I recently had the chance to chat with one of my most favorite peeps, Michelle Ward, for her final episode in her Grown Up Gigs Podcast.

You can listen to our lively and mega-inspiring conversation by subscribing here.

Michelle got me to open up about what my childhood “grown-up gig” aspirations were (you might be surprised!), my climb up the corporate ladder, and what finally sparked my leap from my day job to pursue my passions full-time. BTW, I’m celebrating my 10th anniversary of escaping corporate next month!!

Also, HEADS UP that Michelle and her creative Cohort Emilie Wapnick are hosting their annual Multi-Passionate Must-Haves sale soon from May 17th-19th and you’ll be able to get more than $1700 worth of awesome resources, courses, and e-books from 28 experts (including moi!) for just $97.

SALE IS NOW LIVE!

Guest post by by Lisa Dolce, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator,

For heart-centered entrepreneurs the words selling, marketing, and branding typically trigger the heebie-jeebies or all out panic attacks.

And why wouldn’t they? Our media is filled with in-your-face promotion, superficial slogans, and a plethora of gurus touting the next big miracle formula to getting customers.
It sounds like it works…but it’s just not our style.

So when the time comes to put ourselves out there, we slip into full-on avoidance mode: cleaning our desks, surfing the web, and spiraling into overwhelm. Not the best formula for business success!

Here’s the secret that I’ve learned: Traditional marketing doesn’t work for heart-centered entrepreneurs.

After years of wasting too much time and money trying to learn these approaches, my perfect customers still couldn’t find me. And when they did, it turned them off!

The good news is that you CAN market yourself in a comfortable, authentic way. You don’t have to suffer, feel sick to your stomach, or settle for less-than-ideal clients.
All it takes is a simple mindset shift…and a few strategic questions to launch your heart-centered marketing plan.

Ready? Here goes:

Instead of selling, start giving your gifts to the world.

Don’t persuade someone to buy your services or products. Just share your unique talents with them. (Doesn’t that sound so much more exciting?!)

When you switch from selling wares to sharing gifts, you stop cringing and get really excited.

Here’s a two-part process you can follow to make the transition easy. It’s a total game-changer!

Step 1: Identify your unique gifts and talents.

The clearer you are on what you offer, the easier it will be for customers to understand the immediate benefits of working with you. Use these questions to guide you:

• What do you do well and enjoy?
• What are you most passionate about sharing with others in your business?
• What impact do you want to make in this world?
• Do you help people do something they couldn’t do on their own?
• Do you give people support in some way that can significantly change their lives?
• Do you create beautiful products or experiences for people?

Step 2: Align your gifts with the language of people who need your gifts the most.
Survey some of your current ideal clients and ask them what problem you solve for them.

Incorporating your ideal clients’ language into your message will draw more like-minded peeps. Use these questions to guide you:

• What are the specific benefits that your customers will receive from your gifts?
• What need are you fulfilling? (What do they need to learn, know or do?)
• What are you helping to make better for them?

Any time you create marketing materials, use this process as your foundation. You’ll make it easy for dream clients to hear you amidst the noise of traditional marketing—so go ahead and shine a big bright light on YOUR gifts so the right clients can find you!

To learn more on how to package your talents and gifts, check out Jennifer Lee’s second book “Building Your Business the Right Brain Way”.

Lisa Dolce is a Small Business Coach, Start-Up Mentor and Licensed Facilitator of the Right Brain Business Plan ®. She helps heart-centered entrepreneurs bring together their brilliant ideas and beautiful gifts and talents to design, launch and grow their own profitable business.

Guest post by by Cass Mullane, Accountability Coach, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

I was at my Women’s Chamber of Commerce luncheon and heard a great speaker who has a huge job running the largest hospitals in the region. She is a delightful person who maintains her sense of humor while demonstrating what it’s like to be a very successful businesswoman. She was talking about leadership, passion and health and a particular line stuck with me:

“Turn judgement in to joy.”

Look at this from the perspective of constantly judging yourself. Obviously this is a recurring theme amongst women, but it applies equally to men. Whether you’re judging your mental shape, your financial shape or your physical shape, you tend to set up standards that are unreasonable and you then berate yourself for falling short of perfection. What gives?!

Do you realize how much of your precious energy is wasted feeding the negative judgment into your mind? Are you paying attention to the impact of that judgment … sucking the passion out of your life?

If you were to check in with your body you would immediately feel that negative energy. To see what I mean, say this sentence out loud: “I totally screwed that up, I’m a completely worthless person.” Check in with your body and you’ll likely feel your shoulders slumping, your energy draining and your mindset heading into a downward spiral.
Now say this sentence out loud: “I totally screwed that up, and I learned some important lessons.” Feel the difference? Maybe you shrugged your shoulders, but your body didn’t slump. Your energy probably remained stable and your mindset went into I-have-to-figure-this-out-now mode. You acknowledged the screw up but instead of collapsing into a trembling blob of goo, you shook yourself off and looked ahead to see what you learned in order to not repeat the same screw up. Small shift in thinking, huge difference in your energy.

There’s joy in learning lessons, because there’s joy in learning. Think about it. When you learn something new, your brain is engaged and you are fully present. Whether you’re learning a new painting technique or learning a better way to handle a business situation, you’re staying in the moment and being proactive. And when you’re fully engaged, there’s joy. In fact, when you’re fully present, there’s very little room for judgment because so much of your self is focusing on learning something new.

So, when you fall short of miraculous, instead of being so harsh on yourself, find the lessons learned and apply them. One lesson might relate to the actual situation and how you could have responded in a different way. Or it might be how the situation could have been defused or avoided all together. Or it could be a serious look at the expectations and seeing how they were or were not communicated. Another might be checking your standards against reality and making some very appropriate adjustments.

