The Accidental Entrepreneur's Guide to Self-Employment Success

When Trying Harder Gets in the Way of Prosperity

2009-10-23T02:02:31Z

Photo Courtesy of: istockphoto

The wealthy man is not he who has money, but he who has the means to live in the luxurious state of early spring. ~Anton Chekhov

Have you ever had a friend who always seemed to date the wrong people? Often this is the result of a confusion of values and standards. If your friend is choosing prospective mates based on certain standards, perhaps looks, he may be unwittingly overlooking the woman who is a good match for his values.

When your standards don’t match your values or vision, the harder you look for what you want, the worse your results. As they say, you are looking for love in all the wrong places.

The same thing happens in your relationship with money.

You start out with good intentions, only to find yourself operating according to standards that feel inauthentic, intimidating, or downright cheesy. Ouch! Yuck!

If you get down on yourself or try to muscle your belief system or behavior into line, it just gets worse.

The financial conflict gets turned inward, and now you are at war with yourself. With friends like this, who needs enemies? As long as you argue with, resent, or reject your current experience, it keeps biting you. When you finally stop fighting what is (usually when you are utterly exhausted), things change. It’s enough to make a person crazy.

Here’s the deal: change starts with acceptance.

To learn more about this and get an exercise you can use to incorporate acceptance into your financial life, read The Four Pillars of Acceptance below.

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Introducing: Authentic Wealth, Getting into Right Relationship with Money

Money. Sometimes it seems like you can't live with it and you can't live without it. And if you work for yourself (or want to), ambivalence about money can wreak havoc with just about every aspect of your life.

It’s not about the money. Money is simply not that hard to understand, get, and manage. If you don’t believe me, look at some of the folks who have lots of it.

It’s about a relationship and a vision. When you combine an authentic vision with good reality testing, solid practices, and a supportive community, your relationship with money starts looking way different. Vibrant. Alive. Filled with possibility. Click here to see how you can experience Authentic Wealth.

If you like what you see, fill out the short application and lets talk about whether this is a fit. Click here.

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Back to the four pillars of acceptance.

Acceptance is the foundation for all creative action. Acceptance is finding the “you are here” place on the map, the place you can take a confident stand and then move toward your goal. There’s simply no way to move forward if you don’t start from where you are.

The first pillar of acceptance is humility.

Humility and its close relative humor exert a homeopathic influence: a small dose of humility and humor averts humiliation. It’s a whole lot easier to accept where you are with this pillar in place.

The second pillar of acceptance is wonder.

Wonder enlarges our capacity to receive support from unexpected sources. When you accept what is with a sense of wonder, it is much easier to surrender control – which you don’t have anyway – and open to synchronicity, serendipity, and happy accident.

The third pillar of acceptance is willingness.

Each time you set aside your own script in favor of reality and summon the willingness to cooperate with what is, rather than fight it, you are storing up energy, building momentum. With the pillar of willingness in place, acceptance shifts your orientation from resignation and resentment to healthy peace and ambition.

The fourth pillar of acceptance is desire.

Ah, desire! When you tune into your deepest and truest desires and allow yourself to experience your longing while accepting current reality, you complete a circuit. Your acceptance is now the firm foundation from which you can move forward.

Gratitude Practice with the Four Pillars.

Gratitude can pave the way to acceptance like nothing else can. Take a full, easy breath as you name things for which you are grateful under each pillar. Ask your body to show you what it feefeels like to experience that gratitude. Savor the experience.

Humility: Name three things you are grateful for that you did not earn or get for yourself. (Examples: health, children, nature)

Wonder: Name three things you are grateful for that are beyond your understanding or knowledge. (Examples: electricity, art, the color blue)

Willingness: Name three apparent limitations that you can be grateful for. (Examples: losing a job, a rainy day, missing the bus)

Desire: Name three things you have wanted that have come to you. (Examples: a spouse, a garden, season tickets to the theater).

The Innocent Origins of Scarcity Thinking

2009-10-15T23:29:32Z

Once upon a time there were three little pigs. The time had come for the little pigs to leave home and seek their fortune.

Of course, the first thing they needed to do was to find shelter. The first pig built a house of straw he found scattered on the ground. The second pig built a house of sticks he scavenged from the woods.

The third little pig discovered an abandoned cache of bricks. “These would be perfect for a house,” he thought. But then he decided to live out in the open because he just didn’t feel right about taking anything without asking and he didn’t very much like to ask.

The big bad wolf, who loved to eat little piggies, attacked the first pig’s house one night. Though the door was tightly latched, the wolf merely took a gigantic breath. He huffed and he puffed and lo! He blew the house down.

The first pig fled to his brother’s stick house. Again the wolf came calling. Again he huffed and he puffed and lo! He blew the house down as well.

The two little pigs ran frantically into the night seeking shelter. They found their homeless brother holed up inside a sewer pipe. Working desperately, they managed to block the opening with a large boulder and, for the time being, they were safe from the wolf.

“What a wise little piggy I am,” reflected the brother from his damp, dark hiding place. "As long as I keep moving, that old wolf will never get me."

Of course it wasn’t very long before running and hiding and scavenging exhausted the little piggies and the wolf had himself a lovely feast.

What's Wrong with this Fable?

