More Than WE Know

Ready for this week’s Carnival Tour??

At the top of the list is  The Carnival of the Capitalists with an extensive collection of articles - including links to those that didn’t make the cut! 

Of particular import to Women Entrepreneurs is Jim Logan’s article 7 tips to boost profits before you close the box. These tips apply to both retail and service providers, who want to increase their profits at the point of sale. 

The E-3 Carnival of Success Principles has several inspiring posts.

Tim Gary’s article How to Make Time Out of Thin Air will resonate with any Woman Entrepreneur trying to manage a complicated work and personal life (that would pretty much be All of us!!!)

The always interesting Carnival of Small Business Issues - Edition 33 is hosted this week by Atlantic Canada’s Small Business Blog.

Women Entrepreneurs who are Service Providers, will find Carol Bentley’s article especially empowering:  Does Your Business Pass the “Charlie the Plumber” test… 

Thanks for joining this week’s tour!

Reminder:  Win a Free Book!!  Discovering Your Inner Samurai: The Entrepreneurial Woman’s Journey to Business Success, by writing a comment on yesterday’s interview with author Susan Reid.   Winner will be announced next Saturday, January 26th.

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This week’s carnivals will give you a work out - but I guarantee you’ll like the results.

The selected articles tell us the best ways to take advantage of all the opportunities that present themselves in our lives: by evaluating,  focusing, using our strengths and working hard. 

And to reward you for all the hard work in this week’s carnival, I’ve included a free gift at the end!

This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is hosted at Small Business Essentials.  John Crickett’s article Evaluating A Business Opportunity posted at Business Opportunities and Ideas provides a detailed list to use when evaluating a business opportunity that seems like it must be “too good to be true”. 

At the All Women Carnival hosted this week by Australian Women Online Edith Yeung reminds us to stop multi-tasking every minute of the day. If you’re like me and can’t recall the last time you focused on one single thing for at least an hour, then be sure to read How to Stay Focused posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act.

Jason Blumer of Thriveal did an excellent job of hosting the Carnival of Small Business Issues this week. He’s provided a tantalizing summary of each article in the carnival.

Of particular note is David B. Bohl’s article Are You Exploiting Your Strengths?  posted at Slow Down Fast.  We’re all pros at identifying our shortcomings, but how about taking advantage of all of our strengths? We’ll feel happier and might just get more done. 

At the Carnival of Success Principles Andrew of Personal Hack presents Hard Work or a Secret Formula?.  Andrew reminds us that very little long-lasting success occurs overnight.  Instead the way to acheive sustainable success is to work at it consistently each and every day.  It’s not a hyped-up, adrenaline-rush of a message - but it is inspirational in its own way. 

So, How did you do? Did you make it this far? Good for you!

And now, as I promised, here is your free gift:

Ted Demopolous at Blogging for Business is giving away an ebook called Effective Internet Presence Now Required for Success in Business and Life.  Ted will make you think about your relationship with the internet as he asks the provocative question - If you don’t exist online, do you really exist?

Apparently some carnivals took a week off,  as I couldn’t find where they had set up camp.  But it’s just as well as I found an abundance of great articles at the E3 Carnival of Success Principles . I’m taking the opportunity to highlight several well-written articles that really resonated with me and my fresh New Year’s spirit of getting things in order and getting things done.

My favorite article is Pat B. Doyle’s  Feng Shui and Clutter posted at Barton Pond Feng Shui. Pat says, “You will be a lot more successful in your work if you eliminate clutter. Clutter is so draining to your energy.”

This fascinated me because I know so little about Feng Shui.  I never thought about it being related to clutter and how physically and emotionally draining, living with clutter can be.   

The following three great articles also deal with eliminating clutter - only this time it’s mental clutter.

Vahid Chaychi presents Do You Want to Change Your Life? First You Should Learn to Control Your Fear! posted at Weboma.com. 

So often our fear clutters up our mind and our emotions and gets in the way of accomplishing our goals. Whether it is fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of looking foolish, or fear of the consequences of success, we need to face the fear, and do it anyway.

After facing our fear, we need to face our inclination to fill our life with busy-ness.  A lot of our mental clutter is due to trying to do everything for everyone. 

As women we are particularly good at multi-tasking. We take pride in our ability to simultaneously write an article, watch the kids, cook dinner and clean our bathroom bowl.  But sometimes  to get worthwhile results, we need to block out time to clear our minds and focus on accomplishing just one thing really well.  

To learn more, read David B. Bohl’s article Time Management: Focus and Getting Results posted at Slow Down Fast Today!. David says, “Emphasize on focus and results in time management. It’s not about how much you get done in a particular block of time. It’s about getting the results you need from that time.”

And last, to make the most of that new physical and mental de-cluttering, we sometimes need to exert self-discipline.  Discipline has gotten a negative connotation in our play-now, pay-later culture.  But discipline really means caring enough about the vision you have for your life, your business, and your family,  to put forth the effort and work to make it come true.

To learn more about how to make those dreams you cherish become a reality read Ed Rivis’s  article Discipline: Number One Success Tool for 2008. posted at Ed Rivis.

I hope you found today’s focused Carnival a refreshing and inspiring break.  

This week’s carnival ride ties in with the annual tradition of setting New Year’s Resolutions.

Here are mine for 2008: Be bold, get organized, appreciate yourself and take a risk!

1) Be Bold

This resolution finds support at the E3 Carnival of Success Principles Lorraine Cohen presents Letting Yourself Have Outrageous Success and Personal Happiness posted at Powerfull Living, saying, “How often do you say no to the people and things that would increase your business success and personal happiness? Learn key tips to change your nos to YES!”

2) Get Organized

This resolution finds tons of support at the Working at Home Blog Carnival in which Sagar presents Be Your Own Virtual Assistant: 100 Tools to Keep Yourself Accountable and Organized posted at Bootstrapper. I can’t wait to dig through these tools and find a few time-saving tricks!

3) Appreciate Yourself

This resolution found support at the All Women Blogging Carnival. I found this absolutely charming article written by Akemi. She makes you realize that what you view as your imperfections may be the very same traits that others value most about you. How to Love your Imperfections posted at Gratitude Magic is a reassuring article that I’m going to keep close at hand in 2007!

4) Take a Risk!

This resolution found support at the Carnival of the Capitalists hosted this week at the Journal Blog . Can You Really Make Money Showing People “How To”?, posted at KentonNewby.com assumes that there is an abundance of opportunity for both you and for your competitors. So much so, that it’s even okay to turn your customers into your competitors by teaching them how you succeed.

I love this idea that by sharing the secrets of our success, we all grow stronger. At first it sounds like taking a risk, but in reality we risk much more when we cut ourselves off from others due to fear.

That’s the carnival for this week - hope you found some inspiration and support for some New Year’s Resolutions of your own!!

Take a break from all the holiday hustle and bustle, pour yourself a cup of coffee (or cocoa!) and settle down to read some of the great articles on the web this week.

At the E-3 Carnival of Success Principles Women Entrepreneurs will find a valuable lesson in exceeding Customer Expectations in Richard Lee’s article Everything You Will Ever Need To Know About Business posted at Richard Lee. But it comes with a warning! If you’re a book lover, you might feel a pang of jealousy over Richard’s story!

As always, the Carnival of Small Business Issues has a good collection of business-related articles. I agree with the host that if you take away one thing from the Carnival it should be Carol Bentley’s Do people remember you? posted at Carol Bentley. This article is part 1 of a 2 part series - be sure to read Part 2 and get the free downloadable tool to help create effective elevator speeches.

Some interesting topics at the All Women Blogging Carnival hosted at Moggie Madness. Of particular note to any Woman Entrepreneur wondering whether it’s too late to live your dreams is How old is too old? posted at Barmus, by Barbara.

The Carnival of the Capitalists hosted this week at Samablog has a collection of high quality articles. Among them is an article by one of my favorites bloggers, Pamela Slim. She asks a question shared by many Women Entrepreneurs “How do you know when is the right time to quit your day job?” posted at her blog,Escape from Cubicle Nation.

And now, a few other points of interest:

For anyone (both inside and outside the U.S.!) interested in winning a Virtual Assistant for a year, visit Elance to enter the contest. (Where do I sign up????)

If the past few weeks of interviews have gotten you interested in the opportunities available to run a handmade craft business over the internet, you will want to read the article Handmade 2.0 from the New York Times magazine. It’s a full-length feature that’s chock full of information on all angles of the handcraft sales business.

And last, I want to thank Frank Carr of OpTempo for his review of MoreThanWEKnow. Frank provided some good feedback on the looks of my blog, which I have already acted upon. If you have a blog you’d like reviewed, stop over and request one. Also read the many reviews Frank’s already done to get some additional ideas of what works and what doesn’t.

That’s it for the Carnival this week - hope you enjoyed the ride!