I’m a big believer in having the right tools for the job. Without them, you struggle. But, I am NOT an early adopter of technology. I like to see versions 2.0 and 3.0 roll out after the bugs have been worked through.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, talks about technology as an accelerator. If your core business competency is dependent on a particular cutting-edge technology, then you need it. If your stock-in-trade is quickly-edited, beautiful, professional video, then you need the fastest, best video equipment and highest-processing speed computer.

But if you don’t do that, you probably don’t need the latest and grooviest.

I try to be careful with our equipment dollars, because expenses eat up profit very quickly.

How do you face getting the tools you need? Do you have a conscious strategy around investing in the tools you need?

The workshop is the Sacred Moment, which we teach every spring- this year it’s coming up February 25-26 in Portland. Ostensibly it’s about the sales conversation, and how to talk to potential clients with integrity and heart and still get paid… so they don’t disappear into “I’ll think about it.”

But I have to warn you: there’s a rabbit hole in that there workshop. To be able to hold this conversation in a healthy space requires a combination of humility and strength, courage and softness, power and service. The spiritual, experiential exercises we do are transformational and will have an impact on your entire business.

If you wonder who you really are, if you sometimes get caught in neediness and “not-good-enough” conversations in your head, if you’re looking to have powerful, heart-centered engagements with influential people in 2011, then this workshop will rock your world and your business.

And you’ll come out of it immediately able to enroll your right people and get paid.

Why don’t you join us in Portland, Oregon, February 25-26. Early-bird pricing is available now: The Sacred Moment Seminar: February 25-26, Portland, Oregon.

Sticky Notes Versus the To-Do List Tsunami

Earlier this year I replaced our kitchen sink. At one point I was faced with having to tighten down the basin drain, which comes in two parts: the metal ring on top of the drain hole, and the bottom part which screws into the top part, allowing water to drain down the pipe, instead of leaking out and filling the under-the-sink cabinet, something I know from experience.

I tried for thirty minutes to screw those two pieces of the basin drain together using the tools I had on hand, ruining a doohicky (you can tell how proficient and skilled I am in the building trades by my precise technical language) and ending up leaking water everywhere.

One of the four trips to the hardware store that weekend solved the leak. I’m now the proud owner of a basin wrench, which did just what it said it would do: easily screw the basin parts together saving my doohickies from an early death and my kitchen from an untimely flood.

Sticky Notes Are Not Going to Stop the Tsunami

When I was young I had a nightmare that repeated itself over and over again. I would find myself on a beautiful beach facing the ocean, at my back a sheer cliff that rose hundreds of feet in the air, clearly unclimbable. Inevitably a tsunami would appear heading towards shore, and the dream would end as the shadow of the monster wave covered me, and I would wake up, a scared-witless seven-year old.

The dreams stopped before adolescence, and with the passage of time it’s become clear that they were foreshadowing either the realities of running of a business, or my plumbing problems.

And I’m not alone.

In an unscientific survey of the more than 2000 small business owners I’ve worked with in the last ten years, the most common complaint I hear is “overwhelm.” (Almost no one mentions plumbing. Although, it must be said, I don’t ask.)

It’s such a common theme that it was one of the very first subjects I covered, back in December, 2001. I’ve also written about the spiritual answer to overwhelm, (which article was the seed for the workbook and audio class ‘A Solution to Overwhelm’ that comes with Creating Heart-Centered Websites.)

The spiritual side of overwhelm is critical, because it is mostly due to mindset. However, there’s another, more practical side to handling overwhelm.

Let’s get boring. Let’s get nitty-gritty. Let’s get this thing handled so you can be a hero for your business in 2011.

Let’s talk about organizing your tasks and projects.

Sticky Notes Are Not Going to Do It

Chances are neither will a little pad of paper, digital or physical. Here’s why.

Any live creature has, oh, approximately ten gazillion different things happening physiologically to keep it alive. Breathing seems simple, until you get down to the cellular level and see all the systems involved with the simple act of taking air in, breaking it down, and distributing it where the components need to go.

Your business is not nearly that complex, but it can seem as if it were. After ten years in business, here’s what I see each to-do needs:

The Needs of a Task

The needs of each of your tasks are fairly simple, but critical.

A due date: Seems obvious, but having a deadline for a task helps tremendously. And seeing all the deadlines for all your tasks together helps you assign due dates more compassionately, because you realize they can’t all be due “by 10 a.m. tomorrow.”

