July 2016 - Mommy Ginger

First of all, I would like to thank all of those who attended our Facebook Live Session about Monetizing your Blog. For those who want to view it, here it is! Thank heavens for Facebook’s embed functionality!

I hope that you learned a lot from what we shared with you. I’d like to add a few more things and stress on parts that we didn’t have time to focus on due to time limitations, but before that, please don’t forget that the offer for Php 200 off on WORDPRESS BLOGGING BASICS for the Early Bird Rate will end on Wednesday. The CODE is WORDPRESS!

THINGS THAT I FAILED TO MENTION

Since I was panicking because I had to be at a meeting, I failed to mention some important points about earning from your blog. First of all, define what your objective is for your blog. Those with unclear objectives oftentimes fail. Also, please do not make earning money an end goal for putting up a blog. The end goal should be bigger than that. We, bloggers or “soon-to-be-bloggers” are given a huge opportunity to change the world — to fix things, to share ideas, to help make the world a better place. Money should not be END, but the means to an END.

Also, think of your blogs as your own personal newspaper or letter or journal. Yes, you can write about anything under the sun, but be responsible. Your intentions may be good, but sometimes, the interpretation of others or how people perceived and absorb the information may be different. I know that whatever action your reader takes after reading your blog may not be your responsibility, but let’s try to avoid starting fights, insulting people, etc. That’s just my opinion.

This is also linked to earning from your blog, because brands, advertisers and possible partners will always partner with bloggers with the same values. If you share the same values with a brand, you will possibly and more likely be chosen as a partner blogger or commissioned to write about their products.

Some of the things that you can Earn From as a Blogger

Advertising Space: You can places ads that are situated in certain areas of your blog. How you earn from these ads are either from a monthly rate booked by an advertiser or through either Pay Per Click or Cost Per Mille. What you get from Pay Per Click (PPC) ads differ based on the amount of traffic your website gets. Check on what percentage of those who visit a site actually click on ads for blogs that are of the same genre as you. This will give you an idea on how much you can earn with the traffic that you have. Cost per Mille advertising (CPM) is when you earn based on the number of impressions (page views) you get. You earn from every 1000 impressions.

Sponsored Posts / Text Link Ads / In Text Ads / Advertising Widgets: Sponsored posts are a thing here in the Philippines. Most of the brands ask for this and pricing again depends on the number of people who read your posts. Text Link Ads are a bit related to sponsored post since this allows you to place text based ads within the text of your articles. Cliking on those words will send you directly to a brand’s page or social media account or a lead page. In text ads are the same as text link ads but are usually more obvious than Text Link Ads. And advertising widgets are widgets that you install in your site and display a mixture of different kinds of ad types (affiliate, PPC, etc.)

Affiliate Marketing: A blogger earns commission for every product sold. There are different ways that a brand can go about doing this: using a code, using a link, a widget, etc.

Audio Advertising where you are paid every time someone plays and ad on your site (Pay per Play or PPP). These ads usually play a video that can’t be stopped or stopped only after a few seconds.

Cross-sell services: We shouldn’t look at our blogs as the “product or the service” that we offer. We can take a step back and see if our blog is actually a tool that we can use to cross-sell other services like coaching, an ebook, a book, a workshop, etc.

The other way that you can earn are through Pop up Ads, creating membership sites, create some kind of listing in your site and earn though listing fees, ask for donations or you can eventually sell your website. Brands sometimes look for an existing site so that they need not build new content.

Please do let me know if you have more questions on blogging and I’ll be happy to answer them for you. Also, again, we are looking forward to seeing you on August 20 for WORDPRESS BLOGGING BASICS. Sign up now and get Php 200 off!

After being chosen as one of the top 10 startups for Ideaspace 2016 Cohort 4 last Friday, I wanted to write about our experience, but I decided to write about another topic instead. I wanted to write about business lessons you should know before you reach 30 and about maturity, and this is not about being old, but this more about “business” maturity (although, oftentimes it comes with age). I decided to write about this since I have seen a lot of young people deciding to start a business before they reach 30, which is just AWESOME! I am all for it, but please do read up, learn, interview people, ask around, validate your idea, etc. before you jump the gun.

From my observation of people who have started a business, from both those who have succeeded and failed in keeping it afloat financially, I have noticed a lot of similarities. These lessons (I suppose I could call them that), I feel, would help a lot of younger people in making sounder and wiser decisions. Again, these are all from my personal observations.

One: If you are in the process of finding yourself (quarter life crisis) and are still figuring out what you want, being involved in a startup or let alone, leading one, is not the wisest thing to do. I see that the successful startups are led by people with a pretty good idea of what they want in life (and believe me, being just plain ‘rich’ or being the next Steve Jobs just doesn’t count). They are headstrong, but not stubborn about things. These are two different things and be aware of the difference. Starting a business means that people will look to you, especially if you are the CEO, for direction and you will probably fail at being a leader if you haven’t got your business figured out, let alone your life.

Maturity is seen in founders who know when to drop things temporarily to fight a better fight in the future.

Two: Successful founders know that money doesn’t make the world go round, but they know that money pays for the bills. You probably saw a lot of pictures of your friends who were part of Ideaspace 4 with big checks like these.

Well, the feeling of making it to top 10 was similar to probably winning the lotto, but the reasons for being elated were very different. All of us (I hope!) understood that this money was gasoline for our business. It was more to fast track things internally that would make us launch the product within this 4.5 month duration. Although, even if founders understand the purpose of grants and funding, they sometimes fall into the trap of using the funds themselves for a lot of unnecessary expenses, and what unnecessary doesn’t mean giving yourself pay that is due you. Unnecessary things or spending are things that you may not actually need, but end up paying for, and this oftentimes, stem from poor planning.

Maturity is seen in founders who know what they are worth, and who are smart enough to have thought of a financial plan for the business even before funds start coming in. The attractiveness of money/funding will not lure them into the habit of overspending.

Three: I am an advocate of working remotely or working from home, but for businesses that are just starting, I would have to say that it is crucial that you meet face-to-face regularly. Believe me, I have seen the difference that this makes in a lot of instances and scenarios. For CEOs or for the leaders of these startups especially, it is very important that you are with your team often. A wise friend told me once that the leaders or the founders of the “idea” would have an incomparable amount of passion that would be infectious and that would be enough for the entire team to function with gusto. I believe this to be true, as I have personally experienced this. In the business that I run, I see that people draw inspiration from me and in the businesses/startups that I am part of, I draw inspiration and energy from the founder of the idea.

Maturity is seen in founders who know when they need to be there for their team, and when to let go for the business and the team to grow speedily.

Four: Your unique selling proposition is not only the uniqueness of your idea. An idea can be the same as someone else’s but executed better. An idea can be really unique also and totally different from anything else that you might have seen and encountered, but the pain point is not evident or the timing is off. So, really think about what will set you apart, and why will people avail of your service and not that of another entity. Don’t be scared to share your idea with the right people (do your research and look for people with experience in the industry that you want to enter or those who your peers say would be willing to give genuine advice). And when these more experienced people give you advice, have an open mind about it, but also, think things through to know what will make the most sense for your business.

Maturity is seen in founders who embrace the concept of abundance (of ideas, advice, collaborations, information) and discern for themselves which of these information will make sense for their business.

Five: You will fail many times along the way. You will get disheartened not only a few times, but an amazingly whole lot of times. I can’t count the number of times I have cried or the number of times I have not slept, but there were a lot. You should know that this is normal. It’s also good to have someone by your side who truly understands what you are going through.

Maturity is seen in founders who know that hard times make you tougher, and the challenges are not indications that you need to quit, but indications that you need to step a little bit further from your business to see where improvement lies.

Six: Last, but not the least, focus on things that make sense now, while thinking of the bigger picture and your reasons why. I’m not sure though if telling Millenials to go for what they are passionate about and to strive to make a difference is still relevant, since it seems everyone is talking about this already and it seems that these come natural to this new generation. But, what I wanted to harp on is for you to know think about what makes sense now. Will it make more sense to gather knowledge as an employee then possibly start your own business later on? Will it make more sense to start early and continuously learn along the way? Will it make sense to focus on building one startup with a friend and have a part-time stable job on the side? Will it make more sense to study more first to build confidence then start a business?

Maturity is seen in founders who know that there are many decisions that you must make on the road to building your own business. You make them after thoroughly assessing the situation, and ultimately, accept whatever the consequence of that decision is.

These are just some of the things that I thought about over the weekend. I have other thoughts that I want to document, but I’ll just save it for yet another day! If you have thoughts about this that you want to share, or questions that you want to ask, please leave a comment below. Today is yet another busy day for me, but I hope that my moments of reflection and journaling it, helped!

Talk to you soon!