There’s something just plain wrong about a fairy tale that ends the way this one does. We know intuitively that the pigs were supposed to have learned a lesson and lived to profit by it. Instead, we see the very pig who we expected to build a sturdy house of bricks settle for a life on the run. But is this such a surprising choice? How often in our own lives have we made similar choices leading to chronic feelings of scarcity?

Scarcity as a Rationalization and Protection

For years I believed that my own anxieties around money were the result of being the oldest of eight kids. I would explain with a laugh that the accountant who lived in my back brain multiplied everything by ten before deciding if it was affordable. Somehow I kept a straight face while I said this, even with evidence of past and present prosperity everywhere around me.

One particular memory seemed to support my story about money. I was about five years old and I was on the phone with my best friend, Mary. It was early evening in the fall of my first grade year.

“Can you go roller skating?” Mary asked. “I’ll ask,” I said, pretending to put down the phone. A moment later I got back on. “My Mom won’t let me.” I said.

I have always remembered that the reason I didn’t actually ask my Mom was that I didn't think we had the money and I didn't want to embarrass her. For forty years I believed that, until one day I saw that something was wrong with that picture.

Scarcity as a Dodge

First, my friend Mary’s family was no better off than mine. In fact I once sent her money, believing it to be an act of charity, but provoking an embarrassing scene between our parents. Second, when I thought about it, I found it odd that this particular memory would pop up whenever I thought about money and my childhood. It’s odd because there weren’t eight kids in the family at that time, so my back brain accountant wouldn’t have been multiplying by ten, if indeed she was multiplying by anything at all.

If the story isn’t as I remember it, I wondered, why would I have pretended that we couldn’t afford for me to go skating?

I only had to ask the question in order to see the obvious answer: I had been far more afraid of rollerskating than of asking for money. In other words I created a scarcity script to cover up my awkwardness, both the anticipated awkwardness of skating and the additional awkwardness of not knowing how to just say “No, thank you.”

Oh. My. How many times have I said, “I can’t afford it,” when I meant but didn’t want to say, “No, thank you,” or “I’m scared”?

I used scarcity to fend off scary possibilities for a very long time and I got pretty good at it. The results could have been grim, but fortunately I woke up to what I was doing in time to build a house of bricks.

If you recognize yourself in these stories, never fear. One of the grand things about interior barriers to prosperity is that they dissolve in the light of understanding. And when interior barriers come down, exterior barriers become much more manageable.

Here are some pointers for lowering your interior barriers to prosperity.

Listen to yourself when you talk about money. Do you apologize for having it? For not having it? Do you make excuses? One tip that led me to my own phony memory was the ring of apology about it, a rather tinny ring at that.

Notice how you are when good things happen. Are you comfortable with having friends, neighbors and colleagues witness your good fortune? Or do you reflexively minimize blessings so that others won’t envy you or even want to take what you have?

Be accountable. Whether your financial situation is good, bad or indifferent, life gets easier when you know what you have and how you use it. For me, this means balancing bank statements promptly, and maintaining complete and current records of all credit and debit card transactions.

Learn to mix money and love. It took years before I began to get comfortable talking about money with people I loved. That makes running a household a guessing game and in subtle and not-so-subtle ways sabotages energy that could otherwise enrich both your emotional and your financial life.

Keep these pointers in mind as you go about the important tasks of creating your own places of shelter and the wolf won’t trouble you any more.

Why lowering your prices doesn’t work and how to resist the urge

2009-10-09T00:27:13Z

A few years back (okay, 20, but who’s counting?), I participated in a three-day studio tour on beautiful, art-friendly Bainbridge Island. I spent most of the weekend scurrying around, pricing and re-pricing every scarf, sweater, and hats, certain that if only I chose the right price my work would fly off the walls. It didn’t.

That weekend came vividly to mind as I read the following letter from artist Julie Sadler.

I was recently in an outdoor art show and had to give prices to people as they asked for the original works that I have done. Even tho I have gotten a fair price for some of my larger works on the internet, I found that if I asked for my price at the show, people walked. When I went down 50%, items sold.
Does this mean, I am pricing things too high to begin with? Is it better to sell only a few things...at a larger price, or many things at a smaller price??

The simple answer to this question is that you can expect to sell for less when you sell your work on the street, where you cannot control the context, where you are not in charge of the guest list, and where you don’t even choose what your neighbor will be selling.

What to do? It’s not enough to say, “Don’t lower your prices.” Nor is it enough to say, “Stay off the street.” You and others, whether artists or architects, who struggle with what to charge, need three things to get off the price roller coaster.

A platform.
A path.
A practice.

Your platform is your “come from,” the context that encompasses the unspoken (but palpable) values that you and your just right customers hold in common. In many respects, it’s your niche. (Did you know that “niche” comes from the Latin for “nest”? How cool is that?)

Your platform (and I’m not entirely satisfied with this word, so if you have ideas, please send them my way) is what makes you visible to your audience and what tells them where you are coming from.

To grasp the significance of platform, consider the difference between Disneyworld and the Louvre, between an Aveda spa and a remote, rustic hot springs.

With all due respect to sidewalk art shows – and my first venue was the local farmer’s market – when you sell art on the street you have left the cathedral for the carnival. It’s no surprise that folks expected to pay less.

