Announcements, Art of Earning, Business Brainstorm
Money and I have a sordid relationship. Don’t worry, we’re pretty cool now. She won’t mind if I talk about her like this.
For most of formative years, my family didn’t have much of the stuff. My single mom employed herself as a seamstress. She was constantly busy but not rolling in the dough. Still, despite earning very little, we were never without stuff.
I had instruments, summer camps, piano lessons, a computer, and even a car.
She figured out how to get me what I needed without incurring massive amounts of credit card debt. We lived frugally but always got we wanted passionately.
She also taught me to save like a mo’ fo’. From my very first gig umpiring a softball game to my last part-time job in a jewelry store, I put half of every paycheck in my savings account for BIG purchases (trip to Austria, anyone?).
Money came & went.
After college, I got stuck. I started equating money with time, tasks, and responsibility. I saw inside the belly of a retail beast and began to believe that if I earned more money, certainly others would lose money.
I began to assume that I was truly worth the $13 per hour they paid me.
I assumed I would never be worth more.
At the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, this was a burden I carried. I assumed my worth had been set. What I soon learned is that your personal worth surges out of you even when you don’t expect it.
Your personal worth doesn’t always show up in money – maybe it will take the form of gratitude or influence – but it shows up. It’s our job to claim that worth as the dollars & cents we need to earn to experience the world and to improve the world in the ways we desire.
Abundance of personal worth begets abundance of financial worth. It’s your choice how you use it.
An example:
Yesterday, I dropped about $400 at a craft show. It’s the third year I’ve attended this show and it’s by far the best show I go to every year. I love the people who vend. I love the people who show up.
But the last two years, I held scarcity in my heart when I attended.
This year, I came ready to spend. While $400 may or may not seem like a lot to you, it still represents a lot to me. And while I was a bit sticker shocked at what I had done at the end of the day, I felt damn good embodying abundance. And I felt damn good extending my abundance to those I purchased from.
Also, Lola now has a week’s worth of clever indie t-shirts to wow the kids at summer camp.
For the vendors I purchased from yesterday, I changed the world a little. I reinforced the uniqueness of their ease. I shared a smile with my debit card that told them they were worth more than the sticker price.
No, increasing consumption won’t fix our problems but having a better relationship with money might.
* * * * *
In case you haven’t noticed, our relationships to money are changing. Fast. Furious. And unexpectedly.
No longer are finance, law, and medicine fields that guarantee stability, profit, and growth.
Artists – of all kinds – are finding money to be easier to come by, abundance amidst recession, and demand despite saturation.
Your relationship to money is no longer determined by your previous experience with it, your college degree (or lack thereof), or time in an industry. Our ability to earn is instead based on our own view of our unique talents.
Capability doesn’t determine cash flow.
But passion might help determine your profit.
At the Selling Your Soul event in NYC on Thursday, Danielle LaPorte (or, as I affectionately refer to her in my noggin’, DLP) and Marie Forleo provided (at least) 2 important sparks about our relationship with money. One, a question: What do you really mean when you say “I can’t afford it?” And two, a statement: we all have “money stuff.”
Much of my success as an entrepreneur has not been about having the best widget, the fastest fingers, the smartest brain, or the most intuitive spirit. Gaining influence, earning money, finding my niche, and producing my art has largely come as a result of working through my “money stuff” and understanding what I mean when I say “I can’t afford it.”
Let me say again, having a 6-figure business isn’t about being the best. It’s about understanding your relationship to money.
Having a 6-figure business isn’t about producing more than anyone else, having more clients than anyone else, or having a monopoly on your message. It’s about understanding the art of earning.
Scarcity in earning is directly related to scarcity in spending, investing, hiring, and giving.
What I meant when I said, “I can’t afford it:”
I meant I wasn’t worth it. I meant I couldn’t earn it. I meant I made bad decisions. I meant I didn’t value myself.
What I mean now when I say, “I can’t afford it:”
I don’t see it as valuable to me. I don’t need it right now. I don’t want it. I made a choice not to have it.
Making money can be so easy.
My come-to-Jesus moment with money was when I truly discovered how easy it is to earn what you need when you work for yourself. What is easy to you, what comes naturally & beautifully to you, is ugly, difficult, and downright nasty to someone else. That is the source of value.
What is easy to you, what comes naturally & beautifully to you, is ugly, difficult, and downright nasty to someone else.
That’s the source of value but it’s not the end. Value flows forth from your alignment with your purpose and your relationship to those who identify with your purpose. Your purpose is the beginning & the end of the transaction.
What you do – the work that is paid for – may be meaty, but it won’t seal the deal.
The art of earning is offering your valuable bits for sale. The art of earning is finding your purpose scattered throughout the experiences of your life and business.
There is no need to paint a different picture or construct a different model. Take your “easy” talents, your insane passion, your drive, and purpose and box it up for sale.
Nota bene, parts of this equation often missing:
- Ease
- Talent
- Passion
- Drive
- Purpose
- Package
- For sale sign
Money need not control you. You need to control it. Money need not determine your experience. You need to earn money to determine your own experience. Your gain need not mean your customer loses. Your gain needs to be others’ gain.
What does a passion-driven entrepreneur need to know about the art of earning?
So very many things… but I’m specifically curious about what you’d like to know. I want to help you strengthen your relationship to the dollars & cents you & your business needs to survive & thrive in the changing economy. I want to help you find profit in work your soul craves.
This conversation is part of my purpose. And I’m on fire about it.
——
Update! While the conversation continues (and will for the foreseeable future!), my first contribution is all shinied up & put together. The Art of Earning is a digital guide all about making money beautifully. It’s a deconstruction of our hang-ups around the topic of cash, profit, and earning potential. It’s also a reconstruction of a new money paradigm for artists-of-all-sorts.
The best part of all is that you can name your own price. And frankly, that’s a celebration of my own confidence in my earning ability, a party to which you are oh-so invited.
Click here to learn more about The Art of Earning!
“Art of Earning” will help you heal your beliefs about money and start getting into a really loving relationship with moolah and your mojo. It will teach you how to be a Goddess of your own Abundance. The world needs this!
– Goddess Leonie | goddessguidebook.com | author of the Business Goddess ecourse
Business Brainstorm
Results. I love ’em.
Results often seem elusive. Despite the promises of info products, programs, courses, and blog posts, we are often left resultless. Maybe we don’t have all the same questions but we have plenty of new ones in their place.
Results are key. They help us meet our goals. They buoy our spirit when things get tough. They prove to others we’re not insane.
Results are becoming uncommon. “Daily grinding” often doesn’t produce results. Daily grinding produces distraction, complacency, and circular productivity. Are you really working towards an end? Or are you just working towards tomorrow?
Check.
Feeling stuck comes from ingesting. Creating a result comes from digesting.
Consider how you feel after you indulge in a lovely carb binge. Sedentary. Lazy. Heavy. Bloated.
Consider instead how you feel after you indulge in a delicious spinach salad with oil, lemon juice & all your favorite fixings. Buoyant. Energized. Ready.
Carb binging is ingesting – the focus is what’s going into your mouth and not what’s coming out the proverbial other end. It’s all or nothing on the intake and just nothing on the output. The pleasure comes from stuffing yourself more.
Eating fresh, clean food allows you to digest. You experience both the pleasure of every bite and the pleasure of feeling ready for what the world will throw at you. You are fueled.
When you truly digest your research, your work, and your analysis, you are able to create results.
What results are you creating right now? What results do you need to be creating?
***
Accelerate your results. Accelerate your success. I invite you to join me in the lab for my FREE Prototype Challenge. Results everyday, guaranteed. Click here to get started.
Business Brainstorm
Let’s pretend we’re at a party. You mingle politely. You ask a few nervous attendees about the weather and what they grabbed off the buffet.
Slowly you make your way to one side of the room. Alone.
You ask a question, quietly, to the room. You wait for the response.
No response comes.
Maybe a few friends walk over to make sure you’re okay. They’re visibly concerned.
You shrug your shoulders. You expected to start a conversation, to get a response, to engage people. Instead, you got silence.
This is what engaging your tribe with indirect media looks like. Indirect media is Twitter, your blog, Facebook (most of the time), radio advertisements, video marketing, etc… It’s indirect because it requires some perfect circumstance: your tribe has to be reading, listening, viewing, consuming at exactly the right time.
It’s awesome. But it’s also hit or miss.
Email marketing is direct marketing. It’s a way to connect to your tribe, on their own terms, in their inbox.
Growing your list is growing your tribe.
To start any direct email marketing, you must first start a mailing list. I recommend Mail Chimp but there are plenty of other (if not nearly as cheeky) services. You cannot blind copy a bunch of email addresses in Gmail – nope, sorry, just don’t do it.
In growing your list, you are growing your tribe. You are gathering together a community who is interested in hearing what you have to say about your business, your products, and how those products relate to their lives. You aim to build your list quickly but with a keen eye for bringing in those who are likely to be your customers.
You don’t need to entice the dude who found your website searching “cheese doodles.” Unless, of course, you sell cheese doodles or cheese doodle accessories.
I grow my tribe by offering subscribers a freebie. I offer them something that is representative of what they would get from me if they did buy something and I make sure it’s representative of what I’m going to be offering.
Here on this site you can find my freebie to the right as a graphic ad. Click that (no, really, click it) and you’ll find a nice little opt in page for my list. Sign up there and you get my Spacious Goals Guide.
On Scoutie Girl, it’s a little different. I have both a graphic ad and an opt-in form called the ViperBar at the top of the page.
Your business may benefit from offering a free consultation with subscription or maybe a coupon for 10% off a first order. You may simply state that your goods move FAST and that prospective customers better get on the list to make sure they don’t miss the best stuff.
Look around the web and you’ll see all manner of email list enticements, opt in forms, and prizes at the bottom of the proverbial boxes. The takeaway here is that there is no “right way” to grow your list. You can experiment with any combination of tactics & tricks but, in the end, it’s what works for you and your visitors that will be the most impactful.
I’ve grown a list of over 5,000 subscribers in less than 8 months. Those 5,000 subscribers are connectors, mavens, discussion starters, research assistants, trend setters, and influencers. And they’re customers. They are my tribe. We are in conversation.
They let me know what is working. And they let me know what’s not working. I listen as much as I broadcast. Actually, I probably listen more than I broadcast. They are my lifeline.
This ain’t your grandma’s newsletter.
Back in the day, newsletters were cut & paste together with paper & glue, run off in an edition of a hundred, and slid underneath office doors. This was expensive. And so newsletter compilers would jam as much information as possible onto the paper.
Email is fast, cheap as dirt, and much more effective. So instead of calling attention to 10, 5, or even 3 action items, the best email updates showcase one – and only one – call to action.
That means you ask people to attend an event, like you on Facebook, buy a product, check out the Spring collection, register for a teleconference, or leave a comment. But that’s it. Just leave it at that.
Given choices, we get overwhelmed. We delay action.
Your emails should trigger immediate action.
One. Thing.
You can also offer blog posts by email using one of the email subscription services. Again, I love talking monkeys. This gives you most of the impact of email while allowing you to concentrate on one marketing form at a time.
Tara, one thing?!
Good, you were paying attention. Here’s how you write about one thing.
You write your email like you were writing to a human being. Not like you would write it to a corporation full of people who don’t care or an organization of people who have better things to be doing.
Write it with clarity, humor, warmth, and love.
Don’t worry about tactics or strategies. They come with time. Worry about writing as yourself, as the face of your business. Write with confidence and humility.
And above all, make sure it’s clear what that “one thing” is, m’kay?
Pick what’s most important to your business right now. Invite your subscribers to click, comment, connect around this one thing. You’ll have immediate results in the form of dollars, feedback, and conversation. You’ll know what’s working and what isn’t. One. thing.
But… can I?
It’s a common to wonder what an “opt in” really means. Does that mean I can email them about just about anything now? Maybe. Sort of. Do you really want to?
I make my opt ins broad but directed. I do manage multiple lists so that I’m sure I’m reaching the right people each time I send out an email.
But I also send out emails that don’t have much to do with the original thing someone signed up for. The unifying factor is, of course, me.
Your subscribers are opting to hear from you. If you have something to say and you think there’s a remote chance they’d be interested, say it. You’re probably right.
And yes, you can make offers via email. You can ask people to buy your products and sign up for your services. You can suggest an affiliate promotion. You can encourage people to follow you on Twitter.
If it benefits your business, you can put it in an email. And you probably should.
– – – – – – –
Want more on email marketing? I have a 30-day course that proves… email marketing doesn’t have to suck.
“EMKS has offered wonderful, accessible guidance. I would recommend it.”
— Stephanie, CreativeLivingExperiment.com
Click here now to find out more about Email Marketing Kick Start!
Business Brainstorm
I got an email from Anna with a common question. Sometimes this question speaks up loud & clear, as it did to Anna. And other times it shows up as a never-ending quest of research, consulting, and false starts.
Anna wants to know what she should do if she wants to make Art her life but isn’t an Artist in the traditional sense. She says, “I am not that good at it. I do not knit that well and I certainly do not draw as an artist. I just love to do it.”
I can relate, Anna. I can relate.
People are starting businesses at an unprecedented rate. The changing economy has created an ideal environment for experimentation. The need is great.
And I applaud all those who are trying.
But I’m sick of seeing aspirational entrepreneurs waiting at the sidelines while they try out new skills, develop products, approve drafts of shiny logo images, purchase multiple domain names, and hone their brands. Now is the time to start!
If you think know you have something to offer the world, even if you have no idea what that might be, you have to put yourself out there.
You can’t further your dream in a vacuum.
You need the encouragement, support, and give-and-take of a community.
My guess is that you don’t already have this type of community. You might have some close friends & a loving family but there’s a distinct possibility that – through their love – they won’t “get” what you’re trying to do. In fact, they’ll even discourage you.
So you have to build this community.
You build it around you, your imperfections, your passions, and your big ideas. And you reserve the right to change any of those at any time! You are transparent, exploring, and growing.
People will respect your journey more than they would a misguided stab at entrepreneurial perfection.
That sounds great, Tara, how the heck do I go about doing that?
First, you realize that there are no instructions that I can give you that will make the process of experimenting & exploring easier. That’s all on you.
Next, you get yourself set up with some sort of digital publishing platform (blog) and some social media profiles. But instead of setting them up with a finished product or business in mind, you start them with the mission of learning more about what’s out there and sharing your journey with others.
Document your journey. Share your story. Don’t apologize.
The initial benefit is that you push yourself to talk to creative entrepreneurs – doing interviews, talking casually, and networking… – and learning what they do. You’ll discover opportunities you didn’t know existed! But the subsequent benefit is that you can actually build quite a following whilst exploring your options because people really identify with the unfinished story of your journey.
Then, when you decide to try something more professionally, you already have a waiting customer base. You also have the opportunity to explore writing & affiliate marketing along the way.
There is no need to wait until you have all your ducks in a row. Start now and see what happens. There are more options & opportunities out there than you can know. The only way you can find out about them is to try.
PS. I’ve got a new ebook available. It’s short, sweet, and power-packed. It’s called Making Motion: 7 Steps for Doing More with Your Creative Life. If the ideas make your heart beat a little faster, this book just might be the thing to get you moving.
{image credit: Alice Popkorn}
Business Brainstorm
People thank me for making things easy. Which is a surprisingly difficult thing to do for yourself.
It’s easy to know what you love and what you’re good at. It’s quite another to accept that the easy way really is the right way. Even more difficult to embrace it.
People thank me for dreaming the big dreams. No matter how brave we are, we have a tendency to censor our own dreams.
But when you see someone (me!) say, “I’m going to make it happen.” You feel a little better about upping your goal just one more notch, a little steadier in pushing yourself one inch farther. Permission granted.
People thank me for making them think. Is this my numbero uno goal in life? It just might be.
Dyana Valentine asked me last week, “What do you want more of in the world?” The question had stumped me previously. But I blurted out, “I want more people to think about everything.” And I want less people to take things at face value, accept what they’ve been told. Blind faith has it’s place but experience rules my roost.
Taking the easy road, dreaming big dreams, and relentlessly thinking for myself is my code of conduct. Some would find these qualities contradictory. Crazy. I find them calm & collected.
It’s my journey & I choose to take this road.
Of course, my particular road map is not the one everyone wants to follow. I like it that way. My street is not crowded. But I don’t walk alone.
What do people thank me for? They thank me for being me and helping them to be more of who they already are.
Thank you Danielle LaPorte, Marie Forleo, and Selling Your Soul for the prompt. You have already prompted me to do big things.
{letterpress thank you cards by Paisley Dog Press}
Big Thinking, Business Brainstorm, Questions
This morning, Aycee asked me, “How can I juggle 2 creative businesses?”
It’s a question I get asked a lot. We’re people of varied interests, with a slew of talents. We don’t want to get pinned down to any particular thang.
So instead of specializing, we branch out. Every new idea has a new name, a new domain, a new blog, and a new Twitter handle. And somewhere along the line, we get dazed and confused. And despite having the much-coveted “multiple streams of income,” we have no money.
My title is misleading. I’m not going to explain how to manage multiple businesses. I’m going to show you how your business is all one.
Bold statement: Your business, no matter how diverse, if run [almost] entirely by you, is one business. Not many. Solopreneurs have solo businesses.
“Now, hold on there one crazy minute,” you might say. “Tara, it sure looks like you have multiple businesses.”
Let the showing commence.
I have multiple products. I have ebooks, teaching programs, a digital zine called Scoutie Girl, a business forum in partnership with Megan Auman, and coaching services. I talk about everything from productivity to better blogging to designing a website to email marketing to being a mom to being a breadwinner.
But when it comes down to it, I sell artist-entrepreneur support programs.
I have one business, around one central character (me!), and one grounding mission:
I work with big thinking artists-of-all-sorts who struggle with how to earn a good living from their art. I riff, strategize, and conceive of fresh ways of doing business that leave my clients feeling rejuvenated, their businesses revolutionized. I arm artists with confidence & freedom while removing their fears & stagnation.
You might have a blog here, an Etsy shop there, and a service business around the corner but they are all products of your central mission. Think of them that way and your job as entrepreneur suddenly becomes clear.
And those things that just don’t fit? No matter how hard you cram them into your mission box? Maybe it’s time to reevaluate.
If you have multiple businesses, your task for today isn’t to figure out a new way to market one of them or to write a new blog post for the other, it’s to discover, deep down, what it is that ties these “businesses” together as “products.” What is your overall message & mission that allows your products to function independently?
Need a hand? Book a session with me or try Dyana Valentine’s Pitch Perfect program.
