changing our grip - the value of being ourselves part III

See Part I and Part II

Sometimes we talk a good talk about change and growth, but when it comes to our makings we think what we wanted to do yesterday is what we want to do today and what we will want to do tomorrow.

(We have a full moon in Scorpio next week - I am going to do a big post on this for Monday - there is much Plutonian energy with this one and since Pluto is the planet of karma ie our beliefs that create our reality - if we can release our emotional grip on what we are so afraid of losing we can get a huge emotional growth from this period. We can work on "our stuff" now or our stuff will work on us.)

I saw Russell Simmons (yes, the hip-hop business magnate and gazillionaire) speak a couple years ago. On the surface it was about growing a fashion business (specifically a t-shirt brand, I think), but what it was really about was growing a business to sell and by "sell" I mean "sell the business" not sell your t-shirt, although obviously we would have to sell a whole lot of t-shirts before our t-shirt brand was sell-able.

The goal though was clearly to sell the business (ie the brand) at some point. It seemed like it was a foregone conclusion that this would be our goal, too.

This whole "growing a business to sell it" kind of made my heart ache. I could see all the pitfalls with this way of thinking - unsustainable growth, the kind of corner cutting and number crunching that results in poverty wages, damage to the planet, do whatever it takes to make this work stress and unbalance - the more is more is more thinking that is so unsustainable and so damaging and truly not the way the energy at play in the world now is leading us.

(now I am not saying this is what he was saying - this is just what I was hearing)

Obviously there isn't anything wrong with selling our business or our brand (one day I will no doubt be sick to death of all this and accepting a fair trade of a lifetime supply of avocados and milk-bones) - it would be better than a slow, painful death after all. 

It was having this goal at the beginning that bothered me. 

It's not that I thought we should all be building generational businesses - although I do have a fondness (sniffle) for them, in a small town diner kind of way, but I was an artist after all, this was my creative baby, how could anyone ever love her like I do?

Flash ahead two years and I run across some clips from this same talk and I get something totally different from it now.

(it's amazing how much smarter Russell has become ... ha!)

Probably one of the truest things in life is that we just don't know what we don't know. 

There is real value in separating ourselves from our businesses and brands.

emily mcdowell - joan of arc quote

This doesn't mean we won't continue to work from our hearts - knowing when to tighten our grip, when to loosen up, when to switch grips

(I'm starting to feel like one of the Williams sisters, hopefully my biceps are listening)

and when to let go like we are holding a hot potato takes courage and inner work. This stuff will never come from our head.

My friend with the music store is exhausted. Most of us are. Life has sped up and we were all born from energy that moved at a slower pace. We need to trust ourselves with this stuff.

We truly were born to do this.

I realized with my second listen that had I embraced the "building a business to sell" thinking even a little bit I would have been much more likely to have built a business that could get along without me more often. I would take things a little less personally. I would have asked for help when I needed it. It would be easier to change my grip.

Of course if I had fully embraced this thinking I would not have built anything truly real because it would not have been built from the energy I came here to use - I would have been too busy playing for an audience.

(creativity and children both fall into the 5th house of our astrology chart and birthing creative babies that keep us up all night or crying babies that do the same thing produce equally strong emotional attachments and this is a good and necessary thing ... until it isn't anymore)

We have a full moon in Scorpio in a few days - the period of this full moon and the days after will be a powerful time to release some of the emotional attachment we have with our businesses. Scorpio is our fixed (unchanging) water (emotions) sign - he really likes to hold on to emotional experiences as long as possible - ruled by Pluto if we are clinging to the wrong stuff this can be devastating. Scorpio will be in Saturn so not taking any crap - we either loosen our grip or life forces open our fingers (this is the culmination of November's new moon in Scorpio).

NEXT UP PART IV - owning our impact - the value of being ourselves (so what might the music store do next and what does it have to do with Russell Simmons and what does it have to do with our business)

going downstream with an upstream business - the value of being ourselves part II

It wasn't that long ago, of course I think in evolutions and age myself in dog years now, that I sold things from mall carts because there was no place of commerce called the internet.

(there was an internet of course, but people didn't trust it so much for shopping in those days)

I had to build my business to appeal to the local customer. This is what business makers had been doing for generations.

If I wanted to focus my business on what I wanted to do I had to plant my business in a place the thing I wanted to do was needed.

Or I could try to figure out what was needed in the place I wanted to plant my business (ie the local mall) and focus my business on that.

I couldn't just decide what I wanted to do and do it wherever I wanted to do it - I had to work upstream with an upstream business.

We live in a very different world now.

