Blog - Her Business Directory™

Learning to Trust Yourself More!

You may have a difficult time trusting yourself. Don’t despair. You are not alone. It is something that many people experience, and find difficult to overcome. When you lose trust in others, you start to lose trust in yourself.

To help you overcome this problem, you need to focus on key aspects of trust. The first is to have faith in your accomplishments. If you pass off your accomplishments as not being that important, when you need to rely on them, they won’t be there for you. That is sure to interrupt the process of trusting yourself.

You also need to trust your instincts. You won’t always be right, but you will be more often than not. An instinct is something you feel strongly about and does not come only from experiences. They come from something internal that no one can truly explain. It’s part of that inner voice that is telling you what to do. You need only listen. How many times have you said to yourself that you should have listened to your ins…

Setting Realistic Goals

You must be realistic and honest with yourself. If you set goals that you can't possibly reach, you are setting yourself up for failure. You will make yourself frustrated and unhappy. The key here is a realistic and honest assessment of your potential. Although most people will be unnecessarily harsh in their assessments, it is easy to become too hopeful when you start breaking down barriers. If, for instance, you're extremely interested in and fond of music and would love to be a singer, it would be unreasonable to set a singing career as your goal if you can't sing a note (some talents are inborn). But if you are knowledgeable about the music business and would be happy being involved in some other capacity, then it would be reasonable to pursue a career in the business. Be wary of making otherwise perfectly reasonable goals unattainable because of stringent time frames. When you set a goal, you will most likely set times for achieving certain steps along your way to achievi…

Brand New Beginnings – Rebooting Your System to Reinvigorate Your Life

Today we’re talking about Fresh Starts. In this special training, we’ll discover what it means to make a fresh start, why new beginnings are essential, and simple ways to reboot your life.

This training is highly interactive, so go ahead and grab a notebook and a pen, and let’s get started.

Life is full of chapters and phases, and most of us have many of them in the course of a single lifetime. Every one of these chapters has…you guessed it: A beginning, a middle and an end. As one chapter closes out, it often signals the beginning of another. These transition points are golden opportunities to clean up what was, accept what is, and step excitedly into the newness of what will be. After all, as singer Dan Wilson of the band Semisonic said so eloquently:

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Sometimes the chapters of your life are action packed and full of pizzazz. You’re going, growing, and getting things d…

Home Business or Work-at-Home Job – Which Is Right for You?

Many people often want to work from home for a variety of reasons. Maybe you just had a child and want more work-life balance, or perhaps you have an illness that makes it difficult for you to get out of the house. Or maybe you just like being home and want the freedom to work your own way. Whatever the reasons you want to work at home, you’ll need to choose whether or not you want a job from home, or you want a business from home. Here are eight questions to help you decide. 1. Are You Self-Motivated? If you want your own business so that you can set your own hours, you will need to be very self-motivated. You’ll need to take time out of your day for marketing, interviewing clients, closing the deal and then doing the work too. You’ll be 100 percent responsible for delivering the work, billing and collecting. You’ll even be responsible for deciding the methods you’ll use to do the work. To do that you’ll need to be a very self-motivated individual. 2. What Skills Do You Ha…

11 Small Business Grants All Women Entrepreneurs Should Apply For

All new business owners need as much capital as they can obtain. With female-owned firms accounting for an estimated 11.6 million small businesses in America, that financial need is especially important for female entrepreneurs.

Statistics show female entrepreneurs are less likely to receive small business funding than their male counterparts and are more likely to receive a shorter-term loan with less capital and significantly higher interest rates.

Fortunately, several lenders, nonprofit organizations, and corporations have acknowledged the unique disadvantages faced by female entrepreneurs and begun to offer grant money to support self-employed women.

From federal grants to state grants, the experts at ZenBusiness have pulled together 11 grants offered to women-owned startups to help jumpstart their businesses.

Eileen Fisher Women-Owned Business Grant

Amount available: Between $10,000 and $40,000

Previo…

Common Work-at-Home Positions You Can Apply For

Working at home sounds like a dream come true to most people. No tromping out in the cold weather, no need for business clothes, and perhaps a way to truly have integration of family life and work without being fired. But, what sorts of positions can you find that you can do at home? Inbound Call Center Agent An inbound call center agent takes calls using their home phone and computer system from the comfort of their home office (or kitchen table), taking orders for products and services. For example, you may work on a project for well-known home shopping networks or food chain establishments. You’ll be trained, and have practice calls before you get started. You will make between $8 and $20 dollars per hour from home doing this. Some positions are independent contracting and some are full-fledged employees. Outbound Call Center Agent An outbound call center agent makes outbound calls to a list of leads given to them by the company they work with. They will try to sell some…

4 Self-Care Tips For Extra Busy Women

Finding time to invest in self-care can be challenging, especially when you live an extra busy life. When your days are spent bouncing between work, family and social commitments, there can be little time left to catch your breath let alone take time to care for your physical, mental and emotional health. If you are struggling to find time left for self-care, try these four tips to incorporate good self-care habits in your routine.

