Female Entrepreneur Association

I was recently introduced to an amazing lady called Jill, through a mutual friend and so we arrange a Skype chat to talk about the wonderful world of business and find out more about each other. At first I had no idea why my friend had put us in touch, but I trust him, so I knew that it was going to be good... and it was. First off we had to figure out the timezones, because I'm based in the UK and at the time Jill was flitting between Singapore and Thailand (I discovered that her and her husband spend their time travelling around the world and working from their laptops... by this point I was intrigued). So once we got chatting I asked her about her business and she started telling me about how she has a few affiliate marketing websites that her and her husband started up 18 months ago. She told me that in the first few months they only made two sales and were feeling really disheartened by it all and didn't know what else to try, until they stumbled across a "write for us" link on a competitor's website. From that moment on everything changed for them and they went on a "guest blogging mission". She told me that she worked hard to get lots of guest blogging opportunities and within one month they'd had the first $1,000+ month and then within a couple more months they hit their first $5,000+ month and it's been growing ever since. After hearing her story I was blown away- I mean I knew that guest blogging was a good marketing tactic, but I didn't realise that it was THAT GOOD. So, I wanted to find out more - I wanted to discover a good strategy for guest blogging... and I thought you might like to know too, so I asked Jill if she'd be up for doing a video with me. So here it is! I am on a guest blogging mission now and I hope you'll join me! To help with this, we've created a 7-day Guest Blogging Challenge! It's a free printable that you can download, print off and work through to help you along your guest blogging journey. My hope is that you will have made massive progress within 7 days! I'm definitely doing this challenge, are you going to join me?You can download your workbook here. I hope you find all this helpful (I know I have!). Leave a comment below and let us know if you've guest blogged before and if so how has it helps and are there any tips you can share? Carrie x

Have you ever wondered how you can build your list faster or get more sales, or how you can become an expert in your industry? how to create content that people will love and share.  Well I think there’s one really significant thing you need to do in order to make these things happen. It's simple, yet so many of us forget to do it, but every single one of us is capable of doing it. And when you decide to do it, it will make ALL the difference to you, your business and the people you serve. This one thing is so powerful and will help you to stand out so much and it's this: BE EXTRAORDINARY.Make the decision to be exceptional, to go the extra mile, to be remarkable and it will help you so much in life and in business. Whenever you put something together to get more people to sign up to your email list go above and beyond and people will sign up and will love it and share it. If you want to get more sales, go the extra mile with the service you provide, like the taxi driver I talked about in the video. Don't be average, be exceptional. You don't need to be ridiculously talented in order to be extraordinary - we can all be extraordinary, we just have to make the decision that that's what we're going to be, day in, day out. Make the commitment to go above and beyond, to try you best at everything you do and people will want to do business with you, they'll want to be associated with you, they will want to tell other people about you. Being exceptional doesn't mean doing big things for people or spending a fortune on going the extra mile - remember the little things count too. How you present yourself, how much time you take to develop yourself, to learn new skills to be the expert that you want to be. Being exceptional could be sending a thank you card to a customer, picking up the phone to someone to find out how they are doing. The little touches count, people will remember. So make the decision today to be extraordinary and you will stand out, because most people forget to go above and beyond. I would love to hear your comments on this - have you gone above and beyond in business? If so, what response did you get? Carrie x

Goal setting and visualisation are so important when it comes to manifesting what you want, but so often we forget to do it! It can be so easy to get caught up in day to day tasks and dilemmas that we forget all about our goals and end up focusing on what's going wrong or worrying about things that could go wrong. The problem when we focus our attention on these kinds of things is that it can lead us off track... we lose sight of our goals and dreams. So, in this video I shared some things you can try and help you stay aligned with your goals and your dreams. Have fun with this & dream big! I've also made a free printable for you to use, with powerful words & affirmations on to help you stay connected to your goals. You can download your copy here. I would love to hear your tips & tricks when it comes to goal setting - what helps you to stay aligned with your goals? Leave a comment below!Carrie xImage via

