Category: Lifestyle

I’ve been in business for about three months now.  It’s a good thing to remind myself of at times – I’m so impatient!  If you read The Beautiful Beginning, you know I once marveled at people who start their own business.  The whole getting started part mystified me.  Now that I’ve been cogging along for a few months, I still marvel at people who start their own business and do well.  Instead of thinking I’ll never be like them, I now wonder what I can learn from them.  If you’re mystified on how to get started, here are three little pearls of wisdom just for you.

#1: Do the Work

My website was up:  check!  Facebook business page: check!  Then what happened.  Well, at first it felt like a whole lot of nothing.  That’s when I realised it was up to me to drive this train, I had to keep it moving forward.  I blogged.  My blogs show who I am and what I can do. I gave myself deadlines and stuck to them.  I published on my Facebook page, jokes and non-work content as well as sharing my blogs, like everyone recommends.  You need a dream, a vision. But you also need to keep grinding through the ‘grunt work’ of generating interest, even when the person you need to keep interested is yourself.  When I wasn’t sure what I was doing, I read other blogs on getting started.  Listened to podcasts. I reached out to other biz mums, including my high school bestie and business mentor, Mikala from Inspired Office.

#2: Collaborate

Mik suggested I join some groups for a free and easy way to learn, be supported, and start forming relationships.  I joined Mums With Hustle Biz Club and Mums Starting Small Businesses (Australia).  You know what you’ve heard about women not helping other women, because we’re like sooooo catty and competitive?  Well surprise surprise – it’s a myth.  It’s great if you can meet someone in person to collaborate with.  The good news is that groups can also help facilitate this.

At times it seems that groups beget groups beget groups.  I’m a member of several groups now, some specific to copywriting, others goal setting and planning – each have something of value to offer.  I’ve started snoozing them so I can check the group when I want to, without it taking over my feed.  Joining groups gives you a safe space to share ideas with others, ask questions, and grow.  FB is a data-mining tool; use it to your advantage and mine it to find your own pearls of wisdom, even some gold.  Social media may have many ills, but as a collaborative tool it’s fantastic.

#3: Believe

Mindset is all.  We live in the world, but we have words and worlds inside our heads.  They directly affect how we see ourselves and what happens in the world around.  If we keep telling ourselves we can’t:  then we won’t.  Everyone has heard that before.  Let me tell a little story to illustrate the point.

I’ve always done ‘real jobs’.  That’s what responsible people do, right?  I learnt quickly writing wasn’t a ‘real job’ – I’ve been telling myself that for years.  Late last year, I thought, f@#k it, and broke free of a lifetime’s habit of talking myself down.  I started making time to spend writing. I wrote creatively.  I wrote stories with beginnings, middles, and ends.

It was only small, but dedicating time to my craft helped me switch up my mindset.  I started thinking of myself as a writer.  Here’s the groovy part:  as soon as I took myself seriously as a writer, other people did too.  Believe.  When you back yourself, you give other people a reason to think they should too.

To sum up, here are three little pearls you can take with you on your own journey.  To be honest they work in business AND in life.

1. Do the Work –  Push on, because doing nothing will not help you achieve your goals.
2. Collaborate – Social media groups make it easy to reach out to people in business of all experience levels
3. Believe – mindset is such a big part of succeeding in business, and in life.  Say ‘yes’ to yourself, don’t devalue your skills.  You’ll find once you start really believing you have something to offer, other people will too!

That’s it for now team.  Starting your own business isn’t always easy, but you can do it.

Need some more motivational reads in your life?  As well as blogging to share my experiences as a businesswoman, I’m a freelance copywriter who creates cracking web content, sizzling sales pages – and of course, beautifully written blurb-alicious blogs.

Jennifer Zeven

Principal Blurb-ologist, Blurb-ology

 

It’s so important to embrace gratitude and give ourselves time to acknowledge it, to really feel it.  Today’s impromtu post is a list of little things I’m grateful for today.

 1. Rest

I woke up feeling happy and well-rested.  Miss 10 Months held on to wakefulness until 2am the previous night.  Last night she was down by 9pm and slept ALL NIGHT.  I slept all night.  I’ll say that again for added emphasis, I SLEPT ALL NIGHT.  Sometimes when your baby’s been restless it’s hard to switch off when they do seem to be in deep sleep.  I listen for them, I half expect them to wake up.  I’m grateful because I did not do this.  I shut down my laptop at a sensible time and finished the night reading a chapter of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens.  I slept soundly, woke up responding to my body’s own natural rhythms and lay in bed a while appreciating how darn happy I was feeling.  I heard the kids collecting millipedes outside, enjoying the new rain.  The baby was still fast asleep. I got up because I wanted to, not because I had to.  Ah, bliss.

2. Rain

It’s raining.  It’s always a big deal when wet stuff falls from the sky in South Australia.  At work we used to stop and watch it fall against the windows and down onto the city streets.  This morning it’s raining softly and steadily.  The rainfall varies between heavy mist, or soft, light sleet, to the always loved steady rain.  I’m going to have to take wet washing off the line and spin it out again, then hang it around the house to try to dry it, but I don’t care.  I grew up in the country and the rain and its various ways of falling, not to mention the frequency of the falls, were topics of much conversation.  Rain is good for the soul as well as the land.  I feel contented and connected to the earth when it rains.  I feel more at peace with myself in the rain.  More of my creative thoughts push themselves to the front of my mind when its raining.  I’m grateful for the rain, and hope it’s also falling where it’s needed for our farmers.

3. Recreation

It’s school holidays.  Yes, you read right, I said ‘it’s school holidays’.  I love the break in routine the holidays bring.  I love having my kids play happily around the house (MOST of the time it’s happy play, ha-ha).  Mr. 7 is tired by the end of term, he needs the break and values his time to do the things he wants to do around the house; writing his little books, playing with Lego, paper planes.  Miss 5 started school this year, and although she has coped tremendously, she was tired and looking forward to holidays too. They deserve their break.  As I type this the elder two are playing doctors to a bunch of the millipedes they’ve found which have been injured in the rain.  Don’t ask me how.  I’m grateful to smile as Mr. 7 says things like, “I don’t think surgery will be necessary on this one”, or sadly, “There’s nothing we can do for this one.”  Miss 5 is dutifully checking for arthropods who are victims of drowning.  Oh dear, now Mr. 7 wants to do an autopsy so they can “…learn more about the body.”  Um, ok….

4. Red Grapes

Finally, Miss 10 Months loves eating grapes.  Sure, it’s a little thing to be grateful for.  The Flame grapes lately have been firm and sweet, and after giving them a wash and slicing them in half for her, she’s happy to sit in her high chair eating grape after grape after grape. Sometimes I wonder how many grapes she will take before she turns into one!  Her grape-loving ways have enabled me to sit down and write this little gratitude list now while it’s fresh in my mind, and the feelings of gratitude and happiness is still wrapped around me like a warm, fluffy cardigan.

What are you grateful for?  Leave a comment, I’d love to hear it 😉. #blurbology #goodcontentgoodwriting #gratitude