I just finished playing with a Squidoo lens, http://www.squidoo.com/LearningEntrepreneurs and am off to play in Twitter.com now. I have a Ryze page but that seems to be less popular than it used to be, so I’m looking to get set up in MySpace and Facebook. Found another new one called ning.com which may be an interesting possibility for The Learning Center to have a an active discussion area.

Do you have any experiences in promoting your business in any of these or other social media sites? What is your favourite one and why? Post your comments with your social site page URL.

It’s Tuesday, April 22 and it’s Earth Day. And it’s been snowing here for 5 days straight in a late spring snowstorm. We’ve had close to 30cm of snow (close to 12″) and still expecting another 5cm today. So in celebration of earth day I am not going to drive my car all day. Mostly because it would mean a whole lot of shovelling.

Here’s my poor corner garden & firepit. What you can’t see in the picture of course is the howling winds that are gusting to 40km/hr (almost 25 mi/hr).

In anticipation of spring I had started to put away the winter gear: the snow pants, boots, gloves, toques, scarves. The front hall was looking empty with only spring jackets, but we’re back to full winter gear laying everywhere again. The snow has piled against the front door so I have to shovel to get out. Yep, celebrating Earth Day inside.

Do you have a specific promotion or event planned for today? Is your business green and eco-friendly? Post a comment with your earth friendly tips & events or tell us how your business is green.

My office is home based and online which means my main footprint is in power consumption from the computer & peripherals. I try to reduce the amount of documents I actually print, and I recycle paper by printing on the back of scrapped documents.

What’s your earth day solution?

Do you exercise, eat right, take vitamin supplements, read food labels, recycle, look for eco-friendly products and services? There’s so many things that have crept into our lives as ‘good habits’ that maintain our personal health, the health of our family and the health of our community.

Like so many other areas of our lives, our businesses also have to be regularly maintained with good habits for optimal health. As entrepreneurs we wear so many hats and for a business to run successfully we need to be at the very least proficient under each of the hats. But really, unless you’re already an accountant or bookkeeper, who really likes doing the day to day bookkeeping? Okay make that twice a year bookkeeping.

Like so many other areas of our lives, once things are identified as a healthy habit we make the effort to make it a regular habit. We can do the same with our businesses by creating small manageable bits done regularly. This is preventative medicine and allows us to stay ahead of many of our business challenges.

In this week’s Learning List, there’s a great little article about taking your ‘business vitamins’. Be sure to read it and see how you can incorporate business vitamins into your daily routine.

Now, I’m off for my morning walk with my baby and get my day’s events organized in my head. How about you?

I am always on the lookout for new sources of expertise. Even within areas where I’ve found one, to have two or more is even better. If you are an expert and have informational products, ezines, ebooks, courses, etc., contact me with your information and let’s chat some more. I have lots of ideas for using expert information that I will be building into this Learning Center over the next couple of years (yes my business plan goes that far ahead at the moment). So let’s connect - use the contact me form found here.

I think I’ll just continue this thread by numbering as I share them with you. Should make it a bit easier to find all the posts in the archives, etc. as the list multiplies.

Ezine Marketing - I have been a long time subscriber (3 years at least) to this lady’s ezine as I have always learned something from her. She is known as ‘The Ezine Queen’, Alexandria Brown. She has very recently decided to move on from doing just ezines into more marketing information. However like me, she shares only what she has already experienced as being productive or useful. For that, I’d strongly recommend you sign onto her ezine list which she mails out about once a week. She is also promoting a new business product, called 2008 Online Success Blueprint-in-a-Box - which I have NOT yet gone through, but I intend to buy in the near future when I have a bit of time to attend to it (kinda busy at the moment with getting this built for you). Based on her other products that I have tried, I’m confident this one will be full of value as well, which is why I’m bending my rule a bit. She already has a solid track record for quality products in my view so I have no problems recommending this new one.

