Unemployed and facing an uncertain future? Meg was – here is her inspiring story!

After separating from her husband, Meg Montgomery soon found herself on unemployment, facing an uncertain future. Tackling her challenges head on Meg completed a business development course and two months later launched her business, Women-Money-Power.

Fast forward to today and Meg is now making money from her business and loves what she’s doing. Listen to this inspiring story and discover the steps Meg took to turn her life around to go from unemployment to self employment.

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Show Transcript: From Unemployed to employed: One woman’s story of courage and determination

“Welcome to the Ambitious Entrepreneur where you are hearing inspiring interviews to help you get more clients so that you can take your business to the next level. Are you unemployed? Have you thought about starting your own business but just don’t know how? Today, I am joined by Marie Montgomery who will be sharing the steps that she took to go from unemployed, self-employed and how she is running her own business and loving it! So stick around”

Annemarie: – Now losing your job and being unemployed is certainly a difficult and very scary place to be. There is a former career coach, job search coach; I have worked closely with many clients who felt like that the carpet has just been ripped from under their feet. They learned that they no longer have a job. But for many of them losing their job was like losing their identity making it very difficult to think about their future, let a loan go out and have to find another job. Finding another job when the economy is tight, there is not many jobs to go around that can make things even more difficult.

In fact, today I just checked the figures, I believe that US bureau of labor statistics report much on the fourth that the unemployment rate was at 9%. That is 13.7 million people out of work in the US. Here in Australia, the unemployment level is lower at 5% which is rate to round about 605,000 people out of work. Now for some people, after getting over the initial shock of losing their jobs while the door for their job was closed, another door opened for them. One that they will probably would not even previously considered that door led them to entrepreneurship and running in their own business.

And today on the show, I am joined by Meg Montgomery, she is going to sharing her journey, how she went from being unemployed to now being self-employed and running her own business. And Meg loves being her own boss and she is going to share the steps, the obstacles that she recommends that we avoid, lot of other advice to help you to start and grow a successful business if entrepreneurship is something that you have been considering. Welcome to the show Meg!

Meg: – Thanks so much for home Annemarie!

Do you want to tell us briefly about your story? How you went to being unemployed from being self-employed and I guess the thoughts that went through your heads and some of the steps that you took to get that moving?

Meg: – Oh of course! I moved recently from very urban area and this about 2 and half years ago which was real power center for me in terms of the making money up into the mountains where there is really not much, I actually the place that I lived actually depressed for very long time and it is just a lot of work up here and what the people consider a good way of cheer is about the 3^rd that I used to make. And when I moved up here, I said you know what I am going to make it online somehow and when I was unemployment for a year and I worked and worked and looked around and I found out who is in internet marketing, who is making lot of money and I try to follow them. Those are like pieces of puzzle missing. And I just couldn’t put it together and I was very frustrated and I was broke. And then I sit with my husband and it kind of left me penniless and it was very scary and I said okay, this is the time that it will work for me.

So I actually took a very expensive class with a very regarded internet marketer and he put all the pieces put together for me and it was like this major Ahaha moment in my life and I was like wow that is how it works and I took that course 4 months ago and I started in January kind of pieces things together with website women-money-power.com and you were part of my first venture which was a teleclass called it is a women world and I tell you putting this seminar together was one of the amazing experience in my life because I got to talk to people who are doing extraordinary things online. And I learnt much again in the teleseminar as I had on the court and it was such positive reinforcement and I knew that whatever I was doing was on the right track. It is just everything has felt so fantastic.

So the two months that I was doing teleseminar, I was doing one call a week, I put my website together, my social marketing together and learning more about how to drive traffic and it was just piece by piece and it started building and then I made my first sales, my first product sales and it just been amazing. And I loved to write, so I think that is my real strength. I love to write, I love to research so it is a great outlet for me in that regard. Because it is that bring this information to the light in the form of information products.

Annemarie: – You mentioned quite a things that I am sure people are not  familiar with internet marketing and may be not really dipped their toe in entrepreneurship and running their own business, may be a little overwhelmed. So I loved to just pull some of the things apart because I think that are very-2 important steps. So let’s talk about some of the things that can be avoided because I noticed that you mentioned that you started for a while researching on the internet, you really feel that pieces of the puzzle was not there. So looking back what are the some of the key elements that you think people don’t really need to do that this is what you need to do, what are the some of the things that they should be avoiding?

Meg: -You know I think that the unfortunate reality of Internet is that there is so much emotional marketing out there that draws people security and their weakness and their desperation. If you have never consider trying to make your income online for and you are very first looking then you are going to find these sites that promise you, you are going to make $1000 next month if you buy this info product and there is so much of out there and it is tempting because you want to believe it. You really want believe that you can get out of your financial situation easy and it is not going to happen that.

