clients in Ohio, Charlotte and all over Greenville, but her office is in her Greenville home. “I had a studio for 17 years on Woodruff Road, (oh my, the traffic!)” she says.“After a nasty divorce, I decided I had to find some security and felt like I needed a safety net, so in 2002 my decision was to close my studio and move to my office at home.”
The advantages of an in-home office for her is that she, like Cynthia Boggs, can work at any time of day or night, ”I can work at night and early in the morning, with my coffee, and in my pj’s” she adds.
Electra Arial needed to stay at home with her two young sons, aged 2 and 4 in 2007 when she started her now-booming business, Electra’s Monograms. Three years ago, Arial was making candles with monograms when she took her home craft/hobby a few steps further and designed indelible monograms. She took the prototype to a store and the rest – as they say – is history, or herstory.
You see Electra Arial’s monograms in the rear windows of kid-carrying SUVs all over Greenville and much of the rest of the country.
“I got the website up and running myself, made all the products, staged and shot all the photos, wrote all the copy, uploaded everything, and launched it all from my basement office. Now I have close to 450 retailers who sell my monogrammed decals from as far west as California and as far north as Maine and NY.”
“I love being able to make money doing something I love from home. I can work while the boys are at school and their playroom is right beside my studio, so while they are playing with Legos or Wiis, I’m in the room right beside them getting orders out.”
Arial says that her website (ElectrasMonograms.com) has made her location independent, an idea she suggests to others considering a business based at home.
Cynthia Boggs adds, “A very important part of a successful in home business is a separate bank account. Have a business license, and if you own property, incorporate.”
Gwen Hopkins advises, “You have to be very responsible and treat your home or office as a workplace.”
But, you no longer have to have to worry about a parking space or that pesky rush hour traffic. GBM
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