Build Your Tribe Tuesday - Where your story meets theirs

I am about to go and edit the My Story page on my site. Why? About every 3 months I go in and make some changes. My story evolves as my work does. Right now on that page my story is leading you towards my work in health coaching. Now that I am also doing creative marketing coaching and The Joy Up programs, those parts of my story are missing. If you only read about my mama life and my past with food and diets, I am not connecting with all of my tribe. The ones I want to invite for tea. My tribe has expanded and grown as I have.

Where does your story meet theirs? Look at your about page and try to not feel attached to anything on the page. What is that story telling you, asking you? Is it too long and you don't want to read it or is it lacking some honesty and layers?

If you have only a few moments to capture someone, draw them in to the work you do, you must share the part of your story that intersects with theirs and the work you do.

Take an hour or so and go to each of the sites you love. Read their about page. Look at where the story meets yours. Use that inspiration to create a page that is inviting your tribe, the one you deep down want, to stay. Allow your story to evolve as you do. You are building a tribe and a business; building is evolution and growth and you keep adding layers as high as you want to go.

Let your story meet theirs. And your tribe will grow.

Build Your Tribe Tuesday - The power of free

The karmic energy of free is powerful stuff. Free does not mean less than. Free should have power; it is an extension of your best work, your clearest voice, your true desire to make a difference, touch a life, change a world.

We are all cluttered by stuff, from the physical to the free stuff in our inboxes. Free should never feel like a burden. Free without being used or appreciated has no karmic return.

Free is your gift from the heart. Nothing less.

Build Your Tribe Tuesday - Failure pep talk

Cliff Notes: there will be failure. I want you to decide how you will use it. Will it be the reason you give up or will you dig deeper and use the blessings that are inside of it?

Build Your Tribe Tuesday ~ What are you made of?

My beautiful client recently described me as being made of fairy dust and manifestations. While I accept this glowing review with grace and the biggest smile ever, I need to add, and fear.

I have the dust and the magic but, oh my, I still have fear.

The day before I was launching The Holiday Joy UP, I sat on the bed and told Patrick all the problems and all the places I still had so much work to do. He listened and prompted me to reveal what was really going on. Pretty sure I cried.

The truth was that I was terrified. Shaking in my boots, full of fear. Perhaps not as much that I would fail, but more that I would succeed. And that I couldn't quite yet integrate fully that success.

  “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." - Marianne Williamson

Or that I would make a mistake, forget something, screw up, not be perfect. That is what I am made up of. 3 years of running a business I am strong in my voice and mission, I have pockets full of fairy dust and I can teach you to manifest and create magic. 3 years later I still get scared, differently, but scared.

I work through my fears and allow them to cast me out to beautiful places. Places that I must go. Divine creations and joyful bliss-ed out words and large gatherings of women; tribes uniting in joy and passion through mindfulness.

Fear + Action will carry you into your soul's desires. Your spirit can handle the fear that propels you, that makes you better.

Remember Wendy wanted to leave the nursery with Peter Pan but she was for a moment afraid to leave. And when it came time to fly all she needed to add to her passion for the adventure was a little fairy dust. Perhaps fear and magical dust work together?

What are you made of? Each ingredient is part of why your tribe will assemble around you. You can work as a partner with your fear and trust that it is no less magical than that dust you want to start sprinkling.

Build Your Tribe Tuesday ~ Create your own formula for magic

No one ever taught Lucas how to draw. He has no book explaining drawing for a 3 year old. But just like each of my children right around this same age, he drew his first picture. He started with a circle. Then he learned how to add eyes. And one magical day he turned that circle into a ghost. Chloe's was a person, Eli's was a cat, his a ghost. Each time these firsts appeared I felt overwhelmed by the magic they had just created.

A child develops in certain developmental stages. Their first drawing isn't the same as another's but it comes as a result of being at that perfect place where skill meets desire. There isn't a can't. They aren't judging the outcome of the few scribbles, they just watch as it unfolds under their cute little hands. One day they are looking at a cat, or a face or saying boo! Suddenly they have created their own magical formula for creating something more than circles.

There are so many formulas out there for all things business related. I see people taking a formula from someone else and trying to duplicate it. But just like that first drawing from a child, a formula creates no magic without the creative hands behind it. True there are elements that can create great websites, sales pages or blog posts, teas or chocolates, yet without your creative hand there is no magic. Passion is felt. It is never copied.

Studying, observing and understanding how others are accomplishing their magical things is a wonderful practice. There is so much to learn from the creative greats out there. The moment we start to copy, to create inside of another's formula, we risk losing the connection to our creative hands. We all have the ability to create our own magic by observing the businesses around us, the creatives who sparkle and we can then take that feeling of passion and create our own formulas for magic.

