Self Employed Success

About 20 years ago, I set out to make a Vision Board for myself about my perfect business and my perfect life. At the time I was working a corporate 9-5 job, plus running a photography studio in the evenings, and photographing weddings every weekend. My corporate job was safe but a little boring, and working most evenings and weekends left me no time for dating. I had been living in a two-bedroom apartment since college, but longed to have my own home and garden.

I pulled out a stack of magazines and began cutting out images and words that inspired me. Soon I made a Vision Board of my perfect small business, my perfect new home, and wrote a list of What I Want In A Husband, which I added to the Vision Board.

Fast forward six years later: I had bought my own home and created eleven garden beds, which brought me tranquility and a deeper connection to nature and beauty. I had met and married Aly (he laughed when I showed him my Perfect Husband list!). I had started my life coaching business that would eventually morph into a small business coaching enterprise.

Last year I created a new Vision Board for myself (see photos below). Already some of the things on it have come to pass.

What’s a Vision Board?

A Vision Board is a collage of things you want in life, experiences you desire, and people, situations, and feelings you want to manifest. Sometimes it’s called a treasure map.

Making a Vision Board has several purposes:

• Helps keep your goals constantly in sight and in your mind
• Surrounds you with the energy of what you desire most
• Helps you gain clarity about what are your most important goals and dreams
• Keeps your emotional energy high and your focus strong

The way to achieve your goals in life is to have a clear picture of what you actually want. Brian Tracey says, ” An average person with average talent, ambition and education, can outstrip the most brilliant genius in our society, if that person has clear, focused goals.”

The Law of Attraction says that the more you focus on the things you want, the more time you spend paying attention to your purpose, the more you draw your desired items and experiences into your life. So surrounding yourself with visual representations of what you desire helps to elevate your energy in the direction of those things.

What You’ll Need

1. Poster Board – I use 20″ x 30″ poster board, because you can find inexpensive frames of that size in any discount department store. A frame will keep the board flat and dust-free, and will allow you to hang it on your wall.
2. Old magazines – You’ve been wanting to clean up your old magazine pile, so here’s a good excuse! Also, check with friends to see if they have any old magazines, or ask your local library if they ever trash magazines. Choose magazines that have always appealed to you in the past, as they’re a treasure trove of images and words for your Vision Board.
3. Glue – Don’t use glue sticks as the glue isn’t stable (unless you’re going to frame the Vision Board between a plastic cover and a cardboard backer, which should keep all the items secure). Personally, I use paper cement. There are also double-sided sticky tabs you can buy at most photography stores. These tabs are commonly used for putting together wedding albums, but work great for a Vision Board, too.

Getting Started

While it helps to review your goals and dreams in advance, I find that just diving into the magazines and cutting out any words or images that appeals to me to be the best way to collect ideas.

Don’t judge or critique what you’re cutting out yet. Just cut out any image or word that attracts you, as these are subconscious messages from your brain, heart and soul.

Sort them into piles of themes:

• Feelings you’d like to experience
• People you’d like to attract into your life
• Travel and places to see
• Money goals
• Lifestyle goals, like health, relationships, etc.
• Professional goals, like enhancing your business, becoming famous, or writing a book

Prioritize what must go on your Vision Board. Soften your focus and allow your thoughts, feelings and intuition to guide you to the most important images and words.

Layout without gluing. This helps you to group the items in a pleasing manner and eliminate those items that don’t work for you. Don’t forget that you can write your own words and draw your own sketches for the Vision Board, too.

Glue and frame.

Put it where you’ll see it. Take a moment each day to focus on a portion of the Vision Board that calls to you.

Do you remember in The Secret, John Assaraf talks about creating a vision board that included his perfect home?  Six years, and several moves later, he was unpacking an old box and came across his old vision boards – and discovered an amazing thing: the photo of his dream house on one old vision board is the EXACT house he lives in today! (Not a house “like” the house he wanted…the exact same house he was currently living in.) John tells the story in this moving video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svkV9xoaVuI

When you create your Vision Board, take photos of it, and post it on your blog or Facebook, so we can all share in the manifesting of your dreams! (Post the link on my Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/PassionForBusiness or use the Comments link below to post your link to this blog.) I can’t wait to see what you create!

Congratulations to Helga Matzko! Last year we designed a new website for her, and last month Helga asked us to create a matching blog, which she launched yesterday: http://www.gestaltri.com/blog/ 

Helga has a great take on the blend of Gestalt psychotherapy and life coaching…it’s worth reading the past issues of her newsletter and blog!

Helga understood that in order to create a lasting brand for The Gestalt Institute of Rhode Island, she needed her website, logo, and blog to deliver the same visual message.

• Check out her home page and the natural “spiral” theme from the photographs.
• Next, look closely at her new logo that was created from the website spiral photos we used.
• Then, go to her blog and see how, using WordPress, we were able to bring the logo and colors from her main website (including the SAME navigation!)  into her blog for a consistent brand.

When thinking about your website and the possibilty of adding a blog to it, remember to tie the visual elements together so that you create a strong brand, too.

Also notice that Helga put her blog on the same domain as her website, not a new domain/URL. In this way, her main domain receives more SEO credit for each blog post she adds. A big mistake I see people making is having one URL for their main website and a different URL for their blog.

Getting a Top 10 listing on Google take a bit of doing…getting a Top 3 listing is a real accomplishment! So we offer huge congratulations to Kate Nasser, who implemented our SEO suggestions on her website after we did an SEO Review of her site, and now lists as #3 on Google for the keyword phrase Professional Soft Skills, and #9 on Google for Professional Soft Skills Training!

Aly reviewed Kate’s sight and found lots of SEO ideas that could boost Kate’s search engine rankings. After producing a written report for her, we got on the phone with Kate and her web designer and brainstormed an implementation plan, which they undertook immediately. (I just love Kate’s “can do” attitude…she jumped in and made the changes even though the holidays were upon us!) That phone call was on December 21, and by January 10 Kate had emailed us with the good news – she was on Page 1 of the search results for her chosen keywords!

If you ever doubt that you can achieve high search engine rankings, or think it’s going to take six months for your site to crawl to the top of the listings, Kate’s success shows you that you can do it, too. (I’ve had situations where I’ve done a major SEO edit on a site on Friday, and by Monday I was on Page 1 of the Google results for my chosen keyword….zoom, zoom, zoom!)

Check out Kate’s website at  www.katenasser.com (and don’t forget to go to Google and type in her keywords, so you can see her rankings!).

Need more information about our Website and SEO Reviews, and how we can help you get the marketing results you want from your website? 

Visit our site:
http://www.passionforbusiness.com/website-review.htm

Quick Reminder: the teleclass series, “Designing Effective Workshops and Teleclasses” begins tomorrow (January 19).

If you want to create classes that students will LOVE, and earn increased revenue for your business at the same time, then this class is for you.

For more info:

www.DesigningEffectiveWorkshops.com

I hope to see you in class!

Heard a great quote from CopyBlogger for all of us who speak and teach and write: “We’re valuable precisely because we can cut through the noise and give them only what’s useful and relevant to them.”

Sometimes I think, “Everyone knows what I know!” There is so much free information on the internet, it can get disheartening when you’re trying to create a profitable business. Then I remember: it’s BECAUSE there’s so much free information that people can’t cope with the quantity of it…and they NEED us to synthesize it, distill it, and give it back to them in practical, simple terms.

A friend and colleague said to me, “I often say I offer a shortcut and I’m able to share what works and more importantly what doesn’t.”

It used to be that people couldn’t get access to all this information easily, so they needed us. Now they have too much information, and still need us.

Quick reminder: the One Action Now teleclass is tomorrow, January 14, from 1:00 – 2:30 PM eastern.

Need to figure out how to do Action Planning for your business? Join us!

Class will be recorded, so if you can’t attend live, you can download the recording and listen to it at your convenience.

Learn more about this class here:

www.OneActionNow.com

A few months ago,  I posted a note on my Facebook page about how our cat brought a dead mouse into the house, got chased around by us (looking like idiots), and eventually dropped the dead mouse in the cat toy box alongside her catnip toys.

My peeps loved that note and shared so many stories of the cool things their cats have done (with and without dead critters).

It was a great non-business, non-marketing post – just a funny story I wanted to share. I got THREE emails from people who had seen or commented about that post, thanking me for it, and asking me if I had any openings for private clients. One person even said, “If you have six cats, you’re my kind of business coach!” (Kitties got an extra treat that night for giving me the funny story, too.)

It’s not just the “here is what I offer in my business” posts that get attention. When we’re acting real, authentic, human…people can see and touch us in a new way. And we get to connect so beautifully with our clients and students, really communicating about ALL that matters to us in our worlds.

In December, I had lunch with David Newman and grilled him (no pun intended!) about creating information products.

Lots of great strategy ideas and tips!

You can listen to the interview in MP3 format here:

Karyn Greenstreet interviews David Newman about Information Products (MP3)

People always ask me, “Karyn, how do you get so much done? You always have new class and new services to offer!”

I have an important business fact that I want to share with you: You don’t have to feel overwhelmed by your business. And you CAN get more done in less time.

I do it, and so can you. I’ll teach you the secrets of how I got to be so productive at growing my business and getting things done.

There is a way to create your plans, over and over again, that makes you feel confident and energized that you are moving in the right direction.

Just imagine how wonderful you will feel, knowing you are on the right track!

In this step-by-step, practical 90-minute teleclass, you will:

• Review your goals and intentions for 2010, selecting the perfect goals for you
• Prioritize which projects and tasks, creating order out of chaos
• Create your Action Plan using masterminding techniques…stop wasting time on tasks that don’t bring in revenue or build your business
• Learn how to master the Action Planning Worksheet, so you can use it over and over again
• Find mastermind partners among teleclass participants and colleagues; you’re not alone anymore

We will be using the power of mastermind groups in this teleclass to brainstorm new possibilities, find clarity on challenges, make decisions, percolate ideas, tap creativity, and garner support and encouragement.

There is synergy of energy, commitment and excitement that participants bring to a mastermind group. Mastermind groups are made up of peers working together to support each others success.

January 14, 2010
1:00 – 2:30 PM eastern
Registration fee: $39

Class will be recorded, so if you can’t attend live, you can download the recording and listen to it at your convenience.

Learn more about this class here:

www.OneActionNow.com

Warmly,
Karyn

I invite you to join my on a journey where I’ll either fall flat on my face, or soar above the clouds. This is my year of Risk Taking. Every year I have a “theme” for what I’ll do or be that year. This year’s theme is taking risks; last year’s theme was keeping focus.

I might as well start off taking risks early, eh? So here goes:

Business Risks #1 and #2.

Risk #1: I’ve been thinking for a long time about offering mini-classes, just 60 or 90 minutes on a very narrow topic, for a very inexpensive price. In a world where everyone is offering 90-day training programs or 12-month training programs, I’m going against the flow. And I like it! (And it scares the you-know-what out of me.) I have no idea if this will succeed or flop, but if I don’t try it, how will I know? So I’m grabbing my First Risk by the horns…I’ve taken a mini-topic (action planning) and created a 90-minute class around it. Just diving in.

Risk #2: I’ve been wondering a lot about how much lead time people really need and want between the time you start to market a class, and the actual start date of the class. Do people need four weeks to think about it? Six weeks? One day? Typically I’ve begun to announce a class about four weeks before the start date, and that’s worked fairly well. But I want to experiment with a much shorter time period: one week. So my Second Risk is to start marketing the action planning class tomorrow, just 7 days away from the start date of January 14. Sink or swim. What’s the worst that could happen?

(Look for my announcement about the One Action Now class tomorrow, or visit www.OneActionNow.com to check it out.)

What about you? What would be a risky thing for you to do this year, this month, that scares you a little, but also excites you and challenges you to grow and experiment? How do you figure out whether it’s a risk worth taking? How will you feel if you don’t take the risk?

For me, risk-taking is not a natural activity. I’m more cautious, a planner, a person who likes to have her ducks in a row. But how can I explain the exhilaration, the FREEDOM I feel, in taking these two risks today???  Yeeeehaaaaw! 

P.S. I’ll let you know how these two risks pan out and share with you my stories of other risks I’ll take in 2010. Stay tuned…and fasten your seatbelt!