Home Business | Michelle Shaeffer

Ways to Go Green With Your Home Office

September 6, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer Leave a Comment

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes

Support your health and a healthy world by making green choices for your home office.

It’s not difficult to be more environmentally friendly while creating a home office that will reduce your exposure to toxic chemicals, it just requires a bit of planning and thought.

Furnishing & Decorating Your Office

To furnish your office consider shopping for second-hand furniture so you can save it from a landfill. Craigs List, eBay, yard sales, moving sales, your local paper, and second-hand shops are great places to look.

If you’re purchasing new, look for furniture that will last and not need replaced quickly.

For decor you can use recycled and re-purposed items. If you repaint, use a low-VOC paint to reduce your exposure to dangerous fumes.

4 Ways to Minimize Distractions in Your Home Office

August 27, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer 17 Comments

Reading time: < 1 minute

When you work from home, it can be a real challenge to get your business tasks completed without repeated interruptions.

What can you do to minimize the distractions and be more productive?

There are four keys to creating a home office environment that allows you to minimize those distractions and stay focused.

Top 5 Mistakes New Work at Home Moms Make

August 26, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer 8 Comments

Reading time: < 1 minute

Are you making one of these mistakes in your new home based business venture? For a successful home based business watch out for these common problems.

Mindset: Hobby vs. Business

Are you running your business like a “business” or like a “hobby”? You’ve got to change your mindset to look at your business like a business. Get your business license and get setup right.

Take time to organize yourself and set clear goals. Setup an accounting system. Write a business plan (even a short one) and include your goals. Block out time daily to work both “on” and “in” your business.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Goals, Mindset, Work at Home Tagged With: Mindset, mistakes, WAHM, work at home, work at home moms

Four Fantastic Business Books for Female Entrepreneurs

August 20, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer 1 Comment

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

Looking for your next great business book to read? Here are four of my favorite books for women in business from those I’ve recently read. Click the image on the first three to grab a copy at Amazon (affiliate links). The fourth isn’t an affiliate link, and it’s only $4.95 S&H.

See Jane Succeed: Five Types of Female Entrepreneurs Reveal What it Takes to Win in Business and Life by Michele DeKinder-Smith

This inspiring and validating book stays on my desk (not the bookshelf) and it’s full of highlighted passages and dog-eared pages. It offers a unique look at the different types of women in business and the challenges they face. Each “Jane” type of woman entrepreneur is explained, analyzed and an action plan presented that includes step by step help to turn their difficulties into strengths so they can break through to the next level of success in their business and live their ideal success.

Read my review of this book at http://ezinearticles.com/?See-Jane-Succeed-by-Michele-DeKinder-Smith&id=4823259

I Love My Life! A Mom’s Guide to Working From Home by Kristie Tamsevicius

This is a resource-filled book that takes you from the dreaming phase all the way through a successful business. It begins by offering ideas and identifying opportunities for business you can run from your home, and in helping you identify a good match for what you enjoy doing. You’ll find help for creating a business plan, setting up your home office, building a business website and creating your marketing strategy. Kristie T. also shares tips from experience on how to balance work and life as your business grows.

Makeover Your Business in 6 Weeks or Less: Proven Techniques for the Entrepreneurial Woman by Michele Scism

Has your business growth got you feeling unsure of what your next steps should be? As your business grows your plans and mindset need to grow with it and this book lays out 6 areas of your business to review and improve from your marketing and follow up to your systems and mindsets. It’s written in a friendly, conversational style that makes it easy to read.

Read my review of this book at http://ezinearticles.com/?Book-Review—Makeover-Your-Business-in-6-Weeks-Or-Less&id=4819903

The Career-at-Home Mom: Secrets for Earning a Six-Figure Income While Having Time for Your Family by Debbie LaChusa

Get Your FREE Copy!
Just $4.95 S&H

careerathomemom.com

If you’re considering leaving a corporate or professional job position to launch your own business this is a fantastic guide to help you choose a business by starting with what you know, plan for success and learn how to create and manage a super-profitable business while still having time for your family and your life. It’s also helpful if you’ve got an existing small business and you’re looking for ways to leverage your time and leave behind the overwhelm as you transform your business into a more flexible model that allows you to make more and do less.

