The first post in this series:
The Business Boxing Match :: Success vs. Failure

The second post in this series:
Fight the Inner Battle :: Sneaky Tools to Win

The third post in this series:
Go to the Mattresses :: Overcoming Obstacles vs. Untapped Potential

The fourth post in this series:
Claim the Victory :: Embrace your Success

Perhaps you will recognize yourself in the following scenario…

I’ve come across some really wonderful online marketing tools, success groups, and knowledgeable professionals that I have recommended here on my blog along the way that have taught me tons about creating a business around a blog (as you may or may not know, this wasn’t my original plan).

I could have dropped hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on the extensive selection of learning tools that are available online these days. In fact, a few years ago, I probably would have done just that :: and I would have started working on all of them and finished none of them. Sound familiar to any of you? Or have you jumped from one ‘business opportunity’ to another, hoping that this next one will work out for you?

I am all for smart educational investments, especially those that help us grow professionally and personally. But unless you work to actively uncover and eliminate your values conflicts, no investment you make in yourself will give you the results that you are seeking.

So here’s my dirty little blogging secret :: my blog is not really about running your home based business. My blog is about running YOU. Sure, I’ll give you my business tips along the way, and I’ll share my lessons learned in the hopes that you don’t make the same mistakes that that I did. When you can run yourself, running the business is a piece of cake.

My true goal is to teach you to manage and run your emotional states ::

• Motivation when you’re feeling frustrated
• Action when you feel like procrastinating
• Belief in yourself when you doubt that your business is going to make it
• Trust in your inner wisdom when you have to make tough business decisions
• Strength and determination when you must get outside of your comfort zone in order to make a difficult step to take your business to the next level.
• Courage to take your biggest business mistakes and turn them into opportunities for growth
• Faith in your abilities when faced with the massive uncertainty of when your next paycheck will arrive
• Balance when you are working too many late nights and your family really wants you

Do you remember, the most important thing I said yesterday? I’ll say it again in case you missed it:

WE WILL ALWAYS DO MORE TO AVOID PAIN
THAN WE WILL TO ATTAIN PLEASURE.

My sneaky simple tool that I will start to discuss tomorrow is for us to get conscious about what we associate pain and pleasure to. I say ’simple’. I don’t mean ‘easy’.

Can you imagine how much power you would have over yourself - and your business - if you were consistently able to pick and choose what was painful and boring, and what was fun and rewarding?

Where would your business be today if you actually got excited every time a problem came up?

How would your revenue increase if you knew with 100% certainty that you would deliver on every promise you made - to yourself?

Tune in tomorrow for the third installment in my Business Boxing Match series and find out how!

The first post in this series:
The Business Boxing Match :: Success vs. Failure

The second post in this series:
Fight the Inner Battle :: Sneaky Tools to Win

The third post in this series:
Go to the Mattresses :: Overcoming Obstacles vs. Untapped Potential

The fourth post in this series:
Claim the Victory :: Embrace your Success

This upcoming weekend I am gearing up to be a trainer at the sales seminar that saved my life. I’m super-duper excited. In honor of this, and the critical material we cover in the live event, I’m going to do a series of posts this week on Values Conflicts.

Huh? Values conflicts? Yes - they are the single biggest destroyer of small business. Values conflicts are responsible for creating the obstacles we must overcome to succeed. Allow me to explain:

We all have good values we hold in high esteem. For most of my readers, I can guess at several of them: Family time. Success. Love. Growth. Connection. Comfort. Freedom. Achievement.
We also have values that we would do just about anything to avoid. Rejection. Fear. Anger. Frustration. Humiliation. Self Doubt. Unworthiness. Lack of Control. Guilt. I’ll call these avoidance values.

Values conflicts arise when we percieive a risk of feeling one of our avoidance values in order to move towards one of our good values. Here’s the important part - we may not even be conscious of the perceived risk. Allow me to give you an example:

I had a friend that was preparing herself to be a Small Business Coach. She found an opportunity to be mentored by someone with extensive credentials, and who also offered to help her build her coaching business. She is the kind of person that would be an extraordinary coach - focused, experienced, well-read, and very influential and admired in her local community.

