“Don’t limit yourself,” said Mary Kay Ash. “Many women limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.”

What you think you can do — what you focus on — will become reality! You don’t need special equipment or a lot of money to succeed in life…but you do need some basic tools. Read Simple Acts of Moving Forward: 60 Suggestions for Getting Unstuck for practical ways to let go of whatever is holding you back. And, check out these ten ways to get unstuck…

10 Ways to Get Unstuck and Move Forward – Mary Kay Ash

1. Figure out what’s holding you back. Maybe you’re depressed because of a business failure, health issue, financial problem, or relationship breakup. Or, maybe you can’t seem to improve your self-confidence or maintain a happy, positive mood.  The first step to lgetting unstuck is to identify what’s stopping you from moving forward.

2. Be objective about sources and solutions. Whatever the source of your rut is, remember that there are ways to overcome it! Different problems have different solutions, but there are some general rules for getting unstuck. For instance, don’t focus on what you lack (eg, someone to love, or a business of your own). Instead, focus on what you want more of in your life (love, success, acceptance, freedom). Be specific about what you want, and try not to get caught up in negative or critical emotions. Take a step back and look at your life with objective eyes.

3. Look for the possibilities in your problems. In Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell writes, “Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer.” What are you learning from the obstacles in your life? Are your problems — job stress, relationship breakups – leading you in an unexpected direction? The sooner you accept the lessons, the faster you’ll overcome your obstacles and move forward in life.

4. Work with your personal advantages. I’m a big fan of “to do” lists and I love checking off each task when I accomplish it. That’s one of my personal advantages, and I use it to make my business successful. For instance, one of my goals is to earn $50,000 a year as a blogger. Part of achieving that goal involves writing two blog posts a day. To stay motivated to write every day, I make a list of the blog posts I need to write at the beginning of each week…and the satisfaction of checking off those “articles to write” makes me feel happy and motivated enough to do it again and again and again! What are your strengths or personal advantages? Put them to work for you!

5. Ask for help moving forward in life. What do you need to do to get unstuck? Ask your family, friends, and colleagues for help. Do you need financial advice? Time? Resources? Motivation? Support? Be specific about what you need, identify who can help you, and be clear about what you’d like them to do. Mary Kay Ash said, “Honesty is the cornerstone of all success, without which confidence and ability to perform shall cease to exist.” Be honest about what you need.

6. Surround yourself with successful women. Who do you admire? Which family member, friend, or colleague is in the position you’d like to be in? To soak up the habits of highly successful women, stay connected to women who achieved their goals — even if you don’t know them personally, even if they aren’t alive! The attitudes, values, habits, and thoughts of women who soar will rub off on you. Also, stay away from people who hold you back or aren’t supportive.

7. Focus on one step at a time. If your number one goal is to start your own homebased business, don’t move towards a competing goal. For instance, you can’t put all your energy towards working from home while you’re planning a vacation that involves traveling around the world for a year! You can’t move ahead in two directions at once. Focus on “unsticking yourself” from one thing at a time. “So many women just don’t know how great they really are,” said Mary Kay Ash. “They come to us all vogue outside and vague on the inside.” Be concrete and specific about what you want out of life, and how you’ll get it.

8. Expect to do a little work. Bill Gates programmed computers at university for 10,000 hours before he started his own company. Gates is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in recent history (perhaps of all time) — but he spent 10,000 hours practicing before he took the leap! That’s 416 days of working around the clock. This tip for letting go of what’s holding you back is from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and involves practicing your craft. “…[successful people]…simply put in more hours than anyone else,” writes Gladwell.

9. Stay  connected to yourself. No matter how you’re planning on getting unstuck, stay open to revising as you go. For instance, you may decide to stop focusing on moving forward in your relationship, and start focusing on moving ahead in your career. That’s okay! Take your nose off the grindstone every so often…look around…and make sure you’re still on the right track. Let yourself make revisions whenever you need.

