Secrets to Success

According to a study reported in Prevention Magazine, “79% of baby boomers expect to work at least part-time well into their golden years”. The study revealed that “a growing number of adults are looking at their 40s, 50s, and 60s as the right time to start fresh in an entirely new field”.

Craving a more fulfilling and meaningful career is one area of focus during midlife adjustment. As adults reach midlife, the importance of achieving goals and doing what makes them happy becomes much more important. This is the time closet authors, entrepreneurs, musicians or artists begin thinking about careers to match their passion for life.

Women are well represented in this trend, with more women than ever using their midlife as a springboard to experience positive career transformations. Most often, these women want to create something that has the ability to help others while at the same time helping themselves.

According to Entrepreneur Magazine, one of the best, high-growth service businesses is Home Staging (also known as Real Estate Staging or House Fluffing). This business is particularly attractive to individuals with a passion for decorating and an interest in real estate. Home Staging is a very low cost business to start because you don’t need to invest in inventory or a retail location. And, with the slowing U.S. real estate market, the need for home staging services will grow as desperate home sellers look for alternative marketing solutions to avoid the significant price cuts recommended by their agents.

After staging hundreds of homes I can honestly say that no matter what the client’s circumstances, I am generally doing work that makes a huge difference in the lives of my clients and that is very satisfying. People’s reasons for selling a house vary greatly, but often my clients have to sell and sell quickly because of personal, financial or medical issues.

For example, many of my clients are couples going through a divorce. It is often a huge relief to them to have me as an independent third party make the decisions about what should be done to get the house ready for sale. They appreciate that I have no vested interest in either the husband or wife’s point of view. I just tell it like it is! In many cases by using my services, the couple makes enough profit to enable them to have down payments for separate houses.

If you’ve been itching to reinvent your life and do something that reflects your real talents, I hope you will do whatever is necessary to seize the opportunity. Changing your job, career or lifestyle may take some work. But if you truly follow your passion, the effort will provide infinitely positive results.

More and more moms are finding a way to indulge their maternal instinct while staying in touch with their inner entrepreneur. The Center for Women’s Business Research recorded a 32 percent increase in women-owned businesses from 2002 to 2008. Revenues of those businesses grew at a rate of 48 percent and employment by 27 percent in the same period.

More and more moms are finding a way to indulge their maternal instinct while staying in touch with their inner entrepreneur. The Center for Women’s Business Research recorded a 32 percent increase in women-owned businesses from 2002 to 2008. Revenues of those businesses grew at a rate of 48 percent and employment by 27 percent in the same period.

Clearly, moms are looking beyond the cubicle for benefits the corporate world can’t provide. Women entrepreneurs cite job perks like “being available for your child when he or she is sick, starting dinner at a regular hour, and never being worried about children at home alone after school.” Home businesses allow moms to work just as hard as they would in a corporate environment, but on their own terms.

A Little Help from E-Commerce Solutions

How do they do it? The engine of home business is the Internet. Moms can market, sell, source, and distribute products online, from the comfort of the park, the backyard sandbox, or the home office. They capitalize on low-cost marketing tools such as an e-commerce website and internet marketing campaigns. Many moms tap into online networking tools through Twitter, Facebook and Tradeseam.

Here’s a look at some creative moms and their e-commerce ventures:

Personal Trainer. Jennifer Hairston quit her job as a full-time physical therapist to care for her 3-year-old daughter. But she hasn’t missed a beat professionally. Hairston founded a business as a personal trainer, marketing and managing her personal training services from home. To get started, she posted ads on local message boards, advertised through social networks and generated sales leads using online marketing strategies. Event Planning. Monica Moody found her path back home in an event planning venture. In 2004 she launched Spa Party Creations, which organizes on-site spa retreats for women and girls. To get the word out about her business, Moody relies on a strong e-commerce website that “provides visitors with access to great resources,” from information to event planning ideas.

Home Schooling. Education is at the forefront of every new mom’s mind. Some of them take the interest a step further by setting up an educational home business. Former LA Raiders cheerleader Tanya Hutchison founded a home business teaching social etiquette and performance to children. Jackie Friedman Mighdoll started the Sponge School, which offers language classes for toddlers, to help children capitalize on their ability to absorb foreign languages.

Personal Assistant. Beth Adams founded a personal assistant firm on the strength of her multitasking ability, honed while raising four children. Her service My Girl Friday helps moms and other clients master the minutiae of daily life, taking care of errands, cleaning out closets, etc. Home-based virtual assistants take care of errands online. As a virtual assistant, you can help busy people with: travel planning, email and mail correspondence, bills and bookkeeping, organizing appointments and meetings

Staying at home with the kids no longer means staying out of the public sphere. Count on business services such as Website design, Search Engine Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization to help you find a virtual marketplace for your products or services. With a little creativity and vision, you can be a stay-at-home mom and an entrepreneur.

As a woman, being a real estate professional can be a very rewarding career. Whether you are a sales agent or broker, a mortgage agent or broker or even an investor, there are a number of benefits that a real estate career awards successful goals driven women. Your income is only limited by your time and your ability to effectively market your services. This career offers a flexible schedule in that you can take the kids to school, come into the office and work and then leave the office to pick the kids up from school. Very few careers offer this type of flexibility.
However, there is one disadvantage to being a real estate professional. You are only as good as your last deal, and our current economy has made those far and few between.
Because of the nature of real estate transactions, the income you earn as a real estate professional is very linear. You list a house, the house sells, and you get paid. You get a mortgage, the mortgage closes, and you get paid. You find a house, fix it up and sell it you get paid. However, if you stop listing houses, stop getting new mortgages or stop fixing and flipping houses you stop getting paid.
Even if you become a landlord, there still is the potential to have to deal with challenges that may come up. The property may require repairs that you have to come out of pocket for. A tenant may decide to stop paying rent and now you have to invest time and money to evict the tenant. The passive income opportunities are really limited.
Why is passive income important for us as women? A passive income stream provides a level of security for us and our children unlike nothing else. Even if our husbands make a lot of money, what happens if our husbands pass away early or gets involved in a tragic accident that leaves him unable to work? You may be single, what if something happens and you are unable to work?
What if changes in the economy and the industry cause the number of real estate transactions to slow down, as were witnessing now? If all of our income is linear, these changes can have a devastating effect on our households and finances.
However, the good news is that there is a very effective passive income system for women real estate professionals. That system is to continue to work your career as a real estate professional on a full time basis, but start a work from home opportunity on a part time basis.
Real estate professionals have some unique circumstances that make it a lot easier to have home business success compared to professionals in other industries. One of the biggest challenges that most women deal with when starting a home business is adjusting to going from a situation where you are making a straight salary to a situation where you now only get paid when you produce. A real estate professional is already use to this in her current career.
Another challenge for many women when starting a home business is finding time to do the business. As a real estate professional, many of the activities that you are already doing in your real estate career, you can do the activities required for success in a home business at the same time. For example, after you finish meeting with a prospective client, you can say “by the way” and mention the product, service or business opportunity you are involved in. If the client decides to do business with you both from a real estate standpoint and for your home business, you have the ability to get paid twice for almost the same amount of work.
A proven work at home business system offers a number of benefits that can complement the benefits you already enjoy as a real estate professional. One of the biggest benefits is the ability to create passive and residual income. Currently, the only way you can create passive income in real estate is to either become a broker or become a landlord.
However, both of those income streams involve some level of work. A broker has to train the agents, provide the office, etc. A landlord has to manage the property (or hire and manage the company that manages the property.)
With a business opportunity, you can recruit business partners that get trained by your company or success team and still enjoy income off their efforts. In addition, because many of these products are consumable or monthly services, you can get paid over and over again for a sale you make one time. That is a true passive income stream that a woman real estate professional can enjoy.

