Work from Home - Lots of Options Available but is it for YOU???

Working from home is a dream situation to many individuals but is it for you? You see the pictures of moms with their babies on their laps in front of computers and you think, ya that's what I want. But is it all it's made out to be? Working from home is a commitment and you have to be self motivated, if you aren't guess what - you won't succeed.

There are lots of work at home options out there, some good, some not. So how do you find the one that will work for you? First you have to know yourself, your passions and talents. Be honest with yourself don't idealize what you want to be, be realistic about your skills, habits, and motivations. Second, once you know what your about find a company that will match who you are. If you choose a company that doesn't match you - guess what, you won't succeed. There are more things to consider check out my article on choosing a direct sales or network marketing company, these are the two most important though.

Want to know more about network marketing companies or multi level networking companies?Reviews Articles on various multi level marketing or direct sales companies

When you work from home you have all sorts of distractions, especially if you have young children. You have to be able to compartmentalize your life and your children have to be able to understand that when you are in your office working not to disturb you unless it is an emergency. Your spouse or partner will have to be very supportive and helpful during the time you have set aside as work time. If you don't take your work at home situation seriously, your family won't so make sure you draw the boundaries right away.

When you work from home the condition of your home could be a distraction if you want to make sure it's clean before your start working. If you can't ignore the pile of laundry during scheduled work time then you won't be able to succeed. You need to ensure that you have planned out your time and you do what needs to be done in it's allotted time. If you keep putting work off to clean the house or do laundry you will never get to work and will fail.

A side effect of working from home is working all the time, it's hard to keep work at work when your home is your work. If your personal home phone is also your business phone you could find yourself answering business calls 24/7. Many people who work from home find they love the flexibility but they also end up working more hours a week then if they had an outside office.

Working from home is a wonderful experience, one I've been fortunate to hold in the past. My husband has freedom and spends more time with the kids, but at times he works all the time and misses out on the kids activities because he can't keep to work hours. He doesn't have to commute further than a few feet but his clients demand on calling any time to book an appointment and show up late in the day to pay their bill. My husband has a successful business but he feels he never gets time off and we have to leave the house to leave the work stress behind. When deciding if you should work from home you need to take the good and bad into consideration before you make a decision.

Looking for Work - Recruiting Agencies or Head Hunters

I've met with my fair share of head hunters or recruitment agencies over the years, most have interviewed me to work for them instead of offering me options. I am disillusioned by head hunters and have yet to be impressed by the service they provide. That said, they are a useful resource when looking for work because they have plenty of opportunities to fill with quality candidates. Trick is finding the one you can work with and trust.

They are looking for the perfect candidate to put forth to the company and when they find them they are hoping for a quick hire and a paycheque. Anyone would right? If that was how you got paid wouldn't you want it to be an easy match? Thing is when it isn't a match and either you don't get offered the job or you turn down the job some head hunters write you off, especially if you've made a taboo mistake during the interview process. Don't forget that their reputation is riding on your performance.

Companies pay a lot of money to recruitment agencies when a match is found and they aren't willing to take a chance on anything less than a perfect match for that reason. So if you are going into an interview set up via a head hunter make sure you are over prepared: Study the company, press your suit, get a hair cut, leave the cell phone at home and know the answers before you arrive preferably early.

Recruiters and Head Hunters have lots of positions they need to fill with highly qualified and good quality candidates. Remember, they are focused on the companies needs not on the candidates needs so don't go in expecting them to find you a position. You need to do your homework and continue to search job boards, newspapers, and websites for opportunities. You will be in the recruiters database but unless you are in constant contact with them you will not be a top of mind candidate.

Choose an agency that has the image you want to portray to the marketplace. If you are looking for labour blue collar jobs register with an agency that specializes in these types of jobs. If you are looking for a professional office position steer away from industrial recruitment agencies and towards agencies that specialize in your industry.

That's the great thing about agencies, there are so many different types. Whether you choose a general bit of everything agency or a niche agency focused on one industry make sure you work with the recruiter. Keep in contact, give feedback about the interviews you go on, call to see if there are any other opportunities, and make sure you know what you want before you meet with them. You don't have to be a star with an amazing resume to use head hunter services, there are plenty that will help you.

I've met only 2 head hunters that I think are really good to work with:

Nancy @ Tag Recruitment Group in Calgary
Paul @ Holloway Schultz in Toronto

Do you know any head hunters that are really good to work with? If so please pass on their names as it isn't easy to find the good ones if you are a candidate.

Unemployed and Looking for Work takes 3 Ps - Patience, Perseverance, and Prayer

The waiting, the interview game, the searching, no wonder I wanted to buy a career for myself. I want to get going on a career so bad I can taste it. Finding a new position that fits what I want and what a company wants is stressful, anyone who has looked for work knows the rejection, the anticipation, the effort, the stress.

So what can you do while you wait for the right job offer to come along. First off, why do you have time to do anything else? Looking for work is a full time job in itself. If you do have time though, read books and periodicals that pertain to the job and industry you want a career in. You may even find a job, you will impress during your interviews and you will feel like you are doing something productive. Patience does not come easy, but without it you'll make reactive decisions and not proactive. Take it from someone who knows, lack of patience means bad rushed decisions. If you feel productive you'll be able to weather out the storm.

Rejection is hard to take, even for the most confident person. You've found a position you want really bad but you didn't interview well or someone was just more suited for the position and you don't receive an offer. I've been there, you've been there, everyone has been there - You are not on your own. The thing is if you give up after too many nos you'll never get anywhere in life because life is full of nos. If you want to work or want a career you have to keep going, regardless of how many times you've been kicked down. Without perseverance you'll always be unemployed and down.

Looking for work can be a lonely occupation, especially if those around you are stressed about you being out of work. It's hard to stay positive have patience and persevere when you feel like your alone in the world. Prayer will help you talk out your feelings, failures, and make you feel like you're not on your own. You will need someone or something to listen to you so you can get perspective on your situation.

A couple years ago my life was great, I was content with what I had and excited because I was going back to work outside the home and start a career. I was reading Philip Yancey's book "The Bible Jesus Read" at the time and the first chapter was on the book of Job and my study of the Book of Job ended up being a warning about the future.


I've been kicked down so many times and have had so much go wrong that my closest friend keeps commenting that she doesn't know how I get out of bed in the morning. I'll let you in on a secret -- I try really really hard not to feel sorry for myself or expect others to feel sorry for me. I keep a positive outlook by focusing on the positive aspects of my life and not the negative. It's all about perspective and staying positive even when things don't go my way. Family has asked how I keep going and really, what else am I supposed to do? I am determined to have a successful career and do something with my life and in order to do that I have to keep going and persevere over every no, every rejection and be patient waiting for the right offer.

The don'ts of an interview

My Love Hate Relationship with Wal Mart and Why You Need Wal Mart in Your Portfolio

I must confess I do shop at Wal-Mart, it is a love hate relationship though. I hate shopping at Wal-Mart and every time I'm in Wal-Mart I get grumpy but the cheaper prices keep me coming back for things like cleaning supplies and milk.

Wal-Mart is one of those stores you go into for 7 items and come out with 27 items and spent at least $200.00. The lower prices and roll backs tempt shoppers to impulse buy. How can anyone save money if they keep buying stuff they don't really need because they got a good deal? Or are consumers really saving money by shopping at Wal-Mart?



By shopping at Wal-Mart consumers support low wage local jobs and the Chinese economy. Where we live you can't afford to live on the Province's minimum wage and as a result the bulk of the employees are immigrants from China and India, most of which work 2-3 jobs to give their kids a better life.

Supporting small business will make an economic change in local communities, thing is if you are struggling to make ends meet Wal-Mart prices become your only option. Until I find work I feed my family on $150.00 per week, not an easy task, but attainable thanks to Wal-Mart's prices.

With more and more families finding it harder to make ends meet they will turn to shopping at Wal-Mart, even if they didn't before. This is the reason you need to add Wal-Mart to your investment portfolio, it is an anti-cyclical stock. What that means is, when the economy is doing bad and retailer stocks are falling, Wal Marts sales will be rising and it's stocks will rise as a result.

Fortune reported:

Wal-Mart has perhaps made the greatest strides with customers, who are clamoring for bargains during these days of rising gas and food prices.

The company said Thursday that sales of U.S. stores open at least a year rose 4.4%, one of the retailer's strongest showings in months and one that blew away analyst estimates. The performance is especially remarkable coming at a time when most retailers are struggling.

Wal-Mart is trying to change it's image by providing employees with more benefits and creating a more pleasant shopping experience. They hope that this will keep shoppers coming back even when things get better. However, if consumers continue to demand low price items from China will things get better?



** I am not a financial planner and any investment decisions should only be made with the advise of a trusted advisor.

My Job Search seems to be Going Really Well

Looking for a position to re jump start my career has been a full time job but the work seems to be paying off. In a real short time I have received a lot of interest and have 3 interviews a day. The amount of interest in my resume is good for my self esteem and I hope to be working before the end of June.

