It’s 2012 and as we move forward with new and exciting plans for Ovaleye this year, I have to think what the heck happened to 2011? The year flew by too fast for a growing business to handle. Here is what I found as I go through my notes for the past year.

Our company picked up momentum beginning in 2010 as we doubled in size, in the summer we took on partners, added new services and a new way to market ourselves with video towards the end of the year.  Then, beginning in 2011 we added a new Affiliate program, began marketing our VoIP and Business Class email services, ended the partnership formed in 2010 all while learning how to grow our business with my grandson in tow.

Looking back at 2011 I am left thinking where did the year go? I was so consumed in trying to keep up that I never felt like I caught up until the last month of the year. I caught my breath and could plan for 2012. When you are in the thick of things you do not realize what happened until you can basically relax and take a serious look at your progress. I encourage all small businesses to take time to go over the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s the only way to move forward.

Lessons I have learned:

• Partner with businesses that will help your business grow and that have the same values as you
• Listen to your gut when making a big decision
• Organization is everything
• Cash flow is a big part of your business. You have to have this to survive!
• Don’t be afraid to fail
• Be present!
• Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and have fun when marketing your business
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help

I received great advice from my personal trainer the other day. I have seen him for about 8 months now. He has the best routine for me, but I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted. I asked him why this was the case; why I wasn’t seeing BIG results after doing everything he said to do. He said to me “well, Kathy do you sweat every single time you do this work out? Do you push yourself?” I said well I don’t sweat as much as I should and I am careful. He said that is your problem. Push yourself to get the results you want. No one else can do that for you.

Your business is part of your life, family and everything you do. Ovaleye is my third child and needs me and my team every day. So you better LOVE what you do.  The process of building a scalable business takes time, love and lots of sweat.  It will drive you insane days and there will be days you dance and sing around in joy.

2012 is all about spreading our wings to see how far we can go.

One of my favorite days of the week is Monday. It’s the start of the week and usually one of our busiest days. I love to be busy and enjoy talking with as many web hosting clients as we can.

My day usually starts at 5:15am and by 8am I am in the office after the gym and checking my emails. I will usually get support calls before 8am while at the gym. No problem, I can jump off the treadmill and take the call using Ovaleye VoIP and my Bria soft phone!

The office is usually  jumping hearing from clients, clearing emails out of my inbox and hopefully tweeting. I always check out who has looked at our website and who follows us on Twitter Facebook. I jump on Facetime with Jenn, who is my partner (and daughter), and my grandson to plan when we all meet.

My grandson time on Monday makes the first day of the week the best day! I love this time with him. I get him all to myself! We play games, run, and he wears me out! Jenn, his mom, works in the office while I play.

After dinner with Grammy & Grampy my grandson goes home with his daddy and my daughter and I with my husband (partner and producer) record SOHO Insights for Ovaleye.tv and have a blast talking about the trends, services, and products for the small office, home office lifestyle.

To top the day off Jenn and I visit my mother-in-law (her Grandma) and we watch Dancing with the Stars or a fun movie and drink wine!

Monday is a good day!

Kathy K Nelson – Chief Decision Maker at Ovaleye.com

Here is a short post on my love of Apple products and how they have made my life easier and much more fun. I envision many many days and nights Steve Jobs poured his soul into Apple and it will live on for many years.  This is why I buy and enjoy my Apple products so much.  Here are just a few gadgets that make my life as a small business owner, wife, mother and now grandmother easier.

• My must have October 14th is the iPhone4S Siri
• Facetime with my grandson (Priceless)
• iPad2 – I work in my favorite places and have WiFi
• What would I do without this app on my iPhone?
• iTunes where my old business was local bands and selling music.
• The last one I would like to share takes me out of my comfort zone and into my favorite thing I like to do each week. Because of iMovie & iTunes I can reach as many people as I can sitting in my home office.

Thank you Steve Jobs!

Kathy K Nelson – Chief Decision Maker at Ovaleye.com

Running a business when you are a mom is fun and exciting each and everyday.   I have said in earlier posts, I wish I had a blog to connect with others back when I was raising our kids before the Internet.  Watching my daughter juggle her business tasks with a 9 month old baby can be entertaining.  Before my grandson turned 9 months we could keep him busy in the office while making calls.  Not sure it works so well now with his ability to scream as loud as he can at any given moment.  He never sits too long in the office so this is also a challenge.  Mommy helpers can really come in handy!

I am hoping all mothers that have a small office home office lifestyle take a moment and celebrate the fact they can enjoy both worlds.  It was always a dream of mine to build a business in my home office while raising our family.

My reasons to celebrate with all the at home mothers in business:

1. FREEDOM to be at home with the kids

2. Tools available now to run a successful business from their home office

3. Flexibility to enjoy the family time

4. Building communities and support online

5.  Savings on commute time, career clothes and daycare

I sat with a good friend last night who has two young kids.  It was hard to start a family for her so she is in no hurry to be away from her kids.  She is very excited to be getting her feet wet this month online.  Investing in a little “ME” time and enjoying her passion of writing will get her started in her vision of owning her own business from her home office.

