Another great article that I want to share with you…
Like me, you’ve probably heard too much advice urging you to ”Build your mailing list!”, often by packing it with as many people as possible. One such approach is to get 10 new e-mail addresses a day and simply add them to your own mailing list. If people don’t like it, they can unsubscribe. But, is this “Super Size Me” approach really the most effective and most ethical way to create new business? Is it aligned to how you want to do business?

As a business coach, I want people to feel respected and safe working with me. I think it is just plain wrong to add people to a mailing list without their authorization! As an entrepreneur building a new client base, you know that building trust with potential customers is an essential step in nurturing a loyal following. Slapping them onto your mailing list without prior permission sends the wrong signal – it can be interpreted as presumptive at best, and predatory at worst. However, inviting potential clients to join your group, sends a positive message that your company respects their privacy and values their opinions and choices.

The following article by Katja Presnal delves into the idea of the value of having a quality list filled with people who know you and are interested in your company or services, instead of a quantity list filled with strangers. I met Katja Presnal on Twitter, and think her ideas are outstanding. Follow us!

Coach4moms and Katja Presnal

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One of the mantras I learned from my entrepreneur Dad a long time ago is

“Businesses do not do business with businesses. There is always a person in a company doing business with another person in a company.”

Let me explain why understanding this is vital for your success in social media marketing.

READ MORE

“Mompreneurs”
Giving the “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval to new businesses.

I want to share with you this article that I found on the MSNBC Website.
The author Eve Tahmincioglu brings up some interesting questions for us to ask ourselves:

What does the term Mompreneur mean to you?
Are Mompreneurs more valid than the other entrepreneurs?
Do we choose to give business to a Mompreneur because she is a mom, or because she offers the best services, or both?
Do you think the term is necessary?
Do you define your self as a Mompreneur? If not, what term do you prefer to use?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
DO YOU AGREE OR DISAGREE WITH THIS ARTICLE?
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Primary author Eve Tahmincioglu has been covering small business and entrepreneurship for more than a decade. She regularly writes about small business issues for the New York Times and BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine. She also writes the Your Career column for MSNBC.com. She is the author of “From the Sandbox to the Corner Office.”

MOM ENTREPRENEURS NEED TO GET OVER THEMSELVES

What the heck is wrong with the word entrepreneur? It’s a perfectly good word that has been around for a long time.

But nooooo, we can’t seem to leave well enough alone. It turns out moms who come up with a great business idea are no longer entrepreneurs. They are “mompreneurs”.

The cyber lore out there says “mompreneurs” are women who come up with a product or service while home with their children, and somehow stumble upon the idea because of a need they discover while taking care of the little buggers.

With that kind of reasoning, people who come up with a great idea at the local watering hole (which is where many great ideas are hatched), would be called “drunkpreneurs”, or “boozepreneurs.” You see where I’m going with this?

There are mompreneur magazines like The Mompreneur; books, including “Mompreneurs: A Mother’s Practical Step by Step Guide to Work at Home Success”; and websites such as Mompreneurs online.

Lately, PR people have been constantly pitching women-owned businesses for me to write about and using this label, which isn’t new but seems to be getting more popular these days. For some reason they think the business product or service isn’t quite enough to get my attention.

Well, it’s annoying. First off, it’s hard to say. It doesn’t have four syllables like entrepreneur so I find myself constantly saying “momtrepreneur,” but that’s not right.

Secondly, women are constantly complaining that they’re not treated equally when it comes to the business world, but they feel compelled to alienate a whole gender by making it seem like their accomplishments are that much more important because they experienced motherhood while crafting a business concept.

So do we want to be part of a club and label ourselves? I’m asking this about men and women.

I figured I’d ask a linguist. “There are lots of ways we use language to distinguish ourselves. It’s part of identifying ourselves as members of a group. It’s not surprising,” says John McCarthy, professor of linguistics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

If a man came up with the word and started calling entrepreneur moms momprenuers, that would have been a major no-no, McCarthy says. But since it appears that women concocted the label themselves, it’s OK.

He calls the label and others like it “cute.”

OK, it’s cute, but will it last? McCarthy isn’t betting on it because rhythmically it doesn’t quite work. He suggests the word “mommypreneur” rolls much easier off the tongue.

Sorry, I don’t like that either.

Thank goodness, not all mommies are using the moniker.

Deborah Stephens Stauffer and Kathleen Whitehurst invented DaysAgo, a digital day counter that you attach to food containers so you know when something has been in the fridge too long. The idea was sparked by half-used baby food jars. You know, the ones that fill up the fridge when your kids are tots, and you take your chances using, hoping the mashed peas weren’t opened last month.

It’s a great idea and doesn’t need the “mompreneur” gimmick to sell, even though these gals are the perfect definition of the word. “Just because I struggle daily with juggling conference calls and nap schedules does not mean I am any different than other traditional entrepreneurs,” Deborah says.

Amen sista!

