Self Improvement For Self Employment

This self improvement blog is now covering self employment too, but the main focus is still how to live your dream. The self employment topic will mostly cover Internet marketing and sales for small business.

I think covering these two topics in one blog works because many of us dream of the freedom that comes from being self employed. Most of us want to work from home, or wherever we are in the world, so that we can have a flexible lifestyle that allows us to develop our career and also enjoy other passions like parenting or travel.

Knowing how to make the most of the Internet is vital if you want to experience the freedom self employment offers. These days all of us should be able to express ourselves and sell ourselves on the Internet. Your web presence may be the shop window for your products or services but more importantly it’s also the first introduction to you as a person, your ideas, how you present yourself and the way you choose to live your life.

I’m really excited because Internet marketing and web design is a topic I love and am also qualifed to write about. I graduated with an MA in Design for Interactive Media in 1996 and have been self employed running my own successful web design company from home since then.

Slogan Change?

I’ve been thinking of changing my slogan to “Self Improvement for the Self Employed” but my clever friend Robin Dickinson, who’s a veritable font of knowledge, ideas and postivity, suggested self empowerment to me which sounds much more appealing so I might use that. I think Live Your Dream still fits with what I want to help readers with but it sounds rather hippyish and new age too me when the advice I give is concrete and solid.

I like the slogans Simple Success, Simple Empowerment or Total Empowerment. Or is Live Your Dream still the favourite? There’s lots of thinking needed and your feedback is very welcome.

New Post Schedule

I’m going to start updating this blog more often and posting new articles twice a week on Mondays/Tuesdays and Thursdays/Fridays depending on where you are in the world.

The loose plan is Mondays/Tuesdays for self improvement and Thursdays/Fridays for Internet marketing. But sometimes that may change and I also plan to write about travel from time to time as that’s another topic that interests all of us.

I’m excited about this but also terrified. It doesn’t seem like a big change but I spend a lot of time writing, editing and formatting my posts so this doubles my work. It’s ambitious but I want to do it because I’m keen to get my knowledge about Internet marketing and small business marketing out there.

I see business owners making costly and time-consuming mistakes on their websites daily. I want to save my readers from making the common mistakes and teach them the essential information they need to feel confident in their online marketing and how they behave on the Internet. I want to help more people make the Internet work for them.

To do that I need to commit to my schedule and fit the writing in come what may. I will also be running my web design and copywriting business, servicing clients there, raising my three primary school kids and running the household. Fortunately, I’ve spent years working out how to eliminate drudgery from my life and perfecting that. What I need to practice now is eliminating distractions.

Just to make things more interesting I’ll also be jetting off to Sydney for a day and Shanghai for four days so out of action for about six days in May. But I’m determined not to let that interfere with the grand blogging plans I made before Coca Cola decided to whisk me off to World Expo in China because they like the positive tone of my writing. Confused? So am I but you can find out everything I know about the Coca Cola chronicles here. I’ll be keeping you updated on Coca Cola, their Live Positively initiative and my jaunt to Shanghai as well.

So now I will be extra busy as I want to make sure all my posts are ready written and set up so they will post automatically while I’m away in case I can’t get on the Internet. My lovely husband will be in charge of that so your reading shouldn’t be interrupted.

No Techie Stuff Ever

By the way, just in case you’re worried I promise you it isn’t going to turn into a geek fest round here. I personally have little interest in or knowledge of technical jargon, computer programing, electronic gadgets or WordPress plug-ins.

What makes the Internet great is the people who read it and I’m writing for the average Internet user. Someone who does what they need to do to get by, knows they have gaps in their knowledge that could be filled and wants to succeed online without knowing the inner workings of computer programming.

As always my main aims are to make sure this blog is:

• Fast to read;
• Relevant to your goals;
• Actionable;
• Uplifting and Inspiring.

Coming Soon

I’ve been planning topics to cover for you. Of course I reserve the right to change them at any notice – the titles will definitely change and the topics might too if something exciting, inspiring or urgent crops up. But I want to give you a taste of what you can expect here so you can look forward to it and tell your friends about it too.

I’m not short of ideas for things to write about to help you live your dream. I keep a list of post ideas and there are over 100 ideas on there (really!) so my main problem is deciding which ideas are gold dust that needs to be posted and spread as soon as possible. I spent an evening sorting out the most important ideas and dividing them losely between my two main topics and my third topic of travel. The topics are all dear to me and I can’t wait to share them with you.

There are 3 aims to posting this schedule:

1. To get me to commit to the new schedule and focus on it.
2. To make me commit to pushing myself to write more and also add videos rather than just wanting to.
3. To give readers an idea of what to expect and get feedback on if this is what you want to read.

Get In the Hot Spot 10 Week Editorial Calendar

April – Fri 16th – The big plan

Tues 19 – How to plan and make a timeline

Fri 23 – How to make a wish

Tues 26 – Learn something new everyday

Fri 30 – An Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon

May – Tues 4 – Blogging your passion and launch of GITHS store with one recommended product to get you started

Fri 7 – Is self-employment for you?

Tues 11 – Lessons learned in a 5 year old dance class

Fri 14 – Blog networking secrets

Tues 18 – Deal with change or life transitions

Fri 21 – How to be ruthlessly focused on your goals

Tues 25 – The best things our parents did for us

Fri 28 – Desktop stretching video< June: Tues 1 – How to fulfill your destiny

Fri 4 – My employment history and lessons learned

Tues 8 – How to be positive and have more fun

Fri 11 – Introduction of the Country Series where I discuss the pros and cons of and share stories about life in countries l’ve lived in like France, New Zealand, Costa Rica, Laos, Zimbabwe and maybe even the UK. Episode 1: Australia with a Noosa video.

Tues 15 – On not fitting in

Fri 18 – Why blog content is not king

Tues 22 – Sponsorship letter

Fri 25 – Me being interviewed by Oprah

Now’s your chance to tell me what interests you most and least. If a topic seems popular I can try to bump it up the schedule so you can read it sooner and if there’s a topic everyone thinks is boring, overdone or pointless I can bump it off the list.

Don’t be shy now. Remember if you want to get what you want in life you have to speak up and ask for it.

As you see next week I’m going to write about how to plan so if you want to make a totally crazy plan for yourself like this one you can.

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Happy Birthday Mr. Candy

This week I also want to thank my clever husband (pictured above) who’s in charge of tweaking this site, fiddling with widgets, installing plug-ins and stuff like that. It’s his birthday today (April 16th) and a day when all non-geeks thank clever computer boffins like him who actually know how to make the Internet work. It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it and as long as it’s not me I’m grateful. Happy birthday Rich!

Handsome Man On Beach Confession

In case you wonder about the photo caption, handsome man on beach, that’s purely for the search engines. It’s childish but it tickles me pink to think that if someone types “handsome man on beach” into the search engines (and trust me, people do) they find a picture of our very own Rich Candy aka the Mucho man. I hope they enjoy it as much as I do:)

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