In a nutshell.

At the end of August I will be stepping back from my business and closing it down for an indeterminate amount of time so that I can follow my passions to a career that I truly love.
(If you don’t want the long story but would like to learn about what this change means for you (i.e. super discounts) skip down to the last section.)

Here’s the longer story.

As many of you know I attended the World Domination Summit this year in Portland and it was an amazing experience. I was surrounded by amazing people doing amazing things and I got really excited about my future, but not necessarily about my business. I came to realize (what I had actually figured out a while back) that although I LOVE my clients and the Creatives that I work with I don’t necessarily LOVE what I do for them.

I tried switching it up and I started offering new services, like social media focused strategies, and other ways for me to enjoy what I was doing, like consulting and speaking, but it all just seemed like I was trying to make something fit that just doesn’t seem to fit. Why has it been so hard for me to market my new services if it’s what I really want to do? Why does the thought of checking my email every day make me feel nauseous? Maybe I just wasn’t trying hard enough, or maybe I was just putting effort into something that really didn’t fit me or feed my soul.

Throughout July I began to realize that my passion doesn’t necessarily lay in my current business model. I have decided that I need to take a step back and evaluate what I really want out of my career and my life. I want to find something that lights me up on the inside the same way that I saw in the attendees at WDS. I want to feel like what I am doing makes me feel complete and doesn’t take away time that I have with my family. I want balance and freedom and importance.

Do I know where my passions actually are hiding or how I am supposed to find them to create my dream career? Ummmmm, no…which is why this is one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. Going out into the world to find my true passions and leaving behind a successful and lucrative business seems a bit ridiculous to me on one hand, but on the other hand I can’t see myself being unhappy in a business that I feel like I “should” really love. There is even the chance that I will step back, try some things and then realize that this business really is where my heart is if I tweak it “just enough” to make it really gel with what I want out of my career. Who knows. I may end up being a fry cook on Mars or owning a cupcake truck driving around downtown Cincinnati….

This is a good thing. 

After talking with my friends and clients I’ve come to realize this is just another step on my journey. I will use all of the knowledge and all of the amazing friendships and connections that I acquired over the past few years and go out and find something I love. I never would have found many of the friends and connections I now have if I hadn’t started this business three years ago so this business has made a lasting impact on me and how I see myself now. YOU are so important to me so I want you to know that I could not have created this business by myself so I will forever remember your willingness to put your trust in me.

What does this mean for you?

Mostly it means that I will not be available for new clients and I will most likely be pretty quiet in your email and on the blog (not that I’ve been a super noisy voice in your inbox lately).

What it also means is some exciting “Sara is Going to Find her Passion” discounts!

If you want to get your online marketing strategy pulled together, this is the month to do it. I will be open until the end of August so if you have been dragging your feet waiting for the best time to get your online marketing strategy pulled together by my awesomeness, this is that time. I am also dropping the price down to a super cheap $100 (originally $247) so there really isn’t any reason not to get your plan of attack up and running this month. Click here for more info.

ALSO starting today I will have my ebook, The Chocolate Banana Workbook, up for a crazy discount of $10 (originally $47). If you have been waiting for a good time to start getting your big delicious ideas off the ground and start planning to make them happen, now is the time to pick up the Banana. The sale ends on August 31st and then the ebook will be shelved, maybe to never be released again or maybe to be revamped once I figure out my new direction. Either way, it’s a good idea to pick up a copy now instead of later. Click here for more info.

FYI, If you already have the ebook but you still want to help my family eat something other than Ramen Noodles for the next few months, you can always donate to the “Help Sara Feed Her Child Fund” by sending me a gift through PayPal… ; )

Thanks so much for being awesome and understanding how important it is for me to follow where my true passions lead me and I hope that no matter what my next chapter holds you will be a part of my journey.

PS: Don’t forget to check out the discounts. They are there as thank you gifts for you so I hope you take advantage of them if you have been waiting for the perfect time.