As we enter the information age and the world enters a global economy, more and more women today are turning to alternative ways to earn additional income. The old adage of “go to school, get good grades and get a safe secure job with benefits” may have worked in the industrial age of our parents and grandparents. However, relying on old age advice in a new age can be a recipe for financial disaster. What are you going to do if your job gets outsourced to another country? What if you are happily married to a loving husband with three wonderful children and God forbid, your husband dies unexpectedly. In an age where most households are a two income household, how are you going to provide for your children?
Some women make an incredible income and have a job in a very stable industry. However, they never have time to spend with their children. A mother’s worst nightmare is when your youngest child calls the babysitter “mommy” instead of her. It is for these and many other reasons why women are flocking to the work from home businesses and having massive home business success. Here are some examples of home business success stories of successful women who have made the transition to the home business industry.
In a recent issue of Home Business Connection magazine, we learn the story of Ms. Elizabeth Foo. A young, single and successful woman in her mid twenties, Liz had a very successful career as a top salesperson marketing gym memberships. With a six figure income in her twenties, you would think that Liz had the ultimate lifestyle. Unfortunately, that income came with a price and the price was working 6 days a week including nights and weekends with very little time to do anything else. By getting involved in a proven home business, she was able to make $40,000 part time her first year and over $100,000 full time her second year. She now not only enjoys home business success, an incredible income, but she actually has time to enjoy it and the income continues to come in whether she personally works or not.
Dani Johnson has an incredible story of the power of owning your own business. Getting started in the work from home industry, at the age of 19, she really struggled to have success, not making any money and going deeper into debt. However, after investing in herself and getting much needed training and development, she was able to go from being broke to becoming a home business success as the #1 producer in her work from home opportunity and earned her first million by the age of 23.
Margaret Tanaka was a highly successful producer at a public broadcasting station in Chicago, Illinois. However, she and her family were tired of the big city life and wanted to slow down. Of course, with a slower pace in life, her income took a huge hit as well. Prior to moving from Chicago, she got involved in a work from home business but didn’t do anything with it for 3 plus years. She finally made a decision to get started and work her business like a business. It’s a good thing she did that. Her husband unfortunately died at the age of 36. However, because of the time she invested into building her business she was able to take off completely, spend time with her son and still earn monthly checks that averaged $5000 a month.
There are many reasons why getting started in a work from home opportunity is often the right move for women. Success in this type of opportunity is usually based on effectively communicating your vision for what the business opportunity can do for people. Women, generally speaking are better communicators than men, which is one of the reasons why so many women are coming to this industry and are experiencing massive home business success.
Success in this type of opportunity is also based on building effective relationships, another trait that women tend to do a better job at then men. For example, one of the reasons why Margaret Tanaka decided to give her business opportunity another try is because her sponsor, also a successful woman distributor within the opportunity constantly followed up with her through letters and phone calls over the 3 plus year period that Margaret was inactive in the business. As you can see there are many home business success stories for women. The only question that remains is will you be the next one?

Ready to make some sales? If you know a few key secrets you can be happily hearing the cash register ring in your women’s clothing liquidation business on eBay.

If you know anything at all about women’s clothing, you know there seems to be something new in style every week. This means there is always a market for new items to complete an outfit or get the desired look. If you are in tuned to what is hot in women’s clothing, you can end up being the person that everyone comes to when it’s time to shop.

Know the Fashion

The first thing you need to know if you want to begin this type of business is what it takes to have the ‘in’ women’s clothing liquidation items in your store. You have to know what you are looking for. There are a few places you can go to get this information.

TV

Start by watching a few of the most popular shows on TV to see what everyone else is looking at. The top stars on these shows are the women that most women look to when they are trying to determine what is ’stylish’ and hip to wear.

If you have cable, there is an even easier way to go. There are fashion TV stations out there that will do nothing but show you what is in and all the pieces that a woman should have in her wardrobe. Take notes and you will know what items you should have in your eBay store to make great sales.

Magazines

Would you like a picture you can keep around? Head to the periodical aisle at your local bookstore or grocery store checkout. There are plenty of fashion and celebrity magazines that will show you what clothes you should have to be in style. You will be able to make a quick inventory list just by flipping through the pages.

Awards Shows

If you are selling formal clothes, you need to look the any of the awards shows for music, movies or television shows. All the celebrities will dress up to the nines and their dresses are what fashionable woman look at to make sure they are in style.

Back Up Your Products With Pictures

Once you start to list your clothing items for sale, make sure to back them up with pictures of celebrities in similar clothing. The faster your potential customers can see themselves looking like their favorite celebrity in your clothes, the faster they will move to make a buy.