By Jim Mandeville

One of my businesses has been dying a slow death. I own an outdoor advertising agency. We specialize in advertising in places such as billboards, malls, movie theaters, gas pumps, and indoor. It’s no secret that the other traditional advertising platforms, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television are having a rough time as well.  Why is traditional media advertising struggling?

There has been a shift in consumer behavior. Exposed to thousands of advertising messages every day, we’ve all become pretty immune to all these messages. No longer can advertisers rely solely on traditional interruption marketing techniques and simply put their messages in front of our faces wherever we may be and expect us to respond. The leading companies and the most effective marketers have been using content marketing to break through the ad clutter and position themselves at the top of their industries. A huge plus for those of us with small businesses is that a successful content marketing program requires very little money. It does require a bit of work, creativity, and thought however. (more…)

Do you work at home?

Yes – I’ve worked at home, self-employed, for 13 years.

How many children do you have?

Two daughters, ages 22 and 25.

How many hours do you work a week?

It depends on the week and the year.  In the first five years, both daughters were still at home and I worked on average a 35 hour work week.  When my second child left for college, I was working on average 55 hours/week.  That continued through last year when I cut back to 35 hours week – and in the summer that drops to 25-30 hours/week – with a total of 6 weeks vacation time.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and what motivated you write, “Women, Work and Autoimmune Disease: Keep Working Girlfriend”

I’ve lived with chronic illnesses for 30 years.  I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 29 and just married. We had two children and I was able to continue to work outside the home full time until I developed ulcerative colitis (UC) and I became very sick and went on disability for two years. In that time, I became determined to find some kind of work, paid or not, that I could do.  But my training and skills were not conducive to part time employment. I recognized that if I was going to keep working with a sick body, it had to be work I loved doing and gave me flexibility. (more…)

Do you work at home?

I do not consider it work because I love what I do.  I do generate my income from home based business activities.

How many hours do you work a week?

This is a hard question because as I said, I do not consider it work.  I put about 30 hours per week into office time.  I go out of the house to do demos and speaking events 3-4 times per week.

Tell us a little bit about your company and how you got started.

Dedicated to improving the quality of family life through education, DebBixler.com focuses on teaching families healthy living choices and direct sellers how to create consistent income from home in their home businesses.

As a trained chef, after a successful 30 year career in the hospitality industry I got tired of going to work for someone else.  I started a party plan business and used my skills in public speaking to generate leads and incorporated all the business skills that created a success in the corporate world and was able to replace my income in 9 months.  I then quit my full time job. (more…)

By Holly Reisem Hanna

Lately I have been inundated with SPAM – from unwanted newsletters, ridiculous link requests, unsolicited tweets from random people wanting me to vote for them, or for me to view their sexy pics, to lame comments on my blog!

I’ll be the first to admit, that when I first started blogging I was so eager to succeed that I did leave some non-thought provoking comments on blogs and I did email some people abruptly to exchange links. However, I quickly learned that this was not the way to get ahead and establish and cultivate relationships.

Here are my tips for healthy participation and successful self-promotion: (more…)

By Holly Reisem Hanna

For the past two weeks, I have been stressed to the max, tense, uptight and anxious!

Yes, I have been extremely busy, but for the most part, I’m always busy!

I’ve been eating right and exercising, so that couldn’t be it. I create a daily to-do list and I’m very organized, so that wasn’t it.

What could it be? What was making me feel so out of sorts? After some self-reflection I finally came to the conclusion – I had unintentionally over-extended myself.

You see, I love to help people. I also have 1,001 ideas running through my head at any given time and I want to pursue them all. The problem begins when you don’t say no, and you keep pushing forward even though your mind, body and spirit are telling you to STOP! For me not slowing down and not saying no, runs over into all aspects of my life, from personal to professional. In fact, I even instigate it further by volunteering myself or planning events that I know in the back of my head are going to cause me stress. (more…)