A start date: Vastly overlooked in the world of small business owners, if there’s anything that will help you avoid overwhelm is knowing that you don’t have to start working on or even thinking about this task until February 15. Try adding “start dates” to your tasks. You’ll like it.

A context: Do you need to be in your office, at your computer, on the phone, or running errands to get this task done? Naming the context means that you can be more efficient with your time by getting all of your errands done at once, or all of your phone calls done in a block of time, rather than constantly switching from creative mode, to administrative mode, to running errands mode. Keep it simple: for me, I just use “office” “phone” “errand” or “waiting for.” Hold it, “waiting for?”

If you’re waiting for something from someone, chances are they are even less organized than you are about tasks. If you aren’t tracking what you’re waiting for, you may never notice they didn’t get it to you until way too late. So you ask someone to send you a pdf you know they have by Friday. And then you set up a task: “Receive pdf from Josephina, Friday January 7, context: Waiting.”

A project: Most tasks are building blocks for something larger, such as getting your latest offer launched. Others are just single, one-off tasks, like “buy stamps” and so I put those in a project called “Work-Single Tasks”

Where’s That Wrench?

You only need to lose track of a few key tasks, miss a few deadlines, and look like an idiot in front of one or two clients before the need for the right tool becomes obvious. It’s okay to go back to the hardware store four times, as long as you end up with a tool that fits your needs and fits you.

I myself use Omnifocus, an application that syncs between my iPhone and laptop so that anytime I think of a task I can empty it into Omnifocus and stop thinking about it.

Choose a tool, put your tasks and projects into it, and then, as a final commitment to living a life without overwhelm, make yourself an appointment every week for 30-40 minutes to review and clean up your projects and tasks.

It took me about six months of playing with Omnifocus, tweaking, falling off the wagon and climbing back in until I found a way to make it work for me. So don’t expect an instant miracle.

Yet, if the heart of your business is yearning for this kind of support, and you’re tired of feeling overwhelmed and embarrassed from dropped details, take this on as a learning project for the first 3-6 months of 2011. I bet it turns your business life around.

Resources

I mentioned Omnifocus, which I love. But that’s just me. I asked on Twitter, and my tweeps came up with this list of alternatives:

@acdolph: Notational Velocity is a free mac app that lets you super easily work with a folder of text files.

@lesmckeown: Worketc.com is a nice cloud alternative. I loved living in TiddlyWiki for a year or so:

Larry is a remarkable person (as is Robert, I’ll be interviewing him soonish.) Through his consulting firm, Willeman Strategyas Partners, he basically functions as a Chief Financial Officer for small businesses that aren’t quite large enough to have their own CFO. Okay, that’s sounds as exciting as watching grass grow.

Here’s the exciting thing: every single one of his clients, every single one, survived the recession and the majority of them actually grew in the last two years. This is in Oregon, one of the harder hit states with 10+% unemployment. He’s helped many of his client firms expand their impact tremendously, while making their owners millionaires in the process.

If you’re reading this blog you might not be in a position to hire Larry, since most of us in the HoB tribe are self-employed or have a micro-business. But what he has to say about managing costs, developing a business financially, and the role that heart and caring play in the numbers is something you need to hear.

We spent about an hour talking through three areas:

Open your heart and have a listen. How often do you get to hear advice from a stunningly successful chief financial officer?

[audio:http://www.heartofbusiness.com/Audio/larrywilleman.mp3]

Right-or-option click to download.

And if you do have a small to mid-sized company, take a look at Larry Willeman.

What big questions would you ask if you were able to spend time with a big-hearted, super-successful CFO?

Today was my day to experiment with B roll. If you don’t know what b roll is, watch this video that BrantC showed me.

Today I dug into strategy, spirituality, living in the moment, and planning. In other words… is strategy spiritual or not?

Enjoy. Any of you inspired enough to do a video challenge too?

You know that kind of gross habit some buggy people like to do where they stick a pin in a butterfly and display it in a book? That’s what Charlie’s nicey-icey look did to me. Transfixed, I was, right to that chair. I nodded. “Yes, Charlie. You’re right. It’s time.”

Trouble was, I had said that a dozen times before and since. I wasn’t getting to it. I wasn’t actually doing the walking.

Time to Get Walking

In my Sufi spiritual lineage, spiritual work is referred to as “the walking.” As in, “You’re walking your path.” Challenges, issues, even joys and celebrations, are all part of the walking.