It is tempting to want to skip steps. To want to outrun failure. The magic is in the doing, in allowing our creative hands to be guided by that passion inside of us and to dream big. Let others inspire. Grab that inspiration and allow it to open up the mystery of what is next for you. Dream your way into your own formula for magic.

Then go do it. Boo!

Build Your Tribe Tuesday ~ Create Space to Write

Patrick said good-bye to me before I peeled my eye lids open this morning. Snuggled in bed with Lucas and a puppy at my feet I had to force myself to crawl out from the warmth to go sit with Chloe and Eli who were at the table coloring. Eli recreating an Eric Carle book for me and Chloe trying to coax him to make it better.

I put on the hot water for my coffee, filled a glass with water to sip and mentally prepared for the start of the day. Lunches to be made, breakfast to cook, backpacks to get in order, dog to walk, some fun toy out for Lucas (Playmobile today), emails to return, a program to finish, a blog post to polish off.  Beds to make, dishes to wash, dinner to prep.

This all happens within our rhythm, and I will admit to not flowing well when that rhythm is interrupted. I rely on it. Recently Lucas gave up napping, those two hours I relied on, vanished. A new rhythm is emerging.

Patrick's time is in the morning. Mine is late at night. We have our own space and quiet.

He has space in the early hours to be alone and read. He is ready for the early rising kids when they wake. We both sleep about the same, hours wise, but at different times. When everyone in my house is asleep I sit down with a cup of tea and I write. I crave this time. I thrive on its routine. I am an evening writer and I love it.

Patrick said to me, "I think the reason you stay up till midnight writing is because you need your brain to get so tired that you can start writing from your heart." xo

Whatever the reason, the beauty is that I carve out time to write. It becomes a part of my rhythm. It is how I connect to my business, my tribes, my creative side.

Every single Wednesday afternoon you can find me on the couch, in a quiet house (kids have dinner with a wonderful friend) and I am working on my Making Space letters. Sometimes I write for hours, other times for minutes. When it gets dark I light candles, do a little meditating, it is one of my favorite times ever. The only thing I write during this time is content for those specific letters. Rhythm.

The common struggle of blogging or producing content isn't that you don't know what to say, you don't know where to start. So you avoid. There is no rhythm for you around the practice.

Practice creates rhythm. Space is inside of that rhythm. The space is where you create.

How will you start to find that space?

Build Your Tribe Tuesday ~ Show me your face gorgeous!

Say Gorgeous

One of the most powerful exercises towards practicing self love and making peace with our bodies is to take self-portraits. While not one of my more popular exercises initially in my women's groups, it remains one that makes the most powerful impact. Learning to trust yourself enough to take a picture of you, creates a bond and an awareness of just who you are and how you feel about yourself. The real fun comes in the sharing of the photos. It is not an exercise in creating vanity, it is an exercise in self love.

I remember being 16 and just looking at a picture of myself would send me into tears. Body issues tearing at me and yet knowing that inside of me I was glorious but trapped inside of this strange depression.

As a business owner whose face is her brand, I feel joy looking at my smile and my wrinkles around the eyes because that joy is what I want to deliver. My love for me matches the intensity of love I have for my work. (More on that another time.)

Say Connection

When growing a business the most beautiful way to start creating connection is through your face. If you aren't used to sharing and getting pictures taken of you, starting a business online will be the dive into that out-of-comfort zone.

From your website to Facebook to Twitter, and don't forget your Gravatar (please, please don't forget this) you have some face time. On twitter you can learn so much about a person from their picture. That tiny box can hold so much weight and instantly gives a first impression of you. Choose it wisely and change it from time to time.

Ever go to a person's Facebook page and instead of the person's face you see a logo? How connected do you feel to that logo? Do you want to go out to tea with it? Learn from it?

A logo can be the right fit as the face of the business. A product may use a logo or a picture of that product to brand itself. The Mogul Mom is a great example of a logo working the right way as Heather has many contributing writers for her site. If you want to meet her, simply go to her about page and see her beautiful face.

When you are in the business of building a tribe and community around a brand that is you, your face is the first place of connection. Your eyes, your smile, your softness or your edge. You and your style shine through each picture you place of yourself. A logo is no substitute. No one wants to talk to a logo about changing their life.

Say Hello

The first thing I want to see when I go to your website or your blog is you. I look for you. I go to your about page. If you aren't there I search for you. Often I run into stock photos and various other faces. Sometimes I can't find a picture of you anywhere. How can I say hello to you if I can't find you?

When I see you, I instantly feel a connection, a desire to know a bit more. When that picture says hello to me, invites me in, asks me to stay and learn more or read more I will. I do. Looking at me in the eyes or gazing away both carry different messages and meanings, lovely and different.

Notice how you feel when you are in the tribes where you hang out. What makes you feel connected and a part of that tribe? How do the photos, the faces, create that space and that connection for you?

I'm ready to see your face and you are ready to build your tribe. Show me you, the you that is now and who wants to start connecting.