In order to reach your platform, your audience steps onto a path. The nature of that path determines not only the initial exchange, but also the future of the relationship as well as your own sanity and sense of direction and connection.

You see, there is always a path, but until you take charge of the landscaping and maintenance, the path is likely to lead your customers into the wilderness instead of into an ongoing relationship with your work.

The other thing about a path is that it tells you where you (and your work) are headed. Knowing and taking care of your path keeps you on track, reminds you what you are up to, reinforces your choices, and gives you a map and a rationale for pricing and other key parts of selling your work to the just right audience.

There are a couple of clues in your email, Julie, that tell me your path wants your loving attention.

I was recently in an outdoor art show and had to give prices to people as they asked for the original works that I have done. Even tho I have gotten a fair price for some of my larger works on the internet, I found that if I asked for my price at the show, people walked. When I went down 50%, items sold.

When you have a path, you know what your prices are and they are not a moving target. If people approach your work, express interest, and don’t care to pay the price that is right for your path, that’s okay. A path is not for just anyone; it exists for the pilgrim, also known as your just-right customer (or customer in training).

Does this mean you have to be rigid about where you show? Not at all. From the hours I spent immersing myself in your work, your blog, your Web site, I got the impression that engaging with people feeds you. If that’s so, by all means take your work to the streets.

But here’s the deal. Make the street fairs a way to get onto the path, not the end of the path. Print greeting cards, mat color reproductions that you can sell for street prices. When people buy these low-end representations of your work (steppingstones along the path), invite them to get on your email list, then talk to them from time to time, inviting them to make pilgrimages (to gallery shows, your Web sites…).

Finally, without a practice, you’re bound to fall off the path. In other words, fear, the desire for appreciation and approval, and even your creative nature will distract you from your path without a practice to keep you focused.

I could write a book on practice (in fact, I did – see The Way of the Accidental Entrepreneur). For the sake of this article, here’s a simple practice to support sane pricing.

Set prices in advance and take a vow of abstinence from lowering them. Your price is your price is your price. You owe it to the people who have paid full price to honor the value that you and they have already established. Prices go up, not down, unless you are selling a commodity.

Use the buddy system to seal your vow. Wherever two or more artists (or architects or bod workers) gather together and agree to hold the line, there is light…

In lieu of selling, share yourself with people who are interested in your work. Talk to folks. Ask them questions. Answer their questions. (Tip: listen literally and answer the question they ask, not the question your fears hear. For example, “Why is this so expensive?” is not the same as “How dare you charge so much?”)

Work on your platform and path. If you are busy designing and building your dream, you are less likely to be distracted by the nightmare.

(Reprinted from June 13, 2007, issue of Authentic Promotion.)

Why You Don't Need to Believe in Your Business

2009-09-28T21:18:09Z

I know, it sounds crazy. Why on earth would I tell you not to believe in your business?

I wouldn't. But there are times when we just don't have a lot of faith in what we're doing. Things go wrong. We feel tired. We lose a client or get hit with a late charge or miss a deadline.

It hurts when things go wrong, and it doesn't help to insist that we buck up and "believe."

A battle with confidence
We put unnecessary and unproductive pressure on ourselves and our businesses when we think we need to believe in them. If we believe we need to believe (!), we're naturally going to be afraid and worried when our confidence wanes. I know that the more I try to believe in myself when I'm feeling low or stupid (it happens), the more frustrated and anxious I become. Soon, all I can think about is myself: Am I good enough? What's wrong with me? Will I ever have the confidence and stamina to make it?

Confidence follows action
Not only is preoccupation with our own value misery-producing, it creates a stalemate. We don't take effective action because we're worried about finding the magic formula that will restore our confidence. But, most of the time, confidence is the product of action.

On some level we know this, but when we're worried about believing in ourselves, we look for the one action that will make us feel good, and that often means we refrain from doing anything until we know for sure it will work.

Waiting for certainty when you don't feel confident is a losing game. Certainty is unlikely to show up, and you end up feeling worse and worse about yourself as you procrastinate and waffle.

At times like these we need to let go of whether or not we believe in our work and simply do it. This usually means taking actions that look very ordinary, even dull.

It happens to everybody
Last week, for example, I wanted to work on a new teleseminar tentatively titled The Art of the Ask. It's for Accidental Entrepreneurs who have trouble asking for help, business, money, referrals, feedback, etc. I had been very excited about the idea, but then I felt like a deer in the headlights. I didn't know how to talk about the class. I wasn't sure how many sessions there should be. I was anxious about defining the just-right client for the program. Yadda yadda yadda.

What's called for now?
And then I stopped and asked myself what the situation was and what action was called for. I decided the situation was that I was working out a new class and needed to know what prospective participants experienced when they had problems asking, what they would want out of a class like this, and what questions or concerns they would have.

So I wrote a simple description of the class and posted it in Shaboom County. I also posted it in Sean D Souza's 5000bc community. These actions were much simpler than "writing a sales page" or "outlining the curriculum." And by taking them I moved the project forward a little bit instead of staying frozen because of what I didn't know.

Act first, then believe
When you feel lost, depressed, overwhelmed, or less-than, look outside yourself. Notice what the objective situation is. What simple actions are called for? Take each action for its own sake. Every action produces a fresh situation, one you can again respond to with a simple action. I've never been able to think myself out of a funk, but I can behave myself out of one. I bet you can, too.

You can get oodles of help taking actions that will grow your business for just $56 as part of my 56th birthday celebration. Learn more by clicking here. Expires October 1 at 5pm PDT.

Photo credit: istockphoto

Review: The Shadow Effect (Movie)

2009-09-21T17:54:34Z

Over the summer I had the opportunity to review Debbie Ford's movie, The Shadow Effect. Ford, you may remember, broke ranks with the forces of relentless positivity with her 1999 book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers. In some respects, The Shadow Effect is a continuation of that work.

Here's a clip.

A number of unforeseen circumstances prevented me from reviewing the movie when I had intended and, as a result, I had the opportunity to scan other reviews before writing this one. Of the reviews that appear in the first two pages of Google results, there were two broad categories: thrilled approval (from the school of The Secret) and cranky disappointment (on religious and political grounds).

I think both responses missed the point. The strength of The Shadow Effect is that, unlike The Secret, it acknowledges and accepts both dark and light as essential to the human experience. It is nonsense-dangerous nonsense-to pretend that we can wave a magic mantra and make darkness go away.

Some Christian reviewers object to the discussion of light and dark, good and evil, without reference to God and Satan. The resolution of the conflict between light and dark through forgiveness without reference to God raised one reviewer's hackles. He wrote: "Sorry, forgiveness is not in ourselves, it’s by the grace of God and his Son, Jesus. They dared not touch any of this subject in “The Shadow Effect” though, its all left quite universal." (sic) Again, this review misses the point. The Shadow Effect is not a theological commentary. It is a popularization of a concept from Jungian psychology presented in a mash-up of 12-Step Recovery, New Age thought, and cinematic technique.

The movie is filmed and scripted to make the concept of the shadow palatable without taking away its significance. It hints at ways to work with the shadow, and in the interactive edition provides eight exercises that can help individuals and groups shine a light in the dark corners of their own psyches.

One criticism that crops up both in the reviews on Amazon.com and elsewhere on the internet is that it is politically biased. Hello! Public figures such as Barack Obama and Dick Cheney, each referenced in the film, are magnets for projection. That the folks making this movie projected goodness on Barack Obama (the result, we infer, of his successful integration of the shadow) and evil on Dick Cheney (for the opposite reason) is neither surprising nor shocking. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the attribution says nothing about the validity of the message.

So what is the message? According to Ford, "What we can't be with won't let us be." When we repress our darker instincts and thoughts or deny the evil we contemplate or the evil we have done, we are consigning whole areas of our experience to "the shadow." Left there in the dark (unavailable to conscious reflection or choice), this shadow material can contaminate, even poison, our relationships and choices. The harder we try to conceal or deny the shadow, the more it seeps into our waking activities, where it can wreak havoc.

The alternative is to consciously and deliberately shine light into the shadowy corners, illuminating the secrets we've kept from ourselves and others, so that we can heal. Healing may involve forgiveness of self and others and making amends for wrongs done.

Depending on where you are in your personal journey this can be revolutionary stuff. The movie has the potential to awaken you to the possibility of the shadow and encourage you to have compassion for yourself and others in its grip. It makes encountering one's own darkness more palatable. The interactive CD includes exercises you can work on your own or in groups. If you are new to shadow work, I strongly advise working with a skilled therapist or counselor. Human beings are nothing if not experts in bashing themselves mercilessly or prematurely absolving themselves, neither of which will move you along the path of integrating your shadow.

Should you get the movie? If you've been stoned on The Secret and other happy talk and wondering why you aren't getting the kinds of results promised therein, The Shadow Effect may provide a crucial missing piece. If you are an old hand at working with the shadow, it can be a useful addition to your bookshelf.

What the World Needs Now... Is a Generous Helping of Self Promotion

2009-09-17T15:45:52Z

The first annual Self Employment Telesummit is underway and participants are giving it rave reviews (Thank you!) And due to the time devoted to the summit, I've reached again into the Authentic Promotion archives for this week's article. I hope you enjoy it.

Self promotion, some feel, is selfish.

In fact, authentic self promotion is one of the most generous things we can do. To understand why this is, let's look at what's behind much of our discomfort with self promotion.

Of Bathing Suits and Three Way Mirrors
Self promotion is a bit like buying a bathing suit.

You screw up your courage and venture into a tiny dressing room where a three-way mirror and overhead lighting expose every real and imagined flaw.

Gee. Why don't you do this more often?

We avoid self promotion to the extent that we fear what we (and everyone else) will see in the harsh light of the dressing room.

That we aren't perfect.

But Perfection Isn't What the World Needs
The world isn't hungering for more super models or crying out for manicured lawns and good hair. The world doesn't need more perfection. We need more humanity.

And there's nothing like self promotion for bringing one face to face with one's own humanity.

Hey, Could You Turn that Light Down?

Self promotion shines a light on the things we want to share with the world, and, in the process, it's illuminates things we'd rather not advertise.

That's a good thing.

For every accomplishment we can claim with pride, there's bound to be a corresponding flaw, error, or oversight. For every strength, there will be a weakness. There will be instances of our failure to live up to our own standards.

Conscious self promotion requires us to accept ourselves as we are without defense or justification. And it won't let us get away with delaying life and work until we get one more certificate, one more degree, one more insight.

The Gift of Not Measuring Up
The world can't wait until we're perfect. (Right. Like that's going to happen. And if it did, how would I know?)

Life, the Universe, and everything wants us to participate Here and Now.

Self promotion is one response to the call to participation. We promote ourselves not to compete against or exceed others, but to join the dance.

Far from leading to ego inflation and grandiosity, conscious, authentic self promotion calls us to humility, to a right-sizedness that is grounding and enriching in the best sense.

Self Promotion Is Creative
When we promote ourselves and our work from where we actually are (as opposed to where we think we ought to be), we invite change.

By promoting ourselves consciously and authentically, we loosen our stranglehold on our self images. Having offered them to the world, we open them (and thus ourselves) up to radical refurbishing. Like the Velveteen Rabbit with it's bare spots and missing eye, we may be rubbed raw (and we will be made more beautiful).

But only if we are willing to be found out as less than perfect.

Self Promotion Seeds Compassion
The practice of authentic self promotion transforms the way we see the other travelers on Spaceship Earth. Because we know what it is to publicly affirm values we do not always embody, we may find ourselves strangely moved by the other Human Beans who fall short of their ideals.

In these and so many other ways, conscious, authentic self promotion is a generous act. When we accept the challenge of "putting ourselves out there" as a call to deeper engagement rather than shallow manipulation, we are putting our small selves on the line for the sake of something bigger than we can imagine.

Just another come-on? What marketing, money, & body image have in common.

2009-09-04T00:49:04Z

I've been writing up a storm lately as part of The Self Employment Telesummit Blog Tour. Among other things, the tour has generated some great questions. This week I want to talk with you about one question in particular, the relationship between creating sale-able work and selling out.

This came up over at Tammy Vitale's blog (Women, Art Life: Weaving It All Together). I wrote a post for Tammy about the challenges of charging and getting a good price for one's work. In it I said:

When I was a practicing fiber-artist, I would have said that my work was too labor intensive and that there was no way I could charge enough for my time. That was both true and not true.
I could not charge enough for my time the way I was choosing to spend it. My choices did not match the priorities of my just-right clients. More to the point, I didn't give a hoot about my just-right clients. I wanted to make what I wanted to make and I was happy to sell it to anyone who loved it and would pay the price. But I wasn't interested in finding out what my clients wanted and valued.

Two years after I closed the studio I realized why the money hadn't followed the work I loved: I was not committed to serving anyone with my work. Why, then, should anyone pay me?

Here's the come-on part
One reader of Tammy's blog shared this reaction:

I have to admit that this has the appearance of just another marketing strategy: I find out what clients want and value, and then make what they want so I can make sales, rather than producing what comes from my heart and soul, and having those who are attracted to it become my clients.

I can understand how this reader feels. I've felt that way. And I am not saying we should abandon our hearts' desires, look for vulnerabilities in the consumer psyche, and exploit those for money.

As I was sitting with this issue, I recalled a conversation I had once with a client who is a physical trainer. She wanted to invest in some workout clothes but was stuck on what to buy. "I know my shapeless old sweats aren't professional," she said, "but I don't see why I should have to wear a thong, either."

"Well," I remarked. "There are a lot of choices that are neither shapeless sweats nor thongs."

She began to laugh and her eyes lit up. "You mean maybe I could look nice without baring my tush?"

When we're sensitized, we can only see extremes.
Sometimes we become so sensitized to an issue: body image or money, for example, that we only see the extremes. The quite rich and varied middle ground is practically invisible until we learn to look with different eyes. And that is what I would love for every person reading this article to do: Look at the relationship of your prices to your work, yourself, and your clients with fresh eyes.

Just another marketing strategy?
When we’re sensitized to marketing and sales, innocent business practices take on a sleazy character. We tend to see them in the worst light, to think of their most extreme and distasteful manifestations.

But nowhere is it written that we have to sacrifice creativity, integrity, or authenticity in order to do business. In fact, the opposite is true. The marketplace rewards all three, when they coincide with perceived value.

And that, I think, is as it should be. No one owes us a living. At the same time, one look at my checkered career and you'll see I'm not attached to conventional lifestyles or definitions of success. So I’m not suggesting we reduce art to the level of consumer-baiting.

The marketplace is a meeting place, a middle ground.
I do feel that the marketplace, far from being an evil place, can be the crossroads where goods and services--including the arts--can be exchanged and both parties enriched in the process. And it is our responsibility to demonstrate or make apparent the value of our work if we want to earn a living from it.

Is this scary? You bet. There is always the risk of rejection and failure. I know some of my high-minded objections to business in the past were, in part, screens for my fear of failure. Equally scary can be the fear of succeeding, for being successful means being a visible target of criticism, envy, and even resentment.

These twin risks of failure and success are why I say self-employment is a spiritual path. I haven’t found a way to succeed in business that doesn’t require me to examine my conscience and my belief systems on a regular basis. I’m not always at ease with what I find, and that, too, is as it should be.

