So, it’s nearly December; d’you remember how last year I organised the Cardiff So(u)lopreneurs Christmas Lunch Thing? Yeah? Well, this year the Queen of Amazing Possibilities , Noreeen Blanluet is sorting the freelancer festive frolics… from her (rather wonderfully revamped) blog:

How Mindy might look if she gets into the party spirit and agrees to be dressed up like an elf!

I’m organising a Christmas Do for Cardiff(ish) Entrepreneurs and Freelancers. It’s on Friday, 16th December, in the afternoon/evening, there will be a home-made (by me!) Festive Spread, and it’s happening at the BeAmazingToday Headquarters in Splott (Cardiff). So whether you define yourself as freelance, self-employed, entrepreneur /solopreneur /soulopreneur /soultrepreneur, work-from-home…  or if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur but haven’t made the leap yet… this is for you!

Come and hang out and partake in more-or-less Christmas-related food. (There may be mince pies, or something mince pie related. I will see how far I can push my baking skills!) Significant Others are welcome, the dress code is: absolutely no ties (unless worn as headbands), and pre-booking is ESSENTIAL by 13th December, on the eventbrite page which you will get to by clicking this link, and for the reasonable contribution of six squid.

So… see you there, yeah? x

Too right, you’ll see me there Noreenski! In fact, she’s put me in charge of music and decorations… ha!  I’m thinking all white and silver… ooh, spray snow… and Mindy the cat dressed up as the baby Jesus… or an elf! Or…

Anyway, click on this here link – or that one up there – and get yourself booked in. It’s gonna be smashin’ I tell ye.

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1. Mindset. Typically, they are leaders and entrepreneurs – neither of which find it easy to

a) admit they need help – and that’s as much to themselves as, God forbid, anyone else
& b) actually ask or look for it!

We are used to being independent, making things happen… so even when we know things are not working, that things need to change, the idea that this time, we alone might not have the answer/can’t fix whatever’s broken is just a thought too far! Add to that the discomfort of feeling vulnerable, exposed, ‘stupid’ even, that admitting and sharing our problems can bring up and it’s little wonder we delay getting help – often perilously.

2.  Financial. When big businesses have problems, they call in expensive consultants. That works for them because they can afford big fees and they take the (correct) view that it’s an essential investment ie. they focus on the value the ‘spend’ will deliver, rather than seeing a ‘cost’. The sole trader, or small business (even if they share this ‘success’ mentality of ‘value/investment’) would be hard pushed to afford big business consulting fees. Even a few hundred pounds for half a day (say) with an independent consultant, can, in times of hardship – and when there are no guarantees – bring on the jitters. There’s a worry* about putting all your eggs in one basket… What if your investment doesn’t deliver, or fails to give you the desired return? (*Oh look, we’re back to mindset again!)

So what to do? Well, besides stepping away from our egos and accepting that we alone can’t possibly have ALL the answers, we can also accept that not only is it ‘okay’ to admit that we want help, it’s actually the smartest position to take. And from there, we can start looking for the best help available.

About a month ago, my dear friend, client and colleague Chris Ogle came up to Wales on one of his 4Networking (4N) Road Trips. Besides visiting and 4Sighting at several Welsh 4N meetings, he also arranged and chaired a Link4Growth ‘taster’ session after the  4N Chepstow event. Chris had been banging on about Link4Growth for months, and had hired me to build them a very basic website, so I already knew a fair bit about this new venture; but in truth, I didn’t really ‘get it’. He described it as a ‘Board Room’. Honestly? It sounded really dull and stuffy to me and I’d kind of decided that it wasn’t anything that I’d benefit from. However, I’d heard some really positive feedback from people who’d attended the first Link4Growth events, down ‘that London’ way, so whilst my decision to attend this ‘taster’ was mostly out of loyalty and a desire to support him, it was also to see what all the fuss was about.

