By Diana Stirling

I believe when moms choose to work at home, we’ve chosen this path to have more freedom and flexibility in our life. We have wanted to spend more time with our children without giving up our passion for our career. Perhaps some of us have done it out of necessity, to have an income stream while still caring for our children, while some of us have done it to not give up on our dreams of entrepreneurship and to show our children by example what having a true passion for what you do really means.

Choosing this life path for our family and our business has the best decision Shannon (my biz partner) and I have ever made. Since starting to talk more with other women entrepreneurs about Pretirement I have discovered that many women are confirming their true desire to Live Life Now – and this is what we collectively need to celebrate and inspire others to do.

I’d like to share with you stories of three women who have truly inspired me this week to Live Life Now:

Eva H.: This week I interviewed a mom who, after a 20 year career as a grocery store cashier, turned to her husband and said “If we had one year left to live, what would we do?” (more…)

By Diana Stirling

By all accounts, building a home based business is perhaps the most difficult business of all. Chances are you started your business so that you could work from home to have the flexibility to raise your children while still enabling yourself to make an income and fulfill your dream of being an entrepreneur.

The challenge with businesses that are run out of the home by ‘moms’ is that you are first and foremost a mom. Which means your children get your attention (as does your housework, your meal planning, your school and activity appointments) and your business is ‘squeezed’ into your day or after the kidlets are asleep. Multitasking at the maximum!

So while this is giving you the freedom, you have to truly WANT to have your home business.

I would love to know…what truly motivates work at home women to work so hard building a business, while simultaneously focusing on being a great mom?

I sat down with a successful woman entrepreneur this week who truly runs a home based business. Natalie Preston not only works from her home fulfilling online orders, but her local clients also come to her house (more…)

By Diana Stirling

Being Pretired, I work much of the time from another part of the world, so my ‘home office’ changes. Given this situation, it is rare that I can attend a live seminar, conference or event in my area. For this reason, I absolutely love and rely on on-demand webinars and make a point of scheduling 2 one-hour webinars per week for personal and/or professional development.

Have you ever been so excited to take a course, totally pumped during the presentation and for about half a day following but then one week later realize that you…

1. Can’t remember 80% of what you learned.

2. Haven’t implemented anything. (more…)

By Diana Stirling

Ever had an “I don’t feel like it” day? I know I have them more than I’d care to admit and they can strike at any time, anywhere and without warning.

The two businesses Shannon and I run are centered around Pretirement, which means we can work from anywhere for a part of the year. Surprisingly, I can be in my home office in Canada or in the most beautiful part of Australia and either have unbelievable momentum or absolutely NOTHING.

When I lose motivation I need to bring myself out of it as fast as I possibly can. My businesses, my employees, my clients, my sanity – all depend on it.   (more…)

By Diana Stirling

Writing this post from the Cook Islands is a dream come true for me. For the next four months I am living and working in the South Pacific with my husband and our two children (4 & 2 years old). Four years ago, I was in an office in Vancouver Canada, I had more than a dozen employees and over a 2-hour commute.  At that point we, my business partner Shannon and I, decided to completely restructure our businesses so we could work from home – wherever that ‘home’ may be.

We decided to Pretire.

Now, we each travel for 4 months of the year working in our new destinations as if we were working from home. I knew I was fulfilling a personal life dream, but Pretirement has also brought three amazing (and somewhat unexpected) gifts: (more…)