Annemarie: – And I absolutely agree and it just yesterday I was reading a post on Facebook and someone sharing their story about how they had invested, someone who has promised look if you are going to invest so much we are going to advertise then and I am going to market you from my 35000 list and so when they invested in service nothing happened. As you said those type of schemes out there so you need to be very-2 things that sounds good to be true generally are you know they are too good to be true so the reason that I want to mention that from go get is that while there is a lot of pieces of information you can certainly be overwhelmed and don’t get as you mentioned as well, don’t get stuck into these schemes that you can make a million or 100,000 or whatever a month because there are steps that you need to take to build your brand, build your business and so we will be talking about some of those steps now. So when you are looking at the pieces of the puzzle that you finally realized hey this is what I need to do, what are some of those core elements?

Meg: – Well you know, one of the things that is so important that you have to do something that you love, you have to involved with something that you are passionate about and in building your business you will become an expert if you passionate about something that you are already leveled expertise in it. But as you build your business, you really learnt how much more and people begin to search you now for your knowledge in that particular area and that is called your niche and developing your niche and for me I really care so much about helping women around the world to raise their academics status that is really close to my heart. And so that is what women money powers are all about is really using the huge international community of women to build each other’s net worth.

Annemarie: – And I think it is just so important and I just want to talk about that again, the fact that you need to find something that you are passionate about because let’s face it if you are working on your business and that are things that you need to do and if you are not really enjoying it and if you are not passionate about it is going to be very difficult to write an article or do a video or blog post some of those things if you are not really passionate. And thing is that when you are out there communicating with perspective target market they will see that you are not really serious you are not passionate and so as you said discover find out what it is that really motivates you and you become an expert in that. What about some other practical steps like you talked about website, you talked about social media and some of those other things, let’s talk about them.

Meg: – Sure, I will tell you. I was kind of feel like everything is in [Timestamp 09:03] and very much going towards global marketing and in just a few years from now websites are going to be absolutely, hate to say but it is true and the older generate holds on very tightly towards the website but the younger generation does not even have websites. And in America right now, one percent of businesses are engaged in global marketing but this is going to expediential and that is the thing that I am actually getting into it. You have to think about all the ways that are to market and there are many ways to market both online and offline and you need to take it as advantage as much as you possibly can and it is a step by step process. I am not saying tomorrow you need to learn about social marketing web 2.0 whatever it is. But step by step marketing has to be something that comes into play in the development of online business it is very important.

Annemarie: – In fact one of the things that I often see and read and hear on the Internet many of the top marketer is that when you are in business, you really need to become familiar with marketing because that really is a key element to connecting, building your profile, building your connections and reaching out to your prospects. So marketing and social media and all those sorts of things are things that people would need to become familiar with and it is interesting that you say about global marketing, I know that I got a website and that based on word press which is based on platform and you can get plugins to enable those websites then to become readable on the mobile technology such as IPhones and iPods’ and those sorts of things. And yes people are definitely starting to access lot of that information on their IPhones and iPods’ so I can see that this is certainly a way to go so old fashioned websites are certainly going to be null and avoid.

Meg: – But I am not saying that they are yet. Websites are still very-2 important but I would say that if you are getting that to business you should set a Facebook page for your website up. And may be make a blog before you do websites or make your websites your blog or whatever it is but really if you shift on Facebook is so much on higher on websites right now and at the same time the websites are such a great platform to put information out there.  I mean I use them for all of my businesses, I have very flushed out websites because I feel like that it is really the best way to get your information out there and so if some prints and learns about your phone and when they get back to the computer they can go back and look for online and see what you are really about. It is little bit hard to present yourself as clearly as possible when you have 300 pixels.

Annemarie: – And I think we just mentioned that when we are talking about the websites is being absolutely we are talking about all websites that really work online brochure. That was just information about your business because people are so much social now and I know when they are reaching out they wanted to find out a person behind the business and we are talking about the websites that integrates now, blogs you mentioned that those people who really don’t know what blog is online generally is a online web log and  incorporating things like Facebook or twitter and all of those social media platforms as you said everybody is starting to get out there and networking a lot more. That allows you to connect with them and really build a relationship with your site visitors. So what else, what other things that you have noticed that really supported to your business and taking it to the level Now where you really generating an income and speaking on daily basis obviously to perspective clients. What are the some of the other steps that you have taken?

Meg: – Well, you know what I do every day is I put up twitter posts, I either rate blogs or I re-posts other blogs that I really like. I am constantly putting stuff on Facebook; I am actually constantly going out and making friends. I literally reach out to people like I go to like for instance network blogs and networks they have all these fantastic blogs on there and once that I like go out there and see who are the fans of that blog and people who I am interested and reach out I say hey let’s become friends on Facebook. And those people have become really powerful and what it comes to your business online is a community, it is a part of community. And so what you are doing is you are building your community in terms of people who you want to want to associate with and who you want to be your clients and who you wanted to be your mentor. And you gradually build that community in any number of ways and I really think that the most powerful that any new business can do is to go out there and just start find out people who is in your niche. Find out who is your competition is, find out who you can help, what is extremely important and then put yourself out there in your very-2 best life. And it really amazing what happens if you do that.

