Working from home can be wonderful because you are always there if needed by the children… and can be frustrating because you are always there if needed by the children.

Sheridan and I run a publication called The Family Grapevine. It is a phonebook for local families and is paid for by selling advertising. We have worked from home for 11 years now surrounded by children, dogs, budgerigars and a group of goldfish; who all make for an interesting day “at the office”.

Day 1. First day of school. First day of selling. Sheridan’s house has been designated the ‘office’ for this season so I arrive, as arranged, at 9.15 am as Sheridan arrives back from dropping her youngest at preschool for the morning. The older children have left with varying degrees of enthusiasm to walk to school. Kettle on and tea and coffee prepared we settle into the office area (also a playroom and a display area for her world renowned collection of teasmades) with our three office dogs and two office budgerigars.

Our work begins promptly at 9.25am. We open the database and find we have 876 phone calls to make to prospective advertisers. We decide to start with the ‘cold calls’, ringing people who have not yet advertised with us or who do not yet know about us. We select the first person to contact. The phone rings before we pick it up… maybe it’s an advertiser wanting a full page advert? No, it is the school ringing to say that Sheridan’s middle son has forgotten his PE kit and could it be dropped off, please. She leaves on that mission and arrives back 20 minutes later.

While Sheridan is away, I take a call from a woman saying that she can’t find a copy of the last magazine and she desperately needs to find a football club for her daughter so she will stop kicking her football round the house. I tell her where she can pick up a copy. I also receive two calls from new companies asking us to list their business so I put the details on the database. I also pay a quick visit to our group website where we have a forum for all the people in our group. We use it to ask and answer questions and also to provide each other (especially new people) with much needed encouragement and support. I answer a couple of queries.

Selling starts at 10am. Cold calling is very tough. Many businesses get dozens of calls asking them to advertise in all sorts of magazines, so understandably they are often negative when they find out what we want. We do quite well through the morning; out of 30 calls we have 11 people interested in receiving a media pack and wanting to see a copy of the magazine. This information has all been added to the database so we can automatically print it out later. The only break to our phone calls is the 11am visit from the postman. This always generates very loud responses from the office dogs and budgerigars, not a great time to be in the middle of a phone call, so at around 11am we stop all calls and attempt to distract the dogs from hearing, and therefore barking at, the approaching postman. We have tried the ‘locking the dogs in the loo’ technique, playing loud music so they can’t hear him and we have even introduced them to the postman so they can see he is a friend, but nothing works; we have to go on ‘postie alert’ every day.

At lunchtime Sheridan fetches her toddler and brings him back for his lunch and afternoon nap whilst I make the sandwiches. All I can find today is peanut butter and coleslaw, but they make a surprising but amazingly tasty sandwich combo. Work starts again after lunch. We receive some calls from previous advertisers asking if they can advertise again. These are great calls. One caller asks what a quarter page advert looks like in terms of size. Sheridan gives him the dimensions but he says he can’t visualise it. Sheridan, in an inspirational moment, says, “about the size of a piece of loo roll”. The caller is impressed and says, “in that case I’ll book a loo roll please!” Another sale made.

It’s the end of Day 1 with 65 calls made, 22 media packs to be sent out, 8 adverts booked, 32 new listings added to the database and a call from a person who is thinking about joining our group and publishing a magazine in her local area. With the information stored in the database we will spend our time this evening printing invoices and sending out proofs. A good day.

Day 5. 625 calls still to make. The designated office today is my house. The cold calls have been going well but we are getting tired from the long phone conversations and dealing with some quite assertive negative attitudes from people we have called, so it’s time to start ringing previous advertisers. Work begins promptly at 10am. (A sofa had to be dismantled first to retrieve a recorder, which was then cleaned and dropped into school for a music lesson. Why can’t they remind us the day before…)

The office is located in a corner of the living room. My son Joe is off school because he has been being sick all through the night. He is now settled on the sofa in the living room surrounded with books and comics, clutching a bowl, just in case, and being a brave soldier. Today we have 3 office dogs and 4 office goldfish. (“Mummy can we have goldfish in a tank”, “What a good idea, they will be more quiet than the dogs and won’t need to be walked”. Fish and tank duly purchased and set up. “Joe, what shall we call our fish?”, “Tim”, “which one?”, “All of them”, “But don’t you think they would like their own names?”, “No”. So they are all called Tim except the one that died which is now known as Ex Tim and the new one bought to replace him, New Tim).

Phone calls are going well. Sheridan is talking to a new and awfully professional sounding person at an advertising agency. She is dealing really well with the call and providing lots of information in her quiet professional manner, when suddenly Joe shouts, “I feel sick,” then loudly proceeds to make good his statement… again and again. Sheridan has gone white and her professionalism evaporates. I rush to console Joe, get the tissues and start to clear up. Strange sounds are heard from the agency person, a sort of hiccupping. Sheridan manages to say, “I am sorry about that,” then realises that the agency person is actually in fits of laughter. She starts to laugh herself. When Sheridan truly laughs she is unable to speak and makes strange squeaking mouse-like sounds as she struggles to breathe. I have to take over the call and calm everyone down. Poor Joe complains, “Being sick is not funny you know”. We all apologise, including the agency person.

