Life on the Road

I think our compensation plan, and Lifetime Residual Repeat Income, can’t be beat…  But some days it’s the little things that make you smile.

I went to Office Depot to pick up a few things.  Some were for the business, but some were for homeschooling, and Miss Jewel got a lovely pack of 8 Big Girl crayons for her very own.

After scanning it all, the cashier gave the a total of $28.96.

Then I swiped my Visa card, which is registered through the company’s preferred pricing plan.

New Total, $15.46.

Now that made me smile!

Okay, this is one of those “the news got me thinking” kind of posts, so please bear with me!

NEW YORK (AP) — A sharply increasing portion of America’s working mothers say their ideal situation would include a part-time job, rather than working full time or staying at home, a new national survey finds.

This article, from Bay News 9, finds that 60% of Working Moms would rather work part-time than full-time (up from 48% 10 years ago), while 19% would prefer to stay home entirely (essentially unchanged).

Meanwhile, the responses from the at-home moms indicate that very few of them think working full-time outside the home would be good (16%, down from 24%), and most feel that they are doing the best thing - staying home (48%, up from 39%).

Interesting - maybe that whole SuperWoman / SuperMom thing is finally going out of vogue?

The big issue that I find is not addressed at all in the study is working from home. I know and awful lot of WAHMs - myself included - who believe we truly have the best of both worlds.

Why do women want to work part-time, but not full-time? Seems likely that they’re thinking they want to contribute to the family income, and maybe have some “grown-up time,” but they don’t want all their time and energy to be drawn away from the home and family.

This question puts it into perspective:

The survey also found differences in how working and stay-at-home moms assess the job they do as parents _ mothers working full-time give themselves lower ratings, on average, than at-home mothers or mothers working part-time.

So why not get all the benefits of the job, without going out into the world to look for it? WAHMs create their own schedule, have all the flex-time and sick days they need, and never have to worry about an accident on the freeway making them late for work. Plus, there are a lot of great companies to get involved with now that even off traditional “working woman” perks like Direct Deposit, benefits, and a 401k! (Didn’t know that? Check us out!).

Sadly, reality isn’t in sync with the preferences expressed by the women in the survey.

According to the latest federal figures, 70.5 percent of American women with children under 18 work outside the home _ including 60 percent of mothers with children under 3. And the newly emerging preference for part-time work doesn’t mesh with current reality: three-quarters of the working mothers have full-time jobs.

How did this happen? When did this happen? Why?

Even the women who don’t want to work, or don’t want to work full-time, are working. If they’re anything like my friends back in L.A., they don’t even feel like they have a choice.

Isn’t that an interesting conundrum? You choose to live in an expensive place, you choose to get a biger house, you choose to buy two new cars, you choose the designer wardrobe and the plasma TV, and on and on… Then you say you don’t have any choice but to work, since you can’t live on one income.

Even the media points out over and over again that most people vastly overestimate the value of a second income. You lose the income, but you also go down a tax bracket, don’t have to pay for daycare, save on food and clothing… Even CNN - not known to be family-friendly, has a great article on Planning: Going from two incomes to one, including a worksheet proclaiming:

MONEY Worksheet: The real value of a second income
When you or your spouse stops working, your family loses a paycheck — but also eliminates all the costs associated with earning it. When you compare income and outgo, you may be surprised at how little that second salary really adds to your family’s bottom line.

Now we’re really to “frugal living” - that’s quite a ramble from full-time versus part-time work!  But actually, I think that many people tend to put on their blinders and consider one tiny fact out of context.

Frugal living is - in fact - integral to a discussion of the value of a second income, which is integral to a discussion of whether mom really needs to work, which also requires that we consier how important our childrens’ education is - and how well it will be handled if we leave it to someone else, which also requires consideration of our beliefs about our responsibility before God for child-rearing…  And so on, and so on.

It’s like saying, “but I exercise, why am I still fat?” without considering the fact that you eat five times more calories than you need.

It’s time to step back from banging our head against the tree.  Back up far enough to really get a good look…

Ah…  The Forest! 

We choose to be home, “training up our children,” and building a secure financial legacy for them at the same time.  Thank God for providing this opportunity to us.

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  Check out the WAHM Blog Carnival!

I’m always a little disappointed when I see an ad for something that goes against the values a site is espousing.

