Work at Home Moms Articles – WAHM Articles

Last month I wrote about 5 Business Lessons I Have Learned and this month I want to share with you five more lessons.

1. Priorities
In any business, you have to know how to prioritize. You can be working in your business or you can be working your business and these are two different things. When you’re working in your business, you’re working on tasks that aren’t earning you money. When you’re working your business, you’re doing things to grow your business and to move it forward.

I know I have said and you have probably too, “I didn’t have time for it” and it really means you didn’t make it a priority. Now think about it, if you made it a priority, it would have been done. So, what do you do? You have three choices:

1. Make it a priority
2. Outsource it
3. Ditch it

It is that simple.

2. Time Management
Time management and priorities go together. In order to get the most out of your day, you have to be working efficiently. If it means you only complete two things on your to-do list between all the other family responsibilities you have, then it should be the two things that are the most important in your business.

I know having multiple streams of income is important to most of us. You don’t want to ever rely on one source so it’s easy to tack on new projects. When you add new projects to your plate, it means you’ll be subtracting time from what you currently have. It’s important to be aware of how much quality time you are spending on each business because it’s easy to push aside and “ignore” one or several businesses.

3. Evaluate Your Business
There isn’t any set time when you should evaluate your business. It’s on a day-to-day basis. If your personal life or other projects you have are negatively impacting your business today, you’re going to fix it now. Focus on your businesses that are profitable and remove anything that doesn’t hold your interest or time.

4. Partnerships
Business partnerships aren’t for everyone. There are a lot of pros and cons when it comes to co-owning a business. A valuable lesson I have learned is to always have a written business agreement, partnering up with a friend is not always a wise choice even though it seems to be the most logical choice and business partnerships shouldn’t be 50/50, but they should be 51/49.

Going into a business partnership shouldn’t be done on a whim. Take your time to evaluate how it’ll affect your current situation, be it in your personal and/or business life.

5. Learn To Say No
You can say no and it doesn’t mean you have failed. It’s knowing what you’re capable of and how much you can handle. Sometimes it may mean you have to decline a potential client, but so what? There’ll be more clients when you’re ready. It’s hard to repair your reputation if you can’t deliver on your services.

Bonus Lesson: Positive People
Keep company with positive people because toxic and negative people suck your energy. There are some people who can’t or don’t know how to turn negatives into positives. When you surround yourself with positive energy, you get more of it and more people that are positive in your life. All of this equals to more happiness and self-fulfillment.

Sophia McIntyre is an Internet Marketer, Article Marketer, Ghostwriter and founder of WorkAtHomeSpace.com, a free resource focusing on work at home companies and jobs, home businesses and other work at home related topics.

A mentor can come when you least expect it and that’s what happened to me when I first started my business. At the time I started my VA business I was working a direct sales type business and was not having any luck what so ever.

You see I’m not very good at calling people and asking them to look at what I do and join in. While I’m a great talker and I love to talk I’m not good at cold calls and trying to push something on others. It’s just not me in anyway. So with that said, I was looking for something new and different. That’s when I found my mentor.

I was on a social networking site called Ryze at the time. I joined a group that was for work at home mom’s and the lady that ran it was amazing. She was always posting wonderful things that would help the mom’s in her group. The conversations were wonderful and I learned so much from that site. I also found that the site owner was always willing to help and she was always full of encouraging words.

While she probably never knew this, she was was a great mentor to me. She was always encouraging me and telling me to go for my dreams. I trusted her opinions and one day I will see the success that she has. I will always remember those encouraging words and will keep them in my mind for the rest of my life.

This last week has been wonderful. I’ve enjoyed July so far and I hope you have done the same as well. There has been a lot going on, but as the old saying goes, that’s a good thing. The 2nd half of the year is well on its way and I sure hope it’s been a good one so far.

This week’s newsletter is all about saving money. I thought this would be fitting with summer vacations being planning. Since we can all use a little more money in our pocket when it comes to vacations, I just know these articles will help you do just that. The wonderful thing about these articles is you’ll be able to use them any time of year and not just during the summer.

The first article I’m sharing with you talks about frugal grocery shopping and who couldn’t use a little saving during the summer month. The next has to do with paying cash and I know that’s a good one. The final one we’re sharing has to do with saving money through could.

Please make sure to leave us a comment and tell us how save money during the year. We’d love to hear from you.

Did you know that as a home daycare business owner, you can deduct almost any Advertising Expenses as a cost of doing business in the year the costs were paid or incurred?

You certainly can! Just as long as they are reasonably related to your business and you‘ve got the paperwork to back it up.

This is NOT an all inclusive list of deductible Advertising Expense, but definitely worth further examination:

To continue reading this article, click here.

Welcome to 2011. I hope it’s a great year for you. It’s official, 2010 is in the history books. We had a lot happen in 2010. Some good and some not so good stuff happened during this year. WAHM-Articles has been through a lot, but I’m hoping with the new year things will improve and will be for the good. I know Denise would be happy with the things I have in mind for this year.

I hope you have planned your year and have set your goals in place. I also hope you wrote those goals down and you know exactly what you need to do to make them reachable and that you’ll have the success you set out to achieve.

Goals are important personally and for your business. If you don’t set them in place and work to achieve them, you won’t know which direction to go and you won’t know what you want to reach. It doesn’t matter if you set one goal or five goals, you need to do it. If you’ve never set one, consider trying it with one goal and see how you do. Click here to read an article I wrote to help you set goals and achieve them.

We’d love to hear about your goals, how you achieve them, and what you’re tricks are to staying motivated. Please share them in the comments below.

Here’s to a wonderful and successful New Year!

The work at home moms blues. Do you ever get those?

I do. More often than I’d like, in fact. Which in a way, surprises me.  I’ve never had so much control of my life as I do as a home business owner. If something gets me down, I can put a stop to it!

But, in another way, I’m not so surprised after all… I’ll be blogging about that more this week.

I would love to get some input from other moms on this topic too. Do you ever get the work at home mom blues? Whether you do or not, I would really appreciate it if you could participate in my brief survey here.

To thank you for your time, everyone who participates is entered to win a free one-month 125×125 button ad space on WAHM-Articles.com. (You need to supply the button ad.) I’ll be drawing the winner March 22, around noon MT.

I really look forward to hearing what you have to say! Who knows, maybe I really am the only one who sometimes feels down about working at home. And then again, maybe we have a lot of encouragement to offer each other!

Here’s the link to the survey again.

~ Denise

I just started mine tonight. I have never left it this late before, but these last few weeks have been too hectic for me to get it done. There is one redeeming point about leaving your Christmas shopping to one week before Christmas though. You’re under pressure so it’s much easier to make decisions! But it’s still not so last minute that you’re making bad decisions.

How about you? Is your Christmas shopping done?

~ Denise

Another successful work-at-home-mom recently joined us at WAHM-Articles!

Jennifer May is a WAHM who  enjoys helping, sharing and supporting WAHMs -   those looking to work at home and those who already do.  She is already a Professional Writer for Examiner.com and runs a  Home Business with Ameriplan .

She’s dedicated to the online WAHM community and owns two very successful work at home groups on Cafemom – I Want to Work at Home! and Work at Home Directory

Thank you for joining us Jennifer, and we look forward to publishing many of your WAHM articles!

Do you remember the day the Berlin Wall came down?

It was November 9, 1989. I was 19 and I remember being in class at the university when I heard the news.

That moment is one of those things that has stayed with me over the years because it was the first time I really understood that a group of people, united in a single cause, could create a world of a difference.

It was also poignant for me because all four of my grandparents were from Russia. They had been able to escape to freedom after Russia joined the Soviet Union, just before the borders closed.  Many of my relatives chose to stay behind, hoping the political climate would change. But by the time they realized it was only getting worse, it was too late for them to leave.

Because my ancestors were Mennonites who had migrated to Russia from Prussia during the 1700′s at the invitation of Catherine the Great , and were given special treatment in a country where too many others were starving, they were the target of much antagonism during the Russian Revolution.  Many of my family members who didn’t escape when my grandparents did have long disappeared. Some we know were sent to Siberia and were never heard from again.

The wall coming down was the first wave of a tide that would sweep across Eastern Europe and dissolve the Soviet Union in 1991.

When I think back to my grandparents and great-grandparents choosing to leave everything and everyone they knew so they could raise their families in freedom, I am overwhelmed.  To pack up their young children, everything they could carry, to travel on a 6-week voyage to a country they had never seen, with a language they had never heard… to me, in my life of freedom and choice, it is almost unfathomable.

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada, and Veterans Day in the United States. It is a day when I remember how grateful I am that there have been people throughout history and today, who stand together and choose to make a difference.

Sometimes it is by donning a uniform and taking up a weapon.  Sometimes it is giving up their lives for generations of people they will never meet. Sometimes, as in the case of my grandparents and great-grandparents, it is giving up everything you know for the promise of something better.

On this day, as I am home with my children, with the freedom to teach them what I want, to travel where I want, and to work where I want, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for everyone who has united across the centuries for my freedom.

Thank you.

~ Denise