I wonder, wonder, wonder who wrote the book of success

Wonder Wheel Success

Most of us spend a fair amount of time questioning ourselves, our choices, our capacities, and our decisions. That’s okay. It might as well be, given that we do it, right?

We can experience this questioning as self-doubt of the feels-pretty-crummy kind or as the kind of wondering that is the essence of creating.

This has been up for me lately as I’ve been wondering how best to rejigger The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right. Reflecting on the responses to the survey I put out last week and drawing on six years of sharing the work, I came up with a radically new design.

For a few days I was quite excited and happy about the new offer. I’d figured out how to cut the price by 85% (not a typo) while building in robust support.

And then, I started to think. Was the new design really right?

Wondering about what to create was turning into doubt about whether the creation was right. Collaborating with possibility was turning into worry about the outcome.

Back to wonder

As the saying goes, this is not my first rodeo. When I realized that wonder was turning into doubt, I did the sensible thing: my laundry. And while standing in the sun hanging clothes on the line, I remembered the wonder I felt when the new design of Goldilocks emerged.

As I looked in the direction of that good feeling, the experience of wonder increased. I realized that I knew all I needed to know: that I had a cool new idea and was enthused (en*theos) about putting it out into the world.

I can’t know what the response to the new version of Goldilocks will be, but I do know that it makes me smile.

Success lives in the immediate experience of wonder

Creating is in our DNA. We can’t not create. And part of creating is to wonder how to make something happen.

What we sometimes forget is that the success of a creative venture lives in the wondering, not in the outcome. So long as we have breath, there is the possibility—the inevitability—that we will create again. There is no such thing as a make-or-break outcome to creating.

The real question is whether we will experience the success of creating here and now or look for it off in the unknowable and uncontrollable future.

This week as you work on what to offer your clients or how to put an offer out into the world, remember the distinction between wonder and doubt. Go ahead, think things through. Just remember to look in the direction of a wonder-full feeling when it comes time to make your decisions.

What do you think? CLICK HERE to share your thoughts at my blog.

So, are you curious about Goldilocks?

The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right

Here’s a quick-and-dirty break down of what’s new about The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right followed by a link to the full details.

The content: Unchanged. Still 7 lessons including recorded classes, a professionally designed workbook, transcripts, and mindmaps.

The price: Reduced from $1500 to $220. Really.

Support: A year of monthly teleconferences for coaching and Q&A.

Community: A private Facebook group.

Bonus: Believe! A Guide to Practical Attraction. A complete home study course in non-magical thinking to create what you want.

Bonus: A new how-to video each month.

If you think you might want to play, click here: www.shaboominc.com/goldilocks-landing/

 

Photo of the Wonder Wheel by MA1216 via Flickr

 

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Molly
Posted in Community, Confidence, Creativity, Emotional intelligence, Small business, Success, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

How to manage for happiness when your thing doesn’t fly

happy_balloon_2-4-2013Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. ~ Albert Schweitzer

What’s going on when you put your work out there and you don’t get the response you’d hoped for?

When your thing doesn’t fly?

I’ve been thinking about this because recently one of my best things didn’t do as well as I’d expected. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. But first, let’s talk about how to manage for happiness even when your thing doesn’t fly.

Truth #1: It’s not personal

I know it stings when your thing doesn’t fly, but trust me, it’s not personal.

There are a kazillion possible reasons why an offer might not succeed. A kazillion because that’s how many possible responses your possible clients could possibly have.

Did you follow that? It’s worth rereading. Because not only are there a kazillion possible reasons, 99% of them are out of your control.

Note: not 100%. 99%. That leaves a handful of things you can control on your end, which leads to Truth #2.

Truth #2: Every offer is an experiment

Every offer you make is an experiment. Even if the experiment has resulted in oodles of sales in the past, it’s still an experiment.

In other words, you can’t control the results.

But you do get to control what you put into the experiment. When it doesn’t work, you get to change it up. You can play with the pricing, the design, the packaging, the timing. Preferably not all at once, or the experiment gets muddled.

(Caution: don’t go fiddling with your offers too fast. You need to give them a good try before making changes willy nilly. Otherwise you’re not experimenting, you’re shooting in the dark with blunt darts.)

Truth #3: You get to manage for happiness, or not

When you’re building a business around work you love, you presumably make offers you are happy to fulfill.

What may not be so clear to you is that there are almost always more happy ways to offer and deliver your work than you have yet thought of. One of the benefits of having a thing not fly is that you get to discover those ways.

The trick here is not to let temporary disappointment distract you from what I call managing for happiness.

Managing for happiness means looking in the direction of a good feeling about your business. It means coming at your next actions from a place of “What does this look like when I know that happiness comes from within and that I get to play it any way I choose?”

Truth #4: If you want to be in the game, you’ve got to stay in the game

Like I said at the top, one of my best programs didn’t take off recently. In spite of having sold out several times in the past, the response to The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right has been tepid.

I felt a lot of equanimity about it. I love the program. I was proud of the videos and webinar I did for the launch. I was delighted with the gorgeous new graphics and template for the workbook. Maggie and Lisa had been amazing to work with.

So I had no regrets. And for a couple of days I thought about just letting it go.

But then I realized that just dropping it would be more like resignation than acceptance. It would mean leaving the game.

I like to play, so that didn’t seem like managing for happiness.

How I managed Goldilocks for happiness

I asked myself what managing for happiness would look like when it comes to Goldilocks. And here’s what came.

Instead of trying to figure out how the heck I could get people to sign up, I asked myself a question at the heart of The Goldilocks Strategy: What do my people want?

It seemed clear: managing for happiness means asking that, so I’m asking for your help.

I’ve created a super-short (5 question) anonymous survey so you can tell me frankly your thoughts about Goldilocks. There’s even a place for you to say it wasn’t on your radar at all. It’s all good to know.

I imagine you can complete the survey in about 3 minutes, though you can write as much as you’d like me to know.

Here’s the link, click here.

No matter what your experience has been, I truly want to hear from you. And next week, I’ll let you know what I’m finding out.

UPDATE: Survey results are in, and the bottom line is that folks are concerned about money, time, and overwhelm. I’ve rejiggered The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just Right so that it is much less expensive (85% less), has a year of monthly teleconferences for support, and break-it-down-for-you emails every 7-10 days.

Photo Credit: dfbphotos via Flickr

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Molly
Posted in Authenticity, Community, Confidence, Creativity, Goal Setting, Life purpose, Marketing, Meaning, Money, Personal, Productivity, Self care, Self-employment, Serving others, Small business, Success, Vision | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

What eternal happiness can teach us about business

cookies_4-2013
Years ago (38, but who’s counting?) my husband-to-be asked me what I thought the meaning of life was. I replied immediately and somewhat to my own surprise, “eternal happiness.”

At first I thought my answer was somewhat frivolous. But when I mused about the qualities that happiness can bring out in us, I thought it might have some validity. Life has thus far shown that to be true.

38 years later Miles and I are ridiculously happy. I think that’s largely because we decided separately and as a couple that happiness matters.

There were some very rocky years for sure, but somewhere along the way, we each made a decision to pay more attention to and place a higher value on occasions of happiness than occasions of disappointment or hurt. We began to look in the direction of the other’s essential goodness. (Miles was way ahead of me there.)

I don’t know if he would put it this way, but we each decided to assume that the other was acting in good faith to the best of his or her ability at the time.

And then taking out the garbage became sexy

I distinctly remember the day I made a big deal out of Miles’s announcement that he had taken out the trash. In a flash of insight I realized I had a choice: I could dismiss his announcement as trivial (or worse, as a craven bid for undeserved credit), or I could tell him it made me hot.

I chose the latter. Yes, I was joking, but in that moment a truth came to light: The truth that an infinite amount of happiness is available when we look in that direction. The truth that the value and implications of Miles’s taking out the trash lay 100% in how I chose to hold it.

I said it made me hot, and then it did. (Not to worry, that’s the end of the personal disclosures.)

What this has to do with your business

When you work for yourself, you are in business. And being in business is like being married. You get out of the relationship what you put into it.

If you regard the business side of self-employment as a necessary evil, you’ll find plenty to dislike. It will be easy, even natural, to give power to whatever random negative thoughts arise. And as in a marriage, you’re likely to blame yourself as well as your business for what’s wrong.

It’s a vicious circle.

But when you decide to regard your business as if you could actually be happy together, the relationship changes dramatically. You begin to look at where your gifts and resources can serve your business and vice versa. Instead of asking why business is such a drag, you start looking for crumbs of joy.

And where there are crumbs, there are cookies.

When you choose to manage for happiness, things don’t magically go well, any more than they do in a marriage. But you won’t make the mistake of imagining that your happiness rests on externals.

When you look in the direction of happiness in your business, you will be happier in it. The happier you are, the more responsive you will be to the needs of your business and the more appreciative you will be of how your business enables you to do the work you love. You’ll be more creative and willing to be bold. When random positive thoughts occur, it will be natural to give them power.

It’s a virtuous circle, and it begins with the decision to be happy.