Mentors have told us that in the US (particularly Silicon Valley), it is very ‘normal’ to see startups in elevators, coffee shops, parking lots (a scene in the series Silicon Valley comes to mind) pitching their ideas to angel investors. Creating a pitch deck is a normal “thing” that they do (as how taking pictures before we eat is normal for us). Practically, everyone has a startup idea. That kind of culture is not yet evident here in the Philippines, therefore, not a lot of us are skilled enough to deliver great pitches. Even those with corporate backgrounds, like us, realize that pitches for businesses are very different from the lengthy corporate presentations that we have. Now that I have seen quite a number of pitches already, I even think that corporate presentations should be more like pitches when delivered.

I remember once, in my corporate life (seems like ages ago), I was avidly following Ted Talks speeches. I admired how skilled the speakers were at delivering talks. These speakers (well, most of them) just told a story, as if they were really talking to us. They didn’t seem practiced nor rehearsed. Out of the blue, I wanted to deliver my corporate presentation in a Ted Talks-way and it worked out quite well.

My point being is that we, in this country, need to be more vocal about sharing new thoughts and ideas with each other, because that’s a way we can validate these ideas. Creating a pitch deck and presenting it is a great way to validate your business idea. It’s a way to adjust and rethink strategies when we receive feedback. The problem with most of us is we that we take not-so-good feedback personally. Nope, feedback is not an attack against YOU but it’s actually something that you should hear early on so that one, you can come up with a clear answer/solution for that particular concern or two, you can readjust certain things about your business idea or three, drop the business idea altogether. Bottomline is that these feedback make you dig deeper and analyze situations better.

Also, I think that most of us fear being copied, but I think that most of the people that we meet and pitch to are mature enough to respect your idea. We just don’t give the people around us enough credit. Also, it really is just an idea. The meat is in the execution. Who executes better and faster is the name of the game. Oh, let me drop the faster part, because I am all for who executes it the best!

The Pitch and Creating a Pitch Deck

When you want to create pitch deck (presentation), there are a lot of resources that you will find online. When I first created a pitch deck, I just Googled “creating a pitch deck”. Here are some of the resources that I used:

1) The one from Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/chancebarnett/2014/05/09/investor-pitch-deck-to-raise-money-for-startups/#4db3234c4863

2) This one page guide on slide 8:

3) Super cool decks of successful startups: http://bestpitchdecks.com/

and a whole lot more! I think read and listened to tons of material on creating a pitch deck.

What I have seen and observed is that you can initially copy the standard template, then practice your pitch. If you feel like there are certain points that you want to highlight and if you feel you need to drop some aspects, then do so. Pitches should be short. How long, you might ask? Let’s just say that we have a 1 minute pitch, 2 minute pitch, a 3 minute deck and a 5 minute deck to explain our business (haha! we just want to be THAT ready).

Another lesson that I have learned is to customize your deck and think of your audience. I have seen and experienced that every pitch is different.

So that being said, we will be having one of the most important pitches for our business this afternoon. Please pray for us! (#ideaspace2016)

Hope this helps!

PS. Thanks to all those who have helped us improve our deck (mostly from Ideaspace!) Ms. Diane Eustaquio, Manny Martinez, Gabe Mercado, Prim Paypon, Jojy Azurin and the rest of the Ideaspace team. Thank you, too, to our advisors Jojo Flores, Jay Fajardo and Anderson Tan 🙂

I love learning new things about the human body. I just find the human body truly amazing. We seemingly do simple things like eating, sleeping, breathing, etc. but beyond what we see are a lot more things happening at the same time, which we do not see. Recently, I met a really great doctor, Dra. Eca Lorenzo does consultations at LifeScience. She explained a very interesting topic, which was functional medicine.

Let’s enter LifeScience!

LifeScience Lounge

LifeScience Pharmacy

To be honest with you, even if I am amazed at how our body works, I spend little time taking care of it. I think most of us take our health for granted, especially when we do not feel sick or feel any pain. And sometimes, even if we feel some pain, we just go to the doctor, take medicines and trust that the pain will go away soon. This is the reason why we see doctors as people whose main responsibility is to cure the sick and prevent people from dying. For those who watch Grey’s Anatomy, we see doctors in action, going through surgery after surgery, taking out complications in one area of the body or identified areas. This is how we view doctors.

But talking to Dra. Eca made me realize that we need to put more weight into what we always say that prevention is always better than cure. And taking prevention to heart means that you focus on improving your life and making the right health choices, guided by doctors who base their advice also on facts.

