Creative Activities Lead to True Calling July 1, 2009

Many people I have met over the years who are exploring entrepreneurship have something in common: they are searching for who they are meant to be in the world. What they were born to do in their time on the planet.

So often when we are searching for this thing we’re born to do, we are looking for it like it’s something we lost or something valuable we dropped in the street, like a lost $100 bill, that we must always be searching for or we’ll never feel responsible or complete.

Recently, however, one of my clients shared her story with me and illustrated so clearly that it’s not that we have to go searching for that one thing we are to become but, rather, that we need to connect to the creative conduit that will reveal it to us.

She explained to me that toward the end of  her corporate job experience, she felt a deep sense of longing to do something creative. At that stage, she felt that doing something creative as a career would be such a wonderful way to make a living.

She had always been interested in flower arranging, so she took a class and loved it. She had a natural talent for it and enjoyed connecting to her creative self. Within months of completing the class, she took a second job in the evenings and on the weekends as a floral designer at a local flower shop, and during the day she continued working at her corporate job.

She explained to me that at that point, she felt her world opening up. She started seeing possibilities instead of wallowing in misery. This new awareness and attitude was key to finding her calling. Within a year of floral arranging, she was cleaning up some papers and happened to drop a newspaper on the floor. She looked down and saw it had fallen open to an ad for a workshop teaching Reiki. She had never studied or thought about Reiki before, yet somehow she knew the minute she saw that ad it was the opportunity for which she had been searching.

The workshop in Reiki uncovered her gifts and talents as a healer. She wanted to take it even further and soon became a certified life coach and added a few more healing modalities that she could use to help her clients.

It wasn’t a strong desire to become a healer that led her to her true calling, but her ability to connect with a creative conduit, in her case floral design, that led her to her ultimate calling. And now she has the added benefit of having both in her life.

As you search for a connection to the person you long to become in the world, I encourage you to look for your creative conduit. Woodworking, writing, painting, singing, acting, teaching, crafting, sewing, gardening — whatever connects you to that center of creation. It will ultimately lead you in the direction of your dreams.

Poem: Let “Famine” Inspire You into Action June 22, 2009

Famine
by Alice Barry

It was true
What I knew
What I dreamed
What threatened the seams of yearning in my heart.

It was gone
Before I listened
Before I cared
Before I dared to say, “I love you,” and sweep it off its feet.

It remains
Someplace it can breathe
Someplace within reach
Someplace it can breach the false security of my fear.

Use Summer to Pull You Through June 15, 2009

It’s gorgeous outside right now. And almost no where in the country do we appreciate that more than here in Minnesota.

But when the weather or other forces of nature do make everything easier, there’s an interesting phenomenon that happens to many entrepreneurial spirits: we take a deep breath, we roll up our sleeves and then…we rest.

We take a break — a long three-month break. Then before we know it, in the throws of Fall with Winter nipping at our necks, we panic. We suddenly realize that we had a whole summer of opportunity that slipped by because we rested. We languished in the false relief of sun and fun instead of using all that energy and ease to our advantage.

What if good were great? What if great were outstanding? What if everything you do now to nurture your connections, creativity and commitment were enough to carry you through until next June, even when things don’t feel so easy later in the year?

Now is a great time to connect with other people, enjoy the beauty around us and use it to our creative advantage. So don’t rest. Instead, rest assured that you made the most out of an incredibly opportune time of year.

Energy Prod April 1, 2009

I’ve noticed a powerful tool available to we entrepreneurs. It’s not new, but it’s sometimes overlooked.

I call it the energy prod.

It takes energy to create ideas and energy to take action to implement them. And if you feel your energy to do that is down, all you need to do is find an energy prod.

To my knowledge, there is no such invention on the market yet, but there are endless sources to that can give us the energy we need. My favorite source is watching another entrepreneur in action.

One I’m watching closely right now is Sandy Dempsy. I first met Sandy last summer in at the Las Vegas Storytelling Workshop with Barbara Winter. She didn’t have a business, she just had an idea of what she loved. And now I’m watching her grow that into something magical and meaningful on her new website, www.thedreamingcafe.com.

It’s re-energizing me and reminding me of how much fun it is to connect to an idea that is so important you keep coming back to it and playing with it in new and interesting ways. Sandy is an example of an energy prod.

Who can serve as an energy prod for you?

What can you watch in action?

What can you learn by watching?