I’m turning the big 3-0 today and instead of expecting lots of pomp and circumstance for me I wanted to celebrate YOU!

This has been a big transition year again (I know, don’t give me that face…) but I know that I’m on the right track to finding what is really important to me and my business. 30 is going to be the best year yet!

This year to celebrate you and give something back for all of your support over the past three years, I’m going to be offering a 30% discount on my ebook, The Chocolate Banana Workbook !

The special discount code, which is only good until July 4th, is “30ROCKS” (no quotes). 

You can buy the workbook right from my site - just enter “30ROCKS“ (no quotes) when you’re at your shopping cart! Super Easy!

Once you put the discount code in you’ll need to update the cart to see your new total. The price will drop to either $32.90(just the ebook) or $102.90(ebook and followup call) and you’ll get the workbook as a download in your email immediately after your purchase!

PS: Remember this offer is only good through July 4th so make sure you don’t miss out on the awesomeness!

What’s a Facebook Group?

Facebook groups are kind of like little forums that are housed within Facebook. Unlike Pages, you can create a closed group where you need to approve every new person that wants to join the group OR you can create a secret group where only you and your members will see your group and your posts. You can also have an open group but in my opinion it would just be better to create a Page instead if you want everyone to be able to join.

Ok, but why do I need one?

There are a lot of great reasons to be a part of a Facebook group; family, business, personal, nerding out about Star Trek… Even if we just focus on business you can use it for networking, masterminds, event collaboration and even private groups as part of a product line. We’ll get into some of these reasons more in depth in a future blog post.

Setting up Your Group

In the left hand sidebar of your Facebook dashboard you’ll see a listing of all of your groups that you are a part of right now. To create a new one, click on the link that says “Create Group…”

Now a popup will appear for you to add your group’s details.

TaDa!

Now you have a group! What? You were expecting it to be hard?

There are some additional customizing things you can do like adding some info to the About, Events, Photos and Doc Tabs but that’s all optional. To update any of these areas you just click on the tab you want to add or upload info to:

About – Add a description and see who your members are

Events – See current events and create new events

Photos – See current photos and upload new photos and photo albums

Docs – Create some docs for your group to add content to or just view

Cover Photo - You can also update the “cover photo”, even though Facebook kind of hides this option, by hovering over the photos of the group members you’ll see an icon pop up that will give you the option to upload an image (dimensions are 801 x 250 px).

Some notes about setting up your Group:

• You can change the Name, icon and Privacy settings even after creating the group so don’t freak out if you make a mistake here.
• Facebook requires you to add at least one person to your group to start it up. This mean that you may want to have a list of friends to add before creating the page. [Or a really understanding friend who is your guinea pig for your new group as you play around with it.]

My Favorite Businessy Books
(in no particular order) 

Do the Work – Steven Pressfield

War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles – Steven Pressfield

The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) – Chris Hardwick

Style Statement: Live by Your Own Design – Danielle LaPorte

The Fire Starter Sessions: A Soulful + Practical Guide to Creating Success on Your Own Terms – Danielle LaPorte

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life – Steve Martin

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income – Darren Rowse

UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging – Scott Stratten

What did I miss?
What are some of your favorite “businessy books” that you keep on your bookshelf?

This post originally aired on When I Grow Up as part of  The Recession is Bullhonkey series, where Michelle shares stories of those who have gotten hired and/or started their own businesses (or sometimes both!) since 2008. 

Back in 2009 when I started my virtual assistant business, Your Creative Ally, the economy was just about to launch into full swing “awesomeness” [note the sarcasm]. I started my business basically because I realized I wasn’t the stay at home mom type and really needed a job to put some of my energy into and help people the best way I knew how. Now for me that meant I started out with very low expectations and was not planning on bringing in truck loads of money. I basically just wanted to make enough money to pay my monthly student loan and credit card payments along with my World of Warcraft subscription. [Yes, that was a necessary part of my monthly budget.]

Let’s jump to 2010.

