Putting your focus on profit doesn’t make you a Ferengi. It is a necessary part of the business world. When you have a j-o-b, someone else is responsible for marketing, office space, administration and designing a business plan. You show up, do your job and get paid for your time.

But when you own your own business, even if you have employees, you are ultimately responsible for every part of your business. That’s why you charge a higher hourly rate than you would if you worked for someone else. Very few entrepreneurs bill 40 hours per week.

But in spite of this, many entrepreneurs have an uneasy relationship with money. And it is a relationship, as I was reminded by Iyabo Asani in a teleseminar I attended last night. In this teleseminar she said that money represents an exchange of energy. You provide a services (expend energy) and the customer gives you money in exchange.

However, if you have a problem relationship with money, it spills over into other parts of your business life. If you always feel there is never enough money, then it is often because you lack value in yourself. This can manifest itself in a lack of clients or in attracting clients who can’t or won’t pay what you’re worth.

What Iyabo said made a lot of sense to me. I know in my own life, my relationship with money hasn’t always run smooth. I don’t come from an entrepreneurial background so making money isn’t always seen as a good thing. This makes for some interesting thought processes when you’re in business, let me tell you.

However, when I focus on money, when I focus on cleaning up my relationship with money, things improve.

How? A few years ago, I was attracting people who didn’t want to pay. They didn’t truly value my services yet they claimed the wanted to hire me. On more than one occasion I allowed myself to be talked into working for a reduced rate. Then the client kept adding more work.

The worst situation came when I was hired for what I thought would be an exciting project; something I had never done before. However, in the back of my mind there was a red danger flag waving franticly at me. But I ignored it. As a result, I was talked into cutting my rate in half. Then, a job that should have taken hardly more than a week ended up taking 8 weeks of my time, full time, and netted me less than $1,000.

After that experience I decided to get smarter. I wrote out a detailed description of my ideal client. This description included someone who truly valued what I offered and would readily and happily pay my full fee.

The result, it worked. I began getting better clients, clients who could and would pay me, happily and on time.

This happened because I knew what I was looking for. I was determined to never again be taken advantage of by others. I became more confident in quoting my fees. Clients sensed that and were less likely to try to get me at a discount.

Second, by focusing on what I truly wanted, the Law of Attraction could come into play. I know it sounds “woo woo” but when you know what you want and put it in writing, it has a way of showing up.

If you have an uneasy relationship with money, don’t bury your head in the sand. Look closely at it. It’s only once you deal with your money demons that things can improve.

Andrea J. Stenberg

This teleseminar I attended with Iyabo was part of the Masters of Client Attraction telesumit being presented by my colleagues Scott Shane Holt and Janice Wright. The list of speakers they have lined up is impressive. The Telesumit runs until April 12^th. If you’d like to attend free, here’s the link http://tinyurl.com/ajsMOCA.

Yes, that is an affiliate link. Yes, if you upgrade to one of the paid versions of the Telesumit I’ll get a commission. But we’re all in business, so you won’t mind. After all, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you should know I wouldn’t recommend anything I didn’t truly believe in.

Whatever the weather where you are, why not take a moment to sample some of the blog posts by the members of the Blogging Boomers Carnival. This weekly collection of the best posts by an eclectic mix of baby boomer bloggers is bound to include something of interest to you.

So head on over to this week’s host, the Midlife Crisis Queen, and read what’s being offered this week.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Oh, it’s not like I nap every day. If you call me at 2 p.m. and I don’t answer, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m in snoozville. It’s much more likely that I’m taking a late lunch or I can’t locate the cordless phone.

But the truth is, at least a few times a month, I will lay down after lunch and sleep.

How did this happen? It’s not like I’ve always been a napper. I can even remember in kindergarten (yes, waaaaaaaaay back then) laying on the floor and wishing “nap time” would hurry up and finish so I could get on with things.

So if at the ripe old age of five I was able to make it through the afternoon, why can’t I now?

There’s a couple of things at play. First, it is not at all uncommon for me to be sitting at my computer by 4 a.m. In fact, I prefer days when I get up that early. Think of it: I can have three and a half hours of work done before I even wake my son up for school. By noon, I’ve put in a full day. If I want to take the afternoon off and watch a movie, read a trashy novel, or even take a nap, I can easily do it without feeling guilty.

