Julie Anne Bonner

Are there really any benefits to being organized? Isn’t it more fun to live on the edge and fly by the seat of your pants? If you have ever asked yourself those questions, then you may not be aware of the many benefits there actually are to being organized. It’s not about taking the fun or spontaneity out of life, but about getting the best from your life that you can.

Here are 10 benefits to being organized:

1.    You will have more time for yourself, your friends and your family. When you live an organize life, you get things done faster. You spend less time looking for lost things and more time with the people you love. Freeing up your time will also allow you to read that book you’ve been meaning to get to for the past year or taking that tennis class. We never get yesterday back. Make sure you get the most out of each day.

2.    You will save money. You’ll always use up what you have and not buy duplicates because they are lost in the back of a cabinet somewhere. No more last minute purchases, which can add up very quickly, when you are organized. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been a fan and reader of SUCCESS Magazine for awhile now and always enjoy their issues. There is a program I was just made aware of that I would like to tell you about. It’s a program I am joining myself and something I am really looking forward to.

Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS Magazine, is releasing a program on www.success.com called Designing the Best 10 Years of Your Life–Your Strategic Plan for Achieving Lifelong Goals.

Over 8 weeks Mr. Hardy will guide people through the development of a comprehensive life plan complete with all of his proprietary documents, worksheets, video and audio material–everything provided in his previous $1,500 single-day workshop. The program and complete system with all the support materials will be given away for free.

The program kicks off tomorrow, Tuesday, January 5th, but anyone can join at any time.

Why is he giving away this program for free you may ask?  Here’s a personal message from Mr. Hardy which addresses why he is doing this program, why for free and how it will all work.

What do you think? Are you as excited as I am? Let me ask you this: what are your life-long goals? Maybe you actually have goals set in your mind. Maybe you actually have them written down. And if you have a plan in place for your goals, well kudos to you!

If not, consider giving 8 weeks of your time to set yourself up for success over the long haul. Can you imagine setting up a 10 year plan? In ten years I’ll be…well, we won’t go there, but I have a general idea where I would like to be. My husband and I have some great ideas, but those ideas won’t turn into realities without a plan. And without a plan, we will fail.

As Darren said, this can be easy, but it can also be easy to get distracted. So stay focused, do the work and make a commitment. Ready? I am.

I usually don’t work on Sundays, so I will make today’s BEST post short and sweet. The BEST thing about Sundays for me is family. It just doesn’t get any better than spending my day with the people I love.

My Kids

Me and My Husband

January is National Blog Posting Month and the theme is BEST. As I mentioned yesterday, I will be posting every day for the month and most posts will be geared towards the theme BEST.

Christmas is over, my wonderful husband put all of the decorations away yesterday and our house is back to normal. My parents bought our whole family a Wii Fit Plus for Christmas and I LOVE it. I tried it out a couple of times after we got it, but since we had a lot of family here, it wasn’t something I was able to do on a regular basis.

Now that the New Year is here, it’s time to get myself back in shape. I know, I know…how many people have that as one of their New Year’s resolutions? A lot!

I had a chance today to really check out all that the Wii Fit Plus has to offer and I was blown away at how many workouts and games there are. And it has something for every member of my family. We have all been having a blast with it.

Here’s the commercial for the Wii Fit Plus.

In order to make myself post on here consistently, I have joined NaBloPoMo for January. What does that mean? It’s National Posting Month, which means I am committed to posting on here every day in January. If you are looking for a little push, you should join.

The theme for January is BEST. I am not quite sure where I will go with this theme, but will just figure it out as I go. Join me on the ride!

I have never been good at focusing on one thing at a time – never. I love to have a variety of different projects I am working on. Here is where you can find me these days, as far as blogging goes. (I’ll have one more to add later. It hasn’t launched yet!):

Disney Society – News about Disney movies, Disney Channel and Disney stars. This blog is so much fun!

Home Fabulous 365 – Make your home fabulous all year long! Tips on organizing, decorating, cooking, entertaining and fabulous finds to share with you.

MomGadget – Reviewing just about everything!

And here’s where you can find me to connect:

Twitter

Facebook

Linked In

When I am not blogging and connecting with amazing people through social media, I am working side by side my husband at Purple Key Marketing. Right now we are working with a few great clients and are having fun in the process!

Drop me a line if you would like to connect!

