A very select few readers know that I love to dance - and I will even say I’m pretty good at it. Yet, I must sadly admit that this Cockatoo has my butt whipped when it comes to boogieing down!
Sit back, relax, and get ready to laugh - we need it on Fridays! 
My second home based business was a great freelance graphic design business. I ran it for 4 years from home, never took on any debt, and made money every year (until the end… but that’s another story). There were several times in which I tried to figure out how to grow the company without taking on more clients - and the obvious solution was to subcontract some of my work out to other freelancers.
This worked for a while, but I found that I was a little lot outside of my comfort zone to delegate work - especially work that had “my name on it”. I wanted to run the show - wanted to maintain control. At the time, I knew I was dealing with an internal struggle - and deducted that I was just afraid of failing :: that if I didn’t control all of the pieces of the puzzle, something would go terribly wrong.
So I eventually stopped trying.
It wasn’t until few years later that I realized that perhaps it wasn’t fear of failure at all. In fact, I was damn good at failing :: I failed to follow up on a ton of leads, failed to grow my business to the level I wanted, failed to manage my time efficiently, and in the end the burnout got to me and I ended up closing my doors (which may or may not be considered a failure - for me, it truly was the right time to move on).
It was a dear friend who helped me to see that failing was indeed comfortable for me. What I was actually afraid of was becoming a success. Megan over at eBay Selling for eParents wrote a heartfelt post about this yesterday. And instead of buttoning up her article, she left it open ended and asked for some input from others.
So here’s what I have found. Becoming successful has a whole slew of perceived baggage that comes with it: I feared that if I became hugely successful…
When it came right down to it, being super-successful was so darn foreign to me that the uncertainty that it caused was more frightening than just staying in my ho-hum business and never getting anywhere.
At least I knew what to expect with “ho-hum”.
Now, by some standards, this site is hugely successful - compare it to iVillage or even TechCrunch, and we’re still an internet peon.
I won’t kid you by saying that busting through these fears was easy. Honestly, I’d have to say that they were the hardest challenge of all - pushing me to the limits of what I felt I was capable of (and well beyond it, at times).
In short, the internal walls to success are far more difficult to conquer than any external challenge you will ever face as a business owner.
And I hate to sound negative, but no matter how successful I get, there still seems to be more internal roadblocks to overcome. The good news is that once you get a little practice at facing your fears and moving past them, it does get easier to do it again.
And again, … and again.
I mentioned last week that I am reading The Girl’s Guide to Building a Million Dollar Business by Susan Solovic. I expected great business strategy, networking advice, and an inspirational guide to getting big. Yes, the book has all that - but honestly, do you want to know what this book is really about?
Face your fears. Do it anyway.
It’s not an easy pill to swallow.
And honestly, it’s times like this that I rely on the personal lessons learned in the darkest moments of my life. I tell people over and over again when bad things happen, they will be thankful for the experience at some point in their lives. And this is how I get through times like this - by taking the $hit I have been through and using it as fuel to get me through:
If I can get through bulimia, homelessness, being single and pregnant, and an alcoholic marriage… well, building a super-successful business has GOT to be a piece of cake. 
Leave it to ‘Da Man Easton Ellsworth to celebrate his 2nd blogging birthday in style.
Easton writes at BusinessBlogWire and is also Editor for Know More Media.
He’s offering free blogging tips to anyone who emails him requesting help. Don’t know his email address? Well, you can’t miss it here.
Ever read an article and say to yourself “Dang, that was so good I wish I wrote it?”
Well, Nataly over at WorkItMom did just that recently - and I’ll also confess that I’m not nearly as disciplined as she evidently is (got to work on that one…).
Her article is 5 Simple Things You Should Do Every Day to Succeed With Your Business - and ever since I read it, I’ve been thinking of ways to implement this simple process with my business - I’m not one for strict schedules, but I do love having some structure to my day.
Nataly suggests having a small daily to-do list:
(Don’t let this list spoil the article for you - Nataly is such a great writer and her articles are a must read!)
From experience, I can 100% truthfully say that if I did these things daily, there would be a measurable improvement - in likely less than 30 days.
But some days I’m totally on top of things - and others, well, not so much so. So although I think her system would work for me, I think I would be more interested in doing these kinds of things on a daily basis if I chunked it into areas of improvement and gave myself a little leeway with what I need to do for the day.
For example, I know I need to do more PR outside of the blogosphere - so I could commit to 2 things per week, like:
Then perhaps I could come up with tasks for other areas of business growth - SEO, advertising promotion, traffic generation, work to help one of our authors with their blog, etc.
What I liked the most about Nataly’s article is her willingness to share the fact that although these things can sometimes be hard for her to do, she works her butt off to get them done anyway - which probably is another post for another day… (motivation for the days you just want to crawl under the covers and hide from the world!).
Did you know that two of my favorite bloggers, Brian Clark of CopyBlogger and Tony Clark of Success from the Nest are also two work at home dads? And did you also know they are both gifted entrepreneurs and internet marketers?
Actually, you probably did.
