Several months ago I created the Online Business Head Start Club. One of it’s members, Kalen Smith from Online Rookies recently began interviewing successful Internet entrepreneurs and sharing their wisdom and reached out to me about creating a writeup for OBHS. In the interim, he had sent me the below questions. I was so impressed by the quality of the questions and how much I enjoyed answering them, that we agreed to share the interview on this platform.

Michele, what inspired you to start Online Business Head Start?

OBHS was a program that was lingering in my head for some time. I wanted to be able to provide content to other entrepreneurs and online business owners that was valuable yet exclusive at the same time. It was important for me to offer content that was not readily available anywhere. This is why I focus much of my attention on guest interviews. I myself find it very useful when listening to interviews of those whom I respect and admire and wanted to provide the same experience to my members.

What goals do you have in mind for Online Business Head Start?

My goals for OBHS are long and wide! Although it’s still at the infancy stages, that is, it hasn’t been around for very long, I foresee an amazing community of online business owners congregating together to support one another in their ventures. My plans for the future is to create an infrastructure that supports forums, content sharing, and cross-promotions.

I’ve recently become a gold member of my site. For the readers who aren’t familiar, can you give them some details on what being a paying member helps them with?
Sure!  As a member, you get access to on-going training in all areas of starting and growing an online business.  This can cover many topics from marketing tips, resources to help you automate your business, best practices, leveraging your time, setting up speaking engagements, search engine optimization techniques, social media tips, etc.. Being a member is going to allow you access to the resources, tools, and insiders’ secrets to expedite your efforts by learning topics such as these from those who’ve already had success with them.

We are facing a number of changes on the horizon, including another update from Google. Do you feel it is going to become harder to run a successful Internet business in the near future?

I think we are just at the tip of the iceberg with having an internet-based business. More and more businesses are gravitating to the web in order to leverage your efforts. Will this increase competition? Sure. But for the savvy entrepreneur and business owner that stakes a claim sooner than later and continues to define and redefine their message, what they stand for, and what is it they offer that their competitors don’t, I believe will become the industry leaders. All in all, don’t wait… act now!

Michele, I wanted to let you know that I think you have chosen some really great experts speaking to these topics. How do you find such amazing people to work with?

Thanks! These experts are people whom I’ve established relationships with that I believe are not only leaders within their industry but also have proven systems, processes, and knowledge that has allowed them to be ahead of the curve in their business. These are people who have paid their dues and are able to share their winning formulas with others.

I noticed the first couple resources you listed were about content creation. Would you say that content creation will be an underlying theme of your site?
Content creation is definitely a dominant theme for sure, but it’s just one of many important categories that I will be presenting on OBHS as the site progresses. I also believe that touching on areas of mindset and self-development are extremely important topics and I plan to cover these times more in the near future.

Your tagline is “replacing struggle with clarity, fun and ease!” What inspired you to create that tagline?

Simple. Struggle was for the longest time has been a strong presence in my journey. Getting to where I am now in my business has been a challenging one. Mostly because for a long time I had chosen to do it on my own online. Then I had my big aha moment one day – I realized that was addicted to struggle! It was all I knew. It was what I had witnessed my parents doing growing up. I decided that it was time to put that old limiting belief to rest and take on a more empowering one.

Replacing struggle with clarity, fun and ease it what resonated most with me; mostly because it was what I had desperately wanted in my life and in my business. One of my first courses of action was to begin to invest in myself and take on mentors and coaches and begin to learn their shortcuts.

Realizing you ALWAYS have a choice on how you want to run your business (and your life) can be enlightening. You can choose struggle or you can choose fun and ease. I recommend the latter.

If you had to take a swing at it, what would you say would be the one biggest problem that your community hopes to address?

I love this question and it is probably the reason why my business has evolved over the past year and I have found myself coaching entrepreneurs quite often in one particular area – and that is with gaining clarity and focus in their business.  With information so readily available adding to the noise on the internet, it has been that much more difficult for those running an online business to gain clarity on what their message is and how to effectively expedite their efforts using online marketing.

Shifting your focus to that of a problem solver and getting crystal clear on your message, that is WHAT is it you stand for, WHO is it that you help and HOW you help them, in very specific details, is going to be the key to unlocking the door to your success.

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