(although it looks like the internet created this change, what really happened is we changed and the internet was created by us to support our new way of being - this is why we really need to defend what we have created here - if you haven't educated yourself on net neutrality, please do so and take some action to support it)

The stuff I sold from my mall carts had a very broad appeal. It had to. I had to appeal to as many people who came into that mall as possible or I wouldn't stay in business.

This mindset is the reason so many people in business before the internet have so much trouble translating their success to an online business. With 60% of U.S. sales anticipated to involve the internet by 2017 we all need to figure this thing out.

I have a friend who owns a local music store selling musical instruments and supplies. He has been in business for decades and was smart enough to see the internet as a great opportunity. He got in early and set up a website.

It pretty much looked like a one dimensional version of his music store.

This seemed like a good idea at the time (the aisles in his store became sections in his website - he even had pictures of his retail store on his front page) because we really couldn't see how this was all going to work yet.

Of course what happened is his website never took off. Yes, millions of people were buying online, but they weren't buying from him (most of the money made from local stores going online without a doubt went to web designers).

His physical store sales plummeted. Yes, customers still came in to pick the brains of his seasoned staff, but then they went online (and to the big box stores), with its price comparison and Amazon free shipping.

The very internet that was supposed to open up his little business to the world destroyed his retail sales platform because he was selling the same thing everyone else was.

Now he is a very savvy and smart business man and switched his retail sales business model to a service model - he now makes most of his money on music lessons and has become the go-to local place for this. He was able to go downstream and do what we loves in an upstream business.

This works for him because he is a musician and loves music - if he had been just a guy who opened a music store because he saw his town needed a music store he would have been in a whole lot of trouble. Those guys are dead in the water now.

There is not a Happily Ever After ending to this tale however

(and if he really thought it through he wouldn't really want there to be, we came to this planet for contrast and growth after all - the end is never really the end).

His service business model is exhausting. His sales staff do not easily transition to teachers. Some are excellent, some not so much. He is now trading hours for dollars. Even in his little upscale community parents will only pay so much per hour for lessons. Other music stores are making similar transitions. There is more competition all the time. He still has a store filled with musical merchandise and a website that looks like his store. He is swimming in brand new waters.

(and so are we)

Next part III - loosening our grip

why we have to know we're awesome to sell online - the value of being ourselves part I

 

The challenge with integrating our spiritual life and our business is that in order to be fully ourselves we have to stop catering ourselves to an audience, and of course, our customers are kind of an audience.

They don't eat popcorn and we don't tell them to silence their cell phones

(well, maybe they do eat popcorn - I hope not with any of that fake butter though)

but we are in business to trade value with them - the stuff we make for that stuff in their wallet; the stuff that got into their wallet when they traded their value for the stuff in somebody's else's wallet. We are all in this together after all.

Since Business 101 taught us to figure out our customer, get inside her head - who is she? what does she look like? what does she want?, then cater to that - this is all good solid advice, until it isn't anymore and the truth is - this way of thinking has always made artists a little itchy.

Maybe we quit our day job to fire our boss and now we have dozens of bosses (we call them customers or clients these days) and instead of working for a paycheck we are working for the possibility of a paycheck. We really need to know what the hell we are doing here.

I have had a couple businesses before this one and before that I was in banking. I have made many mistakes over the years, but the one thing I have done right (and this is totally because of the Course in Miracles and my spiritual practice) is this:

I have always seen myself as the primary value in my business or my job. Not the stuff I make, not the stuff I do - because I know these forms can and will change - I know the value is really me.

I know from past experience that when one business winds down I can make another one because I have done it before. Seeing ourselves as the primary value we have to offer the world rather than our makings being the primary value is an important distinction. This works the same way when we have a job.

I have many friends who sell online who are selling less and less because the marketplace is more and more crowded (and other reasons, but this is one of them). They are a little panicky. Many people have turned to teaching and coaching and this in itself is OK and a good thing really - we all teach what we need to learn after all, that's how life works - but the coaching business online is starting to look like a giant pyramid scheme (which is not in any way sustainable) with coaches just coaching people to be coaches! 

(I have to do a post on the proliferation of online coaching and the asteroid/minor planet Chiron - the wounded healer- soon)

So what is the answer here?

We always have to know our ability to make money is in our own hands.

It isn't in our customers' hands or our boss's hands - the money looks like it comes through our customer or through our paycheck. It comes from the Universe (God/Higher Self - we should pick our most comfortable word here because we really need to get this and hold it in a place we vibrate with) - the money comes from Source.

It is like air. We breathe it in. We breathe it out.

The more we try to hold on to money the more it runs through our fingers - and in fact if money is running through your fingers right now, loosen your grip! Spend a little more. Trust that life has got your back!

Some experts advise us to play out worst case scenarios with our fears - they tell us to think of the worst possible thing that could happen if we lose our job or our business and this is supposed to make us see how preposterous our fears are so we can release them -

the problem is that all of us have past life experiences where the worst possible things that could happen to us really did happen to us (and if you don't resonate with past lives, think of your familial ancestry here) and part of us knows this.

How freeing would it be to really absorb into the very DNA of our business that we just have to be who we truly are and trust that the universe will deliver to us exactly the people who will benefit from us and our work and that is exactly what will happen.

(this does not mean we will make a lot of money - it does however guarantee to make us rich)

Part II next week - going downstream with an upstream business

Have a nice weekend everyone - I had a stressful week and it is now 70 degrees and sunny so I plan to be meditating (ie gardening) in the sun as much as possible for the next two days. I had a terrible Vitamin D reading of 16 (!) recently and have decided sun (and supplements) are my friend right now. I will try to do another auto-immune thyroid/hormone post next week. Would love to hear what anyone else is doing.

Also Venus is moving into Aries May 2nd - so this is a great time for us to take any action that brings beauty and love into our world. Will write about that next time!

New Moon in Taurus April 29th - Solar Eclipse!

Tomorrow's New Moon in Taurus is a solar eclipse!

In olden days solar eclipses scared the hell out of everyone and we still carry a little of that in our DNA I'm sure.

This one has the energy of the Cardinal Grand Cross, so even though a new moon is a time in the dark, a beginning that doesn't always feel like a beginning until later, this one has an extra kick behind it.

People don't always understand Taurus. It is like she is so simple, and these times we live in so complicated, we have made her complicated, too. She isn't.

Taurus is all about the Earth - she is everything grounded.

Taurus is all about sensuality - the touch that feels like love.

Ruled by Venus she coaxes us back into our bodies at the end of a long day with a hot bath, she urges our hands to pick up those tomato plants at the market and get them into the ground, she is the voice that whispers I love you when we stroke the baby's ear with our lips.

Taurus rules our 2nd house of values - everything money can buy and everything money can't buy. 

We have the sun and the moon in Taurus today and this is the time to ask ourselves "what do we really value?"

This new moon in Taurus is an excellent time to begin a grounding practice, make affirmations and set intentions about:

Money, Contentment, Patience, Self-worth, Releasing Stubbornness, Health Issues regarding your neck, throat and voice in the world

Some I will be working with include:

1. I live in comfortable and enriching surroundings
2. I easily find the time to shop for, prepare and eat nutritious and delicious meals
3. I enjoy and appreciate my life!
4. I slow down and enjoy doing each task with thoroughness
5. The habit of trying to rush results is easily lifted from me
6. I embrace constructive change
7. My neck and thyroid enjoy perfect health
 and then some money affirmations.

 (astrologer Jan Spiller calls them wishes and says to work with 10 at every new moon)

AFFIRMATION TIPS: get into a happy frame of mind - always make affirmations from a  positive place - write your affirmations down by hand in script, speak them out loud - I write my affirmations on strips of paper and burn them, releasing the ashes into moving water - then release your attention from these things knowing that your intention is known. Know these things are already yours.

Also remember affirmations are action -  they set the energy in motion and we are literally creating the affirmation within the energy that is needed to manifest it. 

Words are not just words. If done properly, in the right frame of mind, they line us up energetically with the thing we are seeking.

I started my money work when the sun entered Taurus and have had a few surprises - two unexpected checks in the mail, hubs won the lottery (each win under $10 and growing steadily - he is addicted) four times and

<--- I received this from the girl at my local bank sandwiched between two check registers.

I found it in my bag the next day, briefly considered a quick trip to the bank at midnight with a flashlight - but since I value my freedom more than the bank's loot -

I accept it as a clear signal the cosmic loot is ready to be picked up!

The new moon in Taurus always makes me think about stewardship - the responsible care we take of ourselves, our families, our businesses, our planet - this one feels like an excellent time to do some restful things and just be actually.

Taurus always desires peace, so bringing some symbol of peace into your life right now is very powerful.

(think about what symbolizes peace to you - and get yourself some of that! for me it is a garden, so I grabbed some pics from Pinterest and am getting my supplies this week to start a new one just for cutting flowers; a garden I can watch from my studio window while I work)

Stuff is springing to life all around us now - we show the universe what we value by what we give our attention to - where is your attention today?

xo all