Workplace Flexibility Lets Mothers Thrive

I just read this article and totally responded to it! I hope you will too.

Many of my clients are highly motivated mothers who went up the corporate ladder after graduating from college. A few years later, they decided to take a break from their careers to embrace motherhood. Upon returning to workplace, they found that the typical corporate environment was not flexible enough to combine ambition and with family. So, they decided to take the entrepreneurial route, determined to create a new model for combining motherhood and meaningful work.

Lisa Druxman’s excellent article offers salient advice on how you can make your entrepreneurial company a family–friendly environment and meet your business goals. As an entrepreneur myself, I am considering these new and better ways to make my business more “ambitious mother friendly”!

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Worplace Flexibility Lets Mothers Thrive by Lisa Druxman

Get creative with scheduling and tap into the experience and talents of women seeking a mom-friendly workplace.

My Body Made Me Do It!

I am a mother of 3 girls, ages 8, 5 and 2 years old. And I am an entrepreneur. I am very busy all the time, and on top of this, my in-laws are coming today from Paris to stay in our home for one month.

We all know that we have to take care of ourselves and squeeze in some self-care activity. But in reality, we always seem to put ourselves last on the list! There is some self-care activities that I just loooove. Every time I take a yoga class I promise myself that I will do it at least twice a week. Recently I discovered Nia* and was so excited that I went home and announced to my family that I wanted to go at least every Saturday morning.

Well, I haven’t been to a yoga class in 6 months, and I took only two Nia classes in the last two months. I have been running and doing some grueling cardio exercises to keep fit, but I seem to have a hard time allowing myself to simply relax and have fun dancing or doing asanas.

Today I had a wake up call because I actually couldn’t get up from my bed!

My back was killing me from vacuuming my car yesterday and lifting my toddler from her crib. That’s when I realized that if I don’t allow my body to take it more slowly, then my body will do it for me. And it hurts!

So today I finally did put myself first:

• before my clients

• before the business opportunities that I want to grab and the challenges that I am ready to overcome

• before everything on my to-do list (getting the room ready for my guests, folding the 4 loads of laundry and putting them away, updating my database, following up with my leads, finishing an article on 5 tips for the Success Minded Mother Entrepreneur….)

I would allow myself to use a gift certificate and enjoy a one-hour FULL BODY massage! I pulled out the certificate, and it was dated December 2006!

*”Nia is a well-being fitness and lifestyle program. It is the original and most advanced form of fitness fusion. Nia blends the martial arts, the healing arts and the dance arts to create a high powered, synergistic workout that no isolated exercise technique can match. Nia is a blend of form (simple choreography) and freedom (freedance). The music is uplifting and inspiring. Nia is ideal for all ages and fitness levels. It’s all about the Joy of Movement!”

Courtesy of the Center for Nia and Yoga

Here is an article that I just found today on the MSNBC website and thought that you my readers, would relate.

Primary author Eve Tahmincioglu has been covering small business and entrepreneurship for more than a decade. She regularly writes about small business issues for the New York Times and BusinessWeek’s SmallBiz magazine. She also writes the Your Career column for MSNBC.com. She is the author of “From the Sandbox to the Corner Office.”

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“I have quit feeling guilty that I’m a mom first.”

I recently read this line in Working Mother magazine while I was sitting in the pediatrician’s office waiting to have my son’s tonsils checked. Ah, guilt – every working mom has it at one point or another. How do you quit it?

I had to cancel an important story interview to get my son to the doctor’s office, and I only started reading the magazine as a way to take my mind off a number of stressful thoughts.  Would I make it back to my office in time to finish an article that was due? Would the doctor tell me my kid needed his tonsils out? Would dinner be ready by 6 p.m. when my father-in-law was coming over.

The source of the quote above was Sarah Stevens, the owner of a technology security business in Charlotte, N.C., and mother of four kids, ages 9 and under.

The article talked about how she sometimes attends meetings or work dinners with a baby in tow, and “I’ve had children spill on clients,” she says. “I never really find balance, but I’m comfortable with who I am and what I do.”

Turns out many mom entrepreneurs are having trouble staying on the business balance beam, according to a new survey.

A survey of more than 1,000 female business owners who are part of the Make Mine a Million $ Business program — created by Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence and American Express OPEN — found that 27 percent of moms have “a high level of stress related to balancing work and family demands, compared to just 18 percent of non-mothers.”

And, as you might expect, the stress level is ratcheted up for mothers with preschool-age kids. Nearly 40 percent said they had high levels of work-family anxiety.

This wasn’t all a doom-and-gloom survey. It also offered some tips from the moms surveyed when it comes to making things better.

“Moms — especially those with preschool children — do sacrifice personal time and sleep, but they employ a variety of strategies to ensure that family needs are met along with the demands of their growing businesses. Among those strategies: outsourcing household tasks, booking family time into their workday schedules and carving out family time on weekends.”

While going through this survey I started wondering why we always ask women these questions and rarely ask men.

