photo credit: jerine

I’ll be doing my business planning in a few days and I’m excited to use my new productivity tools. Here they are, in order of techie-ness:

1. Legal yellow pad

I learned about the virtues of a legal yellow pad from Frank Kern and Trey Smith of Infomillionaire. They use it for goal setting and planning.

I like the size of a legal yellow pad, but prefer the blankness of bond paper. However, bond paper is much more expensive, so I’ll settle for the yellow pad.

This is perfect for brainstorming, brain dumping, making diagrams and mind maps, and making master lists of to-dos.

2. Spiral notebook

This is my learning journal, which I learned about from Troy White’s post, “56 of the best tips for growing a small business on budget”. This is where I write down all the new stuff I am learning from my various memberships, courses, readings, interaction with people, etc. Most importantly, I make a list of action points - things I need to implement to improve my businesses.

This list is one of the bases for my daily to-do list, which I write on my:

3. Moleskine Weekly Planner + Notebook

I looked in a number of places before finally deciding that the Moleskine weekly planner would be my planner for 2009. I wanted a fairly large space to write in each day, plus an entire page for my weekly most important tasks, goals, etc. This fit the bill. Plus, the fact that I’m using the same notebook used by Picasso and other artists is very motivating (Note: I am a frustrated artist).

4. Ipod Touch

Believe it or not, I’m using the Ipod Touch to increase my learning. When the toddler is refusing to stay asleep without me beside him, I play some sleep music and read Ebooks and my RSS feeds, or interact with business connections via Twitter. I have found the following free Apps to be indispensable for this:

• Twitterific - for reading and sending Twitter messages
• Files Lite - for accessing files from your hard drive
• Free RSS - for subcribing to and reading RSS feeds

And while I’m making dinner, I plug the Ipod into our boombox and listen to Podcasts. This way, the Ipod touch has accelerated my education, leaving me more time to actually implement my learnings.

When resources permit, I will also invest in a new set of colored markers. I am a visual learner and having colorful diagrams is very helpful for me. Unfortunately, my daughters have managed to lose our marker collection, which is quite expensive to replace. But I’m sure the time will come when I can have my colorful diagrams again.

So there you have it, my new productivity tools for a more productive new year. What productivity tools could you never live without?

photo credit: fdecomite

Sometimes in life, you get stuck. You get into a rut. You may know it or not, but you will most likely stay there. It’s nice and comfortable and safe there. But it doesn’t change the face that you’re stuck. What’s holding you back? How can you move forward?

We found out many of the answers this week. Today we concluded a week-long breakthrough session in Mom Masterminds with our business mentors, Kelly McCausey and Lynette Chandler, and life coach Aurelia Williams. Every morning this week, we had an hour-long teleconference to discuss various issues that could be getting in the way of growing our businesses. Kelly and Aurelia kept the topics a surprise to us each day so we would not come to the teleconference with our preconceived notions. As a result, our minds and hearts were open and we candidly explored our feelings, attitudes and behavior.

We covered the following topics:

Monday: Breaking Through the Blues

Tuesday: Overcoming Fear of Failure

Wednesday: Overcoming Fear of Success

Thursday: Developing a Decision Habit

Friday: Stretching Your Expectations

I had no expectations at all when I attended the teleconferences. I didn’t even think I needed to “break through”. So I was really surprised by the insights that I gained. At the very least, a decision point has become clear to me, something that had been hanging around the back of my head for some days now.

Here are some of my notes from the breakthrough sessions:

Everybody will fail so … fail fast, fail often - fail forward.

Am I sabotaging myself because of my fear of success?

Put your blinders on (and keep your eye on the prize)!

True forward motion requires a direction. You simply cannot get far going everywhere at once. Have you chosen your direction?

WAHMs don’t have to worry about a glass ceiling, but we do need to watch out for a sticky floor (paraphrased from Wendy Piersall).

Right now I feel torn in four different directions. The breakthrough sessions did not give me the answers on a platter. However, I now know what to consider, what practical tools and techniques to do (such as Kelly’s brain dump and Aurelia’s obstacle analysis) to clearly determine which direction will likely bring me more happiness. And if I’m wrong, I know that it wouldn’t be the end of the world - I would have learned which direction is the wrong one, so there are only 3 more possibilities to go!

I just might take up Kelly’s offer for special breakthrough coaching. You can read more about it here.

photo credit: krisdecurtis

I don’t know about you, but I’m already having a very Merry Christmas!

It all started when Kelly McCausey, co-founder of Mom Masterminds and an amazing business woman, announced on WAHM Talk Radio and on Twitter that she is granting the wishes of work at home Moms. Not really thinking much about it, I submitted my own 3 wishes. I sent 3 whole wishes, ranging in cost from under $100 to almost $700 - something I had been wanting for months but couldn’t cough up the money for.

Well, what do you know? Kelly helped me get my $700-wish!

My most expensive wish was for Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero’s “She Factor” home study course.

Lorrie is my first copywriting teacher. I decided to try copywriting after hearing Lorrie being interviewed about her own WAHM dreams and how she got started and eventually became successful as a copywriter. Hers is the first of only two copywriting courses I’ve ever bought. And I could afford the digital-only format, which was a little over $100. I still open Lorrie’s copywriting course every time I write a sales page now and follow her template.