At the end of the day, finding out what clients want and value and responding to that can be part of rather than inimical to the creative process. We can produce what comes from our heart and still make good business decisions. In fact, that is exactly what we must do if we are going to enjoy any success worthy of the name.

A Pricing Exercise
Our feelings about marketing and sales are not logical, and even when we agree that we ought to be comfortable with them, we may struggle. Here’s an exercise that can help bring your heart, mind, and body into alignment around pricing.

Take a moment to observe your physical sensations. You don’t need to interpret or decode them; simply observe the sensations in your body. Some good places to check are your solar plexus, belly, chest, jaw, neck, and shoulders.

Notice your overall feeling or emotion. Again, no need to interpret this. Just go with your first impression.

Finally, notice any automatic thoughts that arise. Do you immediately think, “I ought to get more than this” or “If only I could sell 10 of these a week”? Whatever your thoughts are, just notice them.

Now roll your shoulders, shift your weight from side to side, and gently turn your head in both directions. You might even stand up and walk around the room for a moment before going on to the next part of this exercise.

Working with the same product or service, imagine someone buying it and really getting a lot of value from it. Picture how they will use it.

Notice everything that goes into realizing the benefits of this work. If you see yourself providing additional work, that’s fine. Just let yourself imagine how it would be and what it would take for a client to buy this thing or experience and really benefit.

When you have a clear picture of a client benefiting from your work, ask yourself what it takes for that benefit to occur. Are there any changes you would like to make to your sales or follow-up process? Would you like to improve the packaging?

Finally, ask what you would need to charge in order to feel really at ease selling this product or service. At what price point would the energy coming in equal the energy you need to put out in order for a client to benefit hugely?

Now imagine that you are charging this price and providing a product or service you are really proud of. In your mind’s eye, see a client paying the price and experiencing all the benefits of your work. Notice what it would feel like in your body to engage in this transaction. Observe your physical sensations, your emotions, and your self-talk.

You might want to make some notes of what you experienced.

With a bit of work, you will be able to charge good prices for good work, and you won’t have to bare your financial tush to do it.

The Paradox of Money and Meaning: Why Thrival Comes First

2009-08-27T21:47:17Z

Many self employed professionals in the creative and healing arts flounder on the shoals of making a profit. Experts in their craft or practice, they excel in their work of making meaning, yet fail to earn more than a survival level income.

What's wrong with this picture?

In the Beginning Was Survival
To answer this question, we need to go back to basics, to look at the very essence of what it means to be self-employed. As we roll the evolutionary clock back to when the first human consciously chose work, we discover that the impulse to self employment is rooted in the survival instinct.

For thousands of years we worked simply to have enough to eat. In time, we also worked to secure protection from the elements and our enemies. Eventually, our attention turned to preservation of what belonged to us. And, out of this first experience of abundance and relative safety grew the impulse to make art.

Self Employment Is Evolutionary
The moral of this glimpse into pre-history is that self-employment is evolutionary. It began with our most primitive impulses and evolved along with our bodies and minds to keep pace with (and, to some extent, lead the way to) emerging problems and possibilities and ways of making sense of the world.

It's important to notice that this evolution is holographic. Each evolutionary stage is included and encoded in higher stages. Our primitive survival needs don't go away when higher needs emerge. Even the greatest painter has to eat.

This explains why thrival is a sacred duty. Unless we go beyond survival needs and work to thrive, we cannot sustain the meaningful work we want to do in the world.

Thrival is not a result of doing good work; it is a pre-requisite.

Thrival Is Job One
What this means is that the more elevated your purpose for self-employment, the more attention you need pay to generating abundant revenue streams. In order to free your attention and energy for the high-level work you are here to do, you need to secure a more-than-sufficient income so that you can meet a variety of needs from food and shelter to education and recreation.

Mere survival will not equip you to to the work you want to do.

If you try to get by with minimal revenues, you will spend way too much time spinning your wheels, worrying about how to pay the bills, agonizing over how to connect with clients, and even resenting the burdens of self employment.

The Good News
There is more good news in this picture than you might expect. For one thing, creating the structures and systems of a thriving business is less complicated than doing the work you've been trained to do. Building a business happens, by definition, at a lower level of evolutionary complexity than does meaning making through the creative and healing arts.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle that self employed professionals face when it comes to building a business is that they are more at home with the higher levels of complexity. The best practices of the business world can seem dull by comparison. But true mastery requires a command of a range of skills that, out of context, appear trivial. (Remember The Karate Kid?)

In the best of all worlds, we would have a beloved master who would model for us the relationship between the mundane skills of thrival and mastery in our chosen realms. It's painful and frustrating to try to learn from someone who lacks our own scope and vision.

Which bring me to a very special event two weeks from today: The Self Employment Telesummit. For less than the cost of any course I've offered in the past three years, you can learn business skills from 12 masters of the art of self-employment. At the platinum level (yes, even the platinum level costs less than any of my classes) you also get 2 weeks of coaching from yours truly so you can build momentum without overwhelm.

The Self Employment Telesummit is designed especially for professionals in the creative and healing arts. It begins with panel presentations on September 10 and 11, then continues with three featured breakout sessions daily from September 15-18. The followup coaching program, Momentum Mastery, begins with a group coaching call on September 22 and continues with follow up calls on September 29 and October 6.