Annemarie: – And it is not really scary, I know that there are lot of many business here in Australia, may be not advanced as the business in US and really leveraging the power of social media but really it is the concept of the face to face networking as we know and everyone is familiar with face to face networking but it is an online forum and the beauty of that is you can connect with people who are not necessarily located in your street, in your business or in your suburb. I mean look it us we have connected previously as you said in your tele-class and you are located in other side of the world and that does not  mean for social media we would probably never have never met and I would not have the opportunity with you today which is really exciting and for those of you who are sitting there and thinking oh I really don’t know if this social media stuff really works if I really want to do it. I really encourage you to get your profile set up and just observe that you may not want to do much but observe I think how other people are doing, definitely reach out to me as well and start really seeing how other people are leveraging it. Now there is one of the things that I want to talk about is Meg is that topic of mastermind groups because you mentioned in your profile that was something that you think was very important and I think that was important too. Do you talk a little bit about mastermind groups?

Meg: – Absolutely! As people are coming online and even longer because masterminds are used by people at every level but when you are just coming on online business and kind of teaching yourself the ropes. There is almost nothing better that you can do the become a part of mastermind and usually there are free and it is just a group of likeminded individuals coming together to help each other in business and it is inspirational to way to create a sense of community and levitate that loneliness that is sometimes happens when people are sole-entrepreneurs. It increases your experience and it increases your confidence, it is amazing for brain storming, improving your business skills there are so many things about master mind that are like you get your [Timestamp 16:15] doing it because so many great things have been said and so many ideas that you could never come to your own and the mastermind is the out of napoleon hills thinking grow rich which is really-2 amazing book to read. And what it basically says is that when two people come together brainstorming that becomes the third mind which is mastermind and it is greater than some of few people and that is really-2 true and really highly recommended as a way to learn and to grow and  to make your business as greatest as you impossibly be.

Annemarie: – And I certainly through my own experience in mastermind certainly relate to it. And just if there is an issue or something that you are not sure about just having the ability to be able to share with that other people and they put their input, it has your thinking in completely different direction you would never had come to had you just sitting out there you know that you have an issue of your own. And I think the people who this is the first time I have ever heard that concept, I think as Meg was saying lot of different mastermind groups, some of them which you can access for free I think you have a mastermind group that you also undone to me. Did you want to share with people how people can get in contact with you or to leverage that mastermind group?

Meg: – Absolutely! I will, I am actually running mine for free because I really want to help people to just start and feel comfortable so on my website women-money-power.com there is a link of mastermind to see it and it talks little bit about what I am doing there and you can shoot me an email and let me know that you are interested in becoming a part of mastermind and they are on Thursdays at 8 o clock EST. Everybody is welcome, men and women does not matter, it is totally open. And I would love to hear from people if they are looking for some kind of group to help them their business out of the ground this is perfect forum for that.

Annemarie: – Yeah! Fantastic! Now we are coming to the end of the show but I did want to ask you one another question and you mentioned that there are three simple proven strategic online business models. Are you able to briefly cover those because it may be good information for someone who is sitting thinking you know what I really want to do this, just share a bit of information about the three different models may just help them decide which model is going to be best for them and you know they can start implementing? Do you want to talk briefly about those?

Meg: – That is great way to end the show. You can be as an entrepreneurial or not in terms of being an online business and the three models that I put out through money power are as follows:-

The first one is a fillet marketing which is where you through a blog or page traffic or any number of pages basically promotes other products and you make a commission every time when somebody purchase those one of the products through your links and this is very popular way of making money and people are doing it in very different ways. I can’t claim to be expert at it but I do know that is very popular model and I have make money as a filler marketer although I never persuade as the way to make full time income.

The second one is network marketing which is perhaps the least entrepreneurial but one of the strongest models. Network marketing I know kind of bad kind of some people, however, things have changed and the companies that have been around for like 25 years or 30 years are magnificent and are really making people fantastic incomes. I recommended highly if you don’t to go out and start your own business.

The final third business model is called passion based business and that is what else business is that is what mine is basically where you take one of your passion in mind and create an online business  around it. And you build it so that becomes a source of income for you. And this is probably the strongest model in terms of being able to make great money because it is your grey child, it is your energy and you can go far as you want. It is pretty fun.

Annemarie: – I think fillet marketing is for the people who perhaps who don’t really want to go out and create a whole system or services and things like that and rather want to promote other people products and services and somewhat generating an income from promoting to their network. Networking marketing as you said is around for many-2 years, passion based business model, I love that passion based.  You know the service provider or perhaps you Meght have done consulting in your previous work and thinking of what I can actually do that start to generate a small client based and generate an income from that. So those are three great models, so again fillet marketing, network marketing and my favorite would be passion based marketing business model. Is that something that you coined me Meg or is that something that you.

Meg: – You know what I have to say it is in the cloud. It is not just me who is calling with that. Many-2 people are and I am not sure who invented the term but I loved it.

Annemarie: – I loved it honestly makes me shiver. It really is passion based business model and that is what we want, passionate women and men being successful and sharing their knowledge and expertise with the world. Look Meg it is absolutely an honor to share this interview with you. So for those of you who would like to know little bit more about Meg, you can go to her website www.women-money-power.com. Again Meg, thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us today.

Meg: – Thanks so much for having me Annemarie!

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