Creating new office spaces today throughout my house today! Its exciting to reinvent the space you’ve worked in for 2 years.

First, I am creating more storage space in my office for Safety First Bags because it is good to keep inventory at my finger tips. I converted the garage into an office in my town house, and it is the full floorspace of the main floors without walls!!! I used wall units to create a division and have storage space behind them and a fully carpeted office, complete with conference table on the main floor. It is awesome to leave my home, go down the stairs – and its cold in the stairwell – and open the door to the office! What a blessing!

With that blessing comes major electric charges in the winter, so this year I have taken advantage of my laptop that HP sponsored Word of Mom with and worked from upstairs 95% of my time this winter. The savings have been tremendous as my bill more than doubled in the winter having to heat the garage.

With this blessing comes the decision to bring my office upstairs for the next few months. This is the second change and at first, it was a struggle for me as it has been many office was in the living part of my home.  As a MOMpreneur my office has been in my bedroom, then the dining room and then, finally, in an office in my house. It is a bit of an adjustment to make the decision to move part of my office back into my day to day life. Funny how even though I work from home psychologically I “go to the office” every day. Now my office is going to be living with me again, but this time it is because I choose to do this – not because I don’t have a choice! Ah the difference the when you choose…

I choose to love my second office in my home and will make it cozy and professional with just a bit of fun tossed in for good measure. I choose – what WONDERFUL words those are! I say it again, I choose.

How did you end the year and begin this new one? Are you leaving things undone hoping they will take care of themselves or are you  realizing that you need to let your minds rest for a bit as we begin 2012.  Sometimes taking a step back and reflecting on the successes and near-successes of the past year gives us a renewed sense of purpose and a drive to push ourselves to the next level.  The new year is 2 weeks along and it is now time to take that deep breath and honestly decide what the year ahead is going to look like.

Have you ever seen The Secret?  A few years ago it was all the rage, but as with many things, life gets in the way.  The laws of attraction and the basic principle is that whatever we put out into the universe, we attract back.  I try to remember that we are all the writers of our own play, the authors of the scripts that govern our lives, and when we focus on the positive we empower ourselves to make our dreams reality.  No matter what happens, there is always a positive lesson to be learned – no matter how difficult the lesson – it can work to our advantage. The mind hears and focuses on the signals we send it – so focusing on the positive elements gives our minds the power to grow strong.

I have learned that my greatest achievements have come out of my lesser ones. Learning from our mistakes is the definition of intelligence – and I am striving to be as intelligent as possible!!! Even as I have been promoting Word of Mom it was time to take a step back and decide what direction the show is going to take in 2012. It is exciting as Word of Mom is going to expand in the next month to 5 shows a week and others are coming on board to host shows with me each day. It is marvelous that the good energy we have been sharing and the amazing MOMpreneurs that have taken the time to bring a part of themselves to the show week to week, is manifesting itself in such a wonderful way.

So to all of us – here is to a successful, powerful, positive 2012. May the Laws of Attraction bring you all the positive energy and success that you strive for. Surround yourself with the belief that if you see it in your minds eye you can achieve it in your daily life. Your thoughts and feelings are what you will attract into your life – so my daily resolution is to focus on the joy of life, the power of the element of surprise and the excitement of exceeding my expectations and finding the magic in each and every achievement.  In other words, I will make the best today I can.

A happy 2012 to all…

Jennie Armato ~ January at Vivapreneur Academy

Tonight Word of Mom is Prime Time on BlogTalkRadio sharing Vivapreneur Academy’s second half of the year at 8pmET/5pmPT. Join this VPA Tele-Interview with Jennie Armato, author of “Web Millionaire Secrets – How to Make Your First Million Dollars Online and Make It Last”. Jen will show you how to get your business online, profile it, build it, automate it and manage it without having to hire marketing consultants or webmasters to do it.

Jennie is leading entrepreneurs along the easiest pathway to success in the new economy, particularly usi ng the power of the internet to build your global profile and presence plus income.”

She has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds and hundreds of hours over the past 14 years experimenting and testing concepts to streamline your online marketing strategies and sales systems – resulting in her developing simple-to-understand, easy-to-follow blueprints for you to get your best start to that ultimate success.

