I was taking a walk this morning and reflecting on many wonderful things happening in my life, and I had the thought that I make a terrible single mom.

It’s not that I’m bad to my kids or or that I’m a bad mom.

It’s that I’m flabbergasted by role of being a single mom.  I don’t know how to do it all by myself.

As I walked along, I thought about how overwhelmed I get, about how I always look to the invisible partner next to me for support, about how I always seem slightly undone by the fact that I’m alone.  I feel scattered and crazy behind in my to-do list.  I feel like I’m always running to catch up.  My thoughts went from sunny springtime smiles to dark stormy frowns.

And yet none of this made sense.

In reality, I run my household pretty well as a single mom.  For the most part, I get people where they need to be.  The kids are not dirty and naked because I couldn’t get around to getting them clothes.  They have everything they need and a lot of what they dream about.  Sure, I’m busy and I don’t hand in forms to my daughter’s school on time, but who does?  And so what I told the vet the dog had been sick for 6 weeks but when I looked at my calender it had actually been 3 months (did I let it go that long??)

And I have great support.  Cathy would do anything for me.  Dominica and Mary are my constant cheering squad.  My father and Bonnie have been unfailingly supportive.  I have lots of people who believe in me.

In other words, while I would love to have a partner, while I would love to have someone who loves me intimately and who supports me and the kids, and who actually helps me in the day to day workings of a household–I don’t need that person.

Habitual Negative Thinking

Why do I think I make a terrible single mom when I’m actually doing OK?

I have the habit of thinking those negative thoughts.  I think  I need a partner.

I think that I need the support.  I think that I need the love.  I think I need the help.  I think that without it, I’m overwhelmed and barely keeping up and that I’m doing a terrible job.

I’m sure you won’t find this remarkable, but every time I have those thoughts, I become overwhelmed and can barely keep up.

Even though I have a lot of evidence that I’m actually doing fine, my mind defaults to this habitual negative thinking.

True Leaders Train their Minds

Habitual thinking, and especially negative thinking can be the end of any progress we make in our life or in our business.  If we want to be true leaders, to really help the people we serve, we must be very aware of habitual thinking.  It is rarely accurate and usually serves to undermine what we are doing.

The first step to correcting your habitual and negative thoughts is to become conscious of when you think them.  Notice what your default story is–what do you tell yourself every time something happens.  When I feel challenged about the many details of running my family, I automatically think,  “Julia, you’re bad at being single.  Other single mothers handle all of these details with much more grace.  Other single moms get so much more done than you.  Other single moms don’t have a son who has needed a haircut for 2 months.  If you had someone who loved and helped you, you’d be Ok.  Your son would have short hair.  But instead, you’re barely keeping up.”

The second step is to notice how these thoughts make you feel.  In my case, I feel overwhelmed and I screech to a halt.  Since the reality is that I’m a single mom, having these thoughts doesn’t solve anything.  My son’s hair is still too long.  They aren’t constructive.  I start to frown and I feel tense.

Next, ask yourself if these thoughts serve any purpose.  Does feeling bad and overwhelmed do anything to correct what you’re worrying about?  I certainly don’t get less overwhelmed by thinking about how bad I am at something.

Finally (and this step is a doozie), acknowledge your habitual thoughts and then let them go.  Don’t focus on them; don’t promote them.  Just like you would do with a whiney child, you hear them but don’t play into them.

This last step takes discipline and practice but it is truly the key to moving beyond them.

I have been challenging myself to move past my habitual thinking.  This morning, I had those thoughts and then put them aside.  I kept walking and in a few minutes, I was sunny and accomplished again.  In a short time, I didn’t feel overwhelmed and I realized that I’m a lucky woman and that I am doing just fine.

Habitual thinking happens all day long.  When you run your business, you will have thoughts which are not constructive and which can bring you down–it’s the human condition.  The real question is what you do with those thoughts.

To be a true leader, you must learn to manage your habitual thinking.  Replace negative thoughts with positive ones, and learn to let negative thoughts pass with no impact.

I get overwhelmed and it is hard to manage a modern family on my own.  But I’m not a terrible single mom.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Facebook Profiles vs. Pages.  The debate rages on.

Facebook developed Pages as a way for businesses to promote themselves and to make a distinction between people and businesses.  But many people continue to use their profile for business use.

Mike Klingler, creator of the Renegade Professional internet marketing training site,  started a Facebook discussion about Profile Pages vs. Fan Pages for business use.

The discussion is heating up, with people on both sides feeling strongly about their choices.

Which do you prefer?  Do you mind blending your business life with your personal, or do you prefer to keep them separate.

Below is my response to this discussion.  You won’t find it posted because Facebook is being a little glitchy and I can’t get it to post.

Hi Mike,

I’m trying this one more time today.

I agree that we need to walk our talk so that our private lives and our business lives are in sync in terms of our values.  I can’t imagine finding contentment if I thought a certain value applied to one part of my life and not the other.  I’d be wacky in no time if I lived like that.

So I’m completely on board with a holistic approach to one’s biz life.

Still, there are some very real reasons why people want to separate the 2 parts of their lives in terms of FB.

I only friend people I know but I allow anyone to fan me.  If I used my profile for biz, then I would have lots of friends who were actually strangers.  Further, by doing this biz I have chosen to have my name spread across the internet, while my friends and family have not.  If I make my profile page very public, these are my concerns:

1.The privacy of my loved ones.  If my friends and family post about their lives and I have strangers who can access my wall, their lives are suddenly public.  Yes, I know that FB is not private, but not everyone grasps that.  I am friended with lots of kids and I don’t want their info exposed to people I don’t know.

2.  Spamming my friends and family.  My loved ones have not requested biz info from me.  Even if my content if superb, it’s spammy to talk about work in a home setting (it’s a little like pulling out the compensation plan during Thanksgiving dinner).  My profile friends want to hear about my private life, not the latest email marketing technique.

To me, this is the implementation of Attraction Marketing.  As long as my loved ones have not asked for my biz info, I won’t flash it in front of them.  When they see my magnificent success and how I glow with happiness in my biz, I’m sure they’ll come knocking at my door! 

3.  Sometimes I just want to be private.  Of course I share a lot about my private life in my biz and I’m quite proud of my personal accomplishments.  But there are times I just want to make a post that doesn’t go in my biz life (maybe this is the introvert in me talking).  Maybe I want to kvetch about the weather with a friend who understands or maybe I have a kooky interest that I want to share with just my friends.  This separation seems healthy to me.

Note:  even as I write this I know it is only half true–if I really wanted to share intimately with my friends, I wouldn’t choose FB to do it.  In reality, FB is false intimacy.  But I’m sure you can get the idea.

Yes, I know that I can fuss with the privacy settings on FB and address many of these concerns.  But privacy setting are not foolproof and they are an extra step.

The point is that I think one can be in alignment with our values and still want our profile separate from our biz page.

So Mike, you suggested that there should be no problem with mingling biz and private, and I suggest that there is no problem with separating them either.

@Eric, and @ Brian,

Eric, I love your story.  I can really see the value in sharing yourself and like I said, I have never been one person in public and a different person in private.  I agree that we are who we are, in biz and in our lives.

But for me, I still relate to Brian’s experience that there are some parts of ourselves that we share best with our most intimate family and friends.  There are private moments when I want or need my family support and for a myriad of reasons, don’t want strangers to be part of that moment.

Eric–your example of asking a question and getting answers from a really wide group of friends–both close and distant is great.  But your question wasn’t particularly personal–it was interesting (in fact, it was a brilliant question to engage people!).  The same question could be used on a page or a profile.  And I think it was its uniqueness that attracted people to answer.  Would you have gotten 23 comments if you had just said that you had oatmeal for breakfast?  And would you have gotten the same branding?

It’s interesting that you feel like your page builds your brand and identity because I have the opposite experience.  When I see a feed with all sorts of musing and revelations from people I barely know, it doesn’t engage me in them.  I need a relationship with them first before I care about their private life or their philosophies.

