I’m a planner, so why didn’t’ I have a plan?  Well,  I guess the reality is, I thought I did.  I truly believed that I had a “marketing’ plan in mind when I started my ministry back in 2005.  However, the one thing I didn’t do was write it down, thoroughly and well.  Sure, I jotted notes and ideas down randomly and crazily. I had dozens and dozens of ideas and I have a WHOLE 3″ binder full of notes to prove it.  But, in reality, the plan wasn’t the real deal.  It wasn’t a serious, know what you’re going to do and HOW you’re going to do it type plan. 

That all changed yesterday.  After 3 almost 4 years of super hard work on my part I believe I’m taking a turn for the better.  Sure, I have booked speaking events, I have executed speaking events, I have seen girls get excited, I have written ebooks, I have sold ebooks, on and on the list goes of things I have accomplished, but the truth is “I am not finished.”  I am not finished and I do not want to be, because as the old saying goes, “God ain’t finished with me yet.”

A couple of days ago, I was chatting with a PR expert,  who I quite obviously could not afford to pay, however, she willingly chatted with me for a few moments and then decided she’d better refer me elsewhere to someone I could “afford”.  Smart move on her part I might add.  Lucky for me within a matter of a few hours I was on the phone with a precious lady who was quite obviously a “God connection” for me.  God sent her to me, no doubt in my mind.

You see, this lady, well she has been in my shoes, I”m almost certain.  No, she may not have had a ministry like mine or struggled at age 25 to get it off the ground, but she has been a young mom with a dream I’m quite sure and to beat it all, she was a “southern young mom with a dream”.

I’m from the south YA’LL and if you’re not then, well quite frankly you have a hard time understanding us.  So, I felt as if angels had pushed her into my path as we laughed and chatted about the fact that I live in a cow pasture, I’m Southern Baptist to the core and even better, she said to me as we parted our ways via phone line, “Now go take care of those youngins’”.  Who else but a fellow southerner would tell you that?

What’s better than that is by the next morning, bright and early, I had a proposal from her in my inbox and a clear, thorough, thought out PLAN for marketing my ministry lay before my eyes.  Sure, at first it seemed like Greek to me, but after reading over it several times and speaking with her once again via telephone I feel certain it is the plan I need.

Also, I am pumped, excited and a bit overwhelmed, but I know that this is yet another GOD given opportunity for me to take just another step towards my success.  God may only give me one step at a time, but He never leaves my side.

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We are participating in the bloggy giveaways this week and giving away a 30 Day Journaling Guide from my ministry, Beauty by Design Ministries.  This 30 Day Journaling Guide is a great way to get started journaling.  It takes only 30 days to begin a habit that will serve you a lifetime. Journaling is a habit that you are sure to reap the benefits of for many years. This 30 Day Personal Journaling guide gives you the direction that you need to start your journaling journey. ***Please Note: The 30 Day Journaling guide is a pdf download. 

While you are waiting to find out if you won, why not sign up for my 7 Day Journaling Ecourse for free.  This will get you on your way to journaling.

Now, I know you’re wondering “What do I do to enter?” It’s simple there are several ways to get more than one entry into the contest, whose winner will be announced on Friday, October 31. Deadline for entries is midnight on Thursday, October 30.

Here’s how you can enter 1 entry per each of the following actions:

1. Comment on this post and let us know how you found this contest.
2. Subscribe to our feed by clicking the orange subscribe button in our sidebar. (Look to your right—->)
3. Subscribe to my ministries’ newsletter, Mom-Daughter Connection in the box on the right of our ministry website, Beauty by Design Ministries.Yes, it’s main focus is mom-daughter relationships but it is about connecting moms and there children in general allowing moms to guide their children towards a growing relationship with God.

4.  Blog about this giveaway and link your blog post to this blog.

*****Please leave in your comments all that you did to enter so that I will be sure to give you that many entries.

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Yesterday, as I blogged about here, I attended a webinar by Lynn Terry of Clicknewz.com for mom bloggers. I do consider myself a mom blogger, but as I stated yesterday I was an online business owner before I was a mom blogger so I see things a little differently than some. Nevertheless, one of the things we were challenged to determine from yesterday’s webinar is what our goal is for our mom blog. As well as where we see our blog in 5 years. So, I wanted to share some of my thoughts.

Though I may have started my blogs for different reasons I believe my ultimate goal is connecting. In my ministry, Beauty By Design Ministries, I desire to connect moms with their daughters who in turn will help their daughters to connect with God. I notice here on my mom blog that I blog mostly about God, ministry and family. Sure I have stints where I blog about working from home, or organizing, or frugal living, but ultimately I am all about ministry. That is my focus, my heart. I want to use my mom blog as a means by which to connect with other moms who desire to connect with their children (my focus is girls) and help to turn their hearts towards God. So, ultimately for me, its all about connections. My connection with other Christian moms and their connection with their daughters, and all of our connections with God, because ultimately that’s what I want for myself and others, a valuable, intimate connection with God.

As for five years from now, I hope this will only get easier to do as my own daughter grows I can share real life stories of how I connect with her. But, for now I use my own experiences from my past and present of connecting with my own mom.

Be sure to check back here on Monday as we are participating in next week’s Bloggy Giveaways, you will want to be sure to enter to win a 30 Day Journaling Guide from Beauty by Design Ministries.