The brilliance of this metaphor is in the observed phenomenon that you have to be in motion to see change. Just sitting there isn’t going to get you anywhere.

In writing that, I feel the need to explain I’m not talking about forgoing contemplative or devotional spiritual practice in favor of action. As I’ve written about time and time again, action can be useless or even harmful if it’s not based in connection and love.

And if you’ve ever maintained a regular spiritual practice, you know that “just sitting there” isn’t just sitting there. You’re doing the walking.

But beyond spiritual practice, showing up is often a critical catalyst for change and evolution.

All of this high-minded blither-blather is to say that I realized there was a place I wasn’t showing up and doing the walking. Video. Oy.

So I Showed Up

I’ve been writing for over twenty years. I love to write. I’m really comfortable with it. I’ve been recording audio for close to ten years. I feel darn good about that.

Video, eh? Yuck. I don’t know how to edit it. I’m not always comfortable staring at a camera. I don’t know all the tricks to engaging an audience visually. I’m a beginner.

But the only way I’m going to get there is by walking.

The Two-Week Video Challenge

I challenged myself to make one short video each day, and posting it on our blog, starting Tuesday, August 24 (Monday was my birthday) and going through Friday, September 3, not including the weekends.

I let go of trying to meet client needs and expectations. I let go of being in service. I realized that I needed to get comfortable with the medium, and just doing nine videos in a row is, I’m pretty sure, going to get me comfortable very quickly.

It’s working. You can see the first video here and then just follow the trail through the blog. I’m already more comfortable.

Will you join me? You could do a video challenge, or some other kind of challenge. The basic guidelines are: pick something you’re uncomfortable with, and then do a lot of it, consistently, in a short amount of time, with no expectations on how effective it will be for your business. It’s purely a learning process.

If you take it on, and you have a blog, post the link here in the comments. Let’s check us all out.

p.s. Molly Gordon’s Amazing Self-Employment Telesummit

Molly Gordon, from Shaboom, Inc, has been a true friend of mine for a few years now. We’re in a mastermind group together, we hang out when we’re in the same city. I just love her to pieces.

She’s also really, really good at the self-employment thing. She’s been helping entrepreneurs for years, longer than I have, and she’s been extremely effective.

Molly invited me to present at her Self-Employment Telesummit, which I agreed to. I know we just promoted our Momentum course, but this is way different. If Momentum wasn’t right for you, but you need real support to get your business going, then check out the telesummit.

Next Wednesday, September 8 I’m doing a no-cost call with Molly so you can experience who she is. I think you’ll really enjoy her no-nonsense, grounded, heart-felt way of approaching self-employment. Click here to read about the call and sign up. Please join us.

People love her work. And, as she’s told us, because of what she’s learned in the course so far, she’s set to make two or three times as much income next year as she did this past year. Very exciting, considering it raises her income to a place where she’ll being able to breathe and care for herself with some spaciousness.

She also has big plans to reach even further heights in 2011, including creating some products for passive revenue. Very exciting.

Then, in a moment of realization, she dropped the “creating products” project. Just turned her back on it. Huh?

It’s Not What You Think

She doesn’t hate products or creating easier forms of income. What she realized was that she didn’t want to continue living at a constant frenetic pace. Let me quote her:

“I HAVE to remember that the Silicon Valley start-up mentality all around me (not just where I live, but also my Stanford “indoctrination”) say businesses have to develop with massive efforts in short periods of time… That is just not the truth in what I am doing. Deprogram, deprogram, deprogram!”

That sure feels like a relief? Yet, speed is so compelling… Are there legitimate reasons for wanting to move fast? When do you need to get moving? When can you slow down?

The Fine Print on Speed Choice

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is that our client already has clients. She has an individual practice that was (sorta) paying the bills, and we helped her move further into momentum. She now has the breathing room to go as slowly as she wants to with new projects.

There is a “running start” that is needed at the beginning of a business, or whenever you just aren’t making it. That’s why the first three months of our yearlong program include the very basics on what it takes to get clients. Clear audience, clear offer, making connections, building trust, and being effective in the conversation with potential clients.

Important stuff. But once you start bringing in clients, you don’t have to live there. And there are all kinds of reasons not to.