Sending out resumes, re writing my resume and cover cover letter and fielding calls is time consuming. Jobs are not always posted on job boards or in the paper and searching out all the websites of good companies to work for takes some effort. Researching the company before an interview by reading their website information and googling the company for non corporate information takes time. Answering questions and being prepared to answer any question that comes at you takes practice. Add to the equation, kids and lack of money and it becomes a stressful experience. One I hope to not have to do again for a very long time.

A Nation in Denial? Is the US Economy in Recession?

The media and the government continue to deny that the US economy is in recession. The Jobless rate is increasing and their is a crisis in housing, financial and Credit markets. With Fuel and food costs rising on top of all the other problems in the economy can the economy stabilize? Is there enough cash injection left to grow the economy or are the majority of people tapped out?

From the Associated Press:

And, there’s been a lot of talk about whether the economy is on the brink of, or fallen into, its first recession since 2001. That determination, made by a panel of academics, is usually made well after the fact

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Airlines Cut Jobs

The squeeze, a byproduct of record oil prices that are pushing airlines toward financial disaster, accelerated Wednesday when United Airlines announced plans to take 70 more jets out of service and cut domestic capacity by 17 to 18 percent in 2008-09. Its discount unit Ted will be shut down and 1,100 additional jobs eliminated, with more to follow.

That came two weeks after a similar move by AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, the only U.S. carrier larger than United, which said it would slash domestic capacity 11 to 12 percent after the peak summer travel season. American already has begun eliminating flights, as have No. 3 Delta Air Lines Inc. and others.

What determines a recession?

A period of general economic decline; specifically, a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters.

From an article on About.com:

They [BCDC] define a recession as the time when business activity has reached its peak and starts to fall until the time when business activity bottoms out. When the business activity starts to rise again it is called an expansionary period. By this definition, the average recession lasts about a year.

An economy cannot continue to go up and up forever it is a cycle of expansion peaks contraction and vallys. A smart business owner will plan for all the stages of the economic cycle and understand economic indicators to help develop their plan of action.

Will things get better? From the same Associated Press article:

Fed officials and the Bush administration are hoping that the Fed’s powerful doses of rate reductions and the government’s $168 billion stimulus package, including tax rebates for people and tax breaks for businesses, will pull the economy out of its deep funk in the second half of this year.

Even if that happens, the unemployment rate is expected to climb to 6 percent or higher early next year. Employers won’t want to ramp up hiring until they feel more sure that an economic recovery has strong legs.

I think the US is on the road to a recession for how long or how deep I do not know. Right now many sectors are in recession and if your business is in this sector you need to take action and create a plan to survive it.

Should You Cut Back on Advertising During a Slow Economy?

Cost of Living is Increasing, Consumers are Cutting Back, Is Your Business Effected?

Cost of living is getting high thanks to the higher cost of feul, wheat, and corn. These are staples and necessesities for families and they have to cover the cost of these items, which means they have less for luxeries. Some businesses are finding it harder to cover costs and meet their liabilities.

Restaurants are declaring Chapter 11.

People are getting dog food from food banks and looking for discount vets because they can't afford their animals.

Toyota and Ford are reporting lower sales.

GM is closing 4 plants and considering cancelling production of the Hummer.

Jobless Rate Increases - 49 000 jobs cut nationwide.

So if the big guys are having trouble how can the smaller guy survive? Here are some ideas:

1. Get your financing and books under control to ensure you won't have a cash flow emergency.

2. Find another use for your product and service to increase your target market. Ask yourself, what other ways can my product or service be utilized? Get creative and brain storm with friends and family.

3. Add other products and services to your business, preferrably ones with high margins. Make sure that the new products complement your presents products. You don't want to go out and find a new target market, you want to offer your present target market more.

4. Reduce your inventories to hold less items that don't sell very well. Can you downsize your lease space? Perhaps sublet a piece of your footprint to a complimentary business but not a direct competitor? For example Postal Outlets in Drug Stores. If you have extra storage space you could warehouse items for anther company to help pay the rent.

5. Talk to your suppliers about offering drop shipping or custom order only items instead of inventoring it and having to be out of pocket.

Where can you cut costs? Where can you expand your market share? The goal here is to make it through a recession period with your business entact, which means cutting back and cutting expenses. Finding creative cost effective ways to save money and increase sales takes planning. Take time to plan and brainstorm with trusted mentors, consultants, advisors and friends. Try not to get so bogged down in the day to day you forget to plan for tomorrow.