Photo by Lindsey B via flickr

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Molly
Posted in Ambition, Authenticity, Community, Confidence, Creativity, Getting clients, Life purpose, Meaning, Self care, Success | Tagged , , , , , | 16 Comments

How to Get Prospective Clients to Value Your Work When Money Is Tight

Collaborative Conversations about Value and Pricing

Illustration: istockphoto.com

Why do some businesses survive in tough economic times while others fail?

One explanation is that people always necessities, like groceries, but not luxuries, like diamond rings or massage. But that isn’t necessarily the case.

Still, if you look around you, you’ll see tons of evidence that people continue to invest in discretionary goods and services even when money is tight.

While grocery stores undoubtably have a priority claim on our pocketbooks, it’s not just our stomachs that influence what we buy.

Simply put, we all pay for what we value. That’s the idea behind what’s called value pricing. But here’s the deal (and the good news): You don’t have to persuade prospective just-right clients of the value of your work. Establishing value is a collaboration.

What Is Value?

Value is the difference between what a thing costs and the benefit that others perceive that it confers.

The cost of groceries gets measured against the value of nourishment and pleasure, and the grocer makes a sale.

How Prospective Clients Establish Value

It’s easy enough to understand how people determine the value of putting food on the table. But what if you’re a massage therapist or an image consultant? How do your people decide if your work is valuable enough to pay your rates?

While it’s true that they can’t eat a massage or wardrobe consultation, both of these “non-essentials” have deep seated value for the just-right client.

My friend Tom has back pain that used to interfere with his work. Now regular therapeutic massage keeps him flexible, fit, and productive. For Tom, massage is not a luxury, it’s job security. (He’s can also crawl around the floor with his kids again, which may be the bigger benefit.)

When Linda could afford shopping as a past-time, she thought hiring an image consultant was unnecessary. Now that she needs to dress professionally on a budget, she’s realized how much money she’s wasted on poor choices. Working with a wardrobe consultant has become a necessity.

So prospective clients know the reasons why they would pay for products and services like yours.

But they don’t always know that they know it. It’s your job to help bring those reasons to light.

You can learn how to do that in Five Keys to Conversations About Value below.

How Do You Get Clients to Talk to in the First Place?

Before you can have collaborative conversations about value, you have to find and connect with prospective just-right clients. How do you do that?

The answers to that question are at the heart of The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just-Right, a 7-part program with the sole purpose of showing you how to get clients that fit just right.

UPDATE: I’ve redesigned Goldilocks with a full year of monthly teleconferences to help you put the tools to work in your biz. Work at your own pace and start getting more clients. ♥

 

Five Keys to Conversations About Value

It’s one thing to understand the concept of value as a collaboration. It’s another thing to have the conversation that gets things going. Somehow, when we sit down to talk, a fog bank seems to move in. Or we get what golfers call the yips.

These five keys will help you navigate through the fog and prevent the yips.

1. Let go of the result.

2. Be willing to be surprised.

3. Ask questions.

4. Listen.

5. Check before drawing conclusions.

Let Go of the Result

The first and most important key a successful conversation about value is to let go of the result.

A conversation about value is not a sales pitch in disguise. The goal is not to make a sale, but to collaboratively reveal the value of your work so that the client can make an informed decision about buying.

No, not every prospective client will decide to buy or hire you. But I promise you that anyone that walks away from this conversation feeling heard and understood remains a prospective client and positive referral source.

Be Surprise-able

Even if you are crystal clear about the value you offer your just-right clients, be willing to be surprised.

You may be the expert in how your work solves problems and fulfills dreams, but your prospective clients are the hands-down experts in what that means to them.

So open your mind. Drop your preconceptions about value. Let the client surprise you. (And you can surprise them by really listening. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

Ask Questions

Your job in the conversation about value is to ask questions, not answer them.

When you want to collaboratively establish the value of your work, imagine that you are helping a friend make an important decision. Instead of giving advice, ask questions that help your friend, in this case, a prospective client, articulate what’s most important to them.

  • What do they want to achieve?
  • What will that give them?
  • Why is that important?
  • And what matters most about that?
  • What’s their starting point?
  • What’s between where they are now and where they want to be?
  • If they could have any kind of help they wanted, what would that look like?

Not only will this conversation reveal value from your prospective client’s point of view, it will be a goldmine of language and ideas you can use in the future to decide what to offer, how to package it, and how to describe it.

Listen

Forgive me if I sound pushy, but if you aren’t asking a question, your mouth shouldn’t be talking. And if you don’t know what to ask, silence can be okay, too. Show your prospective client that you are willing and able to really see them and their problems and dreams without trying to tell them what they need.

