The (real) life of a WAHM (work at home mom)

I had a GREAT day yesterday – brainstormed with the developers who helped me with HOMEdigz, and lunched with a smart, innovative friend – a mini-tweetup, if you will.  You can’t do it all alone. A solo entrepreneur needs other like-minded friends to act as muse, sounding board, challenger, etc.   And it only works when you reciprocate.

Sow how do you find friends like that? Well, you start by BEING a friend like that, then get out there an interact where they are – at tweetups, chamber meetings, BNI meetings, etc.  Ok, kumbaya stuff aside…here’s where my head is right now:

• I’m spread too thin.  Not only is it messing up my focus, but it’s confusing my personal brand (yes, we all have a personal brand, whether we realize it or not).
• I’ve learned to LEAD with a better-clarified monetization strategy. “Hope” is NOT a strategy. Nor is “I’ll figure it out once I have traffic”.
• I need to have products – something I can sell. Whether that’s an eBook, widget or consulting services.
• I need to pick a target, and focus on that target customer. From there, adding more products and services will be intuitive.

Ok, now lets move from philosophical to actionable.  Here are my next steps:

• Disengage from the staging coaching arrangement I made (not much has happened there anyway, but it was still a branding distraction). Good news, they will still welcome any marketing products on their site – I’ve got some ideas if I can just find the time to develop them.
• Bring on a partner for Rooms That Work. It’s a great business, but I don’t have time to focus on it. The plan would be to begin neutralizing my presence in the biz with the intent to transition the business to the partner.  I need to evaluate what the value of the business is. It’s a well-branded and anchored web/blog site, FB Fan page and Twitter.
• Begin laying the foundation for a targeted consulting site as a paid membership site. This can be done with or without a partner – it depends how deep I want to go in content and how much time I have. This idea really appeals to me – it’s success would hinge on having/making the time to stay on the front end of learning. Very cool.
• Adapt HOMEdigz to include a stronger business marketing resource – possibly make use of the DigzBiz URL.

That’s all for now…gotta get the kids to gymnastics before they kill each other. Oh the insanity!

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I was up from about 2am on last night. I was thinking. Seriously thinking. What is my personal brand?

I’m having a bit of an identity crisis. Am I a home stager/interior decorator extraordinaire? Am I a marketing guru? Am I an author? Am I just a darn good employee? The one thing I’m clear of, however, is that I’m a great mom and wife. Cook? Not so much. lol

When it comes to work, what is my passion? What is my hobby? What am I good at? What will make money?

I wrestled with these questions all night long. I had to move to my daughter’s room around 3:30 am because “somebody” started snoring. I guess I’m a lazy insomniac because I really should have popped open my laptop and waxed poetic. But then again, I wasn’t done thinking.

I’ve been exploring what direction to take HOMEdigz, and my community feedback online survey hinted at something promising. A clue. An idea that has actually been rolling around in the back of my brain for awhile.

I love helping small businesses succeed online. Case in point…when at Dream Dinners last week, I enthusiastically added a YouTube video to their Facebook page and claimed their vanity name for them. They rewarded me with a free Vermont Mac and Cheese dinner. Yes, I’ll work for food!

And that’s just one example. When talking with other businesses, I love to help them with ideas and talk about how they can extend their brand online.

Now there are two steps to extending a brand online: 1) getting set up, 2) knowing what to do online once you’re set up.

I’d love to stay and chat some more, but I’ve got a day job to attend to. More coffee anyone?

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