Crystal Paine’s newest book, Money-Making Mom: How Every Woman Can Earn More and Make a Difference, shows women how they can earn more money and use that money as a tool to make a positive impact in this world.

In this book, Crystal provides practical advice for starting a business (any business!) and also finding ways to make money outside of a traditional job.

 

I received a free pre-release PDF copy of Money-Making Mom, but I have pre-ordered my own hard-cover copy and anxiously awaiting its release.

I read through the entire book in a few days and got so many ideas for my own business, but still didn’t know where to start. And it was entirely my fault because I didn’t take notes along the way. I was so excited to dig in that I read the book without pausing to make a plan of action. Don’t make the same mistake I did!

This book has the potential to help you start a business or breathe new life into an existing business, but you must prepare yourself to be able to take action. Have a notebook next to you while reading so you can write down all the new ideas you get along the way so you can immediately start applying them. This is a must!

I am now reading through the book a second time and taking notes and it is making a huge difference in my perspective of my blog as a business. (I am a blogger at RevealNaturalHealth.com and work as a virtual assistant.)

This book not only talks about what is needed to start a business but also provides lots of ideas to get your creative juices flowing and offers advice for when you already have a business and feel stuck.

Financial Freedom

I have followed Crystal’s blog MoneySavingMom.com for over two years now and enjoyed her previous book, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, so I am familiar with a lot of her stories. Early in this new book, Money-Making Mom, she shared a story I hadn’t heard before from her childhood when her family lived in a trailer. She used that story to demonstrate how she learned about financial freedom from her parents and goes on to encourage her readers to determine what financial freedom means to us.

To me, financial freedom means:

1. being able to pay our current bills,
2. having an emergency fund to cover existing expenses for at least 3 months plus extra money to cover medical, home, and auto insurance deductibles,
3. being able to say yes to tumbling for my daughter or a weekend getaway with my husband,
4. being debt free,
5. using our remaining income intentionally to save for retirement, replace appliances and vehicles as needed, take family vacations, and contribute to our community, and
6. NOT working so much that my family feels ignored and unimportant.

I am NOT there yet; not even close! But this book is making me realize financial freedom is not an impossible dream.

Use Your Skills, Talents, Passions, and Knowledge

Crystal talks about making an inventory of your skills, talents, passions, and knowledge. I highly recommend you make a list of your own skills, talents, passions, and knowledge as you are reading. You can always refer to your list when you are feeling stuck for ideas to use in your business later on.

After lots and lots of practice, I can admit I am good at cooking. This is a skill of mine. Using this skill combined with some ideas from Money-Making Mom, I realized I can create videos demonstrating different cooking skills and use those videos to attract new readers to my blog.

What’s Next?

Financial freedom and discovering your skills, talents, passions, and knowledge are just the first two chapters of the book. Here is a list of all the chapters in this book:

1. First Steps to Financial Freedom
2. What Makes You You
3. The 8-to-5 Cure: Working for Yourself
4. Get Moving, Start Building
5. Expand Your Thinking, Expand Your Wallet
6. Growing Your Business
7. What Gets in the Way
8. Live Generously
9. How to Give? Let Me Count the Ways!
10. Here’s to Your Success!

I plan to keep blogging my way through this book to help keep me accountable in my own business.

Have you ordered your copy of Money-Making Mom: How Every Woman Can Earn More and Make a Difference?