Over the years, I’ve found that most business owners don’t know their enough number.  You know, your enough number: the precise amount of money it takes to cover your business and personal expenses, as well as account for taxes so you don’t suddenly owe ALL THE DOLLARS on April 15th.

In this special edition of the podcast, I’ll show you how to figure out precisely how much money you need your business to make each month, then break down exactly how much of your work you’ve got to sell to make that number happen. We’ll even account for taxes, and of course I’ll make you laugh the whole time.

Finding your enough number will help you prioritize your marketing activities, stop overwhelm in its tracks, and generally stop your asshole brain from going on and on about needing the vague and ominous “MORE” money.

Listen in below.

HEAR YE HEAR YE THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT.  This could be a paid class with a bunch of videos and bonuses and blah blah blah, but then you’d never actually do it because it would be one more thing you mean to do but never get around to completing.  (When asked to take a long-ass class about finances, 100% of humans suddenly have something much better to do.)

Please treat this like a no big deal, just-hanging-out-on-an-average-Tuesday sort of podcast, but grab a notebook and do the work.

If you’d like my help to go a step further and get yourself a rad workbook that will walk you through all of this, because diving into your financial health is intimidating AF, I’d be happy to help!

You can purchase this class in workbook form so that you actually complete the tasks instead of just listening.  Grab it for $10.

If $10 isn’t something you’ve got right now, we can also exchange value when you write a review, leave a rating, or send the podcast along to others.

Again, this is an experiment.  The trend right now is not just to give away simple things, but to make free courses and programs and challenges and audio and video and send 4,233 sales emails with timers and LIMITED OFFERS and tripwires and webinars and MY GOD IT’S EXHAUSTING.

This is me modeling more of what I would like to see in the world: fewer people doing things for exposure dollars.  Less content marketing, more making things that are truly useful and not simply a ploy to build an email list.  (I’m not giving this to you to build my email list because most freebies end up in your downloads folder, only to be found and deleted in roughly 2027.  And that does neither of us any good.)

P.S. This experiment is anti-capitalist in nature, as you get access to the goods first and pay second.  Translation: there’s TRUST here.

If this type of experiment is interesting to you, check out my anti-capitalist, pro-abundance-without-any-manifesting interview with Bear Hebert.

At its most simplified, you overcome perfectionism like this:

Make something up.
Get the word out about it.
Accept dollars for the thing you’ve made up.

(Of course that doesn’t always work, because have you seen the photo to the left and WOW do I suck at being posed sometimes.  But you keep going.)

This is an episode of That’s What She Said, my weekly podcast!  Listen in below, or read along for the transcript(ish).

This thing you’re sharing may or may not require: a website, an e-mail list, a social media presence, and/or a change of job.

It will most definitely involve: risk, leaving your comfort zone, asking for help, and failing. Lots.

We hide behind plans and structures, strategies and investors, sure things and experts, but there’s no real way to know how a thing you’ve made up will do until you introduce it to the world.

So go on, make the thing.

And then introduce it to the world.

“I’ve had many many many products, the vast majority of the things I’ve written, or created, the organizations I built fail, but the reason I’ve managed a modicum of success is because I just keep shipping.” — Seth Godin

We’re tempted to hide, to give up, or to go back to the old way of doing something once we’ve perceived something as a failure, but Seth tells us to just keep shipping.

That idea you’ve got? Ship it.

That thing you’re sitting on? Ship it.

The movement you want to start? Ship it.

Ship 10 things, and 2 will succeed.

That’s better than shipping 1 thing and having it fail, right?  It feels too big, too important, or too grand. It’s not ready, it needs more of this and less of that.

IT WILL NEVER FEEL READY. SHIP IT.

What are you perfecting, tweaking, or planning?

What’s been an idea lurking in your brain for the past few weeks, months, years, or decades?

What is it you want to do but you feel like you just freaking CAN’T because you’re too scared, because you don’t know enough, or because someone else has a slightly similar version and you’re afraid you’ll end up copying him or her, even though you know that’s a lame excuse and really, yours is completely different?

What do you need to set a deadline for, NOW?

I dare you to set it.

And then JUST FUCKING SHIP IT.