The Entrepreneurial Hour March 25, 2009

One of the obstacles many of my clients feel is a barrier when they are just starting their business is time. Not having the time, not taking the time, not knowing the value of their time.

The truth is, it takes as much time as you want to build a business. There is no formula you need to follow, however you do need to find the guidelines that work for you.

Fellow entrepreneur, Sandy Dempsy, for example, was feeling frazzled, overworked, exhausted and creatively drained from her day job. Yet her creative voice was begging for attention and she wanted to get a jump start on her business.

Sandy gave herself the gift of time by using her vacation as an entrepreneurial sabbatical. She used the time before then to plan out her days and goals and anticipating obstacles that may have derailed her so she could strategize ways around them.

During her time off, Sandy said, “I wrote every day, meditated every day, got my new website up and practiced living a new way.” By the way, she also launched that website, www.thedreamingcafe.com, 30 days sooner than she anticipated it would take.

Consider this, in my experience 1 hour in focused entrepreneurial time is equal to about 8 hours in what I call “cubicle” time. Imagine what a difference one hour a day can make!

Now that she’s back to work full time, I know it’ll only get easier for Sandy because she has established the framework and the practice. All she has to do is keep writing something every day and taking one small step at at time.

Learning from Sandy’s experience, know that time is there for you. All it needs is for you to tell it what it will become for you.

Learning to Be OK with Learning March 23, 2009

When I began my business four years ago, I noticed an instant trend: I had to learn something new about myself every single day. There were so many revelations, trials and lessons that I can remember feeling so exhausted at one point I asked my mentors if there would ever be a reprieve. They wisely answered that question with another question, “Do you want to stop learning?”

Of course I knew the answer was, “No,” but I felt so overwhelmed.

Then my coach, Lynn Baskfield, did a great exercise with me that I now use with my clients. At the end of each year, we tallied up my achievements, disappointments and lessons.

She used this exercise to teach me one more important lesson. First, she had me burn my disappointments. No problem there. I wanted those things out of my mind ASAP.

Next, she made me take a match to my achievements. I stayed with her on that one, but I admit I almost dove in the garbage can to save them. How could I let those go? Weren’t those lessons proof that I was here and made a difference?

The she told me I would get to save my list of lessons. Not just save my list of lessons from being burned at the stake in our exercise that day, but actually get to keep those lessons forever.

Now I finally get it.

Learning and learning and learning is so important because the lessons are the only thing we get to carry forward.

Begin Today February 23, 2009

Once you begin, you become.

Once you become, you beckon.

Once you beckon, you are bestowed with riches beyond money.

Begin.

Culture of Overnight Success January 13, 2009

Since becoming an entrepreneur just 5 years ago, I’ve become keenly aware of the troublesome prominence of a culture of overnight success in our world. Yet I have never met anyone who is an overnight success. And even those in the spotlight whom we may consider to be an overnight successes, there is a much broader story for how they got there. The story of “overnight” success is never the whole story.

In most cases, it was through years of work, trial, error, small success, set backs and eventually greater success. It wasn’t overnight.

Take actress Jenna Fischer for example, from the NBC sit com The Office.

The culture of overnight success wants you to know “…that after a string of appearances on successful shows such as Six Feet Under and  Cold Case, Ms. Fischer landed the part of Pam Beesley in The Office and, due to the show’s wildly popular success, she became an overnight sensation which has now landed her an Emmy nomination, money, fame and opened up the opportunities of her choosing.” Happily ever after. End of story.

In an effort to tell stories of incredible success, media sources tells the stories of what is considered someone’s monumental success, through boiled down, succinct packages that work for their publications.

I recently read the follow article excerpt she wrote for TV Guide that tells a much greater part of her story.

Here is how I got “discovered.” I had been living in L.A. for about two years when a friend wrote a TV script and wanted to do a live stage version as a way of attracting TV producers. He

Jenna Fischer of The Office was not an overnight success.

asked me to play a small role. It meant lots of rehearsal for very little stage time and no pay. Along the way I questioned why I had agreed to do it, but it was very funny and he was a friend, so I agreed. After our third performance, his manager approached me and asked if I had representation. I said no. She offered to represent me, saying she thought I had a real future in television comedy. Naomi is still my manager today. A month later, I was doing a very strange play — a musical adaptation of the movie Nosferatu — at a small theater in Los Angeles. I was doing it because I loved the commedia dell’arte style of the show, and because I loved the people involved. I worked all day as a temp doing mind-numbing data entry for a medical company, and then went to rehearsals for five hours a night, often getting home past midnight. One night an agent came to see the play and left his card at the box office asking to meet me. He became my first agent.

