I Have a Hunch

Welcome to Life from my Laptop, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also sign up to receive my posts via email. Thanks for visiting!

I have this hunch.  God is doing something big in my life.  Well, I knew that, but I am beginning to see it more and more as he reveals things little by little.  First you must know that God has been doing a great deal with me lately.  Read back a few weeks worth of posts in my blog and you can read all about it.  God is always at work in my life, but sometimes well, I notice it more than others.  Now is one of those times.

Over the past week I have taken some of the things I felt God prodding me to do, focus, trust him, etc and I have done it.  Outsourcing a lot of my writing not only due to the impending birth of my third child, but also to free up my time to focus on my ministry.  As a part of that I wanted to improve my websites and figure out ways to monetize them that would make up for some of the outsourcing.

I felt led to also beef up my newsletter, offering my subscribers more, and better quality. I will admit sometimes this got the slack because I was writing so much for others I didn’t have a great deal of time to write articles for my site or content for the newsletter.  I felt bad about this but I was always worried about the money and where it would come from if I didn’t write.  Now, I am trusting God to provide.  I’ve stepped out on faith before, so I began asking myself, “Why can’t you do it again?”  I finally decided that my answer was, “I could indeed do it again, so I have.”

So, in doing so this past week I hired some coaches, while others volunteered to help me, online friends and other WAHMS coming to my aid, a God thing in itself.  Then, I did a ton of work on my sites and I beefed up that newsletter.  It really does look better and is a better quality.  Finally, in the newsletter I asked for feedback and for once guess what? I got feedback.  It’s amazing what you get when you simply, ASK.  What a “duh” moment.

So, one of the things that I discovered was I have a lot of homeschoolers on my list.  This means something to me in more ways than one, but first of all I have always wanted to homeschool my children, and though my son attended private preschool last year and is signed up for the fall, I haven’t given up on that dream, though my husband isn’t all for it.  Second, the homeschooling community or at least the one I believe I’d want to be a part of is deeply rooted in the Christian community, meaning to get involved with them would be right up my alley and would fit the target market of my ministry so well.

Fortunately, there are already homeschoolers out there receiving my newsletter.  Better than that I discovered from a couple of emails i received that the homeschoolers who are receiving my newsletters are the girls themselves, or at least their moms are sharing them with them because the girls themselves wrote to me.  One has already in turn joined my affiliate program and the other has requested for us to cross-promote as she has a product she promotes to Christian teens as well.  In fact her name is Amanda and she blogged about a product of mine today on her blog.  Check it out here.

Finally, at the advice of one of those WAHMs who have reached out to help me I began looking for moms who would review the products I have my affiliates promoting so that my affiliates could use the reviews.  I immediately got to work finding reviewers and who stepped up to review them but more homeschoolers.

Finally, one of those homeschoolers suggested that I submit my guides to The Old Schoolhouse Store and she got me in touch with the person to do so.  How exciting! So, I have a hunch, homeschooling may be in my future in more ways than one and frankly that excites me.

Now, to convince my husband it’s a good idea.

Coaching…Mumbo Jumbo?

Ok, I’ll admit, I used to hear the words “life coach” or “business coach” or any other type of coach besides one who coaches a sport and thought, “mumbo jumbo” or wondered,”Why would I need that?”  However, I have been proven wrong several, several times lately.

It all began a few months back when I got a wild hair to “get organized”. Anyone who knows me, knows that when I get a wild hair to do something, well, I do it!  So, I got my home organized, my business organized, virtually my LIFE organized, but not without help.

I broke down and hired an “organizing coach”, Marcia with Take Charge Solutions.  You’ll never believe she was literally halfway across the world in South Africa.  We communicated via Skype and it was an awesome experience. I even for a short time thought because of her effectiveness and my love of organizing that  I should branch into that field. I am glad I pulled back, but I definitely learned a ton and got organized to boot. (If you aren’t aware I created Organized Life by Design as a result, which has now been sold.)

Next, after coming home from She Speaks I knew I needed to focus and to have my website focus as well. It needed some help and I needed help helping it.  Okay, so that was a mouthful, but really.  I was on Twitter just a twittering away and talking about my “issues” when new Internet Marketing Coach, Carrie Lauth offered to do a website review and coaching for me in exchange for a testimonial. Since I desperately needed the help AND I needed a distraction from worrying about when baby #3 will make his arrival I jumped on the chance.  Boy am I glad I did.  Carrie was awesome, steering me in the exact direction I needed to go and giving me step by step instructions, gotta love that!  Again, on coaching, I was sold.

Finally, I had began making this huge, astronomical list of writing business, ministry and other routine tasks that I must do monthly to keep my businesses and such going. I was doing so, in an attempt to get even more focused as I had been convicted that I really must do.  The list just made me want to run for the hills.

Once again on Twitter  I noticed Life Coach, Aurelia Williams twittering about how much outsourcing had helped her.  Outsourcing was something I definitely wanted to do and I have attempted to do several times, however I don’t know much about and I’m not confident in myself to make decisions about, therefore I thought to myself maybe she could help me determine what it is I should do with this list and how I can make this all happen.

So I got in touch with Aurelia, whom I have known in the work at home community for years and set up a coaching session.  Again, I am so glad I did.  I now have a great idea of what to outsource and what to do myself, and in addition a fantastic list of ways to be more effective in my life and ministry.  I am floored and energized at the same time.

Additionally, I just have to say that I met 2 of these 3 ladies online because of the wonderful community of moms knowns as Mom Masterminds, of which I am a graduate.  Mom Masterminds has literally been a God-send for me and a contributing factor to the success of my businesses.  To anyone who is trying to make a go at “working from home” you should definitely check it out, as soon as you check out the above ladies or maybe you can meet a couple of them over there.