The Accidental Entrepreneur's Guide to Self-Employment Success

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.

It was a grand old fourth

2009-07-11T00:29:54Z

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.

Why Appealing to Fear Is a Good Thing

2009-07-10T02:14:11Z

There's no mystery about why marketers appeal to fear. Fear mongering works. Before Madison Avenue taught us to fear it, body odor was just a fact of life. Same with gray hair, weeds in the lawn, and dingy whites. Advertising has transformed what were once minor disappointments or inconveniences (if that) into the occasion of fear and shame.

We're right, I think, to deplore the wholesale manipulation of the consumer mind by appeals to fear. But we're wrong to avoid appeals to fear in our own marketing.

Excuse Me While I Talk About Me
Once upon a time I thought massage was a luxury for the unforgivably self-indulgent. Of course, I'd never had a massage, nor was I close to anyone who had.

One day I learned about a body worker who specialized in working with recovering addicts. I made an appointment, and it left me feeling more intact and present than I'd felt in a long time.

But I balked at the suggestion that I get regular body work. That felt like a plot to empty my pocketbook.

Still, over the next few years I scheduled the occasional session. In time, I saw a clear connection between massage and physical, mental, and emotional well being. Today I regard regular body work as a necessary luxury.

Appeals to Wellness and Well Being Don't Work
The thing is, I never would have scheduled a massage for the sake of increased well being. I didn't know from increased well being at the time. It was only when body work appealed to my fear of feeling crummy in recovery that I even considered giving it a try.

The same principle holds true for your just-right clients and customers. You see what they'll have or experience after they give your work a try.

But they can't hear that from where they are now. If you really want the best for your clients (and I know you do), you need to appeal to their fears.

The Three Demons
In mythology, the hero has to complete certain tasks or tests before she can complete her journey. Often these tests take the form of demons. Three particular demons will haunt your path as you learn to appeal to fear without being a creep about it,

The First Demon: Does Your Work Work?
To appeal to fear in an honorable way, you have to be able to offer relief. That means your work has to work.

Does it?

Notice how this question makes you feel. If it provokes defensiveness, anxiety, or resentment, you have some work to do before you can make an honorable claim.

This demon uses the weapons of grandiosity and false humility to keep you from seeing and stating clearly what your work can do for people. Your best weapons against it are detachment and humility.

The Second Demon: Confusing Yourself with Your Work
The second demon tempts you to take credit for the good your work can do. That might not be a problem if it weren't for the fact that there will be days when claiming that you can help anyone feels like fraud. And then there's the horrible burden of assuming responsibility for benefits that flow through you when you know darn well you are the vehicle, not the source.

Appealing to someone else's fear or pain when you are quite sure you're incompetent and phony is incredibly painful. It's no wonder that we prefer to stumble along in genteel poverty instead.

Connecting with source is your best protection against demon number two.

The Third Demon: Taking on Blame for a Cultural Discourse
The third demon will torment you with guilt and shame when you find yourself speaking in ways that feel inauthentic to you. And it's a sure bet that experimenting with appeals to fear will feel inauthentic, whether they are or not.

In a society saturated with commercial excess, there is no getting away from greed, envy, and grasping. And when you try out the practice of speaking to your clients' real fears, there will be times when those qualities creep into your voice.

That's a natural consequence of swimming in the soup of consumerism. It does not mean you are a bad person. It just means you've slipped into the common lingo. When you become aware of it, you can shake it off.

Time, practice, and willingness to make mistakes are your most powerful allies in the face of demon number three.

You Are Your Just-Right Client
I'm betting that the work you do (or want to do) has a deep connection to who you are and to your life path. It's grown out of your own journey and it will continue to evolve as you do.

This gives you a particularly keen insight into what your just-right clients fear. They fear what you do.

You've invested a lot in your learning journey, and you don't need to be at the end of it to serve others on a similar path. You do, however, need to let them know you're there and that your work addresses your shared concerns.

Appealing to fear works. When you appeal to fear with the intent of serving your just-right clients, your business will thrive and they will thank you for it.

Why Reducing Anxiety Doesn’t Help Your Business

2009-07-02T23:48:30Z

If they gave merit badges for anxiety, accidental entrepreneurs would have a bunch of them. The quintessential anxiety-provoking circumstance is a gap between how things are and how you want them to be coupled with uncertainty about how to close that gap. That just about perfectly describes self-employment (or any learning situation, for that matter).

