Being a hotel and boutique owner in Canada means I’m not home that often. Grandkids run around all day and I come home to the mess. But I make the best of my time at home, because I have the skills to use my time wisely. And that brings us to today’s topic: How to apply your business skills in the home, and what this means for the whole family!

First we want to ask “why do we want to apply our business skills at home?” Firstly, my skills in cooking, cleaning and being patient with customers transmit nicely into household settings. Over the years I’ve learned from experts in various fields on how to do skillful things, all of which I can do at home, like learning how to repair an oven thanks to Appliance Repair Victoria on the west coast. Or, even better, my skill at cleaning the carpets thanks to years working in other hotels from Kitchener to my home country.

But there are also business skills that you should NEVER use against your own family in the home. An example of this is using sales techniques to manipulate people. If you love your family you should have an honest discussion to get to the bottom of things, not trick them with deception and sales strategies. At first, when my kids misbehaved, I would use certain sales strategies against them, managing my micro expressions to seem more intimidating, but soon I felt bad for doing this and resorted to honest conversations instead.

With that said, here are a bunch more business skills that I do use at home:

• Organization
• Accounting
• Laundry
• Cooking
• Decorating
• Designing

Over time this list will continue to grow as I get better at managing my business and spending more time at home.