Leap: After the Right Brain Biz Summit

Last week I finished the Right Brain Business Plan Video Summit. I caught almost every day and took copious notes but I stopped blogging.  During the summit I became more internal in my thinking (little notes everywhere throughout the day) and less external (I do not want to but all my little notes to myself on the web).

I appreciated all the words, wisdom, and wacky inspiration shared. I was awestruck a few times at the gorgeous and honest businesses people are building.  I tucked away little examples of how I want to live and how I want to become a business woman (still swooning over Danielle La Porte and Pam Slims’ bad ass businesses).

I bought a fabulous new journal and sparkly paints and began to play again with words, drawings and color.  For the rekindling of my 7 year old artist on the inside I am grateful.

But my biggest learning was this…LEAP.  Every single person that shared during the summit was leaping fully with both feet in front of them into their dreams. On the last day of the summit, Leonie Allen, creator of Goddess Guidebooks, talked about dreaming up an idea and then taking ONE weekend to make it happen. I gasped. This is not my style, unless I am working under someone else’s deadline, I plan and I perfect. I do not do something in one weekend.  Until now.

I am beginning a one weekend journey. One weekend to get the house the way we want it and then to let go of what is not perfect.  One weekend to finish my web copy (okay maybe a week and a half but you get the point).  One weekend to write a blog post.  One weekend to figure out which wedding dress to buy, and then choose!

Okay so of course I am not going to do everything this weekend. But I will start with one weekend to work on the home.  And a week plus a little to finish web copy for my soon-to-be launched business website.  You, my expanding, beautiful world wide web community, will be my accountability group. I will report back.

Now it is time to LEAP.

Start from inside: Day 3 Biz Plan Summit

Day 3: It is the second day of Right Brain Business Plan video summit with Jennifer Lee of Artizen Coaching. If you are creative entrepreneur you can still join up. Her guest today was Laura Hollick.  And Michelle Ward shared the cool tools she has made from the Right Brain business plan and her journey into a super successful coaching career.

I had a very different experience with the summit today. So far I have been in gather resources mode and absorb, absorb, absorb. During the interview today, I had an ah ha moment filled with bits of brilliance. Laura Hollick talked about the importance of her internal journey and that journey being the foundation of her business. The connection she has created with her internal self or her authentic self has been the primary brick of her business. She talked about the importance of healing, self care, and quiet space. Ah! I know what some of you are thinking, that is a whole lot of woo woo.

Most of my twenties I thought quiet time and self care was a good idea during the in between moments (you know when you aren’t doing anything else).  Anyone that knows me, knows that I am almost never not doing something else and if I get a free second I will fill it up with sorbet eating and 30 Rock watching.  It wasn’t until hitting full burn out mode, combined with “what if all that schooling did not lead me in the perfect direction” that I realized I had to unplug.  Now quiet time is a daily must. I feel myself starting to come back together, become more whole and connected.

I am building my business and doing A LOT of internal work. I thought that was a coincidence. I am realizing it is not. The business I am creating is based on what I do best (communicate, plan, organize and work hard, all with heart) and to do it well I have to be connected with my core.

My take away today: if you want to be a creative entrepreneur get reconnected with you…and maybe try on a little quiet time.

More fun to share.
Here is partial reading and resource list shared by speakers and participants. I borrowed these straight from Jennifer Lee’s follow up email.

Soul Art Body Mapping
Soul Art Gallery
Soul Art TV – more inspiring interviews of creative, spiritual revolutionaries, plus one of her signature, artistic videos Peeps mentioned
Brene Brown’s TEDTalk on vulnerability (So worth it, I am watching it every week)
Wordle – for making a word cloud for your Business Self-Portrait
The Declaration of You e-Course – Michelle and Jessica Swift’s online course. Lots of fun visuals and fantastic exercises.

Colorful Visions: Day 2 Biz Plan Summit

Day 2: It is the second day of Right Brain Business Plan video summit with Jennifer Lee of Artizen Coaching.  If you are creative entrepreneur you can still join up.  Her guest was Julie Stuart.  Violette Clark joined to talk about her gorgeous business plan…that is right I said gorgeous and business plan in the same sentence!

LEARNING 1: Vision. It is important to create a compelling vision for you and for your clients.  Ask: What do I want my legacy to be? Julie shared that the key to moving into that vision is to get quiet and imagine. Some questions she shared to begin your visualizing: “What is my business trying to tell me? My business is telling me people need healthier work environments with less stress, more joy and more courage. What is the landscape of my business?” My business is a beautiful clearing in a dense forest.

There was lots of talk about using vision and values as a way to make business decisions.  We know this rule: hold the business decision up next to your values and vision, does it fit?  BUT the key is actually writing down (or drawing your vision) and visiting it again and again. Nonprofits, often make a decision made quickly without looking at the values and vision . The values are not explicitly decided and they have not assigned actual power to the values and vision. My goal – use my vision and values, keep them front and center in my business.

LEARNING 2: Make a BIG colorful Map. Julie Stuart does detailed, colorful maps of ideas, group meetings, one-on-one coaching and even strategic plans. See color and strategy come together: check out one of her maps. My take away from her brain dumps, mind maps and visual plans? Get your planning out of a binder and in front of you.
Make your plan something you want to look at and engage with.
Witness the glorious mess of ideas in your brain!
See community vision actualized.
I will use this tool for myself and with clients during strategy sessions. Bring on the markers!

More fun to share.
Here is partial reading and resource list shared by speakers and participants:

VisualPractitioner.org
Getting unstuck: fluentself.com
Visual Thinking: Tools for Mapping your Ideas by Nancy Margulies and Christine Valenza

And more books shared yesterday:

True and False by David Mamet
The Art of Game Design (a course in video game design)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink

Making my Right Brain Biz Plan: Day 1

Day 1: I am impressed! I just completed my first Right Brain Business Plan video summit with Jennifer Lee of Artizen Coaching.  She is hosting a two week video summit that walks everyone through the tools of her Right Brain Business Plan book.  Today her guest was Andrea J. Lee.

LEARNING 1: Marketing. Jennifer Lee is doing a brilliant job promoting her book while giving webinar guests added value. I am taking a two week class for free and already loving the ideas she is sharing. I will buy her book (even though I have already used her e-book). AND I will tell all the entrepreneurs in my life about it (creative entrepreneurs – buy Jennifer Lee’s Book). Plus: she has on site tech support for the whole video webinar summit, crucial!

LEARNING 2: Idea Book. Andrea Lee keeps a (fun) book with her at all times to capture her creative juice overflow. Whenever she has an idea it goes in the book, without judgement!

LEARNING 3: HELL YES Decision Making. Andrea Lee’s rule for making decisions for her business. (PS this rule is also great for overachieving, do gooder social workers.)
She asks: is it a Hell Yes? HELL NO? or Maybe?
Andrea listens to her intuition, if she feels “I have to do this” then it is a Hell Yes and she goes for it.
When it is a HELL NO, she feels it in her body, a heavy weight in her stomach. (My HELL NO response is a physical feeling of discomfort and nausea.)  If she feels a HELL NO, she does not do it.
Then there is the maybe, the hard to decide category.  Andrea says…if the decision falls into the maybe than for the current moment it is actually a no. Novel and smart, she waits until her intuition says hell yes before she decides to go for it!

More fun to share.
Here is partial reading and resource list shared by speakers and participants:

The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
The Mind Mapping Book by Tony Buzan
MindNode
Kazien way by Bob Maurer

I will share more of my learning  from the summit over the next two weeks.

Feel the fear

Enough already!

I have procrastinated my return to this blog for three months. Excuse after excuse, but now it is the new year and everything in my life is lining up to teach me about taking leaps of faith and facing fears.  Even though only three dear friends read this blog, it feels as if I am speaking to the world when I publish. Perhaps that is the joy and tremor of blogging, at any minute anyone with internet access can stumble upon my blog.

I started this blog to reflect on building a balanced live; a life in which I have time to spend with those I love, take care of myself, fight for radical change in the world and make some money doing work I care about.  I wanted to stake a claim that this is possible.  However, as I move closer to that goal I waver. Is it all possible?

In December, I was working three jobs trying to keep my head above water and make enough money for rent, debt and health care.  At the same time, I strove to invest in my relationships with friends and family.  Oh and I was trying to start a small business.  The missing piece was me. I was not connected with my body or my spirit, no exercise and no prayer.  And so I made a scary leap into the unknown. I finished one contract, took a break from another job and quit the third.  Now I am gainfully unemployed or more accurately self-employed without a gig.  For the first time in four years I am aware of my body, my breath and my spirit. But the other side of the coin…there is no money coming in, and no health care.

Although I have not figured the balance piece out, I have entered into new territory. A place where I believe in myself in spite of the large lurking monsters in my head that say I am wee bit crazy.  This month I have built a business plan thanks to Artizen Coaching. Fed on inspiration and encouragement from sites like White Hot Truth and the words of dear friends, neighbors and family. Spent time talking with my fiance about our future. Began to take exercise and eating seriously. And found a new place in my relationship with God and universal love.

Not bad…now to figure out how to make some money doing work I love; supporting people and organizations in their journey to accomplish their own dreams.

P.S.  My new business name…Vessel Strategy and Consulting (website and blog coming soon).

Our cat presiding over my business license.

Community Naming

My first step to launching a new business (aside from supporting the clients I currently have) is finding a suitable name.

This process has become very communal. I have now had 4 naming sessions for my new business, including: talking with my parents and partner while floating by boat in Puget Sound, morning breakfast conversations with my partner, after dinner conversations with extended family and Theos chocolate and a late night brainstorm with the wonderful artists that live in my building. All most every conversation has involved wine and cheese! Now all the names are in hot debate over emails and Google chats.

The collaborative process embodies who I want to be in the world and how I want my business to function. Even if I am running it, I want my business to be built by and for the communities I live in and work for. Right now the dear people in my life are helping me name the business, providing emotional support and cheerleading, meeting for coffee or phone dates to brainstorm and even taking pictures for the new website. Starting my own business is an incredible way to reflect on the beauty of community and the importance of not going it alone. But at some point the decision must be made and it is mine to make. I have promised myself and my loved ones that the decision will be made by All Hallows Eve. Stay posted.

Fall Leaves, Business Blooming

After a summer of long weekends biking, going to weddings and greeting new babies, I am hunkered down in the wet Puget Sound weather and ready to blog.

I began this blog with the intent to write about my process of living into my own possibility and inspiring others to live more fully into their possibility.  This last year, I have been working for two nonprofits part-time and searching for a full-time gig. Along the way I have been consulting for other amazing nonprofits, artists and small business owners. For the last six months I thought I was only doing that to fill in the financial gaps that come with part-time employment and the recession.  While this is true, I came to realize I also love the work of supporting organizations and individuals to complete projects, strengthen their work, vision, plan and raise money and capital. When I support folks in the process of getting organized, listening to their core values and working toward a common goal; my inner social worker meets my inner public administrator and they get along splendidly!

Following in family footsteps, I have decided to create and launch my own business. I am joining the growing ranks of women small business owners; consulting, supporting and creating for good! This is a bit tricky while balancing two part-time jobs and one consulting client, but I am excited. My personal goal is to take the journey one-step at a time, figure out how to work from home efficiently AND still find room to practice my new found life balance.  That being said it is 5pm on a Saturday and I am getting ready to get back to work. Thanks for coming with me on the journey!

Up a hill on a bike

Radiating possibility begins with things as they are and highlights open spaces, the pathways leading out from here.

- The Art of Possibility, Rosamund Stone and Benjamin Zander

This weekend I went on a bike trip with my bike loving life partner. I also like bikes but I do not like hills. Hills, however, are hard to avoid on a bike trip.  Last year I dreaded every single hill on our little summer excursion often getting off my bike and walking.  This time the first little hill came and I nearly cried, then I got mad because I was promised a hill-free trip (an impossibility).  The second hill on the trip came and it was a long one, a sneaker that just did not stop.  I had to pause on more than one occasion but I did not get off my bike.  I kept going and when I finished the hill both my partner and I rung our bells (now a new hill completion ritual).

After the fourth or fifth hill of the trip I realized I could not go around all the hills, the hills were a part of the bike experience.  The sense of completion and the joyful ride down the other side of the hill are a part of the same experience, one part could not exist without the other.

I finished school in the middle of what is now called “the Great Recession”.  I panicked looking at the hill in front of me, a part-time job that could not become a full-time job anytime soon and rejections to job inquiries piling up.  But this hill is a part of my journey.  It is teaching me about fortitude, community and mutuality. It is providing me with the space and time to frame my life in new ways.

How do you face the hills in your life?

Balancing chosen work and community

When I graduated in June 2009 I had a Masters in Public Affairs and a Masters in Social Work…and I was exhausted. I spent the three previous years reading stacks of articles, writing until 2 in the morning, digging around on the inside looking at who I was and digging around on the outside looking at what the world is and trying to learn some statistics when I had a moment. Thanks to school I am more prepared to begin a career in social work, the nonprofit field or government sector BUT I am not prepared to live a balanced life.

I have a lot of perfectionism running through my blood and in school I tried to do it all to the fullest.  After school finished, I decided I did not want to push that hard anymore. I need to figure out how to really enjoy the slow details of life: strangers’ conversations on the bus, late mornings with stove top coffee and a new home with a cat and a lover.  And I am wondering, how does one do this, especially in the States, especially in the nonprofit field? How do we slow down and enjoy each tangible moment and at the same time keep up the drive and momentum to work toward changing this world?

How do you balance your community, chosen work, family, home life and enjoy the moments during and in between the activity?

Let the possibility begin

This is my first blog post. ever.

I have wanted to blog about my journey and career path for a year, since graduating from Grad School. But fear and time have held me back.  Thank you Rosetta Thurman for providing the opportunity to have support and community and begin my blogging journey. I am ready.