10. Help other women move forward their lives. When you encourage, educate, and connect with other women, you increase your own dedication, determination, and self-discipline! You feel good about yourself, which increases your motivation and gives you the self-confidence you need to move forward in life. It feels great to help women move towards their dreams, and it’s good karma!

“Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else,” said Mary Kay Ash. “It’s the women with follow-through who excel.”

If you have any thoughts or questions on these ten ways to get unstuck, please comment below…

Related posts:

1. How to Make Mistakes and Move On – Brenda Ueland
2. 7 Ways to Overcome Procrastination at Work – Sarah Ban Breathnach
3. Living With Diabetes for Women – Mary Tyler Moore

First, a quotation from successful businesswoman Martha Stewart:

“Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success.”

Since your thoughts turn into reality, remember to focus on ideas that strengthen, uplift, and inspire you — and be open to new possibilities and opportunities! For help starting a homebased business, click Start and Run A Business From Home: How to Turn Your Hobby or Interest Into a Business. And, read on for five hobby ideas that became careers…

5 Female Entrepreneurs Who Turned Their Hobbies Into Into Careers

Do you already have a business idea or hobby you love? Read For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business for tips.

1. More than a biker chick: a published author. Babs Ryan started the Chicago Motorcycle Meetup four years ago. ”I’m a 49-year-old woman who turned my hobby into a job, and then back into a hobby again,” she says. “I started riding motorcycles at age 21 in grad school for fun, on a trail bike riding in the desert in Arizona.  I became the chief marketing officer at Kawasaki in the UK; two years ago, I started a motorcycle club in Chicago called Chicago Motorcycle Meetup. It grew to 180 members in three months. I’m still riding, but I had to hand over managing the club to someone else because my business book, America’s Corporate Brain Drain, was published and I needed more time for marketing.”

2. Leaping into the wild unknown. Tai Kuncio, founder of Absolute Adventures, Inc, says, “My business partner and I have been running Absolute Adventures, Inc for almost nine years now. We started the business because we both love being active in the outdoors and wanted to take that passion and turn it into a way of making a living.  Our company offers fun outdoor events on the weekends, ranging from kayaking to hiking to sky diving.  We actually get paid to do all the fun things we’d be doing anyway!  We also offer a wide variety of unique team building events to corporations all over Northern California, ranging from high-tech scavenger hunts to sailing regattas to culinary events.”

3. “Wining” her way to success – and writing a book. ”I turned my love of unwinding with a great glass of wine into a career,” says The Wine Coach® Laurie Forster. “With the help of my life coach, I left the corporate world years ago in search of a career that I could be passionate about. Now as The Wine Coach®, I blend my training as a professional sommelier with my experience as a life coach to help people connect to wine, each other, and the things that bring them joy. I wrote my first book, The Sipping Point: A Crash Course in Wine.” 

4. Making jewelry out of science. Raven Hanna, PhD, started Made With Molecules. She says, “My hobby has become my career – and now I need a new hobby! Working as a scientist and science communicator, I was always making crafts on the side. After many comments from friends and strangers that I should sell my serotonin necklace and other molecule-inspired jewelry, I started Made With Molecules.  I never imagined that it would be so successful. It’s now my full time job, and I love it!” Marrying science and artistic creation is a great hobby idea that can become a successful business – if you have an open mind.

5. Greening the baby’s food. Connie Pope, co-owner of Jack’s Harvest, explains how she became a female entrepreneur: “My good friend Heather Schoenrock loves to cook and has always made organic baby food for her children.  She had her third child, son Jack, around the same time I had my second son, Avery. I don’t even like to cook dinner so I wasn’t making my own baby food, but I wanted Avery to have the healthiest food possible.  Since Heather was already making her amazing food for Jack, I offered to pay her to make Avery’s food too. One thing lead to another and three years ago we launched Jack’s Harvest!”