We have a lovely call today from a woman thinking of moving into our area. She loves the local schools and countryside, but her main reason seems to be that she has read our magazine and is amazed at the number of activities for children going on in our area. We try to explain that most areas have lots of things going on; it is just a matter of finding them. She understands but insists that she wants to move to an area where they have all been found for her and all she has to do is choose which ones she wants to use.

Five days before copy date. Copy date is the day we stop selling and all copy has to have been received from the advertisers. We are close to our target but still have 225 people to call. We have tried them all at least three times by now but they are either constantly in meetings or not answering the phone. Countless answer phone messages have been left by us but we have learned over the years that most messages go unanswered. We are up to date with the administration. All the invoices and proofs have been sent out and Sheridan only has a handful of new adverts to design and a few amendments to make. Many people have already paid us for their adverts. Life is good.

The phone calls are going well today and we have almost taken enough bookings to deserve another cup of coffee. There are no tea bags available today because I used them to illustrate a demonstration of division whilst helping Joe with his Maths homework. They got a bit broken when I was demonstrating long division. With a little time in hand we spend some time on our website forum answering questions and reading posts made by the other editors. It is really brilliant that they are all helping each other. Sheridan and I have decided to have a ‘works outing’ tonight. We are going horse riding for the first time in many, many years, followed by a visit to the local pub.

One day before copy date. 63 people still to contact. Panic is starting. Will they ever answer the phone? How do people run businesses when they never answer the phone or are constantly in meetings? Will we reach our sales targets? What are we going to do with the children in half term? Why have the dogs decided to dig up the geraniums? What am I going to cook tonight? All those questions that beset people who run a home business. Compounding the mounting panic, both Sheridan and I are suffering from the after effects of the horse riding. The day after this exercise was extremely painful, we could hardly move. Sitting down was a major problem, so all calls were made standing up. The situation is gradually improving; most calls were made sitting down, hurray!

The day has gone quite well and we have even been able to make contact with a few of the people we have not got through to before now. At the end of the day we are having tea together and chatting about life in general. Sheridan’s phone rings and we hear her middle son answering. “Hello this is The Family Grapevine, can I help you?” Oh what a star! Sheridan is melting with pride and mentions something to me about a new business partner in the future. We listen carefully as the conversation continues. “Yes Mummy runs the magazine, She works very hard. No, I am all on my own in here… but I can find her if you want… Ok, I think she is in the kitchen having another drink,” at which stage Sheridan rushes in to take over the call and to explain that she is only drinking tea.

Copy Date. At last, the end of the constant telephone calls. They are such fun sometimes because we have long chats with advertisers who have become ‘telephone friends’. We spend most of the call finding out about each others families and businesses and at the very end we ask, “Would you like to advertise this time?” and as usual the reply is “Of course, book us in”. However, some calls are really tough, especially when the person we are talking to does not know us. They can become needlessly defensive, because they do not realise that if they say they don’t need to advertise, we will actually go away. I once went into a shop to tell them about our business and was greeted by, “I don’t need advertising,” at which point I said a cheerful thank you and started to walk out. Immediately she called out to me and asked, “Is that it?” “Yes,” I replied, “if you don’t need advertising that is fine”. She asked me about our magazine, asked to see my sample copy, loved what she saw and booked a quarter page there and then, because “You were not pushy”.

We have gone all gooey! We heard today that one of our editors has given birth. Her husband has sent everyone a picture of the newborn. She is gorgeous. Congratulations emails and phone calls are flying around the group.

The day after Copy Date. We receive several phone calls from people asking if they are too late to advertise. We explain that unfortunately they are too late and tell them that we have been trying to contact them for days. They ask if we could try again for the next issue. We will try.

We have reached our target! Hooray! All we need to do now is finish proofing, collect the money, lay the magazine out, send it to the printer, clean our houses, have a great half term with the kids and wait for the printed magazines to be delivered after half term so that we can pile them into our cars and distribute them around our area. Then we need to collect and check more listings. All of that is another story.

This was a guest post by Nikki and Sheridan of The Family Grapevine. Nikki and Sheridan met in their sons’ school playground in Reigate (Surrey, UK) in 1995. They became friends and met often for cups of coffee and long chats. They soon realised that it was very difficult to find the huge variety of facilities for children that there were in the local area; so the idea of The Family Grapevine was born. They found they really enjoyed all the research and proudly produced their first magazine in 1996. They recieved hundreds of calls saying how useful people found the information they had collected and they became totally hooked on publishing this information.

The Family Grapevine is a magazine phonebook containing 1000’s of local phone numbers covering a huge range of subjects of interest and inspiration to families in a local area. It has grown from one edition in Surrey to over 30 local editions around the country. Each edition is run by an editor who knows their local area inside out and shares their love of ferreting around to track down both easy and downright difficult to find facilities for children in their area. If you think you would be interested running a Family Grapevine publication in your local area why not give them a call on 01749 678393 or 01749 870471.

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