Now that sounds easy, right? Well, that was after two years of working as a temp, doing every acting gig I could find for free, borrowing money to buy a new engine for my car, and wearing a pair of shoes with a hole in them because I couldn’t afford anything else. Did I mention my living-room curtain was made from a torn bedsheet? It was another three years before I got my first speaking part on a TV show. That show was Spin City. (I played a waitress in a scene where the girl playing Charlie Sheen’s crazy date threw bread at me.)

Every year I did a little more than the year before. For my first five years, I probably earned between $100 and $2,000 a year from acting. Year 6 brought me some of my biggest success — and I only made $8,000 from acting. But I put a lot more money into my career than that. Headshots are expensive — the photo session and getting prints can run anywhere from $500 to $800. Classes range from $150 to $500 a month. It costs $1,200 to join SAG once you are eligible. And apartments are crazy expensive — $700 to $1,000 for a crappy apartment that you share with at least one roommate. It’s no wonder my living-room curtain was a bedsheet.

Why call out this culture of overnight success? Because for entrepreneurs it’s important to understand that with your eye on your vision, every single step you take toward that vision is toward success.

If you are working in a small dark office in your basement, embrace it now. It’s just for now. If you are investing in classes to improve your knowledge and add new skills, love spending that money. It will come back to you.  And if you’ve just had a bigger year of sales than you could ever imagine, savor it. It’s only the beginning.

Don’t Ask How December 6, 2008

One of the most common stumbling blocks my clients and peers encounter on the entrepreneurial journey is getting stuck with a dreadful realization: “I don’t know how.”

They buy books to find answers.

They surf the web for guidance.

They pick up pamphlets and send away for free information.

But still the answer does not come.

I have a realized thought my journey that there is a better way.

Don’t ask, “How?” Instead, ask “Who?”

People have the answers we’ll ever need to any solution. And, if at first we can’t think of anyone who may know the answer, then ask the people you know who they know. It’s not only a faster way to get ideas, but also a way to get a more complete answer — one that leads you down the path not only of what to do, but also what not to do.

The next time you’re feeling stuck in the “hows,” try asking yourself these questions that lead you, instead, to “who.”

• “Who could help me move this idea forward?”
• “Who do I know who has encountered this same obstacle?”
• “Who have I met recently that would be able to…?”
• “Is there someone close to me who knows someone that can…?”
• “Where could I find someone who will…?”

Who knows where these questions could lead?

‘nough Said Bill Strickland: Success is Finding and Living Meaning July 5, 2008

Bill Strickland, I first learned about Strickland in a Fast Company article from August of 1998 (by Sara Terry). Strickland is the Founder of Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild and Bidwell Training Center Inc., both Pittsburgh-based organizations for urban change designed to help people pull themselves out of a life in the ghetto, has an amazing biography called Make the Impossible Possible (check out his short movie, too).

I have never heard better articulated the mission I stand for in living life than how he describes success in his book. He says:

“I’m convinced that no genuine success occurs except as a natural expression of the human heart’s search for meaning.

Yes, there are plenty of successful people who make a lot of money or have a acheived high corporate positions, who run organizations or have won elective office, who are clueless when it comes to understanding what life is all about.

The fact is that kind of success is only half of the equation. Our drive for titles and money is too often based on a desperate need to prove ourselves to others, rather than the passion to live a life in a way that draws on our true values and talents, enlarges our spirits and allows us to be who we need to be to live rich, satisfying lives.

Real success, genuine success can’t be chosen and chased down. You assemble it moment by moment, out of the dreams you choose to follow and the values and passions you share. It’s not something you have a choice in, it’s a process that occurs whether we pay attention or not.

When we focus on anything other than the things that have real meaning in our life, our life becomes shaped by the random circumstances of the world around us.

Trying to find meaning in material success is a losing game…[it] is an addiction, just like boose or drugs. It burns up your time and your energy, drains the humanity from your life and leaves you wanting more.

Meaning is not something you can add to your life in limited amounts or defer to a time in your life after you’ve made it. Meaning is your life. It’s who you are. It’s all you’ll ever have and…[it's] the only practical foundation for a life worth living. No genuine success in your personal or professional life is possible until you trust the power of the values and experiences that matter to you most.”

Thank you, Bill.

Don’t believe Bill Strickland? Read Success Built to Last by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery, Mark Thompson.