For more ideas, read Turning Hobbies Into Homebased Businesses – Stories From Female Entrepreneurs.

Do you have a hobby you love — and can you see yourself making money from it? I welcome your comments below!

Related posts:

1. When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know
2. How to Make Your Business Successful: Find Your Personal Advantage
3. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business

Here’s financial and life inspiration from Suze Orman:

“In all realms of life it takes courage to stretch your limits, express your power, and fulfill your potential. It’s no different in the financial realm.”

You need courage to be an entrepreneur – and you need to believe in yourself! For more info on starting your own business, click Small Business Start-Up Kit. And read on for several ways to transition into self-employment as a business woman…

How to Get Money to Start Your Business – Suze Orman

Be open to creative business and financial possibilities! In How Hobbies Become Money Making Careers, I describe ten hobbyists who turned their joys (and opportunities) into their businesses. They became female entrepreneurs almost by accident, because they were open-minded – and they love it. Not all of them share how they found the money to start their businesses, but if you want me to contact them, just let me know in the comments section below. I’d be happy to write an article called “Money Tips From Female Entrepreneurs.”

Work part-time, be self-employed part-time. When I first started freelance writing, I worked part-time in an office. I soon realized that the more time and energy I put into writing, the more it paid off – so I decided to take the leap into full-time self-employment as a home-based writer. This is a great way to earn money to start your own business – working part-time – because it’s practically risk-free.

Invest your savings in your business. If you have a couple thousand (or a few thousand!) dollars saved up, then investing your own money in your business makes sense. If you’re a saver, it doesn’t take long to build (or rebuild) capital. If you’re a spender, read Money Tips for Women in Their 20s, 30s, and 40s. If you own your home, you could consider remortgaging it…or selling it altogether.

Apply for a small business loan. Before you apply for a loan, make sure you have a business profile, business plan, personal and business financial statements, and proof of collateral. If you’re applying for a loan to start your own business, you’ll also need to know your credit rating. Plus, you should have some of your own equity invested in your business (eg, money, property, equipment, etc.). To learn about banking relationships, read Tips for Small Business Banking.

Ask your friends or family to invest in your business. You can alleviate the awkwardness of asking friends or family by following certain standards for lending money to friends or family members. If you’re asking friends or family members for capital for your startup, then you need to be as professional, businesslike, and organized as you would if you were applying for a small business loan. And, make sure everything is in writing.

Use your credit card or personal line of credit. To me, this is a risky way to get money to start your business, but…entrepreneurs are known to take risks! Think this through very carefully before you start using your credit card to finance your small business. Most credit cards charge high interest rates, and you have to pay your bill whether your business is successful or not.

Play the stock market? This is another risky way to get money to start your business! If you’re considering investing money to make money, make sure you’re prepared to lose it all. Some investors make good money playing the market – though the economy can make or break your investment. Short-term high-risk investments aren’t necessarily the best way to finance your venture into female entrepreneurship…but it is something to think about.

No matter which combination of methods you use to become self-employed, take this financial advice from Suze Orman:

“It’s better to do nothing with your money than something you don’t understand.”

Don’t invest your money into anything you find confusing, unsettling, or risky. Make sure you research all your options thoroughly — whether you’re getting a bank loan or using your own savings to start your business. You might also consider investing in a business financial advisor.

For more info on successful self-employed business women, read The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel. And if you have any questions or thoughts on getting money to start your own business, please comment below…

Related posts:

1. How to Start a New Career – Suze Orman
2. Dealing With Different Money Personalities as a Couple – Suze Orman
3. 8 Smart Ways Women Can Save Money – Suze Orman

“No one ever said that starting a business was easy,” writes Stewart in The Martha Stewart Rules (10 Essentials For Achieving Success As You Start, Build, Or Manage A Business). “The reality is that companies, even the largest and most well known, falter not once, but many times.”