Media & Publicity - Another lady with great information is Joan Stewart and likewise I’ve been on her ezine list for a number of years. She is known as The Publicity Hound and always has great advice on working with the media and getting into the media. I have used her advice in my earlier businesses and they never failed to generate results. She also has free articles you can use in your business communications as well as compiled reports on a variety of topics. Lots of resources at her site, PublicityHound.com.

Here’s a couple of excellent sites that provide some base fundamentals and reference information on a couple of areas. I’ve used both of these myself, and even if you consider yourself an expert in these areas, it never hurts to take a quick peek in case there’s something that triggers a thought or idea, or even reminds you of something you once knew but had buried in the dusty recesses of your brain.

Website Design - HTML, CSS, XHTML code basics by W3Schools.com They also offer a slate of other internet & website coding lessons. Their explanations are clear with excellent examples and they also provide little working windows where you can play with parameters to see what it does to the presentation. Highly recommended for those trying to get a handle on the basics and a good reference site.

Mailing Lists - Shawn Casey, a long time internet marketing guru has launched an interesting site called ListBuilding.com with another fellow that outlines how to build mailing lists. They’ve recorded a couple of teleconference calls with real people who built their lists into substantial sizes and generated income from them. They detail exactly what they did to build their list and business. While not all their techniques may work for you, they will certainly get you thinking about what you’re doing or not doing with your list. And hey, it’s free so check it out.

Speaking of list building, have you subscribed to the Learning Center’s list yet? Don’t forget to do that before you go if you haven’t.

For those of you who have been with me over the past couple of weeks, you’re starting to notice some changes. A new template - a freebie I downloaded (see Site Credits) and I updated the Wordpress template too, a little nicer than the plain default one. Is this the final look? Nope, but it’s a quickie interim one to make things look a little less bare bones. Besides I kinda like the sheep - how I feel some days.

The freebie mailing list I’m using as a temporary measure has some down sides, like no access to archives as I thought it did. You get what you pay for, though so I’m not really complaining, just whining a teensy bit. So critical info stuff from the mailings I’ll post here for now until I get my permanent service up and running. It will have all the nice features, but then I’ll be paying for it too *smile*.

I found some great resources this week that have some decent basic training. I did send them out in the mailer, but I’ll post them here in a separate entry. I’m still learning all about Wordpress, the service I chose for the blog so you’ll see some weird template things happening from time to time as I play with it. I’ll have it all nailed down before the official launch.

If you’re visiting - please feel free to leave comments on any blog entry or send me an email about what you’re looking to learn or where your business is at. I welcome all feedback.

I use a number of nifty little tools and programs for designing & maintaining my sites. I thought I’d share some of my favourites with you.

Filezilla - a great utility for handling your FTP transfers. In their words, “FileZilla is a fast FTP and SFTP client for Windows with a lot of features. FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server.” Freeware, find it at http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla

ColorPix - a delightful utility I recently discovered and have used a fair bit now. In their words, “ColorPix automatically translates any screen color into RGB, HEX, HSB and CMYK color values, and comes with a zoom-able magnifier built in!” They also have another utility called Galleria that helps you create complete colour schemes and is also free. I haven’t used it yet but intend to load it up shortly. Find it at http://www.colorschemer.com/

If you’re looking for a specific script to run on your site, start your search at www.Hotscripts.com, an excellent resource with ton of scripts, tools, how to’s, etc. A free service although not all services & scripts are free.

Okay what’s with the name, Mrs Paula? I’ve had a couple of people ask, so here’s the explanation.

1) It’s what the neighbourhood kids call me - that’s where it started. I’m also known as the science mom at school because I’m always pushing science with the kids. I was also dressed as a mad scientist for hallowe’en when my boy was in kindergarten and I think that’s when the visual stuck as well. But Mrs Paula is easier to say than ‘hey science mom lady’.

2) I like it because in this day & age of casualness, saying ‘hey howzit going Paula’ when I’ve never met you, has always been a bit of a bee under my etiquette bonnet. Yes call me old fashioned, but I still like introductions. I think kids have lost a learning layer of respect by this pervasive casualness as well, but that’s a rant for another day.