Maybe part of our thoughts about profile vs. page comes from our own experiences with how we bond with people.  For me, I can’t imagine bonding over FB.  For you, FB can start the relationship.  For me, FB comes AFTER I know them.

Thanks, Mike, for this discussion.  I’ve been trying to help people with just these issues and it is really great to have a discussion to explore them in.

Julia

There’s been a lot of changes happening in the last 4 months.  Business Moms Kiosk is in the process of a complete overhaul, from facelift to new content, look for some exciting changes.

One of my biggest announcements is the start of a new project which will focus on WAHM’s (Work at Home Moms) and feature some great new videos.

I am lucky to be part of a new WAHM group.  We are busy scheming and planning, but soon will have a fun, new resource which will get all your questions answered about how you can get your business started online.

Look for more information really soon.

Marketing Elves Make the Holidays Profitable!

While I’ve been writing and studying marketing, few of you know about my secret career as a marketing elf.

In this recently released video, you will see me (I’m the one in green) providing all the solutions to the average businessman’s marketing needs.  With just a wave of my elfin fingers, voila!  He has the promotion he dreamed of.

Do Marketing Elves Really Exist?

Wouldn’t we all love to had a marketing elf come and solve our problems for us?

The best real life marketing elf I know of is Renegade Professional.  This elf shows you the way to buid your business using the internet.  Just like the elf in the video, there are step by step tutorials, clear instructions and lots of help.

Renegade Professional Brings Marketing Cheer

When you join Renegade Professional, it is just like Holiday Bounty.  Here is a list of just some of the resources:

YouTube Tutorials:  21 tutorials coming to over 6 hours of instruction

Squidoo Tutorials:  23 tutorials coming to over 5 hours of instruction

Google Adwords Tutorials:  9 tutorials coming to over 2 hours of instruction

Lead Capture Page Tutorials:  21 tutorials coming to over 6 hours of instruction

Email Marketing Tutorials:  8 tutorials coming to over 6 hours of instruction

Writing with Pull Tutorials:  44 tutorials coming to over 7 hours of instruction

Attraction Marketin over the Phone Tutorials:  7 tutorials coming to over 6 hours of instruction

…And this is just a partial list.

It’s Like Having X-Ray Vision…

My personal experience with Renegade Professional has been amazing.  When I joined, I already had 2 websites started so I thought I was hot stuff.  I thought I knew my way around internet marketing.

Renegade Professional showed me how the internet really works.  It was like getting and xray of the internet and seeing the inside.  Internet marketing involves a web of connections and links.  This is everything from backlinks (for the spiders), to social media links (for real, human relationships).

While this may seem obvious, its deeper meaning has changed the way I think of business.  Before Renegade Professional, I had lots of separate pieces of marketing knowledge.  The tutorials brought them all together into a full picture.   Building relationships became more than just keywords and traffic statistics–it became meeting real people.

Not for Everyone

But of course, it’s not for everyone.

If you don’t want to learn internet marketing, and it amazes me but not everyone does, then this is not for you.

And if you don’t like having someone show you what you need to do to get internet marketing to work, then this is not for you.

If you insist in figuring everything out yourself, then this is not for you.

And if you don’t have the time or ambition to learn internet marketing, then this is  not for you.

Contact Me for a FREE 45 Minute Consultation

Renegade Professional is the most complete internet marketing training that I know of, but honestly, it is not for everyone and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone.

Contact me and I will give you a FREE 45 Minute Consultation.  During this consultation, I will assess your business challenges and give you may recommendations to build your business.  No, I will not recommend Renegade Professional if I don’t think it will meet your needs.  Each plan I give will be personalized to your needs and situation.  By the end of the consultation, you will have an Action Plan to get your business growing.

Contact me today and get your business off the ground.  It will be like have 8 strong reindeer, lifting you into the sky.

Small Print:  With the dawn of a new era in internet marketing, led by our dear FTC, I will disclose that, of course, I make a commission if you sign up for Renegade Professional or any of the other products I recommend.  I am running an internet business, so money must be made.  But I can assure you that I only recommend products that I believe are the best out there.  And in my consultations, I only recommend what I believe would serve you best.

