Motivating Business Mums

Inspiration, ideas and advice from 45 small business owners

Debbie O'Connor

• Publisher: Harriman House
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781908003096
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Motivating Mum (www.motivatingmum.co.uk) is a website that offers support and advice to mums who are running businesses and those who are thinking of starting up.In March 2011, Motivating Mum organised a charity mentoring festival called Mummy Mentoring Month, in association with International Women's Day. Successful business women were encouraged to donate their time and their professional services, and these services were sold to mums who were starting up, with all proceeds going to charity.As part of this festival, we asked business women in the UK and Australia to send in blogs, which were published one a day during the month of March. I kept the scope very wide - blog about anything that would give support and advice to mums. The results were amazing - blogs written by professional coaches and very successful businesswomen, and blogs written by people who are just starting out. Some are sharing their professional advice in various different disciplines - some are just sharing their personal journeys, successes and failures.Taken as a whole I think these blogs provide a great resource of really good advice for mums in business, and that is why I decided to put them together into an eBook that people can dip into for inspiration on an ongoing basis.The charity that we supported for Mummy Mentoring Month in the UK is Nema (www.nemafoundation.org) which helps women in rural Mozambique with aid, healthcare and education, so that they can support their communities and families. So in order to continue the spirit of Mummy Mentoring Month and International Women's Day, I am donating 20% of my royalties from the sale of this book to Nema.I hope that you will be inspired and educated by the blogs in this book. If you are please visit www.motivatingmum.co.uk (or www.motivatingmum.com in Australia) where the support, advice and inspiration is ongoing.

Being Overwhelmed, or What to do When all the Balls are Threatening to Drop at Once

Fiona Muir

Whether you are for the most part a planner or someone who prefers to ‘go with the flow’, there are times in all our lives when things happen which are seemingly out of our control and it can feel as if we’ve been put through the spin cycle on the washing machine a couple of times, dropped on a treadmill at fast speed and been chucked 100 balls to juggle in front of a watching crowd.

The first thing we have to do once we recognise that we’re in a situation like this is metaphorically step off the treadmill, put down the balls, turn our back to the crowd and get our balance back.

So, what can you do today, right this moment, to help combat being overwhelmed?

As being overwhelmed can be experienced as a physical, spiritual and psychological state, it helps to do physical, spiritual, and mental and emotional exercises in order to become unstuck and move forward.

Physical Jump-Start Exercise

Firstly, centre yourself physically. Just take a quick moment to observe where your shoulders are at the moment. If they are somewhere around your ears, consciously drop them down and take ten deep breaths from your abdomen, breathing slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Spiritual Jump-Start Exercise

From a spiritual point of view, if you have a belief in a higher power you’ll probably find it helpful to take a short time to hand over the things you know are out of your control to your higher power through prayer, freeing you up to concentrate on taking action on the things that are within your control.

Psychological Jump-Start Exercise

If you find you have a problem that keeps running through your thoughts and taking over your headspace and draining your energy, take control. And if there is nothing you can do immediately to solve it, make an appointment to allow yourself to think about it for half an hour at a future allotted time e.g. 10 o’clock tomorrow morning. Make a promise to yourself to consciously put the situation out of your mind until that time, and concentrate on taking action on things you can change or move forwards today.

Watch your ‘internal chatter’ very carefully at this point. This is the things we say to ourselves. These can be very destructive and add to the feelings of being overwhelmed. For example, be observant for thoughts such as “I can’t believe you’ve got yourself into this mess again, it’s your own fault, you’ll never learn, you’re always letting people down”. These thoughts are counterproductive. It might seem strange at first, but make an effort to change your internal chatter to the kind and supportive way you’d react to someone you love who came to you with the same situation e.g. “I’m sorry you’re so stressed, I know you don’t like being in this situation, it’s not ideal but you will get through it and learn from it, I love you and have every confidence in you. Who and what will help you the most right now?” This takes time and practice but is deeply empowering and there are many coaching tools to help you observe and change your negative self talk for the better.

Examine the Juggling Balls…Are they Needs or Wants?

Next, it helps to look at each of the balls at our feet and decide which of them you absolutely have to pick up. To do this, it is important to examine them and to differentiate between the needs and the wants.

Wikipedia defines a need as, “something that is necessary for organisms to live a healthy life. Needs are distinguished from wants because a deficiency would cause a clear negative outcome, such as dysfunction or death. Needs can be objective and physical, such as food, or they can be subjective and psychological, such as the need for self-esteem. On a societal level, needs are sometimes controversial. Understanding needs and wants is an issue in the fields of politics, social science, and philosophy.”

With clients I’ll often use a wheel of life tool which helps them break down their life into its component parts, to find out what is and isn’t working for them in their lives. Your life’s component parts might look something like this:

My Life: What matters most today?

• My body
• my mind and emotions
• my soul
• my children
• my home
• my finances
• my vocation
• my hobbies and interests
• my partner
• my relations
• my friendships
• my community.

If you take a short time out to identify your needs for today in each area it will pay dividends. Fast forward your mind to the end of today and identify what actions you could take today to make the biggest difference to your peace of mind and quality of sleep.

“What” questions are sometimes referred to as ‘wisdom access’ questions in coaching. For example, concentrating on your physical body ask yourself:

• What am I feeling right now?
• What does my body need?
• What four things can I do today that will have the greatest positive impact?

Then write down the answers in your action list. Do the same for each area and you will have a list for the day.

In might seem counter intuitive when you have so much on and are overwhelmed, but it does help to take time out to do something that energises you and/or meet up with someone who energises you. Also, the opposite is true; when you’re operating in crisis mode, gently and kindly avoid situations and people who are a drain on your energy until you’re back on track.

As always, prevention is better than cure, so take time to write down your observations from this case of being overwhelmed and jot down what worked for you and helped you through it. Use this information as the start of a crisis plan so that you can be as prepared as possible for the next time you have too many balls to juggle.

Becoming aware of your strengths and weaknesses, your needs and wants, and what does and does not energise you, will help you when you’re overwhelmed. You might want to consider working with a coach or attending a coaching workshop to work on your own personal crisis plan. Also perhaps consider one for your family so that, when something big happens in your life that you can’t control, you have something to refer to or to refer others to for supporting you in physical, spiritual, mental, emotional and practical ways.

I hope you find some of these techniques useful as you juggle the various balls in your life right now.

Fiona Muir is the founder of Fab Life Coaching, part of Fab Communication. Fiona is a fully accredited coach with over 20 years’ corporate experience devising and implementing marketing and growth strategies for a wide range of individuals and organisations; from sole traders and starter SMEs to blue-chip organisations across all sectors. Prior to launching Fab Life Coaching and Fab Communication, Fiona’s corporate experience was gained at a variety of levels, including: student, executive, manager, director and co-owner of a successful SME. www.fablifecoaching.co.uk

Why your Lack of Confidence is Killing your Business

Rebecca Jones

Watch any business programme on the TV, read a business book or spend time with other business owners and you will hear time and time again how “cash is king” and “turnover is vanity and profit is sanity”. But have you ever heard the phrase, “I’m just too busy to make sales calls”? I have, and I hear it all the time.

But you and I know that sales are everything to the success of any business, right? You know that you can have a great product or excellent service but if no one buys it you don’t have a business. Instead you have a very expensive and time-consuming hobby.

Yet time and time again I speak to business owners who may as well be telling me that they are just too busy killing their business to make any sales calls. Okay, so they dress it up a little: “I have so much paperwork to do I’ll do my chase up calls next week”, or “I need to re-design my website so those sales leads will have to wait for now”. Best of all: “I don’t even know if these people who made enquiries are ready to buy yet”.

If this is you, STOP right now, as you’re killing your business.

You know that being a business owner is hard work; there are lots of tasks to do. You also know that you enjoy some tasks more than others. Maybe it’s because they are closer to your skills set. But have you considered your CONFIDENCE?

Think about it for a moment. Which jobs do you tend to put off, leave till last on your TO DO list and always find seemingly more important tasks to do instead? I’d put money on it that these tasks tend to take you out of your comfort zone and that you are less than confident about carrying them out.

If anything to do with sales comes on your list of jobs you put off and jobs you feel least confident about, you need to take action now. If your confidence is holding you back from making sales calls or you’re worried about hearing “No, not today” or “I buy from someone else”, then consider these suggestions.

• Plan your sales calls and meetings so you feel more in control.
• Practice before you contact potential clients so that you know what you are going to say. Think about your opening lines and practise them until you are able to deliver them confidently and clearly.
• Consider what objections people may have to purchasing. Pre-empt them within your discussions or be ready with responses (this comes back to being prepared).
• Accept that not everyone is going to like your product or service and that doesn’t matter. You still have to talk to people about it because there will be people who do like it and do want to buy from you.
• Don’t take sales rejections personally. They are saying no to the product, not you, even if you designed it, made it or deliver it.
• If someone says no, thank them for their time and ask them if they may be i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Publishing details
• Introduction
• The Value of Being Mentored, and in Mentoring Others
• Because You’re Worth It
• 60-Second Networking Introductions
• My Journey as a Freelance Accountant
• Time to Achieve
• Being Overwhelmed, or What to do When all the Balls are Threatening to Drop at Once
• Why your Lack of Confidence is Killing your Business
• A Woman’s Guide to Surviving the Recession
• What is a Mumpreneur?
• Overcoming Challenges
• The Essential Media Toolkit
• Your Work Passion—A Survival Guide
• The Choice is Yours: Mumpreneurs and that Elusive Work/Life Balance
• Thoughts from a Dadpreneur
• Is There Enough Time to do Everything?
• Have You Missed Out on Mentoring?
• 5 Tips on Marketing Your Business
• The Power of Motherhood
• First Aid Training—Is it a Priority?
• Diary of a Work-at-Home Mother
• Maternity Pay and Allowance for Business Owners
• Advice for Brides—Remembering You
• Curiosity Killed the Cat, But it’s Your Best Tool When Networking
• What Inspired Me to Start My Own Business
• Is Networking Working?
• Going it Alone
• Can Any Mum be a Mumpreneur?
• Creating Contacts
• A Life Less Ordinary—The Surprising Truth About Mumpreneurs
• Living to Fail or Living to Succeed
• What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
• What is the Point of Twitter?
• 5 Tips for Protecting Your Spare Room Start Up
• Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling
• Free Advertising for Small Businesses
• 8 Steps to Becoming a 5 to 9’er
• Am I Really Multitasking?
• Focused or Fannying?
• Procrastination: A is for Aaa Don’t Wanna
• Learning to Juggle
• Motivation
• Setting Up Your Online Business
• Selling Handmade Online
• Spring Clean Your Career Grace Owen
• Richard Branson or Closer to Home?
• Why Mentoring?
• Where Glowless Gets Her Support
• How to Increase Your Productivity by up to 40%