Author Terri Pilcher and I have put together an ebook that addresses the issues direct sales moms face - how to increase and maximize sales. Our goal is to help you increase your sales - with tips from professional marketers and successful WAHM businesswomen like you. Click Here to purchase!

A Note From Terri ~ When you meet someone you know will help you fulfill your God-given purpose, you just know it’s a  God-thing. When Jill and I met, we knew that working together would enable us to change more women’s lives and help them to reach higher levels of success. Together we put together an article and e-books that give you insights into the minds of successful businesswomen. We hope our work will enable you to achieve your dreams! - Terri Pilcher

These are probably the questions you’re asking yourself right now. We’ve been where you are, and we want to help you achieve your dreams as a work-at-home mom.

A friend of my mom’s called me recently to ask about work-at-home ideas. Her husband sells mortgages, but with the slow-down in the real estate market, they need to make more money. She’s a stay-at-home mom who homeschools their adopted children. “What can I do?” she asked me. “Are there any legitimate work at home opportunities?”

I assured her there were, but the most common required both direct sales and going to home parties. She didn’t have time for that because of her husband’s irregular hours selling mortgages. “What are you good at?” I asked.

She hadn’t finished college and had spent the last thirty years as a stay-at-home mom. “I don’t have any skills,” she said.

I knew that wasn’t true, but it took some work and more questions to find out what she’d enjoy doing. She has adopted four or five kids (I’ve lost count) from China, and has a passion for adoption. As soon as she started talking about how much she enjoyed advocating for families in her church who wanted to adopt, her voice sparkled with enthusiasm. I knew I’d uncovered her passion.

“Can you get paid to be an advocate?” I asked her.

She knew of a few possibilities, but didn’t think she had the skills to fill the paying positions. I left her with homework, “Call a couple of your contacts in the adoption world, explain that you want to work from home and help families with adoptions, and ask for their advice. You’ll be surprised how willing they’ll be to help.” It’s her passion for adoption that will give her a job where she can find success.

How to Find a Great Home-based Business

When I first started looking for an at home business, I was pregnant with my first child and desperate for money. I wasn’t worried about finding something I liked. I figured I could and would do anything that would make me an extra $1,000 a month. I didn’t realize that I could never get a business to that level unless I loved what I was doing and believed in it.

Finding something that’s merely LEGAL won’t make a home-based business work, no matter what most people tell you. It’s passion for your choice of work at home business that will keep you going through the difficult early stages and give you the satisfaction to keep at it for decades.

To find your home-based business:

1. Choose a life of passion
2. Make a list of all of the things you’re passionate about
3. What home businesses excite you?
4. Picture yourself in each business. Ask which one fits you best?
5. Talk to the people who know you best and ask which of your top 3 choices they see you doing and why.
6. Make a list of the steps you’ll need to take to start that business
7. Start today on the first step

Let’s work through these steps together.

Step 1 - Live Passionately!

Do you wake up excited about your day? Probably not. Most of us struggle to trudge through the daily grind.

Wake up. Get the kids off to school. Clean the house. Run errands. Pick up the kids from school. Cook dinner. Clean up. Help the kids do their homework. Get the kids to bed. Call a couple of business clients. Collapse.

What’s exciting or passionate about that? Especially when you’re struggling to pay the bills.

You’re living in a poverty cycle:
• Poverty of heart - Where’s the love in what you’re living through?
• Poverty of life - You feel poor and live cheap.
• Poverty of soul – Nothing’s filling you with joy and you’re giving nothing back to the world.

God has so much more for you. He calls us to a life of abundance. When I say abundance, don’t hear “lots of cash”. Abundance means a life of joy and generosity.

Find your passion and you’ll break the poverty cycle. Passion gives us the power to overcome the failures and rejections we experience on our way to success. When we find the God-given purpose for our lives and live for it, we’ll live joy-filled lives. Every day will be an adventure.

For CWAHMs, passion is an essential ingredient to working from home. There’s so much going on already, that if we need to give up our relaxation time to run a business our new work must be something we passionately enjoy.

Step 2 – What Excites You?

If you had a chronic disease and knew you were going to live five more years without pain and then suddenly drop dead, what would you do? Money is no object for you, because you also have a billion dollars in the bank. What would you most want to do?

Take the same scenario and change your death date to one year from today. How would you spend your time if money was no object?

What do you most love to talk about? What excites you? What do you enjoy doing or thinking about more than anything else?

Write down your answers to these questions. Which of these would make you excited to start every new day?

The thing that excites you the most is part of your purpose. It’s part of what God’s created you to do. It’s wired into our brain to love, enjoy, and yearn for those wonderful things God wants us to do. (Yes, some moments are drudgery, but not our whole life!)

For me, it’s helping others find their passion and live successfully. I want everyone to be happy! Every person who finds their passion and lives with purpose will make a huge positive difference in the world. For Jill it’s more specifically helping other moms find ways to work from home. The blessing that it has been in her life urges her on to help other moms find success at home.

Imagine how your kids’ lives will change when they see their mom waking up every morning with a smile on her face and a cheerful look that lasts throughout the day. What will they learn from you? They’ll learn how to become successful in their lives too. Kids learn by example, and when we become that positive role model, we’re giving them the opportunity to live with joy.

Print out our Work At Home Worksheet. Writing down your passions, dreams, goals, and vision will give your thoughts the chance to become real. You can read back over them on the difficult days and know that the dreams are worth the struggles.

Step 3 – Make a List of Businesses Related to Your Passion

What could you do at home related to your passion and skills? Don’t limit yourself. Think crazy! At a women’s networking meeting I met a woman who ran a successful limousine service out of her basement. Don’t let impossibilities stop you.

Take the time right now to make a list of the ways you can live your passion. Don’t worry about a lack of education, money, or talent. We’re dreaming, and the sky’s the limit for what you can do. Include things you enjoy that are related to your education. If you’re a nurse, but can’t do that from home, what about daycare for sick kids, writing health articles, or case management from home? Be creative!

Once you’re done, look at your list again. What work from home businesses have you heard of that match your dreams? If nothing comes to mind, you may need to create your own business. Call successful people in your industry and ask them for advice.

If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, check out our list of TOP CWAHM Opportunities.

Step 4 – Picture Yourself in Each Business

“Without vision, the people perish,” says the Bible in Proverbs 29:18. Picture what it will be like to live your passion. What will your day look like? How will your dreams affect your family? How will it affect you? How will it change your relationship with God?

Write down everything you think of, set it aside for a couple of days, then read your list. Rewrite those ideas into a full picture of your life when you’re doing the work from home job of your dreams.

Does the vision of your future success excite you? If it’s truly your future, it will excite you, motivate you, and give you the strength to overcome your fears.

Post your vision on an index card and tape it near your business workspace. Look at it every day and picture your future in your mind.

My first home business was an MLM company that sold vitamins. I made big enough mistakes that my husband will never let me join another network marketing company. Still, we both agreed that I learned good lessons about marketing, being bold, and running a business. It wasn’t until eight years later that I remembered the vision my upline told me to create to motivate my sales efforts.

My original vision: a cute little cottage with my husband standing out front and holding our baby on the front steps. The house of my dreams wasn’t huge, but it was ours. We achieved that vision and bought our first house four years after I pictured it, even though my home business contributed nothing toward our finances. The front of our house looks exactly like the home in my vision!

Vision works.

Jill’s vision began with her own desire to work from home. She wasn’t able to find a website that she trusted that contained all of the information she was seeking about working from home. Seeing a need, Jill decided to fill it. CWAHM.com was born out of a desire to put all of her research in one place, connect with other Christian moms and work together to find success.

Step 5 - Plan Your Success

Whether you already have a home business or are ready to start one, you need a plan to take you where you want to go. Without a plan, you can’t get anywhere. It’s like jumping in a pond and treading water. You’re surrounded by land. Many destinations are possible, but until you choose where you’re going to go, you’ll stay in the middle of the pond and accomplish nothing.

Think of most people you know. They live without purpose or plan. Life becomes boring and monotonous when there’s no reason behind what they’re doing.

That’s not the life God wants for us! He gives us adventure, love, joy, journeys, exploration, and creativity.

How will you find or create your dream job? First, write down your goal, the vision you wrote down earlier. Next, write down the things necessary for you to get where you want to go in the next five years. Then, write 1-year and 1-month plans and the steps you’ll take to achieve your 1-year and 1-month goals.

I’ve started a business that imports handcrafted items made by women in desperate situations in third world countries. I dreamed it up two years before it became reality. My future dreams for it include a direct sales company that sells fair trade items, helping work at home moms and impoverished women. To get there, I want the business to pay for itself, so I’m starting small and selling items at craft shows and on consignment in stores in my area. As it grows, I’m investing the profits in the business, so my plan looks something like this:

This is the 5-year plan. The 1-year plan has more detail and
looks like this:

My 1-month plan is even more specific:

Now it’s your turn. Take out the Work At Home Worksheet and plan your success. Write in your ultimate goal first. Then write in the 10 biggest steps you need to accomplish to get there. Then write in 5 smaller steps (or more) to reach each of the big steps.

Step 6. Take That First Step

What are you going to do today? I’m going to go and do something I haven’t touched in two months – I’m going to get my website working. It’s essential to marketing my products.

What is the first step on your plan? Is it to research your first choice business? Call someone today and learn more about it. Is it to go back to school? Start researching schools today. Do you already have a business in mind but don’t know if you want to spend the money? That’s fear. If you have the money,spend it. If you don’t, have a yard sale or sell baked goods until you do. There’s no good excuse not to do something today!!!

When Jill began CWAHM.com she started small. Her husband taught her web design, and what he didn’t know she taught herself. She spent ten dollars or so on a domain name and began building the website. Your first step doesn’t need to be expensive or terrifying. Set a goal that is attainable for you and go for it!

What’s Stopping You?

Look at your lists, re-read your dream. What’s holding you back? You’ve
had those desires and dreams for years now. You’ve tucked them away, because
something told you that they were impossible for you.

