Posts in "get your biz off the ground" Category — Page 7

Decision-making made really, really easy.

When in doubt, you’ll almost always have two options: the comfortable choice and the uncomfortable choice.

Our brains are biased toward keeping us safe (read: comfortable), so your brain will naturally point you in the direction of the comfortable.

Only.

Uncomfortable is where you learn stuff.

You’re not soaking up knowledge during the first minute of a run or the first five minutes of writing or during that whole weekend of sleeping in and watching TV. You’re learning at the limits, hours into a challenging task or weeks into a project you’re not sure will succeed.

Uncomfortable means pushing your own limits about what entrepreneurship, community, fun, and learning can look like and feel like. How do we cross the divide between the online and offline worlds? How do we navigate a group of strangers who we would like to have as friends, despite the distances between us?

Uncomfortable means letting the obvious reveal itself to you without drama. Until you meet that person or hear that speech or read that book or figure that one thing out, you can’t know what to do. But now you know. What will you do about it?

Will you pursue the safe path, or will you go exploring?

I hope you’ll choose the uncomfortable.

Obviously, no one wants to be uncomfortable. No one enjoys the states of cold, hungry, washed in waves of self doubt, tired, sweating, or overwhelmed, but that’s when the good shit surfaces.

It’s horrible to be out of ideas or broke. It’s terrifying to take a wrecking ball to your business or to take the whole enterprise down to the studs. It’s inherently unsafe to start over.

It’s like CrossFit for your soul to get out there and do your work in the world. There are easier options everywhere.

But if you’re reading, it’s your job to do the deeper work that’s almost always uncomfortable. We all have versions of phoning it in that could make us a decent paycheck or keep us outfitted and fed for the coming year.

We’re called to go deeper. (That’s what she said.)

You could go off and read the first chapter of every book in the library instead of hanging out with those three books in the Restricted Section that will change the entirety of your existence.

Most people don’t enter the Restricted Section. They don’t follow the callings of their heart, or their brain or mind or psyche or even their sexual organs (unless they’re drunk on a Friday night).

Most people avoid uncertainty, risk, and the profound sense of taking on uncomfortable as a lifestyle.

But I dare you to be a different sort.

Like what you like.
Pursue what interests you.
And befriend uncomfortable. It looks good on you.

P.S. To explore this topic in a book’s worth of depth, pick up a copy of Calling to the Deep.

get your biz off the ground, market like a mofo

Nab my ultimate newsletter template.

Ah, the newsletter. Bane of every small business owner’s existence. Source of much strife and procrastination, many viewings of Game of Thrones, and infinite excuses for not sending today.

You hem, you haw. You “don’t want to say anything unless you have something to say,” so nine months pass between communications.

Or worse, you’re bored by what you’re saying but you send it out anyway. And no one responds. No one takes any action, so you write the newsletter off as useless.

It doesn’t have to be that big a deal to create and send a regular newsletter. (I know it is in your mind, because ASSHOLE BRAIN, but it doesn’t *have* to be a big deal.)

Let’s start with three simple elements you can use to make ANY newsletter/missive/communication better, okay?

The Ultimate Newsletter Template involves engagement, value, and a call to action.

Start with element #1: engagement.

To keep your readers engaged, you’ve got to be engaged first. There’s no wrong way to engage your readers — whether you want to talk about the latest book you’ve read or movie you’ve seen, some of the most rewarding work you’ve done lately, or the ways in which you’re changing your freaking exercise habits.

Draw your reader into the newsletter with details that will matter to ’em. That might mean a personal story from you and your life; the latest research relating to your business or your field of expertise; or a recent experience that relates to your business in some way. So long as you keep it short and you actually find it interesting, trust that your readers will feel the same way.

THEIR engagement doesn’t come from YOUR sense of obligation.

If you’ve got yourself a formula for how to write the best newsletter ever and it says you have to start with talking about the weather, or your horoscope, or your latest business achievement — and that thing doesn’t feel good to you — then you’re bumping up against obligation. That dreaded sense of “Oh, I have to say THIS” will ruin your communication right from the start, which means people don’t read the whole thing or will click away two second into it.

Then add element #2: value.

Once you’ve got your peeps engaged, it’s time to deliver value. Value, meaning: you improve your reader’s life in some small way with this piece of communication.

This value is going to look different for every business owner on earth, but here are some ideas to get you started.

Value-add option: your creative solution to a problem

Natural problem solvers want to help other people solve problems. (Humans are really straightforward that way.) If you already teach people how to do stuff, your newsletter is a place to share the free knowledge you offer that leads to deeper work. For example, teaching people to plant their produce might be one of your free tutorials — but teaching people how to get the maximum produce from their garden over the course of the growing season might be your paid work. Likewise, I teach people to do breathwork for zero dollars — but you can always book a 1-on-1 session with me if you want to go deeper, or pick up a breathwork class if you like what you find.

Value-add option: how-to/DIY tutorials

Not a teacher or person who teaches people how to do stuff? Actually, you can still teach people how to do stuff. 😉

If you’re into crafting and making, you can deliver DIY tutorials that keep your peeps engaged. Even if you’re a wedding photographer, delivering DIY value could mean helping peeps square away their wedding decorations, their florals, or their craftiest and quirkiest wedding favors via helpful Pinterest boards or interviews with other rad humans who are really good at what they do. Complementing the work you do with DIY help means you’re delivering tremendous value to your peeps. (Or at the very least, passing along your favorite vendors!)

If you’re into sewing, that tutorial for those cute little pillowcases might lead peeps to demand that you make more for ’em — and then you might have a whole separate business selling those pillows. Just ’cause you were sharing your creative impulses with your peeps. Personally, I show my work when it comes to my painting, and use the proceeds to fund charity work.

Value-add option: inspiration & curation

Some people are natural stylists. Everything they touch seems like it could appear in a museum. If you’re one of those people who photographs your shoes in twelve different positions for Instagram before putting ’em on your feet, you’re a natural curator.

Why not use your newsletter to share what’s inspiring you and what’s interesting to you at the moment?

Sure, you sell a product or service (here’s a tutorial for that), but you’re free to share the other products or services that go best with yours. Trust me, we’d rather have our favorite nutrition expert share the best protein powders for our smoothies than have to go through the trial and error of purchasing all those chalky, chalky powders ourselves.

Round it off with element #3: the call to action.

Without a call to action, newsletters can feel a bit aimless — leaving your reader feeling like, “You’re contacting me WHY!?” instead of inviting further engagement. And by engagement, I mean people being excited about what you’re doing in the world.

Personally, I assumed that people would respond to my newsletter “naturally” if they felt it was interesting, but I get at least five times more e-mail responses when I add a simple “Reply to this e-mail and…” at the end.

Don’t assume people will naturally reach out and buy/call/e-mail/chat without a bit of prompting! We’re all busy, and we’re all trying not to step on one another’s (busy) toes. Inviting connection speaks volumes about you, your values, and your business.

In the end, every newsletter should end with a call to action. You don’t want your reader to read the e-mail and feel done.

Here are 7 simple calls to action that work most anywhere: Click here, Start here, Read this, Add to cart, Buy now, Call me, Reply to this e-mail.

Simple, short phrases like “Click here” or “Start here” or “Read this” or “Add to cart” or “Buy now” or “Call me” or “Reply to this e-mail” are all calls to action that get your readers doing what you’d like. It’s up to you to shape business communication to be engaging.

By using these three elements and making damn sure you want to read your own newsletter, you’re off to a good start.

P.S. More newsletter rehab right here.

Photo // my own from time spent in Njabini, Kenya with Flying Kites

get your biz off the ground, make meaning

It’s time to do cartwheels in your underwear (and other business dares)

Your best moments will feel like doing cartwheels in your underwear.

Free, light, a tad scandalous and entirely life-giving.

Your best moments will feel like the rules don’t apply.

Like you’re flying. You’re unstoppable. You’re entirely alive.

The challenge for entrepreneurs lies in making more best moments through your business.

Not in merely making money to fuel faraway vacations,
but in making your ordinary reality feel like a faraway vacation.
That rich, that deep, that light.
That life-giving.

Not in using time away from your business to fuel the relationships that “matter,”
but in making relationships that matter within and through and around and
because of
your business.

Not in drawing a firm line between work and play,
but in blending the two to create something new
that no one has ever seen before.

Your challenge lies in making more best moments through your business.

In choosing to override the defaults that say business is for making money,
and life is for making meaning.

Your challenge lies in dancing with making both money and meaning through your business — one feeding the other in a crazy-ass dance to the beat of your choosing.

So choose. Today.

What lives just below the surface, dying to rise? Let us see it.
What are you afraid to give birth to? It’s time.
Which parts of yourself are you sure the world cannot handle? Show us.
Where are you terrified of taking your business next?
Because you know it will require more of you than ever before?
Because you might just end up feeling like you’re doing cartwheels in your underwear?

Choose. Today.

Begin shaping your next best moment.

and

please

invite us to do cartwheels right alongside you when it’s time.

P.S. Calling to the Deep leads pretty much directly to cartwheels.

get your biz off the ground

How to handle overwhelm

Unless you’re a robot of some kind, there will come a time when you feel like you’re behind on everything. Absolutely freaking EVERYTHING. Even your favorite TV show and your best friend’s gossip.

You will feel like you can never, ever possibly catch up, and you will consider throwing in the towel on your entire operation.

You will forget your commitment to yourself to make this work, your commitment to your soul to let this work into the world, and your commitment to your clients to deliver what you promised.

You will, quite simply, be washed in waves of overwhelm. And your brain will tell you there’s no way out. You’re hosed. Doomed. Screwed. Fucked. Except you’re not.

It’s Overwhelm’s job to make you think you can’t possibly get it together. But you can.

You’ve got to keep aware of just two things: your energy levels and your overwhelm levels.

It’s entirely possible that you’re so freaking tired that you simply can’t do anything more, even if you dutifully put in another two or three or ten hours. So rest.

Truly, rest. Go to bed and don’t get up until your body says you’re ready. When you hit this point, you should also let yourself cry. Or slam doors, or shower, or listen to the loudest LOUD music you own. Or soak in the tub listening to that one Enya song on repeat. However you choose to process the overwhelm, do it.

‘Cause when you’re stuck in waves of overwhelm, you can’t do jack shit. You just spin. You’re victim to the circle of tasks swimming around in your mind, and you can’t quite get a grasp on any single one. So you spin some more. And then you beat yourself up about how you’re not getting anything done when THERE’S SO MUCH TO GET DONE AAGGGGHHHHHHHH.

There were times during the creation of the Brand Camp event that I felt absolutely, utterly exhausted and overwhelmed. The ferris wheel guy needed a call and my accountants needed endless tax documents and I was teaching a masterclass the next day and I needed to finalize the schedule and look over the camp menu and tally the survey results of the vegans and vegetarians and special food needs to report back to camp staff, all while going through some deeply personal, overwhelming stuff.

Prioritize the exhaustion. And deal with the overwhelm later.

Trying to deal with overwhelm when your cup is empty just leads to more overwhelm.

I’ve learned to get myself to bed with a book and wake up at my regular time the next morning — without allowing myself any guilt about how I got those twelve (or thirteen or fourteen) hours of sleep — to start fresh. With a scheduled list.

Overwhelm takes the list-making parts of our brain out of commission. We’d like to start, but we don’t know where to start, and so we spin and spin and spin. Sleep gives our bodies and brains a break from the logical thinking that got us into this jam in the first place. Sleep gives your body a fighting chance of getting you through the next day.

Sleep is the magical icing that makes your life taste sweeter. So freaking sleep.

This is not rocket science, and you know this already. Sleep.

But we give ourselves 3,475 excuses to put it off. We check our e-mail one last time. We catch up with the Real Housewives. We play the game a little too long. We let our screens mask our exhaustion and steal away minutes that we could be putting to good use: sleeping! Once you’ve slept, you’re ready to conquer overwhelm.

Overwhelm cannot survive itemization and scheduling.

Itemization, meaning you bust out a sheet of paper and list all the things you need to get done today. And in the next 3 days. And in the next week.

That list should have at least 20 things on it…keep going. And going. Get it all out on paper. Even the stuff like getting your eyebrows waxed or your pedicure updated. If it takes up your time, it counts.

Now, prioritize your tasks.

When is that task really due?
Is there someone who can help you complete the task?
Is there a way to batch the tasks so that they’re completed in one dedicated chunk, or do they require daily time?

Finally, schedule the tasks.

Create chunks of time for those things you simply must accomplish, with looser periods of time for working on smaller, less important, or less urgent tasks.

Whatever you do, do NOT make a to-do list.

You’ll naturally want to throw everything onto a to-do list and skip the scheduling, but this will only lead to more overwhelm. You’re scheduling the work in order to prioritize it on your calendar. You’re working on the hardest or most urgent tasks first thing in the day, then working on less and less important things as the day goes on. That means you’re tackling the hardest tasks when you’re freshest.

Given a to-do list, you’ll tackle the easy wins first — post office, grocery shopping, mani/pedi, email, software update, CHECK! You’ll avoid the hardest things on the list, whatever they happen to be for you, and naturally shove them to tomorrow. And tomorrow, you’ll do the same thing. Which is why you haven’t sent an e-mail newsletter in six years or updated your blog in six months (psst! how to get out of a blogging rut!) or finally written your bio so it still says “Coming soon!” even though you’re really embarrassed about it.

Scheduling your most challenging tasks makes the difference between getting shit done and…not getting shit done. Period.

Kaboom! Did your brain just explode!?

Now go and do one of three things: sleep, itemize your to-do’s, or schedule what you’ve got to get done.

P.S. How many lights on your dashboard are blinking?

come alive, get your biz off the ground

10 ways to make space for what really matters

We’re all asked to do things we don’t want to do, go places we don’t want to go, and take part in projects we don’t have any interest in on a regular (read: daily) basis. If we cave and say “Yes” to these so-called opportunities, we end up taking time away from the work we’re doing that we enjoy, and from the family and friends who are waiting for us to get our heads out of our laptops and pay attention to them.

Here are 10 simple, painless ways to make space for what really matters in your life.

Provide an alternative. Say “No, but _____ could help you out” and refer away. Point people to a website, an article, a colleague, a friend, a resource, or a kitten video whenever necessary.

Have a weekend and/or unplugged e-mail auto-responder. This creates a gentle boundary and lets peeps know they won’t be hearing from you within 7 seconds. Or even 7 minutes!

Respond to methods of communication you don’t prefer with those you DO. You’re teaching people how to treat you, and you’re also teaching people how to communicate with you.

Model the behavior you’d like to see others emulate. Hire an inbox mistress. Have unplugged days. Take longer than an hour to get back to people because you’re off living life. Be the change.

Set expectations. As in, “X will be done by [date] and [time].” This eliminates the other person’s need to check in, to “see how things are going,” or to bother you until the scheduled date and time. It also manages expectations and makes people feel that you’re taking care of them. (Because you are.)

Say “No, thanks.” No further explanation required.

Delete it. If an e-mail has obviously been copied, pasted, and sent to a mass audience to make an individual request for your time or to ask a favor, delete it. No response necessary. I’ve been asked to speak at seminars that start “Dear Sir or Madam…” — there’s no need to be offended or outraged — or even to respond. Moving on…

Charge more for the work you don’t enjoy doing. It’s perfectly fine to charge more for making your least favorite product, even though your hard costs for your least and most favorite products are the same. It’s easy as breathing.

Charge more for urgency. Oh, you need this to be done in 2 hours? That’ll be 50% more than if you wait until next Tuesday.

Don’t take work that gives you a bad feeling. Even if it’s “good money.” Even if it’s “easy.” Settling teaches people that you’ll…settle.

And remember: “No” is a complete sentence.

Hope this helps you make more room for the important stuff in your life, and for living a good story offline.

P.S. Need to make room for what matters by prying your life back from screens? You need Space.