Why Long-Term Speed Isn’t So Good For You

Let me count the ways:

• If you move too quickly, you won’t be able to properly integrate and express spiritual and emotional insights, or even digest new ways your business is changing you.
• You’ll do shoddy work. You may think you work best under a deadline… until you see all the typos and mistakes that your customers point out to you.
• You won’t make considered decisions and instead fill up your time with what’s in front of you.
• You’ll miss the miracles and opportunities that happen in the spaces between things.
• You’ll spend more money on unhealthy take out food, and other unnecessary “caring for yourself when you can’t care for yourself” luxuries.
• You won’t bring your full attention to your emails or phone calls, subtly alienating the very people you want to connect with.
• Inspiration and guidance will continue to whisper in your heart’s ear, but you won’t be able to hear it at the speed you’re traveling.
• You’ll create a project management train wreck, with missed deadlines, increased refunds, and the above-mentioned shoddy work.

It used to be we had a lot more contemplative time. We used to write letters that would take days or weeks to travel back and forth. We used to walk or ride horses places. Forty miles used to be a day’s journey.

Unfortunately, a series of unfortunate and unhealthy choices made over decades has created a complicated interrelated system that demands a LOT of time from each of us. Just going through junk mail takes so much time, especially if you shred all those unwanted credit card offers to avoid identity theft. Yes, you can take steps to get off junk mail lists… which takes yet more time.

If you have your own business, you have more control over your time than most. Please don’t just give that control away to the culture of speed.

But how can you resist the siren’s call for speed?

How To Slow Down

• Acknowledge when you do have to move quickly.

When you aren’t making it, you do have to get going. Acknowledge the reality of when speed is needed. It’s insane to think speed is just never needed, and so by acknowledging the occasional need for speed, your rejection of the speed culture won’t set off inauthenticity bells inside your heart.

What’s your “squeak by” number? What do you need to do to get there?

• Discipline yourself.

You have plenty of discipline, because you work hard all the time. Can you take the discipline from your workaholic tendencies, and apply it where it counts the most?

Many of us have made half-hearted commitments to spiritual practice. What if that time you spent in your heart was an obligation, and not a choice? What if you had to do it?

As you commit to this discipline, you’ll find speed is a function of your heart, not your mind. When your heart is connected, it knows the proper pace. Sometimes your heart moves slowly, savoring each step. Other times the Divine wind carries you at incredible speeds.

• Choose Wisely

Seeing your business clearly, and either figuring out or getting help to figure where it is and what it needs means that you can focus in on just one or two key projects that will move your forward.

When you are connected to your heart, and your heart is connected to Source, it’s much easier to see your business clearly, to see the possibilities, and to choose wisely.

Listen, I know it’s easy to say things like “know your business” and “choose wisely” and less easy to actually do it. Similarly, it’s easier to just go along with the culture of speed rather than to stop and do things differently.

Our economy is dysfunctional. That’s a given. People’s attention is taken up by a whole lot of distracting mess. It’s true. In this context you may not know how to assess your business. You may not know how and where to focus your business.

But is swimming in the culture of speed really going to get you there? Slow down, learn what you need to learn, and proceed at the pace of your own heart instead.

Do you have any other reasons that speed is no good for you? Can you join me in a commitment to bring health into our economy by slowing down?

Come share your thoughts in the Tent.

When you are about to actually do something, the worry that it won’t work out and you won’t make the money you need has you fretting. Quite normal. Totally natural. Don’t judge yourself.

Unfortunately, what happens next is that the fretting turns into an endless tweaking before you actually carry out what your tweaking. As tweaking becomes endless tweaking, the first of the month gets closer… and your panic increases. Deer-in-headlights-syndrome sets in.

After lots of tweaking and not much accomplishing, you pull out your credit card, or whatever you do to squeak through another month.

That’s my story, although thankfully Heart of Business is past the years where I needed to pull strings in order to make it month-to-month. We’re moving toward launching our next course later this month, and we’re trying some new things. I’m nervous. Is it going to work? Am I doing it right? Am I betraying myself? After checking my heart, I know I’m not betraying myself.

Here’s what I want to tell both me and you. I’ve read this story before at least a 1000 times, and I’m betting you have, too. It still needs to sink in.

Business unfolds in iterations. You do something. It works maybe 20 percent as well as you’d like. You look at it, you try it again. It works 45 percent as well as you’d like. You look at it, you try it again, it works 70 percent as well as you’d like. Maybe that’s good enough. Seventy percent.

On to the next thing, until you have a hatfull of things functioning at 70% and you’re making a living. Then whew… you catch your breath. At this point you can really turn up the juice and get things going.

