Ok only one article is new as of today, but the section is new!! Check out the Articles from eMoms at Home!

The new article addition, by the way, is the Top 10 Obstacles to Success as a Work at Home Mom. It brings me to a whopping three articles (yes, I know, I’m writing furiously lately, so just keep coming back for lots more). What are the other two articles? Well, I’m going to make you visit my articles page to find out!

*end shameless self serving plug for traffic*

I’m way behind in my tipping duties today - this should have come out hours ago!! But I have had a very productive day today, so I’m not complaining..

On to Jory. If you don’t know her, you dang well should. Jory co-founded BlogHer.org (yes, THAT BlogHer!) with Lisa Stone and Elisa Camahort. Now, Jory might get an awful lot of link love, yet there are important things for this particular audience of work at home moms that I want to highlight in her blog, Pause - Jory’s Thoughts While Sitting Still.

1. One of the reasons that Jory is so successful in her work is because she is so darn passionate about it! Frankly, the words “Blogging Evangelist” come to mind. This woman walks her talk and it comes through in her writing (#4 of my Top Ten Key Success Ingredients). Check out her amusing post on trying to recruit another fine woman into the blogging world - HA! She reminds me a lot of me in this post, talking about the things that really matter in blogging - actually in business in general when you get right down to it.
2. Jory’s Living Without a Net Series is a MUST read if you are fearful of starting up your own business. Guess what? We ALL are. We just don’t show it most of the time, because we’re so busy pursuing our dreams. In fact, this series almost intimidates me, because she writes about a lot of the things I need to get out of my own hands and head… yet she’s way ahead of me. I guess I just need to step up and get writing .
3. Lastly, in a wonderful and warm-fuzzy article for Fast Company (yes, I did say warm-fuzzy), Jory takes on a great truth and puts it front and center for us: being a woman in the business world is tough, we’re usually expected to strap on balls in order to succeed, yet embracing who we are is truly our greatest strength. When I was a marketing recruiter I brought in some of the biggest agencies in the city as clients - and I did it by treating my clients like friends. Friends, as in I even crocheted a couple of ponchos for my clients’ new babies. Unconventional, yes, but I was darn good at what I did because I never forgot who I am - a woman.

Alright, I know this sounds totally kiss-ass, but I am having a really hard time coming up with a “Tip”. The things I am coming up with even sound kiss-ass-y. So I’ll make an observation. Jory is open with her vulnerability :: it makes her an inspiring leader, allowing us to also be vulnerable, thus tapping our strengths. But I have had a hard time finding a post in which she totally and completely toots her own horn. So my invitation to Jory is for her to bask in her own glory for a post. Like I wrote in my previous BlogTipping post, embracing our power and our light is a good thing!!

FINALLY onto my BlogTipping project for the day…

My first shout out goes to Antonella Pavese, who’s blog is one of the first I ever read. I remember considering starting a blog, and I believe I was doing some research on what other women are blogging on. It was well before I launched my own efforts - yet I was so impressed. She writes about her passion - which is a great mixture of technology, psychology, women, and just her own voice.

1. The reason this is relevant to moms is this: Antonella has taken the time to know herself well enough to understand her strengths, find her inner wisdom, and has taken the leap to publish the whole kit and kaboodle together in a delightfully fascinating blog.
2. Antonella writes about the user experience, which is something that I believe moms naturally pay attention to without realizing it, or even being aware of it. If you are a true eMom (and I mean a mom who wants to start an internet based / tech business) this is a subject that needs true planning and conscious attention - making a site or blog easy to understand, navigate and read will make or break your business. Period.
3. I adore her most recent post on owning our own power and strengths. This is something I have been working on consciously recently. (Very) generally speaking, women seem to back away from their own power and light. I can go on and on about my ruminations as to why this is - but suffice it to say that when I made the decision to really embrace and LIVE the powerful woman I am, amazing things started happening in my life.

My tip? From our great little email chat yesterday, Antonella made a quick deduction that her blog isn’t really relevant to moms - perhaps she was kindly trying to decline my invitation to join the BlogJolt group. But if not, I would suggest simply that she think of herself as relevant to all women (and men) - because anything spoken from her true self is relevant, period.

By taking this identity on, she can continue to lead by example as she ‘owns’ her own great blogging success.

First in my Article Series on Advice, Ideas + Solutions for all eMoms at Home

As a serial entrepreneur (I started my first work at home endeavor at 26 and am on my third time around – with several businesses in the oven!!), I have watched my income both skyrocket and plummet – sometimes in a blink of an eye. I have learned many lessons along the way, one of the most important is that you must be generally happy and have some level of self esteem in order to succeed. Without these ingredients, we run the risk of self-sabotage, which kills any business. It is particularly destructive for home based businesses – simply because more often than not, a home based business is a one-woman-show, and if we are sabotaging our only employee, how will the show go on?!

Then again, it also extremely important to know what success means to you specifically. If success is simply grocery money and a lot of time with your kids, or if you are building the next fortune 500 empire, you need to have benchmarks in place in order to know if you are successful. Otherwise, you may continue to work every day, never feeling like you are getting anywhere, because you don’t have any references in place for what success is.

No matter what your business goals are, here are the top ten key success ingredients for Home Based Businesses – or any small business, for that matter!

Read the Whole Article…

I was up until the wee hours of the morning last night to meet my own self-imposed deadline to have three new articles written for the eMoms at Home site. The topics include:

The Top 10 Personal Barriers to Professional Success

The Top 10 Work at Home Key Success Ingredients

Secrets to Faster Blogging Success

I just need some time to proofread the work and build the site section, so look for this new resource by the end of the week. DONE!!

Holy Cow! I just got a call from Les Brown!!! As in, motivational speaker, best selling author, and radio and tv celebrity Les Brown!

I’m still spinning… it was a short and sweet call. He is out to dinner tonight with my dear friend and coach, Alan Brown (no relation), who owns and runs the Anthony Robbins & Associates franchise here in the Chicago area. Alan and Les is going to be partnering on some business ventures, and he told Les about what I am doing with eSelfHelp. Les actually called to say that he is really looking forward to working with US, said he’s looking forward to meeting me soon, AND offered his help on the site!!!!!

Forgive me for acting like a giddy little schoolgirl here, but this is HUGE! I feel so humbled, yet at the same time, so much bigger than I did just a few minutes ago… Wow, I am just darn grateful to be alive, to have followed my heart to get to this day, and that I get to share it all with an audience on the internet that gets to come along for the ride…

Did I mention how grateful I am?!?!!??!?!?!!?!???!??!?!

If that’s not a headline that will grab your attention, I don’t know what will…

I am putting out an invitation for work at home moms (or dads, for that matter) who have been successful in their chosen fields to contact me. I am developing a series of interviews and podcasts to highlight exactly what it takes to launch a successful work at home business.

Since I have over 2 and a half years of experience as a trainer and coach with the Anthony Robbins companies, my interview style will be quite unique. I ask very personal questions and really dig to uncover the psychology of WHY they are successful - and it’s usually not for the reasons you think. We will explore their identities, their belief systems, and the values they have held in place in order to succeed both personally and professionally.

I already have two good friends who have agreed to sit down with me to share their secrets of success.

Kim is the president of We’re Lit, a candle company she started out of her home just over a year ago. She now has a manufacturing plant, over 10 employees, and has landed coveted retail accounts such as Wal-Mart and Meijer… with their competitors chasing her down for her unique candle products. Kim has a long-standing background as a business owner, and has great advice on what it takes to overcome tremendous obstacles to live the life you want.

Kathleen started Henson Consulting back in 2001, transitioning her career in the PR agency world (she worked for Edelman and Dome) to a home based consulting business when her first child was born. She has worked with cients such as Jane Seymour, Land’s End, Kraft Foods, Chicago Title, and S.C.Johnson Wax. She has built her firm from a one-woman show to four work at home moms, while simultaneously building her family of three to a family of SIX over short 5 years. (And by the way, Kathleen is so busy with her own clients, she hasn’t been able to get her own site back online. I’ll push her to get it back up by the time we publish her interview!)

If your business is successful, and you believe the story of your background will add value to our readers, please contact me immediately with a short bio. Or if know of a successful work at home mom, please forward this post via the email link below.

I have been surprised at the last two weeks of success and transition with the eMoms at Home blog. Firstly, I was delighted and happy to hear from readers I didn’t even know I had in regards to what direction the blog should take. Secondly, I have been even more happy and surprised at the amount of traffic the blog is seeing in it’s relative infancy (I still don’t even have a full three months of posts yet). My musings, both public and private, have pushed me to get very clear on what the heck I am doing here… and I’m ready to unveil my future plans for both this site and eSelfHelp. The questions I have been asking myself have been difficult and challenging. Thankfully, I believe in my heart that I am on the right path, so backing down is simply NOT an option (and a good thing, too, because this has definitely been a challege!!).

In regards to eMoms at Home

1. I will continue to post about the techy behind-the-scenes site building process, as I know this is just plain valuable information for any person who wants to know what it is truly like to build a content site from scratch, from home, and with kids running around.
2. I’ll also continue to write about internet marketing, even though it’s not my true area of expertise. I have been writing about my marketing experiments and initiatives along the way - which in the end will help the readers to understand what doesn’t work as well as what does. This will also help as you consider investing in true internet marketing training programs, because you will be more educated and knowledgeable on the actual behind-the-scenes workings of running an internet based business.
3. I will be adding articles and material written more specifically about the personal side of working from home. This will include examining and maximizing our personal strengths and weaknesses, the mental obstacles that many women face when we are required to believe in ourselves and our abilities at a higher level than we have in the past, self-sabotage, and tools and techniques to empower ourselves to reach for and accomplish our dreams.
4. An exciting component of this is that I will be building an assessment tool to help determine what an individuals’ personal obstacles are, clarify what is limiting and holding progress back, and provide a written report with a road map to get you to where you need to go.

As for eSelfHelp, it will need to be rebuilt from the ground up. I will also be creating it with a CMS (Joomla!), so the time to have it up and running again will be longer than I had hoped, but the site will have a much stronger foundation - content-wise AND technologically. So the external development of the site will be on hold as I work on it in the background. Consequently, I will temporarily throw more of my efforts towards eMoms at Home, as I am thoroughly enjoying taking on this new-ish direction with the blog and making the most of the success to date.

eSelfHelp will become more of a content site (meaning written by me), and will incorporate a lot more of my expertise than it currently does. The big plans for the site will be in the content library, in which I will be developing an audio file library of self-hypnosis material, NLP and Time Line Therapy workshops, meditations and visualizations. Worksheets and workbooks will also be incorporated into the library which will eventually be available on a subscription basis. The material will be directed into three growth tracks as mentioned earlier, entreprenurial, personal and spiritual. I will continue to promote and sell other products from different self help experts, because they all have their own strengths and I am not seeking to be everything to everyone.

And finally, I have let go of the idea that I need to merge the two sites into one. There are things I want to put out there that are very specific to work at home moms, and then of course, things that will appeal to a wider audience. Additionally, it is wise to diversify my streams of income, especially in an internet based business. If things eventually evolve into one site, that’s fine too. For now, they will be developed separately.

First up is going to be a series of articles on work at home challenges, similar to my article The Top Ten Working from Home Mistakes.

I am also taking ‘requests’ so to speak. What is YOUR number one personal challenge when it comes to working from home? Is it staying focused? Is it a belief (or lack thereof) in your talents and abilities? Is it procrastination? Please comment or contact me privately with your input and your suggestions will be included in future content on the site!

As I launch eSelfHelp, and now also give serious consideration to marketing eMoms at Home, I have come to the nearly inevitable moment for every start up:: I need revenue and I have little capital to invest in marketing!

It’s particularly challenging with an online business, because when cash flow is tight, there are simply going to be days when nothing can be IMMEDIATELY done to bring in business (such as in sales, by making more cold calls). This doesn’t mean that things can’t be done, of course, and there will even be days when initiatives will have immediate results. But not every time.

Online Marketing is like building a strong foundation (a good site or blog) and then layering and building resources for growth - some will produce instant results, some will take months to come to fruition. All must be done for a healthy site to grow.

I’ve already mentioned my email marketing efforts here and here. This is my longer-term growth strategy - and the one that I know will be one of the biggest sources of income in the future. I have a small list now, but it’s my highest priority to grow it, even though it’s not generating any revenue yet. If the reasons for having a large mailing list aren’t obvious, read what Rosalind Gardner has to say about it.

My second highest priority is clarifying and executing my Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing plan. To be clear, maintaing a blog is a HUGE part of this plan - and has singly been the number-one traffic driver to both of my sites. My WOM efforts are crucial to my success for two very big reasons:

1. They work
2. They are super cheap or free to implement

Things to accomplish include building the eMoms Community and attracting members, viral campaigns, and actively social networking. Yet there are some interesting facts to consider behind the scenes as to why this is all so important in the first place. I found this, of all places, on Marc Freedman’s P2P File Sharing Blog in a post entitled “Word of Mouth Marketing: Who is Listening?” in which he quotes a Lucid Marketing Study.