Boy am glad I decided to show up! In fact, so powerful was the experience, that immediately afterwards, I put myself forward to get Link4growth off the ground here in Wales – and booked and PAID for my place on the first one.

Why so powerful? You know, I keep trying to explain ‘why’ to friends and associates in business , but it’s incredibly hard to do. I’ve yet to work out why that is, but I suspect it’s to do with the multiple levels it works on; it is a ‘board room’, and it’s also a mastermind group, and I’ve since discovered that the process is essentially an ‘action learning set’, but none of those phrases really explains how it flexes your business, relationship and personal development muscles simultaneously. And that goes as deep as it does broad. Plus it makes you feel great because you get to give as much as you receive…  so you feel supported and supportive, valued and valuable etc. in equal measure.

But most importantly perhaps – you get tangible, practical, workable  solutions and ideas to apply to your business from 12 REAL business people… not theorists, or people who are out of touch with today’s marketplace, but those – who like you are actually out there doing it – day in, day out.  So you benefit from freah thinking, MASSES of experience and new and varied skills and perspectives…

AND because dropping your ‘Yeah, business is fantastic!‘ mask, in favour of the ‘Actually, things are a bit crappy and I’m struggling‘ truth, takes a bit of courage – and you do it along with another 11 people in a supportive, respectful and confidential space – a quality of relationship is created which is usually only achieved after months, maybe even years, of small talk over coffee/wine.

Anyway, I’m loathe to go on now, because my gushiness is in danger of over-egging the whole thing, so instead, I’m going to point you towards the Link4Growth website where you can find out more about how it all works and where your nearest ‘board’ is.

I’m also going to leave you with an audio of an unplanned conversation I had with my friend Beryl Whiting about her Link4Growth experience.

If you’re in the South Wales area, please do come and try it for yourself. Our first session is on 18th August 2011 at the Coldra Holiday Inn in Newport (11 – 1.30pm) or the next one after that is on 7th September at the Maldron Hotel in Cardiff (10.30 – 12).
ADVANCE BOOKING is ESSENTIAL (£30*) and is easily done via the website or by following those links above.

*Someone suggested to me that people wouldn’t be prepared to spend £30 on something they’d never experienced before and that we should run a freebie session!! Well, I’m sorry if this upsets anyone, but if you’re not prepared to ‘risk’ a £30 investment in yourself and your business, then perhaps you should go find a job, because I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be in business.

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Today alone, I’ve had 3 separate enquiries from people needing help with Facebook business pages – all of them involving how to create a memorable URL or ‘pretty page name’, so I thought I’d share some key info here.

First thing to understand… you are stuck with that rather messy URL for your FB page (ie. it has all those ugly numbers in it), until you have 25 ‘likers’. That’s just how it is. So your first task (after you’ve populated the page with a bit of useful content) is to get to that magic 25!

To do that, I suggest you click on the ’Share’ link (1) which appears as the bottom-most item on the left hand side of your page margin. A box will appear:

Click on the ‘down arrow’ just to the right of ‘On Your Own Wall‘ (2) and you will see further options appear in a dropdown menu. Select ‘In A Private Message‘ (3), select (in batches of 8 say) people who know, like and trust you – and then, before you click on Share Page (4),  simply ask them to help you get to 25 and why. Let them know you won’t mind if you unlike in a week or so and don’t be shy to ask them to share your Facebook business page on their wall or with their own friends who may be interested.

Once you have 25 likers, you can get yourself that pretty and memorable URL – perfect for printing on your business card and/or sharing verbally. So how do you do that?

Simply go to: http://www.facebook.com/username/ and follow the instructions there.

Hope that’s useful

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“Some people confuse heart-speak with emotions. Gut feelings are more about changeable emotions, like fear, anger, happiness or sadness. Being in your heart space allows you to feel connected to unconditional love. That is the very best place from which to ask a question and then to feel, listen and know the answer, without interference from the mind. A mind is like a tiny drop of water, a heart allows us to feel, know and understand the ocean. When we do this, we make decisions that benefit everyone. Stefan“

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- How does it feel?
- Why mastering the practice would be good?
- What the alternativea are? etc.

Then just by chance (lol – yeah right), I find this video; Peter Russell talking about ‘letting go’ at Burning Man 2010…

Your thoughts?

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Other people’s words seem to be doing it for me at the moment; I’ve just read The Invitation by Oriah which was sent to me by another dear friend Lynne Allbutt, who I’ve been working with a lot lately on THE fun-est, project (more on that soon). For the moment, here is that poem by Oriah which resonates so loudly with me, I find myself crying when I read it…

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

By Oriah © Mountain Dreaming, from the book The Invitation. Published by HarperONE, San Francisco, 1999. All rights reserved.

I feel so blessed to have some really-very-special people in my close circle of friends. Their love and support, manifest in words and actions, is always hugely appreciated… and in recent weeks even more so.  Lucky girl, me.

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So. Recently a bunch of ideas and stuff that had been floating around in my head for a while and things that I feel really passionate about came together in a wonderful burst of creativity and insight and a real ‘this is what you shall do’ moment.
And one of the things that I feel strongly about and talk about (a lot!) is FLOW.

Flow?

You’re in flow when you’re in the zone, when you’re in that sweet spot where everything falls into place and things are easy, straightforward, effortless. When you have clarity about what you are doing and where you are going and the Universe seems to be conspiring to get you there. The right people show up with the right resources at the right time, and you don’t seem to want to procrastinate or distract yourself because you’re so immersed in what you are doing that it is the only thing you want to be doing right now.

Flow is when miracles happen. Great design. Art. Breakthroughs. Lightbulb moments. Creation. Mastery.

Flow happens when you are connected with both your head and your heart. Or to put it another way, when your left-brained, analytical, logical processes are in balance with your right-brained, instinctive, feelings-based ones. Use your head without your heart and you will be tyrannical and ruthless (with yourself as well as with others). Use your heart without your head and you will be soft and compassionate but you will stagnate. Use both in balance however, and life will be sweet.

Would you like an example?

I did the video for The Paradox Experience website last week. It wasn’t going very well. Now, I’m pretty aware of flow; I’m even pretty good at getting into and remaining in flow. But this time, it just didn’t happen.

You know you’re not in flow when things aren’t working out the way you want them to. You get stressed and frustrated. You stop smiling and instead you frown like you’re in pain. In my case, lots of swearing happens. And in this particular case of the video, walking away from the camera about a million times and starting over again. And cut. And again… and cut.

What was happening, you see, is that I wanted the video to have all the content of the website, so that people who take information in better through seeing and hearing it could watch the video instead of reading the webpage. And so I was all up in my head and I had a mental list of things to say and what comes first and what goes next and I was barely thinking about what I was actually saying, more about what I was planning to be saying. I was in my head, and I was in the future.

And then all of a sudden, I would be in the middle of a sentence – I would have managed to get the right words out in the right order and things would be going ok – and then suddenly my brain would freeze. And it would start shouting at me, things like

“What are you doing? You’re talking to a camera! Did what you just say make sense? You don’t even know who you’re talking to, who’s going to be watching! Did you remember to say this bit? I think you did, but did you really? And should that other bit have come first or second?”

And so I would pause, sometimes even in the middle of a word. I would start thinking that I had just paused and that it would look weird so I should really carry on before too much time elapses. Then I would be thinking about how I’m thinking about pausing rather than carrying on, and then berate myself for thinking about the pause… and then it would have been so long that I would look like I had been struck with sudden amnesia and paralysis and we would have to cut. I was in my head, and I was in the past.

So I kept flipping between thoughts of what was going to happen and thoughts of what had just happened and wasn’t actually in the present moment. Not in flow. And the video just wasn’t happening. I was aware of how ironic that was, since the Paradox Experience is all about being in flow.

A recipe for flow.

And so we (we, by the way, is my patient, supportive best friend who was cameraman for the day, and I) went for a walk. We counted the buttercups in a meadow and jumped up and down on a wooden bridge and pretended to be swept away by the wind rushing through the trees.

And we tried again. And cut.
And then I said out loud what my heart had been whispering and which I had been being headstrong and ignoring:

“I don’t want to do this. This isn’t what I want to say. It’s rubbish.”

Not the content of what I was saying, of course not. But the way I was trying to do it was all wrong. So I spoke simply from my heart and explained what my head had wanted to do (and it had its merits), apologisedfor not doing it, admitted that video isn’t really my thing – yet – and that it’s hard and I need lots more practice, and asked people to check out the website. We did one take.

It was me: honest, open, vulnerable, admitting to failure, engaging from my heart space, strong, authentic.

It was me in flow.

One take.

About Noreen Blanluet:

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As I say in the boo, the Ad led to a sales letter/page. But not one of those ridiculously long, hyped up things… oh no, this one is a thing of creative beauty and utterly engaging… quirky illustrations alongside what I call ‘wake up words’ (rather than ‘glaze over’), set out in bitesize paragraphs which clearly outline the proposition. And the whole thing is headed up by a short, playful yet poignant video presentation, and completed with 4 bonuses of real value (as opposed to 25 you don’t really want), a guarantee and a call to action (payment) with a date to act by. I know all good sales letters follow a similar formula, but this is refreshingly different… it has that all important ‘stand out‘.

I LOVE heart-led business and people who aren’t afraid to be themselves and communicate authentically and congruently. I talk about the power of these things in an interview I gave Andre Duquemin for his AttractPatientsNow.com podcast.  Jenny Shih’s gift to the world, her passion, her purpose and how she presents it all to the world on her website demonstrate that power perfectly.   I mean…  one minute, I’d never heard of her… the next, I’ve clicked on an Ad and she’s created a huge fan in me! As I also said in my AudioBoo, I’ve fallen a little bit in love with Jenny Shih and I absolutely want to work with her at some point, because a) I know she will understand me and b) she’ll enable me to release even more of the ‘magic’ within.  Now that’s awesome power!

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1. CheckAppointments.com - Online Appointment Scheduling Software for Your Business Lets your customers book their own appointments online, 24/7 and provides you with a simple appointment management system for scheduling too. You can send out automatic email reminders, have multiple schedules and locations, and easily manage and streamline your whole appointment scheduling process. The paid-for version also allows you to embed the scheduler into your site really simply. Either way, there is no appointment software to download and set-up looks pretty straightforward compared to some of the systems I’ve used.
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2. NutshellMail.com – Monitoring & Managing Your Brand on Facebook, Twitter & More NutshellMail tracks your brand’s social media activity and delivers a summary to your email inbox on your schedule. It covers YouTube, Linked In & Four Square as well as a couple of others and looks like it might be a very handy tool if you don’t have time to visit all your profiles every day and want to reduce the amount of individual notification emails coming into your Inbox. I’ll let you know how I get on with it. (Thanks to @OtisOgle for the heads up on that one.)
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3. TeamLab.com – Project Management & Collaboration (Basecamp alternative) Also has document editing, tasks, milestones, forums, chat and more. I have to be honest, Basecamp is good, but still far from perfect, which makes me less than keen to spend my hard-earned on it when I can have something as equally less-than-perfect for free! I’ve been looking too at Freedcamp.com, but that’s also not quite right – for my needs anyway… and the only other no-cost alternative I’ve come across is RedMine which was recommended to me by the wonderful Steve Jones of HBS Internet and although it actually looks like the best solution in its functionality, it’s certainly not the prettiest and is self-hosted, so would involve a fair bit of set-up too… watch this space I guess.

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