Guest post by licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitator Cass Mullane

In my last post, I gave you two money tips to consider incorporating into your life.

Here they are:
1. Skim 20% off EVERY payment you receive
2. Give up the ATM

So, how did you fare? Do you have some $$ already set aside for next year’s taxes? Have you got the beginnings of a safety net? Have you used a $100 bill lately? Did you meet someone at your bank? Are you developing the great habit of living below your means?

Good money habits take time and practice to learn and to make part of your daily thinking.

Get started now.

Consider this: If you received around $3000 last month, and if you had incorporated the first money tip of skimming 20% off every payment that came in, then today you could have about $600 socked away in your savings. At the end of this year, if things remain the same, you could have $7,200 set aside for taxes and for your safety net. Best of all, you could finally feel like you’re getting a grip on your finances!

How would that make you feel? Wouldn’t it be great to go online and take a look at your savings account and see it growing? You’d breathe a little easier, right? This is called living below your means. When you do, you feel like you are more in charge of your moola, and, therefore, more in charge of your life. And when you’re in charge of y our life, they sky’s the limit!

Of course once you get in the healthy habit of skimming off the top and watching your balance grow, you have to establish the second healthy habit of leaving it alone. Think of your moola as flower seeds that you’ve planted and now you’re watching them grow. If you yank them out of the ground, they will be gone and you have to start all over again. Ditto with the moola in the savings account. Forget you have it. No dipping in unless it’s a dire emergency. This is a savings account, not a disposable income account. Make smart choices and mind your moola!

One of the best things you can do to encourage a new habit is to experience success quickly. So here’s what I’d like you to try for the next two weeks:

• Lather: When you receive money of any kind, take a deep breath and set aside 20% of whatever you receive.
• Rinse: At the end of the two weeks, look at what you’ve set aside and, no matter what the balance is, pat yourself on the back, do a happy dance and celebrate your success at starting this new healthy money habit – You did it!

• Repeat: Do the same thing for another two weeks

I’d love to hear about your success, so come back and comment on this blog!

Join me at the third annual Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit 2013. This year’s focus is “Inspired Action + Authentic Impact = Increased Income.” AND I’ll be one of the Show and Tell Spotlights on Tuesday, February 26th with Bari Tessler. You don’t want to miss it!

Cass Mullane’s 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. You can also visit Cass on Facebook!Cass is is one of our licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitators.”

Guest post by licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitator Amy Egenberger

You’ve heard it before. Especially if you are a dreamer, a visionary, a clearly creative person, your ideas for the future can be met with wet-blanket pragmatism. “Don’t put the cart before the horse,” we’re told.

Well, I think those naysayers are just hearing us backwards.

Perhaps the old adage is sound advice when we are getting ahead of ourselves and need to come back to what’s needed in the present moment. But, being present to the energy of what really matters to us about this journey actually supports us to move forward.

Your big visions and values are not the cart. They are what give the horse direction!

Imagine for a moment (I know part of you really likes to do that) that you are riding on that beautiful cart. Your creativity is like the horse out front, led by keeping your sights on where you are headed just beyond the horse’s nose. When it comes to creative ventures, I assert, it is the energy of the vision that goes before and animates the horse.

If creative energy is the horsepower that pulls our work forward on this non-linear road of success we are on, then imagining the end outcome is our preliminary step. You know this. The desired destination, the feeling of making it where we want to go, our aspirations are what help us navigate.

What else is our role in all this?

Keep your eye on your vision. Once that vision is more clear, and evident in your Right-Brain Business Plan ®, you are well on your way. Keep it visible and touch in to its energy often.

Feed the horses. What feeds your creativity? Julia Cameron teaches us in The Artist’s Way to go on weekly artist dates. A two-hour appointment with your inner creative artist to do something fun, nurturing, and inspiring for yourself is a good way to reenergize. A walk around my neighborhood, a trip to the thrift store, or a stroll through the Minneapolis Institute of Art does the trick for me. Or, it could be staying home and making a yummy pot of soup or coloring with watercolor crayons. Whatever feeds you, whatever activity sincerely cares for you, will make you stronger.

In our metaphor here, what feeds your creative spirit is what feeds the horses. Vision, values and various joys and passions give us what we need to fuel creative actions. Paradoxically, the vision energizes your creative journey, too.

What will really feed your creative spirit this week?
What about your vision has the most energy today?

So, we practice putting the well-fed horse before the cart, and the vision before the horse.

Oh, and enjoy the ride!

Making way for creative action, Amy Egenberger, MEd., CPCC, is proud to be a Licensed Facilitator of the Right Brain Business Plan®. She is a seasoned educator, life coach, artist and founder of Spirit Out! Coaching. Amy helps people find the courage and clarity to get moving on their creative path. A book, a business, a project, a change… your creative spirit gets out! Amy is one of our licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitators.

Join Amy in May of 2013 for fun & focus to make your biz plan real. Right-Brain Business Plan® Workshop
Minneapolis, Minnesota. http://spiritout.com/classes/rbbp

Did you know that the wildly popular Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit is back for it’s 3rd year?

If you’ve been with us before, you know how much learning and action happens during this innovative virtual event. If you’re new ’round these parts, I do hope you’ll join us live February 25th-March 8th. It’s FREE and it’s an amazing way to connect with thousands of creative entrepreneurs from around the world.

And even before it all begins in a couple of weeks I’ve got a special somethin’ for ya!

When you grab your no-cost video summit ticket, you’ll instantly receive an audio download of a mega-inspiring and info-packed interview with me and Marney Makridakis. Marney is the author of the bestselling book Creating Time and the founder of the popular site Artellaland.

So, even weeks before we dive into the creative feast that is the 10-day summit, you can whet your entrepreneurial appetite with this magical MP3. It’s yours to listen to again and again, no matter if you’re able to make it to the live event or not.

And, you may be wondering, “Hey, Jenn, if it’s a video summit, why is this bonus interview an audio?”

Well, you’ll have to listen to find out! There’s actually a fantastic action-and-impact-related teaching point that Marney and I couldn’t resist sharing with you.

In this exclusive fun-filled interview I also admit why I’ve been so jealous of Marney through the years and she lets us in on all her best secrets for staying so productive and profitable. This is a woman who doesn’t let anything stop her and there’s so much you can learn from her (she doesn’t hold back on this interview!).

So, make sure to grab your no-cost ticket today and get a head start on the summit wisdom by listening to your special instant bonus audio.

I’d love to hear what you take-aways from our chat and what it sparked for you as we head into the summit!

I can’t wait to see you LIVE in a couple of weeks.

Guest post by licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitator Laura Burns

What a broken record, right?

I feel like I’m inundated with ‘stay positive’ messages almost every day. While I’m an optimistic person, it can be difficult to stay positive when you’re deep in development of a new business or tackling a major period of growth at work.

That being said, having a positive attitude can make all the difference. I’m not saying you should be positive all the time, but practicing positivity can really improve the quality of your work, relationships, and spirit.

Let’s dig into this whole positivity thing a little deeper. Here are the major benefits of practicing positivity.

• Approaching the world from a positive perspective helps you take charge of situations, and can takes the power away from people who would try to take advantage of you or bring you down. I can think of many experiences in my life when my positive attitude was the key influencer over whether or not I let someone else’s word and actions change my behavior and thoughts. Being positive has kept me from doubting my value and talents so many times.

• Being positive means being able to see possibilities. A negative attitude closes you off and keeps you from seeing all the amazing opportunities out there in the world. If you let negativity cloud your vision you’ll never see the inspiring stuff out there. Positivity breeds creativity and innovation!

• Positivity allows you to see valuable lessons in negative situations, and helps you learn from the mistakes and failures of yourself and others. A positive attitude allows you to focus on the future. A negative attitude makes you dwell on the past.

One of the greatest gifts my parents have given me is the Positivity Practice of looking for a lesson in my mistakes. Not so much searching for a silver lining, but creating something positive from a negative situation by acknowledging what you’ve learned. It may sound cheesy to you, but this practice has been more useful to me than most other things in life.

Through this Positivity Practice I’ve learned how to be mature, responsible, and strong even after totally screwing up and doing something dumb. And believe me, I’ve done plenty of dumb things!
My most important life lessons have come from complete failure.

What about you? Try this quick exercise to see how the power of positivity is working in your life. Ask yourself,

“What missteps or bad choices have I made lately?
How have I grown from this situation? Are my relationships stronger now for having collaboratively dealt with a difficult situation?
If not, how can I strengthen them using what I’ve learned?
What new skills have I developed because of this situation?
What of my behaviors, regarding the way I handled this situation, can I be proud of and seek to duplicate in the future?
In what ways have I grown and matured by working through this situation?”

I help heart-forward businesses create thoughtfully crafted plans for growth and sustainability. I love to inspire people to think critically, dream big, and clear out the cobwebs to let in the light and the joy! Wanna leave your soul-crushing job to start your own business? Check out my new book, Work Life Revolution! Laura Burns is one of our licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitators.

Guest post by licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitator Michelle Rumney

So you’re launching your online presence – new website and all the rest too. You’ve diligently set up, or are about to, a Facebook page for your business, your professional LinkedIN profile, and perhaps even a Google+ account. You know what a Tweet is. Media-wise you may have heard of Flickr, Instagram, and Pinterest, (the fastest growing social media network right now), and you may be aware that YouTube is one of the largest search engines out there after Google.

And really you know you should be blogging, engaging and creating interesting stuff out there, with pictures and video too, to increase your ‘expert’ status and improve your SEO like you’ve been told… and there’s also that free download to create so people will sign up for your newsletter, which means there’s also your newsletter to write and your programs to create and then more blogging and tweeting and creating… then a few videos, testimonials and it’s seemingly endless and totally overwhelming…

STOP, enough already!

Take a chill pill and give yourself an hour to sit down, and relax and get one thing at least sorted. You really don’t have to do it all! Create your own social media strategy – and one that suits you!

1. Start where you’re planted.

• Where do you already hang out online? If you never read blogs, rarely log into Facebook, but love Tweeting all over the place, there’s a clue there for you of where to start!

• Don’t force yourself onto networks you don’t enjoy using, just because you ‘should’ be on them – instead allow yourself to gravitate to who and what interests you and where you feel inspired to join in the conversations genuinely. Seek out your ideal clients or cohorts there and let things unfold.
• Write down all the networks or online spaces you’re aware of, then pick just one or two main ones to get started with – not all of them – get these working for you first (or ditch them if not) then broaden your outreach into other networks later.

2. Do more than just broadcasting.

A lot of people seem to think that a tight schedule of writing 5 tweets a day, 2 blog posts a week and a newsletter every 2 weeks is a sure formula for success. Well, possibly, but you’ll probably get more out of all this effort if you listen as well as shout it out.

Take managing a Facebook business page as an example – allocate yourself a set amount of manageable time and schedule it in, eg 30 minutes per day. Divide by 3 to allow time for Listening, Seeking and Broadcasting – all 3 are important. Set yourself some targets to keep in check with this – eg.

▪ I will check things people have posted to my wall and respond (10 mins Listening),
▪ I’ll look for 3 other jewellery designers on there and say hello to broaden my network of contacts (10 mins Seeking),
▪ I’ll post my update about my new piece that I’m making with a photo (10 mins Broadcasting).

Then stop and get on with your other work!!

With blog posts, schedule in time for writing them of course, and time for then telling people it’s there – the Broadcasting bit – but then again put time aside for Listening – ideally to responses that people have to your post and for Seeking – for instance, other people posting about similar topics or people who have some connection with what you’re talking about – ask them to comment on your post. Or you could seek other bigger blogs who might be interested in what you’ve written. Obviously the time you schedule will probably be over the course of a few days or a week, rather than all in one go – but remember the interesting bit is usually in the follow-up, so make sure you do. If you hate timetabling, use Asana or sticky notes or whatever works to remind yourself and keep you on course.

3. Keep checking in with yourself – review ROI regularly.

Rather than just start and keep going till you’re maybe exhausted and sick of all the effort (something which many people unfortunately do), keep your efforts focused and schedule in an hour a month to review how it’s going. You can adjust your course of action if you need to.

• Find and set up some reporting tools to help you do this – eg. Google Analytics for your website, Hootsuite, Bit.ly or Buffer for your social media posts, or specific ones within the apps you’re using such as MailChimp.

• Learn how to use them! – watch some how to videos, do the tutorials or get someone to show you (please!!). These tools can tell you who’s active, where they came from, what they are most interested in within your content, how long they spent there, whether they came back or not and what they actually did next as a result. You do want to know (don’t you?) how many people landed on your website as a result of reading your Facebook updates last month, or how many clicks on the sales page you got after sending out last month’s newsletter? That sort of thing…

• Don’t forget to make it fun or you’ll probably resist! Create maps, turn the data into doodles, put some music on, grab some chocolate – see it as a treat to look forward to – time to reflect – and make it so.

Once you’re doing this regularly you can start building up a picture of the ROI – return on investment – of all your precious time and energy. This takes time – be patient – it may take a few months for efforts to pay off in some areas, but know you’re in control and now have a workable social media strategy in place. (ooh!)

Sound doable and like it will help?

So DO these 3 things
1. Choose your preferred network/s to focus on for the next 3 months
2. Schedule in regular set times in your calendar and stick to the Listening-Seeking-Broadcasting plan each time
3. Schedule in one hour next month for analysing & reviewing AND at least 20 minutes to plan the next month going forward

And let us know how you get on – (on your preferred social networks of course!).

____________
Michelle Rumney, helps people get inspired and then get on with it. A fine artist and creative coach, her fun and playful approach helps take the ‘serious’ stuff and make it doable, step by step. Listen to her ‘Journeys’ podcasts, including an interview with Jenn, on RoomOnTheEdge.com. Michelle is one of our licensed Right-Brain Business Plan® Facilitators.

All photos courtesy of creativeLIVE

Working with the top-notch creativeLIVE team to do the Right-Brain Business Plan® 3-day course in January gave me a whole new appreciation for corralling creative cohorts. So much goes into operating a complex business like that and excellent teamwork is vital to pulling off a production of that scale. The event was not something I could have done flying solo, that’s for sure!

Where in your business (or life) could you lean into some extra support and infrastructure? What would it be like for you to have helping hands shepherd your projects along?

I’m super grateful to the executives who brought me in, the producers, set designers, camera operators, sound and tech crew, marketing team, co-hosts, in-studio participants, make-up artist, magic elves who filled my tea and water on every break, and so many other folks behind the scenes who made sure everything ran smoothly.

Whether you’re wanting to team up with a larger organization like I did creativeLIVE, buddy with another solopreneur who has complementary offerings, or you just need a partner for a personal project, there are a few things to consider:

• Know what you have to offer. Perhaps you have original content, a new idea, certain skills, resources, or connections. Be clear about what value you’re bringing to the table. This will also make you attractive to potential partners who may seek you out!
• Articulate what you’re looking for from your strategic partner. What would you like your cohort to contribute to the partnership? What would complement your offering? What are the qualities you’d want in your cohort since it’s important there’s a good fit.
• Build your relationships. Cultivate connections before even entering into a partnership. Effective collaboration needs a foundation of trust and that develops over time with each interaction.
• Let go of control (or at least loosen your grip!). In a collaboration you can’t have your hands in everything. Allow each contributor to own their piece and lend their unique talents. You’ll end up with something far richer than if it was all you. During our prep I started to obsess about the set (even though planning physical space is not my strong suit!). But when I stepped back and let production team work their magic, I was amazed by what they custom built for the event.
• Lean into support. If you’re used to going it alone, it can be a challenge to simply receive. Yet, that’s partly why you’re looking for help, right? Be open to assistance so you can stop bearing the burden all by your lonesome. Believe me, I felt so weird having someone steam my dress in the morning, but when I relaxed into it, I was comforted knowing I could eat my breakfast and prep for the long day ahead.

What could collaboration look like for you this year? Who are the creative cohorts you’d love to corral? And what is the greater impact you can make when you join forces?

And sometimes corralling your creative cohorts can be sharing awesome opportunities with special peeps in your circles. I had the honor of getting to invite a couple of special guests to the workshop.

Vivienne McMaster joined us live via video Skype on the first day and shared about her journey growing her creative business I know hearing her story helped others know that they are not alone when it comes to the ups and downs of pursuing your dreams.

On the second day Right-Brain Business Plan® licensed facilitator, yoga studio owner, and life coach Sharon Tessandori graced us in the studio with her wisdom and grounded energy. Sharon walked us through her path from teaching yoga classes, to launching her own beautiful studio, to leading retreats, training yoga teachers and more. She is certainly someone who knows how to cultivate multiple moola-making methods and to do it with heart.

Who in your circles could you spotlight or feature? It’s another great way to connect and share the love.

Have fun corralling your creative cohorts and seeing what more you all can co-create together!