Filed Under: Goals, Inspiration, Mindset, Work at Home Tagged With: book reviews, recommended reading

Simple Summer Marketing Ideas

August 7, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer Leave a Comment

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

Guest blog alert! I’m at CWAHM this week. I was invited to post two guest blogs at Jill Hart’s CWAHM website this summer and they’ve just posted the first of the two so I wanted to share it with my blog readers. I’ll share the second one once it’s posted, too. If you’re a work at home mom, their newsletter’s full of great tips – both business and homemaking articles.

Summer time means we’re usually outside more, away from the computer, and getting some sunshine. That can make it difficult to stick with some of the marketing plans that rely heavily on the internet. Not sure what to do to stay active with your marketing while busy enjoying summer with your family? Here are a few low-tech and off-line ways you can get in some business marketing while you’re off to the beach or park.

Click here to continue reading -> http://cwahm.com/wordpress/2010/articles/guest-post-simple-summer-marketing-ideas/

(P.S. For Ultimate Blog Challenge participants, this post is 151 words, not including my PS here. Try featuring a little blurb and link to somewhere else you’ve published an article (even Ezine Articles!) as one of your posts. It’ll build your credibility as well as let you re-purpose your work and create a new blog post without writing a whole new article.)

Filed Under: Marketing, Time Management, Work at Home Tagged With: juggling business, Marketing, summer, vacation, work at home mom

Build a Following on Twitter With #Hashtag Tips

August 6, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer 9 Comments

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes

One of the strategies I use to build a following on Twitter is to share helpful tips and articles as often as possible. If you’re doing the same, consider using this strategy to take your tips to the next level.

1. Start by compiling a list of 30 short tips on a specific topic. Remember they need to be under 140 characters. And if you want to encourage others to re-tweet them for you, keep them even shorter (around 100 characters or so).

2. If some of the tips you want to share are too long, write a blog post or article explaining it, then add the URL to the tip. Use a URL shortener like Bit.ly to make sure it’s not too long.

Tips to Help You Complete a Blog Challenge (or Just Blog More Consistently)

August 1, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer 8 Comments

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes

When you’ve got a goal of posting every day for a month, it can be a challenge! Make it easier with these tips:

Plan Your Content In Advance

Get your content plan ready and it’ll be as easy as following a map. Start with a calendar for the month. Look at what else you’ve got happening during the month. Are there any holidays? Promotions or special offers you want to share? Are you launching a new product or offering a teleclass? Is there a product you want to promote as an affiliate? Block out the dates that you want to be sure you’re sharing posts around a specific event or topic and then you can see what’s left to fill in with other topics.

Write Topical Series

If you’re launching a new program that teaches readers how to create and paint their own neon purple widgets, then plan for a week or so of posts with content cenetered on that topic. For example:

Have a Little Faith in Yourself

July 6, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer 14 Comments

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes

Would you like to listen to this post? CinchCast audio is just above the related posts, sharing links, and comments at the bottom. Look for the purple play button.
Ever feel like the woman on the left – biting your nails nervously when you think about running your own business? Good thing you stopped by today, it’s a Tuesday pep talk!

Personal and business get so intertwined when you’re a solopreneur – personal progress IS business progress and growing as a person is required to grow your business…

My greatest challenge in business isn’t marketing, or my technical services, or writing… it’s doing the work to be a better, stronger, bolder version of myself and to have faith and confidence that I’ll succeed.

So if you find it challenging, too, know that you aren’t alone! And you can do it.

10 More Things You Can Do in 10 Minutes Each to Move Your Business Forward

July 5, 2010 By Michelle Shaeffer 19 Comments

Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes

My first post on this topic was pretty popular so I thought I’d give it a second round. Marketing can feel like this huge overwhelming thunderstorm that hangs over our heads when we’re running our own businesses. As if we’ve got TIME to deal with ONE MORE THING! But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Believe me, I understand! If I had to write a 50 page marketing plan and spend 4 hours a day implementing it… well, either it’d never happen… or I’d never get anything else done and never have time to complete the services I need to for my clients and create the products I offer. Or, I’d never get to play with my kiddos and my house would look like a hurricane hit it. There just aren’t that many hours in the day. If I wanted that much stress I wouldn’t be working from home with my own business. Always remember the reason you started your business – I’m pretty sure that “So I can go legally insane and end up in therapy!” wasn’t on your top ten list of reasons, right? Yeah, it wasn’t on mine either.