I’ve always believed you are as old as you feel i.e age is all in the mind.

It wasn’t until I returned back to the ‘workplace’ (an office with other human beings in) I acknowledged that I was actually a little tiny bit older than the people I was working with.

But it wasn’t because I was old, I was 38. It’s just that with the exception of two senior editors, everyone else was younger than me – either their 20s or – at a push – their early 30s. There were a few (men) in their mid 30s but that was it.

I didn’t think anything more of it, having – somehow by the grace of God managed to establish a career without having to battle with overt sexism or misogny.

But I think that with the recession, and our ‘out for themselves’ government, times have changed.

Even though I was supposedly brought up during the ‘me, me, me’ days of the 80s I’/ve prided myself  on my  ‘old school’ feminism;  in that I believed women still had to keep together in order to educate their male colleagues about institutionalised sexism.  It’s not that men were/are  the enemy – attitudes were/are.

Trying to live out this ethos is becoming harder.  Because I’ve seen first hand how being older than 35 -when it comes to holding down a full-time professional role – can be career suicide.

I’d like to think that the examples of women I know (not just ones with children) that have lost their job or found it harder to get permanent or temporary (as opposed to the bits and pieces of freelance crumbs) employment contracts, are just anomalies.

But I’m afraid that it is part of a wider switch in the job market. As jobs become more scarce the old boys network somehow gets tighter and stronger.

This means ‘older’ women get pushed out. Don’t be kidded by the stories of how women are going it alone and setting up their companies in order to create the work/life balance missing from the corporate world.

Most of us do still want to work in the corporate world – we’re not all mumprenuers, we want to make a difference to our younger female sisters too.

Look around you? How many full time 40something women (not freelance, not self employed) do you see in senior positions in your office?

But it’s not just men, I’ve worked with (normally younger) women who have seem  my ‘working mummy’ status as a weakness to be exploited for their own career gain. I don’t think they are even aware of it – it’s just that it’s become a real ‘dog eat dog’ world and that’s the reality.

But younger women, you need to wise up, because in a decade or so it will be you who has joined the ranks of the vanishing 40something women.

And you need to get smart  now.

I have no solutions, but I would like to hear from other women who can identify to all this. Let me know at samantha.moneybags@googlemail.com

We don’t need to tell parents out there how tough it is to balance a career and home life when you have children. Which is is shame because having children is one, if not the most inspiring things to happen to us. Often starting a family is the catalyst we need to change our working lives for good.

Ella Mag interviewed local mum (to us) and  businesswoman Stephanie Adams. She runs the networking group Motivating Mum East Hertfordshire and has plenty of ideas for those of you thinking of setting up your own business.

Take time

Allow yourself some dedicated child-free time to plan and research what business ideas may be of interest and work for you, even if it is just a few hours in the week. It will allow you the the time to focus more clearly.

Do your research

Talk to other mums and your family and friends about your ideas and what they think.

Be realistic

Work out how much time you can realistically spend on your business and then be aware of not taking on too much. Your business can always grow as you have more time available, your children are at school or you have established yourself more.

Do your maths

Consider how much you will need to spend to set up your business and don’t spend too much money at the start. For your marketing there are so many ways to publicise and promote your business through social media, all free of charge.

Go online

Use supportive networking websites for mums and take advantage of resources, links, articles, opportunities, offers, networking events and much more.

For more info see www.stephanieadams.co.uk

Has someone inspired you to set up in business, or do you have tips of your own to share? Tell us below!

We all know it’s not what you know but who you know. But how do you get to know the people you need to know?

This is something that has long puzzled us. We’re all freelance journalists here and to keep getting work we know that we have to be good at our job otherwise we’d starve basically.

But we’ve wondered why – at points in our careers – we saw seeing others that are less than, or even just as talented as as, get work while we were left literally singing for our suppers.

A lot of journalists get work by networking, which means going out a lot, sending lots of emails, making phone calls and connecting to people via social media websites like Twitter and LinkedIn.

The thing is, we at Ella Mag don’t actually get time to go out, and we don’t have free time. If we do it’s spent doing housework, helping the children with their homework or looking after our parents.

So – as mums returning to work what can we do about making sure that we are on the top of editors’ ‘go-to’ freelance list.

And also what can other mums who like us freelance, do?

Should we forgoe our monthly wax appointment and employ a babysitter instead? Or do we accept that while we get enough work, as mums we are lucky enough to get the crumbs that the other (often single child-frere) freelancers leave behind.

Well we don’t want crumbs, we’d rather have a share of the slice thanks so we asked our favourite psychologist Kim Stephenson what he thought.

Kim is a great role model, he changed career, switching from financial advice to occupational psychology and has never looked back. E  has a career which has involved writing books, appearing on TV, blogging and acting as an consultant for some of Britain’s largest companies.

We came across Kim because we sent out an alert on a financial journalist website service, and he was the only one to reply to our request.

So you could say an element of luck was involved.

Kim is not a fan of dropping everything to go to a drinks ‘do just in case you meet someone.

He says: ‘Would you trust somebody you’d just met, or would you prefer to deal with somebody you had seen a few times, who was reliable, consistent, remembered who you were and what you did and took an interest, but didn’t spend too long talking to you?  I’ll find that if you do it right, you can get business straight away, but I rather doubt it.

