maybe the biggest roadblock to getting what we want is the fact we don't really want it part IV

So, maybe we're getting better at wearing our heart on our sleeve without forgetting that's where we put it and sneezing into our elbows  

and we are unearthing the stuff we have buried long ago and the stuff we buried yesterday and we are panning the gold from our findings and clearing out the rubble and we are valuing ourselves by setting boundaries with the way we interact with the world -

We are feeling OK with where we are right now.

And we have a sense that it has nothing to do with where we are right now, but everything to do with who we are right now. Some days we love ourselves and watch ourselves show up - some days we watch ourselves show up and love ourselves. Some days we hide and don't show up at all and we still watch ourselves with amazement and still love ourselves. 

In order for the new stuff to stand strong, in order for it to last - anything that doesn't support it - all the self-sustaining parts of us that know change is risky, that know our new supports, like fresh cement, have not had time to properly set yet - work to dismantle it.

(sometimes with little love taps like that jewelry hammer your daughter gave you that just doesn't carry enough weight to really get the job done and sometimes with a sledge hammer - and this isn't anything personal - we can't take this stuff personally - part of our job on planet Earth is to stay alive and that is the job of our fingers and our toes and our DNA and yes, even those parts of us that are programmed with gold standards like "not good enough", "have to" and "should")

*****

Every summer we add a new vegetable to our garden. And every year some new kind of creature comes along to devour it.

It's not that these critters have just arrived. I am sure they have been here for years.

We just never notice them until they start chowing down on our new vegetables.

Last year it was voles. George kept saying voles and I kept hearing moles until one day I actually stopped what I was doing, cocked my head (for some reason hubs has a way of sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher until I tip my head, what is that?) and actually listened to what he was saying. Voles?

The stuff that is coming up in our life now - maybe even coming up faster than voles at a garden party - isn't new stuff. We are only noticing it now because it is so unlike the new stuff.

We didn't trash the new vegetable seeds to eliminate the voles last spring and we don't need to change who we are now just because it makes us (and maybe others) a little uncomfortable.

We don't have to know what will make us happy in order to be happy. We all know what happiness feels like. Maybe we don't have to know what we want in order to get what we want. What do you think? Knowing what we want is the part that gets many of us stuck. I know it gets me stuck. Maybe we only have to know how we want to feel.

We only have to know how we want to feel and be brave enough to let go of all the things that do not feel that way until we are only holding on to the things that do.

Maybe when we feel bad it's not because we aren't living up to life's expectations. Maybe it's not because we aren't being everything we could be. 

Maybe it's because we aren't being who we really are. 

Maybe the biggest roadblock to getting what we want is the fact we don't really want it ..... maybe getting clear on what we want isn't the part we have to worry about anyway - maybe we only need to get clear on what we value. 

next up part V - how knowing what we value gets us what we want

(and I know this post is a bit all over the place - I have had the flu or some kind of heavy duty cold and may not be firing on all four cylinders - on the other hand why let that stop me)

if at first we don't succeed .... (maybe we are measuring the wrong thing)

In 3rd grade I had to write my motto in the class yearbook (why did we have yearbooks in 3rd grade - I guess we didn't. It was some kind of written something like a yearbook though) and I remember writing "Try. Try again."

(Childhood memories that are truly our own, not the stories we have heard our parents tell again and again, show us so much about what we are made of now and what we are holding on to. Some people misinterpret this as a way to blame someone from our past, but if that is what we do with our memory we are missing the point entirely. The real question isn't what did the other person say or do to me but "what does it mean that I remember this thing? how am I made of this?")

I have no idea why I wrote this in my "yearbook" because even then I knew I was not a Try. Try again, kind of girl. I was more of a "do the stuff I am really good at only" kind of girl.

I was lucky (or maybe not) that the kind of stuff I was good at was the kind of stuff that mattered to teachers. I remember my teacher nodding her head approvingly at my 'motto'.

(that head nod is actually the part of my memory that is important; the approval for saying the safe thing)

Flash ahead a few years and no one would be thinking "Try. Try again." was a good motto. Not that we had become a world full of quitters, but it wasn't try-ers that were running things now - it was the do-ers that made things happen.

The world had moved on to "Do or Do not. There is No Try." YAY for Yoda! Then Nike eliminated that notorious 'try' word altogether with "Just Do It."

hope locket by cuddly rigor mortis and polarity

I still like the word "Try" though. And Hope, I like the word "Hope". I used to make a locket with the word Hope and people asked me all the time to change the word. They didn't like it.

I see the potential pitfalls with these words, but I still love them. Surrounded by people filled with hope that are trying to make things better is not such a bad space to be.

My favorite quote is T.S. Eliot "for us there is only the trying - the rest is not our business."

We can only do what we can do. The process is what we do. The rest is not our business.

I cannot disconnect Nike's "Just Do It" from the idea of winning and the winning part is sometimes (and often) outside our control and I am over the things outside my control (I have been totally over them since Janelle recommended James Altucher's book a couple months ago.)

being any kind of barometer for how I am doing - not because I am a control freak, really! but because I am committed to being about the stuff that matters and not just about the stuff that can be measured.

What do you all think?

(yes, I am channeling Dolly Parton now, I blame my increased bust size due to the 47 layers of clothing I am wearing right now)

xo I still have a winter mayhem update post to write this week, I haven't forgotten! Stay warm!

this is the year we do it ... better

 .... not better than someone else does it and not even better than we did it last year, because we were in a difference space last year and we don't fit in that space anymore. Doing what we could have (maybe) done then may not be the best thing for us to do now.

(and looking backward only gets us a sore neck and 

embarrassing photos on Facebook

when we walk into things)

We don't do it better by looking at what didn't work. We look at the stuff that went right. We focus on how we want to feel. 

Hubs and I went out to dinner a couple weeks ago. I had been spending a lot of time alone in my studio working and not doing a lot of talking and I shocked myself with the extent of the unconscious negative chitchat we immediately had going on -

about the guy who turned without signaling, the temperature, the shortened day, the pending storm, the traffic, the parking lot, health stuff, customer problems, my daughter's problems, my niece's problems, political stuff, Fukushima (hubs is obsessed with Fukushima) - all important topics, but I realized we were framing all our conversations about what was going wrong.

On the drive home I deliberately refocused us. I pointed out the beautiful holiday Christmas lights and Sully's latest adorableness on Facebook, a wonderful customer email I had received that day, the delicious leftovers we were going to have for lunch the next day ...

Every time hubs brought up a problem, I re-framed it. Every time I was about to say something that wasn't something I wanted or connected to how I wanted to feel, I stopped.

When we got to the house I asked George if he noticed what I was doing and he said "yes, but what good does it do to pretend everything is perfect - how does that fix anything?"

This isn't about pretending everything is perfect. It's not about fixing anything or getting so fixated on who we want to be that we lose sight of who we are. But once we know we get what we focus on, scratch that - once we know we are what we focus on - once we really know this, this mindless negative chatter matters.

It matters alot.

 
We currently have a Venus Retrograde that takes us right into a Mercury Retrograde which takes us right into a Mars Retrograde (some people may feel like they aren't really getting started until May!)  - this can create a whole lot of space for us to reinvent ourselves this year.

So how do we want this all to play out? What are we going to do with this space we have been given now to make the stuff that we know isn't working for us better? Hoping everyone is having a wonderful New Year! We are expecting snow to start any minute here!

more lessons from 2013 ....

So ... even though I like to think I am the kind of person who believes life offers up experiences and not lessons

(the thinking part of me knows this is true but the emotional part of me still channels grade school report cards along with the nervous belly and yearning for little gold stars)

if I said "experiences from 2013" this would be a whole other post ... and actually now that I write that, I probably need to write that post, too. It might be a lot more fun.

This not so fun series started here and here.

sullymac - boy wonder

3. The Etsy and doing it all lesson:

My "one woman show" business is not sustainable.

Before Etsy the idea of a 'one woman show' as a lasting business model was not on my radar. I did not think this was some kind of nobler thing or more important way of doing business. I did not think this was the way to a happier life or more money or doing more impactful work - I didn't think about it at all really.

After a decade in banking watching businesses survive, thrive, explode, implode and just drift away from passionate founders and another decade with my own business (much of that time with employees) I knew that businesses need systems and processes and checkpoints. I knew that businesses are investments and need to be cared for as such.

Somehow when Etsy came along I forgot all about this stuff I already knew.

I was like the young girl who scoffs at the friends who pine for their princes, but secretly practices her curtsies and tiara hair - I created exactly the business I would never advise another person to create.  

Maybe the business I had secretly always wanted - the one with me in complete control.

Every single thing I have sold in the last 7 years (over 25,000 or so things) have been designed, fabricated, finished, checked, packaged and shipped by me - every single show I've done was booked, planned, displays created, shipped, assembled, show floor worked, orders filled, customers followed up with by me, websites created, blogs created, social media and business relationships haphazardly maintained, over 1000 blog posts, a gazillion other things - only God knows how many customers corresponded with, how many balls made it into baskets, how many balls were dropped ...

Then Etsy announces that manufacturing is OK now and start promoting it in subtle and not so subtle ways and I feel kind of like ... well, an idiot. Because I knew this was not a sustainable model and I have worked myself into the ground with it anyway. There is no fault here. It is just an experience I will be creating in a new way in 2014. Just a leg of my journey - the next leg will be different.

(we all get lots of legs don't worry, it only looks like we just get two, there is a record breaking millipede with 750 - we are really more like her)

2. The "when you've got your health" lesson:

I will have to get back to this one because I am not feeling as healthy today as I would like, no doubt because I have put my health practices on the back burner for the last few busy weeks. I think I should write about this from a place of strength. Autoimmune stuff is tricky ...

(luckily for me, cats have nine lives and we always land on our feet ... and I've got all those legs remember)

1. The mothering is a gift lesson:

I come from a family with a long lineage of motherhood karma. Infertility, miscarriages, babies raised by aunts and grandmothers, babies born to unwed mothers - we have only one baby (she is almost 5 now) born to a mother and father who were married (to each other and before she was conceived) in 4 generations.

I am going to write a long post about this mothering/creation/karma stuff next week. With Jupiter in Cancer it is kind of divine timing to talk about this stuff, maybe someone can be helped by something with it.

I wanted to wrap this post up this week, so I can start a new leg of our journey next week. No telling where this new leg will carry us - another family inheritance is feet that tend to go in unintended directions and are also about two sizes too big so we always to keep our eyes open ....

xo all - Merry Christmas Week!

5 Things I Learned in 2013 ... #4

Yes, this is one of those count backward things like Letterman.

I have a friend who is a very judgey ... she is brilliant and a perfectionist and very organized and this judgmental thing she has going on has always driven me crazy.

A couple months ago this friend stopped cursing. She just woke up one day and decided cursing sounds terrible and ... well, she just stopped.

I was talking to her and a curse word slipped from my lips. I saw her blink - a long, hard blink. I slipped another curse word into my next sentence and there it was - that long, hard judgmental blink again.

(maybe some kind of involuntary reaction like the ex-smoker coughing around the cigarette)

I wondered if she was silently praying for me every time a four letter word escaped my lips.

I got annoyed.

I started sliding curse word after curse word into the conversation until I sounded like Carmella Soprano and had her blinking like a turn signal that needed a new bulb.

Soon she was rubbing her forehead and asking for an aspirin.

When I told hubby this story that night he said it was the meanest thing I'd ever done.

( I actually thought it was kind of sweet of him to think I had never done anything meaner than give a non-curser a headache - does he even know who he's married to?)

It did wake me up to the fact that as she was judging me I was judging her right back.

Which isn't really a surprise. I know the more we judge ourselves the more people we attract into our life who seem to criticize us. I know that judgments block energy, set up internal defenses and resistance and tend to hold negative patterns in place.

This lesson - which sounds simple and obvious and sort of stupid maybe - hit me over the head. Although I think of myself as a non-judgmental person, well except for people who litter or don't like animals, I mean we are totally allowed to judge them, of course, but I can be really quite judgy (and yes, I can spell this word with or without the 'e' since spell check assures me I am making this word up either way).

Discerning is ok. Discerning is a good thing. Judgey not so much.

Maybe this isn't really a lesson, but it did show me how I measure the world and mostly myself. I have seen her a couple times since our curse/blink off and she doesn't seem judgey at all to me now ... in fact I can clearly see the love there and feel compassion for her, which I know is mirroring the compassion I am feeling for myself .....

5 lessons I'm taking from 2013 ...

Top 5 lessons I learned in 2013

or the last 5 lessons I learned in 2013

(my short term memory is as holey as swiss cheese these days I blame GMOs which is not as crazy as it sounds read this)

or maybe I should say relearned since life is a spiral and we sometimes run into the same stuff again and again in different spaces and forms.

I know I have run into this one before.

I realize this is all a little heavy for December  reading, and this first lesson is a little dense ... maybe if you are reading this you could play some holiday music in the background to stay festive, so I don't kill your Santa buzz.

Anyhoo, a little vague (sorry) background info - a situation was brought to my attention about something someone was doing.

I had to decide whether to ignore the situation or push against it (ie take some kind of real world action).

I decided (after much back and forth with myself - my usual crazy person routine) that ignoring the situation was the higher action. Inaction was stating to myself that this was a situation I did not have to worry about - I trusted life to take care of me and what this person was doing could not threaten me. I was safe. I decided the decision to not take action would bring me more peace.

I ignored the situation. I did a little spell to release it. I withdrew my attention (mostly).

A few months later the situation winded its way back at me in a bigger way.