To skip to the steps on how to charge what you're worth go to 3.45 minutes in on the video & 4.11 in on the podcast. Do you ever feel like you're not charging what you're worth? Or do you feel uncomfortable and guilty when it comes to asking for money and find yourself lowering the price? Do you ever charge less, because you're worried that if you charge more, no one will buy from you?If so, you're not alone. This is something that so many of us do, myself included! So many people start a business because they want to do something they love, make a difference and help other people and it's as if somewhere inside of us we have this little voice that tells us that we shouldn't be charging for this! We end up feeling so uncomfortable about charging what we're worth.But it doesn't have to be this way! There is nothing wrong with charging for our products or services and we shouldn't feel bad about it! If you ever do, this video will really help you.Alexandra Watson, the UK's leading success and happiness coach has helped lots of women overcome their struggle with charging what they're worth. In this video she shares her top tips on how you can start charging what you're worth and feeling good about it. To find out more about Alex check out her website here. Have you ever struggled with charging what you're worth? If so, what helped you to overcome it? Leave a comment below.Carrie xImage credit of illustration on featured imaged: Natalie Walstein  

Have you ever felt really frustrated because you wanted to achieve something big, but you just didn't know how you were going to make it happen? I have! And it can leave you feeling totally disheartened and thinking that your goal is going to be impossible to reach. In fact there have been times in the past where I really wanted to achieve something, but I actually stopped myself because I couldn't stop focusing on the things I didn't know how to do! I think this is something a lot of us do. But on the upside, if you ever feel like this I have some great news for you... it's okay! Yes, you read that right - it's completely okay and normal to not know how to do everything! We're not superhuman! We're just people with big dreams, trying to turn them into a reality and we don't know all the answers and that's fine. Nevertheless, it can still be a tough reality to face, which is why in this video I shared my top tips on what to do when you're feeling frustrated and stuck because you haven't got a clue how to do what you need to do in order to reach your goal.These things have helped me soooo much and continue to help me anytime I feel stuck because I haven't got a clue and I hope they help you just as much! I'd love to hear what you think, please leave a comment below and share you tips and advice - what helps you when you haven't got a clue what to do? Carrie x

To skip to the steps go to 4.55 minutes on the video & 5.26 minutes on the podcast. Have you ever wondered whether there's a formular for success? Some people think that there is no such thing as a success formular, but what if there was? What if you could uncover your own success formula and apply it on purpose? This is something I have thought about a lot... especially on the days when everything seemed to be hopeless and I felt like I was getting nowhere. In fact I used to spend a lot of time reading about how other people became successful to see if I could copy what they were doing. I began to realise that there appeared to be several things most, if not all, successful people seemed to do consistently - and I guess this makes sense really. If you look at the law of cause and effect, it says that for every cause there is a specific effect. For every action there is a reaction. Therefore it would seem fair to say that success is no accident. Rather a result of specific action.  While discovering all these things it suddenly dawned on me that I had put into action this "success strategy" before and not even realised I was doing it. That was a massive light bulb moment for me, because once I realised what the success strategy was, it meant I could use it consciously to help me reach every single goal I ever set myself. In this video I share the practical things you can do to help you reach your goals (I've not really touched on mindset in this video, although I think it's important... but that's for another day!) This is the strategy that has helped me over and over again to achieve what I want - it's something I now consciously apply whenever I set a new goal.Why having a success strategy is important... If you have a success strategy you can use, it will help you so much to reach your goals. Most people don't consciously think about what they're doing, or how they're doing what they're doing - they're just doing it. But by becoming more aware of what helps you to reach your goals, you'll be able to start applying success strategies ON PURPOSE. Take some time to look back over goals you've reached and goals you failed to reach and try and work out what you did each time - why did you reach your goal? Why didn't you reach your goal? The answers will help you to formulate a success strategy that you can use. So, become consciously aware of your own success strategy and start using it on purpose! I hope hope this helps you to become even more successful in your life! Carrie x

We all know what it feels like when things don’t go to plan! I find that in business you can pretty much be sure that things are going to go wrong at some point or other, sometimes big, sometimes small. I’m sure you’ve probably been through phases where things seem to go wrong all the time and phases where things are going perfectly! So in business it’s not really a question of “will things go wrong”? It’s more a question of “how are you going to handle things when they do go wrong?” How are you going to react? How are you going to respond? This is something that I had to think about this week, because things have been going wrong for me!! On Monday I sent out an email to my entire network, sending everyone the latest issue of the magazine and a couple of hours later I discovered my website had crashed!! I got a flood of emails from people telling me the links were broken, because they were seeing a "forbidden" message on the website. I wanted to cry. I thought to myself, "why do these things happen at the wrong time?" My initial response was to get mad and annoyed with my hosting company... but that didn't work out so well, so then I tried a different approach, which did work, so I thought I'd share it with you. I hope you enjoy the video and it helps you next time things go wrong!Carrie x

