It’s A New Year 2010: Do You Believe In Your Business?

I must tell you that this post is extremely transparent into who I am, my beliefs and what the year 2009 has looked like for me and my family.

This post is just as much for myself as it is for you.  This year has been a VERY challenging year for me but I know who I am and how to get through it, I just need to do what I know works and move forward.

Here We Go…

Personally: You know when you go through tough situations, stress does crazy things to your body. This day last year we were packing our bags and getting everything ready for our next few months in the hospital for my daughter Tori’s relapse.

She was admitted to the hospital Jan 2, 2009 and underwent surgery and then chemotherapy in the same day.

She then went on to get her stem cells collected and a month later endured the  BEAM chemotheraphy protocal. This form of chemotherapy is only given when someone undergoes a stem cell transplant, it cannot be given to just anybody.

The purpose of the BEAM protocal is to completely wipe out the bone marrow so that Tori could endure the stem cell transplant which is really a bone marrow transplant. She had the transplant in March and then went into 2 1/2 months of isolation in the hospital, this particular time was very trying on me as a Mother and at the same time Tori said if you wrapped up all the chemo she ever had into one ball, it wouldn’t even come close to the pain from the transplant.  Her stem bone marrow grew once again and it really was a miracle how it all works….

You see, the CVC line that was installed into her main artery is what they used to administer the chemotherapy. But, it also was used to collect her stem cells.

When she would receive chemo, a line was simply attached to her CVC line and the bag was hooked up. The chemo would come in through the line, fall on top of her heart and then it would get pumped through her body.

So I asked the oncologist one day, “So when the stem cells are re-entered into her body after the bone marrow is wiped out… does it happen the same way where they fall onto the heart and are pumped through her body?”

His answer was, “No, actually it’s quite miraculous. Each stem cell is “pre-destined” to a certain part of the body. So as soon as they enter her body, they will automatically go to where they belong. Some will go to the heart, some to the liver, and of course to the bone marrow where we want them to go.”

When it came time for the transplant, I truly felt like I was witnessing a miracle. It was very emotional for me and we filmed the whole thing. I will never forget that day.

Through isolation she ended up with special “pain” doctors and was on a morphine “push” so she couldadminister her own morphine any time of the day. Big things that stick out in my mind is that over a week she had a blood transfusion almost every day along with the daily shot she got in her leg and the CVC line that came out of her main artery (of her heart) and literally came out of her chest, this line had to be cared for as well.  Tori also managed to lose 1 Kilogram (2.2lbs) EVERY single day for 3 weeks.

Coming home, she was still losing a kilogram per day for the first week, her oncologist warned that if this didn’t stop she’d be admitted again.  Thankfully she slowed to losing 8-10 lbs the next month.

This I have to say was the most challenging years of my life considering 2008 was spent going through chemotheraphy as well. By summer 2009 Tori completed her treatment ending with 20 doses of radiation.

This was the treatment she endured for the “relapse.” This is after she had already went through initial treatments right after diagnosis.  That’s a story just in itself.

Giving is much easier…

I learned some important things this year, it really is easier to give to someone than it is to receive.  When my church found out about the relapse they let me know that they would not only pray for us, but they were rallying up people to create some wonderful meals and bring them to our home.

Right away I said, “We don’t need that, it’s OK.” and I was told point blank that it was happening whether I liked it or not.  The meals started just prior to Tori’s hospitalization and lasted for just over 2 months and every single meal that was brought while I was there was a real blessing and I teared up after they left.

It was easy enough for me to say, “no we don’t need it,” but what I learned is that they just wanted to show their love for my family and my other children managed to have a warm meal when we were stressed out or in the hospital.

It’s not easy to accept help like that, in the end I thought… If I knew someone in my church who needed support like that, I would easily want to get involved with creating a meal for them. It’s something that I could do in such a tough situation.

We recently had a clear PET/CT scan done and she is completely FREE of all disease and she has now Graduated to follow up care. A very challenging year it has been and thankfully we’re through it all, and without my Faith in God I truly don’t know how I would have gotten through this at all.

My daughter is healthy and whole now (thank the Lord!) and I feel like I can finally work on my own health, stress does crazy things to you.

Business: I wish I could say through this time my business was booming. It really was in the first part of this year but I made some serious mistakes which was very costly and the second part of 2009 was terrible. I spent the last half of 2009 trying to recover from my quick decisions while I was in the hospital.

I did have some good people and clients in place but it was just too much for me to handle in the midst of it all, I probably should have removed myself and taken a leave of absence from my own business. I was not clear enough to make decisions that I did.

I let go of  Get Content Results which was a substantial part of my income, but I realized that I wanted to work on developing SBB more as well. When I first took over SBB, the advertising stream was simply amazing. My first month I did thousands of dollars in advertising, I literally had a huge stream of income that I had to keep pushing advertisers over to the coming months. It was instant cash that came in daily.

Within the first 6 months of the takeover, I had made some big decisions about specific advertisers. I wasn’t in agreement with some of what was being “pushed” so I let go of several advertisers.  This resulted in a huge loss of advertising income, but I kept the goodies. 🙂

I knew that you cannot ever rely on one source of income so I decided to develop some other programs.I have some really wonderful resources in the works that I know will help many so I’m pretty excited about that.

