Looking to Create a Website or Revamp an Existing One?

February 13th, 2011 | designing a web page

In all my networking, I constantly see people struggling to get a website up for their business without having to hire a web designer. Web designers can be expensive, not to mention that you are then at their mercy, their schedule and the fact that they need to make your updates.

Here’s a quote from a real woman entrepreneur expressing her frustration in trying to get a WordPress website up on her own. If only I had created my workshop before she started trying to do this herself:

"I would LOVE to [build my site in WordPress], however I spent 4 hours yesterday trying to figure out how to do that and all I ended up with was a headache! I don’t know what I was thinking? I really didn’t think creating a web page would be so frustrating! It’s like going to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and you didn’t hire a translator!!! FTP, cPanel, hosting, ports…I have NO idea what any of it means?!?! WordPress has a guide that is supposed to get you up in 5 minutes, I can’t even get past step one! I have no idea if I am using a FTP or shell access?

Sorry to carry on…I’m really disappointed at how blocked I am on creating this, I really thought I could do it on my own, seems like I should be able to. I’m pretty smart and comfortable on a computer…but all this html and ssl and sql stuff just doesn’t mean anything to me… sigh!" ~ Melissa

WordPress is one of those things that once you know how to use it, you can see how easy it is to use and update, but when you are just learning it and getting your website going, it’s so nice to have the support and resources you need right at your fingertips. There is a learning curve with WordPress. Let me help you get over that learning curve and onto the other side where your website looks beautiful and just the way you imagined.

With my Women’s Website Workshop, you learn how to make your own updates, you learn how to create your own website at your schedule, and you have full control over your website.

Whether you are creating a website from scratch or revamping one that you currently have, this workshop will give you all the steps, resources and support that you need to get your site running and looking professional and clean.

For more information, visit http://CereusTraining.com

P.S. I’m offering a steap discount that ends on Mon, Feb 14 where

you can save $250 off the regular price. Check out the details of this special Valentine’s Day special now

at http://CereusTraining.com

Follow Your Inner Guidance

By Kimberly Reddington

February 6th, 2011 | personal growth

1 Comment... (Click to add yours!)

Over the past month, I have been spending some time trying to re-learn how to follow my inner guidance. This is a skill that I lost somewhere along the way of being an adult. I was letting myself get frustrated over this fact because I couldn’t figure out when I had lost this ability.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I remember acting on my inner guidance many times. I remember the biggest moment that I managed to listen to my gut feeling instead of listening to my brain. My brain loves to think and analyze, so to listen to my gut can be a great privilege sometimes. Back in 1995 when my son was 15 months old, I decided that I hated having a 9-5 job. Actually I think I decided back when I was 13 years old that I was not going to enjoy being an employee. I always knew I wanted to be my own boss.

However, I went to college and followed the crowd and got a real job. Every part of me hated working. I didn’t mind the work at all. In fact, I loved the type of work I chose and the field I was in. I just didn’t like being tied to a desk working on someone’s else schedule, on projects that someone else chose. The hours were not convenient for me, and some of the jobs were not what I would have chosen.

My inner guidance at the time told me to quit my job. My brain knew that my husband and son were counting on my income. We needed this job to survive. My inner guidance, my heart, my gut, whatever you want to call it just knew that I couldn’t continue with the job.

I was putting my son into day care every day and that tore at my heart to hear him cry at drop off and pick up. I was missing everything and someone else was raising him just so I could go into an office where someone else was telling me what to do all day. This lifestyle just didn’t fit my personality.

I told no one except my husband that I was planning on quitting. I didn’t want to hear any advice from anyone. I was listening to my inner guidance and knew what was right for me. I didn’t yet know I had an inner guidance, but I could feel it was there. It was speaking very strongly and for some reason I wasn’t the least bit afraid to listen to it. The decision to quit my job with no other plan yet created just felt like the right thing to do, so I quit.

Things worked out perfectly, and within 2 weeks I became a self-employed consultant doing the same work I was doing at my job. Only now I did the projects that I wanted to do and worked the hours that I wanted to work. Life was great.

That was one of the best decisions I have ever made since getting married. I have never regretted that decision. It took me down paths that I would never have gone had I listened to my head or to anyone else.

I am now struggling to listen to my inner guidance once more. I’m sure it has been speaking to me for years, but I have not been listening. I learned through a discussion at a woma\en’s mastermind group that I think I stopped listening when my kids were little. I had to continuously ignore what I felt was right for me in order to nurture my family in ways that I felt were right for them. I stopped thinking about myself; I stopped thinking about what I needed and what my inner guidance was saying. This was wrong.

I realize now what I have done and what I need to do to get back on track. I need to start listening to my inner guidance for my sake and for my family’s. I need to listen to my inner guidance for my own sanity. It feels refreshing just to tell you about it, and to know that I will be paying more attention to it in the months to come.