In 2010 the economy was in full “awesomeness” swing and my husband’s employer really got hit hard. My husband works at a steel mill so when the car companies stopped needing steel and companies couldn’t afford to put up big steel buildings, the steel mill started laying people off work. My husband was one of the last people to get laid off but it happened, and it sucked. Thankfully he was able to get unemployment but that wasn’t enough to help with everything we needed to pay.

WAHM to the rescue.

We knew ahead of time that my husband was probably going to be getting laid off sooner or later so I started networking and building up my contacts so that when the notice finally did come down I had several clients that were able to give me some extra hours. Thankfully, the recession seemed to help, not hurt, my business so not only was I able to pay my personal bills but I was also able to help pay the mortgage!

I am by no means saying that my business saved the day and brought in the same kind of money that my husband was bringing in, but it was a big help. Thankfully my husband was only laid off for 4 months so we were in a much better position than many other people. I do know, though, that if we hadn’t had my income we would have been in some serious trouble. Even in the years since his lay off I have been able to help out again when my husband’s hours were knocked back as well as when we had unexpected car and medical bills that needed to be payed. My little business, that wasn’t supposed to make any real money, has turned into a near second income that has made a world of difference for my family.

I’ve also come to realize that any little bit helps and if you keep a good network of people around you great support, and business opportunities, will most likely be there when you need them!

I heart ToDoist

ToDoist is my new favorite task manager! It’s super simple to use and integrates with Gmail, Google Chrome and there’s even an app for my Android phone!

You can create as many projects as you want as well as adding projects under projects for even more organization!

and then create tasks under each project!

You can even reorder the tasks once you create them!

You cancreate recurring tasks by adding specific wording to the due date field!

The best feature for me is the Chrome/Gmail integration! You can use the Chrome extension to create tasks from current emails that are open in Gmail OR even create tasks from current websites your on!

This is unbelievably helpful for me because a lot of my todos come from emails from clients, so now I can create todos directly from my Gmail and then archive the email for later! [Inbox Zero! SCORE!] Then, when I want to go in and complete the task I can just click on the task link in ToDoist and it will open the email message in my Gmail! It’s like magic! I get a lot of ideas and tasks from websites as well (registrations, blog post ideas) so this allows me to go back and find those sites instantly just by looking in my task list!

There’s a free version and a premium version that costs $29/year (which feels like a steal to me for all the awesomeness this tool gives you). The free version is really great but the premium versions allows you to add notes to your tasks and allows you to add reminders (email and/or text messages) and more! If you recruit others to try it out you can get up to 6 free months of premium membership! *cough* affiliate link *cough*

WeDoist

I also discovered that they have a project management for teams as well called WeDoist. I only just signed up for it but it seems to have the same super simple usage that ToDoist has with some extra features for teams. The free version allows you to have up to 3 users in a project but no extra features (storage, chat logs, real time search) but the upgraded packages allow unlimited team members and lots of upgrades.

The Pro version is $5 per month but that only upgrades ONE project. This could be great if you just want team members to help with certain projects as opposed to all of your working projects, but it could be a bummer if you need to upgrade a lot of projects. For those instances where you want to upgrade the whole shebang they have a Premium upgrade that is $24 per month and allows you to upgrade all of your projects.

Not everyone needs the team function of WeDoist but I wanted to make sure you knew it was an option!

Hopefully this little run through has gotten you interested in organizing your ToDos and tasks! Make sure to let me know if you try it out or add what your favorite task lists are in the comments below!

If you aren’t familiar with Pinterest, it is a site that allows you to create virtual cork boards where you can “pin” images. You can create different boards for different categories and share your pins with other Pinterest users. Pinterest has been around for months but now that Facebook has an app that allows you to publish your pins to your wall the Pinterest buzz has really started. [Oh and it's completely addictive...]

Who’s right? Let’s break it down…

Pinterest is Good!

Word of mouth, or in this case shares of pics, is a great way to market your art.