3) Mrs Polman is my mother-in-law, a dear lady but definitely not me.

So it’s a bit of a compromise in true Canadian fashion. I get to be a little bit formal but not overly and I get to not be my mother-in-law.

So please, leave a comment and introduce yourself. I’d love to meet you.

My story begins in the mid 80’s where my ex and I built PCs in a spare bedroom for businesses looking to get techno. We built 286’s right down to soldering chips on the bare boards. From there I moved more into the software side of things, teaching, desk top publishing (ooohh it was so cool and new back then), installing & configuring. After we split, I got a ‘real job’ for awhile but continued to dabble on the side.

After the split I moved back to western Canada, to a new city by myself where I knew no one and did not have a job. I remember spending my 30th birthday alone in a motel room where I was living while looking for a cheap place to live. Not as much fun as it may sound *grin*. I struggled making a living there. Tried to continue training & selling computers but really my heart wasn’t in it, so I was barely scraping by. Turned to cleaning the apartment building I was living in to help cover the rent. At one point I was so broke, my phone was disconnected and I was living on cabbage & potatoe soup (not a diet I recommend). And I was so ashamed at being such a failure, I told no one.

Then I met someone who got me into his business of conference & event management. Wow, learned a lot there about running a business - or rather, how NOT to run a business. Ended up getting taken for all my savings and ‘invested’ some of my time -read salary- into the biz. Still broke, I moved on.

Back into the ‘real world’ again selling computers which by now I hated. However my path lead me to my hubby and the first of my kiddos, so a pretty good exchange. That’s when I rolled up my sleeves and said ‘I want to stay at home with my baby. I’m going to build a business properly.’ And I did. Making natural soaps & toiletries, I did trade shows, had a successful website with tons of traffic. Did okay on the income side but it was a lot of work. And I got to stay home with my son which was the most important factor to me.

But then I did what many entrepreneurs do, I tried to grow too big too fast and lost my focus. The result? Everything bottomed out. Now I was struggling again to earn an income. So back to the ‘real world’ for another job. By this time we were in another city and my son was starting school. Another ‘real world’ lesson on how NOT to run a business and I finally realized that working under someone was just not my thing. I resented the restrictions on my time and resented having to work for people who’s ethics did not match mine.

Fast forward to today where we’ve had a second child and again I want to stay home for her. But much wiser, I’ve found my passion and that is teaching. Empowered learning. Over the years of working on the internet I’ve met wonderful people, all with the same dream - to have our own business, to have control over our time and to make a solid living doing what we love. But as entrepreneurs, mompreneurs(r), WAHMs, WAHDs, solopreneurs - whatever your label is, we are often isolated behind our computers. Trying to build and network by ourselves, grow and learn by ourselves. And it’s tough - make no mistake. That isolation is great for awhile but eventually it wears you down.

A constant thread in my life has always been giving back and that has generally been done by teaching, sharing. I’ve monitored boards for WAHMs, I’ve been interviewed & profiled by media over the years in the hope that it would inspire other people. Now, after taking some time off, I’ve finally clarified that purpose and passion. For a long time I was bogged down behind the ‘what do I want to be when I grow up?’ mantra instead of just looking back objectively at what I’ve done for so many years.

This Learning Center service is for all you entrepreneurs who have related to my story. Am I making millions doing this? Well not yet but here’s hoping :-). My goal? To have sufficient income to raise my children while I’m at home for them, to have the luxury of flexibility of time - to control my day. Yes I may actually work longer hours than a 9 to 5′er sometimes, but I can do it at 3am when Baby Girl has woken me and I can’t get back to sleep. I can work without someone spying on me, snooping through my emails or hovering over my shoulder micromanaging my every move.

The Learning Center will help you to do the same thing. Through expanded knowledge and skills you too will gain better control over your time, stabilize and grow your income, give you the flexibility of control over your day and your life.

Are you excited? I sure am.