Month: October 2010

Review: The Fire Starter Sessions by Danielle LaPorte

Ignite Your Most Remarkable Self

Earlier this year, Danielle LaPorte published her multimedia masterpiece, The Fire Starter Sessions. I discovered this gem of  (and from) White Hot Truth (yes, this is the name of LaPorte’s web site) through the brilliant Ronna Detrick’s Renegade Conversations site and ezine. So that’s the meandering path I took to get to this entrepreneur’s treasure trove and believing mirror, allowing us to reflect back for ourselves our greatest power, insights, and opportunities.

The Fire Starter Sessions encompass an inspiring journey, with its clean design, vivid stories, video lessons/messages, and 43 pages of worksheets and questions that get you delving into your own flaming core essence, so you can bring those gifts from the core out into the world. It’s called a “digital experience.” LaPorte says, “This is about you defining your vocation, your work, your livelihood, your career, on your own terms.”  Lessons from her own entrepreneurial high-flying, interviews with thought leaders, and lists of resources round out the message.

Especially these past couple of years, so many people have been “trying” to play it safe life-wise, vocation-wise. There is no safe harbor anymore, if there ever was. And so, more timely than ever, comes this fiery voice of Danielle LaPorte, spilling out her White Hot Truth. I can’t say that our energies are a match. In fact, it seems an unlikely pairing, me and Danielle LaPorte in the same breath. And yet there is something so compelling in her message, something that makes me want to take out my eyeliner and put on high heels.

There’s deep truth-telling here, like in her discussion of “quality-easy” or what about this game-changer? “True strength is not necessarily about skill or adeptness. It‘s about vitality.” How many of us entrepreneurs choose to do what we’re decent at, even when there isn’t a spark of passion to be found any more? If you are suffering from such a lackluster approach, this is the antidote.

With its tagline, “Spark Your Genius. Ignite Your Business. Make it Matter,” this “digital experience for entrepreneurs” covers dreams and feelings, content, courage, and design in four modules:

  • module 1: strength + desire: define yourself on your own terms
  • module 2: identity + branding: you are not a box of cereal
  • module 3: content + services + promotion
  • module 4: reverie + courage

Most crucially, Danielle LaPorte shares the lesson of “How do you want to feel in the work you do?” This is absolutely at the heart of it all, and allows dreamers to pull on the dream that is their own — the one that fits just right. I also adore the thought that when something really fits, there’s an ease and grace in the doing.

The Fire Starter Sessions is a multimedia experience definitely worth checking out. Yes, I am an affiliate, and I recommend and believe in the value of this package. You can click on the links in this post, or click the orange box on the sidebar to learn more.

Bridging Heart and Marketing 4

My friends, colleagues, coaches, and mentors, Judith Sherven and Jim Sniechowski, are convening amazing learning sessions in the fourth of their Bridging Heart and Marketing events. Two have been live events; this one is the second as a virtual event. (Very cost effective.) Judith and Jim have assembled a roster of great teachers aligned with the heart-based, soft sell marketing tribe that they lead.

Things are changing so fast online that it’s not always easy to keep  up. In particular, conscious business owners and heart-based healers, caregivers, and service providers find that the speed of change in the online world coupled with the frantic urgency of many of the (especially hard-sell) offers just makes them decide to bow out. Ignore it and hope it goes away.

It won’t be going away any time soon. As Judith and Jim point out, the internet has become the new virtual shopping mall… For finding a do-able and high-integrity path through the online marketing jungle, Judith and Jim are guides that I’ve found to be both trustworthy and transparent in sharing their knowledge.

They came to online marketing after many years as therapists.  Their profound knowledge and gifts for healing relationships informs this crucial aspect of online business. After all, what is business but a varied array of relationships?  They came into online marketing only a few years ago — when both were in their 60s. To hear their story alone offers huge lessons and insights you can’t get anywhere else.

I’ve participated in the last two Bridging Heart and Marketing events, connecting with partners, mentors, friends, and thought leaders I wouldn’t  have met any other way.

Bridging Heart and Marketing Number 4 starts tomorrow, so don’t miss it.
Click here for more details and to register.

The Message Beyond the Message

Why are you writing what you intend to write? What is its deepest purpose or essence? Why you? Why this piece? Why now?

It’s important to look beyond the surface. (I’m doing a marketing campaign, a blog post, a flash-enabled web site.) You may have reasons, but go deeper. Explore your project from the perspective of the heart. And by staying in the aware heart energy, you can access a deeper guidance and a deeper why. This is a process of deeper engagement to see what is there and also what is not yet visible. To read on the lines and between the lines. To hear the notes and the silence and space between the notes.

Sometimes, like my client Barb, a whole book comes as a download as a result of some dramatic trauma. Her book on grief spilled out over a weekend as she continued to heal from the loss of her life partner and sweetheart. For years after she wrote it, she reported, “I’d still cry when I reread it.”  The unacknowledged grief, the hidden and ungrieved grieving, creates a heavy load. We all encounter many losses in our lives. Learning to take the time to acknowledge and embrace every one of them is the dark path towards the light of healing. This is her message for her readers.

No matter how the message of your  brainchild/heartchild comes through — whether through a download all at once or a steady progress of creation — the book that encapsulates the lessons and insights makes up the heart of your message.

But for many, once that’s settled, it seems like that should be all it takes. You’ve gotten your message onto the page after all.

That’s not all. Questions like, “Now what? What’s next?” can be the biggest stumbling blocks. Because it seems like you should be done, but you are in fact just starting. What is your message without people to hear it and connect with it and you?

Your book’s message in itself is designed to  be of service to your perfect people, the ones you are here to help. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be here reading this. Service and contribution are things you think about. So the main message, your service and love is done.

In truth, the writing you do next is just as important as the writing of the main message in your book. This is the writing you do in service to the message you are here to share. These are the words that connect you to your people, the ones who have maybe heard similar messages before, but they will “get it” in a brand-new and deeper way from you.

You’re probably not going to want to hear that the writing you do in service now to your message probably wears the clothing of “marketing” and “sales.”  Too many messengers shy away from that part of the process. Keep in mind that you are still in service to your main message. This is the process of bringing it into a more public conversation.  At the same time, the marketing messages need to remain true to the heart of your  greater work. For most of us, it seems like a different kind of a thing — this marketing and sales writing.

In the spirit of the great duality on this planet, I say, “It isn’t different. And yet it is.” Both/And. There are commonalities between your message, mission, and book AND the writing (and talking) you do to share your message in the marketplace of ideas. They need to be of a piece.

But in some ways, the marketing message, which is what opens the public conversation, is even more important. It has to catch the hearts of those who can hear it from you.

Here’s one way to approach the marketing message of your message.

Think about it as a way you are opening the conversation. Creating the space for dialogue, back-and-forth, feedback, response. Marketing messages take a different kind of crafting, and you can do it — writing to sell without selling your soul or selling out your message. Once again, bring the heart energies to the task of shaping your marketing messages that will be in service to your book, your main message.

Use that awareness and care you have for the people who can only hear it from you in sharing the gifts and greatness you are here to give.

#blogboost

5Cs to Live Your Legacy in Words

More than What You Leave Behind, Live Your Legacy in Words

I’ve written about living your legacy before.  It’s that important.  The following action points are part of an upcoming booklet of experts sharing insights on “defining your destiny,” a project coordinated by Paulette Ensign, the  undisputed queen of the tips booklet.

My suggestion: Test out these 5 Cs to bring your legacy alive. Use words. Write it all down. Document your process for yourself and others.

1 Center —

Begin by taking a deep belly-expanding breath or several.  Focus on your heart-center.  Listen for your internal wisdom and directions from inside.  Write them down!

2 Contribute —

From that breath-centered mindfulness, focus on the deepest gifts you are here to share.  Who are the most perfect recipients of your gifts?  Write down who you are here to serve and the gifts you yearn to offer.

3 Create —

Hold in your heart both what you are here to offer and who you are meant to do it for.  Envision what it looks like when those two come together, with results for the highest good.  Write that down.

4 Connect —

Bring your inner connections and ideas into conversation.  Invite your most perfect people into your sacred circle with powerful words and intent.  Connect and LISTEN.  Write down their words, what they want.

5 Commit —

Write down the specifics of your intent and commitment to create, connect, and contribute.  It’s your map for living your legacy.  Build it day by day with conscious actions — to make the difference you came here to make.

World-changers, writers, authors, visionaries, and conscious creators partner with Bobbye Middendorf, The Write Synergies Guru, to clarify their healing messages. If you’re ready for results greater than the sum of the parts, if you need the right words so people “get it,” if you want to make the difference you came here to make, then connect with Bobbye to live your legacy in words and “Write to Sell Without Selling Your Soul.”