Uranus Pluto Square - or battling Gods will cause the house to shake - plus New Moon Solar Eclipse in Scorpio

fox bracelet - cork and steel

If our birth charts are our contracts - our imprints of that moment we took our first breath - we literally are the universe at exactly that second -

then maybe we have set this all up already and just have to live it out, maybe some things we are going to encounter and deal with this go round are just not up to us anymore.

Of course, it is always up to us how we react and process things, the actions we take, the way we release things - not always so much the actual stuff it appears that we lose.

Some charts have a couple major themes, in other charts there is more going on as if we wanted to get a lot covered while we are here; to burn through a lot of old stuff.

When people suddenly appear to "lose it all" or life takes a total turn, often you can find in that person's chart a kind of integrated life - it's as if they decided OK when I am done with this (ie learned or experienced what I came into that experience to learn) move me right on to that.

Of course, the person living this thinks their life has just fallen apart.

(When I first started looking at charts when I was in banking, over 15 years ago, I looked at charts of many senior citizens because most of my clients were long retired and I didn't see many integrated charts - mostly all charts had a couple major themes. Now I see almost all integrated charts. Recently I saw a couple baby charts and they looked less integrated and I wondered if they would be growing up in a simpler time. So maybe simpler times are coming but what that looks like depends on what all of us do now. Freedom and oppression are both simple states in a way.)

Anyhoo, we have all been living with this intense revolutionary changes and karma burning stuff that is Uranus Squaring Pluto for a while now. This started in June 2012 and continues into March 2015. Right now we are in the exact peak energy of this. We have controlling Pluto and freedom loving Uranus engaged in a 3 year war! At their most extreme, Pluto digs in his heels and Uranus leaps without thinking - so many people are scattered and unsure of what direction to take. And because this is karmic for all of us - it is felt as deeply personal.

If we are tearing something down (Pluto is the phoenix rising from the ashes) we need to allow ourselves the space and the time to soul search and get clear on why. We can use the best of Uranus and the best of Pluto to create positive change. We don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater now.

I had to do the exercise below for a class I am taking and thought it might be helpful to someone else to post it here - this is the place the current square hits your chart based on your sun sign, if you know your rising sign check that also.

If you are an Aries - Uranus/1st house of your identity vs Pluto/10th house of career - I don't think it is a coincidence that two Aries I know both told me the recent changes at Etsy made them feel like they were 'fired'. This square will be about male authority figures vs your own voice, staying true to yourself while fitting in with your career, breaking out on your own in some way vs maintaining the company line.

(and this is not a judgement that one way of being is better than the other way - there is no right or wrong with Pluto and Uranus - both sides will come away from this battle changed - if I was a betting woman I would bet on Pluto though)

If you are a Taurus - Uranus/12 house unconscious, fear, karma vs. Pluto/9th house education, philosophy - this is about dealing with unfinished business before moving into a new space, getting stuck in the past, old fears keeping you stuck, more compassion for yourself, probably hiding or leaving vs actually dealing with what is happening

If you are a Gemini - Uranus/11th house friendships, opportunities vs. Pluto/8th house sex, shared resources - this is the struggle of getting close with people, feeling safe with intimacy, the me vs us struggle of relationship, this can be about dealing with jealousy issues - when to fight for what you want, when to let go

If you are a Cancer - Uranus/10th house career vs. Pluto/7th house of relationships - you have the balance of work vs relationship, also the power struggle within a work hierarchy or a relationship, standing up for yourself within your career or a close relationship, career vs marriage issues

If you are a Leo - Uranus/9th house education, philosophy vs. Pluto/6th house health, work, service - this square for you will likely be about claiming your own power, tooting your own horn (time to roar Leo) , not saying yes to things you don't want, over-committing and not following through vs keeping your word, honesty, service to others vs your own health

If you are a Virgo - Uranus/8th house sex, shared resources vs. Pluto/5th house pleasure, children, art - you will be dealing with letting your walls down and trusting others, how you make money from your creative ventures, recognizing when you are being manipulated, revealing more of yourself through art, creation issues - children and creations that are like children to you

If you are a Libra - Uranus/7th house relationships vs. Pluto/4th house family, home, roots, physical structures - you might be dealing with pregnancy or children vs relationship, moving out of the space of needing your family's approval or working with how that approval fits into your life, becoming secure and rooted personally, changes in your relationship affecting your foundation

If you are a Scorpio - Uranus/6th house health, work, service vs Pluto/3rd house communication - you are dealing with your words literally creating your reality now - you need to be walking your talk now, thoughts literally making you sick, adjusting to change, letting go, allowing systems to work instead of being a control freak

If you are a Sagittarius - Uranus/5th house pleasure, children, art vs. Pluto/2nd house possessions, earnings, values - this square will be shaking out any fears about money, being creative in spite of money fears or needing to get serious about money, confidence issues, keeping a cool head, stepping into your power, handling the spotlight, finances vs creativity

If you are a Capricorn - Uranus/4th house family, roots, physical structures vs Pluto/1st house identity - you are probably dealing with your role in the family changing, moving, uprooting yourself or creating a new image for yourself, women shaking up your world, letting your voice be heard, identifying with issues involving women's rights and children's rights

If you are an Aquarius - Uranus/3rd house communication vs Pluto/12 house unconscious, fear, karma - so this square is about healing, the connection between the mind and body, the law of attraction, forgiveness, compassion, overcoming fears through communication

If you are a Pisces - Uranus/2nd house possessions, earnings, values vs. Pluto/11th house friendships, opportunities - the issues of your self worth vs what your friends think of you, standing up for yourself, not being dominated by someone, working freelance or in a less structured way, dealing with issues of your work in the world, working with technology or learning new technology

Realize these are the spaces in our lives where we may find more questions than answers right now and that is OK. We are all in this space between the old and the new and wheels that feel like they are spinning in sand will find something to grip - when Mercury goes direct and this latest exact square moves by mid November we should be able to be a bit clearer on all of this or it will just not feel as important.

AND we have a New Moon Solar Eclipse this weekend, but I will have to get back to that because I got carried away with this square - I blame Pluto! xo all

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

Mercury retrogrades today - let's add non-reactive to our list of "re's" for this one

unless it's the last of the milk and mercury has just gone retrograde

Mercury is the messenger; the magician - the god of mind, intellect, voice and language. Mercury is about what is being communicated to us

(it's the stuff we take in that literally makes us who we are - did you see this Jimmy Kimmel video - he asks kids the worst thing their mother has ever said and boy after boy say it was when his mother called him stupid - this might be funny on Kimmel, but not so funny that this is what our boys are hearing - I am sure their mothers are well-meaning and it was probably something like "well, that was stupid" when the boy did something, well, kind of stupid, but this is what the boys remember - we always have to be mindful that it is what we take in that makes us who we are)

Mercury energy asks the question "what are we a voice for?"

This is powerful stuff. 

We honor Mercury when we speak our truth, when we think through our thoughts before we say our words, when we say more and talk less.

We dishonor Mercury when we are glib or hot-headed or rude, when we believe that talking about something is the same as doing it; when we say what we think someone wants to hear when it isn't what we really believe.

I have had a few crazy confrontations with people lately myself and probably the only reason I have not had more is that I do not get out much. I am not in the mood to take any baloney from people these days.

(unless it's wunderbar - I know this stuff will kill me, but it's addicting - good thing I only eat it when my sister visits from Portland once a year - it's like our secret handshake)

I really need to be with people who walk their talk right now - who just do their jobs. We are all working so hard now. Excuse makers please exit stage right. Maybe I am not the only one feeling like this.

Now that Mercury is retrograde until November 11th it is probably best to be more 'non-reactive'.

This one is in an earth sign. It feels like some kind of balancing of our connection with cyber reality and our connection with actual reality is happening. We need to get outside and stay grounded. Actual physical environments will change now for some people.

As always a retrograde is a good time for the "re" stuff. Redo, reconnect, rethink, repeat, revise, redesign, recuperate, repair things or buy recycled (rather than new) - stuff like this (warning shameless plug ahead) amazing jewelry.

It's best to spend these weeks gathering information - not so much acting on it. The information communicated to us will be in constant flux now, so working with it will be like trying to hold on to jello - oopsy. If we stick to the "re's" now though, when this retrograde ends in November we will all be in a great position to get our holiday groove on and make some ka-ching.

(at least it's not hitting us during prime shipping season again)

More on Mercury here.