And if I work until my son gets home at 3:30 I can really get a lot accomplished.

Now it’s not as if I set my alarm for 4 a.m. and force myself out of bed. Far from it. My alarm is usually set for 6. However, very frequently I wake up a 4 a.m. And it’s not one of those groggy, peer at the clock, get up, stumble to the bathroom and then decide whether or not to go back to sleep. Most days when I wake up at 4 I’m wide awake. If I resist and try to stay in bed, sleep won’t come. Over time, I’ve learned when I wake up at 4, I might as well get up.

However, the 4 a.m. mornings are not usually the days I nap. Yes, if I’ve had a late night the night before, I may drop off after lunch. Particularly if I decide to turn on the television and then close my eyes for “just a moment”.

However, the real reason I’m a napper is the 3 a.m. mornings. It doesn’t happen to me often, but occasionally I’ll wake up, bright-eyed and bushy tailed at three.

Those are rough mornings. At 3 a.m. I have a tough decision to make. If I wake up at three I can usually go back to sleep again, but it usually takes me a couple of hours. Then, when my alarm goes off at 6, I’m in trouble. I’ll be right in the middle of a REM cycle. It doesn’t matter how much coffee I drink or how long I stand in the shower, I’m going to be wrecked for the entire day. Nothing truly productive will get done because I will be in a fog all day.

But getting up at 3 a.m. isn’t much better. True, I will get work done before 7:30 – a lot of work in fact – but by noon I’m a waste case. I’m exhausted, can’t think, can barely keep my eyes open. And if I have any plans for the evening, I’d better cancel because I can’t make it past 7 p.m.

At least, until I rediscovered naps. Now on those rare occasions when my eyes pop open at three and I know I’m not falling back asleep I can get out of bed without fear. I’ll work until late morning, have an early lunch then, when most people are just figuring out where to go for lunch, I’m back in bed for a couple of extra hours of sleep. Then, when I get up I’m a functioning human being again. I can teach a workshop, host a teleseminar or even have a night out with the girls, even if the event runs later than 7 p.m. All because of the little nap.

So, there’s my dirty little secret. Not terribly corporate I know. But like they say, when you work for yourself, you’re free to work any 80 hours of the week you choose. Some days I just don’t choose to work between noon and 2 p.m.

Andrea J. Stenberg

What’s your dirty little secret for getting through the day or the week? What perks do you give yourself to make up for the sometimes long hours that are involved with being an entrepreneur? Please leave a comment and share your story.

As a business owner, a blogger, and an information junkie, I often scour the internet looking for information that will help me run my business or help me help my clients and readers run theirs. When I found something interesting I would usually be offered an invitation to subscribe to an email newsletter or blog feed via email. I usually accepted that offer.

While this had the benefit of keeping me informed about new content, it had a very big downside. My inbox was getting filled with emails that were not written for me alone. I was getting hundreds of emails a day. Emails that required a response or an action from me were getting lost in the noise.

To solve that problem I gradually started switching all my subscriptions to my Gmail account. This helped at first because it did start clearing up my inbox. But that wasn’t really working either. First of all, now I had two places to access mail. To access my Gmail account I had to log in and read it from my web browser. It just wasn’t a part of my daily routine, so I wasn’t logging in.

This led to a new problem. Because I wasn’t logging into my Gmail account regularly, I started re-subscribing with my main email address to feeds and newsletters that were very important to me. Now I was getting them in two places. Arrrrrrrrrgh!

Next I tried RSS. RSS is that little orange button you see in the upper left of this blog. If you subscribe using that button and use a feed reader (which is how you access your RSS subscriptions) you get updated whenever I write a new blog post. No more inbox.

The problem with that is I’d never had any real success with RSS readers before. I’d tried using the feed reader function of the Flock web browser but found that I had so many feeds it was slowing the browser down to a crawl.

Then I started using Google Reader. Instead of having everything go into my Gmail account, I could have my subscriptions go into Reader.