But she hated to sell.

In fact, it wasn’t just a hatred - it was a downright replusion of the whole idea. Mention sales to her, and she could only think of a used car salesperson with a hard-close rehearsed and at the ready.
Not surprisingly, her coaching practice wasn’t doing very well. As a business owner, whenever she had an opportunity to ‘pitch’ her business, she said the right things, but her voice was timid. And her body language was completely incongruent with the words coming out of her mouth. She would state that she is a great coach that got results. But she sounded like she was a timid mouse, and she would even physically recoil as she spoke.

My friend had values of success, contribution, and hard work. She was enthusiastic and likable. She also had a ton of guts, determination, and a willingness to go the distance to make her business a success. Not to mention talent - loads of talent.

But she had one teensy weensy avoidance value - rejection.

There is one rule that I want you to remember when it comes to values. So important I’m going to shout it out in all caps and bold letters:

WE WILL ALWAYS DO MORE TO AVOID PAIN
THAN WE WILL TO ATTAIN PLEASURE.

My friend had all of the right ingredients for success - she already posessed everything she needed to make it BIG as a coach. But because she had to risk rejection in order to grow her business, she consistently acted in ways that did NOT support her business, sabotaging her own success. Every week she took one step forward and two steps back. And she was suffering emotionally, financially and even physically because of it.

~

This is just one example of how an avoidance value can destroy a business. If you can see even a little bit of yourself in this picture, if you hear a little whisper of recognition, then return all week for some daily insights and even some action items into managing values conflicts :: for your self and for your business.

As momtrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and even dadtrepreneurs, working at home usually means that we don’t have someone else to hold us accountable for our decisions and actions. Because of this, we don’t have someone who can objectively review our business actions and call us on our own bull$#it when we choose to act on an avoidance value instead of a good one.

Think it’s easy to spot in your business? Probably not. But here’s a start:
Action item for today :: List out your top 6 good values (the things you love to feel) and your top 6 avoidance values (the things you hate to feel).

The next post in this series is Fight the Inner Battle :: Sneaky Tools to Win

I’ve given thought to a few topics of late - really important ones that simply refuse to define themselves with simple answers. One of the ones I want to invite a discussion on is women and blogging.

Part of me doesn’t even want to write this post.
Yet, back a few weeks ago, I made a comment on my own blog repeating some great sales advice I had gotten from my husband many years ago.

>>My husband once gave me good advice in sales - whenever I found myself afraid to say something to a client, that was the most important thing that needed to come out of my mouth.

And then someone I highly respect suggested I write about this very subject.

So first, let me talk about the Questions We Fear to Speak.

Why ask difficult questions? Am I tryng to sell you something?

Actually, in this post, no. I am starting a conversation. We as people (myself included at times) avoid asking questions that are difficult for one primary reason among others. We want people to like us and we don’t want to risk breaking rapport with our readers [insert your own business or personal scenario here].

Yet instead of focusing on what we can lose by opening our big fat mouths, a better question to ask of ourselves is:

What is the cost of NOT opening my mouth on Subject A?

To again quote my husband on the subject, “The people too chicken to ‘go there’ are the ones who consistently lose, are more attached to being liked than doing the right thing (fear of rejection), and they lose credibility with the customer.”

To bring this to the blogging realm, try these really uncomfortable questions on for size:

• If you can’t speak the difficult questions - what are you overvaluing?
• Who has control in that situation? Who are you giving up control to?
• If you are constantly handing the baton back to your readers [customers… clients…] what does that convey about your authority - consciously and subconsciously?
• What is your fear costing you?

And I can assure you now, I’m feeling a little squeamish at my keyboard as I type. I don’t want to tread on toes. I don’t want to seem like I am playing the feminist card [I’m not, but even me saying this won’t convince some people of it]. I really don’t like stirring up controversy. But if I ask myself the questions I ask of you above, I realize that I am shortchanging all of us if I keep my mouth shut.

So without further ado, onto Women and Blogging…

It’s no secret that from one point of view, we are the minority. I wanted to break down the top 100 Technorati blogs to determine how many are run primarily by women, but stopped after 50 because I started to feel like I was scorekeeping in a bad relationship (but will divulge that 40 of the top 50 are run by men).

So, I’m taking my own advice, getting outside of my comfort zone, and putting my questions out to the fine and wise blogosphere (yes, to both men and women).

• What has to happen for women to create more visible and highly trafficked blogs?
• Do we as women have different blogging goals than our wonderful counterparts? Does this affect our success with our cohorts?
• How are we defining ’success’ in the first place? Impact? Readership? Traffic? Dollars?
• Are there truly gender issues at play here - or is this phenomena more of a rapport issue? Are more men’s blogs successful because there are more men blog readers? (Would love some stats on that if anyone has any). Are we really just seeking to read blogs by people we can relate to - and can it really be this harmless?
• I also find it interesting that BlogHerAds is really only open to women bloggers. I have mixed feelings about that - does it open up more opportunties for women, or does it reinforce a perception that we need more help than men do? Or both? (For the record, I do think it is a good program and I plan on participating unless I piss off Jory with this question! )

(OK, my skin is crawling now - I have officially gone way farther than I thought I would in this post).

• And finally, to lighten up the conversation a bit, did I shoot myself in the foot by starting this blog with a domain name that tends to exclude half of the human race? (Again for the record, I would do it differently if I knew then what I know now!!)

I invite you to write your own response and trackback to this post, or leave your comments if you don’t own a blog. Take on a question or two. Or ask some of your own difficult questions. I have my own answers - albeit muddy on some of them - but this post is long enough and I’ll bring it up separately or in response to comments.

We may stir up the pot a bit, but if we are to live our lives with integrity, and be congruent with that on our blogs, we should all be asking difficult questions about difficult subjects - or at least building up the courage to do so.

I’ve started writing my eBook (was up LATE last night on a roll, actually!!). Brian Clark over at CopyBlogger wrote a great post today on coercive copywriting. In it he talks about coercion in marketing and writing - when it’s ethical and when it’s manipulation. Since it fit well with some of the things I was writing about last night, it seemed perfectly timed to share a little excerpt from my draft.

~~
I know I say that my first two home based businesses failed. I suppose it is not a very fair statement, because for the first two years of my freelance graphic design business, it THRIVED. I had referral business coming in left and right. I never had to go on sales pitches. Work was just handed to me. I worked my tail off for my clients, they knew it, and sent me more and more work. I was solely in charge of design and art production of the Claire’s Accessories web site for over 6 months, and I helped to triple their repeat visitors over a 3 month timeframe. I did work for Ameritrade, the Follett companies, Aon Insurance and a large Chicago rock radio station, the Loop.

But then two things happened. September 11^th, and two months after that I was pregnant with our third child. Remember what I said about struggling with depression? Well, these two events were more than I could handle with the resources I had available to me at the time, and my motivation and self esteem started spiraling out of control. Badly.

This is why I discuss depression so openly on this blog and in my articles, begging and pleading my readers to NOT work at home when they are depressed. It is a recipe for disaster. I know because I lived it.

So, how did I turn it all around? I learned how to sell.

Yes, you read that correctly. I took a sales seminar. Now, before I lose you, let me explain to you WHY acquiring sales skills saved me, saved my family, saved my marriage, and indeed, saved my ability to be a successful business woman. It’s really not sales – its persuasion.

You see, when I was depressed, I couldn’t persuade myself to look at life differently. I couldn’t persuade myself to act in a manner that I knew would be more congruent with a happier life. I couldn’t persuade myself to take care of myself.

When I procrastinated in business, I couldn’t persuade myself to take action.

When I was harsh (on myself and on others), I couldn’t persuade myself to find the good in the situation.

When I was working at all hours of the day and night, I couldn’t persuade myself to take time for myself and my family.

I knew what I needed to do to get better. I knew all of the things that made a successful business - I had just done it for two straight years. But I just didn’t DO it. In other words, I was constantly at the effect of my own life and my own disempowering emotions rather than at the cause.

When I took that sales seminar, I realized that I had been selling all along. In fact, I had been a damn good saleswoman during the last two years of depression. But I was selling the wrong product! I was selling myself on my shortcomings and on my “story” of ‘I can’t’. I was selling others on my limitations, and selling my customers on what I couldn’t do for them – much of the time I talked people out of working with me!!

When I left that sales seminar, I had changed. I became a new person overnight. Though the changes I made started well before that seminar it was the lessons I learned that weekend that enabled me to FINALLY move to become the CAUSE of my life – and NOT at the effect of my own emotions.

How? Well, I guess you’ll have to buy the book when it’s completed…

(Don’t worry, I’ll publish more excerpts along the way :: stay tuned!)

Sorry, folks! Couldn’t resist the headline. I have a few new subscribers ’round here these days, too… I bet you’re wondering if you just signed up for a new feed written by some crazed mom with multiple personality disorder… Wonder no more and read on, dear new friends!

I’ll never forget the first time I completely ignored my inner wisdom. I was 19 years old and decided I wanted to move to San Francisco. I made my plans, set my date… and then this nagging little feeling started creeping into my stomach. For a few weeks, I just plain ignored it. But it grew. So, good little hippie that I was back then, I did a Tarot card reading to determine my fate! I pulled the Tower card as my outcome. All I remember about tarot cards today was that this card meant certain disaster.

I didn’t like that outcome. So I did it again!

In one of those weird moments when you start to question the universe around you, I looked at my outcome card again. It was the Tower. Goosebumps. And that nagging feeling in my stomach just about knocked me over. Did I listen? No.

I wanted to move to San Francisco, and I was going no matter what card I pulled, no matter what my intuition said, no matter what inner wisdom told me about simply letting go of this idea and changing my plans.

Now before I tell you what happened in San Francisco, I want to tell you the lesson I learned from going to San Francisco has stuck with me to this day, in more ways than one. I learned to listen to that damn gut, that’s for sure.

Sometimes I get asked about “following the heart”. So many people don’t understand what this means. How do we know when we are following our hearts? How do we know what part of ourselves to listen to when we have conflicting emotions? How do we know what direction to take our business in when there is a fork in the road?

For me, at this point, it’s second nature. But do you want to know why that is? I wasn’t born super [consciously] connected to the powers above. I wasn’t some high achiever who seemed divinely guided (Oh, FAR from it! That’s another post in and of itself!!) And I certainly floundered in business before.

The true key to my ‘listen-to-my-heart-success’ has been hindsight; experiencing the pain and consequences of NOT listening when it was surely blatant that I should have flipping listened to myself. Like the time I took on a huge database project as a designer and outsourced the coding. But didn’t know the first thing about what I was doing, nor what they were doing. I had a feeling I shouldn’t do it, but the money was so darn good… the entire project blew up in my face, and made some people look really bad (myself most of all). 

Yes, you CAN grow your business by completely ignoring your inner wisdom. But ONLY if you take the painful and valuable lessons from your experiences and make better choices moving forward. But I have found that these aren’t just business decisions, or even life decisions. For the entrepreneur, business and life are one. We start our businesses because we have a driving desire within us to pursue a dream - and that dream is part of why we are here on this planet in the first place.

So bringing intuitive decisions to business aren’t just for the corner psychic. It’s crucial to our success. And I have a few success stories to share on that topic as well… again, another post, another time

But wait, you say! What happened in San Francisco?! Well, I moved out there, of course. I lived in my friends’ living room and got a job in an ice cream shop. I significantly cut my earnings from my Chicago job and doubled my rent. And it turned out that the friends I moved in with weren’t very good friends. They were heroin junkies that had a penchant for manipulation. Seven weeks later, I climbed on an Amtrak train, penniless except for the money my dad had sent. I’ll never forget that train ride in the fall through the Rockies. It was one of the happiest moments of my life as I finally listened to my inner wisdom and was on the way home.

I was reading one of my new favorite blogs today, over at Passion Meets Purpose. Author Kammie is positive, full of energy, and totally infectious. She wrote a great post about a bit of an ego bruise that was a blessing in disguise - and it made me think of my own big ego bash from a while ago…

I remember when I first seriously considered becoming a life coach. It was almost 2 years ago - I was doing a lot of training with the Anthony Robbins companies, and really felt like I was finally getting this whole living a great life thing. I was working with some great potential clients at events, and really making a difference.

