I really appreciate this post because it sums up my philosophy pretty well.

I’d like to tell my story to the “Anonymous” who took such issue with DianeV’s post. I am a never-married single mother (read “sole provider”), and I receive no child support. I have my own web consulting business and work from home. I am easily supporting my family through my business so I’m here to say that it can be done. I left a “secure” job with benefits over a year ago to pursue my own business. It certainly hasn’t been easy, but I didn’t like the alternative. I know plenty of married women who work full time and rarely see their children. While that may work for some, it wasn’t the kind of life that I envisioned for myself. For me, real sacrifice would be missing the class parties and field trips. It would be picking my daughter up from the After School Program at 6 instead of picking her up at 1:45 as I do now. She plays games on her computer while I work on mine. We don’t live in a big house or anything, but we are comfortable. So I guess I’m one of those kinds of people DianeV was talking about.

As for the topic of this discussion, my mother is very supportive of me. On the other hand, my father always looks nervous when I talk about my work. He’s not in my day to day life and not very computer literate so he doesn’t have a great understanding of what I do. I suspect he’s afraid I’ll start asking him for money or something and that he thinks I’m too lazy to find a “real” job! I haven’t asked him for money in about 10 years. It is frustrating to talk about my successes in business and get anxious questions in response.

Women claim that they believe in quality, but at the end of the day the majority I’ve met still want to be pampered and spoilt—and would rather varnish their nails than think up business ideas. How many women out there burn the midnight oil to build a world-class business?

Well first, as a woman, I would say hold off on the generalizations. I’m a woman who works contantly, with a male partner who cannot understand that. Second, I gave up my day job about two years ago to pursue web development full-time. Unfortunately, my partner and just about everyone else in my life were completely unsupportive. I made the mistake of going into this business with very little financial reserve (actually, none), and have since gone back into working full-time at what everyone is calling “a real job.” I’ve been at my new job for two months now. I’m doing the web development on the side (again), but in a much smaller fashion. For me, the complete lack of support was one nail in the coffin, while the lack of financial reserve, as well as taking on very cheap clients, was the second.

I’m revamping my plan to someday get back into doing this full-time for myself. The funny thing is, my father did the exact same thing I did: he started his own general contractor business. The first ten years were tough — we were close to being poor — but now he has more money than he can count. I wonder if my gender had anything to do with my lack of support from others. Or did I cave too easily? Hmmm…

Women claim that they believe in quality, but at the end of the day the majority I’ve met still want to be pampered and spoilt—and would rather varnish their nails than think up business ideas. How many women out there burn the midnight oil to build a world-class business?

Just “bat” for the other team. Gay-men are often very successful business-men.

Women claim that they believe in quality, but at the end of the day the majority I’ve met still want to be pampered and spoilt - and would rather varnish their nails than think up business ideas. How many women out there burn the midnight oil to build a world-class business?

I guess it’s too much to expect people to believe in a new venture that doesn’t promise security (money) in the form of a steady paycheck. After all, it’s really risky, and they’re probably not chasing their dreams for that reason.

But, as you say, it has its compensations. :)

Its wonderful actually and I’m surprised they are not more jealous of what I have. I travelled from Feb to September this year and had the most amazing adventure. I left with $600 in my pocket. My business enabled that.

And its true, most of my family still don’t know exactly what I do. I just would have liked a little more support in the beginning.

Well, I don’t know that everyone gets a lot of support, especially when you’re embarking on something new, different and “risky” — I think that, in itself makes you “different” too. Oh well!

In my case, I suspect that my friends/family think it’s boring (wow, you sit in front of a computer all day … don’t you need a vacation?!). I also suspect that they haven’t a clue what I do. Ah well.