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I was just talking with my new intern at A Writer for Hire and she was sharing with me that I could learn more about her by reading  her testimony, she then shared the link with me.  She really has an amazing testimony and I like her tend to think mine is nothing earth-shattering but reading hers led me to share mine.  I already had it typed up from using it at an event about oh a little over a year ago so the dates may be a bit old, but here it is:

I have to begin at the beginning as they say.  I grew up in a Christian home; I was saved at the age of eight and was very fortunate to be one of the kids that was at church every time the doors were open.   During my teen years I was involved in everything the church offered from Youth Choir to serving on the Youth Council to attending Church camp and going on mission trips in the summers.  Growing up in Winona, I lived a pretty sheltered life.  Therefore, I did not realize that others out there didn’t have the same situation that is until I attended Modeling School in Memphis.  There I met girls from many different backgrounds and lifestyles.  Some of them came from homes drugs were present.  The situations were as different as they were numerous, and they were all very eye opening for me.

After attending Modeling school, I was chosen to attend an international modeling competition in Miami, FL to represent Memphis. There I saw and met even more people from very different situations than myself.  I was also put in the situation where I had to choose how I would present myself, The girls in line with me at the competition were all wearing what appeared to be tube tops for both their top and their bottom, revealing was more than true!  There I stood in line with these girls clothed from head to toe in my flare legged suit and boots.  I was stylish but I was completely covered!

Ok, you may be wondering, what does this have to do with ministry?  Well, a lot,  I realized through these experiences that I was fortunate and that I was different.  My experiences growing up in Church had made me who I was at 17 years old.  I was a confident, bold, Christian who didn’t mind telling those girls about my faith or why I had on more clothes than they did!  I understood that being a Christian meant being like Christ, honoring God with my body and my actions.  This began a passion within me to help other girls to understand why it was important to be modest, and to make Christ a part of their lives and their decisions for their future.  I had seen so many girls that were going down the wrong road that I wanted them to realize that they could choose a different path.

The girls I attended modeling school with looked at beauty much differently than the Bible speaks of beauty; they also found their self worth in a much different place than I was taught to find mine, in Christ.  I wanted them to have the relationship with God that I did and the hope for my future that I knew could be theirs.

A ministry for girls became a dream of mine way back then.  I also began sensing a call of God on my life back around that time, and even before that time.  In December of 1998, at a youth service I committed my life to full time Christian service.  At that time, I was unsure of what God was calling me to do.  I just continued to follow God’s guidance.  In 2002, after I was married and had moved to Carrollton two years prior I received the opportunity to do youth/children’s ministry with Carrollton Baptist, as many of you know I served there for over 4 ½  years.   God truly stretched me and grew me in this position and I developed an even great love for ministry, for teenagers and for children as I served there.

There came a time in my heart that I knew the girls ministry was what God was calling me to do.  BBDM was actually born in January of 2005 when I began pursuing speaking opportunities to speak to girls and their moms on my favorite topics of beauty, etiquette, modesty, fashion, etc.  I only did a couple of speaking engagements that year but God continued to inspire me with ideas.  One of which was to make the topics hands on  where the girls would not only hear me speak on a topic such as beauty from a Biblical viewpoint but also be shown how to properly apply makeup so that she could look great without overdoing it.  I also created a pampering session, a fashion show, a tea party, each paired with a topic.

The next January 2006, God blessed me even more.  He gave me the opportunity to have a website created and send out flyers to churches to let them know about my ministry.  This created more opportunities and in 06 I spoke 6 times.  During that year, God created in me a desire to do this full time.  I did not know how God was going to make it happen, but I had the strong feeling that he would.  In March, my pastor at our church resigned, and I began questioning whether I should stay on staff.  I prayed more in those months surrounding his resignation than I think I have ever prayed in my life.

During that time, I read the book “If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat”, I began to realize that my “boat” or comfort zone in my life was my job at the church.  I knew God was calling me to be like Peter and step out of my boat on faith.  However, I didn’t do it immediately.  Even though I was unsure of my position at the church, I still hung on to it.  I went through the days in a fog, constantly wondering what God was doing and what I should do next.  I pursued other ministry positions in other churches, even in other towns, only to find dead ends.  I had at this point forgotten about my girls ministry because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do it.

It was over in the fall before I began to think about girl’s ministry anymore.  It was at the Women’s Conference held every September at my church.  Becky Brown of Little Brown Light Ministries was the speaker.  I had prayed to God that through her speaking her would speak to me and show me what I was suppose to be doing.  God answered my prayer.  Anyway, through her speaking that Saturday and my thoughts and prayers I realize that God was saying, “Alyssa, you’re not prepared.” I began spending more time studying God’s word as a result.  God continued to pull at my heart, giving me a longing to speak and minister to girls and their moms.  He also gave me the inspiration to write and to create products.

During a sermon on the first Sunday of January, that our interim pastor preached on change I knew God was saying, “you have to make a change, you have to trust me and step out on faith.”  That day I told my pastor of my plans to resign after my baby who was due in March was born.  It felt as if a weight was lifted off me, God continued to bless.  He began filling my calendar with speaking opportunities and he inspired me to write.  Since January, I have been able to write countless articles, as well as a prayer journal devotional guide for teens.

Beauty by Design Ministries is off to a fabulous start.  God is doing what I knew he would do if I took that step of faith and that is he is paving the way.  He is giving me opportunities to minister to girls and their moms from a Biblical perspective on things that they enjoy but also maybe some topic that they struggle with.  Today’s society has a much different view of such topics as beauty, modesty, and abstinence than the Bible teaches.  My programs teach these topics from a Biblical perspective while giving participants the opportunity to have hands on fun in the activities that they love.  Each of my programs has a theme and topic that go together. I’ve had the opportunity to do Mother Daughter nights and retreats, girl’s nights and retreats as well as be the guest speaker at community events.

I am blessed to be able to use the Internet to reach an even broader market. I publish my articles online to many places visited frequently by moms, and I offer a weekly newsletter moms can receive via email with articles, devotions, tips and encouragement.

I am blessed to daily stay home with my children, but to also do what I love and that is speaking, writing and ministering.  I can truly say that I am where God wants me to be.

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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.

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