At the time I was working outside of the house, and my interest and passion for getting into coaching started becoming a distraction. I wanted a career that I could be passionate about - one that didn’t bore me after 2 months, as most of my jobs had in the past. I had encouragement from many people I knew, and even from people I had coached informally. I had the experience, I looked into coaching certification, and went to my coach and told him about my intentions.

Then I got some nasty medicine.

My coach didn’t think I was ready to be a coach for others. He suggested I needed a lot less talk and a lot more action in my life. That I wasn’t really walking my talk. Man, I was PISSED.

But I really, REALLY respected my coach. That pissed me off even more, because I couldn’t dismiss his observations as uninformed or ingenuine. I felt like he had given me the NASTIEST pill to swallow. But I trusted him. So I swallowed the pill - and my pride - and I took another look within.

I realized that even though coach training would be highly valuable, perhaps it wasn’t exactly what my heart was telling me to do at that time. I was actually more looking for a way OUT of my office job than I was looking to DO coaching, if that makes sense. And I hated, I mean REALLY HATED to admit it, but my coach was right. It was time for me to put up or shut up.

I decided that I would make no career moves until I pushed past my boredom and resistance in my current job. I realized that I was looking for something in my job to complete me - but I was looking at it all backwards. What I really needed to focus on was being complete - and then I knew I could trust that the right career opportunities would appear. I also made the decision to be successful in my current position, no. matter. what. How could I coach people to push past their own fears and resistance if I couldn’t do it myself?

By swallowing that little nasty pill my coach offered to me, I found that it wasn’t nasty at all. It just tasted nasty going down - but once down in my tummy it turned out to be one of the greatest gifts he had ever given me. And I know it was hard for him to offer it - but I’m so glad he did.

Had I listened to all the people who just said “Yeah, go for it, Wendy!” or “Wendy, your’e great!” I would not be where I am today. Not to say that I don’t surround myself with positive people. I most certainly do.

But the people that I spend the most time with, the ones who really define true friendship, are not my cheerleading squad. They hold me to a higher standard - by calling me on my sh*t, by living their own lives at high standards, and by never letting me buy into anything less than my own greatness. And by doing this, then, and only then, do we get to celebrate great successes together.

After that very painful experience, I took walking my talk to a whole new level. I rocked the house down in my office job. And I really dove into learning and applying NLP, coaching, and the science of persuasion. Just recently, my coach paid me the highest compliment he has ever given me.

In front of a room full of 50 people, he found himself in a position to help faciliate a reconciliation between two of our mutual friends. It had been a huge (and I mean HUGE !) challenge for all of us - because we were all so closely tied to each other. After tears were shed and hugs shared, my coach said that this was a great example of the fact that we as leaders have our own problems from time to time - and that this reconciliation would not have happened if it weren’t for MY coaching of all of the people involved. Wow. Talk about a tear jerker.

Had my coach not sacked my ego two years ago, this would never have happened. And it’s very likely I wouldn’t be here behind eMoms at Home today. So did my peer group influence my business? You had better believe it!

So the question is - who is in your peer group? Are these people that buy into your “story”, or do they hold you to a higher standard? Hopefully you have at least one person in your life that sees you at your best - even when you don’t - and reminds you of who you are when you forget.  And if you don’t, just keep reading my blog until you do - or until I get to meet you in person - whichever comes first!

As most of you know, my little eMoms at Home Blog wasn’t my original plan - I was going to make my fortune in affiliate marketing on a self help site. Then as I blogged about it over here, my whole plan got hijacked because you liked my work. Darn readers .

So I had my income plan all in place and then this happened. Now I’ll be honest, I’m kind of scrambling to rework my entire business plan to come up with a different revenue model, because when I went into this, I didn’t know the first thing about making money off of a blog. Go figure.

I’m wishing now that I could buy stock in ProBlogger.net and get a few cents back for every minute I spend on his site - I’d be surely raking in the dough by now if that were the case!

So I’m taking a lot of my own advice on business start-ups. Think Creatively. Add Value. Stay Focused. Stay Positive. Be Smart. Make Strategic Decisions. Work Hard! Follow my Heart! And probably most importantly: Get outside of my comfort zone and do whatever it takes to succeed.

