•Focus on one area of your life that’s organized. Think hard. There has to be something in your life that’s organized. Maybe you’re an impeccable dresser, or you keep your favorite supplies in one place. Consider everything you’re doing now to get organized, no matter how small it may be, and pat yourself on the back. Who cares if no one notices the changes you’re making? It’s your life, not theirs.

•Consider your priorities. If something is important to you, you’ll change it.  If not, you won’t— and in some cases you shouldn’t. If you make only a few changes in the way you work, you could be more productive and maintain your creativity.

•Ask yourself why you’re having trouble getting organized. Instead of beating yourself up over missed appointments or postponed decisions about paper, face it: you may be someone who thrives in a disorganized environment.  Work around your need for a bit of disorganization and designate one place to put your keys every time you come home or figure out one place to keep track of appointments and enter them as you make them.

Before you throw in the organizing towel, realize that being right-brained doesn’t doom you to a life of chaos. If you change the way you think, you’ll reduce your stress level and leave yourself open to accomplish more.

Business: Cute Beltz, a line of belts and accessories for children 12 months to 6 years young.

Motivation: No existing product was available. “I could never find a belt for my two-year old. My sister had the same issue while shopping for her son. The items I did find were a nuisance as I had to add notches in the belt or use safety pins, which are dangerous for kids,” says designer and founder, Kristen Ford-Stevens.

Outcome:  CuteBeltz was founded and thriving online in a matter of months. “The response I’ve received from parents has been an ecstatic sigh of relief. They are witnessing their child’s self confidence heighten each time they put on Cute Beltz,” says Ford-Stevens.

Business:

Motivation: A need for privacy. “One day my four-year-old daughter came to me with an intimate item that I thought was hidden quite well in my nightstand.  At that point I realized that I truly needed some discreet storage so I began looking online for something I could keep on my nightstand or dresser.  Everything I found had a padlock or required a small key for access, and in that fruitless search, my idea for ToiBocks was born,” says Dawn Tulman, President of ToiBocks.

Outcome: Sales of Toibocks continue to increase and their fan base grows daily. They encourage their Facebook friends to answer the question: “What do you store in your ToiBock?” which brings out a few interesting responses.

• Learn some stealth moves. If you decide to leave the room during the call, make sure it’s during a time when no one will notice. When you’re the next one on the agenda, it’ll be fairly obvious to everyone on the call that you’ve left your computer.

• Don’t post messages on Facebook during the call. When co-workers have access to your Facebook account, they’ll know whether you’re spending more time on your wall than on the call. They may even point it out to everyone during the call, as in “Did you just post something on your wall?” which can be a bit embarrassing.

• If you have a dog, put him outside, send him to a neighbor’s house or give him a Kong filled with peanut butter to keep him busy and quiet. No one wants to talk over a barking dog, especially when the dog barks as loud as mine.

• When you’re waiting for everyone to connect to the online call, make sure others can’t hear you talking on your cell phone. Maybe I’m being picky but I don’t want to hear about what you’re wearing or what you want your spouse to wear (or in some cases not wear) later that evening. Some icky things you hear, just can’t be erased from your mind.

The final thing I learned during the call is that I like audio chats better than video chats. The best part is that I can sit at my desk in jeans and a t-shirt (makeup optional) while I know that the corporate execs on the other end of the line are dressed for work. When you work from home, every day is Casual Friday!

A few months ago I hired a makeup artist for a photo shoot and when she showed up wearing more makeup than a clown, I didn’t expect much. Actually, I tried to think of an excuse for why I was about to turn and run. When she finished, my makeup looked amazing. (I couldn’t convince her to come to my house every morning for free!)

I had a similar experience with my CPA. His office looks like the aftermath of a hurricane, but he’s detailed and meticulous. He may have a disorganized office, but I’ll work with him until the day he retires. Talent is what keeps both of these folks in business. But what if others judge them on the outside the way I did originally, and then unlike me, refuse to hire them?

There are a few ways to make sure the book matches the cover:

Live by example. If you’re a fitness instructor, stay in good shape. If your business helps others improve their communication skills, be an effective communicator.  That’s common sense, yet it’s so common it’s easy to forget.

If others hire you for advice and guidance, follow your own advice. As a parent, it’s easy to tell your kids to do as you say, not as you do. That may be OK for kids but it doesn’t work with clients.

Think about what you say before you say it. Then if you say you’re going to do something, do it.