Learn more here.

I know a lot of folks are wary of spending money in these uncertain times, but a business doesn't grow unless you nurture it. If you only do one thing for your business in the next 12 months, let it be this. If you are uncertain about whether or not it is a fit, give me a call. My direct line is 360-697-7022. I'm in the pacific time zone, but you can call any time. If I'm not available, your call will go to voice mail, and I will call you back.

But please, don't delay. This is a once-a-year opportunity, and the best way to ensure that you are around for it a year from now is to click here and sign up today.

I Can Do It Myself (Not): Beyond Self Sufficiency

2009-08-18T23:37:39Z

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.” Thomas Merton

Maybe you’re a bit like me.

I pride myself on being self-sufficient. I feel empowered by the ability to solve problems, repair equipment, and complete projects on my own. I love going to a strange city and giving correct directions to tourists as if I were a longtime resident. Still, self-sufficiency gets in my way sometimes.

There was the time week I decided to upgrade the RAM in my desktop computer. I had done it before and expected it to be a cinch. This time, however, it was a struggle from the start. (That was a hint. I didn’t take it.)

I struggled until I snapped a fitting. Shortly after that, I re-discovered the easy way to insert the chips. I fit a couple of chips in with ease and encountered struggle again when I attempted to add chips to a hard-to-reach corner. Did I stop? No. 72 hours and countless crashes later, I went hunting for (and found) a good Mac technician.

As much as I love being able to pull my own maintenance, there comes a point where doing it all myself is not effective. Perhaps there is a clue in the quote above from Thomas Merton as to how we might discern when self-sufficiency is empowering and when it is limiting.

I invite you to join me in this inquiry over the next few days: “Am I living life as a mystery or a problem?"

Please share your thoughts by clicking here or on the comments link below.

Photo credit

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxw/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Why You Can't Measure the ROI of Social Media (unless you're a real person)

2009-08-04T20:39:20Z

Love this David and Goliath tale from Jonathan Fields at Career Renegade. The moral of the story?

[I]f you’re a small business or solopreneur Career Renegade and you’ve been wondering about the value of this wacky thing called social media, fact is you’ve got a huge advantage over large corporations right now. You have the ability to actually convert time spent on social media into money in the bank. And, have a lot of fun doing it.

The Art, Science, and Grace of Thriving

2009-07-30T18:15:24Z

Oops! forgot to post this week's article to the blog. I'm in
Taos at Jen Louden's annual writers' retreat, and it's heaven!

Thriving is part art, part science, and part grace. A
thriving business must not only accommodate but support life
in all its complexity. A thriving business requires and
provides resilience and continuity. How do you go about
building a thriving career or business? Here are some of the
things I've learned and that I credit with supporting my own
thriving business.

Recognize that life happens.
There will be ups and downs in your personal life and ups
and downs in business. When you can accept these ebbs and
flows of attention, energy, and focus, you will better be
able to adjust to changing conditions both in your heart and
in your environment.

Cultivate systems, practices, and networks that provide
continuity.
For example, this newsletter and my Web site are ongoing and
reliable means of staying in touch with a meaningful network
in good times and in bad.

Pay attention to transitions.
When change is happening, it can be easy to get caught up in
reactionary thoughts and feelings that can muddy your
thinking and make complex situations chaotic. Learning to
detach and observe your reactions, thoughts, and fears will
help you keep a steadier course without being rigid.

Be mindful.
Learn to notice when things are expanding and when they are
contracting, and choose your strategies accordingly.

Look ahead.
Learn to regard mistakes as stepping stones to mastery.
Avoid wasting time in needless guilt and defensiveness.
Seize the opportunity to correct your error and move on.

Listen to your clients and customers.
Identify those who get the most benefit from working with
you with the least effort on your part. This is not
laziness. This is learning to operate from the sweet spot –
that place in which you add the most value by working from
your strengths.

Stay healthy emotionally and physically.
Rigorously address personal issues that inhibit success.
This could mean seeing a therapist, paying off old debts, or
starting an exercise program.

Remain aware.
Learn to listen. Listen for guidance from Spirit, from your
heart, from your environment, from colleagues, from clients.

Keep evaluating yourself.
Raise your standards regularly both for your own performance
and for the caliber of client or customer that you attract.

Periodically update and refocus your business plan.
Include income, expense, and investment plans. Keep it
simple. Distill your plans into a sentence or two that
summarizes your goals and strategies so that you always know
where you are going.

Zen and the Art of Paving: Off Topic

2009-07-21T22:36:33Z

There are right ways to build paths, and I did not use any of them for this project.

The area immediately adjacent to the carport was sandy/rocky/clay full of pebbles and packed hard as stone. I scraped out the grass and weeds that eked out an existence there and started pressing in rocks I'd collected from around the yard and garden. I added some bricks and tiles. Tossed in a few shells and some broken glass and pottery.

I worked a small area at a time, often using my hand rake to tear out the vegetation with one hand while I was placing stones with the other. I rarely cleared more than a square foot or so at a time. I dampened the area from time to time, which helped rinse dust and dirt off the stones and tiles and into the crevices, where it set. Some tiles are very shallow and slip around.