And because the data is on Google and not downloaded into my browser as with Flock, it wouldn’t slow everything to a crawl.

However, I found Reader annoying to use. First of all, it’s ugly! Really, really ugly. I hate looking at it.

Second, I found it not very user-friendly. The column on the left lists all the sites I’ve subscribed to with a number beside each website telling me how many new posts are there. The problem is, until I click on the name of the website and Reader opens a page for that site, I can’t see what the new content is. Just because I subscribed to the feed doesn’t mean I’ll read everything there.

Because of this need to click to see what the headlines are for each of the sites on top of the ugliness factor, I found I wasn’t using Reader very often either. It seemed to take too long. I couldn’t see at a glance what was new so I just didn’t use the tool.

Back to filling up my inbox.

Until I went to Podcamp Toronto. There I attended a session called “Hacking Your Workflow”. Session leader Leona Hobbs shared some of her favourite technology tools: Feedly. Feedly is a plug-in for the web browser Firefox. Once installed, it works with your Google Reader subscriptions to make a magazine-like page of your subscriptions. It makes it pretty!

The “cover” page is created with random bits of the latest items from your subscriptions.

Like a print magazine, the layout is a mix of shapes, sizes and has images. Not only can you see the title of the article and the blog it came from, you also see the first line of the post. Finally, I can see at a glance whether there is something I want to read.

Even better, each subscription can be tagged with one or more keywords. Then if I want to see feeds that are related to that keyword, I can choose it from the list on the side and suddenly Feedly is giving me only those sites that I’ve tagged with that keyword.

I can also share with Twitter and Facebook right from Feedly. I can save individual articles that I want red flagged for rereading later. I can import my Google Alerts.

All I can say is I’m in love with Feedly!

I am now reading more relevant content than ever before and my inbox is marvellously empty.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Are you using RSS? How do you access it? Leave a comment and share your favourite tool.

This week’s carnival covers office romance, hiding your age, career change, a four-month backpacking trip and more. Please join us, read the posts and leave a comment or two if the mood strikes.

Andrea J. Stenberg

1. Choose Your Sessions

Unlike some conferences, at Podcamp you didn’t have to register for individual sessions ahead of time. Even so, I spend a good bit of time looking over the sessions and the speakers. Before I got there I had a list I really wanted to attend.

However, I didn’t carve that list in stone. I know from past experience that sometimes the best sessions are not the ones I was expecting. So I kept my ears open. There were a couple of sessions I attended solely because some else said the speaker rocked. In each case, they were right. Being flexible about the sessions made for a better weekend.

2. Plan Who To Meet

Registration for Podcamp is public – you name goes on a wiki when you register. There was also a LinkedIn group and Twitter hash tags for the event. In spite of this, I didn’t see anyone who I really felt I needed to meet.

However, I didn’t just throw up my hands. I decided one of my goals for the weekend was to meet five interesting people who I would want to contact later and continue the conversations we had.

Setting this goal was very important for me. Although many people who know me personally may not realize this, I’m actually very shy. My natural inclination is to sit in the back of the room and not speak to anyone unless they speak first.

But setting this goal of people to meet forced me out of my shell. Whenever I sat next to someone, if they looked at all friendly, I started talking: about the speaker, about the weekend, about the weather. It didn’t really matter, it was just to start the connection.

The net result, I have eight people I want to keep in touch with. Not only that, one of those people has already contacted me.

3. Go with a Friend

While attending on your own is okay, going with a partner is even better. There were several times during the weekend when there were sessions occurring simultaneously that I wanted to attend. Going with my friend meant we could see more sessions and compare notes later.

I also got to meet more people than I would have on my own. My friend ran into a couple of women she knew from social media and introduced me. I was able to introduce her to others as well. Being a tag-team meant we could get more out of the weekend.

4. Be Social

Most conferences have some sort of social event – cocktail hour, drinks in the pub, a coffee corner. Go to them! This is usually where the best networking takes place. You can sit down and have a longer conversation than you can between sessions. And because these parts of the conference involve food and drink, everyone is more relaxed. There is something innately human about connecting over a meal.