Make sure that the impression you give, matches your message. Think back to your last doctor’s appointment.  If you’re a smoker, and even if you’re not, think about how much faith you’d place in a doctor who told you to quit smoking while puffing on a cigarette.  Not much.

Living by example is a key to success. After all, if you don’t follow your own advice, how do you expect others to trust what you say or do?

In the episode I watched, the chefs on opposing teams were equally talented.  The difference was that one chef was a perfectionist.  The other had his eye on the end result: to serve good food in a timely manner.  The perfectionist spent more time on the presentation of the food —her customers wouldn’t have noticed if the lettuce wasn’t centered on the plate —and less time watching the clock.  The perfectionist lost the competition.

When you focus on making sure the slightest tasks turns out perfectly, you risk missing deadlines, annoying your clients and getting in your own way of success.  Your business can’t move forward when your need for perfection turns into an anchor that drags your business down.

The next time you can’t let something go because it’s not perfect, take the pressure off yourself and keep your eye on the big picture.

Guest Post by Wendy Sullivan

Podcasting isn’t terribly different from blogging. One of the top touted ways of drawing traffic to your blog is to guest post on other people’s sites. I’ve found, in my experience, that inviting guests to be on your podcast really draws the traffic.

According to a study posted on Podcasting News (which you should be reading!), half the Internet radio audience is listening to podcasts, as opposed to streaming radio.

When I began my podcast back on May 18, 2008, it was small. My blog was a small-medium political site, with about 800 daily readers, many of whom were happy to tune into my little voice experiment. The first four weeks of Brass Balls Radio – now off the air – brought a couple thousand listeners, thanks to friends linking to us on their own blogs.

For my fourth show, I screwed up all my courage and invited author and columnist Mark Steyn to join me. At the time of recording, he had just walked out of a court in Vancouver after fighting a human rights complaint over an excerpt of his book, America Alone. Mark was very much in the news in both Canada and the United States during this time, and scoring him for my now-defunct show Brass Balls Radio was quite a coup.

In addition to merely appearing on the show, he also linked to his episode on his own website. That brought me not hundreds or even thousands of listeners – it brought almost 20,000! Not all of them subscribed, but thousands tuned in week after week to listen to the musings of me and my co-host Mike Williams.

It was time to leverage this information to draw in ever more listeners each week. We used different methods:

• Facebook fan pages
• Twitter
• Interviewing other bloggers in our niche and receiving links from them
• Sending out thank you mugs for special guest-hosts

All of these things resulted in more links back to Brass Balls Radio. Someone appeared on our show, they’d mention us on their website. If they received a personalized mug, they posted a picture of it and linked back to us. People not only wanted to listen to the show, the petitioned us to be on it, too. Traffic grew.

One of the most important things we did was to register our site feed with iTunes. Apple owns the podcasting world, and we just live in it. Ergo, making sure our listeners could get our show on their iPods without a lot of effort was really important. You can learn about sending your podcast feed to iTunes here.

So how do you get great guests to entertain and educate your podcast listeners? You ask them! It’s as simple as that, really. Your momma told you that “if you don’t ask, you don’t get.” Very wise advice. Whether you want a high ranking politician, a famous author or a tenured expert on ecology, you have to keep in mind that they are all human beings trying to promote their own product/idea. In the case of Mark Steyn, he was not only kind enough to appear often as a guest, but also agreed to guest-host for our 1st anniversary show. Rush Limbaugh pays him much more than a personalized coffee mug to do the same, I assure you! Obviously I had to approach him first, and this took confidence and more than a little chutzpah.

Don’t be afraid of people just because they are “experts” or are more successful than you. Most of them will be friendly and outgoing, happy to talk about their ideas on your show. I think that out of all the guests I invited, only one ever turned me down – Lord Conrad Black’s wife, and only because Lord Black was about to head back into court in Chicago.

If you build it – and have the confidence to ask – they will come.

Wendy Sullivan is a freelance writer and journalist based in Toronto, where she lives with her muse – an 8 lb chihuahua named Bug. Check Wendy out at Girl on the Write.

When I look back at my career and think about every job I’ve ever had, I realize I’ve experienced the same thing. At first I’d learn everything I could and then eventually I’d go into autopilot.  There was nothing new to learn, my boss refused to do anything differently and I quit using my business skills.

Working from home has changed everything.  As my own boss, I can’t afford to sit back and coast through each business day.  Instead, I make a conscious effort to develop more skills. This keeps me in the loop and keeps my business from being left behind.  There are a few ways to do the same.

