Business Mums Magazine

I’ve decided that every Wednesday I’ll share “Wednesday Wisdom”. These are quotes and tips that I find inspiring and motivating. I’ll share the quote and why I like it.

So here goes with the first one:

“Jump, you might fly”

I heard this on some reality TV show, I can’t remember who said it, but it struck a chord with me and I wrote it on my fridge. To me this means to give things a try. In busines it’s a sign to start, you never know where you’ll end up and you just might fly and be a huge success.

Often what is needed to succeed it to start. So, jump, you might fly.

As some of you will already know, I participate in the Blog Whammy program.

This week, this blog is being “Whammy’d”. You can see the whammy post here. This is a great way to Spread the Word about the Business Mums Magazine as it is encouraging others to blog both about this blog, but also about the magazine itself.

See how easy it is to Spread the Word about the Business Mums Magazine?

For more details about our Spread the Word competition, click here. Don’t forget to enter as there are some great prizes to be won.

There are many business mums who have free downloadable colouring sheets on their sites as a promotion and value add for their visitors, especially if they have products for families.

These are great for a number of reasons:

• parents/kids will use them
• each sheet has the business branding on them, so whenever someone sees the sheet, they will see the branding of the business
• if kids do a good job colouring, then parents are likely to put them on display somewhere in the house, thus reinforcing branding of the business

The other thing with most of these businesses is they have come up with images and characters for their businesses, rather than using readily available images, so the kids are colouring in something new.

I have also found them useful because I supply colouring sheets at Business Mums Network events to keep little ones busy. Where possible, I use ones that I can print off from business mums websites, and I’m sure none of them have any objections to me using them in this way.

A couple of sites where you can find free colouring sheets, either to print off for your kids or to give you some ideas, are:

• Precious Water
• Haggus and Stookles

There are more, however I can’t put my hands on the links at the moment.

If you want to add some free colouring pages to your site, either create the images yourself or invest in a designer to create colouring sheets for you.

With two boys having birthdays around Christmas time (one on 18th December, the other on 14th January), I try and get ideas early.

I was browsing the Piktorize site and on her blog, Olivia is showing off her new range of photo ornaments. These are a great idea for parents and grandparents. As business owners they could also be a great gift for clients, and not necessarily with your photo on them!

If you have a photo competition, you could get an ornament done with the photo of the winner and give it to them as a gift. You could put your logo on them and send them to valued clients, or even a photo of some of your products or your shop. There are heaps of ideas from these ornaments. The biggest challenge will be choosing what to put on them!

First, please excuse any typo’s in this post. I hurt my left hand today while dancing to Veggie Tales with Zac. I whacked it so hard on a door frame that I felt sick! My poor fingers are now covered in band aids and it makes typing rather challenging at times!

As most who know me know, I love hearing the story behind the business or product created by business mums. They are fascinating, and I’m always on the look out for stories to feature in the magazine. Annette Piper shares many of the stories behind her jewellery on her blog. Almost every post has a photo of one piece of jewellery. I love the story behind her latest piece of featured jewellery. You can read about it here. It is a great example of turning a mistake or a difficult situation around. It is a beautiful necklace and I’m sure the owner loves it too.

When you are blogging about your business, share the story behind your products and services. Why did you choose a product or start your service. You never know who is reading it

Olivia from Piktorize tagged me today with a 7 things tag. I need to share 7 things you may not know about me, then tag 7 others. So, here goes…

1. I have a yellow teddy bear sitting on my desk. It was a birthday gift from the lovely Lucie of Multimediart, and I’ve been having a hard time keeping it away from my boys!
2. I have a “nanna nap” most days - this helps me have enough energy to get through the day.
3. My favourite movie is “The Court Jester” with Danny Kaye. It’s a really old movie, but still has me in fits of laughter!
4. I couldn’t care less about football! I lived in Geelong for a while, and my family tried to convince me that I would start going for Geelong…. but that didn’t happen. I only keep an eye on Geelong now because my 6 year old is obsessed…. where did I go wrong!
5. When I was in high school, I wanted to edit my own magazine - and now I am!
6. I often joke that my business will send me broke - because of the great products I see business mums producing. I want to buy it all.
7. My family were missionaries in Nepal when I was a kid - Mum & Dad went there with 3 kids, and came back with 4! I’m the eldest.

I hope you’ve found those facts interesting. Now to tag 7 people…

1. Elena of EP Designs
2. Donna-Marie of Small Business Diva
3. Amanda (aka Mad Cow) of Real Mum Real World
4. Ingrid Cliff of Heart Harmony
5. Sally-Ann & Tricia of 2 Good Sorts
6. Anne Maybus of My Day Off
7. Luke & Susie of The Morning Wake Up (this will be a challenge for them…)

We received our first entry to the Spread the Word competition today from Mary-Lou of Groovy Kids Parties.

She has created a promotional video for the magazine and has put it on her site. We have republished it below.

If you can’t see the republished video, you can view it on Mary-Lou’s site here. 

We hope this gives you some ideas for your entry For more information about the Spread the Word competition, click here.

While reading the Pink Heels blog, I came across a post titled “Thank You is Enough“. It contained a great quote:

If the only prayer you said in your whole life

was thank you,

that would suffice.

~ Meister Eckhart

This got me thinking about saying Thank You to the people around us. Especially in business, I find that we forget to say Thank You to those who support us in our business, our customers, suppliers and really anyone else we come in contact with.

As customers, we also often forget to say thank you for great service, great products, and so on.

My challenge to you is to say Thank You to at least one person each day. You may write a testimonial for someone who has given you great service, send a thank you card to someone who has supported you, send a gift to your biggest fan, or whatever.  By saying Thank You to others, it will come back at you in amazing ways.

Yesterday was my birthday. There are many business mums who use their birthday as an opportunity for a promotion. This year, I simply wasn’t organised enough… Here are some ideas to help you if you wanted to use your birthday as a promotion.

• Let everyone know your birthday is on
• During the month of your birthday (or day) you will be running some promotions - “It’s my birthday, but you are getting the presents”
• At the start of the month, let everyone know what the promotions are

Promotions could include:

• Gift with purchase
• Discounts on certain products - highlight them as your favourites
• A different special each day!
• Free gift wrapping
• Free birthday card with each gift (have it blank so your customers can use it)

I’m sure you can come up with some other ideas too.

We’re nearly at the end of another school holidays. I am looking forward to kids getting back to school and kinder on Monday, and I’m sure they are too - they’re getting bored with Mummy!

Six (nearly seven) year old Nat recently learned how to use the laminator - so has been begging me for some laminating to do! I gladly handed him a few papers that needed doing that I had been putting off for ages! I now have some lovely laminated graphs and useful tools on my walls.

Four (nearly five) year old Zac has been shredding for me. Every few days we’ve had to go down to the pet shop with another garbage bag full of shredding! He lives in hope they’ll give him a free pet in exchange for shredded paper…

Having these taks to share with the boys has helped business to run a bit smoother, however there are some tasks that are very hard to do with two little boys wanting to ‘help’.  They are all on my list for Monday!

How have school holidays been going for you? What are some of the tasks your kids have helped you get done?