ABC's of Having a Home Business

The ABC's of Having a Home Business!
By Shelly Hill

A= Advertise! You need to Advertise your business!
B= Book Parties! Bookings are the Heart & Life Line to a home party business! These can be online website chat room parties, offline catalog order parties, home parties etc!
C= Catalogs! Order alot of catalogs and hand them out every where you go and to everyone you meet! Catalog Shopping is Big Business these days!
D= Draft up a Business Plan and Stick to it!
E= Effort! The more effort you put into your home business, the more you will get out of it.
F= Financial Budget! Set aside a certain percentage of your business income to re-invest back into your business.
G= Goals! Make a list of goals for your business. You can make them weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or yearly goals. Cross off the goals that you meet and work on the rest of the list. This will help you to "keep" focus on what you want out of your home business.
H= Help! When you need HELP ask for it! When other's need HELP, offer to help!
I= Investigate! Investigate what it takes to run a home business. Investigate what is working and not working with others in home business.
J= Just Ask! Tell everyone you know about your business and ask them to book a party, to place an order or to accept a catalog/business card from you! Just Ask!!!!
K= Kick Off! If you are New to the business, have a Kick Off Grand Opening Party! Every time your business comes out with new products or a new catalog, its YOUR job to kick off the new products by promoting them!
L= Learning! You can never learn enough about having a home business. You can do research at your local library, local chamber of commerce, home business associations, online & offline home business networking groups and learn all that you can from training provided by your company and upline managers.
M= Marketing! You need to market your home business to get business exposure!
N= Network with other home business owners!
O= Organization! Get yourself & your business organized! Opportunity! Take the Opportunity you have been given with your business and run with it!
P= Patience! You will not make money immediately! Like any job or business you need to work on your home business and build up a customer/client base.
Q= Quality & Quantity! Are you providing a quality service or quality products? Customers these days want high quality goods & services! Quantity: Do you have enough stock on hand to sell to your customers? To show to your customers to get orders? Always make sure you have enough stock on hand, that can be products, business supplies, etc.
R= Recruit! Recruiting others into your home party plan business can help you acheive your financial goals & dreams sooner!
S= Schedule! Work up and stick to a business working schedule! You need to set aside time when you will be working on your home business!
T= Telephone! Get on the telephone and start making phone calls! Call up potential customers, hosts, clients, associates, friends & family members.
U= Use what you sell! Be your own walking testimonial. When you use your products/services, you know its benefits and can pass that information on to your customers/clients.
V= Venture! Venture out of your comfort zone!
W= Who do you know list! Draft up a list of everyone you know and work that as your Contact List to get yourself started! Work! You need to work your business!!!
X= Xerox! Make copies of current product specials for customers, current specials for hosts and current business oppty. sign-on specials! Get these copies into the hands of other people!
Y= YOU! You are the most important part of your home business so take care of Yourself!
Z= Zero, is for Zero Excuses in your business! You need to treat your home business like a business and work on it constantly! Businesses don't promote or work themselves, you need to do that!


The idea is to go down the list, see what you are good at, or what you need to work on, and just go out and do it!!! This is one of the lists that I will be following this year as I strive to make my businesses work for me!

Shelly Hill is a great friend of mine! She has another list, 100+ ways to market offline, which I will post soon! To learn more about Shelly and what she does, visit my Spotlight blog!

April 2005 and beyond

So now we are in April of 2005, and I am extremely bitter about loosing my job. My fear was that because of what happened I would not be able to get another job ever. I still went to nearly every store that had a "now hiring" sign and filled out application after application.

After nearly 6 weeks, no one had called me in for an interview.

I cannot honestly remember what else I did during that time, my mind seems to have placed a fog on those memories, so "tragic" they were. But somehow I must have been looking online as well, filling out forms requesting information on working from home.

Someone was trying to call me.

After seeing a few messages, I looked up the phone number online to see who the heck could be calling me. This person was from Texas. After all I still hadn't discovered forums yet, or had any friends outside of California. I didn't recognize the name, so I just dismissed the calls.

Well, close to the end of May, this person finally got a hold of me by the phone. Turns out that I had submited a request for more information on a work from home business (not that I'd remember). So I listened to the 30 minute conference call.

That was my introduction to Melaleuca!

At the end of the call we chatted a little longer. I immediatley signed up with her. I was excited to try the products and find out if they really do work the way the other people claimed they did. So as soon as I recieved the link via email to complete the registration, I logged into the website, and placed my order for the Value pack.