Okay, so it’s been a month since I last posted on here and I told you I had a big announcement. Well, it just so happens that the big announcement is the reason I haven’t posted on here. I’ve been a tad bit busy! Busy with what? Let me tell you…

My husband Todd and I decided to open our own marketing business. We are the proud owners of Purple Key Marketing and are very excited about it. This was the perfect time for us to pull together our expertise and do something together.

Here’s a little about our business and what we can do for business owners:

At Purple Key Marketing, we build customized marketing blueprints that show you how to dominate your marketplace and build customer loyalty while slashing your ongoing marketing costs.

Learn how Purple Key Marketing can:

1. Dominate your marketplace
2. Significantly increase your sales
3. Create raving fans out of your customers (this becomes your volunteer sales team)
4. Slash your ongoing marketing costs

That’s what we can and are doing for business in a nutshell. If you own a business or know of someone who does, give us a call at 303-495-3495 or email me at julie@mypurplekey.com. We can get together for 15 – 20 minutes (on the phone or in person) and chat about what you can do for you, as well as what you are looking for with your marketing efforts.

I will be around here more and plan on blogging about a little of everything – Denver happenings, my life as a work at home mom, marketing and blogging tips and who knows what else. I am looking forward to sharing a little bit of my life with you. And don’t be shy. Introduce yourself and let me know a little but about you.

I’ve been at this online thing for over 6 years now. I love it. I can eat, sleep and breath anything that has to do with the internet. I am fascinated by it. I am passionate about it. I am knowledgeable about it.

I have always been told and have always told people (my kids included!), that you should do what you love and you will succeed. I have tried so many different avenues online to try and make money. I have been successful and I have bombed big time. The ones I was successful at where the ones I enjoyed the most. Makes sense right?

My husband also shares the same passion about the internet, but he has different strengths than me. The online projects that we have done together, we have succeeded at. We compliment each other and work well together.

With that being said…we are starting a business that we are both pumped about! We have come up with a name, almost have our site up and running, ordered business cards and a few other advertising items and are hitting the ground running today. I don’t want to officially make the announcement of what it is, but I imagine some of you (especially those of you who know me) can guess what it’s about.

So stay tuned!

I have had several of you ask about BANS and how my progress is going. Well, let me just say it’s not. After poking around on their forum, trying to use their system and doing some more research, I found out it’s not for me. Here’s why and the problems I have with the system:

• Their Number 1 Way book makes it sound a little too easy: Do not be fooled by the idea that you can build a site and have money coming in, even within 6 months like they say. Why? Because it is HARD and I mean HARD to get accepted by eBay these days. That’s what their whole system is modeled on and I can tell you from experience online for 6 years, it’s not that easy. Once you get in, that’s great, but you have to realize that you need to have a site up and running for awhile, with good numbers, before eBay will even look in your direction.

After saying that,  let me also say that I still think the book is an excellent “Make Money Online” book. I do believe it’s one of the best and that it explains their system really well. Just know that their model is built around eBay and that if you are not an affiliate with them right now, it takes some time and hard work to get your foot in the door.

• I did not like the BANS template system: I had problems from the get-go with their BANS template. I did do some digging through the forum to find a fix for one particular problem and felt like I was being sent on a wild goose chase. I have dealt with a lot of template building tools and this one just didn’t jive with me. Since I am so familiar with Wordpress, I decided to go that route and asked for my money back from BANS.
• Success was far and few between: After spending some time on the forum, I could see that the majority of people were frustrated from not having the success they wanted. Things either weren’t happening as fast as they wanted (which is a very common complaint when trying to make money online – people want that instant gratification!), they were getting booted by eBay or they had worked their butts off and just weren’t seeing the results they wanted. There were a few people who were seeing some good results, but that wasn’t the majority.

Needless to say, I am not using the BANS system and have moved on to other projects. If you decide to try out this system, do your research. I know there are people out there who have had success and love it. I just decided after taking a look at it, that it’s not going to work for me.

Feel free to ask me any questions if you are trying to find a way to break into this make money online world.

Balance. It’s something you’ll see me write about a lot on here. It’s something you’ll hear me talk about a lot. I have found that since I started working from home and working online, finding that balance has been hard.

I realized at one point, that I was spending all of my free time online. I stopped reading, stopped having people over for dinner, stopped getting involved in activities outside of my online world and felt like I stopped being human. When I started feeling like I didn’t want to ever leave the house, I knew something needed to change.

Like I said, you’ll see me write about balance a lot. I have a series of articles planned on the topic, but for now, let me ask you one question: Do you have a life outside of your online world?

I found this list of “20 Signs You’re Online Too Much” on a forum a couple of years ago. Check it out and see if you can relate: