Carrie Lauth 2.0

I’ve got another terrific work at home mom to introduce you to. Carrie Lauth is an inspiring mom of four homeschooled children under the age of ten. As host of Natural Moms Talk Radio, Carrie shares her passion for instinctive parenting and caring for the earth while earning a nice income for your family.

Carrie, when did you first decide to look for a way to work from home?

Ten years ago I stopped working outside the home. This was 5 days before my oldest son was born. I figured I would go back to work part time after his birth, but when that 6 weeks was up, I knew I couldn’t do it. I remember sitting in my apartment holding my beautiful newborn and crying just at the *thought* of it. I knew if I had to eat beans and rice and rice and beans forever in order to afford to stay home, I would.

When he was just a few weeks old I inherited an old computer and signed up with AOL. I started selling cloth diapers and baby clothes and supplies on eBay for a profit. (Ten years ago when eBay was still in its infancy you could do that!)

The entrepreneurial bug was deep in my bones though. My Mom was very successful in Direct Sales. Tupperware, Mary Kay, BeautiControl, Pampered Chef, Home Interiors, you name it – she tried it! She won trips, awards, and we drove a Tupperware van for several years of my childhood.

When I was very young me and my best friend were going to launch The Sock sHop – a mail order company that make custom designed socks. Don’t steal the idea anyone, I may still do it. LOL! It’s always been my dream to own my own business.

How did you sort through your ideas for a work at home business?

Really early on in my work at home journey I found the illustrious Alice Seba and www.InternetBasedMoms.com (now owned by the illustrious Mila Sidman). I’m thankful for that bit of serendipity! I found the site because I had launched a tiny little 3 page point and click jobbie and wanted information on how to monetize it. I knew that people earned money with websites even when they didn’t sell a product – of course the word for that is affiliate marketing but I didn’t know that then.

Anyway, I launched this tiny site because I was doing these offline events for women in direct sales. I needed a place to send the media and the people who were calling my house all day. The site was born and I did something very right – I sent out a press release! It was Alice’s free press release template that got me published in my local newspaper (front page news!). That bit of traffic excited me and I also earned a few affiliate commissions in my sleep – which got the wheels rolling in my head. I also learned another lesson from that early experience: that a website must be *marketed*.

I did kind of bounce around for awhile trying different things that didn’t really work for me – but that’s ok. I think for most of us, it’s a bit of an evolution. We rarely start out doing the thing that we end up doing. But in the meantime we’re learning and earning so it’s alright!

Where did you look for inspiration?

Like I mentioned my Mom was a big inspiration but also my Dad – he has run a profitable business for 35 years now. In terms of mentors, I have people like you Kelly, Alice Seba, and many others at Mom Masterminds whose stories inspired me.

Is there anything that you’ve tried that you would say didn’t work for you?

When eBay stopped being profitable (for me – it certainly works for others!) I dabbled in direct sales for awhile but never had much success in it. I got in debt and worked really hard for very little money. Plus I didn’t like having to go out and do demos and meetings and trainings, dragging a nursing infant with me. I had to look for something else that was totally internet based.

What do you love about what you are doing to work at home today?

It suits my personality perfectly. Affiliate marketing makes the bulk of my income. I was never good at “sales” but I can write and connect with an audience, and affiliate marketing is natural for me. Also I think I’m a good host (on my podcast) because I am good at making others shine. I’m not so comfy with the spotlight but I love to learn and talk to interesting people and ask them questions.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer too. As a kid I dreamed of writing a novel. Now I blog and write every day in my business. Since writing is the number one skill for an internet marketer, it dovetails nicely.

How are you applying Web 2.0 tactics to your business?

I love Twitter. I haven’t done a whole lot with other social media stuff. I am afraid I would get too scattered. I did just create a LinkedIn profile and have seen some good results from that. But Twitter is consistently a top traffic referrer for me – and not just from my own tweets. I see a lot of reciprocity going on with Twitter
that I love.

What are your hopes for the future?

To keep building up the side of my business that provides a lot of passive income. I really enjoy doing my podcast but I can totally see myself selling it eventually as my kids get older. I want to learn Spanish with the children in a few years and have some other important goals that have nothing to do with making money, so my business will have to reflect my lifestyle at that point. I’ll be more anonymous and spend less time online. I’ll have more of a team to help run my business for me.

What advice would you give a new work at home mom?

1- Find good mentors early on. You’ll shorten your learning curve by months (years?) and avoid much frustration and tears.

2- Don’t hold yourself back – I think we are our own worst enemies sometimes. We are afraid to speak out, to be known, to charge (what we’re worth), to ask for anything, to call ourselves an expert. Get over it! You owe it to your kids not to mess around. This is business!

3 – Focus and do one thing until you hit your income goal, and really critically analyze any new project to see if it fits into your focus.