To that end, I have studied the patterns of your clicks, dear readers, and I know what makes you tick. I know what you are looking for. You want to know how you can get more done in your home based business. You want guidance on being a success. And you want to know more about taking your business to the next level.

As much as I would love to simply blog for you for free, I am running a business here. And how can I show you how to make money from home unless I am making money from home?! 

So. I will lead by example. And here’s my good news!!

I am putting together the eMoms ProductivityJolt Program - Achieving Consistent Productivity from the Inside Out - which will feature the following:

1. 8 weeks of small group coaching sessions - no more than 4 people on each conference call, each week. Each participant will get personal attention and a personalized program based on each individuals’ business and personal needs
2. An analysis of your current business and personal strengths and weaknesses, which will tailor your individualized program
3. A copy of my in-progress eBook:: ProductivityJolt! Achieving Consistent Productivity from the Inside Out
4. Email support throughout the 8 week program
5. A personal money-back guarantee you will accomplish more in this 8 week program than you did in the last 6 months combined!

I’m still working on timing and pricing. But I can tell you now this is a VERY hands-on program that I will be investing a lot of time and love into. You will get personal attention and I will be handing out weekly assignments based not on what I want to teach, but on what YOU need to get out of this program.

I can also say right now that I am only willing to open up this program to 20 people, because I can’t take on more than that right now and still guarantee the quality of the program.

WELL. I just made a big commitment and I have my work cut out for myself between now and the program launch! Please - everyone - whether or not you are interested in this program - feedback! I can’t wait to hear from you on this one!

When I was running my design business from home several years ago, I was a much different person (read: depressed, angry, blaming and constantly unable to get myself to take action on things). My husband was also a very different person (read: I’m not about to bash him now after all of the amazing growth he has achieved in the last 3 years!).

Sure, we still have our disagreements and annoyances. I don’t normally write about this stuff, but upon reading Of Fish and Family today, I reflected on the side of my life that gets little attention in my writings, my hubby. I swear Margo must be married to my husband’s twin. (How DO they go to the store and come home with so much crap, Margo?! I just don’t get it!!)

But back to my story. When my husband and I were living our lives at our not-so-best selves, we had a one fight that ALWAYS turned into big blowouts. Money.

Now I know we are the ONLY couple on the planet with these issues, so just bear with me (ha!).

The fight never started the same, but once one of us ‘went there’, it always ended the same. With us not talking for days, sometimes.

He HATED the fact that I was home all of the time, and didn’t have a “real job”. But the way he dug it in deeper was to consistently point out that the house was messy pretty much all of the time, and why the heck couldn’t I actually get up off my butt and take care of this stuff?

I HATED the fact that he was (and still is!) one of the most talented sales people I have ever met, yet when my company was hitting hard times, he wasn’t stepping up and consistently making the numbers he needed to cover our expenses. And how dare he think I was slacking off? I was working 16 hour days trying to recover my business!! Would he say this to me if I was working outside of the house 16 hours a day?

The truth of the matter was, we were both right, and both wrong.

My 16 hour days were a lot of surfing and chat-room hopping. And I didn’t believe in myself in any way shape or form, so I was sabotaging all of my business efforts so that my income dipped well below $10K a year. And yeah, the house really was a mess.

The stress of mounting debt, a depressed wife, a ’surprise’ third baby, and constant fighting were taking their toll on my husband’s own self esteem. His motivation started spiraling out of control, and he started finding ways to make himself feel important again:: at great costs.

[Holy shit I am crying while I am writing this!! I haven’t thought about this stuff for so long, and never from the healthy perspective I am able to use today! What a sad time in our lives!!]