Giving things away for free is sometimes the best way to attract customers in the long run. Treat your art like crack, the first taste is free but if you want the reallygood stuff you need to pay for it!

You will more than likely have the “DIYers” out there who see your jewelry or your artwork or your crafty awesomeness and think to themselves, “I can totally do that!” My advice is to let them try and let them fail becauseif your work is top notch awesomeness they will never be able to replicate it. Most of the time they’ll even end up coming back to you for the original!

Pinterest BAD!

[You have to read that in the Hulk voice to get the full effect]

All of this lovey dovey “giving it away for free” stuff is great but what about the people who just want to steal your pics and ideas?

One of the biggest reasons I’ve heard to justify the fact that Pinterest sucks, is that by allowing people to share your artwork or photos of your artwork it will create an armies of copycats. Having a site that is so full of nicely organized photos and ideas could allow anyone to find ideas and recreate them as their own.

There are tons of ways for people to take your ideas and make them their own with or without Pinterest.There are ways to combat this issue though:

• Make sure your art is SO unique that it will be next to impossible to replicate.
• Utilize watermarks or even simply adding your name or your company name to the photo somewhere.
• If you host photos of your work on your website, disable the “right-click” feature or create a Flash or Javascript slide show that does not allow downloading.
• Learn about how to copyright your process or your images. I’m not a lawyer but I would imagine a good copyright lawyer would be able to give you some great tips on how to keep your artwork safe.

For me, I love Pinterest for the ease of use and for organizing all of the great ideas and photos I find online. I work better by searching through photos as opposed to a list of bookmarks so it works out perfectly for me. I mostly pin items for blog post ideas, crafting ideas, inspiration , dream home ideas and dream wardrobe ideas.  If you’re on there be sure to follow me to see some crazy awesome stuff! [If you don't have an account you'll need to request an invite. I think it took only a few days for me to get my invitation so don't worry about not getting in right away, you'll be addicted soon....]

• How do you use Pinterest?
• What are you thoughts about it’s evilness?

Today several large websites including Wikipedia, Wired.com and Craigslist thousands more have blacked out their websites in protest of the SOPA and PIPA bills that are making their way through congress right now.

In a nutshell, SOPA and PIPA are two bills that are trying to stop the piracy of copyrighted material (images, music, movies) which in theory is a good thing. You know what else works in theory, Communism…

Pirating music and movies is bad. We all know that, but with these two bills simple pictures, silly animated gifs and user created videos could put an entire site at risk of being blacklisted.

Why should you care

If these two bills are allowed to pass, sites with user submitted content would be at risk of being flagged as piracy. The result would be the loss of PayPal and other payment processors for the site as well as no search engine activity at all. Basically, sites like YouTube and Facebook would be deemed illegal and could be shut down completely.

Additionally, if you have comments on your site or if you have a forum attached to your site you could very well be held responsible for anything that your users add. For smaller sites this could be doable with minimum effort but for larger sites with hundreds of users this could be a full time job.

How you can help

Contact your representatives and senators and let them know your concerns about the bills. These bills have already been controversial so anything you can do to help push back against them would be great! Wikipedia has a great site to help you find your representatives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CongressLookup

If you still don’t understand the bills head on over to The Oatmeal. He’s blacked out his site and created an AWESOME animated GIF that explains the issues perfectly! : )

In case you haven’t heard, this is your year to shine and be awesome and create amazing awesomeness (at least that’s what my Facebook and Twitter feeds are telling me…)

This year I’m doing something a bit different from my previous years (check out my posts for 2010 and 2011 here and here) and focus more on organizing my goal follow through. I’ve done really well at following through with my goals for each year but I have a lot of specific things I want to get done by specific times this year so I thought a more organized approach might be helpful.

Goal Binder

This year instead of a shiny new planner or a fancy task list app, I created a Goal Binder from scratch with paper and markers!

