Velvet has posted this on the other blog, but I just wanted to make sure it was updated here.

On Monday July 21st I’m hosting a FREE teleseminar on the topic of Marketing Your Website Online.

Many small business owners struggle to get the traffic they need to gain new clients and business - if you’re in the position of not being able to spend a lot of time marketing your website, you need to be on the call.

You’ll learn:

• How to get passive traffic from search engines
• Why you should NEVER pay for “guaranteed search engine results”
• How to establish yourself as an expert and gain trust

And a lot more! During the call you’ll be able to ask questions and get assistance right there.

Join us! Sign up here: Marketing Your Website Online Teleseminar

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Hello ladies,

My name is Carrie Lauth and Velvet has kindly invited me to join her as a guest blogger here on the Atlanta Networking Girls blog.

I’m a fellow Atlanta mom (of course!), and I’m also a work at home Mom of 4 kids. I’ve been involved with internet marketing for about 4 years now and love it.

When it comes to marketing myself online, blogging is one of my favorite things to do. I personally own 4 blogs: Two for business topics, two for mom topics, and two of them have many authors. While I often joke that I blog mostly for my sanity than anything else, obviously blogging is a serious part of my online business.

And that brings me to a favor I would like to ask of you. I’m putting together a special guide for natural business owners, and the topic is all about blogging.

Do you have any questions about blogging? If you do, would you tell me what they are?

Whether you have a blog or not, I sure would appreciate you taking a minute to fill out this survey:

Blogging Survey

If you do, I’ll email you a special coupon code when the blogging guide is released.

Thanks so much!

Carrie

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We are working on getting this blog moved to Wordpress from Blogger - stay tuned and please be patient during our transition!

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The trend of moms working from home to be near their children has grown in the last couple of years. Now that they have found jobs or businesses to run, they’re starting to realize that working from home is not as easy as they thought it would be. The work they do is hard to separate form their personal lives, which makes it hard to schedule time for work responsibilities and home duties.

The workspace these moms use to do their jobs at ends up being a part of their household, so that makes dividing work and home life even more difficult to do. Imagine that your office is a part of the dining room, which also happens to be the room where you eat your meals as a family. How easy is it going to be for you to leave your work life to be with your family when the office is 5 feet away from the dinner table?

The realities of dividing work and personal life can get smudged for work at home moms. When that happens, one’s stress level is sure to rise, which could jeopardize one’s sanity. To prevent your sanity from leaving, you should find ways to ensure that separation takes place between your job/business and your family life.

Assess the current situation. Try to find an area, within your home, to have your office so that it won’t interfere with your family life. The home office needs a room with a door where you can be apart from the rest of the house. A den or a garage can be converted into office space that is exclusive to your business. Some people have resorted to placing their office in the laundry room, just because it has a door! When that is not an option, set up shop in your bedroom to keep it away from the family areas.

Organization is the next step. A messy desk can be a huge distraction when trying to work. Everything needs to have its place. If you worked in an office, your boss would not stand for a messy work space. There’s no difference when your office is at home and not at the worksite.
Use inexpensive organizing items, such as baskets with separate compartments to help organize the odds and ends on your desk. You can keep rubber stamps, letters, invoices, pens, pencils, and the like in here. Organization makes finding things much easier, which results in a more relaxed work day.

Keep your business phone separate from the family phone line. When using the same line, you run the risk of your children answering business calls or picking up the phone during a conference call. This causes your professionalism to fly right out the window and takes your customers or employers along with it.

The same goes for the computer. It’s best to keep your business computer separate from what the other family members use, but budgets don’t always allow for this. In that case, make sure that the business/job files and documents can’t be easily accessed by anyone but you. This will help prevent some of the stress that could be brought on by family members stumbling on a client’s important document and accidentally deleting them.

Be sure to use calendars or planners as they are very helpful when trying to keep track of business appointments or deadlines and family appointments. This will lessen the stress of setting up family appointments when you’ve forgotten about business deadlines you have.

Consider hiring a sitter on days you have a lot of work to do. Being a work at home mom gives you the benefit of controlling your own schedule. Having a sitter keeps the kids away from your office and gives you quiet time to focus on your work and gives your kids a chance to have fun without you feeling too guilty. Mixing business with family in the home setting can be a major source of stress. Keeping the business side of your life organized and separate is crucial to success in keeping your stress levels down and your sanity intact.

Learn How To Balance Work and Family Here

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You’ve probably heard the saying “The Family That Plays Together – Stays Together”. While that’s certainly true, there’s another important activity that the whole family should be doing together – eating dinner. With weird work schedules and after-school activities, family schedules are becoming crazy. When it comes time to eat dinner, everyone just grabs something wherever and whenever they get a chance. Unfortunately, this means that you and your family are missing out on some important bonding and more.

Here are a few interesting facts in regards to family dinners.

• “The average parent spends 38.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with their children… “(A.C. Nielsen Co.) By simply eating dinner together each night and making an effort to talk to your kids, you can easily more than quadruple that time. You get to know your child better and isn’t that the whole point of having a family?
• “Family dinners are more important than play, story time and other family events in the development of vocabulary of younger children.” (Harvard Research, 1996) The dinner table has always been the social center of families, so it is no wonder that that’s where our kids learn to talk. It gives them “real live” demonstrations and practice not only in speech but also social interactions.
• “Frequent family meals are associated with a lower risk of smoking, drinking and using marijuana; with a lower incidence of depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts; and with better grades in 11 to 18 year olds”. (Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 2004.) By spending more quality time with your kids over dinner, you will quickly be alerted to any changes in your child, but you also develop a better relationship with your kids. Wouldn’t you want your child to come to you with his problems instead of turning to drinking, drugs, or considering taking his life?
• “The more often teens have dinner with their parents, the less time they spend with boyfriends or girlfriends, and the less likely they are to have sexually active friends”. (National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University – 2004) Not only do your teens have less time to hang out with boyfriends and girlfriends, having a good relationship with you makes them less likely to search for closeness by becoming sexually active.
• “Adolescent girls who have frequent family meals, and a positive atmosphere during those meals, are less likely to have eating disorders”. (University of Minnesota, 2004) It is up to you to help your children develop a good relationship with food. Not only can you significantly lessen the chances that your daughter will develop a eating disorder, this is also your chance to teach everyone in the family good and healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime.

Isn’t that reason enough for you to bring the family dinner back? Sure, it can get a little tricky getting everyone together with our crazy schedules and having a hot meal cooked at the same time. But it is well worth the effort and once you get in the habit of eating dinner together as a family, it gets easier and no none would want to miss it.

Let us help you get dinner on the table with our 12 week Ultimate menu pack. Grab it today at Menu Planning Central.

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In business our customers, clients and business partners come and go. These relationships may only be for a season. In a day of an abundance of options, loyalty gets more and more difficult to find. Unlike our grandparents who stuck to the same brand of cars their entire life, this generation tend to lack the same loyalty. If someone is offering the same thing for a dollar less or an inch larger, your season very well maybe over in the eyes of some.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the the statement “It’s business and not personal”. It just makes those special relationships in your life so valuable. When you have that person who don’t see you as so easily replaceable, you have a jewel. That person who wouldn’t dare pick up the yellow pages and find someone else in 5 minutes. That person in my life is my sister. The beginning of 2008 was a difficult time for me. I learned alot about faith, business, friendships and most importantly about myself. My sister always had my back and I have such a greater appreciation for her.

I want to incorporate this into ANG. It is not just a ladies, business network but also one where bonds are formed. I have been to other networks where the mention of spirituality and faith is not allowed. Well ANG is built around the principles of faith and spirituality will always be encouraged. I want to wish you all many blessings in your business.

Love Always

From
The Girl In Charge

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