(This sometimes happens with things we ignore - this is not because ignoring - ie withdrawing our attention from something is intrinsically a bad thing - it is always best to focus on what we do want and not what we don't want. I think maybe it happens when there is something else the situation is showing us like maybe the inaction we thought was from higher ground was actually based in fear)

This time I thought - "well, I got no peace within myself by ignoring this situation so I will stand up for myself and push back".

So I pushed.

I told myself I didn't care about what results came from the push that I just needed to take action to stand up for myself.

(I had a memory from 7th grade. I was sitting in front of a new group of girls about a month after I moved to a new town, again - we moved every year, and this group was giggling and making fun of me and I turned around and said something back to one of the girls, which made me feel better for about 5 seconds, and they then proceeded to amp up the torture and make my life totally miserable for the rest of the year. This memory made me think that this time I needed to stand up for myself and see that my world wouldn't fall apart)

But, as soon as I pushed (and this was the kind of push without a delete key) I knew I had made a mistake.

I was pushing from a place of weakness - my push was stating to myself that I had something to fear from what this person I was pushing against was doing. I wasn't trusting life to take care of me even though I know that what is real can not be threatened and anything that can be threatened isn't real.

(the central and first Course of Miracles lesson)

I know that any belief I have will create the outcome of any action I take and I was acting against myself even though the push made logical sense.

(and I realize I am not telling you exactly what I am talking about here, but  you will have to trust me that most people, especially creative makers probably would have pushed).

I knew immediately that whatever the result of the push was (this part was outside my control anyway) - I wouldn't get peace from pushing.

The lessons (yes, there are lessons inside of lessons with this stuff - life is messy and I am not a paper towel kind of girl) I take from this experience of being faced with deciding between two actions and having neither action be the right action is:

#5. The action taken from a decision isn't what the decision is really about. 

Life doesn't present us with a good choice and a bad choice - that would make this entire game called life on planet Earth pretty boring since we would have the whole thing figured out by age 7. Life presents us with choices that prepare the field and allow us to move into different spaces. Neither space is perfect because then the game would be over.

So either choice could have brought me what I wanted, which for me these days is mostly peace, or neither choice could have brought me peace because it is me and not the choice that is bringing the peace.

Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." 

I was trying to solve a problem by looking at the problem. It's like the problem and the solution are two sides of the same coin. We can't have a problem unless a solution exists otherwise there would be no pattern the problem could be formulated from (no matter how many trains run over a coin it still has two sides) but we can't see the (solution) head of a coin by looking at the tail (the problem). 

(unless we are doing one of those squinty eye things looking at the side of the coin, but who wants to go through life with her faced all squished up like that)

The problem was never what this other person was doing, the problem was always how I was feeling. Maybe the problem hadn't resurfaced because I had chosen incorrectly the first time (when I had chosen to let it go) but simply to allow me to choose again and work out, within me, what making the opposite choice would feel like.

Anyhoo - I will try for some lighter lessons in the days ahead, this is December after all. But I did call 2013 my Year of Deciding (or was that 2012?) so this one is a biggie for me again. 

chphotographics

next lesson next week - have an amazing weekend everyone! xo

BLOG READERS ONLY - 
get free shipping on ANY order  in either of my Etsy shops this weekend
with coupon code DECISION

UNCORKED

 

POLARITY

16 Last Minute Moves to Sell More and Stress Less on Etsy This Year (warning - if you are already tired have some caffeine before reading this, don't hate me)

My post today on the EcoEtsy blog - getting your groove on this holiday season:

1. Check your supplies. Get organized. YOU CAN'T SELL WHAT YOU DON'T HAVE. But, you don't want to overstock and make no money. This is tricky stuff even if we are working with historical data for our shop's sales. Maybe get yourself a magic 8 ball (I find this to be pretty effective).

Put yourself in your customer's shoes (this will give us a great excuse to buy those kick-ass boots we've had our eyes on) - and think GIFT.

Look at your makings, put on your new boots and think - "If I were buying this as a gift what would I need to know, how would I want this to look, how would I want this transaction to happen?"

2. Now hop over to Blugrin (Betsi) where there is a great tool to do QUICK EDITS.

3. Do you have variables set for your listings so customers can provide their CHOICES AT TIME OF PURCHASE?

We want to eliminate back and forth emails as much as possible plus I think people hesitate to purchase late in the season if they have to write in information - sometimes this can't be helped but if you can add a variable - get it in there. Remove all barriers to a customer's purchase.

Example - I sell a lot of bracelets, but not on Etsy and not as gifts, because sizing is tricky. I am  adding this chart into my bracelet listings

(although I will still offer the advice on how to measure)

as well as guarantee free shipping back and forth after the holidays for bracelets that do not fit.

It's a gamble and won't work for everyone, but after putting myself in my customer's boots, I think this will make them much more likely to order. How are your listings hurting your gift sale orders? Is there some kind of quick fix you can do to increase sales over the next few weeks?

4. GIFT CERTIFICATES - now that Etsy has instant downloads this is a no-brainer for everyone. If you are outside the country where most of your sales happen you need to do this.

HERE are some templates.

5. COUPON CODES FOR REPEAT BUSINESS - Etsy will email a thank you with a coupon code after you have a sale. If you are not using this - get this set up. Better yet, do this yourself and get them added to your mailing list at the same time. Sign up for a free account at Mailchimp.

6. SHIPPING - Etsy has added shipping profiles so get your listings linked & you can adjust quickly to priority shipping as we get closer to Christmas.

Let people know in your listings you can gift box, include a holiday message and ship directly to their friends and family - they just need to enter the shipping address of the recipient when they make their payment and provide their holiday message in the comments area of their order. I have people ask me to ship to someone else often and even if the address is not entered with their payment (giving me shipping protection) I usually go ahead and do it - use your own judgement with this.

The USPS shipping deadlines for 2013 are HERE

7. The word GIFT in listing titles and tags - I have heard Etsy isn't a fan of this since everything is a gift and it seems like a pointless tag, but I still think people search with it - just use it in a specific sense, not as a stand alone tag. If a customer searches 'teacher gift' and we have only tagged teacher we will not show up in the search so adding the specific tag and words in our title "teacher gift" could be a good idea (assuming of course, our item is actually a teacher gift).

8. SALES - If you like to shop sales, you can safely assume your customers do, too.

Black Friday through Cyber Monday is probably the best time to give your best offer.

Later on, customers will be more desperate and not so geared toward pricing. I don't mean this 'more desperate' in a bad way and some people are always looking for sales, but if customers are thinking your best offers are coming later they are less likely to shop early. Later on they will probably be less price conscious and you can always have a NICK OF TIME sale at the last minute to move out ready made stock.

Have a countdown to the sale. Make sure everyone knows the sale is coming - use your teams, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Mailchimp, tell 2 friends, etc- create a sense of urgency - let people know this is your best sale of the year. Use coupon codes and tag with ON SALE or Cyber Monday Sale or whatever you think customers might be searching. People love FREE SHIPPING.

Update your banner AND avatar with this - customers looking at your item will have your avatar clearly visible this year!

9. READY TO SHIP - this makes a great category or tag to let people know it will be on its way FAST. Then actually ship it fast. Don't assume people need their holiday gift for Christmas - they might need it for the Christmas party 10 days before. Your ready to ship orders should go out the same day or the next day or don't bother labeling them ready to ship.

10. BEST SELLERS - get your best sellers into your featured items, but remember to show some variety here.

11. LIMITED OFFERS - do some limited offers on Facebook and Twitter - run a lunchtime sale with a free gift, etc. Have fun with this, go on Twitter and offer 50% off to the first person who tells you Frosty's last name (except use a question that actually has an answer) - don't worry that no one will answer you. You are sending your good energy out into the universe with this stuff - you are proclaiming, "Send me customers, I am ready for them!"

12. GUARANTEE - offer the best guarantee you are comfortable with then allow yourself to get a little uncomfortable and offer an even better one.

13. GO MOBILE - answer your emails immediately (you don't really need to sleep).

14. ORDER MOO CARDS FOR CUSTOMERS TO USE AS GIFT CARDS (or print your own) - don't assume the end user is getting your business card - they aren't. But if you make a mini TO and FROM card

and print your website on there discreetly - it will end up in the recipient's hands (include your regular business card for the buyer, too).

Moo cards are on sale until the 17th - and arrive fast so get on this. My card without my info (you can print your info on the back) is HERE.

CHECK OUT THE REST OF MY TIPS ON THE ECOETSY BLOG HERE INCLUDING MY HOT ETSY TIP OF THE MONTH

Scalability and Our Handmade Business (Part IV) - what to do when we run out of hours

follow your bliss locket - shira sela and polarity

See the previous parts of this series HERE, HERE AND HERE.

If we scale our handmade business and the thing we love most is the making of our whosee whatsee, then chances are we won’t be doing the thing we most love as our production numbers increase.

That is when we either get real with ourselves, delegate stuff we don't want to do to free up time for us to make stuff, streamline our processes, figure out a way to make our hours for dollars the highest $ possible and decide that is enough

(yes, you can actually turn away business and survive)

or we train someone else to do enough of our production that we can produce greater and greater quantities without killing ourselves.

(no matter how popular our whosee whatsee, no product has a shelf life of forever anyway)

And yes, there will be a learning curve with this and yes, production will slow at first and yes, there may be weeks when we will be paying someone else more than we are making ourselves

(owners get paid last folks)

If we dream of a really huge order and our plan if we were to get that really huge order is to "do whatever it takes" which is the kind of un-planning many of us call planning (raises hand), well, this is the thinking we want something we don't really want stuff that just makes us and our business weaker.

We send life mixed signals. Mixed signals cancel each other out.

We don't get what we want because some part of us - the part that thinks we are not ready for it or thinks it will be too much work or knows we are out of our comfort zone with this - some part of us doesn't want it.

But, what if we actually made plans for that huge order and got ready for it - what if we made it feel welcome. What if we took the time to bring that unconscious part of ourselves that feels this is outside our upper limit into the game. We could write out a plan to adapt to sudden market changes. We could calculate exactly what supplies we need to buy to produce X amount of whosee whatsees, we would draw up orders for these supplies, we would find backup suppliers and production help, we would know exactly how many hours of production such a large order would take and we would have this information ready to go. We could make files marked 100, 250, 500, 1000 so a large order brings us to our sudden market change file and we would know exactly what supplies to order, our time frames and the steps we will take to make this order happen.

(we should also have pictures of our makings with white backgrounds ready to go, too - I have used Pixc for background removal - only $2 an image and they do an excellent, fast job)

This is the kind of action that attracts what we want- not just pinning pictures of what we will do with our earnings on vision boards (although if that helps with your focus do that, too).

If your business is going to scale you might have to speak in public - how can you get ready for that? Is there a public speaking class near you that you can take? If we hate networking, how can we get more comfortable with that? If you are a "go big or go home" kind of maker, then getting ready to go big is the surest way to make it happen. Just don't pigeon hole yourself - stay flexible and available to what life offers up as you take action.

If we are a maker who is more in love with creating a business than the actual making of the whosee whatsee we are producing is it possible to recreate our business in order to scale? 

Zappos shoes is the biggest online shoe retailer. If you haven't heard this story you might be surprised at how the founder of Zappos got started.

He didn’t start by stocking up huge amounts of shoes and investing in an expensive back end website. Instead he went to local shoe shops. He asked the owner’s permission to take photos of the shoes they sold and he put those photos online. When an order came in, he went to the shoe shop, bought the shoes and shipped them ... all by himself.

This is not a scalable business model. But with this model he learned that there was a demand for the service he had created. Then he recreated his business to scale.

Maybe if we are in love with the business creation more than the whosee whatsee creation we could think of our current business as a way to test our assumptions about what people want. Maybe we can then recreate our business to scale. If our love is the business making, then we can make anything.

Can we create a service from our makings business? What have we learned that other people might be willing to pay for? Can we create an add-on that would work with the "make it once sell it again and again" model? If we love the business making more than the making - can we turn our making into a kit and sell that? Less work always = scale. Should we stop thinking product and start thinking service?

The best of kickstarter 2012 is HERE - what we can learn from them? This is my favorite project right now.

To wrap this up our handmade business (without outsourcing production and I am not even going to get into that one with this post except to say it sounds like a very slippery slope to me) may never be able to create the kind of scale that has us lying on a beach during the month of November, but there are ways we can create scale and stay true to ourselves and our makings.

Scalability and Our Handmade Business (Part III) - what to do when we run out of hours

look the world straight in the eye

Scalability makes some makers nervous. It makes me nervous, too.

This is the working on your business and not in your business thing we talked about here.

Of course I talked about the reverse; the importance of working in our business vs. on our business and I still believe that building yourself a job instead of an empire is a totally acceptable and sometimes the most appropriate thing to be building.

It is also the difference between building a business with the goal of selling the business (and not just the whosee whatsee our business produces)

and building a business we want to grow ourself for a long time or even leave to our children, if anyone still does such a thing - this used to be the main reason people started businesses, when I was in banking I heard this all the time - it does not so much happen anymore, which is probably a good thing, kids don't need empires.

Or maybe it's easier to say it is the difference between a business that runs itself and a business the owner loves to run.

(and some kind of balance of both these things may be the ideal)

Most makers I know set up their businesses for the second scenario - the build a life as well as a business scenario - but they did this totally unintentionally, so may have allowed the business to grow in unintended ways and maybe it has become unstable.

They might actually prefer the first scenario at some point - maybe not the selling part, but the business running itself part, but didn't set things up that way and it is hard work to transition.

When I was in banking I told business owners, "make yourself unnecessary" - they couldn't always do this and now that I have worked both sides of this thing I know why.

(it's the passionate heart part of making this thing that ropes us in, folks)

There is no right or wrong answer here.

What I do know though is that when a business reaches a certain level of activity it will actually become less stable without scalability. 

Are there ways to scale and still do the thing we love to do? Yes.

Start out asking yourself what it is you truly love to do.

(think about your ideal work day -
what is it you are actually doing?)

1. Some makers who love the physical part of making their makings have to do that part. There is no question about this. If that is you - you can still make things run smoothly as you grow

(and yes, you will have a limit to your growth; limiting growth is often a good thing - it is called sustainability - unlimited growth is not always good, it is what cancer cells do)

by streamlining your operation, hiring the right support people, charging premium prices by packaging your work in a way that it has a higher value to your customers (this is the part where your story comes in, too) and setting up the right systems.

(we will talk about these systems in Part V)

There are only so many hours in the day. If you are this kind of maker you have to know your limitations. You have to embrace them. You have to know you are building something bigger than something big. You can't take on too much or you will make yourself ungrounded and unstable - you have to be happy with enough.

(I usually find that people who cannot be happy with enough are not happy with 'more' anyway)

This doesn't mean you cannot build something truly amazing and powerful and important.

2. Some makers will find they love the building a business thing more than the actual building of their whosee whatsee.

We will talk about these makers in Part IV later this week

(and thank you to Kathy for letting me know this post had somehow posted empty, which was not some kind of new marketing ploy, but if it makes me sound smart and cutting edge to do this, I will totally take credit)

Scalability and Our Handmade Business (Part II) - how do we get to be spidey-woman and still make stuff?

white heart studios - get your spidey on

I wrote a series of posts a couple years ago on different ways to make money on Etsy, but it was really a kind of whine about how tired I was. You can read it here.

Burn-out is an occupational hazard of working from our hearts and with our hands and heads and I don't believe it is totally preventable. It is one way we know it is time to change things.

Scaling our business is something lots of makers start thinking about when we are burned out or our businesses become unsustainable; sometimes because we are selling more than we can make but sometimes because we are making more than we can sell - the smart ones work it into their model from the start.

For those of us who haven't, raises hand here, redefining our business later is a lot of work. It is like trying to comb your hair in a hurricane. Our business still needs to stay open and making money while we make changes in the background. This takes time and time is the one thing we think we don't have. Time is kind of stretchy though - if we need to make changes, we need to figure this out.

It's like spending more money now - for example buying your supplies in bulk - to save money later, spending time now to save time later works the same way.

One maker model of scalability is the make something once and sell it again and again model - the illustrator who sells prints of his work for example. He still gets to do what he loves which is draw, but he doesn't have the one for one maker model that limits his sales to how many drawings he can produce in a day and he has the bonus of still being able to sell his originals for much more.

(of course he still needs the traffic and he still needs to be producing original things people want to buy to make this all work for him)

Anytime you can make something once and sell it again and again you have created scale. Anytime your fixed costs or the time it takes to make the next one of something you make is reduced from the first one you made, you have created scale - it can take me as much time to make 1 of something as it does to make 3, for example. So every time I make 3, I create scale (of course this assumes I can at some point sell 3).

Some ways for makers to
start thinking about scale:

1. Sell a pattern or tutorial (the old create it once, sell it again and again thing)

2. Sell 3 things to 1 person - Upsell to existing customers. It is cheaper to sell 3 things to one person than 3 things to 3 people, so set up your site to make this easy.

For example a customer looking at rings should be shown a link to other rings or maybe a customer looking at a ruby ring should be shown a link to other ruby jewelry, you decide what you think they want to see, and pics are always better than words when it comes to links and selling online.

When thinking scale it is always better/cheaper

to focus on existing customers ... or is it?

3. Sell 3 things to 3 people (you know my rules are always bendy) 

Create a referral system - more happy customers create more good word of mouth which creates more customers that you didn't have to do anything to get (other than be your amazing self, of course)

For example - try a send a friend deal with a coupon code for people who refer people - you might not totally be able to police this, but who cares.

4. Create a mailing list - this is very important because it is so much less work to sell to people who already love our stuff - just ask your customers if they want to be added and make it worthwhile for them. Give them sneak peaks and discounts and information they want.

I wouldn't email them more than once every 4-6 weeks - when people using mailchimp email me more frequently than that I almost always remove myself from their list - the emails, just like every interaction with a customer, should always reflect your brand. Don't just throw something out there.

For example - Email customers a coupon for a discount on something in your store and in the email include a downloadable simple card they can give with it if they purchase it as a gift. I have found this works better than just a coupon.

5. Keep track of your existing customers' wants and needs - remember, the less time and money you have to spend finding new customers the more you are thinking scale.

For example - Soap lasts, I don't know 30 days - can you sell auto-renewals or subscriptions? You have probably seen this genius viral campaign for this genius tampon delivery company.

Someone who bought mittens from you last year will almost certainly have lost them by now.

Someone who bought cufflinks from you for their wedding a year ago will have an anniversary right now.

Ask customers for their birthdays and email them a birthday card and a coupon two weeks before.

This stuff will take time and maybe money to set up in the beginning, but if you do it right will more than pay for itself later. Hire someone local on TaskRabbit to help you get this set up.

6. Streamline your makings

for example - if you sell on Etsy, maybe you created certain whosee whatsees that you don't sell much, but they drew customers in who maybe bought other things - or this was your thinking anyway, well, maybe now that search is so different and so crowded this isn't true anymore and you can just ditch this stuff and save yourself time, money and headaches

7. Think passive income

For example - sell blog advertising, create a subscription service, etc

8. Hire help; any kind of help that saves you time - if you can pay people less to do things than you can charge someone else, you have created scale. You may not technically create scale if you do this solely to save your own sanity, but in a spideywoman world it totally counts. So if you save 4 hours a week, by having someone clean your house and can put that time into your business, or into wth a nap, and need to do it - go ahead.

Spidey-woman is not superwoman. 

Superwoman burned out.

Spidey-woman is just getting started.

The best thing we can do is build scale and passive income into our business in the beginning - this does not have to be something gigantic.

Big thinkers do not always look like big thinkers to the outside world because our thinking is more broad than tall - we are thinking deep. We are not leaping tall buildings anymore - we are scaling them. This allows us to move over here and over there when we need to, so we get to have an actual life as well as a business.

Spidey-woman has taken superwoman down, folks.

Of course the problem with dollars for hours has always been that if you create a successful whosee whatsee you will run out of hours.

Next week - part III what to do when we really run out of hours

Scalability and Our Handmade Business - how do we get to be spidey-woman and still make stuff?

round and round we go - polarity locket

So, as makers we have been kicking this scalability issue around forever.

And since our businesses are living, breathing entities (not in a businesses are people kind of way, of course) that evolve and grow maybe this is something we can look at now with fresh eyes.

You have probably heard that you might be able to increase profits by making your business scalable (or that you do not really have a business if it isn't scalable) and maybe

you are kind of picturing yourself climbing a mountain or maybe being carried up a mountain on the shoulders of a hardy sherpa.

(which is probably the only way I could climb a mountain right now - NOTE TO SELF - put the inflatable bed away, the guests have been gone for a month and pull the elliptical machine back out, oh and actually get your ass on there Cat).

When I was in banking being able to scale a business just meant the business was efficient enough to be able to grow and work just as well in a large 'scale' situation - when a business model or design failed with a quantity increase we said the business will not scale - so no loan for you good buddy, see you later, have a nice day.

Today more commonly when someone talks about scaling our business they mean we add more business (the ka-ching part) without adding more work or increasing our (proportional) costs - our business becomes more and more profitable without us expending more and more energy (energy = money or time).

Scalability refers to the ability of a site to increase in size as demand warrants. Businesses are extremely scalable if the costs to operate the business are relatively fixed and more customers do not significantly increase our costs but they do significantly increase our profits. This is the perfect business model but doesn't work for everything.

It might be easier to picture what scalability is with an example of what scalability isn't.

(and usually the best way to learn anything from my blog is to read what I have done and then go ahead and just do the opposite)

I used to sell from seasonal mall carts.

This was in the days when people still did most of their shopping there. I started with one cart (see my story about that first season from hell here) and worked it myself six days a week, insanely long hours as the holidays got closer, and then had my brother and his friend work on Sundays.

It was totally exhausting, but a short enough season that I somehow managed to survive and lived to do it again.

That first year I grossed X amount of dollars. Let's say the X was $100,000 - it was probably not that much but this number will be easier to work with. Now because I sold something for $20.00 that cost me $5.00 to make which is about the minimal kind of mark-up you needed for a mall cart in those days - so it was something like $100,000 gross minus $25,000 product, $10,000 rent, $10,000 start up costs, $2000 salaries and $3,000 out the window who knows where costs, let's say I made about $50,000 (before Uncle Sam took his cut).

The next year I became one of those 'go big or go home' kind of girls and rented two mall carts.

And because I am the kind of compulsive thinker who thinks 36.5 steps ahead and because these two malls were an hour away from each other I hired enough people to cover both carts all the time (I think I hired 12 people) so that I was never scheduled to work and would be available to race to a cart if someone didn't show up for work or something went wrong or we just got swamped somewhere, any one of which I saw as a high probability.

Anyhoo, to cut to the chase. The second year I did not work quite as physically hard but mentally I had more stress and worked harder - more people to manage, more situations to manage, more inventory to manage, yada yada.

The second year my numbers looked totally different but because of the salaries I paid people (and when you pay people salaries you also pay half their social security and FICA and need a little thing, which is not such a little thing, called workmen's compensation insurance) and some inventory miscalculations, I ended up netting almost exactly what I had netted the first year.

Almost to the penny is the way I remember it.

Now, I did expand my business - I almost doubled my sales and my customer base, but I also showed myself it wasn't a very scalable business model. I slept through most of January.

I thought about scale the 3rd year (although I didn't actually think the word 'scale', I thought the word 'exhausted') when I planned for 3 carts and a manager to run them, but life twisted on me again - my mother's illness worsened and she moved in with us. I did one cart and hired some help. I have never really been a "go big or go home" kind of girl anyway - I was always more of a stay small and nimble kind of girl.

(except I have never been either small or nimble, but this is kind of how I see myself, go figure).

Today, we are mostly selling online which is great for scale because we can potentially reach more people without outlaying more energy (time, money) but we are also selling things we make by hand which is not so great for scale because usually we can only make so much.

Scalable is definitely possible for us, too, (it will likely require help, most good things do, we didn't come to this planet with 6 billion other people to go it alone, folks) although if we have not set ourselves up this way, it will be some work for us to get this scale thing going. And a product based business will probably never be highly scalable, but there are things we can do to increase profits without increasing energy (time or money) expended.

Later this week - part II - So how do I get to be spidey-woman and still make stuff

let's get our daughters into this scalability thing early girls

Manufactured Goods and the Fishing Boat Captain - part lV (the treasure)

paint and ink

"What are we pirates now Sully?" Captain Mooney asked.

"No, we aren't pirates Mooney. We are still fishing boat captains."

"But maybe there is something we could learn from pirates Mooney. Maybe a little pirate magic." Sully looked around the room.

He unfurled the 5 foot long map and slammed empty mugs on to the map corners to keep it open.

"What do you see?" he asked them.

The fishing boat captains gathered around the table. They looked from Sully to the map and back again puzzled. The moon light began to flow through the pub windows, slowly growing brighter and brighter until the map was almost blinding. Sully stepped back. The men shaded their eyes and leaned in.

The bartender, who had been pretending to busy himself with a dishtowel saw that the crazy fishing boat captains were standing around an empty table, each one staring at a different place on the dark table top, transfixed by ... nothing.

"These guys have finally gone off the deep end", he thought to himself.

Suddenly, the pub's lights flickered and dimmed. The bartender reached under the bar for his flashlight and when he looked up, the lights were on and the bar was empty. "What the hell?!" he screamed. 

Epilogue (1 year later)

Captain Mooney helped the dozen little girls and their mothers off her boat. "These boating birthday parties are so much fun", she thought to herself. One of the mothers asked Captain Mooney how she came up with this clever idea and how long she had been doing this. "Hmm, well, it just came to me about a year ago. The industry I was in had changed and I decided I needed a change, too." "Well, we're glad you did - this pirate party at sea was so much fun for the girls".

Mooney waved good-bye to the party-goers and headed down to the pub for a drink. She looked over at the Etsy Marina sign. Mooney didn't dock there anymore, but she knew some of the old-timers who were still there and doing OK - and she was happy for them.

She didn't see any new faces - the fishing boats were mostly guided electronically now that hands were not required to be on the ship's wheels and although she saw customers boarding those boats, there were still some customers who wanted a real-deal fishing boat captain with her hands on the wheel of their charter boat. The bad news for the old timers was that it was harder for the customers to find them, the good news was that all the competition looked the same.

The place was different, but this was ok because Mooney was different, too.

It was almost a year since the night she had been in the bar with Sully and the other Captains. She must have had too much to drink because all she could remember was a HUGE moon and looking at a crazy treasure map Sully had found and seeing ... something about treasure ... she could never remember ...

She remembered waking up the next morning feeling slightly hungover and well, let's just say it, Mooney thought to herself, "pretty freakin' fearless." Like, she knew her future was totally in her own hands and instead of that thought scaring the hell out of her like it used to, it made her totally anxious to get started. They were the hands that had held the wheel until now after all. She just knew her treasure was out there, hell she'd seen it! Or she thought she had, she wished she hadn't drank so much ...

She had only talked to one other fishing boat captain about the night Mooney had blacked out and Captain Jim hadn't remembered anything either. He did tell Mooney that night was when he decided to start his own little marina and Captain Jane had decided to take that job with the local company, the one who's stock had exploded and she bought that alpaca farm up in Maine. "I can't believe we were all so worried last year Mooney", Captain Jim had said, "it seems like all our sea legs landed on stable ground. Even the marina people who jumped ship have landed safely, I hear."

The only thing Mooney still worried about was Sully. She hadn't seen him in almost a year - not since the night with the map. People did catch sight of his boat now and then - Mooney had heard he had a pirate flag on his mast now - and that was enough to let them all know he was ok - they knew his hands would always be on that wheel.

Mooney finished her pint and headed for the door looking at the faded fishing rules sign on the pub wall - it's funny she thought, I wonder if the marina people had seen our rules before they changed theirs, if we had been able to get them to understand us, if that would have made any difference.

Outside, the moon was shining brightly and a newspaper reporter was interviewing worried people about the latest wash up of 'hands' down at the marina. These guys are here every month, Mooney thought shaking her head.

"What are they this time?" Mooney asked him."Female, maybe a size 10, leftie", the reporter answered before catching sight of the marina spokesman and taking off after him. As Mooney pedaled away on her bike, she could hear the marina spokesman saying:

"This is no cause for concern people. Hands are not as needed as they used to be. Machines can do the hands-on part for us all now. This is not a problem."

Mooney couldn't help noticing the spokesman had a metal hook where his right hand should have been. For a second Mooney thought she caught sight of a pirate flag on a ship heading out to sea ... no, she thought to herself, it couldn't be ...

(disclaimer from Olive -  all characters and companies appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or companies, living or dead, is purely coincidental)

Manufactured Goods and the Fishing Boat Captain - part lll (a fable in 3, now 4 parts)

skilled sailor cork ring

Captain Sully and his fishing boat captain friends, feeling the weight of a thousand other fishing boat captains on their shoulders, stumbled into their local pub.

The bartender who was used to people stumbling out and not so much used to them stumbling in, stood speechless.

Outside, a storm was kicking up. The wind howled. The sliver of a waxing moon filled the sky.

Sad Irish music (this) wafted from the jukebox although no one had put in any coins and hey, the bartender thought to himself, when the hell did that thing start working again?

At first the other patrons didn't notice the sudden storm and the determined and slightly vacant look of the fishing boat captains slowly filling the pub.

All at once they stopped their conversations mid-sentence and cocked their heads.

They looked at their watches. The guy in the john dropped his cellphone down the toilet and flushed it away. He was late - there was no time to lose.

The words pounded in his head. The word pounded in all their heads. LATE.

Most couldn't remember what they were late for - although some had vague memories of kid's soccer games missed years ago, papers not turned in on time, deadlines missed at work and then the promotion going to that jackass who always threw his empty water bottle in the trash can instead of the recycling bin.

One became haunted by her father's funeral, which she had missed 5 years before when a freak storm just like tonight's now that she thought about it - had delayed her trip home. LATE filled their heads until they thought their heads would explode if they didn't get GOING.

Outside as they stumbled onto the sidewalk, each head turned toward the moon in unison. The moon which had been only a sliver just minutes before now filled the sky over the Etsy Marina sign. The moon mouthed "YOU'RE LATE".

(cue the scary music here)

The bartender may have thought for a moment how strange it was that everyone was leaving at once but recovered quickly, filled frosty mugs with Guinness and handed each fishing boat captain a drink in turn as they stumbled past him on their way to the corner booth.

These were not folks taken to complaining. They were women and men of the sea after all and they had learned long ago that a smooth sea did not make a skilled sailor.

Tonight they sipped their pints slowly and nervously. Many didn't speak. A few grumbled about customers who wouldn't know a hands-on captain from a hands-off captain until the ship they were fishing on capsized. At least there would be no captain to go down with the ship, they muttered.

Captain Sully, a man of few words, looked each fishing boat captain in the eye (all at once, yes, all at once) and pulled out a ... treasure map.

(I guess this is a fable in 4 parts now - laughs mischievously and looks at the moon)

Manufactured Goods and the Fishing Boat Captain - part ll (a fable in 3 parts)

amos trout studio print

The marina had only one rule (see part 1 here) - the captain of the fishing boat must actually captain the boat - hands on the wheel, that sort of thing. The captain could have help of course, but the captain still needed to be the captain after all.

(the marina hoped not the kind of captain who went down with her ship, but that part was up to the captain as it should be)

Over time, more and more fishing boat captains were parking their boats at this marina.

The marina got bigger and bigger and hired more people. The marina took down the signs that said this marina was a great place to be a fishing boat captain and put up signs that said this marina was a great place to make money.

People who had never even thought about being a fishing boat captain decided this fishing boat captain stuff sounded like a good idea and joined in, too.

Over time there wasn't room for everyone's boats to be viewed by the vacationers who could choose which boat they would charter for their fishing trip. The marina solved this problem by making different boats visible to different vacationers at different times based on stuff that even the smartest and most cunning fishing boat captains were unable to totally figure out.

There came a morning -

(a storm out of a clear blue sky will probably be the way the story is told later, although any fisherman worth his salt could tell you there had been storm clouds brewing for years)

when the fishing boat captains reached their docks and noticed the marina's one and only rule - the rule that said the captain's hands must be the hands on the ship's wheel - the one rule that fishing boat captains had lived by for as long as there had been fishing boats to captain - well, that one rule had been erased from the marina's welcome sign.

The marina called a meeting to explain the changes. They assured the fishing boat captains that this was really a good thing. The fishing boat captains could grow their hands-on businesses now that their hands didn't have to be holding on to the ship's steering wheel.

Most captains were upset. Some were scared. Many were angry. A few were relieved that they could stop pretending to be fishing boat captains, expand their fleets publicly and hire other hands for that pesky "hands on" part.

Captain Sully (yes, I decided the fishing boat captain from hub's trip was named Captain Sully; the most trustworthy name for a captain after all) who had been a fishing boat captain for so long he measured his time at sea in decades and the other equally crusty fishing boat captains had their own meeting at the pub that afternoon.

Now this is where my tale grows darker I'm afraid dear reader - this blog can't be cork and car parts all the time folks, I'm sorry - sometimes life is ... treacherous.

back tomorrow with part III (you may want to make like a lighthouse or a red roof inn and leave the light on)

Manufactured Goods and the Fishing Boat Captain - part I (a fable in 3 parts)

fishing locket - artwork by the amazing rbwatercolors

When hubs and I went on vacation last spring, George joined a boat charter for a 3 hour fishing trip. On the boat were hubs, the boat captain, one hired hand and 3 other vacationers.

One of the other vacationers (why do I want to type vacationeers, maybe because this took place in Florida), a guy who quickly let everyone know he was a "very successful" entrepreneur, was going on and on about what a great opportunity the boat captain had here and how he could be making a lot more money with his business.

The boat captain, a salty dog from way back, just kind of smiled indulgently at the businessman and asked him "why would I want to do that?" and the businessman was totally flabbergasted.

(this may be the first time I get to use the word flabbergasted in a blog post - I have been trying to work this word into my daily conversation for years, I just love it, you have to overlook the fact it kind of sounds like flatulence though)

Anyhoo, the businessman was getting himself all worked up. "You could have more boats! You could sit back and watch the money roll in! You wouldn't have to do so much work!"

The boat captain looking up at the sky and out at the sea, taking a long breath of clean ocean air and waving to the captain of another charter boat that passed them, his friend Jim who he would be having a pint with later on that afternoon, calmly replied, "I don't work now".

Now because I am that boat captain, but more importantly because I used to be that businessman, I understand both sides of this drama from my gut and my heart and 

I also understand how a boat captain (the artist in this little parable, in case I haven't been clear enough) who's never been a businessman (or at least not a "very successful" entrepreneur type businessman)

and a businessman who's never been a boat captain (the artist), can both shake their heads at the other guy's way of thinking about "success".

"Well," said the "very successful" entrepreneur, a man who prided himself on getting in the last word in any type of business negotiation, "If you don't do it, someone else will. Someone else will come in here and put all you guys out of business."

Now, here's where hub's fishing tale turns into a Stephen King novel

(yes, this is about to get gory readers, hang on to your breakfasts and don't get all squeamish on me later and claim I didn't warn you) -

the boat captain chuckled a little at the "very successful" entrepreneur who got to do for 3 hours what the fishing boat captain got to do every single day of his life.

He steered his boat back to the dock and parked in his designated spot in the marina, the marina he and his other fishing boat captain friends were so happy to call home - a marina called Etsy.

part II tomorrow - the marina gets bigger

working in our business and not on our business - just doing the work (part lV - the mystical part)

fabric, mirrored locket by polarity

I wanted to wrap us this series before the sun moved into Libra so we will just pretend you are reading this yesterday.

(never under-estimate the power of our imagination, the nonexistence of time as a constant - ask Einstein - and for me personally, my ability to be continually one day late with most things)

This Virgo energy that is about work and service and dedication; about doing the stuff that we have to do without our Leo (prior sign) need for attention, without getting credit, without any applause now cedes our path to balance seeking Libra (the next sign) bringing other people into the mix - asking us what we have really created if no one else ever gets to see it or be affected by it - asking us to step out with what we've got - asking us to share.

As Virgo moves into Libra we get autumn; the time of harvest. 

To tie this all back in (rather hastily, I'm sorry) with what happens with maker businesses is we will only grow so much before we need to take a quantum leap. That step by step way we have been growing will eventually hit something, usually a standstill; something that requires a greater expenditure of energy or a decision to let go.  

We have to put more of ourselves into it.

We need the momentum that comes from some kind of full out sweaty run.

If we don't because maybe we don't have the energy - maybe we want the harvest but we don't want to do the planting and the tilling or maybe we don't want to do the planting and tilling ... again. 

This is exactly the time we need to really get to work (the times that separate the women from the girls - call on Athena energy for this) or sometimes exactly the time we need to let go and move on. 

There is no right or wrong answer here.

Everything isn't meant to be some great huge thing. Sometimes it's just the thing we had to grow through and now have to let go of so we have both hands free when that other thing comes along.

But, always remember, everything that is a great huge thing always made this leap.

The next steps will be easier to figure out if we are grounded (we are also moving from an earth sign into an air sign right now so grounding is doubly important). Grounding brings our energy into the current moment which is always the place we line up with ourselves; the place we line up with our answer. And I didn't say 'correct answer' because maybe there is no correct answer. Maybe every answer will lead us where we have intended to go as long as we keep moving. 

Removing the excess electrical charge from an object is called grounding - removing the excess emotional charge, that is the result of over thinking and looking backwards, is also called grounding. 

Pulling our focus back to our physical self and the current moment is especially beneficial for anyone who doesn't feel safe (raises both hands) and we will know this is us if we continually make decisions based on safety.

(these decisions are always ego based because our safety is the ego's job, which is a good thing until it isn't anymore - it's the crutch that helped us to walk while our foot healed but then becomes the reason we can't walk when we hold on to it too long). 

When we find ourselves valuing our safety over our happiness, grounding can help us make better decisions or I should probably say grounding will help make our decision making easier.

And this stuff is a practice so we have to practice it. It's like exercise, it can't not work for us, but we have to actually do it. Some ways to ground:

1. Walk outdoors in bare feet (this works so well, that even just walking across my front yard on a Sunday morning to get the newspaper in my bare feet totally changes my entire mood for the day)

2. Lie on the ground (palms on the ground or forehead on the ground works best)

3. Gardening

4. Bring our attention to the present moment - sit comfortably and scan your body from your toes to your head feeling each part - is it hot, is it heavy - observe how your body feels. Walk around the room and see how it feels to touch things. Run cold water over your hands. List your current moment - so I would say - keyboard keys clicking, the sound of crickets, cold air from the open door - attention to the present moment is very grounding.

5. Eat root vegetables (some people think eating meat is grounding, but I had a teacher 20 years ago who said this wasn't true - that eating meat actually lowers our frequency so that's why it might feel momentarily grounding - I think she was right about this)

6. Stones are grounding. The stuff in our environment always lines up with us energetically. Rocks and minerals hold such old and solid vibrations that it is much more likely for us to have to raise our vibration to match their vibration than for the reverse to happen. Hematite is great for this.

6. Scents have vibrations and can be grounding. Scents force us to either incorporate their energy or move out of their space. Yes, scents are bad-ass.

7. Sounds are grounding. The teacher who taught me grounding had an exercise where you make a sound with your throat and then lower and lower the sound until it is the lowest sound your body can make - that is your root chakra sound and you can make that sound when you need to ground yourself - great for stressful driving situations. 

8. Red, brown and black are very grounding - probably why so many teens are drawn to wearing the color black while their vibration seeks balance.

9. Grounding meditations - visualizing yourself with roots reaching down into the earth, etc.

10. Exercise (preferably outdoors)

So, a daily grounding practice, getting to work (the stuff we do because we have the need to bring forth the work not because of what the outcome can do for us) - we are at the harvest now of our 9 month yearly birthing cycle and like the new mother we know that even our most original work (and really only our most original work) isn't really our work anyway - we don't create the new life - we are just the vehicle birthing it.

It came through us (and on the one hand it could have come through anyone and on the other hand it could only have come through us) because we were the ones who settled down and did the work.