There is so much uncertainty involved in working for ourselves that we can become habituated to anxiety. We assume that there will always be situations that require gritting our teeth and sucking up. If the rewards of self-employment outweigh the emotional cost, we keep going; otherwise, we get “real” jobs.

So far, it might seem that finding ways to reduce anxiety should be a high priority. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here’s why.

Anxiety Isn't the Problem
To begin with, looking for ways to reduce anxiety presupposes that anxiety is inevitable, and it’s not. Yes, self-employment is full of situations that commonly produce anxiety, but it’s not the situations themselves that make us so uncomfortable. It’s our presumption that uncertainty is a problem.

Tell that to an inventor, and he’ll cry, “Nonsense.” Tell it to an artist, and you’ll get the same response. To the creative mind, caps and uncertainties are not problems to be solved but opportunities, possibilities, invitations to be explored. When we lives as creators, the very situations that might cause us to shudder with anxiety evoke excitement and curiosity.

Reducing Anxiety Inhibits Progress
The second reason that reducing anxiety doesn’t help grow a business is that it works too well. What I mean is that reducing anxiety causes us to feel better, at which point we stop doing whatever we were doing to reduce anxiety. In time, the underlying problem re-appears, and we get anxious again and take action.

A classic example is how the accidental entrepreneur approaches marketing and sales. When business is good, who thinks about marketing? When business slows down, anxiety goes up and we use it to spur ourselves on in search of work. As soon as we have enough work, we stop doing whatever we were doing to get it.

How do we break the cycle?
First, let’s let acknowledge that anxiety can arise in spite of our best efforts to be creative and go with the flow. I don’t want any of us to beat ourselves up for being anxious – as if that would help. (Hey, if that worked, I’d be on cloud nine all the time.) Rather than mustering our resources to break the cycle, we would do well to make space for anxiety when it arises.

Thinking about the causes of anxiety does not create space. Bringing awareness to how anxiety feels in our bodies does. As you turn your attention to your body, notice where you might be contracting or resisting the way you feel. See how it might be to open up instead. Make room for the feelings just for the sake of seeing what happens.

Making space in and of itself evokes a different way of being. When we make space for anxiety, we become its witnesses rather than its puppets. As witnesses, we can also observe the anxiety-provoking gap without turning it into a problem. If what lies on the other side of the gap is truly meaningful for us, anxiety will give way to inventiveness.

Making space is anxiety transformation, not anxiety reduction. The cycle becomes anxiety--> awareness-->space--> inventiveness--> action. When we know how to transform anxiety, we no longer need to avoid it.

Photo: istockphoto.com

Success in Pink Polka Dot Pajamas

2009-07-02T22:32:09Z

What is success? Here's one take in 1 minute and 5 seconds.

The Pomodoro Technique

2009-06-29T00:56:15Z

Staffan Nöteberg wrote a super little book called The Pomodoro Technique. Francesco Cirillo blogs about it. And between the book, the blog, and the emerging community, there's a good deal of wisdom about time, productivity, rhythm, and awareness.

That's a lot, considering the core practice, known as "a pomodoro" is:

Choose a task to be accomplished
Set the Pomodoro* to 25 minutes (the Pomodoro is the timer)
Work on the task until the Pomodoro rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break

On Friday, you can download an interview with Sean D'Souza about time, focus, and chaos. It's going to be a bit of a mind-bender, I think, because Sean has devised simple structures that make being disorganized productive.

I know. Sounds weird. But it works really, really well. (I've been using it since December.)

Meanwhile, check out The Pomodoro Technique. You can download the ebook free by clicking on the title: The Pomodoro Technique.

*A Pomodoro is one of those little kitchen timers that looks like a tomato. Like in the picture.

How Honest Are You About Business?

2009-06-26T16:47:38Z

Note: I'd intended to get this entry up yesterday (Thursday). Sorry about the delay. I just plain forgot.

I’m willing to bet that every reader of this newsletter aspires to being honest. Some of you may even feel that your commitment to being honest is what makes self-employment hard, especially when it comes to marketing and sales.

It’s certainly not difficult to find examples of dishonesty in business. But I wonder why we, who are clear that honesty is not optional, would choose to base our idea of business on behavior we reject?

A Losing Perspective
When we focus on the underside of the business world, we make ourselves victims of a system that doesn’t exist.

Sure, there are dishonest business people. There are sleazy marketers. There are greedy salespeople. So what? There are also honest, classy, and generous people in every facet of business and marketing. When we make ourselves victims, we lose.

