One of the main rea­sons many Mums start a busi­ness is to be more flex­i­ble in com­bin­ing fam­ily and a career.

For me, who used to be a civil ser­vant in the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, start­ing my own busi­ness has not exactly low­ered the amount of hours that I work.

But it as cer­tainly made it much, much more flex­i­ble and I am truly grate­ful for the ben­e­fits it has had for the way I can more eas­ily be there my daugh­ter: I decide when and where I work, I try to com­bine work travel to part­ners in Swe­den with pri­vate vis­its to my fam­ily and I can shift meet­ings around to make sure I can also take Eleonore to her play­dates and bal­let lessons. I work from wher­ever I hap­pen to be and a lot on-the-go via my mobile phone.

Many Work At Home Mums delib­er­ately choose a home office to make this run as smoothly as pos­si­ble. Of course it is pos­si­ble to set that up in a good and effec­tive way. It is all about bound­aries, as The Mom Coach rightly points out in a recent blog post on how to com­bine the best of being at home with the best of being a seri­ous entre­pre­neur. She makes it work by for exam­ple decid­ing up front what the work­ing hours will be and mak­ing a clear work plan for the week and for the day — and stick­ing to it! How­ever: when work is over, it is over, and then the focus should be on the fam­ily and house­hold tasks. Hav­ing a des­ig­nated office in the home, with a door, and equipped with a “Do not Dis­turb” sign is another of her tips, as is tak­ing sched­uled per­sonal breaks; for lunch, exer­cise or just plain relaxing.

All good tips!

But for me, that was not an option: I find it way too dif­fi­cult to stay focused at home, and first and fore­most, I dread the iso­la­tion that comes with not get­ting out of the house and ‘going to the office’.

The solu­tion for me has been to rent afford­able and flex­i­ble work space in an incu­ba­tor; the Wom­ens Busi­ness Ini­tia­tive in The Hague. The build­ing we have is quite impres­sive, com­plete with good meet­ing room facil­i­ties and pri­vate office space. The Women’s Busi­ness Ini­tia­tive was started by Suzy Oge, who thought there was about time that entre­pre­neur­ial women in The Hague got a cre­ative and sup­port­ive plat­form to  build their busi­ness from. I have one desk and some

stor­age and share an office with a Niko­let, who is a lay­wer spe­cial­is­ing in con­tract law for biotech­nol­ogy, and with with Karen, who runs the safari tour oper­a­tor Wild Times. Quite inspir­ing to see her desk over­flow­ing with brochures from safari parks and exclu­sive lodges in Tan­za­nia, Kenya and India. You bet I’ll buy a trip from her when I get my first div­i­dends from MummyMug ;-)

What works for you? Work­ing from home or is a busi­ness envi­ron­ment impor­tant also to you as an entre­pre­neur? Where have you in that case based your business?

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