You walk in the front door and the whole house smells like dinner.

You feel safe, loved, and warm — cause man, it’s cold outside.

Only there’s no one in the kitchen. There’s no one slaving away at the counter, blasting music and chopping vegetables.

There’s only your crockpot.

Your glorious, magnificent crockpot, who toils away for hours without reward to turn raw things into delicious masterpieces with no effort on your part.  (I mean, it’s about as sexy as granny panties, but it’s still glorious.)

It’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

So often, we treat our businesses as stomping grounds for raw ingredients: combine this and this, sell.

Add this to that, sell. But…

Business doesn’t have to be a simple equation that starts with your effort and ends with…more effort.

Why not leave a room for the slow simmer of your crockpot?

For creating a body of work that can be distributed later. (For your retrospective at the Met.)

For planning an event, pop-up shop, workshop, or Greatest Hits collection come next year.

For combining old products in new ways next winter.

For recycling your best work into an entirely different beast: a journal or catalog or magazine or class or lecture or TED talk.

For telling familiar tales in new ways.

For the magazine, the book, the coffee table collection, the gallery showing, the studio space downtown.

When we consciously let work simmer, we give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

We’ll find a place for this later, even if we don’t know what it will taste like just yet.

We don’t throw away every effort because we know sometimes, the magic happens in the crockpot. Inexplicably, those raw ingredients become something much better. (See: buffalo chicken dip.)

So, while the rest of the world focuses on marketing calendars and resolutions and 30-day challenges, I’m asking…

…what have you put in your crockpot lately? Where are you letting the crockpot do the work for you?

Because sometimes, time and insight yield astonishing changes with little effort on our part. (But only if we let them.)

P.S. Poems are always in my crockpot.

Today I wanted to share a really freaking surprising thing I’m only just learning, years and years into owning my own business: the more I enjoy what I do, the more others pay for it.

Your most valuable work in the world often feels so fun that you would do it for free.

I don’t mean this in a metaphorical way. I don’t mean people pay in hugs or love notes. I mean they pay in dollars and cents.

Recently, a few peeps I’ve enjoyed working with in the past asked me to be their business mentor. They wanted a custom quote for their particular situation. I thought of the most outrageously fun thing I could imagine doing with and for them, included a price tag that thrilled me, and sent off the e-mail.

Within 24 hours, they had accepted the proposal. I want to point out that I literally made up a package that would bring me the most joy and tossed it out into the universe.

If they didn’t accept — well, it’s not like I had planned on that money anyway. (It’s so much more fun to take risks when you can afford to lose, right?)

And if they did? WIN! JOY! LOVE! HUGS! BALLOONS AND UNICORNS!

The work you should charge the most for is the work that seems so fun to you that you would do it for free.

Because it’s not fun for other people. If you are crazy-gifted at accounting or chemistry or physics or organizing closets or painting murals or reading tarot cards or assembling Ikea furniture or hunting and gathering — whatever it is — I assure you, someone out there doesn’t think it’s fun. Someone out there finds it challenging, grueling, and a bit like pushing a boulder up a hill. And they will happily pay for you to do the task they’d rather avoid.

To say it in a different way: the work you are most likely to succeed in is the work that feels easy as breathing.

Breathing isn’t hard, doesn’t require a lot of thought, and doesn’t feel like work. It’s simply a part of your everyday life.

The work you’re meant to do in the world is exactly the same, which is why we humans have so much trouble finding it: who would pay for something as easy as breathing?

Here’s the catch: we assume everyone has the same ‘easy as breathing’ talents. We don’t. Every human being on this planet has natural, gorgeous gifts that are unlike those of any other.

When you acknowledge what you are truly gifted at doing, and also love, and could talk about for days on end, you’re tapped into your biggest potential.

So, the 1-question guide for coming up with your next product or service: what would feel easy as breathing to bring into the world?

Personally, KK on Tap makes use of all my easy-as-breathing talents — teaching, writing, coaching, and bringing clarity to the table for other peeps — in one big awesome year-long extravaganza.  Check it out. 

Shown: photo from Steer Your Ship San Diego, which featured swimming with otters.  SWIMMING.  With OTTERS.

P.S. Still swirling in choices and I DUNNO WHAT TO DO’s?  An invitation to let your deep knowing drive the bus.

When it comes to money advice, there’s a whole lot of help available in the “making more” department. As a business coach and an entrepreneur myself, I know the pull of “more.”

Ask any business owner to start defining goals, and just one word answers every question.

How many clients would you like? More.
How much money would you like to earn? More.
How many products do you want to sell? More.

“More” is the convenient answer to any question we’d rather not take time to think about. It always suffices, it’s always praised by others, and it’s easy to pop into our go-go-go-go-go day planning.

“More” is so damn sexy that it’s the name of a magazine with a circulation of over 1.3 million people.

It’s the call of our society, of our businesses, of our everyday lives: more.

Only more takes time.
More takes effort.
More takes energy.

What if what we want more of is peace, or freedom, or quiet afternoons on the beach?
What if the “more” call in our hearts is for time to read, to knit, or to laze over a bottle of wine for hours with the person we love most in the world?

That’s when it’s time to define “enough.”

What’s the amount of money that’s simply enough?

Enough to pay the monthly bills.
Enough to make regular credit card payments.
Enough to leave gaps in the calendar for serendipity.
Enough to sock a little cash away into investments.
Quite simply, enough.

“Enough” isn’t the slightest bit sexy. “Enough” doesn’t get a magazine or a TV show, and it doesn’t make news or headlines. “Enough” will never be found underpinning the launch of a brand or the latest Kardashian scandal.

But damn it, “enough” is what gets us through. “Enough” allows us to rest when we’re tired, to eat when we’re hungry, and to play when we’ve beaten our brains to a pulp with work and stress and strategizing and striving.

“Enough” instantly tips us into gratitude — into acknowledging that we literally have enough in this moment. If not enough money, then enough love, enough safety, enough shelter to see another day through to the end.

It’s one of the greatest challenges you’ll face as an entrepreneur — to resist the appeal of “more” and take it upon yourself to define “enough.”

And to melt into gratitude when you reach it. (Even if you need to answer just one more e-mail or sell just one more thing. I know. I get it. Enough. 😉

P.S.  Let me walk you through the process of finding your EXACT enough number.  Please!