Not too long ago, I received an email from a business owner who was very unhappy about expensive marketing that wasn’t producing results.
Her email went something like this:
“I’m a distributor for an exclusive skincare line and sell my products directly to customers. I recently paid several hundred dollars to place a small ad in an alternative weekly paper.
I’m so frustrated because the advertisement didn’t result in a single call! Not one. I don’t have much of a marketing budget so when I spend money it needs to work.
It’s the second day of my two-week video challenge. This video was done in about 99,000 takes, thanks to my not understanding the basics of lighting. Finally I got the lighting done right, and you could see me. Which may or may not be a good thing.
I didn’t go overboard with the iMovie effects this time. Instead I used the crop tool to focus the video frame. I did very little editing of the video, unlike the first one. just the cropping.
The smart-aleck remarks on Twitter helped tremendously. Thanks especially to Laura Roeder.
After I get through being honest about southern California, I dig into fear and emotions in business. Yes, everyone talks about it. Too much.
Remember, I don’t want advice on how to make it better, at least not yet. I’m not just figuring this thing out. The last thing I want to hear about are the little stray bits of pointy hair.
If you do have a topic you’d like me to cover in a video, I’m happy to hear it. If it inspires me, I’ll dig in.
We all know how many struggles each of us face. Sometimes things are beyond hard, challenging, or dispiriting. I find that in situations like that an insight into the nature of the universe and how things work can help me shift my perspective and gain a toehold to move forward.
To honor any struggle you may be in, and to help you move on out of it, I’m going to make this article short and sweet, yet hopefully profound and surprisingly satisfying.
I try to make a practice of catching onto the latest thing no sooner than ten years late. I’m breaking that a little here by picking up video only several years after it became easy to do.
I realized that I freeze up around getting video done. I keep not getting it done, except in little bits. So I decided to do a video a day for two weeks, not including my birthday, which was yesterday, and not including weekends, because that’s family time.
So here’s day one:
I’m guessing I will get into interesting bits about business and spirituality. I’m also guessing that I won’t use way too many iMovie effects, like I did on this one.
Comment or not, this series is strictly for me to get used to this.
As I write this I’m on day eight of our ten-day family trip, and I’m eating a cookie while the rest of my family naps in the hotel room. In between visiting my family in Maryland, and then visiting our adopted twin sons’ birth family in Ohio, we all spent a lovely short visit in Pennsylvania at the Farm of Peace.
The Farm of Peace is one of two U.S. residential communities maintained by my Sufi order, which means two things: one is that teachers, students, and friends of ours live there, and second it is totally awash in the Love.
It couldn’t have been timelier, because although we love my family and the boys’ birth family, there are definitely uncomfortable moments in our times together, God love us all. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then consider this my official application to do an internship within your family.
This is a good time to digress and define a bit of minor lingo. In my Sufi order we tend to say, “the love” rather than “love.” It’s a small thing to distinguish between being in the caffeinated-jolt-fix sensation of squishy-love versus The Love, meaning deep in an ocean of Oneness, mercy, and caring. Kinda an important difference.
Both are good, and yet the first one fades, returns, fades again, and the other one just Is. The squishy-love is the one we’re usually familiar with. The other one seems perhaps less accessible, or a fantasy, or somehow woo-woo, even though it’s the Most Real Thing there is.
Why am I talking about these two kinds of love? I’m a-gittin’ thar, but let me first tell you about my fear.
In 1987, I was bicycling out to the tip of Cape Cod with my friend Chris. We had decided to make it a two day ride out, and then take the ferry back to Boston. Somewhere along the way my tire went flat.
Chris, being a friend, stopped for me while I patched the tire before we got going again. It didn’t take long to get back up to speed.
After all I was 19 years old and lived on my bicycle. A flat bicycle tire was no big deal.
Fast forward to now. I’m 42, in okay shape but not fantastic. I have our twin toddlers in the bike trailer, and they are screaming at each other while fighting over a sippy cup. The poor dears. Continue reading →
When I was about 10-years old, I really wanted a cat. My mom, however, was opposed to this idea. In her opinion cats (and dogs) were bringers of dirt and chaos into a home she tried so hard to keep clean and orderly.
The exceptions to my mom’s rule were things like goldfish and turtles, because they were small and were not going to wander through the house, get into the garbage, or scratch the furniture.
But, let’s face it, goldfish and turtles are boring, and the ones I bought at the dime store had an unfortunate tendency to die within the week.
So I was delighted when I saw an ad for Sea Monkeys on the back of a comic book. Continue reading →
This class has far exceeded my expectations already. I am learning from you, and the rest of the class, on so many levels. I love your facilitation style and the learning activities you have for us. Your insight is so fresh, profound and sincere, and it helps that you have lived through what you share and truly practice what you teach.
I’m excited by the new and freer perspectives you have introduced me to. Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity. I feel very blessed to be participating in it and learning from you. — Victoria Clevenger, Vancouver, Washington
The ideas I find in the Oasis aren’t replicated anywhere else…
I didn’t know it was going to be a place for me–I wasn’t sure it was going to be the kind of place where I was going to be able to ask the kind of questions I wanted to ask – when you talk about spirituality, it’s like politics- no matter what you say you are going to offend somebody.
But, it turns out that everyone is really open and non-judgmental–which isn’t what I expected. There’s a dynamic- it’s not so stuffy and it’s not so laid-back. It’s a nice, happy medium, plus all the information that is coming in.
I released an e-course about three weeks ago, and I referenced one of the posts, and I applied some idea that you had given me about the Customer-Focused Story, and I ended up selling three times the number I expected. The ideas I find in the Oasis aren’t replicated anywhere else that I go.
Taking a heart-centered point that you made about my audio logo has really, really helped me- because I kind of had a problem attracting people before- what I was saying for my business audio logo wasn’t really connecting with people, but after I started actually using the techniques that you talk about and that we went over in the Oasis, potential clients are now responding to me and connecting where they weren’t before.
You have this uncanny ability to turn any question around and make it applicable to everybody. So even if I’m not the person asking the question, I still get something that I can apply to what I’m doing right now. I recommend Unveiling the Heart of Your Business and the Business Oasis almost on a daily basis. — Erin Banister, Pueblo, Colorado
Not too long ago, I received an email from a business owner who was very unhappy about expensive marketing that wasn’t producing results.
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