Basically, I make it up as I go. For me, there is no loss if I need to redo a section. I like the physical activity, I like clearing space and then defining it with quasi random choices. The value is complete in the choices themselves, so if I need to rip it up and redo, I'll be happy to. Not the most pragmatic method, but it's how I have always done creative projects. When a certain result or outcome (say, durability) becomes important, I learn how to achieve it and incorporate that knowledge into new endeavors. But until a skill or refinement becomes necessary, I am happy to do without it.

How do you create?

How to Add a Stream of Income that Makes Your Clients Smile and Makes You Money

2009-07-16T23:04:49Z

Recently in Shaboom County we were talking about how to figure out what you can sell that people will actually buy. In other words, how do you create a new stream of income, really?

Most of us approach designing a product or service by figuring out what people need, what's good for them, and then trying to convince them we can help.

But prospective clients are people, and people don't think that way.

People don't want what's good for them; they want to feel good.

Ask Your Clients What They Want, then Offer It to Them
Here's the part that's so simple it can be difficult to take it seriously.

The way to come up with a product or service that really will generate income is to ask clients what they want, then give them that.

Why We Don't Ask
The three reasons I hear most often for not asking clients what they want are:

1. I'm supposed to be the expert. I should know what they want.
2. Selling people hope (i.e., what they want) is sleazy.
3. Asking clients what they want and then using that to sell to them is manipulative.

Who Is the Real Expert?
Streams of income come from products and services that your clients want. When it comes figuring our what your clients want and will buy, use, and love, there's only one real expert.

The expert is your just-right client.

It doesn't matter how good your product or service is, if you don't satisfy that expert, no sale.

We All Need Hope
Selling false hope to desperate people is sleazy. Let's be clear about that.

But there is no necessary connection between selling hope and selling false hope. Nowhere is it written that addressing what people want prevents them from getting what they need.

In fact, the opposite is true. When we don't offer people what they want, they don't buy it, even when it is what they need.

What's more, people who don't feel good aren't very good at doing things that are good--for themselves or others. Which is why, even if you can get clients to buy what's good for them, they so rarely use it.

And when they don't use it, they don't get the benefits.

And they don't come back for more.

The Respect Factor
The difference between serving clients and manipulating them boils down to respect.

When you approach a client respectfully and really listen to what she wants, you'll learn not just how to get her to buy but also how to deliver your work in a way she can really use.

And using it, she'll get to benefit from it.

And benefiting, she'll come back for more.

The Three Keys to Multiple Streams of Income
You know the old saw about the three keys to retail success, location, location, location?

Well, the three keys to creating multiple streams of income are listening, listening, listening.

Listen for what your clients want by paying very strict attention to the precise words they use to describe their challenges, their hopes, their dreams.

Listen for what they want to experience, to what it would be like in an ideal world to have their wants satisfied.

Listen for what they are afraid they can't have, for the fears and expectations that keep them from taking action.

Real Life Example: Design and Market A Teleclass
A while back I decided to offer a new, simplified version of Authentic Promotion. Before I did a lick of work on it, I posted the following request in Shaboom County:

Hi there,
II've decided to revive the Authentic Promotion course in 2009. It will be the same concepts but vastly simplified (not dumbed down) and focused tightly on completing the course with a half-page marketing plan for 12 months. The course will be 7 weeks long. There will be an optional follow-on program for implementing the plan with support for 3 or 9 months.

Question 1: What's the hardest thing about marketing for you?

Question 2: If your marketing problems went away, what would that be like?

Question 3: Okay, let's be real. What is it you don't believe you can get from a course like this (but gee, wouldn't it be great if you could)?"

The very first person who answered told me everything I needed to know to design the course and market it. Here's what she wrote. You can see how I used these very words to describe the content and to design the course on this landing page. (Note: The course will not be offered again until next year.)

Question 1: What's the hardest thing about marketing for you?
Discerning/deciding what to market and to whom
Planning ahead. The commitment: investment of time, focus and interactive energy
Deeper issues on receiving.
Herding the crowd of cats that is moi.
Question 2: If your marketing problems went away, what would that be like?
Fun, easy and creative.

Question 3: Okay, let's be real. What is it you don't believe you can get from a course like this (but gee, wouldn't it be great if you could)?
A durable peaceful planning process. Much less work/effort/time on computer (not a chance!!)

The Best Part
It's wonderful to design, market, and successfully fill a course this easily, and I would love for you to have that experience. But that's not the best part.

The best part is that the people who participated in this course got what they came for. They were happy campers who knew what what they wanted and got it.

And because they got it the way they wanted it, they are using it.

That means more success for them and more business for me.

What's not to love?

It was a grand old fourth

2009-07-11T00:31:31Z

IMG_9580, originally uploaded by Bainbridge Island Review.

My friend John Ellis and I at the microphones to announce the 42nd Grand Old Fourth parade on Bainbridge Island. Photo by Sean Roach of the Bainbridge Island Review.

It was a grand old fourth

2009-07-11T00:30:09Z

IMG_9580, originally uploaded by Bainbridge Island Review.

My friend John Ellis and I at the microphones to announce the 42nd Grand Old Fourth parade on Bainbridge Island. Photo by Sean Roach of the Bainbridge Island Review.