One cost of relegating commerce to the moral dung heap is that we fail to promote our work with vigor and clarity. Another cost is that we abdicate our responsibility to shape the systems, practices, and media of commerce and to infuse them with dignity, meaning, integrity. And perhaps the highest cost of all is that we cast ourselves as helpless victims, which is a bar against every sort of growth.

Start the Flow
If you are serious about making a living doing the work you love, start the flow that connects you with people who need your work. You open the conduit in three ways:

Make your gifts visible and useful at minimal cost to yourself and optimal benefit to others.

Showing your real personality and perspective so people who resonate can find you.

Getting support to work through the mental, emotional, spiritual, and material issues that invariably arise as we grow.

For years I conspired to keep myself in genteel poverty because I thought it made me a good person. No, let me be even more honest. I thought it protected me from being a bad person. I was living a miserly existence that had no inherent dignity or virtue. Righteousness and fear kept me small and anxious. Other people’s needs were a threat because, after all, I barely had enough for myself. Every day I gathered evidence that there is not enough to go around.

One day I woke up and saw that my own hand on the tap. Sure, external circumstances influence how much I prosper, but the only one controlling how much of the available prosperity flowed in, through me, and out again was me. I resolved to start the flow.

It worked and it still works. (And no, it's not always as open as it could be, If you had to be perfect to thrive, I'd be broke.)

Into Action
The moment I realized that I had been restricting the flow of well being, I knew with utter confidence and clarity that I could expand it. That’s not an overnight job, but I have to tell you it’s a lot more fun to work on increasing your capacity for joy, compassion, wealth, pleasure, and support than it is to concentrate on being stuck or victimized.

If you have a stack of business building tools gathering dust on your bookshelf, it's time to pick one and dust it off. It almost doesn't matter where you start, only that you do.

If you don't have a program or tool that is inspiring and practical, check out The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit before midnight PDT, Friday, June 26.

Why You Shouldn't Buy Another Program
Last night I received a heartfelt request for advice about whether or not to buy the toolkit. Believe it or not, my answer was no! Read on to find out why.

Dear Molly,

I am sorry to bother you but I wonder if you might offer me a bit of help. I HATE asking for help but this email you sent really got to me (in a good way).

I'm so excited about this tool kit (I think the "O" part of this is so exciting b/c I love to write) but I'm feeling too scared to buy it. It's not the money, but I was in Amway (I'm not saying anything bad about Amway).

It's just that I spent SO much money on tool kits and seminars and I guess I didn't have the right mindset and I was in it for several years and well, I still feel like the biggest failure - like how can I think this tool kit might help me be my own boss and enough make money to live off of- but I want to!

I read your newsletter and love it (and I read most of one of your books :) and I have grown I think and am even more organized now but I'm still scared to fail myself.

Thanks in advance for any words of wisdom you or someone on your staff could provide me.

My Response

My honest thought?
Another collection of tools, no matter how valuable, will not help unless you have structure and support. It is incredibly difficult to hold the big picture that the details at the same time, and to grow an income, that is what we have to do.

I'd rather see you save your money and invest in a community of support like Shaboom County or Mark Silver's Oasis. Then, dive in. Introduce yourself and tell folks what you want to create. You don't have to know where to start, we will help.

Then, when you have support to help you focus and follow through, investing in tools and programs makes sense. But you won't have to invest in a heap of them all at once.

Now, if you have the resources to buy The Ultimate Entrepreneur Toolkit AND join a community, do it. The Toolkit is an incredible bargain and most of the products are phenomenal. But again, even the greatest products won't help you if you don't have support and structure. You just can't do it all yourself.

I hope this helps, and thank you for trusting me to answer honestly.

Warmly,

Molly

PS: I am allergic to businesses like Amway. I know they work well for some folks, but they make me nuts. I have never been able to make a dime in network marketing.

Bonus: An Honesty Exercise
Set aside 15 minutes to reflect on an aspect of your business or work that has been troubling. Set a timer and write answers to the following questions at least until the time is up. If you are stumped by one question, move on to the next one, then come back to the one you skipped. Keep your pen moving (or your fingers keying) even if you have to write nonsense to do so.

What do I know about the way I look at business that I'm pretending not to understand?

What am I afraid of? How did I set that up?

What's my responsibility for this? (Responsibility = ability to respond.)

What do I want, really?

What do I have to offer, really, whether or not I am ready to give it?