The solution is more of a book than a blog post. But here are some key distinctions from my work at home journey:

1. Don’t try to start or run a home based business if you have a lot of personal challenges that need to be addressed. Really  - I’m saying this (as in, hand over my heart saying this)… TAKE CARE OF YOU FIRST. You can’t take care of your family, your marriage, or let alone a business, if you are in your own way. Take a few months to get your head on straight. See a coach or a counselor. Trust me, it’s the BEST investment you can make in your business.
2. Own it when you mess up. I was blaming the economy, my husband, and even my own emotions for ‘causing me to get off track’. Doesn’t work that way. It’s a tough pill to swallow at times, but our life is a choice. If it’s a mess, our choices have led us there. No need to be mad at yourself or feel even more guilty about it. It’s just time to start making better choices.
3. Your marriage problems are not about what you aren’t getting. It’s about what you aren’t giving. That goes for him (or her!) too, just in case you were wondering. I know you do things all of the time that show your spouse that you love them - in YOUR way. But have you ever asked THEM what has to happen in order for THEM to feel loved? I can wager that you haven’t (most people haven’t). And if (and hopefully when) you do, I think you will be surprised at the answers you will get.

Lastly, the way that I ensure I never, ever go back to the person I was in 2003 is by doing the following:

1. I take time to meditate connect with myself daily. My happiness is one of my highest priorities.
2. I put fun things on my list to do - and if I don’t do them, my leverage is induced just like it is when the not-so-fun things aren’t done.
3. I make sure my husband and I get alone time every week. Mandatory.
4. I know what has to happen in order for my husband to feel loved, because I have asked him. I make it a priority to do those things. A lot.
5. I listen to my ‘inner wisdom’ and follow it no matter what - even when it is super scary and I don’t know what the hell I am doing. It always leads me in the right direction.
6. Whenever my husband and I are not getting along, I ask myself “What can I GIVE to this situation RIGHT NOW that will make our relationship stronger?”. With such a powerful question, I inevitably get powerful answers!

I’ve been getting quite a few questions lately in regards to my BlogJolt project - and one of them is, “Well, what are the long-term benefits of this kind of time commitment? Why should I work hard to jolt the traffic of other blogs - is it worth it?”

I can boil this down to the question that I aim to answer every time I communicate with anyone, anytime, anywhere::

“What’s in it for me?!”

Let me first speak to some of the benefits of participating in a link-building project, then I’ll talk about what to do when the day comes that you receive a huge amount of traffic in a very short timeframe.

Again - the quick premise of the BlogJolt is for the group to flood a weekly target blog with links, traffic, and social bookmarks. Why is it a good idea to help other bloggers?

1. The obvious - participation is mandatory if you want to be considered as a future target blog - but you only have to participate once every three weeks to keep your name in the hat.
2. You start becoming a better resource to your readers. The more they look to you as an expert in your field - the more they need you to point them to other valuable resources besides your blog
3. Participating in weekly BlogJolts forces you to “get out of the ‘virtual’ house” so to speak, and read blogs you might not have found otherwise.
4. You never know what kind of connections you will make as you write about a new blog. You never know who is reading, who is watching you. I don’t mean in a big-brother kind of way - I mean, one connection can really change the course of your career. Don’t believe me? Read my post about how I got here.
5. This BlogJolt is getting some good publicity - and I believe it will get more. The BlogJolt group is nothing without its members - and I’m promoting the members as much as I am promoting the project. Good PR is a good thing.

Now, what can you do to prepare for being a BlogJolt Target Blog? It can be broken down into two categories - things you need to do on a consistent basis before you get a flood of traffic, and things you need to do specifically in regards to getting that flood of traffic.

Before I go further, I must give great credit to Jason Unger who wrote a great post about this topic - which inspired me to take it further in this post. He talks about what to do before, during, and after a huge flood of traffic hits your blog. (And thanks to Brian Clark at CopyBlogger for the great find!)

To add to Jason’s wisdom from a business perspective:

1. Take the publicity and run with it. Use it as an excuse to open more doors with other bloggers whom you admire. Or even with the press for particularly newsworthy stuff
2. Analyze what you did right and do more of it.
3. Write about what you figure out from #2, and use that knowledge to write posts to help other bloggers duplicate your success.
4. Keep the conversation going. Respond to comments a lot. Get out and comment a lot more, especially on blogs related to yours, or to your post that got linked from a large traffic source. People will start seeing your name more often and start wondering - who is this person who seems to be everywhere? I MUST know them!