If you’re a female entrepreneur, you need to know how to bounce back from failure – and not let setbacks become obstacles. Here are Martha Stewart’s tips for business startups; if you want to learn more from Stewart herself, click The Martha Stewart Rules.

For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business

If this article isn’t quite what you’re looking for, try When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know.

1. Build your business success around something you love – something inherently and endlessly interesting to you. So, write the book you want to read, bake the cakes you want to eat, and sell the clothes you want to wear.

2. Focus your attention and creativity on basic things, which people need and want. Then, look for ways to enlarge, improve, and enhance your Big Idea. For instance, my Quips & Tips for Achieving Your Goals seems to be evolving into a site about love relationships in particular, not goals in general. So, I may enlarge my basic idea (a blog about goals) into an enlarged, more specific website about relationships. That’s what readers seem to need and want!

3. Create a business plan that allows you to stay true to your Big Idea, yet helps you focus on the details. Remain flexible enough to zoom in or out on the vital aspects of your enterprise as your business grows. Martha Stewart’s third rule for starting a business involves a telescope (to look ahead), a wide-angle lens (your business’ environment), and a microscope (the details of your business).

4. Share your knowledge about your product or service with customers to create deep connections. Don’t just sell your product or service: help your customers or clients by teaching them, getting to know them, and asking for ideas or feedback.

5. Use smart, cost-effective promotional marketing techniques that will arrest the eye, tug at the heart, and convey what is unique and special about your business or service. Martha Stewart uses the example of Madge (a manicurist) selling Palmolive dish soap. She adds a personal touch to a mundane household product. When starting a business, female entrepreneurs need to find their own touch.

6. Put quality at the top of your list of priorities, and keep it there. Quality is something you should strive for in every decision, every day. This means striving to be your best self – even in the details – when you’re starting and running your business.

7. Seek out and hire employees who are brimming with talent, energy, integrity, optimism, and generosity. Search for advisers and partners who complement your skills and understand your ideals.

8. When faced with a business challenge, evaluate or assess the situation, gather the good things in sight, abandon the bad, clear your mind, and move on. Focus on the positive, stay in control, and never panic. For more info, read Turning Failure to Success for Female Entrepreneurs.

9. Remember that in business, there’s a difference between a risk and a chance. A well-calculated risk may very well end up as an investment in your business. A careless chance can cause it to crumble. When an opportunity presents itself, never assume it will be your last.

10. Listen intently, learn new things every day, be willing to innovate, and become an authority your customers will trust. As a female entrepreneur, you will find great joy and satisfaction in making your customers’ lives easier, more meaningful, and more beautiful.

“When work is based in passion, it does not feel like work – it feels fulfilling and empowering, far more about creating, building, devising, initiating, leading, and serving than simply moving through one task and on to another,” writes Martha Stewart.

If you want more info on any of these tips for female entrepreneurs, please let me know below! I’d be happy to write another article, explaining any of Martha Stewart’s business rules in more depth…

Related posts:

1. Martha Stewart – Bending Steel With Her Mind
2. When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know
3. The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel

In The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel, I described how finding your personal advantage or strength can set you apart from the masses of entrepreneurs or career women. Here, I share examples of innate advantages or personal strengths so you can see what I (and Garrison Wynn!) am talking about.

“Lots of people ignore their innate advantages because they can’t see how it delivers a professional edge,” writes Wynn in The Real Truth about Success:  What the Top 1% Do Differently, Why They Won’t Tell You, and How You Can Do It Anyway! “An innate advantage is anything that you possess naturally that can help you succeed.”

Click on his book to learn more about how to succeed in business and relationships. And, read on for several examples of personal advantages that will make your business successful…

Types of Personal Strengths or Advantages

The willingness to be honest and vulnerable. Oprah Winfrey is a hugely successful female entrepreneur who shares most aspects of her life, from her struggles with her weight to her difficult relationships with her family members. Her millions of viewers and fans relate to who she is because she’s real. Her honesty and vulnerability makes her likeable. But not every businesswoman can – or wants to be – that open with their clients or customers. 