Remember my comment about being shy? Social events are where having a buddy can really help. I might not (probably not) have attended on my own, but for us shy types, there is strength in numbers. It’s a lot easier to join a group having a conversation when you’re not on your own.

Additionally, because we each have different interests and met different people during the day, we were able to introduce each other to new people in the evening.

5. Implement

While there are many reasons to attend a conference, learning something is usually a main one. But sitting in a lecture or workshop doesn’t do you any good if all you do is take notes. When you get home you need to actually implement some of what you learned.

You don’t have to do it all at once. In fact, you may need a few days just to process what you learned. Reread your notes, debrief with your conference buddy, monitor the conference hash tags to see what others thought, write a blog post. It doesn’t matter what you do, just make sure you spend some time to absorb the material.

Once you’ve decompressed, pick the best and add them to your business. Even if it’s only one or two things, commit to implementing them. It could be adding a new plug-in for your web browser or it could be an entirely new marketing system. It doesn’t matter. Just pick one and vow to add it to what you do. You spent the time and money to attend the conference. Get some ROI on that investment.

6. Follow Up

If you collected some business cards from some interesting people, don’t let them gather dust in the corner of your office. Plan to spend some time in the first few days after you get home connecting. At the very minimum, follow everyone you met on Twitter. If they were interesting enough for you to grab their business card or write down their Twitter I.D., surely they’re worth following on Twitter.

Next, visit their website. Find out a little more about who they are and what they do. You don’t need to check out everyone, just the handful you know you want to stay in touch with.

Finally, in the first week after the conference, make that first real connection. Send them an email, invite them to connect on LinkedIn or pick up the phone. It doesn’t matter. If you had one real conversation with this person make the first move. Trust me, so few people do it, you’ll stand out from the crowd.

Of course, I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will just in case. Don’t send them a sales pitch. Just a brief “nice to meet you”, a reminder of what you talked about and maybe a link to a resource or blog post (by someone else) you think they might find helpful. You started a conversation at the conference. Now you’re trying to keep it going. Later, once they’ve had time to really get to know, like and trust you, is when you can move on to the sales conversation.

If you follow my conference plan, you should get a lot of value out of the next event you attend.

Andrea J. Stenberg

Have you been to a conference lately? What did you take home from the event? How did you ensure to meet the right people? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

For your Monday morning break, head on over to It’s All About Aging – this week’s host – and sample some of this week’s Carnival. And while you’re reading, don’t forget to put the social in “social media”. Leave a comment, send a link to your friends or Tweet about your favorite articles.

Andrea J. Stenberg

One of the greatest challenges many people face in business and in their personal lives is that there never seems to be enough time to accomplish everything they need to do, let alone finding time for things they want to do! They look with envy at those who are able to successfully fit work, family, personal, and other activities into their lives. The reality is that we all have the same 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year – it’s how we choose to spend that time that makes all the difference.

In order to develop a time management system that will be effective for you, it’s helpful to start with some formal or informal assessments to help you compare the way you are currently living your life with the way you would like it to be. Identify the obstacles that are preventing you from managing your time effectively. Become aware of your biological rhythms to determine what type of activity you do best in the morning, afternoon, evening, and late at night. Explore your personality type preferences, and the way they affect the way you perceive and deal with time.

Depending on your specific challenges, some of the following strategies may help you to achieve your goals:

• Organize your space and paper so you don’t waste time looking for what you need.
• Eliminate interruptions by closing your office door and letting telephone calls go to voice mail.
• Be prepared with reading material or small tasks you can complete while waiting for people or in line.
• Get tasks you find distasteful or overwhelming out of the way first. Better yet, consider delegating them to someone else.
• Set personal and professional goals to help you identify your priorities.
• Learn to say “no” and to focus on what’s important to achieving your goals.
• Find a calendar system you’re comfortable with, and use it for all your activities.
• Build flexibility into your schedule to accommodate the unexpected.

Don’t try to do all of these things at once! Changes to the way you manage your time should be implemented one at a time. Just like any other life changes, if you try to make too many at one time, you’re apt to get overwhelmed and discouraged.

Effective time management doesn’t happen overnight, but by determining what changes are needed and incorporating them into your lifestyle, you can take control of your time, instead of letting it control you.