Now flash forward to August 2006.

I had the pleasure of attending the Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah. To read about my trip see my post, It's been a while on my personal blog.

I had found confidence in myself finally, and knew that I could make this happen and start building a business and helping people at the same time. Going to the Convention changed me, changed the way I thought.

Alas, my confidence only lasted a few weeks. Find out what happened on my personal blog.

During 2006 I was not only involved in Melaleuca and the SHALI team, but I also joined three other businesses as well, two of which I am still part of, but not doing much with.

The first was Stuff A Friend (SAF). Since it was free to join, I said "Why not!!" Not only was it free to join, but there are no monthly commitments to deal with. I liked the concept of the products, and figured that I could order stuff for birthdays and holidays. So far I have not ordered anything, but I will be doing something with SAF this year.

The second was Mia Bella/Scent-sations. I have always loved candles, but am majorly allergic to scented candles. Since Mia Bella's candles were made of soy, I thought I'd try them and see how I reacted. Low and behold, I didn't react allergically to them- so I went for the Candle of the Month club- which is $40 a month autoshipment. I lost this one with SHALI (read that post I linked to above if you haven't already).

The third was Isagenix. A friend of mine who is also involved in Mia Bella got me interested in ISA. So I joined her team, but at the time could not order any products. I still have not been able to order products, but plan on doing so before July when I have to pay the yearly membership.

Now as I am writing this I remember that I did join one more- Fairy Garden Creations (FGC). Another ISA friend of mine introduced me to FGC. It's a brand new company, but has tons of potential!! Sign ups were free when I joined, so I said why not. And the rep commitment is reasonable, I only have to purchase something once every quarter (every three months) and there is no minimum purchase amount either. I figured that 2007 will be a better year for me, and I would have no problem with maintaining my rep status.

So now we are up to date with my work/business history. Next post and beyond I will be focusing on one businsess at a time. I may be announcing specials, contests, you never know. I started this blog with my businesses in mind, as a way to get the information out to the public. But I felt that I needed to help my readers get to know me first and that is what these first few posts have been all about.

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to leave a comment. I do have comment moderation turned on, so don't be alarmed if your comment does not show up right away. I did that to eliminate spam, which I know will happen, it's only a matter of time.

Thank you all for wanting to get to know me, and I look forward to sharing with you all the wonderful things I've learned about my businesses!!

Time for Reflection...

I figured that since I'm trying to restart my life in a sense, I need to reflect on what I've done leading up to becoming a SAHM. So here goes.

I started my income making journey back in October of 1995, with my first ever job. I was a senior in high school at the time, taking a whopping seven classes when all my other friends were taking only five. Of course three of them were music, so that was an easy "A" for me. As for work, I found a job as a cashier in a family friendly self-serve restraunt. As of this day, my first job was also my longest. I was there until the middle of 1998, probably around May (I can't remember precicely).

Now, during this time of working as a cashier, I met my husband, who just happend to work there as well. So we worked together for three years. The second year I worked there was when we got married, and I had our first child. That was 1997.

In the first part of 1998, I actually got a second job, well, just because we needed the extra money. A new restraunt was opening up next door to my first job, so I applied and got a job as a waitress. That lasted a whole four or five long months. By the middle of that year I was getting so tired of working, and not seeing my son when he was awake, I decided to quit both jobs. Ok, that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but we both agreed that it would be better in the long run. Ha. That lasted probably a month.

I found another job, working the opening shift at a bagel shop that was accross the street from my apartment at the time. I had only worked there for a few months when we decided to go to Mexico for the holidays. I put in my notice and we went to Mexico. We were going to stay for three or four months. Problems arose while we were gone, and I had to come back early to try and fix the mess.

When I arrived back in the US, it was 1999, and I came back to no apartment, no job, and no friends. Lucky for me, my mom ran into a friend of mine from school and she offered to let me stay with her and her husband until I could save enough money to get a new apartment. She also helped me get a job. She worked at McDonald's. So after three weeks, I started working with her. I worked as a cashier and as the order-taker at the drive thru for about six months. I think it was my third or fourth month of working at McDonalds when my husband and son finally came back from Mexico. Around that same time I had also started a new temp job as a secretary for an appliance wholesaler. I worked both jobs for two months then quite McDonalds: the temp job was supposed to have been 3 month temp then on to permanent hire (I figured that since I was going to work there for a long time that I didn't need McDonalds anymore). Unfortunately I let my private life interfere with my work life, and three months turned to four, and then the owner decided not to hire me on full time.

So it was around July of 1999, I was about to loose my temp job, and I found out I was pregnant. I was planning on giving notice to my temp job, but they already knew (former roommate called them and told them) and told me that I would not get the permanent position. Time to go back to Mexico.

This time I spent 6 months in Mexico, and came back when I was in my last two months of pregnancy. I nearly did not make it back, but that's another story. So now we are in the year 2000, my daughter was born in March, and my husband and I were living in a hotel with some of his cousins. One of them had a job at a local kennel and knew that the owner had been looking for a new secretary. So I go and interview with her, and low and behold I get the job. I started in the middle of April, and was allowed to have my daughter with me everyday. To this day, my nearly two years at that kennel was the best job in my life. I got to work around animals like I've always wanted, and also had the unique opportunity to manage the kennel, and have my baby with me for a while. I started sending her to my sister-in-law's house when she was six months old because it got to be too much.

So from April of 2000 to September of 2001 I worked at the kennel. Then 9/11 happened and all hell broke loose. The kennel owner started to get frantic because we were at capacity, and quite a number of the dog owners were stuck out of town. Remember, the airlines were grounded for quite a while after 9/11. Things got heated, and the owner started accusing my family of stealing things while she was gone for a few days. After a few days of listening to her yell at me for something that I know didn't happen, she threw a fit and started screaming at me in front of a client trying to drop off her dog to be groomed. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak. To this day, I still cannot believe the audacity of that woman to do what she did the way she did it. I still feel bad for the client, because she was a regular. I took the key to the office out of my pocket, looked at the lady with a sorrowful expression on my face, and then threw the key at the owner and said "Fine. If you are going to be that unproffessional, then here is your key, I no longer work for you. I'll be back next week to pick up my paycheck." and then I walked out. I still remember that day. I cannot recall the exact date, but it was about two weeks after 9/11.

So I was once again without a job. I took it in stride, feeling good about what I did, yet knowing that we couldn't afford for me not to work. About a month later, right before Thanksgiving I was shopping at Target, and said, "What the hey-why don't I apply to work here?" So I did, and started working at Target right after Thanksgiving. I was there for one year.

I ended up not enjoying that job too much, and started looking for a new job as I neared my one year anniversary. Well, one day as I was walking around the neighborhood I noticed a new store was going into a small strip mall. So I naturally went over there and peeked at the window to see if they were hiring. Well, as my luck would have it, they were, so I pulled together my resume and emailed it to the address that was posted on the sign in the window. This is now the last part of October of 2002.

Much to my surprise, I got called for an interview two days after I submitted my resume. A week later I went to my interview. After my interview I had a doctors appointment, so I left right away. For some reason I called home, and my husband said that someone had called me about the interview. I hightailed it back to find out that they wanted to hire me immediately!! Talk about luck. The next week I went to my orientation training. Two weeks later, the store manager called me and asked how soon could I actually start. Well, I had to submit my two weeks notice at Target but since I worked nights there I could start partial days right away. It worked out that they wanted me to start two weeks later. My last day at Target was my first day at Goodwill as a Selling Supervisor (fancy name for cashier).

I lasted nearly as long at Goodwill as I did at my first job. I was at two years four months and I felt things were going amazingly well. After one year working there I became an assitant manager. The job was great, the people were great, and then- April Fools??? I won't go into the details here but if you really want to know what happend, you can read about it in my post: What I learned about my last job-I wrote the paper for a class I was taking at the time and decided to post it on my creative blog.

So on April 1, 2005 I officially became a SAHM. From that moment forward I had started my journey into becoming a WAHM. I'm still on that journey, but you will learn what I've done since April of 2005.

New for 2007

I've decided that I will no longer just sit and call myself something I have yet to achieve- A WAHM. For the last two years I've been struggling to become a WAHM, but not quite reaching that level. I'm just a SAHM for the time being. But this year will be the year!!

Over the next year I will be documenting my struggles as I strive to reach my financial, personal, and family goals, as they determine whether I'm cut out to truly be a WAHM. If you have not seen my other blogs, take a few days to read
my Crazy life blog as well as my Health and Wellness for You blog. That will give you a little background on my life in the past two years. I will summarize it in another post though.

I admit, I've portrayed myself as a successful working mother, which is not the truth at all. Shocking as it may seem I have 0 success in the last two years. I will change my life around this year!! Be witness to my life changing decisions! I hope I do not dissapoint my friends.