When we give one idea, concept, or blueprint too much attention, it can suck away our momentum, tank our mojo, and keep us from shipping.

Your brain will tell you that shipping and shipping and shipping does your clients a disservice. It will say that you should tweak and twerk, that your clients deserve only perfection, that they couldn’t possibly embrace the state of your creation as it is right now.

Only what if it launches and it’s missed the mark? Three months of work into it, that’s devastating.

Three years, or three decades into it? You’ll never recover.

That’s the part where you let your people have at it — whatever it is — and then you tweak.

You listen. You add features or streamline the whole venture. You let the dead bits fall to the wayside. You add life to the parts your peeps embrace. You let your clients inform your work, and your work inform your clients, in a glorious cycle that goes up and up and up and up into something way better than you could ever have created without their input.

When you’re holding tight to perfectionism, you’re not holding tight to your clients.

They deserve to see your work, not to be teased with it until it’s been beaten and battered to within an inch of its life.

When you’re striving for perfection, you can erode the fundamental spirit of a thing.

You lose an edge here, a corner there. You keep chipping away, and suddenly the life is gone.

Sometimes the spirit is in the flaws. Sometimes the charm is in letting us see your humanity. Sometimes the most sacred bits are the parts your detractors might call mistakes. Sometimes the best parts of a program are found in the outtakes.

The world makes a big fuss about perfection, but the act of iterating is infinitely more sexy. When you find yourself in the ‘make it perfect, make it perfect, make it perfect’ loop…ask yourself whether what you’re making hums with life.

Ask a friend who loves you where it sings and where it falls flat. Ask if the whole thing reflects who you are and where you are in the world, or if you’ve accidentally picked up someone’s else’s voice. (Or worse, someone else’s aspirations.) Ask them if it feels like you.

Does it feel like kids covered in mud, or dogs digging in the sand, or those moments when you first picked up the instruments of your profession and thought ‘This is what I want to do with my life…’? If it does, no further polishing is required.

Let us see the work. Let your slightly-wibbly bits sing out to ours and make new off-key-but-lovely music together.

We’d rather have a spirited something than a lifeless lump of perfection.

What have you been sitting on, waiting for, or polishing for way too long?

Where are you dragging your feet?

What can you get to market in the next 6 weeks?

No, really…if you give it your all, what can you get to market in the next 6 weeks? The next 8 weeks?

Pablo Picasso painted his masterpiece, Guernica, in under a month. New York Times bestselling author Jane Green writes her novels in six months. Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in less than thirty days. My favorite poems always fall out in twenty minutes or less.

Don’t discount something just because you haven’t wallowed in it for a decade or more.

P.S.  If you need help to overcome perfectionism and bring your work to the world, I’ve got three pay-what-you-can books to help!  Go Your Own Way: free yourself from business as usual is ideal if you’ve got no idea where to begin with owning a business.

Introverts at Work will help you explore selling and marketing techniques that make the most of your Quiet-with-a-capital-Q nature.

Calling to the Deep: business as a spiritual practice will help you figure out why your money issues affect your business, and your marital issues affect your bookings, and your own personal failings somehow seem to be far more pronounced the minute you opened your doors.  That’s normal.  Let’s talk about it.

Tis the season for overwhelm and that busy feeling increasing exponentially, so let’s dive into some simple ways to head overwhelm off at the pass.  You can read and click through below, or listen in to this week’s episode of That What She Said!

Make space.

You can make space physically, by clearing your desk or processing orders. You can also make space mentally, by choosing to pursue one task at a time.

Turn off allll the notifications on your phone and desktop. If you need help breaking your phone addiction, Space will help.  Find out more here.

Delete all the stuff in your Downloads folder. It’s mostly stuff you don’t know what to do with, and now you can take it off your plate entirely.

Delete programs, PDFs, books, freebies, or downloads you don’t want, are never going to use, or no longer need. Yes, you paid money for that online Bobsledding course, but you still live in Florida, so maybe it’s best to admit defeat and move on.

Prioritize.

If you’re constantly running around and asking yourself what to do when, it’s probably time to get yourself some priorities. Namely: if you run a business, you want to keep business coming in.

Write up your six-month marketing calendar.  I’ll show you how.

Send an email to your list. (No shame, no matter how long it’s been or if it’s been never!  Check out How to F*&(ing Communicate if you don’t know what to say or where to start! Here’s how to start an email list if you don’t yet have one.

Whittle.

You can’t work for 12 hours and be at home taking care of your family for 12 hours and and run a casual marathon and write your book and listen to 48 podcasts today, because there are only 24 hours in a day.

What’s most important about your work day, and how can you best get that work done?

If this is your biggest struggle, check out The Quietly Subversive 3-Hour Work Day, episode 204 of the podcast!

It can also help to clear up your desktop by organizing folders and deleting what’s not necessary in this moment. If you’re one of those people with 4,822 unread messages — it might be time to declare email bankruptcy by deleting everything and sending a quick note to your contacts saying that you’re starting over.

Schedule.

Schedule recurring tasks. Yes, you really can schedule time to check email or write posts or edit your work or…whatever!  Here’s everything I know about time management.

Keep a calendar instead of a to-do list. A to-do list means you’ll knock off the easy stuff and move the gross stuff to tomorrow. A calendar means you’ve got it on lockdown and it will get done, no matter how much you don’t want to do it.

Finally, step away from the screen when your job is done. Find out more about the quietly subversive 3-hour work day.

Make space.

Prioritize.

Whittle.

Schedule.

You got this.

P.S. Breathwork for Overachievers might be helpful, too! This active meditation will help you move through overwhelm within sacred space.

Last week, we talked all about the dangers of the instant: instant solutions, instant answers, instant answers to difficult and complex problems.

We talked about how the instant is meant as a shortcut to certainty, and in the meantime it cuts off depth, meaning, and the practice of craft.

As I sat with the episode, and listened to it on a gorgeous drive through the Philly springtime, it struck me that we haven’t finished diving into the instant.

That leads us to this episode of That’s What She Said: there’s no substitute for being seen!

More than cutting off depth and meaning — which are abstract concepts — we often use the instant to prevent ourselves from being seen.

If we could just fill our dockets and calendars and coffers without ever being vulnerable, we think we’d be blissfully happy. Maybe those sales funnels made of fill-in-the-blanks, or that strategy ‘proven’ by so many people will do it — and will require nothing of our souls! LET’S GIVE IT A TRY.

Only.

Making a living without ever showing your true self — particularly for those among us who are sensitive AF, who are artists, who are empaths, who are committed to soul — will likely fall flat.

We hide, and we’re tempted to buy Instagram captions and stock photos and templates and blueprints because surely, surely, the answer to thriving in business can’t be that we show the world our true selves.

THE HORROR.

After a decade in business, and having talked with many entrepreneurs, I’ll put the most basic hiding we do into two main categories.

If we’re busy, full to the brim, over-scheduled, or otherwise at capacity, we’re afraid to show people how tired we are. Not tired like, in need of a nap, but tired all the way down. ‘Three weeks of solo vacation might be a start’ tired.

We turn our Pinterest-ready Perfection Porn Cannon to Maximum, and we show the world how not-tired and engaging we are right now.

If we’re not busy, we’re afraid to show people that our days are not full of the work we profess to love. We spend our time worrying about clients, trying to get clients, making offers, and worrying about money.

We turn our Perfection Porn Cannon to Ultra Super Whoa, and we show the world how very BUSY we are at every level.

Neither option allows us to be seen.

Being affirmed as not tired, as a superhero, as a ‘how do you do it all’ human, isn’t accurate when you are crawling through the dirt on your knees, begging for rest.

Being affirmed as a busy, full-to-the-brim business owner isn’t true, either, when your inbox is empty, your phone isn’t ringing, and you’re looking at part-time jobs to fill the gaps.

What we need most when we are struggling is to be seen.

A few years ago, a wildly talented photographer wrote a deeply honest blog post about how little money all those thousands of likes actually pay, asking people to actually hire them if you admired their work. As in, pay me I’m awesome. It was MAGNIFICENT.

They were seen, they were paid, they have never been more popular.

Likewise, those who are courageous enough to draw boundaries and say no, they can’t actually work with 427 peeps a year are far more likely to sell out the capacity they do have when they slow down, ask for help, hire staff, and/or raise prices.

Are you tired? At capacity, spent, or otherwise full?

Grab your calendar and start putting X’s in the calendar. Give yourself a week off — even if it’s to sit at home playing catch up or to watch Game of Thrones from beginning to end — and then put one Firm Day Off per week on the calendar. Not a half day. Not a sort-of evening. A full day. Each week.

The space you’ll create will start to work on you — to remind you of why you’re alive and why you’re doing this whole entrepreneurial thing in the first place. You’ll know which step to take from there.

Are you bored, not-busy, or wondering where to get clients?

Stop pretending you’re booked until 2024. Get yourself one client at a time: stay on it, follow up like a champ, and get off the screens and out into the world whenever possible.

It’s also helpful to acknowledge when slow business isn’t your fault.

Look at the seasons of your business and acknowledge them honestly. My peeps disengage HARD in the summer (because summer is for being at the beach, not working on new business practices), and they start paying attention again with back-to-school season. Any attempts to market a new thing will be much, much harder for me in August than in September. You probably also have seasons, and working with instead of against them will do wonders.

Once we’re past the basics, there are sneaky and subtle hiding techniques we use to keep ourselves only partially visible.

Have I used these?  Of course! How do you think I know about them?

Before we go any further, unfollow, unsubscribe from, and otherwise actively ignore all those who teach you how to be shinier, flashier, and less yourself. This means those who are selling you a lifestyle, business model, or aspirational ideal that is not only never going to happen, but also detrimental to your health or way of being.

I can’t follow stylists anywhere, for any reason, because I get oddly obsessed with how PERFECT everything looks and how my life falls so miserably behind. Like, yes I have that one hyacinth bloom framed in golden light, but the floor is also covered in dog toys and a puppy who’s 75% potty-trained.

The least obvious but most common hiding tactic we employ is actively hiding the full reality of our lives from ourselves.

Refusing to admit truth within ourselves means we can’t deal with it in the outer world.

Which people do you need to ignore or unfollow for a while?
What do you know needs to happen, but it’s not yet on the calendar?
Which programs do you need to schedule or to delete because let’s be honest, they’re not happening this year? (Those can be programs you run in your business, or that you’ve purchased to work on.)
What do you secretly believe is going to happen in your business — and how are you making your worst fears come true? (i.e. You’re afraid you’ll never have enough clients, so you don’t respond to those who ask to hire you and become clients.)
Which products, services, or people do you resent in your business?
Can any or all of them be eliminated?
What is dying to be born? (Yes, you’ve heard this question before, and NO, I won’t stop asking it.)

Those questions are wily. They don’t necessarily have answers that are obvious to others from the outside looking in, which is why you’ve got to pull up a seat at your own table for a heart-to-heart.

At least one of those questions should have sparked a bigger, deeper task you can do to stop hiding in your business.

Now, we move on to the much simpler task of scoping out basic hiding places in your work.

Is your full name clearly associated with your business?
Is there a headshot of you on your homepage that does not include your lover, kids, pets, or career accessories?
Do you have a concise and accurate ‘about’ page on your website?
Do you follow up with those who wish to hire you promptly, and more than once?
Do you repeat yourself — i.e. stay on it — or do you hope everything you offer will sell out with only one casual mention?
Do you have a clear capacity count on your homepage and in your social media bios if you’re currently too busy? (I.e. there are 18 spots left for the year)
Is there anywhere that you’re hiding behind other people’s blueprints, templates, or strategies for your livelihood?

I completely understand these impulses to scurry away from the limelight or to expect your work to ‘speak for itself.’ Being seen is hard work.

Refusing to be seen — sending in your shinier, flashier, more successful and breezy representative — will only distance you from your own life and business.

Do you expect your work to ‘speak for itself’ instead of making and repeating offers regularly?
Do you share un-retouched or otherwise ‘real’ photos of your life and experience?
Do you ever show your peeps what it’s like behind the scenes in your business?
Do you ever let peeps see your face on video, such as on Instagram Live or Facebook Live or Youtube Live or Whatever the Kids Are Using These Days Live?
Do any strategies that used to work but don’t anymore need to be eliminated?
Where do you actively hide your life (home, kids, partner, office, schedule, other jobs) from your peeps?
Are you hesitant to share your work with your community, with friends, or with people in your real life?

We are far more likely to hire you when you are real — when you refuse to style your kids’ messes for Instagram or when you are truthful about the challenges you’re facing.

Hell, we’re far more likely to hire you when we can see that you’re an actual human.

We don’t need you to be perfect.

We need you to do what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it.
We need you to be honest when you fuck something up.
We need you to do your best work, and to create the boundaries that make the work possible.

We need you to be human.
And you need to be human, too.

It’s the way to fulfillment and to growth.

There’s no substitute for being seen.

To put it another way! Let’s fill in some blanks.

I know I hide when I encounter _________________, and I hide even more when ___________ happens. I let _______________________ mess with my head, and I let ___________ hold me back.

One way to counteract my own headgames is to ___________________.

My version!  I know I hide when I encounter enormous dreams, and I hide even more when winter happens. I let cashflow mess with my head, and I let fear of debt hold me back.

One way to counteract my own headgames is to actively try hearing ‘no’ more often by making more asks for interviews, collaborations, and new clients.

Speaking of asks! I’ve got 5 spots for KK on Tap open, and you’re invited to work with me! If you’ve been listening to the podcast or reading the blog for a while now (looking at you, peeps with more than a year of watching me under your belt), there’s a damn good chance we should work together.

KK on Tap includes quarterly 1-on-1 coaching calls, quarterly group coaching calls, access to my extensive archives, a free seat in the Voice workshop, and a phone-a-friend emergency call to keep in your back pocket.

It’s intentionally paced to be slow and steady, so your business life can unfold naturally over the course of a year. (A lot can happen!)

It’s also priced at $225 a month, which is a damn bargain, and I promise that price will go up significantly the next time spots open.  Current KK on Tap peeps are experiencing record-breaking income in their businesses, launching new products and services, tweaking their business models, and actively doing the work of being seen.

Reach out and talk to me — k@kristenkalp.com — and let me know how you suspect I can help. We’ll pick through your mess, toy with new ideas, try on new ways of being, and then I’ll hold you accountable for whatever it is that’s hardest to do right now.

P.S.  I hate having a coach.  😉

Let’s get you started on the road to Actually Talking To Your Peeps On A Regular Basis Without Shame and Fretfulness.

This is an episode of the That’s What She Said podcast! You can tune in below or keep scrolling to get the gist.

For lots of years, I figured someone else knew best about how I should be talking to my peeps about my business. That sounds silly to admit now, but I trusted ‘experts’ to help me navigate the world of business instead of acknowledging that what I was being told frequently felt ‘off,’ wrong, and generally gross.

Mostly I was told to hustle all the time, but be ‘authentic,’ but not too authentic because you need to be professional, but not too professional because then you don’t stand out from the crowd, and ‘put yourself out there’ but NOT LIKE THAT.

I hated hearing from people and businesses only when they were selling something. At the same time, I was worried about how much noise email and marketing and talking about products generated in general, and I didn’t want to contribute to the noise. Which means NATURALLY I ONLY EMAILED MY PEEPS WHEN I WAS SELLING SOMETHING.

Brilliant.

It took 7+ years to realize:

a.) I don’t have to communicate like everyone else communicates
b.) these people WANT to hear from me, and
c.) their responsiveness or lack thereof to any single email in no way indicates how much impact I’m having on their lives.

I’m going to dive deeper into each of these painfully-obvious-but-difficult-to-learn truths in detail, as you enjoy this excerpt from my upcoming class, How to Fucking Communicate.

It’s all about how to actually communicate with the people on your email list instead of failing to create a list, acting as if the list is actually a hive of poisonous and deadly creatures that will kill you upon sending a single email, or truly believing that even though your peeps said they want to hear from you, they don’t actually want to you to email them, because they are lying liars with better ways to spend their time.

You’ve got instant access to the download when you hit the buy button.  Read more or pick up your seat now!

Truth #1: You don’t have to communicate like everyone else communicates.

There are people out there who have their creative calendars planned for the next twelve months. They are very willing to share their planners with you on Pinterest or as a free download or in a free seminar or all three. For me, the concept of a ‘creative calendar’ that’s solid and unchanging one year out is utter bullshit.

My creative calendar — which dictates my podcasts, blog posts, and emails — is planned for four weeks out, tops. I know what I’ll be marketing for the next six months (see: how to make a marketing calendar), but what I’ll be writing about, talking about, and generally sharing is always based in my life at the moment of writing, which I can’t possibly anticipate a year in advance.

I’ve been podcasting weekly for over three years now, and blogging for more than nine, and not once have I stuck to an ‘editorial calendar’ or otherwise managed to keep to a strict ‘content’ schedule. I’ve made calendars, absolutely, and scribbled gorgeous plans that are absolutely perfect on paper. And then, within four weeks of starting them, I’m BORED OUT OF MY FUCKING MIND BECAUSE I KNOW WHERE IT’S ALL GOING.

Also, can we stop calling it content? It’s art, and poetry, and emails, and podcasts, and images, and witty commentary, and advice, and useful creativity, and all of the above, and calling it ‘content’ makes us sound like really sad robots pushing out blocks of shiny, commodifiable garbage.

So: you don’t have to communicate like everyone else communicates.

The trick to communicating is consistency.

If you say you’re going to communicate with your peeps once a month, make sure you do. If it’s once a week, or twice a week, or every seventh Tuesday, or on the full moon, or only when the sun sets after 8 p.m….do that. The point is whether you do what you say you’re going to do, not the frequency of your communication.

The length, frequency, and template of your communication is entirely yours.

Again, you’ll see people around you saying you must be SEO-friendly or have more than 300 words or write using words at or below a fourth grade reading level or structure your posts to align with social media, which aligns with Mercury in the House of Gemini and…no.

The length, frequency, and template of your communication is entirely yours.

I’m pushing email specifically because we all have an email account and because Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t own the algorithms that govern it. Any platform in which you can communicate directly with your peeps — such as email, texting, or snail mail — counts as communicating.

Your personal communication cocktail might be:

A stunning image and an inspirational quote with a link to book your work.
A short poem and a testimonial about your work.
Three links to your latest products and a discount code.
Your latest blog post, written out and sent as a standalone email so peeps remember to visit your website.
19 paragraphs from your upcoming novel delivered every Wednesday for a month.
A single podcast episode.
A series of podcasts.
Recent interviews.
A few quick snippets of your life right now and a call to action.
New products, featured products, or sale products.
New services, a featured service, or an update on the availability of a service.
All of the above.
None of the above.

Your communication might benefit from having a template, but it in no way requires you to lock one in for life.

How often do you prefer to communicate?
Which length of email do you prefer to send — short, medium, or loooong?
What do you really want to sell, move, or promote in the next three months?
What do you want to share with your peeps that isn’t about selling, moving, or promoting a product?

When you lock in a timeframe, a length, and a topic or two, communicating is much, much less scary than it was before we began.

I’ll send ______________ every ___________ days. I can talk about __________ or ____________ or ____________, and I’ll be sure to mention __________________, since that’s what pays the bills.

What you might have just heard was, ‘Aha! Kristen says I can communicate MY way! And that means I send one half-hearted email to my peeps every ten to twelve months, or whenever I panic about money! That IS my way!’

Nah. You don’t get off that easily.

Truth #2: your people want to hear from you.

If you can really, truly believe this, you’re golden. And yup, I know it takes a long time to get here.

If your peeps are suddenly full of hatred for you and resent your very existence, as your asshole brain says, then they’ll unsubscribe. That’s the worst that will happen. They won’t get your emails/texts/mail any longer. Until then, it’s safe to assume that they want to hear what you have to say. Even if all you have to tell is a personal story and the only thing notable you’ve done this week is find the world’s greatest otter GIF. Fine! Share that!

Also: they want to hear from you, even if there are ‘only’ 7 or 19 or 123 of them. Your list size has nothing to do with the fact that your peeps have agreed to your talking with them via email.

Communicating is more about keeping a line open between you and your peeps than it is about making a direct offer every single time you write to them.

When you share the greatest animal GIF in the world, you’re much more likely to get positive responses and build rapport and let people see you, which does wonders for your business in the long run. (Don’t be frustrated by how quickly people respond to GIFs and how slow they are to respond to big-deep-soulful stuff!  We’re human, we all love puppies, and you can combine the two in profoundly interesting ways.)