Looking for Employment in Calgary and Trying to Overcome Disappointment

For those of you following these posts I have a little confession to make, financing for the business I was hoping to buy fell through. Not only that, I am in a position now where I must re evaluate what I want and what my family needs. The reason for purchasing the business never changed, I was buying myself a career that I could turn into a wonderful lifestyle.

Now I am looking for work, not an easy task even in Calgary. The one thing I learned from the experience of purchasing the business was patience and now I need patience more than ever because if I had purchased the business I would have had 2 paycheques by now.

Overcoming the disappointment of loosing the position the business would have given me has not been easy. Then starting over to build a career I want knowing I almost had the career I wanted is not easy to wait for. I am preparing myself to take a position lower on the career latter with my eyes set on the prize. The last month I was creating business plans, financial statements and marketing plans, this month I will need to create a career plan. I'm looking forward to it!

I left my position at as a sales associate for a financial planner in 2003 to stay home with my daughter who needed me. During this time I volunteered, ran a childcare business, prospected for my husband's automotive repair business, and read more books than I can count to increase my knowledge. Still I find it hard to enter the workforce. A couple years ago my former boss offered me my position back at a lower salary and I decided that I wanted to work in a different industry and at a different professional level. Recently he again asked me to come and interview for a marketing / business development position and although I would rather work within a corporation that has a future for advancement I may have no other choice.

The past 3 years have not helped the situation. Positions I took ended up to be a bad match. One I was laid off from after 3 months and another I left after 9 months. The last year of upheaval has not helped either. First we moved to the Okanagan, next my husband got an offer to move to Ponoka and fly so we moved back to Calgary. I decided to stay home for a few reasons, 1. I was a single parent because my husband lived in Ponoka. 2. My daughter's kindergarten was 8-10:30 then my son was off at 2:30. Daycare would have been around the $1,100.00 mark. 3. We thought we were moving to Red Deer for my husband's job and I didn't want to start a career just to quit again. 4. Tried to purchase a business that would enable me to have a career in B2B sales / marketing / and business development. During this time I developed Carennedy Solutions, learned about website development, learned about internet marketing, and read books on marketing, sales, economics, and business. So I stayed busy, tried to increase my skills and my knowledge, still finding a position in a corporation has not been easy because I don't have a job and because I've been out of the workforce.

Carennedy Solutions, my pet project, is my attempt to help women who want to work from home market themselves and provide them with training. I don't make money doing it, it is an educational tool for those that use it and myself. I've been able to increase my skills and meet some really strong women who want to succeed. If I could teach them anything though, it would be to keep their eye on their career in the long run. I've advised them to create business plans and marketing plans, now I want to encourage them to also create written career plans to help them understand what skills they need to be acquiring during their time at home.

Overcoming disappointment and trying to move on has been hard. I'll admit I need to start making money and more than selling my designs online has brought in. My natural optimism and positive attitude help me to keep looking and applying. I hang on to the hope that I will be able to find a position that will lead to the career I've always wanted and try to get fit at the same time.

Musicians like Beverly Mahood Change the Promotion and Marketing of their Latest CDs

Beverly Mahood and other musicians like her are utilizing social networking sites like facebook and myspace to promote their CD releases. The Academy of Country Music changed the voting for Entertainer of the Year from the academy to fans votes. To make it easy for fans to vote for Entertianer of the Year the votes were collected via an internet poll. Kenny Chesney made the comment that, "But I don't think it's right that they picked the one award that means the most, that all the artists sacrifice the most for." He said they changed the category "into a sweepstakes to see who can push people's buttons the hardest on the Internet. I don't think that's right, really" The award has now become a prize for the nominee that can market themselves best on the internet and appeal to the age demographic that lives online. I should note that he made this comment after winning the award.



Utilizing the internet to promote yourself and your business is cost effective, in most cases free, and depending on your target audience effective. Social networking sites like facebook and myspace enable businesses to create pages and advertisements that will show up on their targeted audience's pages. Even if you feel that you don't have the time to play around with these sites, you do need to take advantage of their low cost advertising and create an online presence for your business.

Online polls, forums and comments are a very cost effective way to gain a better understanding of your audience. However, you need to understand the demographics of those that use the internet regularly and those that rarely log on. Which is your target audience? Will you find them online or offline? Kenny Chesney's comment about fans voting for their favorite entertainer has more to do with the age of fans then it does internet marketing. If an entertainers fans are older the chance they will know about voting and will actually vote decreases. Although you need an online presence understand your target audience and ensure they will find you on and offline.