Art of Earning, Big Thinking
A guest post by Tara Sophia Mohr, creator of Playing Big.
The story that Tara Gentile told here yesterday is true.
I had come across Tara Gentile via Twitter and was so impressed by her personal story. Then I had a dream that I had done a coaching session with her and it had really helped me.
Yup, a dream.
I wrote her and asked her if we could do some sessions. She said something along the lines of, “Great to hear from you! I can’t imagine I have anything to offer you, but let’s just set up a call to say hi.”
I said: “No, I really want to pay you money. Based on your website, you seem to be very “pro” that whole thing where one person pays another for their work. May I please hire you?”
She persisted. I persisted. After some discussion, we decided to work together.
In her post yesterday, Tara talked about how working with me was a step in her own playing bigger. Believing that she could offer value required defying an inner critic who’d declared she had nothing to offer a woman who wrote for Huffington Post and sported a Stanford MBA.
Her inner critic was very wrong. I’m glad she was willing to question it, because Tara helped me transform my work into a thriving business.
Tara also helped me play bigger. She pushed me to set higher goals for the number of people I could reach, the money I could earn, the partners I could work with. Her vision for me was free of all the stuff my inner critic and limited thinking was telling me.
Together, we looked at my passions and expertise, and discovered what my blog readers wanted more of from me. It turned out that what my audience most wanted to learn was what I most wanted to teach. My biggest passion was their biggest quest: playing bigger. Specifically, how visionary, creative, entrepreneurial women can play bigger.
From there, I developed my Playing Big program – a natural outpouring of all that I already knew from my own journey to playing bigger, from coaching other women, from my MBA training, and from a lifelong passion for helping women share their voices. Over 100 women from around the world – from Dubai to Detroit – have participated in Playing Big, and now an amazing group is signing up for round two.
It’s fascinating to me that for both Tara and I, the presence of another person helped us play bigger. That resonates with one of the big truths I know: we learn to play bigger in supportive community, in relationship.
Okay. On to the fun part.
Because I am such a fan of Tara,
because I am so passionate about fabulous women like you playing bigger,
and because I know that playing big happens because of relationship as well as tools and skills,
I’m sponsoring a scholarship spot for someone to attend her Art of Earning LIVE event Philadelphia.
I’m thrilled to foot the bill, because I know doing so advances my mission: helping brilliant, creative women stepping into their full potential.
If you’d like to enter to win the sponsored spot, ask yourself:
- Are you ready to transform your relationship with earning?
- Do you have the bandwidth to give time mental space to this event this year?
The scholarship covers the $1000 tuition & 3 meals; it does not include travel or accommodation expenses.
If your answer to the two questions above is yes and you can get yourself to and from Philly, please leave a comment below sharing, “What does “playing big” mean for you and your business in 2012? And what do you hope to gain from The Art of Earning live?”
Here’s to your playing big in 2012.
Love,
Tara Sophia Mohr
***
Here’s how it works:
- Post your answer to Tara’s questions in the comments below by Friday, January 20 at noon Eastern.
- Tara & I will pick a winner using good business sense & a bit of feminine intuition.
- The winner will be contacted via email on Monday, January 23. The winner must respond via email within 24 hours.
- No purchase necessary.
- The winner will be announced publicly here at taragentile.com by Tuesday, January 24.
Want to share this your network? Hit the Twitter, G+, or Facebook buttons below or click to tweet below:
Win a ticket to The Art of Earning LIVE & play bigger w your biz in 2012! @taragentile & @tarasophia want YOU: http://bit.ly/y3n4SW
Click to tweet it!
Art of Earning
A shortened version of this post originally ran on The Daily Worth. Do yourself a favor, subscribe.
The number one thing that used to keep me from my earning potential? Fear of being greedy.
I had a knee jerk reaction to wanting to make more money – namely, that it made me greedy. And being greedy was the last thing I wanted to be.
Some months ago, MP suggested it might be time for a new definition of “wealth.” Time to rewire our knee jerk reactions to a word like “wealth.” Forget the assumption that “wealth” isn’t for ME.
What about greed? Could I, should I shift my definition of this nasty idea? My idea of greed was pretty simple: more for me means less for you!
In the first year of my business, my inner monologue went something like, “Better to get by with less – at whatever cost – than risk being greedy.” Every time I quoted a project or set a price, I felt queasy – and not a little bit greedy.
I lived in constant fear of greed.
Soon enough my business started to take off. My options were either charge more or go insane. I set greedy feelings aside and decided that charging more was better than insanity.
A funny thing happened when I started charging more, not only was I making more money, I could afford to get some help.