My celebration is HUGE this year.  I finally realized I made my dream come true.  My daughter will be celebrating her first Mother’s Day.   Our company has made it possible for her to stay home with her baby and enjoy the time together.  Maybe not the screaming

The celebrating started with a trip to Disneyland with our kids, son in law and mother in law.

Happy Mothers Day!

Kathy K Nelson – Chief Decision Maker at Ovaleye.com who provides all mom’s a little freedom to do what they want online.

My company, Ovaleye has been busy!  For the past year we have been finding the best services to offer our clients.  We have talked with people all of the US, Russia, and Germany to find the best way to offer these services.  This process has been a learning experience!  The team at Ovaleye has tested and retested these services, using them ourselves for the last five months and we are now ready to roll them out.  It’s a great feeling!

The first service we found and will roll out this week is Persony Web and Video Conferencing.  This service will change the way our clients meet with their partners and customers.  It’s all about cloud computing!  Ovaleye.com will be making our own conference rooms available to hosting clients to use on a reservations, first come first served basis for free.  Using web conferencing service, you can share your desktop, conduct webinars and more all from your small office.home office. If a hosting client wants a room that is branded for them they can easily purchase this from their Plesk Control Panel.

Our second service that we are rolling out is VoIP, or Voice over IP.  This is phone hosted on our server make possible by 4psa’s VoIPNow. Another great affordable cloud service.  I have mentioned this before.  My office phone is a Polycom VoIP desk top phone.  I am able to transfer calls to the Ovaleye team, check phone messages from my email, and be anywhere to answer my office line using my iPhone.  I no longer give my clients my personal cellphone # when I know I will be away from the office and you can do the same.

The third service is a business class emails from our Partners at Open-Xchange.  This is hosted email exchange that is a great alternative to Micrsoft’s Exchange. The Ovaleye team uses this as their email client and I can say it’s so much better than any other I have used in the past with the collaboration tools they offer.  This will provide our clients with free, attractive webmail that they can upgrade to an enhanced service that is similar to Google’s enhanced collaborations tools.  Ovaleye can include our team members in the calendar features, store important documents to share and it’s affordable.

We would not be able to offer these products so inexpensively without the help of our partners at Parallels.  It’s the best decision I have ever made so far with Ovaleye.  Finding good partners is a must to grow your business.

I am also very excited to show off an ever improving website layout that Evolution Design in San Diego created for us.  Bear, the owner, did a great job researching our industry and found the right colors and style to help us sell our new services.  Every business should revisit their website to make tweaks and changes as they grow.

Now on to marketing these services and filming videos to really help teach our clients how to best utilize these new services in their businesses for maximum benefits.  I am so passionate about these new cloud services

Kathy K Nelson – Chief Decision Maker at Ovaleye.com

I hear this word  from women entrepreneurs all the time.   When I meet new clients or am in a networking situation, I am always hearing “OVERWHELMED” over and over?  Then I think am I overwhelmed too?  Heck yes!  I am the queen of overwhelmed.

How do I handle overwhelm? I have recognized why I am constantly overwhelmed.   I am getting better at this all the time.  Overwhelm can actually consume you and I have had those days!  I seem to do better in the state overwhelm now and come to enjoy the fast pace of it.

Reasons to feel overwhelmed when running your own business:

1. Family
2. Time
3. Cash flow
4. Health
6. Meetings/Networking
7. Personal Appointments
8. Website/Social Media
9. Education
10. Marketing

Our goals for 2010 are huge!  There is no turning back now.  The overwhelming feeling comes as soon as I say this.  On the flip side  I think what would happen if I achieve my goals?  I told my husband I feel so happy right now. What am I doing differently?

Here is how I try to keep the feeling of overwhelm away:

1. The goals we have set for our business Ovaleye are achievable and we track the progress weekly.

2. Cash flow can have it’s ups and downs and my Quickbooks specialist helps me with our reports to see where I need to be.

3. Family has been very supportive and I have found when they know what I am planning to do they understand our frantic days and nights better.

4. Attitude is everything.  I envision the time when I hit my goal at least once a day.

5. We always workout in some way.  It helps to go to the gym, walk, yoga or whatever you can do to get out of the office. Mornings are the best time for me so far.

6. Marketing can put a huge dent in our cash flow.  I believe after spending an overwhelming amount of money this past year (it’s only May) I can see some results!  BIG results!  It takes TIME to capture clients.  Doors open and it feels good.

7. Continuing education for me is meeting with successful entrepreneurs, audio books (Guerrilla Marketing is playing now), and keeping up on my favorite major publications and blogs.

8. Twitter, facebook and blogging are some of the best ways of getting your business out there and the cheapest way I know.  However, twitter can make me scratch my head on a Tuesday morning wondering what to say to my followers.

9. Jenn. my daughter the organizer and my husband who says YES you can achieve that goal also helps.

10. I just love to end my day with a glass of wine and either a movie, Lost, Dancing with the Stars or my all time favorite Friends & Gilmore Girls DVDs.

To many happy thoughts!

Napoleon Hill in “Think and Grow Rich” suggests that all Entrepreneurs belong to a Mastermind Group.  I belong to a group in Duvall that started with 3 members and has grown in just one year.  We meet every Wednesday morning at 9am -10am.   Sometimes we do not have a full group but most of the time we all make sure we are there to support each other.

We established some rules at the beginning  and have followed through with them since the beginning.  Trust is necessary and helps the group’s harmony and support in each other.  Each week we listen to the members goals for the week, month or year and help them to be accountable for those goals.

My group consists of a Financial Advisor, Gallery owner/Software Developer, Real Estate Agents, Quickbook Specialist and myself, web hosting provider. We meet at a local Bakery/Coffee Shop.  Sometimes we will meet at one of our places of business which could be our house.  One of our members has owned 3 businesses and has lots of wisdom in business building, one has social media skills, another has experience in the Corporate world.  We have never had a boring session yet.

I will tell you one story before I sign out today.  My favorite meeting to date has been when our financial advisor and I were the only participants at our meeting.  I was nervous about starting a networking group where all their members give 60 second commercials about their business.  I told this to the advisor and by the end of our meeting I found myself standing on a chair in the middle of the coffee shop telling my 60 second commercial.  The advisor former job was writing speeches for political candidates.  He was perfect to help me get over my fear.   I did just fine a the networking event!

I encourage everyone to join or start a Group in your area.  It has helped all of us grow our businesses.

Our first business was called Main Street Music.  My husband and I opened our store in our hometown May 1999.  After a year of online research and planning I opened with much success!  Our kids were in high school so this was a perfect family business.  We offered all sorts of music for our small town.  Main Street Music offered  Karoke nights, live bands, sponsored events, and sold guitars in our little store.

Shortly after we opened, all my favorite customers would come in and show me their collection of “burned cds”.  Many local cd stores closed including ours shortly after Napster caught on.  Our supplier went online and so did Main Street Music. We closed the shop in August 2001 and December 2001 our first customer downloaded a song on  mainstreetmusic.com website.  As our website grew attention all over the US we added to our database, shopping cart and bought our own server. Mainstreetmusic.com started many ads using Google Ads and the traffic crashed our website so another server was bought.  December 2002 we had 600,000 visits.

I was the only customer service rep during this time.  I had a blast talking with soldiers trying to find karaoke music, artists trying to get noticed by record companies, and many Countries looking for music. Lots of our customers were trying to figure out how to download music at that time.  Mainstreetmusic.com was ready to expand in January 2003 when Walmart bought our supplier.  Since we had such a great deal with our supplier we were not able to afford another supplier.  So we closed Mainstreetmusic.com for the last time.

Our lesson from mainstreetmusic.com would be not to rely on someone else for your products.  It can be taken away within minutes of your dream.  This really fun experience gave us our next step to where we are now.  Ovaleye.com owned and operated by our family and all of our servers and products are OURS!

Follow your dream!

Ovaleye is owned and operated by women, meaning myself and my daughter Jenn.  My daughter Jenn

My daughetr Jenn & I

joined Ovaleye shortly after she graduated College.  We have worked the past two years together to plan our future and help our clients.  Last August we looked down the list of our clients and noticed 90% of them were women.  Women decision makers or women owned businesses.  We made a decision to market to women and re-branded Ovaleye to focus on women owned businesses and have been happy ever since.

There have been many mentions lately in the media of how powerful women in the workforce can be.   This is a great article I read:

Scaling Up: Women-Owned Businesses Can Recharge The Global Economy

Our goal this year will be to seek out and partner with as many women in the workforce as we can find.  Hope to meet many of them.

I actually love everything about our business.  Ovaleye’s job is to build an online presence for each of our clients.   As our business grows I am very lucky to be able to meet small businesses from all over the country.  Not only small businesses, but organizations, associations, mommy bloggers, hobby forums and you name it.  And of course I love working closely with family and friends.

Many businesses I get to work with are owned and run by women.  I have chosen to focus Ovaleye’s attention on women in business because most of our contacts in the past are women.  They either run the business or are in charge of finding a hosting/website company.  I really enjoy being able to bring women together, connecting them business-to-business, and helping to create strong relationships.  As a hosting company serving many businesses, Ovaleye gives me the unique opportunity to see how businesses might benefit one another, and how the people who run them can benefit too.  I see it as a healthy and exciting community.

Many of the women I have met over the years are strong entrepreneurs who are motivated and happy to be in business for themselves.  Rose, my quickbook specialist started her first business in Tulsa and her daughter runs it now.  Our client Julie just bought her first house with income from her dog walking business.   Karna, our latest client is a Life Coach who helps clients with hard life choices.  These are just a few of the strong successful women I have met, I look forward to meeting many more in 2010.

Ovaleye is quite a challenge, and I’m learning new things all the time.  I like that.  In fact, I wake up every morning happy to start my day.  I wonder how many people can really say that.  I feel very fortunate.