One more note:  I belong to a business group which supports buying locally.  This video was made to get our members to join our Holiday Promotion and get all the local businesses of Dane County, Wisconsin participating.

When you shop this year, Think Local First!

If you have ever wondered about the power of really owning your niche, you will be convinced of its importance in this video.

John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA.  He stocks over 500 types of soda–everything from rose petal soda to cucumber soda to a cola cream soda.  He knows the difference between the bubbles, the ingredients, the types of glass that the bottles use–he can even quote health facts about why sugar is better than corn syrup.

This guy knows soda.

And if you want soda, you’d go to him.

Watch this fascinating video to see a true master at niche business.  He found a niche and he went deep instead of wide.

You want juice?  Go somewhere else.

You want Pepsi?  He’ll point you to the store down the road.

But if you want soda made from small breweries, he’s got it for you.

Niches work.

It’s important to remember to keep the human touch when you build your business.  Ustream can help you do that.

Building your business with the internet can mean that you gain your lead, build trust with them, complete a purchase with them and never interact personally.

Sometimes this works well for people.  They want to buy what they need and move on.

But when you business involves service (and even if it doesn’t), it is a good thing to remember peraonal, human interactions.

Ustream.tv, a website which allows you to stream live video to the internet in real time is a great solution.

With Ustream, you can interact with your customers, answer their questions and build your rapport with the;m.

I’ve made a short video on  how Ustream.tv can help your business.

When your customers have a question, need to see a demonstration, or just want to see who your are, Ustream is a great solution.

And if you’re feeling tech-challenged or don’t know how to apply Ustream to internet Attraction Marketing, I recommend Renegade Professional for your one stop shop for internet marketing training.

The best Wordpress themes are easy to find.  Themes are everywhere.

Different colors…different numbers of columns…fixed width or variable…

One of the fun things about Wordpress blogs is that they are so easily spiffed up.

How do you find the best Wordpress theme?

This video will get you started finding exactly what you need.

When you’re a beginner at Renegade Professional, it is so easy to be overwhelmed.  Dozens and dozens of videos on all types of subjects can distract you.

If you manage to make it through Renegade Professional, then there are all the other distractions on the webs–the newest launch from the latest internet guru, the latest changes from Amazon and Google, the emerging social media tools.  It’s a jungle to get lost in.

And if you manage to stay out of that, the final and most devasting distraction can hit–the voices in your own head.  The constant dialog telling you why you can’t do this, why you’re making mistakes, why it will never work, why you’re wasting your time.

The distractions are endless.

Stay Focused

Mike Klingler has great advice for Renegade Professional beginners.

Stay focused.

And if you need help, get a coach to help you.

It’s a big job handling everything it takes to get an internet business started.  The technical learning curve alone can be overwhelming, but the emotional battles can take you out.

Find a coach to help you wade through it all.

A chai wallah does one thing: he makes tea.

He makes tea day in and day out. Over and over.

I remember when I was in India how the chai wallahs would enter the trains at every stop and each had their own way of calling “chai”. They would squeeze up and down the aisles with their pots and glasses, at all hours of the day or night (you never got a quiet time). They would shout about their chai is such a way that the words ceased having meanings and became a song.

They were all experts at the same thing, making tea, but they each had their own way of doing it.  (For a wonderful website devoted to the chai experience in India, visit chai pilgrimage.)

Are You Willing to Become a Wallah?

To become a wallah, you must specialize.  Avoid distraction and do the same thing over and over until you become good at it.  And after you have repeated it over and over, your own unique mark will develop.

Focus on one thing and ignore the rest until you become good at it.

“When you go all in, it focuses your attention and effort, doesn’t it?”

—Seth Godin in his blog post Chai Wallah

If you focus your attention, practice until you’re crazy, you come up with your expert call.  You will become a internet business wallah.

You can’t reach success without failure.

I never knew that you had to fail to succeed.

When I was growing up, I was taught that failure was, well, failure.  Failure was not supported.  Failure was something to be ashamed of.

It has only been though building a business that I have made friends with failure.  I fail.  I get up.  I move on.