Author: Bobbye

Bobbye Middendorf, MA, partners with evolutionaries as mystic-catalyst, healer, and poet -- evoking experiences of hope, self-grounding, self-trust, resilience, and joy. Spoken Word Alchemy opens portals for Yin Arising via mentoring; she offers inner wisdom guidance and word altars. With WayMakers, this award-winning wordsmith regenerates their clarity and expansive expression to live life as a work of art.

Embrace Your Marketing Mindset (4Cs)

“I’d really rather just be doing the work that is mine to do, practicing my art or craft or therapy or career or profession. What is all this about marketing?!”

I’ve heard variations on this phrase for years — starting with the authors I worked with at the publishing company that employed me. They saw marketing, at best, as a necessary evil.

Now that I’m a free agent, hiring out to write and market and coach and strategize with and for my clients, I regularly come across writers, artists, healers, coaches, therapists, designers, attorneys, entrepreneurs, and even bankers who deeply dislike (hate?!) marketing. They see it, at best, as a necessary evil.

These are perfectly capable people who seem baffled when it comes to marketing. They tap fearfully into the seemingly endless supply of  variations on “marketing.” There’s corporate marketing, database marketing, SEO marketing, LOA marketing, internet marketing, social media marketing, MBA marketing, marketing trends, marketing research, marketing segmentation, branding, Superbowl marketing, direct response marketing, B-to-B marketing, B-to-C marketing, and we haven’t even touched advertising or PR, which might be included if you talk about integrated marketing or its longer-winded cousin, integrated marketing communications.

Are you intimidated yet? Are your palms sweating? Is fight or flight kicking in? Maybe this is why you hate marketing. Where are you in all this foreign-sounding gibberish? Where is your heart? Where is your gift? Where, even, are your people?

At the most fundamental level, for Conscious Creators, soul-preneurs, world-changers, visionaries, healers, and others in the soft sell marketing community, it really is all about your people. It’s about you and your community and connecting the two. We can talk about marketing without even going past the letter “C.”

Marketing is all about your Community. You can call it your circle, your clients, your customers, or even your audience. You can even go past “C” and call it your tribe. It’s all about your people. Well, what about them?

Marketing is all about Connecting. Connecting is a two-way process. You connect with them, and they connect with you.  How do you connect? From my perspective as The Write Synergies Guru, I’m partial to making the connections via words.

But connections come in every sensory variety. Music connects. Visuals connect. Paintings. Sculpture. Movies. Architecture. Movement connects. The healing touch of massage therapy connects. Even the tantalizing smells from your local cafe-bakery make a connection.

Marketing = Connecting + Communicating. So you make this connection, and from this connection you communicate. As with connecting, above, all your senses have their ways of communicating. But unless you’re right in front of the bakery or the painting or on the massage chair, the actual connection is tough to maintain. Distance isn’t a friend for these ways of communicating.

That’s why words as a medium (though imperfect) can paint the sensory details in a way that makes the communications possible over long distances and across time and space. Words can connect. Words can bring alive the connections across the world.

Words may be stories (Jeanne Kolenda is a master at stories with a purpose.) or metaphors. Words may be how-to or checklists. Words make up the books, the info products, the blog posts, web sites, brochures, business cards, press releases and even the 140 character tweets that are the currency of our communications.

Words weave the background texts of our lives. Words, both spoken and written, are how we communicate!

You mean marketing is just about talking to people? In the broadest sense, yes. That’s exactly what marketing is.

Connect with your Community by Communicating your Content. We prefer, all things being equal, to do business with people we know, like, and trust. How, in this digital marketplace, do we learn to know, like, and trust strangers?

The bakery cannot communicate its smell across the city to connect with bread-lovers in another neighborhood. But our words, imbued with meaning, with the content of our expertise, shared appropriately and clearly, focused on helping our people address whatever issue they face, packaged in a way to be useful, our words can communicate valuable content.

Marketing is that remarkable bridge, weaving together you, your heart, your creation. It weaves these “Cs” of Community, Connection, Communication, and Content into your message and beams it to your people in a way that they can hear it, can take it in, can process it. Suddenly the two-way span back and forth across your bridge is open.

They walk across the bridge to you. You meet them on this bridge constructed out of words that communicate your content and connect with your community.

Focus on what is mine to do

“Focus on what is mine to do.” —Tomar Levine

Your Time to Bloom: Tomar Levine has a gracious online home at this link. Her voice is gentle and her toolbox is extensive. It’s especially yummy for those with creative yearnings who feel they haven’t lived into their fullness — yet.

Tomar and I have been in online classes together here and there over the years. We share a passion for learning and maybe a bit of reticence in “putting ourselves out there.”

In an email note that followed up a recent phone conversation the other day, she said this. “Focus on what is mine to do.” How timely. That’s exactly where I am too.  Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity talks about “just showing up on the page.” That, I realize, is part of what is mine to do.  (Hence how good for me is this blog challenge!)

I’ve latched onto Tomar’s simple phrase that is so rich in reverberations. It sounds more grounded and less grandiose than “Owning Your Greatness.” But it tills much the same ground.

Both frame a way of Being that taps into life purpose, into the reason why we are here. They speak to the ongoing process of giving our gifts, of manifesting and embodying the service we are here to do with the people we are meant to help, the contribution that our creation is meant to make.

Whether you approach it in a matter-of-fact way (“Focus on what is mine to do.”) or in an expansive and out-there “Owning Your Greatness” sort of way, the bottom line is to  generate from the root of our Being the tasks of Doing in the world. Being comes first, the foundation. Then the doing, the action.

By doing the doing, by taking the action, even imperfect action, we create shifts. We make things happen. It’s time to pull back the curtain of reticence. The proponents who advise listening to the still small voice speak perhaps more softly than some others. That doesn’t mean the message is any less important than the ones who “shout.”

In fact, you might consider that the opposite is true. I acknowledge Tomar for the inspiration that started this post.  And thanks also for this 30 Day Blog Challenge. It  is helping me show up, take action, be on the page, as I  build the bridge for myself and my tribe.

The Right Guide

The prior post suggested that readers build a bridge from their vision to their tribe. On the one side, you have your vision, your creation or your business. Then there are the people you serve.  I characterize the “bridge” as the message of your vision or business, put into irresistible marketing language (that also embodies the authenticity of YOUR voice) then opens the way for your perfect tribe to hear it, take it in, and take action on it.

My friend from #blog30, Melanie Kissell, noted in her comment on the post Build a Bridge from Your Vision to Your Tribe,  “Take your vision, go find a guide, and build your bridge!” And Rob added to the comments saying he was still looking for his guide.

Inspired by the comments from my companions on the #Blog30 challenge (for June) along with a recent conversation with Tomar Levine, I realize that many people seem to be wandering in a never-land, looking for a guide, not fully trusting those who so seductively say, “Follow me.”

If you are wanting a magic bullet, but don’t really believe in magic bullets, but (darn it) you still want it anyway, and you find yourself with a raging case of sign-up-itis…Not trusting yourself, thinking you need to learn more, hoping that this next one will be IT…

Well, I know how painful that can be. Realistically I know the temptations that lurk with every magnified online make-a-quantum-leap-in-10-seconds-or-less-while-on-a-private-jet-and-making-millions offer. I have also learned that, while such programs may actually be a good fit for some people, they have never been effective for me.

It’s OK. And there’s nothing wrong with YOU if some of those hyperinflated sales page claims strike you as a bit, um, unrealistic. Tempting, but you know better. Even with the other guides who are realistic, hard-working, diligent teachers and coaches, even with “the good guys” so to speak, even within that group, not every guide is a good fit for you, your vision, and your creation!

Think back about all the times you’ve heard certain pieces of advice. You’ve heard the basics over and over again. Yes, part of it is repetition, a proven way to learn. But another part is how one person may say something just a little bit differently, and BOOM! That person’s expression of the same advice really hits you, really sinks in.

This is an example of what my friends, coaches, and mentors Jan Stringer and Alan Hickman say, “The people who need it most, and they can only hear it from you.”

For your tribe, who are the people who can only hear it from you? Who are the ones listening intently for your voice? Is your voice out there? These are the people waiting for you to build your bridge. Are you doing what my friend Tomar says, “focusing on what is mine to do?”

(Such an exquisite turn of  phrase and so crucial that I’m planning an upcoming post just focusing on that.)

Who is your right bridge-building partner?  Because the essence of building that bridge is taking action, stepping out into the void to create the connection between your vision and your people.  Here’s how I’ve painted the picture of the people who might best hear it from me. If you resonate, be in touch!

And if you’ve found your own right guide to help you build the bridge and open up the path for your just right perfect clients, share with us  how you found this person and why they’re a good fit for you! It’s useful for all of us to see and hear about successful connections.

Build a Bridge from Your Vision to Your Tribe

How do you connect your venture, creation, business, project, or book — your brainchild — to your perfect audience, tribe, circle, or community?

You need a bridge. You need a strong bridge that weaves together:

~the heart of your vision, its benefits, how it will change the corner of the world you are intending to change.
~the authenticity of your voice, the integrity of your heart, the power of your soul manifesting through your intended creation and its message.
~the clear expression of how you can solve the problems or help your people overcome the challenges or deal with the issues you address.
~the longings and yearnings of those people who can only hear it from you — your tribe, your community, your readers, your clients.
~the words that create the connections, the written words that weave all these elements together so that all the pieces stand together as something brand new and stronger than any one of the items alone — i.e., synergies.

You can build the bridge and chart the path across the gap between your vision and your tribe. And sometimes it’s nice to have a guide to show you the way.

Even Seth Godin Revises

“Perhaps we need people to sweep the floor or clean the deep fryer. But it doesn’t have to be you…”

“Surely not everyone” was the subject on the email. I read Seth Godin’s latest post via Feedburner subscription that landed in my inbox. I loved what he had to say — Except for that sentence above. I was all ready to take exception, to do a post that points out another way of looking at the floor sweepers and deep-fryer cleaners.

There was a bit of the same attitude in Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, his most recent book, and I still take exception.

Why? Because everyone, no matter what job, can bring to it a sense of purpose, dignity, and commitment to shining their inner light. No matter what job. It’s the inner light that counts. So I was all set to start my rant, then clicked over to Seth Godin’s blog post for today, what is now online.

Lo and behold. That sentence (above) was gone. It was replaced with this: “Perhaps some people will insist that there are jobs where no humanity is possible. But you don’t have to work for them.”

Well, true enough. But people need the jobs. And they can still bring their light and their humanity to the process of their work. It’s not ideal. It’s an uphill battle. But even a tiny candle in the darkness creates more light than was there before.

Visualize lighting birthday candles. If you’re like me, you light one candle, then ignite the rest of the candles on the cake using the first candle you lighted. One candle can light many others.

And what of the assumption that “we” don’t want those types of jobs? Who is this “we?” I take it to mean people making a commitment to making a difference. Ultimately doesn’t everyone want to own their greatness? Isn’t making a contribution the reason that we’re here?

Ultimately I agree with Seth Godin: Potential Linchpins lurk inside nearly everyone. And I’d say an important part of stepping into that Linchpin role is to uncover whatever it is that makes us shine, that lights our fire and helps us come alive.

Bringing that light and aliveness into the workplace or the endeavor or the creation — that’s the starting point. Then you’re keeping the light alive, coaxing and cajoling the flame, stirring the embers, so that you ultimately get the fire to a point that it helps you cook up whatever is important and will make the difference — the connection. The connection within. The connection with your perfect people, your tribe. The connection with your creation, the gift you give.

He knows how to end strong, Seth does. “We make a difference to other people when we give gifts to them, when we bring emotional labor to the table and do work that matters… your ability to create and contribute isn’t determined at birth. It’s a choice.”

Agreed.  Thanks for revising, Seth.

Being Your Own Guru

I call myself The Write Synergies Guru. Why guru?  I made it up, though I have a genuine, if tenuous and academic, South Asian connection. I took Sanskrit at the University of Chicago for three years.

So did I choose this name just because of a connection with one of the most ancient, sacred languages?

For me, the key is in the term “sacred.” Because the work I do involves creating a sacred vessel around my clients and our conversations. Drawing from the deep and sacred roots of Sanskrit, I place myself firmly in a lineage of teachers whose work touches on the deep inner fire. Drawing out the soul of a client or their project and sharing it in words is a sacred trust.

I have taken “guru” as part of my public persona, not to attract mindless followers, but rather to invite into my circle and sacred space mindful,  visionary people who are committed to becoming ever-strengthened in their own mindfulness, awareness, and consciousness.  In essence, those who want to become their own gurus and their own best teachers, reaching out to exactly who or what they need as a resource in any given moment. They themselves become the sacred vessel.

But have I erred in taking this name? After all, many so-called gurus seem to have earned the bad rap they mostly receive these days. Guru means teacher in Sanskrit, or revered one, and that “revered” part is probably where things get dicey.  Teacher, by itself, is pretty innocuous as a title, even in Sanskrit.  That doesn’t give the term “guru” a free ride necessarily.  I guess you just have to be mindful and discerning in choosing the gurus you hang with.

On being your own Guru

The following quote gets at the essence of my point:  “You are your own teacher,” Mr. Gumucio said he was told. “You are responsible for your own experience.”  This quote came from the New York Times story at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/fashion/25yoga.html?ref=style via a twitter reference by @zenpeacekeeper.

That quote, “You are your own teacher…You are responsible for your own experience,” is really at the root of being your own guru. It means being aware and mindful of your own experiences and what you need.

So in creating this post,  I was intrigued to find my good friend Michael Toms at New Dimensions Radio has a show on exactly this topic: Michael has interviewed Jeff Brown taking about “finding your own inner guru.” You can check out the replay at http://www.newdimensions.org/flagship/3340/jeff-brown-finding-your-own-inner-guru/source: (It’s free till June 9. After that. it’s just $1.99 for an MP3.)  I am a donating member of the New Dimensions Global Broadcasting Council. Your support can help keep this national treasure of recorded wisdom going.

Grow Content AND Relationships

A guest post over at Problogger.net recently commented, “Treat the blog … as a promotional vehicle for an actual business. This isn’t to say all you do is pimp your products. On the contrary, you provide really great content in order to build the relationship up with your reader. However, you do it with the aim of converting into a sale of your own product.”

With the opening bell of the 30-day blogging challenge convened by Jeanette Cates, Ph.D., it’s important to consider the attitude and approach our blogs are taking.  Every blog takes a somewhat different approach, and certainly they are designed as one piece of our businesses.

So, while this is true, that the blog is a promotional tool, it seems to me much more than that.  We sell ourselves, our clients/customers, and our content short if making the sale is the sole focus. While we are in business, it’s also important to create an appropriate space for relationships to expand and unfold.

Blogs are perfect places to share value and build community.  For me, the part of the quote that does hit the mark is, “…great content to build relationship with your readers.” Marketing, in particular soft sell marketing, is all about making the connections and building the relationships in a respectful way.

Ultimately we are not serving our perfect customers and clients well if we don’t move into meeting their needs  by selling our products/services in the spirit of serving them.  Maybe that’s why the line, “…you do it with the aim of converting into a sale…” somehow rubs me the wrong way. It doesn’t hit at the nuances of care for your perfect customers that I think is a critical ingredient, especially in my market of visionaries, messengers, authors, writers, conscious creators, soul-preneurs, and healers.

As a solo professional, the “product” at the moment is me–and the services I provide to help visionaries and conscious creators get their messages out to their perfect customers/clients.

But as a writer, the blog is also a place for developing book content and other creative solutions for people– who may “just” be readers of the blog. It’s designed to give my own perfect clients a taste of my philosophy, values, and style.  They can get a sense of whether it’s a “fit” to consider working with me in a more in-depth way.

So this blog focuses on publishing content in the service of relationship-building, which is itself the foundation  of marketing. It’s also a place for people to learn and gain value even if they don’t buy something right away.

To fully serve people, the next step is to sell something.  At the same time, I  am committed to the importance of publishing remarkable content as a way to build relationships.

Blog Challenge Webinar

Just minutes to Jeanette Cates’ webinar to launch #blog30, the 30-day blog challenge.

http://meetourmembers.com/blog-challenge-begins/

(also wanting to test the Twitter Tools. Can I figure out how to automate??)

Many thanks to @piotrkrzyzek for his instructions on Twitter Tools.

http://www.piotrkrzyzek.com/automatically-tweet-when-you-make-a-wordpress-blog-post/#comment-53396811

Thank you!

Boost Your Writing with Reading

I admit it. I’m a book person. (Yearbooks in school started my publishing journey. Then working in corporate book publishing for ~20 years. Then freelancing for a variety of publishers, ghostwriting books, marketing books, writing press releases for books, helping people with web sites about books, coaching people about their books… Finally focusing on creating my own books. And all the while reading and buying still more books. Maybe lightening my load soon when I get my new iPad. We’ll see…)

In fact, I may be a book-a-holic. Yes. There it is. Out there in public. One of my “drugs of choice” is books. My husband despairs of my book piles that threaten to topple over. Our house my not really be sturdy enough to house my existing library. (Clued in about this by those funny cracks that seem to keep appearing…)

During my childhood, summer was a time to fall deeply into books. I’ve also been an avid re-reader, revisiting stories that resonated with me time and again.  “So many books, so little time,” is a phrase that was tailor made for me. How about you?

Simultaneously to reading comes the writing. Or vice versa. In fact, there are real synergies that grow in a process of reading and writing.  Each one feeds off the other.

Many people are interested in bringing more ease and authenticity into their writing. They long to be purposeful with their messages about their businesses and projects and creations and ventures. One of the ways to find your authentic voice is to practice writing, ideally in a public sphere like this blogging challenge, where you will be able to tap into a zeitgeist and community of like-minded others and to receive feedback.  You’ll be both reader and writer here.

In addition to writing, reading can be a powerful way to embrace and test your writing. One summer, I went through the letters of Virginia Woolf — volume after volume. Yes, that summer my friends from college received letters from me that unconsciously picked up the tone and flavor of VW’s letters. You can’t help but learn from your reading. It’s what nourishes your soul and heart and voice and mind.

So I want to acknowledge and thank the folks at Flashlight Worthy Books on Twitter as  @flwbooks for sharing this link. It inspired my blog post (as books are wont to do) and offers windows to “see with fresh eyes” in ways to rethink and revisit your own writing process.

“7 Great Titles for a Writer Digging for Inspiration”

And welcome to the second 30 day blogging challenge for 2010. Follow the fun on Twitter at #blog30.

Prepping for June’s Blog Challenge

It’s been quiet over here at https://writesynergiescopywriting.com
since I completed Connie Green’s 30-day blog challenge
earlier this month. But lots of things are
simmering on the back burner, so watch for the
feasts and creative explosions to come!

I was revisiting some of the posts a few days ago.
They still sound pretty good! I invite you over
to partake in the synergies that are growing!

There’s another 30-Day Blogging Challenge
coming up! For the entire
month of June, (1-30) there’s a group forming to
continue the blogging fun and business-building.

This time, Jeanette Cates is leading the group.
Go to http://twitter.com/JeanetteCates and search
for #blog30 or connect with her at
http://jeanettecates.com/what-makes-a-great-blog-challenge/
to join the blogging challenge.
Join the fun!
Plus: Today (5-28) Jeanette has “feature member profile”
of yours truly at the customized  member site for this
month’s blog challenge at http://meetourmembers.com/

(So, yes, you’d need to register to see my profile!)
Happy Blogging to All!