Entrepreneurial Entertainment

Well another week of pulling up my new bootstraps and re-inventing myself has been interesting. We have been crafting our first workshop offering for Nov. 15th in Tucson and it is proving to be a fun challenge. I promised last week to tell a bit about what I've been up to...so I shall.

Since this time last year Missy and I have been on the road steady, exploring and integrating, reaching and learning, finding the ways that we can best give our gifts and continue to support ourselves while doing it. This has been quite revealing... I must say it has been an incredible year and we both have grown in many ways, most of which would have not moved to much if we hadn't taken the risk. I have learned that abundance is truly a state of mind and that it is the natural state of the universe... we can choose to be present in the moment in exactly what we have AS what we need, or we can choose to think about future haves and have nots. Either way my experience is that we have what we need when we need it, period. And that being said there has also been moments where we have been on that threshold as I mentioned before. The new choice we are making is to dig a little deeper, take a much bigger risk and step out in ways that ourselves of last year could not even imagine!

I have decided to expand my career from just music and poetry to speaking, coaching, music and poetry... in a nutshell anyway! In more detail I have been needing a container for my music and my message and what has always turned me on the most is connecting with people and inspiring shifts in perception and action. Bottom line is that I need to find the audience for what I do in order to continue doing it! A challenge? Yes! An insurmountable one? No way! What I'm realizing is that I will just have to do things a little differently to get a different result... Step one, get some help from those who know how to do what I want to do. This used to scare me and I'd think I would lose creative control or I might be judged as stupid or whatever. Just like long division and I didn't want to repeat that mistake! So now I stepped out of my comfort zone and have been crafting with Missy and Faye a new outlet for these gifts. We are starting to build some momentum and have some basics set-up... so much detail to accomplish though. Our company is The Resourceful Human, and it is all about supporting the emergence of the authentic human being! A perfect channel for all of our gifts to come together in the ways of our choosing to support those who really need what we have to offer. Resourcefulhuman.org

One of the challenges I've come up against over the years is just not fitting in, to the structures available for success. An example being the music business and its limited channels for making a living and reaching your audience. After making a few different forays into various scenes, styles and venues, I always felt like i was coming up empty. Not to say I wasn't enjoying it or that I didn't get a chance to reach people, I did. The missing element was a rhythm, a flow and sustainable success. I always felt like I was starting from scratch. That get's pretty draining after 10yrs. The realization dawned on me that no one was going to show up at my door and offer me a record deal or love me so much that they would sponsor me. It just didn't happen. So I'm left with the choice to empower myself, take what I've learned and apply it to what does work or retreat into a life of mediocrity... fortunately for me, mediocrity is just not acceptable:<)

It is time to stand up and count yourself
take a dive off the normal and boring old couch
you are needed with your heart on your sleeve
alive and insatiable, but for giving not greed

We are the brilliance of future right nows
illumined in the beauty of our unknown somehows
Dreaming is for giants and you were never small
Just waiting for your reason, and that is all.

Blessings on your road home!
Chief ME

Paid and on Purpose!

I can only begin to tell you how jazzed I am right now. Completely thrilled with my last four days and even more excited to share some of the learning and insights I gained with you.

As you mostly know I'm an artist to the core, and have been experiencing that archetype in it's positive and negative ways for many years. I've always done creative things very well and have excelled in certain pursuits. And there are those things...see long division, a few blogs ago, that I have struggled with and continue to avoid as much as possible. Well, this has been great in many ways in my life and I feel tremendously blessed to have been able of giving so much focus to that! Also I became an expert at living on the wind, learning how to live on little and find the deep abundance in every experience. Unfortunately I have ended up like so many other young people following their dreams. I wasn't starving but I have been down to $20 many times! Not the best feeling when you're mission is to inspire people to live successful, authentic, brilliant lives! So the good news is, I've been paying attention and taking responsibility to change that, because only I can shift that perception of myself.

This weekend I spent at a workshop called the Million Dollar Marketing and Soul Intensive. Most that know me well would laugh at my name beside all but intensive in the soul department. So yes this was a big stretch for me, and at the same time, I am here to make a difference in people's lives, and whatever it takes to do that, I'm in! Many things became clearer for me by going to this thing and I am excited just to share a couple of them and hear how it has helped open up my mind to a plan for moving my dream into action.

The one thing I learned that is so important for creatives and spiritually based people is understanding that the most effective way to offer their gifts to a large audience and get them to the people who need those gifts, is to understand the value in what you have to offer in terms of what it will do for folks when they engage with you and what they will miss out on if you don't reach them. And because your gifts have great value you should be compensated for giving those gifts. When we get paid we feel empowered and energized to do more. I think one of the challenging concepts is how to put a price on these things, and the conclusion I've come to is that it is not the number that matters but how you feel about it. For example I have been charging $20 for my cds for a while now and I came to that decision because I know they are worth it and it feels good to me when I know I'm valuing myself and my work. This is not to say I don't give away tons of them or accept less at times, but the important thing is that i honor myself in the transaction knowing that the music has true value and they will engage more with that value because they paid for it. We value what we pay for. The other thing is that when I have more money I can do more of the things I need to do in the world. So I'm taking the reins and responsibility to accept and leap into this place of power.

The journey into authenticity constantly brings up the need to value the self. By it's nature, authentic being is from one perspective a place of oneness. You may not always experience the amazing bliss of a oneness consciousness but you can draw down the understanding that you are equally a piece of the equation as any other. Stepping up to one's value is a key piece in being authentic and expressing, giving and receiving from a place of power and transformation.

I will keep you posted as I implement these new parts in my life and and new business.

Much love and thank you for offering your thoughts.
Chief ME