To go straight to the steps for silencing your inner critic skip to 3.05 minutes on the video and 3.35 minutes on the podcast. Do you ever feel like you’re your own worst critic? You want to give new ideas a go, you want to try something new, but that little voice inside your head keeps stopping you, keeps making you question yourself and your abilities and makes you hesitate. This has happened to me a lot, in fact here’s a little secret for you… it took me 3 years, 3 different names and 3 different websites before I actually started the Female Entrepreneur Association! My inner enemy kept stopping me and then in 2011 I found a way to stop it. In the video above I share what happened to me and how I managed to stop it from happening. The 3 things I share in the video have helped me so much - even though I still have an inner critic (I don't think we can ever really get rid of it!), I've figured out how to make sure it doesn't stop me! I hope these steps help you as much as they've helped me! One of the things I share at the end of the video is something that Dan Millman from Body Mind Mastery said. Here it is... “If babies held the same tendency toward self-criticism as adults, they might never learn to walk or talk. Can you imagine infants stomping, “Aarggh! Screwed up again!” Fortunately, babies are free of self-criticism. They just keep practicing.” He goes on to say, “So be gentle with yourself; show yourself the same kindness and patience you might show a young child--the child you once were. If you won’t be your own friend, who will be? If, when playing an opponent, you are also opposing yourself, you will be outnumbered... You probably would find it cruel and unnecessary to say to someone, “You are really stupid; you keep making the same mistakes; you should give up; you’ll never be any good!” Yet we think it’s okay to say the same things to ourselves.” I think he makes such a good point! I hope this inspires you to be kind to yourself and be your best friend, not your worst enemy. Carrie x

Skip to 3.37 minutes on the podcast to listen to how to create a success strategy and 3.27 on the video. Have you ever experienced ‘But Syndrome’? … It’s when you really want to achieve something, but…You’ve got too much on this week. It’s your birthday next week, so you’ll wait until after that. You’ve got a meeting coming up which might change things, so maybe it’s best to wait.  It’s the summer, so you’ll get started in September… You get what I mean. The longer you keep making excuses and putting things off, the harder it becomes to get the ball rolling and the more detached you become from actually reaching your goal.  I don’t know about you, but this has definitely happened to me!I find that whenever I set myself a goal a but ALWAYS pops up. There are always a million excuses for why I should wait, why I need to put it off for a little bit longer, why now is not the best time. However, those ‘buts’ come at a high price – when you choose to go with the ‘but’ you’re kind of sacrificing your dream. The obvious solution to this is to realise why you have ‘But Syndrome’ and snap yourself out of it, tell yourself that your dreams are more important than any excuse and get on with it – this is something I make myself do. However, there is something else that I think can be a really powerful way of overcoming this problem and that is by creating your success strategy and then once you’ve created your success strategy there is an exercise you can do, which will kick the Law of Attraction into action, so you can start seeing results! I hope these steps help you as much as they help me! Please leave a comment and share your advice and tips! Carrie x

To jump straight to the steps go to 2.55 minutes in on the podcast and 2.24 minutes in on the video. I recently went on an adventure and found an amazing river down in a canyon. As I sat there looking at the river I had one of those moments where you take a step back from the trials and tribulations of day-to-day life and see the big picture of life – how amazing it all is and how precious our time is here. It made me think about how important it is to soak up life, enjoy the ride and not get so caught up in the little things (that can sometimes seem massive!). I often find that the moment you set a goal, or set your sights on achieving some amazing, obstacles pop up left, right and centre! You end up feel like all of your focus is being drawn to all these little (and sometimes big) problems. Then the doubts creep in, "can I really do this?" "what am I thinking!!" "maybe I should give up". It can be easy to get consumed in the trials and tribulations and end up feeling like things are hopeless. The truth is the pursuit of a dream is not always easy. I recently received an email from someone who felt just like this and she wanted some advice, so I asked her if it would be ok for me to share her email and respond to her questions in video. Watch the video or download the podcast for inspiration on what to do when you feel like things are a little bit hopeless. There are 3 main things I do whenever I feel like this and I hope they help you as much as they help me.Sometimes I feel like we just need a little reminder - whether it's from seeing something beautiful, hearing something inspiring, watching a movie, going on a walk - that makes us realise how amazing and precious life is and how we really need to make the most of it. If there is a big dream you want to reach, take a step back to look at the grand scheme of life and realise that you can make it happen. What is life about if it's not about trying to follow your heart and your dreams? I would love you to leave a comment and share any advice and tips you have. Carrie x