Since I am on Lorrie’s mailing list, I’ve been receiving her Emails about the live She Factor workshop, which was held in early November. I couldn’t attend the live workshop, but I listened to all the pre-workshop teleseminars and devoured everything I could. Just reading the sales page teaches you so much already, doesn’t it?

Kelly has stopped accepting WAHM wishes this year. However, if you would like to help grant a WAHM wish, you can still do so. Find out how you can help here.

So, there’s no need to wish me a Merry Christmas - thanks to Kelly and Lorrie, I’m already having one!

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

I ran into another website for sale this week, and I was very, very interested. It’s in a niche that’s consistent with the website that I bought a few months ago (http://www.natural-moms.com), it’s profitable, and the current owner is a trusted co-member at Mom Mastermind.

When I bought natural-moms.com, I did so almost without a thought. When I first contacted the owner, I was almost already convinced that I wanted to buy it.

This time, I went about it more thoughtfully. After all, after almost 4 months of running natural-moms.com, I knew which questions to ask. Specifically, I considered 10 things (in no particular order):

1. Cost

The rule of thumb that I’d heard is 10 times the site’s monthly income. I don’t know if this is correct, or what the basis is. That said, I’ve seen many sites sell for much more than that. The site I was interested in was selling for less.

2. Niche Marketability

Is there a market for the site? Was it created based on sound market research?

3. Website Quality

I looked at the site itself, of course. Did it look nice and clean and up-to-date? Is it organized in a way that increases usability and responsiveness? Is it search engine optimized? Is the content of high quality and original? The site I looked at looked very good, professionally designed and was easy to navigate through.

4. Subscriber List

Does the site have a list of subscribers? Will it be included with the site? The site I was considering is a membership site and therefore the list of members was automatically included.

5. Recurring Expenses

I also considered the recurring costs, such as web hosting and domain name registration, the cost of generating new content, as well as the cost of necessary software.

6. Time Requirements

I looked at how much time the site needed to sustain and increase its profits. This includes the time needed to produce new content, maintain the site, and market it.

7. Site Statistics

It’s very important to look at the current traffic of the site, whether it has been indexed by Google, which keywords it ranks high for in Google, and the number and quality of backlinks.

8. Website Builder

It’s important to know beforehand how the site was built, whether in HTML or CSS. Site in Wordpress are ideal, because Wordpress is easy to use and has a lot of functionality. However, a non-Wordpress site is not necessarily hopeless. It does have to be a site builder that is easy to use and is consistent with your vision for the site. For instance, if you want the site to have a blog, does the current site builder allow you to add a Wordpress blog?

9. My Business Goals

What are my short- and long-term goals for my online business and is the site consistent with those goals?

10. Ease of Transitioning the Site’s Ownership

What kind of work is required to transfer the site’s ownership to me? If the site has Google Ads, how easy is it to change the codes so that I will be credited for those ads? Will it require manually changing the Java code in each web page? Or will a simple change in a php do the trick?

After much though and prayer, I decided not to buy the site. Although most of the factors I listed above were favorable for buying the site, in the end it was clear that I do not have enough time to maximize its earning potential. Furthermore, the site is not completely in line with my business goals.

Do you think I made the right decision?

photo credit: David Masters

One of the things David Allen advises in “Getting Things Done” is to have a folder (both physical and virtual, in your Email) for “Someday.” This folder is for anything that you would like to do sometime in the future, but without a definite timetable except … someday. It could be anything, from books you’d like to read, to places you’d like to visit, to projects you’d like to undertake. I never really saw the value of this folder until recently.

Even though I had decided to focus my home business efforts based on my back-of-the-church-flyer plan, I found myself still getting distracted by the many - and tempting - offers of various Internet marketers and copywriting gurus. I had exerted a lot of willpower to unsubscribe from many lists I had joined, but still I was getting quite a few a day. On the other hand, I found these useful to me as I wrote marketing copy for my own clients, as they provided me a swipe file for what’s effective in terms of E-mail marketing, squeeze pages, and sales page.

But the worst part was when I would find myself clicking the “Order Now” button for yet another course that was truly valuable and being offered at such a low price. I mean, really, how can you argue with something that costs $8 or even $27? Yet I knew that even if the next new thing didn’t empty my wallet, it would rob me of my precious time.

So I finally decided to create a “Someday” folder in my virtual mailbox. There, I place announcements of courses, products and other tempting offers that I know are relevant to my business goals but that I just don’t have the time or money for right now.

You know what? It really works. There’s much less temptation to spend so much time reading the offers and deciding if the price was fair. Somehow putting something in my “Someday” folder gives me the assurance that I really will get to it in the future, when the time is right. This quiets the voice inside me that would otherwise nag me and make me feel like I would miss the boat if I didn’t buy/subscribe/join right now.

However, the true value of “Someday” can only be realized if you do act on it. David Allen says you should review your “Someday” folder regularly. In my case, I think every 6 months is best. It gives me something to look forward to and motivates me to complete the tasks for today.