Do you fear success or failure? Both hinder most of us. What if I told you to
start your dream now, what “buts” pop into your mind?

Are you too poor? Were you abused? Do you have physical limitations? Whatever
it is, it’s only stopping you because you’re letting it. You’ve
probably heard it before:

Stop making excuses! You’re already doing the hardest job in the world. You’re a mom. Plan around your limitations or step over them. People have overcome more than you’ve gone through and still succeeded in amazing ways.

When I first got married, I’d beg my husband to call and order pizza, because I didn’t want to use the phone. Go ahead, laugh!

When I joined an MLM company I found through a Christian magazine, I prospected for clients by telephone. Boy did I hate it! I made myself do it anyway, because I didn’t want my fear to hold me back. That experience cold calling people to sell vitamins wasn’t successful, but it taught me that I can overcome my fears.

Trust me, if you can learn the courage to call people who barely know you (or don’t know you at all) to sell vitamins, you have the boldness to overcome any rejection in your life. I lost thousands of dollars (okay, I didn’t LOSE the money, I spent that much money improving my health buying vitamins) with the vitamin company, but I gained an invaluable skill I use every day.

I’m succeeding now, because I overcame my biggest fear. I promise that overcoming your biggest fear is the key to your success.

Pull out the Work At Home Worksheet and write down your fears. Compare them to your goals. Are your fears really so real that they’ll keep you from your dreams? Of course not. You can conquer them!

Recognizing Opportunity

When you start on the path to your dreams, opportunities will arise that you don’t expect. It may be an out-of-the-box way to sell your items or find new prospects in your area. A new client may ask you to do something you’ve never done before.

There are four possible outcomes when an opportunity comes along.

1. You don’t see the opportunity – Our eyes have to be open to seeing the possibilities. I think that’s why a lot of self-help gurus talk about visualizing goals, thinking about our goals every day, and even saying our goals out loud three times a day. When you keep your dreams in mind, you see the things that can turn into opportunities when no one else does.

2. Fear keeps you from taking advantage of the opportunity – Fear of failure (“What will everyone say if this flops?”), fear of success (“I’m going to have hundreds of people in my downline expecting me to help them if I do this.”), and other fears make us stay in our current rut.

3. You take advantage of the opportunity and succeed – Who wouldn’t want to succeed!!

4. You try to take advantage of the opportunity and fail – If you reach for success, this will happen.

Many of the features that CWAHM offers and because of services that website visitors have asked for. When Jill began she had no graphic design experience, no web design experience, no marketing experience. Each time a client asked for something she didn’t know how to do, she went out of her way to learn.

For example, when Jill began getting requests to advertise on CWAHM many of her clients didn’t have buttons or banners to use. Jill began getting emails asking where they could find help creating banners that would be customized with their information. Seeing another need, Jill taught herself how to design buttons and banners and a new product was added to CWAHM.

Overcome Failure

Failure’s inevitable.

My first business venture didn’t work out. I failed setting up my website two months ago, and I failed to get a hold of a client for an interview yesterday.

I’ve learned from each of these experiences. James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson vacuum with cyclonic suction, says, “Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.” It took him fifteen years to sell his vacuum, and he had to start his own company to do it. Today he’s worth billions.

What will you do when you fail? Will you give up? If you can’t accomplish any work today because your kids are sick, the car broke down, or a friend stopped by to visit, will you quit for good? If you don’t sell anything your first month, do you stop trying?

You define who you are and who you become by how you react when you fail. It’s failure that points us in the right direction, that teaches us courage, and proves to us that we want to succeed at our work from home business.

Many of the ideas that Jill has tried on CWAHM have failed. She has taken each failure, learned from it and tried something new. There is nothing wrong with trying something and failing. It’s only when you don’t get back up and try again that you truly fail.

Lasting Success

No matter how successful your business is, you’ll regret not placing your family first. Your work from home business is a way for you to stay home with you kids and help with the bills. You’re doing this for your family. Don’t let work steal from them.

True success requires us to live a balanced life. We can place God first, then family, then business, and still make money as WAHMs. It requires discipline (yuck!), but it’s what lifts some over the rest of the crowd.

My friend Lindy, a millionaire CWAHM, believes strongly in self-discipline and believes it’s one of the key ingredients for success. She schedules her time months ahead and tries to maintain a healthy balance between living her faith, family life, and business. She keeps her calendar handy to keep herself from overbooking her time. To her, discipline also means exercising and eating right. “Much of the time I don’t want to exercise, but I force myself to do it. I never regret it.”

Another important tip for lasting success is saying, “No.” This one little word keeps us from burnout, from stealing time from our families, and from doing things we really aren’t called to do. For me, just knowing this wasn’t enough to make me say it. Someone once told me, “If you’re saying yes to things God doesn’t want you to do, then you’re stealing the blessing from the person who is supposed to be doing it.”

I realize that saying “no” means that I’m blessing someone else with the opportunity for success at their call.

There are so many other tips that will help you find lasting success, and you’ll find them here at CWAHM.com. Look around, join the forums, sign up for the newsletter, and call in for the teleconferences. We want you to succeed!