Key to my own WOM efforts are the following excerpts from the study:

“Although the men surveyed made more daily contacts than the women, women were more likely to share a positive experience with a business (91% to 83%) or recommend an enjoyable product (95% to 89%).”

“Marketers should consider employment status when allocating resources for targeting consumers. Full time employees make as many daily contacts as part time employees and stay-at-homers combined!”

“Stay-at-homers tend to make more daily visits to chat rooms and message boards. Including web site addresses and promotion codes in marketing efforts, making it easy to pass this information along online…”

“Those with household earnings of more than $100,000 were more likely to make recommendations than those earning less.”

This kind of research is really important to any business, home based or not. For example, here is an interesting fact from the same study for any business that targets “SilverBirds” (pre-Boomer generation)::

“An overlooked and interesting area for marketers is reaching SilverBirds through message boards and chat rooms. They have more activity in those areas than Boomers and nearly equal activity to Gen X. This is likely due to their desire to reconnect with family and friends, and to discuss health, medical and other issues of aging with peers and professionals.”

Finally to the Mindful part of “Mindful Marketing”. Knowing your audience is crucial to a having successful business. To me, it’s also crucial to having a successful life. I’m never going to be happy with my work if I am not adding value to the lives of others. It may sound oovy-groovy, but I’ve been put on this planet to make a difference, and I plan on living up to that.

As a business owner, I have an obligation to know who my audience is, because if I don’t understand who I am speaking to, how the heck can I ensure that what I am doing is going to be of value?!

So to tie this all together, cheap marketing is really only valuable if I am

1. Marketing something I believe in
2. Marketing something of value to others
3. Taking action and living up to my obligation to deliver the value of my product/content/services to others

To take it one last step further, I take a page from my own coach, who frames his sales training in the following light:

If I am in front of a prospect, and my product or service is of high value to them, I am actually screwing them over if I DON’T sell them on my product or service. This is because my product or service will actually save their money, or create new ways for them to earn money, or perhaps even create a happier relationship or enable someone to live their dreams. If they DON’T do business with me, it will actually COST them money, LOSE their relationsip, or DESTROY their dreams.

Interesting, huh?

Well, my brainstorm of last week has left my mind stewing constantly on how the heck I move forward with a “new direction”. I found it quite challenging to create a way to combine this material into one topic, and hopefully - one site. The demands of maintaining two sites is already getting to be far more than I had anticipated - and to really grow this, I need to focus, focus, focus (I think I need to tattoo that on the back of my hands for continual awareness!!).

My dear friend and great coach Marla Tabaka came over to my rather messy house yesterday to help me out. She and I have worked together for over six years, and there is simply no other person on the planet that I can brainstorm with like I can with her - we always come up with the most amazing ideas together! In true coach form, she asked all the right questions to help me get around my biggest hangup - I just couldn’t get the content of both sites organized in my mind into a cohesive site. The following is what I have been able to pull together based on some of the findings from our wonderful meeting…

One of the things that was holding me back was that I have been trying to keep my own personality out of eSelfHelp.com, preferring to let the big self help experts take center stage. But it became abundantly clear that the reason eMomsatHome is working is because my personality is a big ingredient. Lesson Learned:: be true to myself and my own abilities.

The second hangup was bringing this all down to one site. The eMoms site is quite established and getting a good amount of traffic. But eSelfHelp has the great URL and more mass appeal. Plus is has its own respectable traffic numbers that’s growing daily - so my goal is to merge what is working well on both sites into one. But how could I target stay at home moms on a self help site? I want to niche my content, but my ultimate goal is to touch way more people than just work at home moms.

So I just finished my soul searching and created a rough site map for eSelfHelp, with three tracks, one for personal growth, one for spiritual growth, and one for entreprenurial growth. I can slightly broaden the content of this site a bit and then shift it under the entreprenurial wing of eSelfHelp. Lesson Learned:: When confused about direction, always 1-turn to your heart for guidance and 2-use your ultimate outcome as a compass.

Whew! Getting this rough site map in place has been my obsession - because without a framework, it’s difficult to create an action plan. It’s kind of like having an outline for a book or business plan. Taking on the whole project in your mind can be quite overwhelming. But if you create an outline or site map, the project is easily broken down into chunks that you can work on one at a time (or several, if you are a multitasker like me).

Now that I have this framework, I’ll be able to continue to piece together the whole site, continue to blog about it here, and eventually bring it all together as more and more content gets developed.

But for now, I have a whole site to rebuild… with a newfound passion to make a bigger difference than I was able to before!