The less frequently you communicate in your business, the more likely you’ll have to make an offer each time you do so. Sending a single animal GIF email every six months is not communicating, it’s phoning it in. Likewise, sending five offers a week, every week, is overkill. I don’t actually know how often you should talk to your peeps, but I do know that most creative humans err on the side of under-communicating, underselling, and underoffering, which generally leads to financial turmoil and stress.

Further! Communication is not always about being useful. It is not always about ‘being of service’ by sharing 10 tips or 7 tricks or 4 helpful clues. The emails I’ve received the biggest responses to have been those of solidarity: I’m having a hard time/I’ve had a hard time, and I just want to say I’m with you if you’re having a hard time, too. No calculated, Pinteresting plan to paper the internets with life hacks. No overarching plan that leads to a sales funnel and six figures.

Simply: I’m a human, and I bet you’re human, too.

There’s power in simply being a human, consistently.

Truth #3: you can touch people without their having told you so.

In fact, the more profound the shift, the more vulnerable it is to share it.

I know you’re really worried that you don’t have anything to say AND that what you’re saying/making/creating/sharing isn’t finding the right people. But here’s the deal.

I’ve had my life profoundly shifted by lots of authors and never written them a single email. Why? Because I naturally assume they’re busy, they’re tired, and that they aren’t the people checking their own email. (See: Glennon Doyle, Rob Bell, Matt Haig, Brene Brown. That’s just this YEAR.)

I’ve had people casually write to me and share kind words starting with, “Now that I’ve been on your list for seven years…” or “I’ve admired you ever since [event that took place a decade ago]…” My peeps tend to be quiet, to respect boundaries, and to be deathly afraid of not ‘wasting’ anyone’s time. If those are your peeps, too, you might not get the response you’re looking for each time you send a missive.

THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT DOING GOOD WORK IN THE WORLD.

Your work, particularly your communication, has a cumulative effect in the world. The overall response to a single letter, image, poem, podcast, painting, song, piece of art, class, or offer isn’t measurable, and you have absolutely no control over how it impacts the lives of those who take it in.

If kind words are your only measure of your worth and your work, you’ll come up short every time. If, however, you accept kind words as a gift and keep on working — regardless of whether the accolades are piling in — you’ll find yourself happier and healthier in your business life.

Your job is to do your work and to keep sharing it whenever possible. Keep giving people reasons to share their kind words seven to ten years from now.

I’m so, so grateful for every kind email I receive. I also plan on receiving precisely zero kind emails per week. Often, my peeps don’t reply to my emails. At all. There are over four thousand people a week who see AND DO NOT RESPOND TO each email. I send them every week, regardless.

Doesn’t mean my message isn’t being heard or my life is a failure — just means they don’t want to ‘bother’ me. (Lest you think this lesson is obvious, this is a recent lesson, and I’ve been doing this work for over nine years. It took an absolutely absurd amount of time for me to believe that I could be both being listened to and not receiving tons of feedback simultaneously.)

To suss this out a bit more, let’s take a look at The ‘Bother’ Factor.

How many kind, loving emails to total strangers have you written in the past year?
How many people have changed your patterns, your way of thinking, your habits, or your behavior without ever knowing that they’ve done so?
How often do you ‘mind’ if people talk to you? (i.e. Is a weekly email okay?)
How often do you talk to other people via your business?

Is there a disparity between what you accept from others and what you do for yourself/your business?

TRICK QUESTION THERE IS OR YOU WOULDN’T BE HERE.

I dare you to write to one of those people whose work you’ve enjoyed right now. Then actually write down your responses to the Communication Cocktail, and you’re on your way to communicating!

From here, it’s time to nab a seat in How to Fucking Communicate, which is a 2-ish hour class that starts with you being all, OH GOD I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY AND I’M SCARED and ends with you being all, Actually, I can do this!  A tiny breathwork session and Q+A are included with the recording, as is a kickass workbook to help you take notes and work through the material.

?? Go check out the class details. 

Promo code ARCHIVE takes 50% off, making it just $34.50!

P.S.  Here’s the link to the How to F**&ing Communicate info one more time — then buy a seat!  (Again — promo code ARCHIVE takes 50% off!)