Tag: Alan Hickman

BEE-ing Attraction

What Does Love Have to Do With It?

 

BEE-ing Attraction:
What Love Has to Do With Business and Marketing

When my coaches, Jan Stringer and Alan Hickman of Perfect Customers, invited me to write a review of their book, BEE-ing Attraction: What Love Has to Do with Business and Marketing, I was thrilled to do it. I’m a professional, published reviewer after all. (My reviews regularly appear in ForeWord Magazine’s review section, a trade journal serving book publishing and libraries.)

 

It’s been a few months since that initial request. So what happened? In the interim, I recognized that I had gotten far closer to this book (and its authors) than I do in my professional capacity as reviewer. I had been using the essential (and brilliant) 4-part “BEE-ing Attraction” Plan process for so long that the “usual model” for reviewing simply would not be adequate. (I have also gone through their program and have been certified to offer this planning process.)

 

Let me tell you a story.

 

It’s been nearly a decade since I first came across the 4-part Attraction Planning Process pioneered by Jan Stringer. It was no coincidence. I connected with her first book, Attracting Perfect Customers: The Power of Strategic Synchronicity with lovely synchronicity through her first publisher, Berrett-Koehler, a client of mine. She had co-authored (as Jan Brogniez) and developed this 4-part process that brought the seeming magic of attraction to a business audience, and it was launched out of Houston. Texas.

 

This 4-part Strategic Attraction Process, along with the fundamental idea that the very best marketing grew out of building great relationships, became part of the air I breathed.

 

As the years unfolded, I came into Jan’s orbit, signed up for classes and learned more about this 4-part planning process through my own practice of it and with regular reminder classes that the “Biz Goddess,” Jan, offered with her sweetheart, then husband, Alan Hickman, a brilliant cheerleader of a coach in his own right.

 

In 2009, Jan and Alan published a new, deepened message, BEE-ing Attraction: What Love Has to Do with Business and Marketing. Its cover includes the tagline, “A Guidebook for Developing a Heart-Centered Business and Life.” It’s a process that works (like magic) for all manner of relationships.

 

With their new book and my deepening understanding in applying the 4-part plan, now sometimes called a “BEE-ing Attraction Plan,” the planning process that had been a traveling companion became an intimate friend.

 

Illuminating the expansion of the concepts, the authors build from the idea that marketing is all about relationships (in the first book)  to its new iteration, “Building relationships which are heart-centered and feel good to you.”

 

The varied stories in this book, shared through the voices of clients, create a level of specificity, spaciousness, and hope for all manner of sizes, shapes, and intents of plans — whether around growing a business, renting a dream house, or connecting with a soul mate.

 

What Makes YOU Tick?

At the heart of their process, and Part 2 of the 4-part plan, is a deep-inner-connection process called, “What Makes You Tick?” The “tick” as it’s called for short, is the ultimate foundation on which your relationships stand. What makes you “tick” is like water to a fish — you may not recognize or realize that’s what it is. It’s what you bring to every encounter in your life, whether you know it or not. Its power grows from the idea that “like attracts like,” so what makes you tick is also what makes your most perfect client tick.

 

Say the authors, “The Bee-ing Attraction Planning Process is about shifting paradigms. You must first become what you want to attract.” This whole new paradigm is unfolding under the nose of the crumbling infrastructure of the old way of business as usual. In this all-new business model, collaboration and cooperation take the lead over competition. It’s about bringing your heart to work and knowing that what Tim Sanders said is really true: Love really is the killer Ap. It’s about Being, Presence, Attraction, and Manifestation in their highest and best incarnations.

 

For me, one of the most memorable take-aways, among many, “The qualities that impressed me in others were in reality resonating within me,” reports one client. This is a ray of hope for me and so many people like me who have second guessed ourselves for ages!

 

For recovering perfectionists, you may wonder why your results don’t look like the ones in the book. Yes, I did too. “What am I doing wrong?” you may, like me, be asking. When you are sitting on the aisle of a 737 jet at 35,000 feet, you don’t realize you’re moving at several hundred miles per hour.  So too, in delving deeply into playing with this Strategic Attraction Plan, it helps to surround yourself with what Julia Cameron calls “believing mirrors.” Only then will you realize the progress you are making. Far from sitting still, you may suddenly discover you are getting off the plane in another country, far from where you started.

 

That is the power of putting the 4-part Strategic Attraction plan to work for you. Simple. But not easy. The plan calls on its users to go deep and bring forth the answers to the questions with radical honesty. And in so doing, miracles and magic do happen.