Just ONE client….

I also made the decision that I wanted Just ONE client.

I decided in the summer that I needed to focus on SBB fully, I wanted to bring relevant content to the site and have been extremely picky who I choose to guest post. I have some guest posts coming up and plan to start bringing on more Authors at the site.

As I thought about what I should do an Ad from our area drew my attention.  This is exactly what I was looking for.. this ONE client lives literally 4 minutes away from me, is a business owner herself and needed some help with her online business stat since we connected just before Christmas, and she wanted to tap into those Holiday sales right away.

(I’ll be revealing more about who she is soon)

You see, it’s super easy to gather up clients but not all are in line with what you do.  Either they don’t understand what direction is best to take online or they are in the employer/employee mindset. I’m not an employee, I’m a business owner and I deserve to be treated with respect. I take my hat off to many virtual assistants who work hard for their clients and are greeted with that.

At the same time, I’ve had writers, virtual assistants, technical support people work for me personally and not all have worked out with me either. It’s very hard to get a team up and running and all in line with the goals of your company.

I like to work with business owners not “assistants.” I want to know that if someone is working for my business that they would take on the responsibility like it was their business too. There are many ways to incorporate this so you know what people to hire and keep on board.

This year I’ve taken a serious hit mostly because I let go of all those advertisers AND my service based business.  Besides, there are all sorts of bad stuff that comes with selling text links on your site when it comes to Google, that’s a post all in itself. It’s much better to advertise your own products and services to your market, not someone else. I’ve also managed to develop affiliate income so I’m happy to push this avenue even further.

But I know letting go of what doesn’t work for me will be a good thing since I can focus on the type of business I personally want and would like to create. Not something that runs me.

Education

I’m getting pretty excited about this year coming up. I plan to finally get some post secondary education. I’m looking to take some courses towards a degree that runs in line with my business.

Obviously I became an entrepreneur so I was able to support myself and my family but at the same time I was not able to continue my education.

I was just too busy in the stores and I also had 2 very small children. I graduated high school and took 1 course in the local college so I’m pretty stoked that I’ll be working towards something more that will just increase everything that I’m doing here.

I’m looking to work towards getting as technical as I can possibly get 🙂 I finally am able to continue my education, this is a wonderful day! All the while my oldest daughter will be entering University, I’m thrilled and very proud!

As we head into 2010, I wanted to share with you some ways we can encourage ourselves to move and strive for huge things in our lives.

Believe In Yourself and Reach Your Goals

It’s often much easier to have faith in someone or something else than it is to have faith in yourself. Yet if you’re going to achieve your goals, it’s the one essential thing you need to have.

Belief in yourself gives you the power to:

Dream big – When you believe in yourself you’re not limited to just making it through another day; you have big dreams and the faith that you can achieve them. Fitness goals become marathons, business goals become millions and relationship goals become happily ever afters.

Persevere – When you believe in yourself you’re able to push through the hard times. This is because you know that you’ll be able to solve the problem or weather the challenge, and also because you know that hard times pass. People who believe in themselves are optimistic and positive – they look at the silver lining, make lemonade out of lemons and all those other silly cliché’s that are so very true.

Succeed – It’s an interesting phenomenon. People who believe that they will succeed, actually do. you can call it luck and still others consider it good old-fashioned hard work. Whatever you believe, having faith in yourself leads to success. In fact, it’s seriously difficult to succeed without it. So how do you cultivate this faith in yourself?

How to believe in yourself

Sometimes it’s easy to believe in ourselves for one particular thing but difficult to have faith in ourselves for another. For example, you know you’re great with people so you have wonderful personal and romantic relationships and any goals you set with respect to relationships are easily accomplished. However, you’re not so confident about your money skills and your financial goals are always a struggle. What’s the solution?

Faith in yourself and your ability to achieve your goals, regardless of what they are, can be grown and nurtured by focusing on what you do well. If you’re struggling to achieve a specific type of goal, get expert help. Faith in yourself doesn’t mean you have to accomplish things on your own! Focus on your strengths and what you know you can accomplish and trust that you can find the right experts to help you in those other areas.

Lighten up! No one is good at everything. It’s just not possible. Embrace your strengths, skills and talents. Love them, appreciate them and use them to help you attain your goals. Your weaknesses? Well, how you handle those is up to you. You can let them go, try to improve them or seek expert help. The choice is yours.

Start small – It’s tough to hang onto a belief in yourself if you’re trying to accomplish a goal you’re just not ready for. You wouldn’t just jump off the couch and expect to run a marathon, right? Start with goals you know you can accomplish and grow from there.

Belief in yourself is essential to accomplishing your goals and dreams. When you have it, everything is possible.

So I’d love for you to join me to say that the economy doesn’t determine my worth, low traffic doesn’t determine my sales, and I will not accept any excuses for myself, my business, or anyone who works with me.

If I can succeed as barely an adult when I was 22, surely with all of your experience you can overcome any standstill in your business as I will also.

PS. All the pictures of my daughter were from her first rounds of treatment, she would not be happy with me posting the second round of treatments because she was very sick and weak.