Kim says: ‘Networking is a way of marketing, getting your “brand” out there.  With a brand, you’re trying to get people to think of you first: it’s the old “don’t say vinegar, say Sarsons”, “beans means Heinz”, etc.

‘With networking you’re trying to get a lot of people to know you, what you do and when they have a need of what you do, have your name pop into their head by using personal links, rather than using millions of pounds of budget to get all sorts of people you’ve never met to buy your product .’

Step one: find a niche

Kim reckons we should find our niche – his is being an adviser who is also a psychologist.

‘It is beginning to work because peopl say “Kim is unique, the only person who is OP and financial advisor etc.”

So one thing is to try to find a niche, something that is you, that is your brand that you can get people to associate with you.

(For me I guess it would be I’m a financial journalist with news and internet editing plus blogging experience).

Step two: get out there

Kim says: ‘ Get yourself on lists and if someone contacts you try to find out where they got your name and thank the person.

Step three: have a brand

‘For networking, your brand is tricky if it takes more than 10 seconds or so to say, so get an elevator pitch.  Being journalists, you and your friends should be good at that – as you know, I have trouble being concise!’

Step four: be available

Make sure you’re available – LinkedIn etc. are good, but trying to link to everybody and connect with everybody seems to be counter productive, you can have 10,000 “friends” on Facebook, but how many do you actually know anything about, or care about?  So how many of them will know or care what you do and how well you do it?  Networking tends to be more about quality of relationship, rather than just quantity, although you obviously want quantity as well – as long as it isn’t a case of having a collection of 1,000 business cards of people you don’t really remember and who don’t remember you.

Step five: be polite and consistent

Kim says: ‘Make sure you’re contactable and available, and, I think, if you’re going to try networking in a structured way, keep at it  – don’t flit between different groups, tactics, locations etc. because you won’t have time to build many links unless you are exceptionally gifted.’

Kim is the author of Taming the Pound.

If you’re one of those who sometimes finds yourself wondering ‘what if’ – well as you know you’re certainly not alone.

You don’t have to be deeply unhappy to want to change parts of your life,  which is why we’ve enlisted the help of psychologist Kim Stephenson to give advice to those of you who are wondering how to go about making those little and not-so little changes that would make your life just that little bit more amazing.

First we’ll start the series off with a biggie – work.

Work, we all have to do it, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it.

But how do you know if that desire to snooze in bed a bit longer each morning is a sign you need a holiday or whether you need to think about handing in your notice and doing something a little more exciting.

No job is perfect but it maybe you could be more suited to something else.

Here are some questions Kim says you should ask yourself first.

1) Do you really like what you are doing?

What is it about the role that you like?  If you’re bored with some things,is there a role in your orgnaisation that would enable you to make more of the things you do.

If you don’t know.

Think back on half a dozen projects from the past (work, social, hobbies, whatever) and write down, in as much detail as you can, the ones that you got the greatest satisfaction from.

Then read them over and, with a different colour pen, underline the skills you used – dealing with troublesome people, organising tasks, doing figure work, teaching, working with young people, whatever it is.

See which skills come up several times in projects that were satisfying.

That tells you what skills you like using, and therefore what sort of work you’ll probably enjoy, be good at and, of course,  valuable in.

2) But I haven’t worked for a while, what then?

Again look at the skills you’ve used in the past (work, social, hobbies, whatever).

For example, if you’ve run the home and brought up children you have done, among other things, budget management, organising partner’s trips (PA functions), children’s school and external activities, household management (purchasing and supply, facilities management), shopping (financial comparisons, buying, financial control), chauffeuring, planning family holidays, PTA liaison, managing and motivating partner, children, in-laws, parents, baby sitting circle etc (all forms of people management, relationship management, sales, motivation, compensation and benefits systems management etc.), deciding on long term goals for children’s education, evaluation of rival educational options etc.

Remember, that is a skill set that qualifies you to run most public or private sector organisations.

3) So what do I do next?

Put a CV together based on your great skills you like and your proven competencies  that you’ve done, whether you like them or not.

Compare it to what you’re doing, or what you used to do.  This suggests that you can do the job. you’ve done it in the past anyway, and you now know you have massive untapped potential in addition.

The question now is whether you want to do it which you can, easily, or whether you want to look for something that is a better fit to your favourite skills, that will give you more chance to shine.

Kim  is a former financial adviser who re-trained as an occupational psychologist.

As well as being multi-talented Kim is also the author of Taming the Pound and runs the website of the same name.

You can ask Kim a question below or email us.

I got 14 hours of sleep! Unfortunately this was spread out over 7 days on account of my two little ones having a seasonal vomiting virus.

As a result, I had fallen out with my boss, my husband and my cleaner by 4 o’clock on Wednesday.

I was grateful to have the support of the nanny who seemed to appreciate my suffering but her support had waned by Friday when she woke up with the vomiting bug that she had caught from the children…

It took me all day on Saturday to catch up with the backlog of washing. After doing 8 loads and emptying the entire laundry basket, I realised that there was not enough room in our drawers and wardrobes for all the clean clothes.

I guess the problem used to be alleviated by having an ironing pile but since I haven’t had time to use an iron following the arrival of my daughter three years ago, I guess the problem has been hidden behind my own disorganisation.

When I think about it, we have a similar problem with the capacity of our kitchen units if we manage to keep up with the the dishwasher.

However, now I feel in temporary control, of the washing at least, I think about what is worst…apologising to my boss, my husband, my cleaner or my nanny?