What's in the way of my being honest with myself?

What's in the way of my being honest with others?

From whom am I concealing my real concerns, motives, or beliefs?

What would happen if I told the truth?

Some of these questions may feel uncomfortable. Good! That's a sure sign that you've been keeping something from yourself. Keep asking these uncomfortable questions until you can face the answers squarely. Chances are that other people know or suspect what you've kept from yourself, so do yourself the favor of letting yourself in on the secret.

Honesty is not kid stuff. It's hard work. When you are tempted to wimp out, ask yourself if you can afford to be the last to know the truth.

A Reality Check for the Self Employment Dream

2009-06-18T20:09:24Z

One of the themes that runs through Believe: A Guide to Practical Attraction is the distinction between the creative power of thought and the resource-depleting practice of wishful thinking.

On the one hand, thought has the power to bridge current reality and a dreamed-for outcome. Our experience of the world is created by the thoughts we believe. But wishful thinking, by definition, keeps us and what we wish for separate. The wish is always a distant dream. The harder we wish, the more we resist (and even resent) current reality.

With this in mind, here is a quick reality check. After all, your possible dream begins here and now, not there and then.

You Will Make Mistakes
Hello! Mistakes happen. If you position yourself as a know-it-all, mistakes can be fatal. Position yourself instead as a human being, a learner, an adventurer, and your mistakes become platforms for next steps.

Not Everyone Wants or Needs What You Have
That's good news, because odds are that you can't respond to everyone anyway. Cultivate the courage, integrity, and clarity to listen deeply to prospective clients and decline to work with those whom you are not ideally suited to serve.

Obstacles Are Essential to Creating
Opposition is an essential shaper of the creative process, closing off some choices and pointing in new, sometimes completely unfamiliar and unexplored, directions. Think of it as putting banks on a river. Without those banks, a river's flow loses force. Add banks, and you focus and direct a powerful flow.

Humbly Welcome Opportunities to Profit
Remember the Marianne Williamson quote, "We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be?"

Who are you to not profit from your work? It's simply wasteful not to harvest, use, and recycle the gifts we've been given. Let's get a clue and stop starving ourselves and our businesses of the oxygen they need to thrive.

Clients Have Bad Days, Too
Some times they're going to take it out on you. That doesn't mean you have to slink home licking your wounds, nor does it mean you get to strike back. It certainly doesn't mean you have to accept abuse.

When you feel unfairly used, take a few deep breaths, notice what you wish were different, and remember that we're all human. Maybe it's time to do some boundary maintenance. Are you pretending that you need to please everyone or that everyone needs to like you in order for you to thrive? Look to yourself, not because you are to blame, but because you are the only one whose behavior you can manage.

Sometimes Whole Systems Go Wrong
Or you find out too late that a new project was not quite ready for prime time. (Tell me about it.) At times like this you get to practice being available and responsive to client needs while also taking care of yourself.

Sometimes you won't (yet) know how to solve or resolve the problem, and you may resent the time you're using to reassure clients instead of getting things on track. Breathe. Learn to say, "I don't know, and I do care, and I will get back to you as soon as I can." Practice saying it with dignity, conviction, and patience. Take some time to wonder what you would need to believe in order for all of this to feel right and true.

It Takes a Village to be Self-Employed
Self-employment doesn't mean we don't need or want support, though we may be the last to realize it. Spend some time wondering how other people might want you to thrive. Let your imagination run free as you speculate on what kinds of collaboration could work for you. Turn your complaints about networking into dreams of your ideal support system. What would your business look and feel like if you knew you did not have to have it all together because there was lots of help at hand?

The secrets to creating the possible dream are all related to accepting what is, which includes accepting the support that is everywhere around you and accepting your own desire to build a business that adds real value in the world and allows you to thrive. Some days it will be easier than others to believe that reality and your dream can co-exist. But if you persist with humility, passion, and trust, your dream will teach you how to make it real.

Find out how The 2009 Self Employment Telesummit can help you achieve your possible dream. Registration opens July 5; telesummit September 10-22. To learn more, click here.

Photo: Courtesy of flickr.com

Are you in a faux flow trance?

2009-06-12T02:31:53Z

Flow is described as “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're using your skills to the utmost." (Mihaly Cziksentmihalyi)

Going with the flow is supposed to signify natural, effortless movement from one moment to the next. When it comes to managing your energy and attention in the absence of an external boss, going with the flow can be disastrous.