Only when they feel really seen do people become interested in how you can give them what they want.

Check Before Drawing Conclusions

During collaborative conversations about value, pause and reflect to prospective clients what you’ve heard them say. This shows that you are listening and that you care enough to really understand their points of view. It gives them a chance to clarify or elaborate. It will keep you from inadvertently imposing your thinking on theirs. And it will suggest new questions to ask.

Another cool thing? If you sometimes feel less than fully confident about the value of your work, you may discover that your prospective client is more appreciative of it than you thought.

Value Is a Collaboration

When it comes right down to it, the value of your work emerges from a collaboration between you and your just-right clients. What’s more, collaboration begins long before you are hired.

Start asking questions and listening to the people you’d love to work with. Watch the value emerge. And watch your client list grow.

Are You Ready to Get Better at Getting Clients?

The Goldilocks Strategy for Getting Clients that Fit Just-Right begins May 8, 2013.

In other words, if this has resonated with you, and if you’re ready to dive into getting better–lots better–at getting clients, take a look now at Goldilocks now. Click this link to learn more. www.shaboominc.com/goldilocks-landing/

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Molly
Posted in Confidence, Marketing, Money, Pricing, Self-employment, Selling, Small business | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Don’t think of a blue elephant: What’s negative about positive thinking

blue_elephant_4-2013Okay, I dare you. Don’t think of a blue elephant.

Pretty near impossible, no?

And that’s what’s wrong with seeking success or any form of happiness by trying replace negative thinking and with positive thinking. Thoughts don’t obey.

I’m not saying you have to be the victim of negative thinking. Good Lord, no. I am saying that as soon as we make a project out of replacing negative thinking with positive thinking, we set up circumstances for frustration and failure.

Not the best strategy for feeling good, being resourceful, or accessing compassion.

It’s not thought that’s the problem

You don’t have to do anything about a negative thought. In and of itself, a negative thought has no power. It is utterly lacking in inherent meaning. The only way it can mean anything is if you decide it does.

For example, I just thought of robbing a bank. Big deal. Am I going to rob a bank? No. Am I even vaguely interested in robbing a bank? No. (Well, maybe. Could be interesting. But it sounds like a lot of grief, so maybe not.)

My point is that thinking of robbing a bank doesn’t make me a bank robber. Thinking I could end up a bag lady doesn’t mean I’m doomed to spend the rest of the day in financial angst.

They’re both just thoughts.

The problem is taking the thought personally

Not only do thoughts have no inherent meaning, they’re essentially impersonal. That is, they’re impersonal until we take them personally.

Imagine a three year old is throwing a tantrum because she dropped her ice-cream cone. You try to soothe her, but she’s not interested in being soothed. Instead, she pushes you away and screams that you are mean and ugly.

Now I’ve had days when I might have taken that personally, but, by and large, I don’t attach to the judgments of a frustrated three year old, and you probably don’t either. The thought that we’re mean and ugly just doesn’t get any traction, because we don’t take it personally.

We have the same opportunity when grown-ups whom we respect say we’re mean and ugly. (Whatever. You know what I mean.) We can’t prevent the thought from occurring to us, but we do have the option of not attaching to it.

The “Oh well!” solution

But let’s be real. What about those times when we do take a thought personally and can’t seem to let it go?

Well, there’s always the option of arguing with yourself. (Been there. Done that. Will doubtless do it again. Oh well!)

The problem with arguing with yourself is that the harder you argue, the more entrenched the self that is suffering from the negative thought becomes. If you’ve tried this (and who hasn’t) you know how crazy-making it is.

Instead, I recommend the “Oh well!” solution. Here’s how it goes.

“Ah, here I am, feeling the effects of a negative thought. I hate that.

“Oh well! Another one will be along in a minute. Or two. And with new thought is the possibility, even the likelihood, of a new feeling. With a new feeling, there’s the possibility of a new insight, and thus new options. Might as well hang out and see what comes along.”

The “Oh well!” solution isn’t a technique

The “Oh well!” solution isn’t a technique to generate positive thinking. It’s simply a natural product of understanding how thought works. It’s a lovely alternative to talking ourselves too seriously.

The “Oh well!” solution works in your personal life and your business. It can be especially useful when you find yourself in the grip of thoughts such as that self-employment is hard or that you’re just not cut out to promote yourself.

Try it, and let me know how it works for you.
Photo Credit: Choo Yut Shing via Flickr

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Molly
Posted in Ambition, Confidence, Creativity, Emotional intelligence, Mindfulness, Spirit, Success, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments