AF278 - Happy Holidays from Mommy Income
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Happy Holidays from Mommy Income
I hope that you have had a wonderful holiday season that continues into your heart throughout the new year. I genuinely care about each one of you, your successes, your struggles and all of the business-building entrepreneurship that I know is in all of your hearts. I am a genuine entrepreneur at heart, and I respect and love all of those that are entrepreneurs who are taking the courage to pursue their dreams. I celebrate your courageousness. It also takes faith. You have to believe in the unknown. You can never be certain that these things are always going to work out, but you have faith to believe in your hard work that will pay off, and that you are going to reap what you sell. I celebrate your faithfulness.
I applaud and celebrate your grit and determination in taking perseverance, pushing through and resilience to be an entrepreneur, to run a business, especially a product-based business in Q4, in the holidays, and during the holidays. I celebrate and applaud the late nights, the early mornings, last-minute tasks, and the undone to-do list. I celebrate that for you. That is what makes my holidays happy so I can see other people flourishing and doing their best and looking forward and having hope.
I know some days are worse than others. I know some days are better than others. We have all had the best days ever and worst days ever.
I also want to share a really funny story with you. And I am going to, for the podcasters that are watching on YouTube, encourage you to go to YouTube to watch this episode so that you can see this little presentation that I am about to show you. My daughter and I wanted to share it with you because I am cracking up, of course, and then blown away that she has gone to this length to convince me of a Christmas gift. She made a PowerPoint presentation and I want to share that with you because this covers the basics. And yes, it is made by a young lady - a middle schooler.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I am persistent. I am determined. I do not like to give up on things especially if they are really important to me. So I always teach my children that we do not say cannot at all. That is a bad word here. We say, “I do not want to”, “I am afraid”, or “I do not know how”, but we do not say “I cannot”.
Why I should have a hamster for Christmas? One of her besties has a hamster, hence the reason she wants one. And they help her with the hamster stuff so she knows how to care for it. That was part of her plea. And parents, I do understand that you think that our cats will try to get the hamster but get this, there is something called a lid gasp. A good place to shop for hamster stuff is a site called Night Angel. They have a lot of cool hamster items. So she is already thinking about the financial responsibility of having a hamster.
Back in the day when I was just a new parent, my pastor used to teach a mom's bible city class. One of the things I remember him saying all the time was, as much as you can try to find reasons to say yes, there are tons of reasons we can say no. There are going to be a lot, as parents, that we are going to have to say no to and really good value reasons why. So if you can say yes, then do your best to do so because there is no reason why not.
Hence the 12-year-old here with the presentation was convinced that if she could present all of these things that she could and get to her goal and dream. Her dream was to have a hamster. And I just love it. I respect it. And I know that there are a lot of you guys out there that maybe feel some of that. No one is looking and no one cares. We all do not need accolades and validation all the time, but it is nice once in a while for someone to say, “Hey, I see you.” I know you are working hard. Those results are not coming instantaneously, but they are coming. Hang in there and keep working towards your goals because time is going to pass. Whether you work on your dreams and work on your gold or not, time is going to pass.
If you are going slow, slow is still a pace. Slow is fine. It is still moving. Just make sure you are not moving like the rocking chair-kind-of-moving. Moving, you are rocking, you are moving, you are staying busy, but you are not making any progress. Gauge your progress. Look at it.
15-minute hustle. If you do not have a 15-minute hustle, look at 15-minute Hustle and Kristen Ostrander, Google it and you will see my book. It is also on our website. If you have not read it and you do not have the chart please reach out. I want you to be able to have it, that you can print one, or we have some here and we can mail it out. The 15-minute hustle strategy is what gets me through most of the time. It gets me started on doing something.
One of my biggest wins for this year is finishing the Wholesale Bundles 3.0. It is done and brand-new as of today. I am very, very proud of this work. It is college-level material. It is actually going to be reviewed in 2023 to be added to a couple of community colleges. It qualifies based on the curriculum and the material and all the things that are provided.
Another big win is I was just accepted into the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program. There is not a huge application process with an interview and in-person classes that help small businesses to grow and impact the world and the community. They only select a few businesses. And this is a nationwide program. I am going to Wayne State University to take the Goldman Sachs 10,000 businesses program that they have accepted me into. There are only about 30 students in the class. And I am really excited about that, but also very, very nervous.
What has been the most challenging thing in your business this year? The most challenging thing in businesses year has been discontinued products because of the last couple of years of slowdowns. There have been some discontinued products. We do not know when this is coming back on some of our best-selling items. It is challenging to try to fill in those gaps. Another challenging thing is the hard part about owning two businesses. My Amazon business is my full-time business as well as my Mommy Income. It is difficult to spread the time between both, and I have had a challenging time balancing the time between the two. So sometimes one suffers when the other prospers. Doing wholesale bundles this year was a lot of time and kind of caused my other business to suffer a little bit. Even though I have a partner, I just did not have as much time to dedicate.
It is done now, so we can get back into a new normal of a regular schedule and that this big project is completed and I am excited for the world to see it.
Another question is, what do you want more of? Connection with people, real personal connections, and growth as a person, not just as a business owner and not just as in business. I just want more growth and more joy. The growth brings joy to me. I would like to have more growth in my life - my personal life and my relationships - my relationships with my children. Spiritually I just want to grow overall in small incremental pieces. I'm not in a hurry anymore. I used to be in such a hurry to get to goals and just keep knocking 'em over and things like that.
I understand a little bit more about the value of slowing down. Some of it by force this year such as sickness, illness, different projects going on, different floods at our north cabin, and things like that. I am a better person for that.
What are your goals for 2023? I am a big dreamer but I still have to break all these things down because, in reality, I can only do so much with the time and energy that I have. I am reducing the size of my Amazon business by reducing the number of SKUs that I have by half. I know that seems counterproductive when I literally said I want more growth. That does not include my FBA business. We are actually scaling on it, but not a huge ton. We are still reliant on this income and still creating bundles, but I want to be more creative about exploring my bundle options. I have to drop a couple of SKUs to make the finances available for new bundles. I am going to niche down and focus more on the quality and presentation of my bundles rather than the number of bundles I need to sell. That comes with not wanting to work as much.
How do I plan to accomplish my goals? Well if you are part of the Amazon Files Hub, our last coaching session, we actually did goal planning and goal setting. We went through the questions and wrote down what we are going to do with our day, our week, and our month to get to our goal.
So if you are a Hub member, go check that out. That is available to you. If you are not a Hub member but you are a wholesale bundle student, then please go to mommyincome.com/hub and look at our hub membership options.
It is just a quick reminder that we do have a couple of events and workshops coming up. I am so excited to get to the trade show and start the year off building bundles with you guys. I am so excited about January 4th through the 6th in Dallas, Texas. On Wednesday we are going to do a meet and greet. Then Thursday we are going to be bundling all day together. You are going to leave with a bundle that you can sell in your store. And then Friday we are going to be walking through the trade show where we are going to have these conversations with vendors. We are going to set you up with accounts. It is going to be great. So go to mommyincome.com/workshop. I am personally inviting you. There are some spots left, but I am just excited about the core group we already have.
QUOTE:
“It is not just about having control of everything. It is not my cup of tea. I would rather release a lot of control because it releases a lot of the pressure and responsibility when you let other people do what they are good at and let you do what you are good at.” - Kristin Ostrander
RESOURCES:
- 2023 Mommy Income LIVE Events
- Why You Should Sell Wholesale Bundles on Amazon
- Everything You Need to Know - Dallas Total Home & Gift Market
- 3 Reasons to Attend a Tradeshow Walkthrough
- Wholesale Bundle System 3.0
Share your AHA moments with me on my free private Facebook group - the Amazon Files (use the code word HAMSTER) and tag me so I can celebrate with you!
Have questions? Email me directly at [email protected] with all your questions, concerns, or doubts. I would love to answer them all for you.
Keep on bundling…
-KO
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