Yes, just a hat’s worth of things. A good list of responsive people, decent content that connects, a solid offer that your people want and need. They don’t have to be super-duper amazing. Just 70 percent effective.

Attitude is important. Spiritual alignment is important. Learning and understanding how others have been successful with various business-y things is incredibly helpful.

Our blog and Business Heart Toolkit are full of no-cost help on how to move your business forward. There are plenty of other people who also have incredible resources on moving your business forward. Molly, Charlie, Dave, Elizabeth, Naomi, Bill, Pam, Hiro, Andrea, and Suzanne, among many others, know what to do.

Bottom line? Take a step. Make a ton of mistakes. Mess up. Do it badly.

That Is So Uninspiring

We all have different approaches to this problem. Kate Williams, my compatriot here at Heart of Business, has a real love of quality. She told me when she read the first draft of this article, that it left her uninspired, somewhat deflated.

Let me be clear: 70 percent and “doing it badly” is not (necessarily) about sacrificing quality. Kate puts it this way, “I strive to do the best I can and take care of myself.”

The emphasis I want to bring is not to poor quality. When you are doing work that matters, of course you want to do it well. Your heart won’t let you do it badly.

The real emphasis is on the iterative process. When you do something for the third or tenth time, it has the opportunity to evolve, to become sharper, crisper, juicier, more effective.

If you aim for version 10.0 on the first try, you won’t do quality work, you won’t finish, and you won’t take care of yourself. When striving to do the truly impossible, that’s what happens.

Version 1.0 is Today

Don’t decide that the universe has given you the message that you’re doing the wrong thing simply because you’re getting version 1.0 results. Keep going. If you bounce around, you don’t get anywhere – you just start 1000 journeys.

I know. You’re wishing, as I have, that there was a magic formula, that someone could tell you to just do it this way and it will automatically be amazing and done. There are lots of folks who will promise you that, but the promises aren’t true.

Whatever you learn from someone else has to alchemically mix in the magic of your own heart and being and come out as your special sauce.

For the next few weeks, what is the 70 percent, the version 1.0 you’re aiming for?

p.s. Need practical help building your business from the heart?

I want to highlight our newest practitioner, Jason Stein. He’s an outstanding coach, who has this mysterious habit of helping people make money. He has a very deep commitment to spiritual practice and parenting. He’s an expert communicator, and his super-power is helping people ask for and receive help in their business.

If you’re ready to get your business moving and you’d like someone to roll up their sleeves and work with you, may I recommend checking out Jason? Read about our Organic Business Development Program, and schedule a time to speak with him.

In this case, the incomprehensible mystery I was cross-culturally exclaiming about is business. How in the heck do you learn business? Do you need to take a course on how to manage a team? Do you need to figure out how to present a business plan to potential investors? Do you need to learn about payroll taxes?

It’s a huge topic, and so no wonder you might sigh along with me in your own cross-cultural way.

The article part of this article is mercifully short. The majority of it is a checklist, with a little bit of guidance to help you use it. I’ll be nice and give you the guidance now so when you read the checklist you won’t go insane.

This Is Not A One Month Syllabus

There’s a reason it seems to take two to three years of focus on business development to get your business truly stable and into momentum. It may take you a year or two to get competent and effective in these different areas.

There’s a trick to handling such a huge and diverse syllabus without going insane.

The Trick To Avoiding Insanity

Do not go for mastery with one exception.

The only thing you need to be a real master of is Item Number 7: How to deliver your product or service in an effective way that wows your clients.

Release your need to go for mastery with anything else. You just need to be effective, competent, sorta-okay with them. The ones that you need to hire out to experts will become obvious as you go along. And, as your business grows, you’ll be able to afford it.

But, for now, just competent. Just effective. Just “getting by.”

Plan Your Education

First, go through this checklist right now and find the areas that you have some comfort or skill in, no matter how few of them there are. Celebrate those!

Second, go through the checklist again and ask the heart of your business which ONE thing is what your business is needing you to learn next. Be willing to be surprised. Say yes to it. And dig in.

Third, give yourself time. Remember how I just wrote that it may take you two or three years to really get your business into momentum and feeling stable? Well, what I meant was that it may take you two or three years to really get your business into momentum and feeling stable.

Two or three years. You can make money and do okay, even well, before then. If you are already effective with many of the things on this checklist you may shorten that time considerable.

But to feel really stable, like you’ve got your feet under you and you won’t get knocked over, two to three years.

Here’s the checklist. Go to it.