That’s when I realized that “greed” is a lonely problem!
Worrying about bringing in “too much” money kept me isolated, underutilized, and ineffective.
Being greedy isn’t about having more it’s about maintaining isolation at all costs.
Earning more money for my work meant that I had the money to pay someone for their help on a weekly basis, invest in non-DIY options, and improve my business platforms. In other words, the money I was making was helping other people too and keeping me connected to the wider world.
Instead of seeing bigger payouts as evidence of my greed, I could see them as evidence of my social responsibility.
Had I kept my business just crawling by out of fear that I might give in to some primal greed, I’d be stressed out, pissed off, and not very good for society. Earning more helps me stay plugged in to all the good I can do in the world.
My profit is part of the community’s profit. My growth is part of the community’s growth. My success is part of the community’s success.
My business just doesn’t work if I only consider “me” and my needs. Considering the “we” is how it all works.
When the switch flipped on that realization, it was like there was no amount of money I wouldn’t earn. Bring it on – I can use it.
Greed became a nonissue.
To make the break from equating “more” with “greed”, get a plan for how you’ll use the wealth as it comes in. Charity? Social investment? Employees? Business reinvestment? A weekly massage? Hey, massage therapists are independent business owners, too!
Certainly, it’s easier for me to carry out these strategies and see their outcomes directly as a self-employed person. But I suspect you may be holding out on asking for a raise or taking on side business for much the same fear of greed.
How will you rewire your knee jerk reaction to “greed” so that you can free yourself to be a steward of more money?
***
The Art of Earning LIVE is an intentional, intensive, and intimate business building experience. Find out how your business can take better care of you in this day-and-a-half long workshop. Join me!
Art of Earning, events
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Reading via email? Love you! Watch the video on YouTube!
We all spend too much time working on our businesses. When was the last time your business worked on you?
I’ve spent the last two years turning my pursuit into a business that does just that. It takes care of me. Inspires me. Motivates me.
There’s give & take.
What would it take for your business to take care of you?
More money? Less time? More honest communication? Less promotion? More passion? Less crap?
You’re Invited
Today, I’m opening registration for The Art of Earning LIVE. This event has been many, many months in the planning. I couldn’t be more thrilled to announce it to you.
The goal of this event is “self-care for your business.” When you nurture what you’ve got, it takes better care of you. You know your body needs good food, plenty of exercise, quiet time, and periods of rest. So does your business.
This intentional, intensive, and intimate business event is all those things for your business.
How would things be different if your business inspired you, created more wealth, served all the right people, and allowed you the freedom you need to truly express yourself?
Click here to find out more and register!
Art of Earning, society & culture, Transcendent Commerce & Immanent Value
Money is a religion.
That’s not a condemnation of our consumer society. It’s just a fact.
What is religion? Let me break out my diploma and tell you that there is no good definition of religion. So you must craft something that describes how you engage with religious beliefs – your own or others.
I’m inclined to start with a definition of religion proposed by Dr. John D Caputo, of Syracuse University. Religion is:
…something simple, open-ended, and old-fashioned, namely, the love of God.
In this case, “God” is a word that stands for your higher power. It could be a personal god or it could be an idea, object, or belief that you hold higher than any other.
A definition like this one makes it clear: there is a religion of money.
Money is both an object of faith – you don’t think those bills in your wallet are actually worth something, do you? – and a system for guiding our behavior – we do what we need to do to get the money we “need.”
We put faith in the fact that the number in the corner of a paper bill is what the bill is actually worth. We put faith in the idea that a plastic rectangle means we will pay what we owe. We put faith in the check that we get at the end of each week.
On the flip side, money guides everything we do. It is its own set of commandments. Thou shalt get a job. Thou shalt pay the bills. Thou shalt save for retirement. Thou shalt buy a [car, house, appliances, etc…]. If you break a commandment, society tells you about it.
Understanding money as a religion – even a poor one – has helped me to better understand the nature of pricing, become more comfortable with exchanging money for service in a transaction, and develop a philosophy for commerce that extends past my own business.
So if money is a religion, how does my own faith affect the way I make money?
Perhaps more important to me & my angle on the conversation:
How does my philosophy of religion affect my philosophy of business?
My philosophy of religion stems from the work I did in college. I studied the thread of the Reformation that eventually became Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s idea of “religionless Christianity.”
Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor & theologian. He was also a committed pacifist who was involved in an attempt to assassinate Hitler. He was hung for his crime days before his prison camp was liberated. He’s a complex dude.