Together with her signature online success blueprints, Jen will also share her signature, proprietary software known as the “Web Success Wizard” with you.  She presents the best of the best Web Success Strategies, Systems and Steps at public and private client-only events around the world.

Tune in to Word of Mom tonight on BlogTalkRadio or be part of the conversation by calling us at 347 850 8994.

Entrepreneurial Role Modeling

Like more and more women in this recession, I became a stay-at-home mom by circumstance. I had a full-time job I loved which I was laid off from just as I was trying to get pregnant with my second child.  I was afraid to step off the treadmill of income earning, and I quickly found a part-time consulting job in the same field.  Taking the contract job allowed me the window to get pregnant (as a FT employer would be upset that a brand new employee suddenly had many doctors appointments and such), and it gave me a more relaxing pregnancy, keeping me “in the game” while we waited for what the recession would bring to our family.  Upon the birth of my baby in 2009, the ad agency was facing tough times, and the gig was up.  And that was that.  I was a “SAHM.”

I love wearing blue jeans every day. Every night I am up multiple times with the kids, I am ever so grateful that I don’t need to be showered, dressed up, awake and articulate at work the next morning!  I love seeing all the developmental milestones with my second child that I missed with my first.  I am grateful that I get to hear about their school days the moment I pick them up and I have the time in the afternoons to make a healthy dinner.  We no longer scramble to leave work to take sick kids to the doctor.  My husband and I are lucky we’ve been saving and have held off moving to a larger apartment in order to keep our expenses lower.

Despite all these blessings, a voice in my mind reminds me I must work. I must generate.  For every woman given the gift of making a choice in this matter, the decision is difficult and heavily informed by the experiences of their own mothers.  My own mother felt fortunate to raise us full time for 12 years, as her own mother had to work through her life.  However, when my mother was forced to return to the work force as my father’s cancer worsened, she really started over from square one. She landed at an amazing company and loved her work and colleagues, but she was not making anywhere close to what she would have made had she remained in the work force those 12 years.   Meanwhile, my father, who owned a home remodeling business, was my entrepreneurial role model. I saw the good times and the bad times, but remember checking out job sites with him, going to the hardware store, and helping with office work after school sometimes.

When I started Me On A Tee in Spring 2010, it was a venture to make money, to learn, to keep my marketing skills fresh.  It was important for me that it also be a way for my older daughter, now 6, to see products created and to be a part of it.  Not only is she the model for many of the shirts, but she helps me open the boxes when they arrive and we look at the shirts together. She helps me at fairs sometimes, passing out cards or helping me at the table. I want her to learn what she can about business and sales and to feel a part of its success.

Not all small businesses survive, and hopefully Me On A Tee will take off.  Ultimately, I hope when my daughters are old enough to consider their options for careers and motherhood, that they’ll remember us all helping to grow a fun business.

How did your parents and their experiences raising you inform your decision to start a company?

Me on a Tee Founder Rachel Mehta on BlogTalkRadio

Thursday December 8 on Word of Mom Rachel Mehta shares her company, Me on a Tee!  These custom designed shirts reflect your ancestry and are a vehicle for families to talk about their history and culture.  Shirts may have a flag pole flying all the flags of your family’s ancestry, or a pie graph showing a little bit of this, a little bit of that – all the wonderful parts that make each of us who we are. My shirt would fly flags from Italy, Spain, Poland and Puerto Rico – what flags would yours have?

Observing so many families of various origins, including her own, and understanding the mass waves of immigration to this country have waned, Rachel realize the children may not be learning enough about their family history and their cultural origins. The idea is to get the older generations to pass along family history to the younger generation so that children learn about how their family came to America, what choices had to be made, what life was like getting settled, etc. Rachel wants children to understand their family past informs their present life here in the US. Simply, she thought the t-shirts could be a fun way to get those conversations started and to celebrate cultural diversity.

Join us Thursday on BlogTalkRadio at 2pmET/11amPT and find out how to get your Me on a Tee in time for the holidays. Listeners will have a discount code to use as a gift for tuning in. We’d love for you to be part of the conversation, so give us a call at 347 850 8994.

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