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.â€
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.