While he sat in Tegel Prison, Bonhoeffer began to construct a theology of “religionless Christianity.” While the title may be provocative, the premise is simple:
Jesus is there only for others … The church is the church only when it exists for others.
The system of religion that Bonhoeffer saw all around him was one in which the self was the center. I do this, I am absolved, I become closer to God.
He found this counter to the message of Jesus, to the core of Christianity.
While the work was not completed before his death, Bonhoeffer sought to strip the religious “system” of me-centered rites & rituals and turn to a simple code of “live for others.”
See where I’m going? Bonhoeffer was building a you-centered faith.
It’s no wonder that I see the emerging economy as you-centered, other-centered. It’s no wonder that I am convinced that the path to personal success is paved with other-centered business practices.
Bonhoeffer’s gospel was very much a social gospel. But even more, it was a community gospel. It was a simple prescription for creating communities that worked. His work begs the question: how can we be uncared for if it’s everyone’s desire to care for those around them?
Expressing yourself and your love & gratitude for a higher power becomes an intimate, connected experience between people, here & now.
Why should commerce be any different? Why rely on a system of investments, operating budgets, and procedure to dictate the credibility of a particular business?
What if we remove the barriers to commerce – to connection – and engage each other as individuals with immanent value?
Who needs the old system of business, commerce, and consumption when we can strip that all away and create more meaningful transactions (connections) between each other as human beings?
Click to tweet the word!
Just as the truth of your own faith – whatever it might be – is found in your own experience, the truth of your own business is found in its ability to connect people and highlight their own value.
Your position as “business owner” in the You-Centered Economy is inherently other-focused. You are in business for the benefit of others. The rewards you reap are directly related to your ability to shine your light on those you serve.
When viewing business through the eyes of faith, you can put money back in its place. You can remove money from the realm of religion and see it, instead, as a representation of exchange, a currency for action.
Money is a symbol – a representation of meaning – of the connections we are creating. First, create connection. Second, assign appropriate value to that connection. Third, exchange the currency. Money merely stands in place. The meaning stands on its own.
Invest in connection, spend the dividends.
Just as our faith transcends the actions we perform on others behalves, our value transcends the transaction & the currency exchanged. Yet both of these scenarios are dependent on the immanence of human connection.
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If you enjoyed this post and are hungry for more, check out my posts Stop Trying to Make Money From Your Passion and Towards You-Centered Economics.
Would love to see your thoughts & reflections on this on Twitter. Use the hashtag #youeconomy!
Art of Earning
In solopreneurship or microbusiness, it’s easy to imagine that every dollar that comes in is “profit.”
Take out the meager fees we pay to web hosts, PayPal, and the odd tech service, there’s still plenty left over to play with. And play we do.
But what does it mean to truly become profitable as a microbusiness owner or solo service provider?
In my own business and those of my clients, this is one place where traditional business teaching falls short of our unique circumstances. What follows below is not something you’re going to find in business books but it’s of utmost importance for understanding the way your business functions:
Being profitable means earning enough money to cover all of your obligations, both personal & business, with some left over to invest as you please.
Click to tweet it, yo!
Becoming profitable should be the goal of every business but the numbers and percentages are always different.
The key to knowing when you are profitable is to understand your obligations.
Megan and I often join forces to talk about actually making money in a passion-driven business. I talk about the psychological and philosophical side of earning more. Then she swoops in with cold hard facts and a proven formula. I’ll let you guess which side of the presentation garners a bigger response.
Hint: numbers & formulas win. every. time.
Megan’s pricing formula is for a product based business, natch. She’s a jewelry designer. She has certain costs for materials & upkeep, much easier to quantify.
Megan’s formula also contains two pieces that often trip people up: labor & profit.
Yes, two different figures. One for labor. One for profit. Separate. Different. Got it?
The time she puts into each piece is not profit. That time is an obligation that must be accounted for with an hourly rate. The hourly rate she figures is often 8-12 times the hourly rate most people figure for themselves.
Hint: if you’re accounting for an hourly wage that is lower or equal to the minimum wage in your state, you’re doing it wrong.
Intellectually, you know this makes sense for Megan and the type of business she runs. But what about your business? If you create or design physical products, this model works for you as well (but keep reading – there’s more!). If you are a service provider, content marketer, or digital product creator, it is much more difficult use this type of pricing strategy to generate a known quantity of profit.
So then what is profit?
Profit comes after accounting for all of your obligations, both personal and business, and having money left over to invest as you please.
Oh crap, she said it again. It must be important! Click to tweet it, yo!
When you don’t have to use part of every sale to reinvest in materials to make new products to sell, it is easy to see every dollar as profit. To see every dollar as flexible.
