How to make the shift from being at home to corporate life as smoothly as possible

I am sitting down to write this blog after an hour of peace and quiet. It has been a difficult day with the girls. In their own way they are feeling the transition from Mummy being a work from home Mum to a corporate Mum just as much as I am. The difference is that they are not yet as able to articulate their feelings as coherently as I can.

How has it been I hear you asking? What changes has it brought? Let's start with the good stuff. I love knowing what I am going to do in broad terms three days a week and being able to rely on regular money coming in. I enjoy being in London and having a 20-30 minute walk each way twice a day. Yesterday was a good example of the freedom I now enjoy which was the chance to meet up with a friend, who is back from Hong Kong, for a coffee at short notice without the girls. It is also lovely to be part of a team that is responsible for large scale change and it is very exciting especially as I believe in what I am doing. The bonus has been receiving compliments about my creativity and my ability to add value from the start.

So what am I less sure about? I do not enjoy the fact that 9 out of 10 women wear black or grey suits in the City, occasionally they add white and beige to the mix! In an act of rebellion perhaps, or just to ensure that I never lose sight of who I am, I have been wearing a lot of orange and coral these first couple of weeks. My girls have had to do two to three days a week at nursery and often 10 hours. Thankfully because of support from my Mum, this has happened less frequently then it may have done. I miss my girls and they miss me and the only good thing is that they greet me with peals of delight every evening when I walk in and both want to be picked up and hugged at the same time.

The least likeable aspects are the politics which are rife in most corporates, I just find the whole thing pointless and energy zapping. Even more concerning is the extent to which fear drives employees and how they behave. People have already talked about being "judged" if the project does not deliver. This is unhealthy on so many levels.

My tips to any other parent in this place is:

1. Be very clear about why you are doing this.
2. Ensure that the time that you do spend with your children is quality time wherever possible. It assuages the guilt.
3. Recognise what you are gaining from being in the workplace - for me I am regaining some of my identity which got rather buried over the last three years!
4. Talk through how you are going to make it work with your partner if you both commute and if they are visual, have a week or month's view that shows who will do the pick ups and drop offs; the dinner etc.
5. Monitor how the new set up is working. If it really does not work for any of you then change it. If it is tough but works then be grateful for what it gives you and your family

Love to hear your thoughts on this below.

Three very different examples of business success

The longer that I am in business for myself, the more I realise that many people are searching desperately for the tips to running a successful business. In some cases they will pay lots of money if they think that it will give them the answer they think they crave.

Yet the secret to success is not so difficult to obtain. I want to tell you about three women who I think have got it and how they show it in their own unique way. They have two things in common they are all Mums and they have been brought together by the fabulous pair that run Mums the Boss.

The first got involved in Netmums when it was starting out back in 2001. For a small sum of money, she designed one of their sites and got paid £500 for doing so by Tescos. From what I understand, much of it was about putting together a set of templates and yet what the experience did was to sew a seed. Almost nine years later, this woman launched her own website design business with a little support from a skilled coach and her first commission from Mums the Boss. Today her business is going from strength to strength. She is an illustration of what can be achieved when we believe we can do it.

Another who impressed me is the person behind the business blogging carnivals. Like me there is only a gap of about 14 months between her two children and her youngest is just one. Despite all this, and it is a huge obstacle - the first year with two children I was in a fug most of the time - she has created an amazing website. She is brimming with ideas about how to develop her business and takes the attitude that it is all about exploring and experimenting to find out what works. In the midst of all this she is in the process of writing a book with that other well known mumpreneur, Antonia Chitty, about all the different kinds of businesses that you can run around raising a family. What a great idea! So what makes her successful. A dogged but quiet determination to keep on putting stuff out there based on a strong belief that there must be a better way to do business as a Mum than what has been suggested so far.

The final person in this trio also happens to be a self-effacing person. Yet as I talked to her, it was clear that she had a plan about how to make running her own business work for her. First she has a clearly defined niche, essential in a saturated market, and she has realised another secret to success and that is collaboration. She has a network of about six like-minded professionals who all work in the same industry so on the days that she gets stuck for ideas on a pitch, she has someone who can look at it all with fresh eyes and give a new perspective. They also pass on work to each other when they have too much or if it is more suited to another's specific area of expertise.

In essence succeeding in business takes guts, determination and perseverance. As one of the examples shows it often helps to have the support of a good coach so remember I am here if you need dedicated, focused support.

I hope these illustrations give you food for thought and remember we always profile one member a month on Minerva's Mind who has an interesting story to tell. This is in part about enabling people within the community to get to know each other and also about sharing stories that inspire. Please do get in touch, join or leave a comment below.

#Blogadesh - what's all the fuss about?

If you are anything like me and on twitter and/ or facebook then you cannot have failed to see the references to #blogadesh. It has been a mad, crazy time in our house of late so even though I noticed them I did not explore any further until today. I was so impressed with what I read that I felt I had to do something.

Three of the top mummy bloggers in the UK, Josie, Mummytips and Nixdminx have been approached by the Save the Children to be the faces a viral multimedia marketing campaign to raise awareness about their work in Bangladesh. What is amazing is the speed with which this has spread through the blogging community and beyond.

What we can all do is add our thumbprint to SCF's petition so that they get 100,000 signatures before Nick Clegg attends the UN Summit in New York in September. I have just done it and it takes no more than a minute to complete so click http://www.facebook.com/savethechildrenuk?v=app_141330322563413. When you have done that, do share the details with all your facebook friends and twitter buddies. Also you can add the badge that I have placed over on the right on your blog or your website. The badge can be found here.

The irony of all this is not lost on me for two reasons. Firstly only last night I was saying to the OH that I wanted to do more worthwhile things with my life and we were talking about Greg Mortenson's fantastic work in Pakistan that's been documented in Three cups of tea. Separately last week, I was part of a conversation in which there was a view that many of the mummy blogs that existed dealt with topics that were of interest mainly to the nearest and dearest of the writer. This campaign goes to show the power of social networking and the benefits it can bring in terms of bringing much needed change to the world. And I am glad to be part of it all in a small way and will be following the updates from our three mummy bloggers avidly. How about you?