Running your own small business can be a bumpy road. Many small business owners go through moments were we aren’t sure we can succeed or that we are “enough” (good enough, smart enough, talented enough, etc).

Overcome the confidence crisis! Create your own positivity file. It can be a folder on your computer, a folder on your desk filled with printed papers, a special box, a bulletin board on your office wall, or whatever else you’d like to use. It’s a place where you can keep things that are positive and remind you of your value and accomplishments.

Ideas of what to include:
- Customer comments or testimonials
- Pictures of your favorite projects
- Awards, reviews, etc.
- A profit statement from your best day/month/year in business
- Comments from your colleagues
- Your own notes on projects or clients you feel you made a difference
- Accomplishment journal

If you’ve been in business for a while you probably already have many of these items and will just need to gather them.

If you need help building things to including, here are some suggestions:
- Join LinkedIn or Merchant Circle and invite your clients to leave you reviews
- Send an email to a few of your favorite clients and ask if they’d be willing to write a testimonial for you
- Look back through your project files and find the projects that you enjoyed working on, whether for your own business or in a previous employment position, and include those in your file
- Start an accomplishment journal and write down something positive you accomplished each day — small or big, doesn’t matter, anything that you were successful at will help you boost your confidence

Next time you feel that confidence slipping, allow yourself time to acknowledge the feelings, then pull out the positively file and refocus on the reasons that you have to smile and be confident.

Would you like to republish this article on your website or in your ezine? I’d be honored! Please include this at the end of it with my link:
Work at home mom extraordinaire Michelle Shaeffer publishes The Muses Brainstorm, a weekly ezine with tips to help you balance, manage, and market your home based business. If you’re ready for inspirational guidance and bright ideas sign up free at www.thesmallbusinessmuse.com.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade!

I’ve been awarded the Lemonade Award by Tammy of the ParentZone blog.

Visit Tammy’s blog for articles, healthy recipes, tips and more.

Here is how the Lemonade Award works…
1) You must link back to the person you received the award from.
2) You have to nominate 10 bloggers who are deserving of this award!

So, here are 10 blogs I nominate.

• Organising Queen – http://organisingtips.blogspot.com/
• Create a Thriving Business – http://createathrivingbusiness.com/
• The Savvy Entrepeneur – http://blog.cristinafavreau.com/
• Article Writing & Marketing Tips – http://wahm-articles.com/blog/
• Beneath the Rowan Tree – http://beneaththerowantree.blogspot.com/
• August Afternoon – http://www.augustafternoon.com/blog/
• My Happy Crazy Life – http://myhappycrazylife.com/
• Virtual Freedom 4 U – http://virtualfreedom4you.com/blog/
• My Direct Sales – http://mydirectsales.com/
• Freelance Mom’s Blog – http://freelancemom.com/blog/

Secure passwords are critical if you want to keep your website, your email, your social networking profiles, and everything else online safe.  Here are some free sites where you can generate more secure passwords:

Random.org
http://www.random.org

Password Bird
http://www.passwordbird.com/

PC Tools Password Generator
http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/

** Attention Hyena Cart Work at Home Moms **
Learn How to Get Your Shop Listed in the Search Engines!
Plus, 20 Other Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Hyena Cart

Does this sound like you?

• Do you keep checking the X Shoppers Online to see if you’ve got any new shoppers in your Hyena Cart?
• Do you wonder how to get more shoppers in your cart?
• Do you see other shops getting lots of traffic and wonder how they’re doing it?
• Or, are you successful but looking for more ideas to get even more traffic into your cart?

If so, I can help!

I’ve created Hyena Cart Traffic Tactics to share what I know about SEO (search engine optimization) and other great traffic generating strategies, especially for Hyena Cart work at home moms!

I know, the whole topic of search engine optimization can seem overwhelming because there’s so much conflicting advice and so much jargon—such as keyword density, white hat, black hat, meta tags, and anchor links. The good news is it doesn’t have to be that hard. AND you can get just the information that applies to your Hyena Cart setup!

You don’t have to do this on your own! Let me *show* you (using video of my screen while I go over real Hyena Cart shops–you can even submit your URL to be reviewed free on the call once you’ve signed up) the steps you can take to improve your search engine rankings and get more traffic.

Find out more and get all the details at http://www.themusesguide.com/SEOforHyenaCart.html

Share your Christmas wish.  You never know what might happen!

http://www.wahmtalkradio.com/blog/what-is-your-christmas-wish/

Need a secure, random password?  How about a random list, flip of a coin, or roll of the dice?  Find it free at www.random.org  It’s a quick and easy way to generate password strings of random letters/numbers for better security.  I use the “string generator” feature regularly.  And the coin flipper’s just plain fun to use.  Bookmark it and it’ll be there waiting when you need it.

Vizu offers a simple way to add a poll to your website, blog, or MySpace page.

The basic version is free and simple to use.  Polls can be private or public.

They’ve even got a widget available for you to add polls to your Facebook page.

http://www.vizu.com/index.html

It’s not a good sign. The blue screen of death on my kids PC.  That spinning beachball of doom (sometimes it means just be patient, other times it means Eudora decided to eat my mail… again…) on my Mac.  Oh no!

I’ve got multiple backup drives, and I use them regularly.  But not every night.  My backup drive saves the most important files weekly, but a crash today could mean I’d lose up to 7 days worth of important email and work files.  And the most recent pictures of my kids, too!

A complete crash could spell minor or major disaster for a small business owner who stores everything from email and website files to financial records to client projects to virtual product files on the computer.  If you only do incremental backups to an external drive like me, or just haven’t gotten around to setting up a backup system yet, this “cool tool” is for you!

I’ve found a fabulous solution to backups (and can sleep peacefully at night).  :)

Mozy!  It’s an extremely secure online backup system.  When I say secure, we’re talking 448-bit Blowfish on-disk encryption and you can even keep your own key. The first backup takes a while as it encrypts and copies everything you’d asked it to, but after that it’s smart enough to save only the new files and files you’ve changed, and it does it all in the background.

You can choose from home or business accounts, and even get 2 GB free! Perfect for just backing up the most important files. Click the logo for more details.

I like it so much I’ve got a MozyPro account!

2GB Totally Free Online Backup! Compliments of Mozy

To help me better focus my ezine and blog on the information that’s most helpful for you, I’ve created a very quick (only 3 questions) survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=0gto_2bC1AiQ4ah1iRpyIyjA_3d_3d

At the end there’s a special thank you gift in appreciation for your time. To find out what, you’ll have to take the survey. *smile*