Please share with us stories of when you listened to your inner guidance. How has the opportunity changed your life? Have you benefitted from this, or have you too, decided to ignore yours for the sake of doing what your brain, or your loved ones, think is right?

How do you know if your target market is too broad?

By Kimberly Reddington

January 30th, 2011 | target market

3 Comments... (Click to add yours!)

Prefer to listen to this post?

Standard Podcast [5:16m]: Play Now | Download (30)

I’m often asked how you know if your target market is too broad. Many business owners feel that if they narrow down their target market, they will lose out on potential customers.

This can’t be any farther from the truth. What I have learned is that the narrower your niche and target market:

The easier it is to reach those people who really need your service or product,
The easier it is to give them what they need,
The easier it is to really speak to your audience in a way that gets them to say “Wow, that sounds great. I can really use that. Sign me up.”
The easier it is to become a known expert in your field.
The easier it is for people to know who to refer your way.

Did I say yet that it’s easier to run a business when you NARROW your niche and target market?

How do I know this?

I used to be a programmer with my own freelance business before I became a marketing coach. When I first started out as a consultant, I had no idea what I was doing. I barely even knew what a consultant was. I picked one thing that I really enjoyed doing and decided that was going to be my business. I took away all the things I didn’t like about my previous job and concentrated on the fun stuff.

I then decided that I was going to be very picky with who I worked with because I was starting a business so that I could be home with my son. I decided I needed to stick to projects that allowed me to work from home and didn’t require too many phone calls or meetings.

I was very specific, but I managed to run a very successful consulting business for several years until the software I was programming with started becoming obsolete. Because of this I was starting to get less clients; therefore, I decided to expand my business to all kinds of programming. I was telling people that I did many different things. Once this happened, I ended up with ZERO clients.

Did I say ZERO? Wow! I went from a full plate to zero clients all in a year just because I changed my business model. No one really knew what it was I did anymore. No one knew whom to refer to me anymore.

It was then that I realized that what I was doing before when I was so narrow was actually one of the big secrets. I read a ton of business books that helped me to make this realization. Once I narrowed down my business again to one specific type of programming, I was then able to become a new expert in my new field and once again became extremely successful.

If you want to find the same success in your business, you need to choose a target market that has each of the following 5 conditions:

A group of people that you can clearly identify that has similar needs and characteristics
A group of people that you can easily find and reach
A group of people that has a problem that they want to solve using a solution that you can provide
A group of people that can afford and is willing to spend the money to solve that problem
A group that is large enough to bring in the income that you want from your business

When you are deciding on a target market, make sure that your chosen market has all of these 5 conditions. If you are missing even just one element, your business may not succeed.

Learn how to create your own WordPress blog or website

By Kimberly Reddington

January 24th, 2011 | marketing

No Comments... (Click to add yours!)

WordPress Logo

WordPress is one of the most popular "do it yourself" website platforms. With WordPress you have the capability to create a website, a blog, or both, with very minimal coding. I have a very technical background and have been programming for over 20 years, yet I still choose to use WordPress to create my websites because it makes it so easy to maintain and update my site on the fly.

WordPress is used by many business owners who feel they can’t afford to pay for a web designer and wish that they could just build the website and maintain it themselves. It simplifies the process of building the website and provides options to customize the site to look the way you want.

Despite the fact that WordPress makes it so much easier, there is still a learning curve to getting your website up and running and learning how to do it yourself. There are plenty of free resources available, but the key is to know what to search for and to figure out how to take what they say to do and actually get it to work for you.

I see people struggling with this every day.

I have spent enough time on business and entrepreneur forums and social media sites to realize that WordPress is one of the most talked about struggles that people are asking about. Because of my technical background, WordPress comes easy to me. I wanted to find a way to help everyone be able to have a beautiful and professional-looking website without having to rely on a web designer to take care of each and every step of their website.

I created an all-inclusive workshop that takes you from nothing to a fully-working website that you are proud to tell people you built yourself. The workshop includes every single step you need to take in clear language and clear step-by-step videos. I also include a live webinar with me each week of the workshop to go over each lesson to make sure that you understood what needs to be done and to go over any issues or problems that may be arising as you are building your website.

I can’t find any workshop out there that covers as much and provides as much support as what I have created. It is a workshop that will take the overwhelm out of building your own site.

For more information about this workshop, please visit http://CereusTraining.com

If you act quickly, you can save over $250 off the regular price until Feb 3, 2011. That ‘s a huge savings!

3 Ways to Use a Marketing Calendar

By Kimberly Reddington

January 16th, 2011 | marketing

2 Comments... (Click to add yours!)

When I was training to be a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach, I learned the value of creating and implementing a marketing calendar. There are many different ways that you can create a calendar for your business and the method doesn’t matter as much as actually using one. I use my marketing calendar as a way to set goals for myself in my business, as well as to track my marketing results. In this video, I talk about some ways that I use my marketing calendar to determine the goals and projects I am going to complete throughout the upcoming year.

Click to download a Marketing Calendar Template