Anyway, these two friends of mine recently announced an inspiring joint venture. And since I’ve learned quite a bit from them myself, I really wanted to not only support them in their endeavors, but help spread the word about something in which I really think you’ll find a ton of value.
You may remember Brian’s hit Tubetorial - which he turned around and sold fairly quickly to SplashPress Media back in March. Tubetorial was built upon the premise that teaching sells. Not so surprisingly, Brian and Tony’s new venture is called exactly that.
Teaching Sells in the future will be a phenomenal paid resource to learn more about leveraging web 2.0 in a really profitable manner, getting around the new Google paid links scandal, and by selling your expertise through your writing (and more, I’m sure, as details emerge).
But now, these two are offering a free report that I dropped everything to read (no, that’s not exaggerated hype to get you to do anything - I really did drop what I was doing when Brian sent it to me the other day).
It’s really good. I’m really intrigued. I can’t wait to see what’s next from them.
You know I don’t promote stuff around here unless I think it’s worth your time - honest, I think you’ll really get a lot of value out of reading this report.
If that’s not enough to get you interested, I will divulge that when I had my very first thoughts of turning eMoms at Home from a one woman show into the magazine it is today, one of the very first people I called to ask if they wanted to be involved was Tony Clark. He told me he was involved in another project at the time - and now I see what he was up to.
Kudos to you Brian for snagging such a talented partner. I’m jealous!
Welcome back!
Whether you are thinking about monetizing your blog or you’re getting a startup going, there are plenty of things to spend money on…. lawyers, advertising, you name it…. so don’t waste your money on silly infrastructure when you can get equivalent (or better) things for free.
Every dollar you save in startup costs will increase your chances of being successful down the road. So let’s save some money… and if you have a great free or cheap resource or app that’s really helping your business, comment away! Here’s the quick list with some description to follow:
The run down on the freebies:
1,2, & 3 Google Docs
The first three are the holy trinity of the office: word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations — and Google Docs brings you all three… over the web, for free. So not only are you saving about $300 per computer, but they also all read and write Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint). To me, the two features that are truly awesome: first, you can use Google Docs to edit documents collaboratively online (that is, you and several distributed team members can edit a document simultaneously). Finally, no more waiting for someone to iterate a document. And second, since this is online, you can work from any machine, anywhere, also longer is there is an internet connection. No more worrying about bringing a file with you— this is the quintessential example of using the web as a platform… now that’s real Web 2.0 if you ask me! The only downside: not being able to work on Google Docs on an airplane.
4. Skype VOIP
Seriously, you should never pay for business calls again. VOIP, (voice over IP) simply stated, is moving your phone to the computer. There are lots of choices out there— you’ll find me among the 10M people at any given time using Skype… free calls to other Skype members, free voice mail, free chat, free conference calls, and ability to share files… about the only thing you’ll probably want to get if you haven’t already is a head phone with a mic… but that isn’t needed. You can also upgrade for a modest fee so you can get one or more phone numbers in any area code you want to receive incoming calls and you can also call any landline number. Sure, you will lose the ability to make 911 calls, but you can pretty much do everything else including saving loads of money.
5. Y!Messenger Web Chat
Everybody chats for free already. Web chat is great because you can do it (and bring your contact list with you) where ever you are. Lots of people, myself included, use GMail’s chat. Yahoo’s web-version of the Messenger is great for business because they are aligned with Microsoft, so you can easily chat with those business folk on MSN. Check it out.
6. Flickr online photos
Online photo sharing is all the rage. It’s great for showing personal photos, sure, but it’s great to use as a free online portfolio or file conduit if you don’t have a website of your own or your large images are getting stuck in your email outbox.
7. Blogger Blog
I recently discussed the merits of Google’s Blogger and Wordpress.com. Free blog, free hosting, free plugins, free adsense integration …. um, what’s not to like.
8. Google Analytics
If you don’t have an ecommerce site or a blog, you don’t need to know who is visiting your site. But if you have any kind of web presence, this free set of tools is a must. If you do have commerce related sites and you aren’t closely tracking your website visitors you are wasting precious money.
9. Google GMail webmail
Google has 6 of the top 9 must-haves…. well they aren’t quickly becoming the worlds largest company without reason. 3GB of free email…. nice groupings of message threads…. integrated chat…. searchable everything…. and super compatible. If you can get past the targeted ads that spin off from your email topics and it isn’t optimized for storing in folders, it is a pretty great way to set up a work-horse email account for free.
10. Craigslist web wantads
Have a service (any service!) to sell or buy? Need a used printer or want to hire local employees. Check out the bay-area iconic web service that has gone global, but still stays local.
The really cheap must-haves:
11. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) backup
This is one of my favorite secret little services. Everybody should be backing up their data. Burning discs is fine, but ideally, you do a major backup offsite… just in case. This service costs basically nothing ($0.15 GB/month + $0.10/GB transfer fees). Simple, fast, and cheap. Perfect.
12. Outsourcing services like GetaFreelancer or Elance or iFreeLance
Outsource it. This is important enough that I plan to dedicate an entire entry to the ins and outs of outsourcing on a small scale. There are plenty of pitfalls, many services to choose from, and if you can get past the stigma of getting any sized project completed on the cheap, definitely check out one of these outsourcing sites.