 

With its success stories and practical guidance, plus detailed explanations of putting the plan to work, templates, samples, and inspiration for creating your own 4-part plan, this is a visionary and refreshing (woo-woo-free) approach to creating a heart-centered business that really fits.

 

For those ready to step into, as client Doug Upchurch shares, “a different passion…[operating] from a different sense of ownership and power…” Bee-ing Attraction: What Love Has to Do with Business and Marketing is the perfect accompaniment.

 

Disclosure: Over the past year, I have gone deeply into this process, both through the Strategic Attraction certification training (so I’m certified to offer you this 4-part planning process) and during extensive coaching with Jan and Alan to build my sales muscles and refocus on what exactly IS my heart-centered business. If you would like to taste this 4-part planning process with me, send me an email at bjmiddendorf (at)gmail(dot)com, and we can open the discussion.

Chrysalis: Emergence At Hand

Turnarounds 1:

Chrysalis: Emergence At Hand

 

Pre-emergence before the chrysalis
Photo by MK Salovaara

This is the first in a series of life lesson stories that illustrate the powerful and invigorating TURNAROUNDS that we are all capable of creating for ourselves, in the sacred circle of our words, reflection, and inquiry.

 

Your Journey

Have you been on a journey of personal growth, spiritual development, and profound transformation for awhile now? Maybe you feel like something just isn’t happening; it’s incomplete; OR you feel like you should be there already?  Maybe you’re tired because you feel like you have been on this journey your entire life. “There has to be a better and simpler way,” you think to yourself.

Like you, I feel as though I have been journeying long and often alone. It’s been a precious voyage of inner discovery. And it has seemed like things have been “so close.” It’s like the mathematical asymptote: The line approaching the curve and never arriving.

A Puddle of Ineffectiveness

One day, I confided to my coach, Alan Hickman, that I felt exactly like a little puddle of ineffectiveness that wasn’t going anywhere. Thanks to Alan’s deep listening, reflecting, and training in inquiry, he stood with me in the sacred circle to turn it around.

First, I owned that, “Yes. It’s true. I’m right now in a space of being not very effective.”  Deeper inquiry told me a different story from what I’d been judging myself about and beating myself up for.

(You know, the old riff of “I’m stuck. What’s wrong with me and why can’t I move?”  And I’m sure you’re familiar with the “WHY AM I NOT THERE YET????!!!!” conversation.)

The Caterpillar Turnaround

The metaphor that arose in our discussion was the caterpillar. It had felt for so long like I was melting down from the inside, and I didn’t know who I was or what I was about. Everything seemed to be shifting and changing.

Then the Ah-Ha.  Suddenly I realized that I was indeed looking at the inside of the chrysalis.

Here’s what I could now see: By loving and embracing the stuckness, the ineffectiveness, the right-where-I-am-ness, I was able to acknowledge myself for exactly where I am — like the butterfly looking out from inside the chrysalis. Observing myself with love and compassion, I can see that I am right where I am supposed to be.

Butterfly on my Ankle

A few weeks after my conversation with Alan, this chrysalis narrative continued, as I continued to “notice what I notice.” As I practiced Qi Gong meditation in the garden on two separate days, a butterfly landed gently on my ankle. That was my signal to share this narrative. The butterfly wings are flapping to strengthen themselves for emerging from the chrysalis and getting ready to fly.

(Interestingly enough, I also observe that my drops of essences from Jane Bell, called synchronistically enough, “Emergence,” are nearly complete.)

The Message from Ovo

Another message reaffirmed my understanding. A visit to Cirque Du Soleil’s brilliant “Ovo” show, provided the image of the chrysalis in an aerial interlude. Pressing against the sheer fabric, the butterfly finally emerged high in the air, flapping its  (her?) gossamer wings.

Affirming Our Shared Emergence

These words too emerged. “Share this story and this image. For many are in the chrysalis and can use a guide, the powerful validation  that where they are is just where they are meant to be.  Help them to understand they are seeing from inside the chrysalis, and that their time of emergence is at hand.”

And so, for midlife, best-half-of-life creators of all kinds, global transformers of consciousness, messengers, change agents, thought leaders, awakeners, authors, and healers: I send greetings and encouragement from the chrysalis.

I’m with you when I say I know you are longing to step into your potential, to create transformative projects, businesses, creations, books, messages, ventures. I know you’ve been feeling for a long time stuck, stalled, scared, not good enough, or like you should be there already. Maybe you feel like you are trying to push the river to MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN.

Emergence — Not Emergency

Allow yourself in this moment to relax. Know that you are enough as you are; and you are where you’re meant to be. Allow yourself to just BE in the soup of transformation. Be willing to flap your wings to strengthen them for your own emergence.  (Try practicing in this safe space by bringing your story from your chrysalis into this community of comments.)

Shift the DNA of Your Experience

What has been most surprising for me in this turnaround is that by embracing the stuck, stalled, scared puddle of ineffectiveness, I’ve literally changed my patterns and shifted the cellular experience of myself.

It starts with an honest acceptance of, and even surrender to, exactly where you are right now. Realizing and embracing that you are still taking shape  — you, your project, your creation, all together inside the chrysalis — creates a powerful self-recognition. More powerful still is to embrace your whole seemingly stuck self  — completely free from judgment, and with love, appreciation, and gratitude.

And so you can. It’s the best prayer and meditation ever.

Emergence complete
Photo by MK Salovaara

 

 

 

 

How Attractive — Marketing from the Inside Out

Some time ago, my colleagues in an entrepreneur support group asked me about Attraction Marketing. It really comes down to marketing from the inside-out.

I’m convinced that that the inside-out way is the most powerful way to do anything!! (Start with BE-ing first, then the DO-ing)

The writing projects, workshops, coaching conversations, Vision Quests, and mapping I do are all about taking  that Inner Journey first.

I wanted to share the following questions with you so that you can start making your own Strategic Attraction Plans. Who are your perfect just-right people (tribe)? Who do you envision inviting,  joining you in your circle?  Who are the people you want to cross the bridge of your words?

This Strategic Attraction process will help you clarify and specify so that your light will be attractive to the people who are most perfect for your services and products.

Start by identifying WHO is the first relationship you are focusing on attracting with your 4-part Strategic Attraction Plan.

Do a separate Attraction plan for each of the different relationships you want to attract. Write each of the following four questions on a separate sheet of paper to give yourself plenty of room to expand your plan and NOTICE what comes up.

This plan is to attract MY perfect ________.
Select whom you want to attract:
MY perfect __________
[Sweetheart, employer, employee, customer, coaching client, reader, business partner, vendor, Virtual Assistant, investor, relationship partner, mastermind, teacher, coach, agent, publisher, donor, student, neighbor, etc.]
The process can work for whomever you want to attract, any and every kind of relationship — both business and personal.

LIST #1       DESCRIBE     The QUALITIES of your perfect _____________.
What are the attributes, qualities, characteristics, values, beliefs, and visions of your perfect __________ ?      [fill in whatever relationship you are attracting]
This one can literally fill a notebook. Or two. This is not the place to be stingy! EVERYTHING that you notice that is a perfect quality goes on your plan.

List #2     IDENTIFY        “The TICK”
What makes my perfect  [fill-in-the-blank] __________  tick?
(By the law of attraction — that like attracts like –  answer this by answering for yourself, “What makes me tick?”)
This may eventually be honed down to a very brief and powerful statement that gets at the core of who you are and why you are here.

List #3       SPECIFY         What YOU WANT them to EXPECT of you?
What do I WANT my perfect [fill-in-the-blank]  __________   to expect of me?
This is where you decide what it is you really want to experience in the relationship. What YOU WANT … to do or experience in the relationship.

List #4      DECLARE        Your BE-ing
Who do I need to BE for me to receive what I say I want?
(Another way to ask this: Who do you have to BE in order to be able to provide what you want your clients to expect of you in #3?)

Process: Notice what comes into your field in relation to the perfect relationship you are now attracting. NOTICE. OBSERVE. Make additional notes to your plan. (Even people you don’t like can be fodder for the plan. Turn it around to write down what you DO want based on experiencing what you DON’T want.)

Secret question to shift your energy of BE-ing when things don’t look/feel great:
What Would Be More Perfect?

The above attraction plan is adapted from: Jan Stringer and Alan Hickman’s BEE-ing Attraction: What Love Has To Do With Business and Marketing
Plus you can click here to  Learn more about Attracting Perfect Customers!

I am so excited to report that I am  getting certified as an Attraction Strategist (Also known as a BEEing Attraction Wizard), and going more deeply into learning this 4-question Strategic Attraction process so that I can  share it.

I invite you to play in this field of attractive magic! As one of my colleagues reported, you too will be shedding your invisibility cloak!

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.

Delight Your People — Blog Challenge Post 22

What will it take to bring spine tingling delight to your people, your perfect customers, clients, to your tribe, circle, audience, community, readers, viewers, listeners?

Following this Write Synergies Path, we’ve traversed the inner path of awakening awareness. We’ve added accountability, built momentum (inner and outer) for your foundation, and we’ve talked about creating and implementing.

But who is it all for? And how can you create your vision in such a way that it really resonates down to the tippy toes of your perfect people? People talk about niches, of not trying to serve the whole world. But that often feels, in particular for the heart-full soul-preneurs, visionaries and thought leaders who don’t want to leave anyone behind, that they are being forced into a box that they’ve worked so hard to get out of, the smallness box.

You don’t want to leave anyone behind, and you resist forcing yourself and your message back into a tiny, ill-fitting box.  Reflect back to your own experience working with people. You know there are certain people who are more fun to be with, people with whom it’s hardly “work” at all to serve them, to offer your products.  These are the people who need to “hear it from you,” as Jan Stringer and Alan Hickman like to point out. (You also know in your bones that there are people for whom the whole thing is just an uphill climb. Those may be the clients who need to hear the message from someone else, not you!) The people who can only hear it from you: This is the essence of a niche — your tribe.

There’s something compelling about the basic idea of like-attracts-like, the law of attraction. In the coaching I’ve had with Jan and Alan, co-authors of  BEE-ing Attraction: What Love Has to Do with Business and Marketing , and with their BEEing Attraction work, this like-attracts-like principle leads to a “trick” question. You ask, “What makes my perfect customers/clients tick?”  As it turns out, it’s probably the same thing that makes you tick.

Hmmm. So in essence you are creating your business or program or service that addresses a singular challenge or obstacle that you have somehow successfully dealt with for yourself. The delight comes, on your customers’ side, when they so totally “get it” that you “get them” and their obstacle. They see themselves reflected in the words on your site or that they hear in your teleseminar or in your conversations. They know that you have a deep understanding, not only of the pain of the obstacle, but also the solution to release that pain. That is the beginning of the delight. And there’s more.

More than even the solution to their problem or a way to address their challenge, what they most appreciate is your Presence, loving them and their problem, loving offering the solution, listening for their particular nuances.  Developing Presence in your own way, your authentic content and presentation and voice, creates a dramatic result, a Presence you can share with your customers. By taking the time to develop yourself on this inner path work, you have more to offer the people you are here to serve, and you will be serving them at an even more profound level.

Your Presence — in your words, in your articles, blog posts, videos, audios, in your conversation –  is a source of delight to the people who need to hear it from you. It is the deep listening that you bring to your client interactions. It is the deep understanding and empathy that you have for the challenges they are going through.  It is your authenticity and the love that you bring to heal the pain of the obstacle, problem, or challenge by offering your services and products as solution. And at the foundation of your products and services: It’s you. Your Presence, honed to a crescendo of power to be totally with your clients, meeting them wherever they are on their path.

Delight is a pale imitation of what they will really feel when you, your Presence, is completely in the moment with your clients.

As my mentors, Judith and Jim say, “It’s all in the connection.” Developing your Presence is the path to creating the connections that matter.

Connect with our 30-day blogging challenge on Twitter at #blog30

Synchronicities Are No Accident–Blog Challenge Post 10

I sent the following quote from James Redfield, along with more words of encouragement, to a client. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she reported that she was — just that day — at a particularly low point on her project. “Your words themselves are heartening,” she told me.

As James Redfield observes:
“We’re all in place to do something of great magnitude and courage.  It does
not have to be anything of wide scope, or even something that a lot of
people know about. It’s about touching the lives of people who cross our
path.”
–James Redfield
Author of Celestine Prophecy

Connie Ragan Green’s 30 Day Blog Challenge has put me into a space of engaging in conversations with brand-new friends and fellow travelers that I am meeting in the virtual worlds, toggling between my blog, their blogs, tweeting, retweeting, connecting to Networked Blogs Ap on Facebook, and posting to Facebook and Linked In. Whew. So many ways to connect! This blog challenge is all about trusting that those who will benefit and resonate from my words of inspiration and encouragement will find their way into this particular circle.

Just like in the classes and group coaching I’ve put myself into over the years, and as my friend Alan Hickman says, “The perfect people show up. Whoever is supposed to be there, shows up.”  (Alan is co-author, with Jan Stringer,  BEE-ing Attraction: What Love Has to Do with Business and Marketing . ) So from these classes, workshops, and even the blogging challenge, I’m discovering that the most amazing connections have resulted — seemingly by accident.

Such synchronicity is not an accident!

It is no accident that you have come upon this right now. To reiterate Mr. Redfield, “It’s about touching the lives of people who cross our path.” Put another way, (it’s spring after all, with new gardens and young growth,) it’s a matter of blooming where you are planted.

May you enjoy these 30 days and more of discovering that the just-right people cross your path — those who will enjoy the blooming of your gifts and the greatness of your project and venture.

Follow the fun on Twitter at #blog30. We’re 1/3 of the way there!