• Sign up for webinars in your field. You could spend a solid year (virtually) attending every webinar offered on the Web and still you couldn’t attend all of them. The good news is that because there are many free, quality webinars out there, your only investment is time.

• Read whatever and whenever you can. The Internet is filled with articles on almost any topic you can think of. So why not take advantage of free advice from experts around the world? Advice from business books will cost you more, but if you switch to ebooks you’ll spend less than you would on a traditional book and you’ll be able to take hundreds of books with you at all times that weigh next to nothing.

• Get involved in online forums. Forums are a great way to network with others and build business relationships that will help you grow your business. The bottom line is that you don’t have to meet face-to-face with someone to share ideas and information.

• Enroll in classes you can take online or in person. Either way, classes involve time and money. Decide whether the investment is worth it.

As my son continues to develop his driving skills, I continue to learn new ways to grow my business. I’m also getting better at not pressing an imaginary brake while he’s driving.

This home office is the perfect example. On one side of the room are a large, built-in oak desk and a three-drawer file cabinet.  Along the opposite wall are oak bookshelves with storage cabinets below.

Bev, the small businesss owner who uses this home office more than the rest of her family, replaced the carpeting with oak hardwoods. In the middle of the room, her carpenter installed a diamond pattern made from three different types of hardwoods. Instead of using traditional drapery, she chose an oak arch that fits perfectly above the arched window. The large recliner by the window is the perfect place for her to take a break and catch up on a little reading.

This well-designed home office makes use of every square foot of space. And with the beautiful hardwoods surrounding the space, this is a home office built to last.

Later that day, I called a mutual friend and she told me that six months ago my friend started his own business and was doing well over six figures. As I clicked off the call, I realized that I did to him what others have done to me for years. I’d assumed that because he was running an errand in the middle of the day and was casually dressed, he wasn’t working.

It’s no wonder that others have trouble taking us seriously when we work from home. Consider why:

• You can go to your child’s events during school or anytime in the summer.
• If you want to take the day off to spend with your family, you can.
• You can sleep late and work through the night because you don’t have to wake up early to get to work.
• You can schedule repair calls or deliveries anytime during the day.

Those of us who work from home “get it.” We have flexibility that our corporate counterparts don’t have and at times, don’t understand. There are a few things you can do to help others realize that even though you have a home office, you’re still working.

• Set guidelines and boundaries with your family and friends. They need to understand that you can’t take personal calls all day or at times you need to work uninterrupted. It’s a balancing act that can be challenging.

• Learn to say no when friends or family ask you to wait for the repair person or a UPS delivery. They need to know that although you’re working from home, you’re still working.

• Treat your business as a business, not a hobby. That means that you don’t work for free. Your time is worth something to your clients. It should be worth the same (or more) to your friends and family.

• Use one e-mail address for personal use and another for business. The goal is to keep your business e-mail address clear for clients and important messages while your personal address is for annoying joke e-mails that your friends can’t resist sending.

• Set up two Twitter accounts: one for business and one for personal use. Your personal tweets can include cryptic messages to friends and the latest update of where you are, while your business tweets should be professional and helpful to others who can use your services.

The bottom line is that you can’t get everyone to take you seriously but then again, who cares? You have the freedom that others only dream about during their daily commute to work. Eventually they’ll come around — probably when they’re working from home too.

A good way to increase profits, reduce risk and broaden your market is by joining forces with a competitor. Maybe not all of the time, but a project or two may be a good way for both of you to grow your businesses and to see if a long-term association is worthwhile. If you have multiple businesses, the joint venture may be just one of those businesses, and the others you continue to run on your own. There are a few ways to work with your competitor.

• Be creative. For example, if you’re both life coaches, you can offer more seminars in more places for mutual benefit.

• Create a shared company name to help you brand your services.

• Make sure the venture is on an equal footing. It’s probably a good idea to get a legal agreement that clarifies exactly what is shared, who is boss, and other details. A legal document gives you the way in and the way out, if you need to end the venture.

• Create a business plan for the venture. The plan should detail what the goals are and how you’re going to reach them together. You can’t work at cross-purposes if you want to succeed.

Of course, the most important factor in a joint venture is trust. Without mutual trust and openness what could have been a successful venture (the usual result of a joint venture is success) will fall flat on its face.

Lucinda Cross, known as the Business Midwife, is the author and speaker of Corporate Mom DropOuts. The company provides signature online and offline educational marketing strategies and mentoring for mom entrepreneurs. For more information, visit her Web site to receive the Free Business Mom Toolkit.