I just read an article that I hoped would unveil even more success secrets for all you mom entrepreneurs. However, it looks like I’ll be putting together my own secrets for a stay at home mom business list for you because that article had absolutely no substance. Why are people putting such lame content out there for moms? Moms aren’t stupid and they can’t use advice like “Resilience, confidence and a balanced life” to make their home business a success. No wonder so many Moms can’t seem to get a home business started.

Here are my top 3 lost secrets for mom entrepreneurs and short tutorials on how to take advantage of said secrets. –I can’t find these anywhere else amongst the motivational mumbo jumbo for moms who want to start businesses.

1. Branding is easy. All branding consists of is a list of adjectives that you want people to feel for your business. Once you narrow down those adjectives to one or two that don’t clash it’s easy to create logos, Web sites and marketing materials for your company. If you have 0% experience in design, leave this to the professionals but don’t make them do all the leg work or you might end up with something you don’t like or a bill that you don’t like.

2 STEP BRANDING TUTORIAL:
Step 1. Go to google and search for fonts and colors that relate to your narrowed adjectives. If you want your company to feel fresh and funky, go to google and search “fresh, funky, colors” and “fresh, funky, fonts.”
Step 2. See which ones you like and narrow it down to two or three color palettes and fonts. This will make everything easier for your designer and will ultimately save you money. Which leads to the next secret.

2. Hiring a designer to brand your company is not expensive. I use elance.com for this all the time. Actually, if you want to know my all time favorite designer that I hire over and over again, it’s Mujka Chic and she’s not even on elance (http://www.mujka.ca). You want your business branding to have it’s own voice, graphics, style and feel so it’s really important to invest in this part of your business by $100 to $200 to start everything going for you. Without this branding, no one will take you seriously. Save up for a month or two if you have to get this part going. It’s well worth it and Mujka will take good care of you, especially if you mention Renae Christine. *I am not getting compensated in any way for plugging my beloved Mujka.

5 STEP DESIGNER HIRING TUTORIAL:
Step 1. Find your designer. This can take some time because you want to ensure your designer has created some of the same styles you are looking for. Oftentimes this can take more time than the actual design of your logo. Hint, do NOT use the word branding when finding your designer. This single word can make everything expensive. Use the word logo. They are just making a single logo for you for now.
Step 2. Send your adjectives, color palette links and font links to your designer. Tell your designer you need a logo in 3 formats: .jpg, .eps and .ai. This way, if you need to hire a designer in the future you have everything you need.
Step 3. Your designer will send at least one or two sets of proofs to review. If you need more than 2 proofs then you will probably need to pay more for the designer’s time and seriously, you really shouldn’t need more than 2 proofs if you send all of your information to her in the first place.
Step 4. Request the HEX code colors with your logos. I cannot stress this enough. You will be able to use these hex codes over and over again in the branding of your company with free software and tools that are customizable to your business colors. It is imperative that you ask for the HEX code colors from your designer. It’s a 2 minute process so you shouldn’t be charged extra for this.
Step 5. You can now use your logo on business cards, marketing materials, Facebook page, Web site and more.

3. You can brand your entire company with a single logo. I can hear marketing teams screaming from here. But it’s true. In fact, it’s preferred because it creates uniformity in your brand. As long as you have the HEX color codes and your logo, we can create an entire company from that and for free. So the $100 to $200 that you invested in your designer will be well worth it. Subscribe to the e-mail feed to the right and we’ll continue step by step tutorials with different and free tools you can use with your HEX colors and logos to create a company.

2 STEP FACEBOOK PAGE TUTORIAL
Step 1. Go onto another businesses page and you’ll see a link at the top right corner that says “Create A Page.” Click that link and follow through with each step until your page is created.

Step 2. Upload your new logo as the profile picture. If you don’t have the larger cover photo, just leave that blank for now. The most important part is the logo at this point.

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BONUS: You can have a shop on facebook! Search for the tabjuice app on Facebook. Hint, you will want to have your HEX codes ready to customize the shop to your company’s new branding.