The ability to connect with people. I admire those female entrepreneurs who can connect easily with others (aka “networking”) – because it really is who you know that helps your business succeed. “The people you need to help you make your dream come true are everywhere, and within your reach,” says motivational speaker Marcia Weider. If you think you can’t network, read Networking Tips for Introverts – you’d be surprised at how easy it can be!

Physical stamina and determination. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that hugely successful people put in 10,000 hours of practice before they hit the big time. Bill Gates logged thousands of hours as a computer programmer, the Beatles sung in dozens of dingy nightclubs, and Stephen King wrote legions of bad stories – and they all became wildly successful. A key to their success was the ability and willingness to keep practicing even when they were tired or felt like giving up. For more keys to success from Outliers, read Tips for Achieving Your Goals.

Access to resources: time, money, institutions. Family wealth or fame is a personal advantage that can make your business successful – and there’s nothing wrong with tapping into it! Perhaps that’s part of Maria Shriver’s success. I don’t have access to family wealth, but I can afford to focus on building my freelance writing and blogging career from scratch without worrying about money because my husband makes enough to support us. At first, this made me feel uncomfortable – but not anymore! Now, I am grateful for this opportunity to build my business. I now see it as a personal advantage that I’d be foolish to ignore.

“The idea that we all have to be a certain way or equally gifted or equipped is ridiculous,” writes Wynn in The Real Truth about Success. “Certain jobs or roles require a dominant set of skills or attitudes balanced by almost a complete absence of another set.”

There are many, many more innate abilities that will help you succeed! If you want to read another article with more examples, please let me know below.  I’d be happy to.

If you have any examples of how personal advantages can make your business successful – or questions - please comment below…

Related posts:

1. When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know
2. From Hobbies to Careers – 5 Ideas for Turning a Hobby Into a Successful Business
3. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business

Coco Chanel – who created Chanel No. 5 perfume, bell bottoms, and the little black dress – was a successful businesswoman who had her own formula for success. Here’s what she said:

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” – Coco Chanel.

She thought for herself, and she wasn’t afraid to say what she thought. And she probably said the wrong thing occasionally. She was human. But she also forgave herself (if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have succeeded the way she did!).

This key to success for female entrepreneurs are based on The Real Truth about Success:  What the Top 1% Do Differently, Why They Won’t Tell You, and How You Can Do It Anyway! Click the cover for details – Wynn is a funny, smart writer – and read on for tips businesswomen…

The Key to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Coco Chanel

“We’ve been fed ideas about what it takes to succeed our entire lives, and we’ve eaten them up,” writes Wynn. “In many cases, though, we would be better off chewing them up and spitting them out.”

I won’t go into the wrong keys to success (though if you want me to, I will! Wynn’s wrong ways to succeed are very interesting…just comment below if you’d like me to write about them).

Instead of the usual keys to success, Wynn describes the key to success.

“Although wildly successful, the use of a personal advantage as a get-ahead tactic remains relatively unexploited by average U.S. businesspeople,” he writes. “And yet top performers are nothing more than average businesspeople who have discovered their secret advantage and leveraged it to reach new heights.”

The key to success for female entrepreneurs (and other successful women) is to find your personal advantage.

An example of using this key to success:

Paris Hilton decided she wanted to be more than a rich girl; she wanted to be famous. So, she hired paparazzi to follow her, snap photos, and publish those pictures of her. She used her personal advantages – money, appearance, love of the spotlight, shamelessness – to become a household name.

I’m not saying we should aspire to be like Paris Hilton, my friends. Nor am I saying we need money or elaborate exploits to get ahead. We just need to identify what our personal advantages are – our strengths – and use them.

Paris Hilton used what she had to become a highly successful woman on her own terms. And, her definition of a highly successful woman is different than my definition of a highly successful woman – but she achieved her goals. You gotta admire that.

Coco Chanel’s Personal Advantage

Coco was into fashion, clothing, elegance, and long-term style. Her key to success as a female entrepreneur was her focus on classic wear. Her designs had staying power. Her personal advantage was her tendency towards comfortable, casual, easy clothes – like the little black dress, which is still popular today.

“I don’t understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little – if only out of politeness,” she said. “And then, you never know, maybe that’s the day she has a date with destiny. And it’s best to be as pretty as possible for destiny.”

Coco Chanel’s personal advantage was that she cared about her appearance, and she wanted other women to look and smell good. (Hmmm…is this a personal advantage, or is it just a passion?)

What’s Your Personal Advantage?

What sets you apart from the crowd? Think outside the box: what qualities do you have that other people don’t?  Think of things like how you once turned failure to success or how you changed careers. Your personal advantage is your key to success; you need only find and nurture it.

My next article here on See Jane Soar will list examples of personal advantages – some of them will surprise you – and describe how to nourish and use them.

What do you think of this key to success for female entrepreneurs? I welcome your comments below…

Related posts:

1. Turning Failure to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Maya Angelou
2. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business
3. How to Make Your Business Successful: Find Your Personal Advantage

“I believe in businesses where you engage in creative thinking, and where you form some of your deepest relationships,” said Anita Roddick, creator of The Body Shop. “If it isn’t about the production of the human spirit, we are in big trouble.”

For more info about how Roddick started The Body Shop, read Finding the Right Timing in Life – Anita Roddick. And, click on The Boss of You: Everything A Woman Needs to Know to Start, Run, and Maintain Her Own Business for specific tips for successful businesswomen.

When You’re Starting Your Own Business – What Successful Businesswomen Know

1. Believe in yourself. Your clients immediately know if you believe in your service or product, and they’ll assess you and your product or service accordingly. Tap into — and express! – your passion, integrity, and vision, and you’re more likely to be a successful businesswoman.

2. Gather a great team. When you’re starting your own business, don’t try to do everything yourself, even if you’re a freelance writer who works alone (like me!). If you can’t surround yourself with a smart, motivated team of employees or colleagues, then find a mentor. Soak up insight, feedback, and criticism from other successful businesswomen.

3. Leave your ego out of your new business. Your ego wants to keep you in control, make you look good, and manipulate people. Your ego wants to protect itself at all costs, and it doesn’t like vulnerability or rejection – which is part of starting your own business. Ignore your ego and focus on win-win situations for everyone. Speak up when necessary, even when you feel uncomfortable being in the spotlight!

4. Realize the value of failure. Successful businesswomen don’t escape failure. Successful businesswomen realize that success teaches more than failure, and that failing is a great opportunity to figure out how to do it better, or faster, or more efficiently. To learn more about what successful businesswomen know, read Turning Failure to Success for Female Entrepreneurs – Maya Angelou.

5. Don’t give up yet! Starting a new business can be hard, and many entrepreneurs quit because finding clients is harder than they thought, they feel discouraged, they lose hope, or they no longer believe in themselves or their product. The longer you persevere, the more you improve your chances of starting a successful business. “A writing career is nothing more than a long series of disappointments punctuated by occasional moments of success,” says Michael Bracken. Successful businesswomen know that this isn’t just true of writing careers!

6. Stay organized. Staying organized not only shows your clients what a great businesswoman you are, it makes you feel strong, motivated, and capable. If you get rid of clutter, do things immediately, learn to say no, stick with your routine, and prioritize your goals, you’re more likely to start a successful business.

If you have any tips on starting your own business, I’d love to hear from you! Please comment below…

Related posts:

1. For Female Entrepreneurs – Martha Stewart’s 10 Rules for Starting a Business
2. From Hobbies to Careers – 5 Ideas for Turning a Hobby Into a Successful Business
3. How to Make Your Business Successful: Find Your Personal Advantage