Whew. I love checklist, I love writing things down, and being able to cross them off when I am finished. I have always been a list maker so doing the stretch yourself challenge and see that there are some lists – sweet, I can get those things done quickly!

When you are working through a challenge such as this the checklists are so good because you just move through the list. You can always go back and edit, you can tweak what you write, you can add links or whatnot. But the biggest thing is to get something done. Get started, make changes, and updates. Only a few days left for the stretch yourself challenge!

“You can’t squeeze too much into one month because you can’t adequately promote it all.” – Kelly during the first Stretch Yourself meet up. I had to listen in on the recording because I just could not stay up, the time change does wreck things sometimes.

That is a really big takeaway for me – especially since I signed up for so much for one month. I can’t do it all! Of course not. No one can. I am definitely going to be stretching myself though because I don’t promote myself. I want certain things, I feel like I’ve been around for a while, and I’m just not there yet.

I don’t promote myself because I don’t have anything to act on. I don’t have my podcast, nor do I have a mailing list, or anything to sell. Sheesh! Absolutely no downers here, just reality.

And so I look forward to the end of this challenge. To see how much I am able to grow and implement (and promote!) what I know, what I know I need to share, and what I create.

I joined the 31 days of blogging (you still have a few hours to join if you are interested – check out http://write31days.com/) and I admit I joined without a clear topic in mind. I also joined a business stretch yourself challenge with an amazing business mentor (though I’ve been out of the online business aspect of things for a short while, I’m jumping back in!) and purchased the Blogtober pack from Crissy over at Indie Biz Chicks. Yeah, that’s a lot. It’s probably too much because – FOCUS. Focus is extremely important online, I’m not talking about focusing on facebook or making sure you are posting to twitter once an hour. I’m talking about focus when you want to build a business and earn money.

And so let this count as post one. The Stretch Yourself Challenge is all about content marketing. I have other websites to fulfill that on, let’s see if I can post for the month about what it is like for me to dive back into the working online community.

First thoughts – bright shiny objects everywhere. Obviously I was hit hard by signing up for three things. I have a craft blog – I want to start my craft podcast – I have domain names I want to get rid of – and I want to transfer my remaining domain names over to a new company. That last one is something I can do later. The first two high priority, and getting rid of domain names, that will happen soon.

Actually, over ten years. That’s how long I’ve been online. Online in the sense of blogging, answering polls, posting pictures of my kids, and enjoying what my friends are sharing in their lives. Let’s keep this short and say I started out by joining Tupperware, which quickly morphed into wanting to sell online, which led me to the work at home mom community and the idea of selling something else, ie not necessarily plasticware.

Over the years we’ve moved (alot), but luckily for me I was only ever sold on two different home based businesses and neither really went anywhere. I say luckily for me because I know that home based businesses can sometimes sell a person on being able to make easy money and sometimes a person sold on that idea can sink a lot of their own money into something before they see a profit.

Another luckily for me thing is that I found Kelly McCausey and through her Alice Seba, two women who have done amazing things in the wah community and beyond. I learned affiliate sales through them, as well as how to blog better, focus, and podcasting. I love podcasting but only had my own for a handful of episodes before stopping. I revamped this website to give myself an outlet for business, to see what it looks like to restart something after a break, to restart something after knowing what and how to do something, and to hopefully help others along the way.