To make sure you understand what functional medicine is, I took a picture of this chart that Dra. Eca showed me.

Functional medicine is an approach that offers personalized medical care and searches for the root cause of a person’s health concern and not only treats illnesses and its symptoms but also what caused it. It is not alternative medicine or holistic medicine. Basically, it’s an approach that allows the doctors to spend time with their patients to look at their medical history, to map out personal timelines and to look at the different factors that may influence one’s health in the long run. So even if you are feeling well and dandy now, a certain lifestyle may lead to you having chronic diseases in the future. Functional medicine is all about changing some things in your lifestyle so that you can avoid these diseases and illnesses.

During my visit, I was super impressed with the place. What was cute was that the walls had motivational and inspiring quotes!

The Body Composition Analyzer

After understanding what functional medicine is, I was led to a Body Composition Analyzer. The report was very comprehensive. The report from the BCA told me the % and the weight of Fat, Fat Mass, Fat Free Mass, Muscle Mass in my body. It also gave me my Body Mass Index (BMI) and my Metabolic Age. Aside from those, it gave me my visceral fat score, physique rating, which part of the body I had the most muscles and fat, my body fat distribution, leg muscle score, etc.

With the results that I had and the medical history that I gave Dra. Eca, she gave me great recommendations with my primary concern which was allergic rhinitis. I will definitely try out the things that she suggested and we’ll see from there if it lessens my allergies.

Dra. Eca then showed me an even more detailed report that individuals who sign up with LifeScience get. The report showed vitamin deficiencies in the body of a person. In knowing these deficiencies, you can actually point out what part in the conversion of energy is affected by the deficiency. This was the coolest thing I have ever seen!

For those who are scared of having chronic diseases later on in life or for those who are already ill, I suggest you still visit LifeScience and sign up with them. It may be pricey, but the benefits are huge. Ultimately, we know that health is wealth.

If you want to visit LifeScience and get your free Body Composition Analysis with Doctor’s interpretation, fill out this form: http://bit.ly/lifesciencexmg.

Please do use it though before August 30, 2016. This will help you understand your body a lot!

Thank you so much to all those who attended the First Time Parents Workshop Series Second Run which was brought to you by Manila Workshops and the Parenting Emporium. It was truly a success and there were a lot of expecting moms and dads who attended. Thank you so much and we hope that those who couldn’t make it will be able to attend the next classes this July (http://manilaworkshops.com/events/first-time-parents-workshop-series-2016-thirdrun). Our goal is really to help you prepare for your birth. With this, I have collated my personal favorite readings (my First Time Parents Guide) when it comes to preparing for Mommyhood (or Daddyhood!).

First Time Parents 1

First Time Parents 2

First Time parents 3

First Time Parents 4

First Time Parents 5

OB Check-ups and Pregnancy Nutrition

As first time parents, we don’t know what to expect when we go to our OB-GYN. I remember during my pre-natal visits, my husband would come with me and he had more questions! haha!

http://www.babycenter.com/0_what-to-expect-at-your-prenatal-visits_9252.bc

http://www.parents.com/pregnancy/my-body/nutrition/what-not-to-eat-when-pregnant/

Preparing for Delivery Day/Newborn Care (delivery options, taking care of newborn)

Some of the articles below are from my own blog. I wrote it so that you can see how I wrote my birth plan and what were the stuff I brought to the hospital.

http://www.webmd.com/baby/features/childbirth-options-whats-best

http://mommyginger.com/2013/03/creating-a-birth-plan.html

http://mommyginger.com/2013/03/packing-things-for-the-hospital.html

All About Breastfeeding

I exclusively breastfed my daughter for 1 year + and I think it really did her good. She hardly gets sick and she’s always so alive, awake and enthusiastic!

http://www.parents.com/baby/breastfeeding/basics/

http://kellymom.com/bf/pumpingmoms/milkstorage/milkstorage/

Baby and Toddler Nutrition and Care

With our little ones, we often wonder if we are giving them enough vitamins and nutrients.

Baby Led Weaning – Starting solids with foods straight from the dinner table!

http://www.parents.com/baby/feeding/nutrition/

Hope you like the First Time Parents Guide (article links) that I collated for you! 🙂

Have a happy and stress free pregnancy!

Monetizing your Blog

Business Lessons You should Know before you Reach 30

PH Startups: Creating a Pitch Deck

LifeScience: A Move to Functional Medicine and Systems-Based Healing

My First Time Parents Guide (Collated Favorite Blog Posts)

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