Teachers are leaders. Leaders develop people. That’s mentorship, and mentorship is one of the things I’m really eager to advocate and eager to see spread around the world.
Seth Godin’s short blog post that pointed me to this video is here. I went ahead and placed the video here so you can watch it right away.
Barbara Sher is well-known for books like Wishcraft, Live The Life You Love, and Refuse To Choose. She has been working with people for decades on uncovering their natural gifts and expressing them, primarily through self-directed careers.
She’s written and spoken extensively on resistance as a natural response meant to protect people from change. She tells us resistance is a primitive sort of fear so it can’t tell healthy change from destructive change. It just resists all change.
Barbara knows what to do with resistance. She gives it a voice, invites it to the dance, and then watches it deflate when it’s brought into the light. She’s worked directly with people who struggle with resistance. She knows her stuff. She’s right.
Recently she wrote a blog post explaining why she disagrees with Seth Godin on resistance. Seth’s post is here.
Barbara’s much more helpful and on-target response is here.
She made a similar point on the same topic regarding a review of Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art. She posted her response to the review on her blog.You can find her comments at this link
Edited for spelling errors 03/23/2010. Blushing!
A couple of weeks ago one of the members of Valerie Young’s Profiting From Your Passions creative career consultants group posted to our group’s forum looking for other people who are ready to “go big.” I applauded her for putting intention and initiative into her dream, and especially for reaching out to connect with other people in a Mastermind group for mutual support. Making plans and gathering a resourceful tribe is a very entrepreneurial thing to do.
But I also feel strongly that it’s important to explain why “going big” isn’t the best choice for everyone at this time. Some of us don’t need to go big, and some of us aren’t ready to go big yet. I am not a good candidate for a “going big” group right now, and I want to explain why to help other people struggling with this part of life and work design.
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My last two posts were about the sleaziness of tricking people into buying what they don’t really want, and the ridiculousness of people complaining the FTC is going to try to keep them from tricking people into buying something that’s not what they say it is.
Then I see Seth Godin’s recent blog post about his experience being bombarded by red light district marketing tactics. He suggests an alternative: cut the hype, cut the crap, no more deceit, just be transparent and deliver.
So are you going to sell at a street carnival, a back alley, or the public square?
Sometimes the valuable nugget for me in Seth Godin’s blog post is not the main point. Sometimes it’s a tangential aside, and sometimes it’s just an automatic way of thinking that shows his point of view. In fact, in one post he referred to this as an accent in the way people speak, write, and act.
I was reading through the bullet points in Seth’s recent post titled Is it too late to catch up? which is about ways for companies that have not established a web presence to go digital and learn about online marketing. It wasn’t a particularly interesting topic to me so I was scanning, until I hit the last two bullet points:
• Don’t [have any meetings about your web strategy]. Just do stuff. First you have to fail, then you can improve.
• Refuse to cede the work to consultants. You don’t outsource your drill press or your bookkeeping or your product design. If you’re going to catch up, you must (all of you) get good at this, and you only accomplish that by doing it.
I added the brackets in the first one, because you can fill those brackets in with a lot of options and the wisdom still rings true.
“Don’t plan the format and structure of your blog for the next year. Just start blogging. First you have to fail; then you can improve.”
“Don’t fret over every sentence in the article you’re writing to post online. Just write it. First you have to fail; then you can improve.”
“Don’t memorize every possible variation you might encounter during a consulting session. Just have consulting sessions. First you have to fail; then you can improve”
I think Seth Godin may have been reading Ken Robert’s Mildly Creative blog post about the two-step process for making meaning. Ken tells us, “you can’t do anything with it until you make it.” [my note: “it” = whatever you’re creating or doing]
The second bullet point above, the last from Seth’s long list, will totally upend the worlds of most coaches and other consulting types I know. We have been trained relentlessly from all sides that it’s better to hire someone to do the web stuff unless we are highly technical and web oriented. We’ve been told not to waste our time on it because we can outsource it and spend our time in better ways.
But now I’m thinking of a coaching friend who isn’t sure if her blog is updated because she sent material to her VA but doesn’t know when it will be posted. Hmmm…
Maybe it’s good to have help doing the online marketing, but it’s important to know how to do it ourselves if we need to. Marketing is the number one activity of most successful businesses, right?
Kind of goes along with that first point.
First you have to fail; then you can improve.
I really love that one.
Serendipity again! This time the person pointing me to the exact information I need is, most appropriately, Barbara Winter, the Joyfully Jobless Muse.
I am presenting a series of three calls for the Outside the Job Box Career Experts Program on amplifying and honing your Vision for your business, identifying the Goals that take you to fulfilling your Vision, and breaking Goals into Next Steps with Accountability. I spent the time at my son’s soccer practice last night thinking about how to help the consultants stay focused on the core of their business design and their priorities for being self-employed.
This new framework I’m developing started a month or so ago. I was trying out new tag lines for my coaching business and kept coming back to the metaphor of a journey and the importance of the compass.
Barbara Winter posted a chirp (or is it twirp?) on Twitter today with a link to a great blog post on AWAI Online from June. The post is ”Make Your Business Your Compass” by Isabel Viana.
Thanks, Barbara. Now I have another great resource to share with the consultants, and with anyone who pulls over for a rest stop here On The Twisting Road.
Eerie timing. Just as Halloween approaches, a quick article on Yahoo! Finance provided by the NY Times is here to scare the pants off of us. Eleven Easy Ways to Destroy Your Company will leave you feeling creepy crawlies — not thrills — going up your leg!
Ken is a writer. He doesn’t always know that. He says he wants to be a writer, and that he is establishing the habits of a writer by writing or at least doing something creative every day. But I have no doubt. Ken is a writer. Read this snippet and see that I’m right. While you’re at his Ken and Paper blog, leave him a comment.
Then click over to Mildly Creative and see how diverse Ken is as a writer. In addition to having a gift for storytelling and poetry (also to be found at Ken and Paper), he is compiling a book to serve as a guide to people wanting to express their creativity. In the style of his open-to-the-public working studio, he is posting sections as he completes them. It’s part of his process of evaluating his writing and deciding how to polish it. Start here with the first section and then follow the links at the end to the next one.
Barbara Winter is on Twitter at JoblessMuse. If you’re on Twitter, follow her and you’ll like Twitter much more. If you’re not on Twitter, it’s worth signing up to get Barbara’s twirps.
Like this one. She pointed us to a poem about clutter. Clutter resonates with me, because I am constantly behind the curve clearing it out. And, like the poet, I believe there’s a lot of meaning under all that clutter.
Check out “What Lies Beneath”.
Another theme I’m focusing on as I prepare for the three-call series on amplifying vision, defining goals, and breaking them into steps is the point of the third call: Do what you can.
Ken Robert, who is sharing his own creative journey with all its stops and starts, detours, and distractions, is a fantastic inspiration for anyone trying to take charge of his or her life. If you’re stuck on the question What should I do first?, read When You’re Short On Big Ideas, Think Small.