Although Google and other “ad-words” providers typically do allow you to block ads that you see on your site and don’t like, from what I’ve been able to determine there is no way to filter, block, or select what will show up beforehand. 

They claim it’s going to work out well because the ads selected are based on your content…  But a WAHM frined mentioned the scary story about the ads that started popping up on her site after posting an article about the debate surrounding infant circumcision.  Yikes!

If I had a ragingly popular site that could generate some ad revenue, I think I’d go the safe way.  Selling the spots on the page leaves me in absolute control of who shows up there, and is thereby associated with me in readers’ minds.

I recently saw a link in the Google Ads box on a WAHM business blog that sounded fishy.  Being me, I clicked on it to check it out.  Sure enough, it was one of the many types of schemes that seem to be everywhere these days:

• Pay for my (book/system/website/whatever) and you’ll make tons of money with no effort what-so-ever
• Complete these offers from our sponsors to access this cool stuff
• Sign up all your friends to do this and you’ll get rich
• Drive traffic to your website by joining our site and clicking on other members’ links

And so on, and so on…

I guess the people who put those ads on their site figure that “everyone KNOWS those are just the Google Ads, and nothing really related to me.”  It’s just like the people with blogs on free sites have to put up with the ads placed on their pages, right?

I don’t know, but I’m not buying into it.  Why should I let them spew stuff onto my page that I have no control over (unless I HAPPEN to notice something offensive, then I can remove it after the fact!)? 

I went to all the trouble to get a domain, host my blog myself, and all this other stuff - why?  Precisely so that I could be in control of everything. 

As much as I’d like to think I might earn some extra money, I’m not selling out.  It’s like I’ve heard in sermons more than once:

Go through your house, and clean it up as if Jesus was coming over for a visit.  Do you have magazines or movies you wouldn’t want Him to see?  Guess what - He sees them now, so you shouldn’t have them! 

So if Jesus decides to take a few minutes out to surf the web and runs across my blog, I hope He is pleased with His servant’s work.

It’s been a whirlwind of travel in the last couple of weeks.  Nick’s summer camp in Kentucky, family visit in Mississippi, Convention in Texas, back to Mississippi… and now we’re in Memphis, TN!  WHEW!

We’re visiting Wolf’s aunt Erin, as well as his mom and brother who are also visitng here.  The tentative plan is to stay here for at least a little while and work on doing some business in this area.  Lots of providers, so if we can find the right places to target in the suburbs, we should be in good shape.

Wolf has lots of great ideas for kick-starting the business from Convention so we’re looking forward to an exponential increase in our income this year! 

We recently had dinner at Cracker Barrel in Jackson, TN and Jackson, MS within the space of 3 days.  Quite the Jackson-fest!

In Tennessee it was thoroughly average.  Food pretty good, some better than others.  Atmosphere smokey and not too fun.

In Mississippi we enjoyed it much more, and it’s close on the heels of our top picks.  Green dot on the CB rating map, Hooray! 

Well, the last few days have been pretty hectic.  This is our company’s annual convention, and we’ve had our share of challenges trying to work out how to make the most of it.

We only bought one ticket, figuring Wolf and I could switch off who went in and who stayed with Jewel.

Well, the RV park where we are staying is about 45 minutes from the hotel where the conference is.  There aren’t really any RV parks in Downtown Dallas, go figure.  So it’s not exactly convenient to drive back and forth, and it’s no fun to have the kids trying to amuse themselves in a hotel lobby for hours on end.

Thursday was a half day of workshops.  We all went in, and I checked in and got my badge.  Then Wolf went to a couple of workshops while the kids and I checked out the vendor booths and played on the computer.

Yesterday (Friday) was a full day in the big ballroom, including lunch being served.  That didn’t sound really conducive to swapping back and forth.  So, since Wolf is the one who does most of the front-end of our business (talking to people), and I’m the one who can nurse the baby, he went to the convention and the kids and I stayed at the RV.

We went to pick him up at 5:30, and grabbed some dinner at Burger King (have you heard about the Visa/BK Free Meal?).  Then back to the hotel, quick change of clothes (I had everyone wearing different shirts, since otherwise there would have been a ketchup crisis, I’m sure!)…  And we got our picture taken with Dennis and Daniel Bloom, the founders of the company!

(This is a stock photo, obviously.  We don’t get ours until mid-July)

Today we sent Papa off alone for the longest day of convention.  He’s there from 9-12, we packed him a lunch, then 1:30-5:30, then he has a break.  The big awards dinner is 7:30-10 pm tonight.

He got a TON of great ideas and inspiration from yesterday, so today should be another great day for our family’s fortunes.    

Don’t know yet what we’re going to do.  We’re camped at the Trader’s Village RV Park, and Trader’s Village is a huge weekly indoor swap-meet.  Maybe we’ll go browse…

Many thanks to Staci at Desktop Designs, who graciously agreed to help me with a banner and a plug button to help let people know about this blog.

I figure, heck, I’m already out there leaving our ads on plugboards for our dental benefits, our business opportunity, and even for Tupperware…  So why not stick this one on there, too? 

The more readers, the merrier, right?

Have you seen our plugboard?  Just click “Plug Board” in the box of “Pages” in the top right corner of the page (that’ll work at least until I change the layout, eh?).

The thing that frustrates me about some online advertising - including plugboards, is that I haven’t found a good way to track traffic, and know whether they are doing me any good.

When I send people to our dental benefots site personally, or on our business cards, we use our forwarding domain, http://www.LowCostDental4U.com - better to have something easier to remember, which is the whole point of getting a forwarding domain, after all.  With clickable graphic ads online, I can point people directly to the actual benefits site, including a “code” to track traffic.  I don’t use tons of different ones, but for instance I might use http://tiffany.my123card.com/plug for Plug Boards.

But I don’t have a good way to track traffic to the business opportunity site. 

I prefer to send people who are new contacts to my info-gathering site at http://www.TiffanyBlitz.com.  I have a trackable site for the business like the one for benefits, above, but it seems to me that I’d rather get their info and talk to them before sending them on to that.

And when you ask people (on the form, or when you talk to them on the phone)?  they tend to vaguely say, “I saw your banner on one of those WAHM sites”…  Which of course covers almost everyplace I advertise!

Anyone else out there have a good idea?

Someone recently emailed me and said they were enjoying the blog, but wondered how we had gotten on the road in the first place, and over all just “what our story was.”

:)  It was nice to know that someone cares! 

Anyhow, let me try to give you enough to understand the situation, without it turning into drudgery like home movies.  It’s all very interesting to ME, after all…

Wolf and I were married on Leap Day 2004.  We moved to the small town of Williams, AZ (near the Grand Canyon) and opened a little shop to sell his handcrafted furniture, as well as sell some home decor and gift stuff to complement it (and get customers who didn’t need furniture!).

Well, Williams proved to be a challenging place, and the business and political climate (local issues) proved very hostile to new people and new businesses.  After two years there we had burned through our savings and were ready to call it quits.

We put our house on the market, and our searching finally turned up a home business opportunity that sounded like a good fit (see our Team Blitz website). 

It took most of a year to sell the house.  Since cold calling isn’t our style, we got our business going by working online and by spending a couple of days each week driving in different directions to get to civilization and put our flyers.  By the time the house sold (end of January, 2007), we were ready to go!

We put our “stuff” in storage and bought an RV (It’s amazing how little of the contents of a 3,200 square foot house and oversized garage you can fit into a 200 square foot trailer). 

It’s a 2001 Springdale by Keystone travel trailer, with bunk beds in the back for the kids (Nick is 12 and Jewel is 2).  We also have two cats travelling with us, the “old ladies” Squeaker (about 16) and Loki (13).

Our intention is to travel the country doing some sightseeing, some educational trips, visiting our spread-out families, and working our business (everyone in the country has teeth, right?).

Does that about cover the “Who are they and what are they doing?” bit?  Please let me know if you still have any burning questions…

We’re here in lovely Bowling Green, Kentucky…  where apparently there is no Verizon wireless internet coverage, and no WiFi hotspots (unless you are a student at Western Kentucky).  Great.  At the moment we’re parking in a KFC parking lot, connected (I can only assume) to the wireless connection of some unsuspecting homeowner nearby.

We arrived as planned on Saturday, and parked ourselves at the Camping World store here.  They have an RV parking area across the street from them with free elcetric hookups, and they have a dump station and water available.  Wow!  Glad to support a store that will do that for us, we purchased their discount club membership and picked up a few items from our RV shopping list.

Sunday we dropped Nick off at his summer camp program at the University, which deserves its own post.

We’ve spent the last few days putting out business flyers around Bowling Green - and we’re already getting phone calls from people interested in the dental benefits.  I love this business!

We’re planning to do some more travelling, so maybe Louisville or Lexington will serve us better in the connectivity department…

REVIEW:  Cracker Barrel, Bowling Green, KY

The smoke in a “divided” area really just doesn’t stay on its own side of the imaginary line, does it?  I suppose it will always be a totally non-smoking location that is our favorite, for that very reason.  This Cracker Barrel was unremarkable (in a good way).  Food was fine, service was fine.  Not in our Top 3, but not in our Bottom 3. 

One of the business/motivational email lists I subscribe to is from The Success Factory, and I just wanted to share: 

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The other day, one of my girlfriends shared with me her angst over not having planted her spring flowers yet. To her, this was just as bad as celebrating Christmas without a Christmas tree.

OK, so, I just don’t get it. I have a lot of friends who absolutely revel in planting their spring garden. They just can’t wait to experience the feeling of all that nice dirt under their nails. They know the names of every plant in their yard, the difference between a perennial and an annual, what the bunnies will eat and what they will not, what will bloom when, how much water and sun is needed - they even know what to plant so that their yards will be a beautiful rainbow of color year round. Wow.

Don’t get me wrong - I LOVE to buy flats of flowers. I love it when my yard is neat and pretty - grass cut, flowers in bloom and no weeds. The problem is I would like it if someone else made it that way for me. But, if I am going to have flowers, I have to plant all those flats of flowers that I bought - before they die.

Today, I planted marigolds - too many to count. I worked for two and a half hours and I’m pretty sure that I may not ever be able to stand up straight again. We have 120 feet of split rail fence at the back of our yard. It felt more like 120 MILES as I plodded along, weeding the bed, digging the holes and planting the flowers. I thought I would never get to the end. However, every time I was ready to give up, I found that if I looked back at the lovely orange flowers planted neatly in a row instead of ahead at the weeds yet to be pulled I kept on plugging. After all, how silly would my garden look if I left it only half planted? And what I’d already done was a beautiful reflection of my hard work.

As the summer progresses, I realize that I will need to regularly water and weed my flower bed - but it will be worth it as I enjoy the fruits of my labor through the summer and well into the fall.

What will your business “garden” look like at the end of the summer? Will it look well tended, manicured and full of beautiful flowers - the result of your consistent attention? Or, will you begin the fall with nothing but weeds - a garden that looks as though you were out of town all summer?

While it can be tempting to close your business down in the summer months because the business road ahead seems filled with weeds. It may seem more appealing to just relax and take it easy. But, I encourage you to look back at all the fruits of your labor so far this year. Do you really want to leave your garden half planted?

Occasionally, we all have times when we wish someone else would work in our garden for us. Certainly it would be much easier if someone else would be willing to get the dirt under their nails and we could just sit back and collect our check. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. So, even if the labor is back breaking at times we must forge ahead. The rewards in the fall will be sweet and it is much easier to continue on the journey you have begun than it is to have to start all over from the beginning again in the fall.

Happy planting!

There are SO many factors…  but we use flyers as our primary marketing tool, and love ‘em.

Depends on:

• the product
• the neighborhood
• the location (on doors? store counters? bulletin boards? etc)
• the flyer (design, color, etc)
• etc.

Not very concrete, sorry.

The best advice I can give you is to keep trying it for a while.  Try different variations on all of the above factors.  But you have to remember to allow enough time to really know if you’re getting results.

One of the most difficult and important flyering lessons we have learned over time is this:

Your flyer is just not as high a priority to the person who picks it up as it is to you… The first time they see it, they may not pick it up.  But if they see it again and again, maybe they will one of those times.  To help it get noticed, be sure to have an eye catching design, and a bright colored paper.

And even then, they may set it down by the phone to give you a call “when they get around to it.”  We get calls even MONTHS later from places we’ve passed through and left flyers! 

So you have to wait to know how well any given flyer campaign really works.  And in the meantime, you have to keep putting them out so that you continue to “fill your pipeline” with interested prospects.

“Passive Marketing” - like flyers - will never give you the kind of percentage return you can get with an active method (talking to people)…  But it does produce results if you’re faithful to it, making it ideal as a supplement to your active marketing, a great way for someone who is shy or lacks confidence in their marketing to get started, and a perfect thing to do at odd times of the day when nothing else might be possible.