Establish a morning routineStarting the day right is a good way to ensure your mental and physical health is maintained. This might include a healthy breakfast, daily exercise or meditation; figure out what works for you and implement it daily. Over time this will become a habit, helping you to take some time for self-care every day.Schedule time offIt can be easy to find yourself in a cycle of continuous activity, moving from one activity to the next until it seems you are just going through the motions. Make sure you don’t get lost in th…

ADVICE TO A 20 YEAR OLD

Recently on HER Mastermind Network (on LinkedIn) Kassandra Vaughn posed the following question: Knowing what you know now, if you could give one piece of advice to your 20 year old self, what would it be?

What a wonderful question! Here was my response:

I would tell myself that every day when we wake up we decide what kind of day we are going to have. When we wake up surrounded by challenged and we allow those challenges to affect our attitude, it sets the tone for how we will react to every incident we encounter throughout the day.

We can decide to wake up on the right side of the bed or on the wrong side.

Once I learned this valuable lesson (took me a long time) I realized just how powerful our minds are. My life has been a lot more rewarding and many more opportunities have come my way because I choose to have a great day… each and every day!

Julie replied with “Instead of worrying IF, concentrate on WHAT y…

4 Things to Keep in Mind When Choosing What Goals to Pursue

If you’ve embraced the wonderful practice of setting goals for yourself, kudos to you—but a new challenge can often arise when we start picking too many goals. Here’s a way to sift through the stars and find which ones to reach for.

Think about the biggest picture possible. Sit down for a little reflection, journaling, and exploration of who you are as a person and what matters to you. Try making a list of your ten most important values. Once you’ve done that, think about what you want more than anything else in life, and write that down.

Keep it short, sweet, and to the point, in one sentence—no more. You’ll be amazed about how having clarity on the big picture will help you sort through your goals and find the ones that matter.

Think about your budget and compromise accordingly. When it comes to goal setting, it’s important to think about the constraints you face and be realistic. If you’re holding down a nine-to-five gig within the median salary range…

6 Traits of a Great Leader in the Workplace

When we think of leadership, we sometimes think of epic moments like George Washington crossing the Delaware, or Martin Luther King Jr. speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But what makes a leader great in a less epic venue, like work?

Communication

A good leader at work is a good communicator and clearly spells out expectations. Not only that, they foster good communication between their team. A great leader goes above and beyond leveraging chats, emails, and texting groups to bring their team together around workplace issues. They don’t just offer tools for networking—they help develop a sense of how to communicate effectively.

Empathy

A good leader in the workplace cares about their employees and shows it. Remembering the details of their lives and asking follow up questions (in a non-invasive way) about spouses, children, parents, and life events shows that they care about their employees and view them as more than just human chattel.…

Turning Knowledge into POWER

One of the magazines I read every month is Success Magazine. I consider it one of the best motivational magazines on life and leadership available today. There are dozen’s of articles in each issue to help us with all aspects of our lives.

There is also a little surprise strategically placed in the center of the magazine as a BONUS. It is a CD/DVD with enhanced articles, motivational presentations and ideas. I love listening to it on the way to work.

Today I joined the Success Achievers Community and have already met some amazing people. I think its a better way to strategically connect with like minded people (its currently not overflowing with hype so its worth checking out. You can learn more here: https://achievers.success.com/feed

Today I want to focus on 10 Actions You Can Take to Turn Your Knowledge Into Power (some my own and some from a recent article on Success. Use these tips to jump start each action.

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The Secrets to Success … Just Ask!

Most of the great leaders and successful business people in the world were looked up to and admired because they attained something many aspire to and maybe never achieve. I believe it is because they were good at asking questions! Inventors would never invent things if they didn’t ask questions.

A simple example is the wheel. I can imagine two Neanderthals sitting around thinking, “gee I would love to visit Ugh, but he lives so far away.” And his friend says to him, “it wouldn’t be so bad if we had something to get us to his place quicker!” They had already tried riding the backs of dinosaurs and that didn’t’ work. Have you ever tried to tell a dinosaur where to go? Those big lugs don’t like taking orders from anyone!

Hence the question, what could we invent to get us from point A to point B in faster and safer? Some sort of transportation device is my guess. And instead of riding on the back of a di…