Regardless of the lesson, put what you learned into practice and turn that judgment into joy.

Cass Mullane is an artist with an MBA. Cass’ calm, comfortable approach consistently yields positive results for clients. Her business and personal coaching practice, www.ProsperCreatively.com, specializes in delivering solid left brain business skills to right brainers and creatives in a fun, visual way. She’s a best selling author, textile and mixed media artist and creator of the Cool Stuff Jar™ coaching program. You can also visit Cass on Facebook!

Many creative types tend to operate in more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants mode because they don’t like the idea of being pinned down. Maybe you can relate?

However, if you’re a creative entrepreneur who wants sustainable success in your business, a haphazard approach probably won’t get you the results you want and will most likely leave you spinning your wheels and worn out.

Instead of just hoping that a client will find you or merely promoting whatever product is your bright-shiny object of the day, consider bringing a little bit of strategic planning to the party.

You don’t have to confine yourself to a strict calendar or project manage your launch to death. How ’bout embracing a very simple structure from Mother Nature herself?

Here’s a fun visual tool that can help you start thinking more long-term – my Seasonal Planning Play Sheet from my second book Building Your Business the Right-Brain Way.

You can use the play sheet to brainstorm key events, activities, holidays, or themes that are relevant to your perfect customers at certain times of the year. Then align your offers to those seasonal opportunities.

For example, here in the Northern Hemisphere Summer will be here before we know it so it’s good to get ahead of the game. Are there certain summer-related themes that you can tie your offer in to? Things like summer fun (creativity, adventure), vacation/travel, bathing suit season (health or body confidence related), 4th of July (independence or freedom) or summer school (a quick and fun e-course)?

Keep in mind, too, that it’s helpful to think in seasons if you’re targeting retail shops or publications to be featured in. Retailers and publications tend to operate several seasons ahead, so the Seasonal Planning Play Sheet can help you map out what you will pitch to them and when.

If you’re newer to launching products, packages or programs, you could use this seasonal planning approach to help you brainstorm a fresh idea for a no-cost invitation that’s more focused on providing value and building relationships and credibility. Perhaps there’s a 30-day challenge that you’re inspired to lead so that you can meet like-minded people and share creative work (like Susannah Conway’s April Love challenge that I’m a guest contributor for) or maybe a no-cost webinar like the one I’m doing next week on Redefining Success where you can interact with your peeps so you can learn about what they might be struggling with or needing help with.

I’d love to hear what you’re thinking of launching this summer!

It’s also very savvy to start thinking about your Fall and Holiday launch schedule, too, even at a high-level. That way you can focus on connection and being of service now in a way that aligns with the offers coming up.

I know planning out several seasons and maybe even a year ahead is more of an advanced move, but it’s a great muscle to start building now. So have fun collaborating with one of the best creative cohorts to have you your team… Mother Nature!

Guest post by by Cass Mullane, Accountability Coach, Right-Brain Business Plan® Licensed Facilitator, Prosper Creatively, LLC

I have the distinct pleasure of co-hosting a four day retreat this weekend for a group who call themselves The Spider Women. For over a decade, these ladies have been getting together annually to go on a journey to discover something new. They are vibrant, juicy women who drink up knowledge like sponges. They dive into the classes with tremendous enthusiasm and joy. They are open to trying new things and applying what they’ve learned. They come from all over the US and from Canada. They have diverse politics, diverse backgrounds and diverse personalities. Oh, did I mention that the youngest is in her 60s, the oldest in her mid-80s?

And the glue that binds them together is art.

Art is a most wonderful thing. As artists, we find it a means of creative expression. As viewers, we can receive inspiration, perhaps a challenge to our thinking and even have our souls stirred by art. For me, art is a never ending source of exploration and growth. When I look at these ladies I see the joy of the journey.

This retreat never would have happened if my studio mate and I hadn’t been business minded artists. We saw the opportunity to create an event for The Spider Women and we made it happen. We came up with fun and creative class proposals, did the budget, calculated the supplies costs, estimated the number of hours we’d be teaching, came up with a fee for the retreat, negotiated the contract and managed the logistics. In essence, we married art and business.

I’m lucky enough to have a Spider Women-like group of my own. We’re called Full Circle. We‘re all artists and we’re all businesswomen. We meet regularly in a mastermind format and, once each year, we all go off to the beautiful mountains of Colorado for our own retreat, specifically to work on our businesses. There is great power in this retreat as we strive to challenge each other and to hold each other accountable. These are smart, amazing women and our collective brainpower and creativity makes for a marvelous group of creative cohorts.

What I’d like to have you walk away with from this post is that art and business can, and should, go hand in hand. It takes work and really understanding how to run a business. It requires you to consistently show up as your true self. It means being both strong and vulnerable. It is essential to surround yourself with other amazing people who challenge you and who tell you the truth. It demands that you be open to learning and to making changes.

The bottom line is when you put in the effort to marry business and art, magic happens!

Cass Mullane is an artist with an MBA. Cass’ calm, comfortable approach consistently yields positive results for clients. Her business and personal coaching practice, www.ProsperCreatively.com, specializes in delivering solid left brain business skills to right brainers and creatives in a fun, visual way. She’s a best selling author, textile and mixed media artist and creator of the Cool Stuff Jar™ coaching program. You can also visit Cass on Facebook!

I recently did a quick live video on Facebook where I showed how I use my wall calendar to plan out my year. You can watch that recording here and while you’re there make sure to subscribe to my live events so you can be notified when I’m on live on Facebook again.

I had so much fun trying out this format earlier this week when I shared my top 5 take-aways from 5 years of doing my popular video summit that I’m sure I’ll be doing more impromptu videos soon.