Your dollars are not flexible. They are accounted for the moment they enter your PayPal account. But do you know where they’re going?
Those dollars might end up paying your web host, your email service provider, your teleconferencing service, your PayPal fees, or your assistant. Those dollars also pay your mortgage, your grocery bill, your taxes, and your electric utility – that’s your labor, essentially.
You also have obligations to your own charitable giving, education, self-care, and – yes – fun.
When considering your own financial obligations, I think it’s important to look at the big picture not just the bare bones. That’s when you really start to get an idea of abundance.
And when you can really start to develop a profit strategy.
How can you earn enough to cover your obligations and have money left over to invest as you please?
There are no easy answers to this question. But you can’t create a strategy until you know your obligations. You can’t understand or plan for profit until you know where the rest of the money is going.
Why consider profit only after meeting personal & business obligations?
Because it’s important that you have that surplus. It’s important that you have the freedom to decide what the very best use of extra money is outside of the obligations (no matter how pleasurable) you face on a daily basis.
Being a profitable business owner means having the freedom, control, and vision to use your surplus money as a tool for growth, be it personal, business, or societal.
***
Understanding profit and your ability to use it for good is all apart of making money beautifully, making earning an art. I’m hosting an intensive, intentional, and intimate workshop on creating a business that serves you. Click here to find out more & sign up for FREE exclusive pre-event training.
Art of Earning, Business Brainstorm, Self-Care for Your Business
Sometimes, my business causes me anxiety.
It’s true! It’s easy to assume that the businesses you see humming along online or on main street are free & clear of worry and doubt. But anxiety, stress, and self-doubt creep in at the most unlikely of times.
True story.
And I’d say it’s true of any business mentor, coach, guru, authority figure you pay attention to. There are days when the ups & downs of normal business weigh on you. Even when you know better. Even when you’ve planned better.
Over the next few months, you’re going to hear quite a bit about what I’m calling “self-care for your business.”
At the heart of it, business self-care is setting up your business to take care of you.
Click to tweet that little nugget.
I have begrudgingly pulled all-nighters, I have worked for cheap, I have forced launches, and I have created content to serve something other than my higher purpose. It has never worked. It’s never “been worth it.”
Hard work is a necessity. But senseless work is not.
What is senseless work? It’s work for work’s sake. It’s working from your weaknesses instead of your strengths. It’s doing the same thing over & over again and expecting a different result.
One place senseless work has crept up on me – and always caused more problems than its worth – is when I’m worried about where the next dollar is coming from.
When I’ve been worried about discovering the next offer or attracting the next client, I take the focus off my real mission. I take the focus off of recreating our connection to the greater economy.
I take the focus off the organic process of discovery & attraction and I put the focus on acts of force.
Thanks to a framework from Alexis Neely and a language from Sinclair, I have crafted a system for always knowing where the next dollar is coming from. I know months & months in advance what my offer schedule is and, most importantly, why.
It’s not just about the money or sales but about what those sales mean for moving my mission forward – therefore serving myself while serving you and the world.
That said, there are still times I get a little antsy over money. After all, I’m fighting scarcity conditioning that has been in place for quite some time.
My revenue – while sustained – is not always constant. I’m getting used to a new pattern of money flow. Didn’t I just get used to the last pattern? About two weeks into every (planned) down period, I start to freak out.
I start to think about the quick buck. The easy out. The drastic measures I’ll need to take to keep myself afloat.
This isn’t survival mode – which has been known to motivate some pretty extraordinary behavior. This is self-defeating. It’s wasted energy. It’s just plain unnecessary. And it’s potentially very damaging.
Nope, I’m not immune to these bouts of panic.
But I do have a system, a practice to fall back on.
Just like others might fall back on yoga, a long walk, an exercise routine, a good cuddle, or knitting – perfect for taking care of yourself – I know that I have a point of focus and safe space to fall back on in my business.
I can whip out the calendar or jot out a fresh perspective on my planning in my notebook. And, while the panic may linger, the confidence comes right on back.
I can go right back to serving you, creating greatness, and discovering new ideas. I can do the work that matters and stop dwelling on the work that doesn’t.
I weather a storm that isn’t really there. And I still come out stronger & more focused on the other side.
Your next steps:
- Have a business self-care practice of your own? Share it by leaving a response below.
- If you want to learn more about self-care for the soul of your business, check out a little (big) something I’ve been working on for the last few months.
- If you want to discover more of my philosophies & practices for earning beautifully, pick up a name-your-own-price copy of The Art of Earning.