13. Istockphoto royalty free images
Ever wonder how so many sites get great images for their websites? They don’t make them their selves. They buy them. If you need some images to lively up a website or some flashy icons or some clip art for a newsletter, you can find them for $1 each on many different websites selling royalty free images. As long as you use the images within the license guidelines, there are lots of sites out there that can help you out. I am a loyal Istockphoto guy because of the wide range of image types including everything from photo quality to vector art.
14. Web fax service
Why waste space or expense on a physical fax machine. Web fax services let you fax and receive documents by simply sending and receiving email for as cheap as $10/mo…. if you have webmail, you can send or receive documents anywhere - even on your web-enabled phone… It’s sure saved me a few times.
15. Nolo legal information
I’ll forgo the obligatory joke and get to the point. There are some things only a lawyer can help you with. There are lots of things with the aid of generic forms that you can do yourself. And if you are a little bit adventurous, Nolo has a litany of legal resource just waiting for you.
Phew… Not sure what I’ll hit next week… but after traveling with my toddler without the benefit of preboarding, I’m pretty wiped out. Catch ya’ next week…
Favorite graphs I’ve rediscovered this week: David Sifry’s State of the Blogosphere
Sometimes, “Green Living” gets a lot of attention on recycling paper and cans - but businesses can do a lot more to “Greenify” their work-flow, and usually save a good amount of cash in the process. 20 years ago, it cost businesses and consumers more to live green. Happily, that’s not the case anymore!
Today is Blog Action Day, in which the blogging community is helping to focus awareness on the Environment. And to help the cause, this blog is donating 100% of the commissions received today to The Nature Conservancy from all sales from any of the companies highlighted below.
So what can your business, big or small, do more to prevent Global Warming?
A no-brainer! Present full-time home business owners & telecommuters save approximately 4,439 million gallons of gas per year. If businesses could allow their employees to work at home even one day a week, we could make a measurable impact on reducing carbon emissions from cars (not to mention the measurable impact on your pocketbook!).
Personally, I can’t stand using paper anymore - quite honestly, it either messes up my house, I lose it, or I have to file it (and you don’t even want to know how infrequently I do that!). Keeping electronic records not only makes things easier for you, but it is GREAT for our forests. Great paperless products include Adobe Acrobat for creating PDFs and eFax
which sends and receives faxes via email.
I used to print out things I wanted to save for later. No more! Now I use del.icio.us to organize my bookmarks, never again having the need to dig around in paper piles.
Unless an in-person meeting is required, why bother leaving the office when there are so many easy ways to conference online? Skype offers free calls AND free conferencing, and if you need visuals, try a service like GoToMeeting, a provider of online meeting and collaboration software.
Most companies offer an electronic alternative to notifications traditionally sent out by mail, especially when it comes to invoicing. Request that all communications be sent via email rather than snail mail to reduce the paper sent to your business. And to ensure you don’t get a swamped email inbox, use email filtering to automatically send incoming messages to their proper folders.
Additionally, Earth Class Mail is a new service that will act as a virtual PO Box and forward only the most necessary items. It may not reduce the paper getting sent your way, but it will help you to organize everything electronically.
Many businesses, especially local businesses, don’t realize that the internet is such a powerful driver of sales and leads - right down to the zip code level. Even better, many of the ways to market online are ridiculously cheap or free. There’s a time and place for a fancy brochure - but I’ve found blogs to be an extraordinarily powerful business tool, and they are a heck of a lot cheaper to create!
I just found out about these computers in my research for this post - and what a killer find! Zonbu PCs consume one tenth of the power of a normal desktop, plus stores all of your data on their servers, so you don’t even need a hard drive (nor do you have to hear it - these PCs run completely silently!). To make things better, they are ridiculously cheap - as in less than $100.
There are excellent resources to learn more ways to improve your green efforts that are specific to your industry. Both GreenBiz.com and SustainableBusiness.com are free news & learning resources with some seriously great content.
Ideal Bite is an eco-living newsletter that sends short and sweet email tips for both home and business - and they even have editions just for San Francisco and New York.
From recycled paper to recycled ink, and from green technology to earth-friendly industrial cleaning products, TheGreenOffice has it all. They also offer free delivery on orders over $49 and a link to find local recyclers. And remember, if you buy anything from TheGreenOffice today, 100% of eMoms at Home commissions go to The Nature Conservancy!
(Quick note, TheGreenOffice page seems to be taking a little while to load - please be patient!)
eMoms at Home founder Wendy Piersall is dang passionate about helping parents succeed as entrepreneurs, parents, and in life. She also writes for Entrepreneur.com.
Dawud Miracle has one focus: to help you get it. The it? How your website, and blog, can change the way you do business. You can find out more at dmiracle.com.
Chris Furmanski, Ph.D., is a work-at-home daddy entrepreneur with a precocious toddler, a family-focused educational startup and a case of blogitis from BabyThoughts.com.
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