There are typically two parents in these households, so why isn’t “dad does half the work at home” one of the top strategies these women employ?

Most women I know always gripe to me about how their hubbies just don’t do enough when it comes to family obligations.

I’m lucky to have a husband who is a true partner, but even he would admit I get stuck doing a lot of the home stuff because I’m sort of a control freak, and let’s face it, society still expects the mommies to handle most of the family load.

Maybe we women need to start thinking more like the “co-CEO” of the household and enlisting the guys to do their share.

So, how did my day end?

My son just had a cold and didn’t need his tonsils taken out. My husband went to the store and started the baked potatoes while I was at the doctor’s office, so dinner was on time. And I finished the article, although I did have to work after dinner.

Who has time to feel guilty?

Here is business expert Seth Godin. point of view:

When I attend a Cocktail party I have to start with small talk before I can find out if we can create a deeper connection.

I do the same with my Social Networking.

Since I started to use those services:

• I got invited to talk about the Power of Celebration on a radio show,
• I got invited to  appear on a personal development movie ” the voice of women”.
• and I received great help from my Network to build my business.

So now how can you create REAL connection that will help you with YOUR BUSINESS ?

Look for my upcoming seminar on Networking.

I am becoming the Queen of Networking and it’s the Key of my business Success.

I am ready to share with you what I know so you can attract more business, make money in LESS time sand be available to spend MORE time with your family.

Until my seminar is ready, I want to share with you a great video about Twitter.

Once you sign up, follow me my name is Coach4moms.

Here is an article from my friend Cyndi  Schulson. She is doing her coaching training at International Coach Academy which is the school that I went to and highly recommend for anyone who want to become a Coach.

Mothers Entrepreneurs really want to build their business but they also need to have time to be with their family. How great would it be to make money even when you are taking your kids to the park?

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This summer, I took three months off to spend more time with my children, and I got a check every month for doing nothing. That is the power of residual income. If you want that kind of time freedom, then you must consider the type of income you’re earning. The key is to earn passive income AND multiple streams of income. Passive or residual income gives you an ongoing source of revenue while creating multiple streams of income allows you to leverage your efforts and turn on several income taps at the same time. When you generate passive income from multiple sources, you will be able enjoy what too few people have - both time and money.

Passive income is money received on a regular basis, with little effort required to maintain it. Multiple streams of income means that you have money coming in from various sources. There are lots of ways to create both online.

Network marketing can be a great source of residual or passive income. Top financial gurus like Robert Kiyosaki have identified network marketing as an excellent business opportunity. One reason is that there are few barriers to entry. For instance, there are generally low start-up costs, and you don’t have to worry about employees or overhead. In addition, there are great tax benefits when you have a home business. However, network marketing is not the answer for everyone. It takes hard work and consistent effort to be successful, so it’s important to have realistic expectations. Furthermore, there are a number of key things to look for when selecting a network marketing company, such as the products, compensation plan, company track record, training, retention rate, and systems of marketing and duplication.

The industry is well positioned for growth as more and more people are looking for additional income, especially in today’s economy. And the Internet is really helping the industry grow and evolve. More and more people are using the Internet to build their network marketing business, using the principles of attraction marketing. The goal of attraction marketing is to create value for people through content and information, and develop relationships before even presenting your opportunity.

The Internet has also created a whole new realm of possibilities for how to earn passive income, including web hosting, software products, internet marketing services, and custom web design services.

One of the more popular ways is through advertising commissions. If you have a website, you can put a banner or link on your site and collect a monthly fee for doing so. You can also offer advertising space in your ezine or ebook. You can also put Google Ads on your website. When someone clicks on the ad, you get a commission. Of course, these advertising methods depend on you getting people to your website in the first place.

Another method that has become increasingly popular and allows you to create both passive income and multiple streams of income is affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you make money by promoting products and services for companies and by recruiting other affiliates. It’s a good idea to diversify and choose multiple services and products so you don’t put all your eggs in one basket and so that you create multiple income streams. When you’re choosing an affiliate program make sure that it meets your target market’s needs and provides value. Look at the amount of commission the affiliates pay and number of tiers on which they pay commissions so that you can also get paid when one of your affiliates makes a sale.

Affiliate marketing has low barriers to entry. You don’t have to invest anything (most affiliate programs are free), and the companies do most of the work for you. They provide the products, track the sales and give you a commission for each sale. Many programs even give you training and marketing materials to help you along.

Ebooks are another way you can create passive income online. You can write an ebook about any subject that is valuable for your target market. Ebooks are not expensive to produce and can generate ongoing income for years to come. You can even add an affiliate program by getting other people to sell your ebook for a commission.

Like anything else, creating income online requires consistent effort and patience. Education is essential and there are great resources to help you. But if you’re willing to commit to the time it takes to build your skills and your online presence, you can have great success. And once you have cash flow coming in on a residual basis and from multiple sources, you will be able to take time off and achieve greater balance between work and family.

I have created this survey to find out more about YOU !