What you’ll need:

Binder - I used a half sized binder but you could use a full sized one too
Paper - lined or blank, whichever you like writing on best
Colored paper or Colorful dividers – I used colorful cardstock that i had laying around but you could always just buy some pre-made dividers
Hole punch
Markers, colored pencils or crayons – Color and/or write with them to liven up your pages! (I have no idea why I have markers with my maiden name writen on them but they make me feel nostolgic everytime I use them.)

I started off by creating tabs for each month with the colored cardstock. For my half sized binder that meant cutting the cardstock in half and then punching holes.

Then I added some sheets of paper with each month that will track my Goal Focus for the month, Important Dates Blog Post ideas and Money/Mileage Tracking. You can chose to track whatever you want here or you could create a traditional daily planner type setup. Whatever will keep you motivated and keep you on track.

Then I created some additional cards for my main focus or Vision cards. I chose to just draw and write out my intentions/goals for the year but you could cut out magazine images or draw pictures of your goals too! Whatever gets you excited, do that!

I created 4 cards for my main focuses this year; Me Time, Spirit, Business and Family. You might end up with just one main focus card or you might create more than four! Again, just remember this is for YOU to follow so make something that YOU like and don’t think about the right way to do it, because there isn’t a right way to create you own goals!

I realized at the end of creating my cards that I had a distinct theme for each of my main focuses so I created one final card that listed my themes all together that I could glance at and remember what was really important for me this year. I ended up putting this card on the back sleeve of the binder!

That’s it! Nothing super extraordinary but I’m really hoping it will have the right combination of structure and creative freedom to keep me motivated to stick with it for 2012. I may end up changing things around but that’s the beauty of using a binder because you can always take pages out and add pages in!

• What are you goal plans for this year?
• How are you planning on tracking your progress on your resolutions/goals for 2012?

PS: Don’t forget to check out the new Chocolate Banana website and sign up to get on the VIP list for updates and discounts on all the planning goodness!

PPS:Don’t know what a Chocolate Banana is? Click HERE for all the delicious information!

Today is the start of my holiday vacation (YES!!!) and I wanted to give you all some good cheer and happy thoughts as we all celebrate the season of joy and light.

You are all special and fantastic.
(yes, even you)

Remember that even if you don’t see yourself as such, someone else out there is thinking the world of you. Make them proud by being the best you that you can be each day.

Take some time to really think about what others see in you. What do they love about your personality? What is the one thing you always get praised about? Taking an honest look at ourselves though someone elses eyes can sometime help us see how wonderful we truly are.

Your ideas and thoughts are creations waiting to be unleashed.

Want to climb a mountain? Want to record an album? Want to write your memoirs for your grandchildren to read? Hold on to your crazy plans because you never know when you might actually be able to make them a reality.

That’s the core idea behind Your Chocolate Banana. We’ve been having a great time this month discussing the steps to making your big exciting plans come to life and in January I’ll be launching the companion workbook! If you’re ready to get your crazy awesome idea rolling be sure to get on the preview list to get access before anyone else and to receive discounts on the workbook and other products!

Stop saying you CAN’T and find ways that you CAN.

Excuses are just ways for our lizard brains to tell us “Oh this sounds scary, better not try it.” I urge you to push through your apprehensions and TRY. Make your time to write a priority. Do the research to decide if you truly need a degree to start your business. Yes, you may fail but what is life but a series of failures and happy accidents? You’ll feel better for having tried rather than never even giving it a chance to succeed.

Remember what is truly important in your life

If you’re anything like me you tend to be a workaholic and tend to get your priorities out of wack on at least a few occasions. Take some time this holiday seaeson to really decide what is the priority for your life, your business and for your family.

My daughter is now, and will always be, my priority so rearranging my business and my life needs to happen to make sure she is happy and taken care of, even if it cuts into my Facebook and WOW time (and now I’m loving Skyrim and Assassin’s Creed too… so many awesome games, so little time…)

Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah to all of you and I hope you all see yourselves the way I do, as awesome sauce. : )