To add to Jason’s wisdom from a personal perspective:

1. Own your success. You just got a lot of traffic. A LOT. Guess what? That doesn’t happen to everyone. It happens to good bloggers. It happens to good writers who add value to the blogosphere, or to the internet as a whole. That’s now who you are. Make it a part of your identity. As you let this ‘go to your head’ a little bit, you will start thinking of yourself differently, coming up with different ideas, and accessing different resources within yourself, which when done properly and ethically, will take you from good to great.
2. Take this as an opportunity to rethink your blog. Perhaps you got a lot of attention for a niche topic or post - could this be telling you something about the interests of your readers? Are you writing about all of the things you really care about on your blog? Or can you take this opportunity and use it to expand the content you offer to your readers?
3. What did you learn about yourself when you suddenly got a lot of attention? Did you tell yourself “Finally! I’m getting the traffic I deserve!” or did you say “Why the heck are they writing about me?” or were you suddenly uncomfortable with all of the scrutiny and attention? Just notice what your reactions are - when you get a chance to be in the spotlight, all sorts of things can creep up in our minds - voices from the past saying ‘you don’t deserve this’, ‘who are you to be writing about this stuff’, or ‘I wonder if I can really maintain this success - there isn’t enough material in me to keep this going!’.

   Whatever your reactions are, this is an opportunity for you.

   Limiting beliefs can kill a blog, let alone a career, and ESPECIALLY an entrepreneur’s dreams. Most of the time, we don’t even know they are there until it’s too late, already wreaking havoc by creating crappy circumstances or experiences, or sabotaging our success. You have an opportunity to actually have these limiting beliefs become clear NOW, hopefully before the damage is done long term. Identify the limiting beliefs that come to mind that could have potential long term consequences, and be vigilant about getting rid of them.

When I received a “BlogBoost” from the LinkedIn Bloggers, everything changed, and is still changing - so fast I can hardly keep up with it all. I started writing more about topics I hadn’t touched on this blog, and started taking this blog seriously, whereas before hand, it was practically an indulgence.

But I siezed upon the opportunity to build upon my success, reach out to my readers, and I started developing a lot more content that was a lot more valuable. The day I recieved a lot of inbound links could have been a one-night-stand. People could have come and gone. But I did a lot of the things Jason suggests in his post, as well as the things I have suggested. Since the day I was boosted, my traffic and subscribers has consistently increased because of these steps. In fact, my highest day of traffic before my “boost” is now a slow day… a REALLY slow day.

So perhaps it’s not a marriage proposal for my readers just yet, but I can definitely say,  “We’re more than friends”. Wink. Wink.

Wow. THANK God for my Mastermind Group. Let me give you the quick history before I launch into my accomplishment for the week.

In my Mastermind Group, we meet weekly to discuss our goals and progress, keep each other on track and offer coaching when appropriate. We come in with weekly commitments, and if they aren’t accomplished by the next week, severe leverage is induced. I pick my own leverage - something so painful that I will HAVE to ensure my list is complete!! My leverage is that I would have to grow out my usually well-hidden moustache. For 2 weeks. Trust me, my work gets DONE.

So last week I said I would request 10 inbound links. Then I put it off. I avoided it until the AFTERNOON of my evening meeting. And then I knew I HAD to do it. I’m a social butterfly in person. I even just blindly invited 50 women bloggers to the BlogJolt group. Yet to contact people to request a link was different. I was asking rather than offering. And I was scared.

But I was even more scared to get hairy. I knew I had to put up or shut up. Plus, I had to ask myself: How can I offer leadership to my readers and blog about this stuff if I am too scared to do it myself? So I bit the bullet and started writing.

I was surprised, but in retrospect, I’m not. Avoiding it was the hardest part. When I had no choice but to sit down and write the damn emails, I found I could do it.

I even found a way to ask without sounding like a greedy pig.

And I even found a way to offer some value back.

And I even opened some doors to some really exciting partnerships in the process!!

As business owners, going outside of our comfort zone is an absolute requirement to success. Even as bloggers. Even as moms, for that matter. If we are always inside of our comfort zone, we are not growing.

Ironically, my friend Brett sent me a great quote this morning that really perfectly explains why this is so important for us as humans::

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.