In fact, it's not flow at all, but faux-flow.

Aimlessness
When going with the flow means flowing any which way, it's not flow, it's aimlessness.

Flow requires us to make a decision. De-cide, from the Latin "cut off." Harsh words in our feel-good-crazy times, but essential to flow.

Flow requires deciding on a direction and turning away from competing directions. Until you make a decision, you may feel all flow-y, but you're in a faux-flow trance.

Apathy
If going with the flow means not going anywhere until the limitations are removed, it's not flow, it's apathy.

Flow requires constraint. A river gathers force from the narrowness of its banks relative to the volume of water. The same is true when you decide what to create. Limitation and constraint focus your attention, require you to make choices, and keep you moving forward.

Self Deception
If going with the flow means believing your thoughts and feelngs, it's not flow, but self deception.

Accurate feedback is essential to flow, and we can't get accurate feedback if we live in our heads.

The only way to get accurate feedback is to look to what philosopher Ken Wilber calls a community of the adequate. (I know. Not a very juicy term for the village that gives life to your creative endeavors, but he's a guy.)

Left to our own devices, we see what we expect to see, what we want to see, what we are afraid to see. It's not that we are unwilling to see the truth (well, not always), it's just that the committee of me, myself, and I produce distorted information.

Breaking the Faux Flow Trance
Breaking the faux-flow trance means:

Making a decision.

Accepting constraints as an aid to the creative process.

Actively soliciting feedback from a community that can see you in ways you can't see yourself.

When you have those three factors in place, flow will happen. Without them, it won't.

Flow's more fun!

Stop! Do Not Trust That Guy!

2009-06-05T01:07:05Z

Photo courtesy istockphoto.com

Let me say right off the bat that the biggest barrier to prosperous self-employment is rampant suspicion.

Suspicion about people's motives, integrity, intentions, ability, understanding, reliability, and more can leave the self employed person isolated, frustrated, and resource-less.

And everything we suspect about others we suspect about ourselves, sometimes to a greater degree. Which, since we're our own bosses, can make work hellish.

In one fashion or another all the work I do could fall under the umbrella of "healing suspicion."

Still, I say that if you aren't suspicious you aren't paying attention. And you really should pay attention, at least some of the time.

To reconcile all this, let's look at what suspicion is and what it's for.

Suspicion Is a Messenger

According to the Oxford American Dictionary, suspicion is:

1. a feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true.
2. a very slight trace of something.

Now, you wouldn't get very far, you might not even get out of bed, without the "feeling or thought that something is possible, likely, or true." And if you didn't pay attention to very slight traces of something, you'd miss out on all kinds of good stuff.

The Difference Between the Messenger and the Message

The function of suspicion is to alert us to a possibility. Suspicion becomes a problem when we experience possibility as fact.

It's perfectly reasonable to suspect that the stranger at the door is a solicitor. What's not reasonable (and what can seriously impair your relationships with the neighbors) is to bark "We don't want any" at the new neighbor who dropped by to introduce himself and drop off some cookies.

Suspicion is a signal that we should pay attention. Which is why I say, "If you aren't suspicious, you aren't paying attention."

Two Kinds of Attention

When suspicion strikes, it's natural to become vigilant, and vigilance is one way to pay attention.

But when the signal has been received, we need to decode the message. To do that, we need to shift from vigilance to inquiry.

Prolonged vigilance burns out our adrenals, produces chronic anxiety, and distorts perception. Oh, and it makes it very difficult to decode and evaluate the message.

What to Do?

The simplest way to shift from vigilance to inquiry is to ask a question: "Is this (person, organization, offer) trust-worthy?"

Of course, asking this question puts the burden of investigation and evaluation on you. It takes away the psychic barriers that protect us from action (and possible failure). It asks us to shift from being vigilant (this could be dangerous) to being responsible (response-able).

This week, when you sense suspicion, give yourself a moment to really notice it. (Greet the messenger.) Define what is up for examination, and ask "Is this (person, organization, offer) trust-worthy?

Let me know what you notice in the comments section of The Accidental Entrepreneurs Blog. http://www.shaboominc.com/blog

And check out the free teleclass described below. It's all about how to get from suspicion to trust without losing your shirt. This information could have saved Bernie Madoff's investors a lot of grief.

Free Trust Teleclass

Learn how to go from chronic suspicion to informed trust in this week's free preview event for The Self Employment Telesummit. The class is called Authentic Trust:
How to Rely on Others Without Being Taken for a Ride, and it will be at noon Pacific time, 3pm Eastern time on Friday, June 5.

If you're interested register even if you cannot attend. I'll send you a link to the recording.

Wildcard Wednesday Sunshine came softly through my window today

2009-06-03T22:46:35Z

It's gorgeous here in Suquamish this afternoon. Temps are in the mid 80s and the sky is a cool blue, not the white-hot blue that sometimes steals freshness from a summer day.

I just finished editing this week's episode of Self Employment TV (you can see it below, and someday I'll even add it to the Self Employment TV web site). The reason that's relevant is that I've been enjoying a spell of flow: focused, relaxed productivity.

I really like it when that happens.

Mom, Where Does Focus Come From?
Sometimes I swear that focus is a myth promulgated by over-adrenalized self-help gurus to sell books and CDs. I resent it mightily when someone pontificates about the latest system for getting focused.

In fact, I resent it so much that, sometimes, I stay unfocused out of pure spite.

But I digress.

I suspect that the focus I experience today is the manifestation of a few wise choices, one healthy practice (which has led to another), the support of wise and compassionate friends, and grace.

And it's the grace I'd like to dwell on (and in) for the moment.

Wow, How's this for Hanging a Left?
My mind just turned to Gerald May's challenging and insightful book, Addiction and Grace. May, a psychiatrist and a devout Catholic (if memory serves), invites us to look into the deep dark corners of unexamined habits and preferences to discover where we turn from grace.

As we encounter and acknowledge our habitual turnings away, we may experience a profound and helpless sense of remorse, which is a turning toward that same grace.

It occurs to me that there is something quite lovely about the whole of this, the turnings away and the turnings toward, the hiding and the disclosing of ourselves to ourselves and to whatever greater power we recognize.

On Being too Full of Ourselves
Perhaps you, too, grew up overhearing the disdainful whispers, "Oh, he's so full of himself" and "Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth." And maybe to this day you find something a bit distasteful in public displays of self love and approval (or PDSLAs, as they shall heretofore be known).

The admonition against self love and approval can steal a lot of joy from innocent beauty.

I'm talking about the innocent beauty of any one of us during a momentary encounter with his or her own essential amazingness. (This topic is hard on one's syntax.) We know it when we see it in children (except when we are feeling very, very grumpy). The joy of spontaneous self-love is beautiful to behold.

And what a turning away from grace it is when we step on the sparks of enthusiasm for ourselves. (And, remember the suggestion that this turning is part of a larger turning, thus not necessarily to be disparaged or feared.)

In January 2008, at the Certification Workshop for facilitators of The Work of Byron Katie, I noticed myself thinking, "I should be feeling more sober and serious. I shouldn't be so full of myself. I shouldn't think I'm so hot."

As I walked down to the lunch tent, I did The Work on "I shouldn't think too highly of myself." Here's a synopsis of what I found.

Is it true?
Yes.

Can I absolutely know that it is true?
No.

How do I react when I believe that thought? What happens?
I contract. I see others' beauty and wisdom and feel resentful, envious, less-than. I compete both overtly and covertly. It's like putting on a girdle and shoes that are way too tight, then bitching at myself for being cranky at the party.

Who would I be without the thought?
I would be the woman walking to the lunch tent in the sunshine with happiness bubbling in her belly. I would be shining. I would be so full of love and ease. I would be light.

I could go on and attempt to tie all this together. Fortunately for you and for me, it's Wednesday, and that means I have a big honking permission slip that says, "Molly is allowed to write without purpose or responsibility today."

So, I did.

Bug Your Customers (They'll Love You for It)

2009-06-03T22:27:27Z

Synopsis
Are you afraid to bug your customers with information about your products or services?

I understand. Been there. Still there sometimes. And in the past week I pushed my personal envelope around bugging customers, and the results were terrific. I received thank you notes from people who were able to register for the The Self Employment Telesummit because I reminded them on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

It scared the heck out of me, and some folks unsubscribed. That's cool, and that's their business. My business is to take care of the people I serve by delivering timely information in their best interest.

Are you taking care of the people you serve?

Spiritual perfectionism, strategic procrastination, and feeling yummy

2009-05-29T16:48:07Z

I started this post with

"It's Friday, and here's a recap of this week's realizations. Actually, it's a recap of yesterday's realizations, because that's as far back as I can remember."

Immediately, the staff copywriter raised a red flag.

"What are you doing? What's your message? Why should anybody bother to read this? What's the purpose of this post?"

Yikes. Until then, I thought I was just going to talk to you. You being anyone who cared to listen. I mean, I'm not holding a gun to your head.

But I dutifully began again.

"There was a biggie (realization, that is). Now, how do I make it succinct?"

At this point the marketing director, who had been reading over my shoulder, gave a heavy sigh.

"What?" I said.
"Well. It's just that, as a reader, I still don't know why I should read this."

I'd written exactly three sentences, deleted one of them, and was about to delete another. And then I decided to send the staff out for coffee.

Whew! I'm gonna write fast so we can have this chat before they get back.

Realization 1: It's okay to choose a resourceful state.

I'm tired of being jaded and skeptical. Yes, I know there is a lot of BS in the world, especially when it comes to motivation, focus, the law of attraction, and the like.

And, you know what? I want as much of the good stuff for myself and for you as possible. And there is a lot of good stuff lying around just waiting for us to take it in.

What this boils down to is noticing when my Inner Cynic objects to changing from a crummy state of mind/body/spirit to a yummy one. Then, asking myself if I truly believe that crummy is morally superior to yummy.

It's not, you know.

That doesn't mean the crummy is morally inferior, either. Crummy and yummy are morally neutral.

Sometimes I don't seem to be able to shift from crummy to yummy, and that's okay. But when I can, which is a heck of a lot more often than I've been acknowledging, why wouldn't I?

Realization 2: It's okay to have a purpose.
Oh my, I'm beginning to spot a trend.

For some time know I've been allergic to purpose because I see so many people flailing around and not taking action because they don't know their purpose. Looking for purpose is a bit like looking for your shadow. Sometimes you can see it in front of you or behind you or off to the side.

But regardless of where it is, you're standing on it.

So I've made a religion of being anti-purpose. "I don't need no stinkin' purpose," I'd think. I'm just going to take the next indicated step.

And I thought I was being all humble and realistic. When I was really buying into the notion that purpose had to be grandiose, which is a kind of inverted grandiosity.

I thought I was being realistic and going with the flow. In fact, I was trying so hard to prove that I wasn't trying to control things that I was blocking the flow.

Dunno if any of that makes sense to you, but I'm here to say that purpose is marvelous. When it shows up, go for it.

That isn't to say that you need a purpose. Like I said, you're standing on it. But it's worth checking in to see if you're standing or stuck.

Realization 3: It's better to do things wrong than to not do them at all.
Now, I actually thought I was pretty good at this. Lord knows I make enough mistakes. And I am pretty good at letting go of some kinds of perfection.

But come to find out, I've been a spiritual perfectionist with a procrastination strategy. Here's how that looks.

I realize that there's a flaw in the way I've been making sense of the world. I don't know how to make sense of things without that flawed way of thinking, but I'm determined not to continue to operate "that way."

So I say no to the old way of making meaning and sense of things. I opt for a new way, one that, by definition, I'm not very experienced in (yet). So far, so good.

But when I require myself to be/appear fluent in the new meaning-making system, I dissociate from any part of my experience that doesn't fit my idea of what that would look like. And, in case you haven't noticed, dissociation makes for clumsiness, a pervasive sense of inauthenticity and, sometimes, existential terror.

Oh well.

Firmly in the embrace of spiritual perfectionism, I cast about for strategies to make me look and feel less adrift than I am. On a practical level, this means my energy and attention go to self-analysis, self-reproach, and closeted self-improvement.

Which results in an indefinite moratorium on actual growth via practice, engagement in community, and just plain living where I am. That's the procrastination piece.

The moral of the story: When in transition, it doesn't help to pretend you're on the other side.

Realization 4: I don't know who I am (and that's okay).
Many years ago a woman I admire tremendously told me that the thing she admired about me is that I don't care what people think of me.

If only.

Back then (circa 1990) I had a crew cut, dressed funny (arty), and owned a fiber art studio called Mollycoddles. She interpreted some or all of that as meaning I wasn't preoccupied by what other people think.

Like I said, if only.

This week I've been noticing with some chagrin how much I compare myself with others and how I contract when, in my view, I come up short.

Mark Silver writes better headlines.
Jennifer Louden is nicer.
Naomi Dunford swears better.
Havi Brooks is funnier.

I could go on... (I hear you, and I won't.)

But then I got to thinking about The Self Employment Telesummit. If there weren't people who did things better than me, I'd do the blinkin' thing myself. And it would be a much, much different event.

Because yesterday I started to see the purpose of it all, my purpose, if you will. And that's to change the context of self-employment from a competitive, lonely, overwhelming slog up a never-ending hill to a collaborative, resource-full, supportive creative process.

I've always been fascinated with how our lives unfold, how we do and don't consciously participate in the ongoing creation of meaning, substance, and connection.

And now I get to play a bigger, more generous game integrating all that life knowledge with business know-how so that creative self-employed people can experience was less overwhelm and a lot more success.

If that's the result of not knowing who I am, it works for me.

Wow, if you read this far, thank you. Now it's your turn. What realizations have you had this week? How are you seeing and doing things a little differently?

How to Make Free Stuff Valuable

2009-05-29T16:36:50Z

Photo: Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Should you be giving things away?

A while back, Nona Parry raised a juicy question: do people need to pay for something to appreciate it? The question of whether people value what you give them for free is an important one and worth revisiting.

Nona wrote:

I cannot stress enough how very much I disagree that people must pay for something in order to value it. I first ran into that attitude in the 1970s with the Transcendental Meditation people and have been avoiding its proponents ever since.

She has a point, and if I have given the impression that people don’t appreciate what they get for free, allow me to set the record straight.

Give-aways are important means of inviting your customers in, introducing them to your work, building trust, and expressing appreciation. They can also be part of a strategy of giving back, contributing some part of your work to benefit your community.

Still, there are two factors to keep in mind when you offer something for free.

The relationship between cost and commitment

If you offer a free teleclass, you can expect fewer than half of the people who register to show up. But when you charge for a teleclass, almost everyone shows up, even when it is the same class that had 50% no-shows when you gave it at not cost.

What’s going on here?

No matter how valuable your product or service, it has to compete with myriad other things for your customer’s time and attention

Coffee with a friend. A headache. Even–heaven forfend–television. Not to mention work, doctors' appointments, and showing up for the kids’ soccer games.

Think about it. It’s Saturday morning and your choices are:

a) Do your homework for the marketing course you received as a door prize. b) Weed the vegetable garden. c) Finish the project that was due Thursday. d) Have coffee with your sister who is in town for the day. e) Do the grocery shopping. f) Work the crossword puzzle. g) … h) …

Do you see? The list could go on and on, and no matter how valuable the marketing course might be, you are probably going to choose one of the other options.

Of course, you could have paid for the course and still put your homework off in favor of other things. God knows, I have paid for plenty of programs I never finished. But I promise you, I gave them a better shot than I’ve given the umpteen free reports I’ve received for subscribing to an ezine like this one.

Everything free has a cost

If you are in business, your ability to give free content away depends on your ability to generate revenue. Ideally, you will arrive at a balance of giving that serves others and contributes to the well being of your business. Otherwise, you are like a parent who starves her children to take care of the neighborhood.

So how do you know what to give away?

It's about the customer

Whether you are selling your work or giving it away, you absolutely, positively, must know whom you are serving. The more narrowly you can specify your “just right” customer, the more appropriately you can design your give-aways.

It needs to solve a problem

Forget about mouse pads, chocolate bars, and calendars. Your first free offer should identify and solve a problem for your customer.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First, pain signals danger and urgency; it is a call to action. That is, it motivates people to use what you give them and that is good for them and good for you.

It’s got to be simple

Your freebie should be like Google search results: relevant, easily accessible, and easy to use.

It needs to give them a next step

When your prospective customer uses what you give them, they will be in one of two situations: they will want more or they will want out. (Believe it or not, either is fine – you aren’t taking hostages, you’re building relationships.)

Your gift should include a clearly identified next step clearly identified. That step could be visiting your Web site, completing a survey, or buying a product. Without this step, you are asking your customer to figure out what to do next. If they knew that, they wouldn’t need you.

It’s a path, not a forced march

By offering gifts and helping your prospects and customers use them, you make a path to your door. The point isn’t to force people along the path, but to make the path easy enough to find that those who want to make the journey can do so.

Far from reducing the relationship with customers to one purely based on profit, this approach to giving invites your customers into an intentional community where new value will be created with every step.

Do what I say… a modest disclaimer

I know that what I’ve said here is true based on experience. But do I follow these guidelines in my own give-aways?

Sometimes. I’m getting better. And it’s a process. I just want you to know that you don’t have to get everything right all the time to succeed. Just keep an open mind and a playful spirit; you’ll get there one step at a time.

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