Janet Barclay, Organized Assistant, offers a variety of professional quality services to support entrepreneurs and other individuals who are overwhelmed by the demands and technology of the 21st century. For further information or to request a subscription to her monthly ezine, The Organized Assistant Resource, please visit her website at http://www.organizedassistant.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Janet_Barclay
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While the entire podcast was interesting – as always – there was one section in particular that stood out. Godin said, “real artists ship.”

By artists, he didn’t necessarily mean people who put paint on canvas. He broadened the term to mean anyone who is creative and bringing something new to the market, in particular entrepreneurs. What he really meant is successful entrepreneurs finish what they start and bring new products (or services) to market. They don’t spend forever making it perfect. They get it close enough, then release it.

During the interview they discussed a few well-known cases of companies taking forever to get a new product to market. In some cases, they never quite manage to release.

This got me to thinking about my own business and the businesses of other people I know. There have been several times where I’ve had great ideas, created a plan and started work on a brilliant new product. And then something that should have taken me one or two months to complete, drags on for many, many more months. By the time I finally finish it I’ve either lost interest, or someone else has beaten me to the punch.

And it’s not just me. I see it all the time in other people. I have a friend who is a very talented alternative health practitioner. She is kind, caring, and really knows her stuff. We’ve formed an unlikely partnership in the past to create some wonderful workshops together.

But her real dream is to have a full time practice. We spend many hours brainstorming ways she could market herself to attract new clients to her practice. I helped her create a marketing plan. Some of her marketing ideas were truly innovative.

But she never quite got off the ground. There was always a reason why she wasn’t ready to promote the next workshop or approach a complimentary business for joint ventures.  Her website wasn’t quite perfect, her office space wasn’t nice enough, she didn’t have enough names to contact. It didn’t really matter. The net result is she never got around to pursuing those opportunities and now she’s back working full time in a career she isn’t passionate about.

And yet the other day while at my chiropractor’s I noticed someone else with the exact same type of practice as my friend was implementing all the ideas we had come up with. She had partnered with my chiropractor, was running workshops and building a practice. This other woman was living my friend’s dream.

Now, I’m writing about my friend’s lack of ability to ship because let’s face it, it’s always easier to see where other people are going wrong than to look objectively at myself. But I do it too.

I’ve resisted posting a list of consulting services on my site for over a year now. Why? As I write this I can’t think of one good reason why it’s taken me this long. And yet here it is, a year later and people who visit my site can’t find a way to hire me. Dumb!

And to add insult to injury, I’ve had several people ask when I’m running courses again; both ones I’ve run in the past and new ones that have been on the drawing board. But I haven’t set a date.

So, dear readers, I have a challenge for us both. Let’s commit to being true artists for the rest of 2010. We will complete those projects that are on the drawing board. We will release them to the world to see if they sell. We will promote our asses off to sell these new products and services. And we will go one better. Regardless of whether these new products and services are wildly successful or fall flat, we will continue to create new and better products, while learning from our past efforts.

Andrea J. Stenberg

But for the longest time, winter stretched on without end between New Year’s and the March Break. And if you don’t have kids, or can’t the week off, everyone was stuck going without an extra day off until Easter.

Canadians began lobbying for a February break; a long weekend to brighten up our interminable winter. A few years ago, the government decided to give in and create such a holiday. The push from my region to make the holiday on Groundhog Day fell on deaf ears. Guess the feds aren’t fans of Wiarton Willie. However, they did decide on lame-sounding, but hard to find offense with, Family Day.

So welcome to the Family Day edition of the Blogging Boomers Carnival. This collection of Baby Boomers who blog about life, the universe and everything is the longest running blog carnival by baby boomers.

This week’s host are the lovely ladies at Fabulous After 40. The Glam Gals, Deborah Boland and JoJami Tyler, are image and style experts, who help women over 40 look and feel fabulous.

This week’s topics include Academy Award fashion, going for your dreams, driveaway companies, lying on LinkedIn, retirement, family reunions and more. Please visit the carnival, read the posts and feel free to join the conversation by leaving a comment or two.

Andrea J. Stenberg