The 23 Things You Need to Know to Be Really Successful in a Micro Business

Marketing

1. How to identify and communicate with the folks you’re trying to reach.
2. How to create ongoing content that speaks to potential clients and deepens the relationship.
3. How to network without feeling like a piranha.
4. How to create strategic alliances that don’t burn you out.

Related Marketing Systems and Tools:

• Autoresponder (we use Aweber*).
• Contact Manager (we use Solve360*).
• Website with blog (we use WordPress) and good designers.
• Social media tools (we primarily use Twitter and blogging. To a lesser extent we use Facebook).
• Multimedia tools if you want, like microphone for audio recording, and camera for video recording.

Sales

5. How to hold an effective sales conversation.
6. Copywriting–how to hold an effective sales conversation in writing.

Related Sales Systems and Tools

• Online shopping cart (we use 1shoppingcart*).
• Merchant account which processes credit cards (we use PayPal and Authorize.net).

Product/Service Delivery

7. How to deliver your product or service in an effective way that wows your clients.
8. How to craft an offer that meets client needs and expectations.
9. How to communicate effectively through upset.

Related Product/Service Systems and Tools

• Desktop design software (we use Adobe InDesign and Photoshop). Perfectly good stuff can be done with more basic packages like Pages or Word).
• Nonviolent Communication book by Marshall Rosenberg.

Project and Information Management

10. How to capture and organize tasks without dropping details.
11. How to organize and timeline projects.
12. How to capture and organize information without overwhelm or losing important bits.

Related Project and Information Management Systems and Tools

• Project/Task Manager (We use Omnifocus).
• Information manager (We use Evernote Premium).
• Calendars (We us iCal on the Mac).
• Online Collaboration Tools (we use Google Docs).

Strategic Planning

13. How to know what your heart really wants.
14. How to know what your business really needs.
15. Understanding revenue streams and choosing appropriately.
16. How to prioritize projects so your heart and business both get what they need.

Related Strategic Planning Systems and Tools

• Mastermind group: (Mark’s been in a mastermind group for years).
• Mastermind of the Heart (bonus ebook and audio class from us–comes with Unveiling the Heart of Your Business).
• Do More Great Work book by Michael Bungay Stanier with 15 maps on how to think/work with your Great Work.
• Planning tools: Whiteboards, big pieces of paper, colored pens.

Money

17. Having a comfortable relationship with money.
18. How to spot check your bookkeeper, without being a bookkeeper yourself.
19. How to price your products and services so they are profitable for you and accessible to your particular audience.
20. How to pay yourself without getting into trouble with the tax collector.

Related Money Systems and Tools

• Online access to your separate business banking account.
• Accounting software (We use Quickbooks online).
• Online money management tools like Mint can be extraordinarily helpful as well.
• Bookkeeper (Local to Portland we use Balance Your World Bookkeeping).
• Accountants (Local to Portland we use My Tax Man [Can you believe they don't have a website? If you're in Portland, just Google them]).
• The Soul of Money book by Lynne Twist.
• The Heart of Money Transformational Journey, a course we teach that is also available in a home study format.

Management

21. How to hire folks who help you, like web designers, virtual assistants, accountants, and bookkeepers.
22. How to clearly communicate needs, expectations and timelines to outsourced people.
23. How to have a productive meeting.

Related Management Systems and Tools

• Online collaborative communication tools (we use Google Docs).
• Sharable Project Management (we use Solve360* and Basecamp is another good one).
• Death by Meeting book by Patrick Lencioni. All of his books on management and teams are top notch.
• Nonviolent Communication book by Marshall Rosenberg–specifically sections about how to make requests.

* Links denoted with an asterisk are affiliate links.

p.s. Missed out on free call last week?

You can still get the recording on the Sacred Moment.

p.p.s. Needs some hands-on help getting your business going?

We have two practitioners available to support you one-on-one in your business. Both Judy and Jason are experienced, heart-centered official Heart of Business peeps who can work with you to get your business up and running, without losing your heart in the process.

If you’re needing that one-on-one support, check out the offer, and see if it resonates: Organic Business Development Program.

A penny dropped recently, despite having heard it in different forms over and over again. The penny that dropped clarified that you don’t just do things differently when you head-up a team of people, but you actually do different things. As in, my day is filled with very different activities than the ones on my calendar 24 months ago.

For me, it’s been a struggle to change my daily activities. It’s not just about getting it done or being afraid to let other people help. That was definitely a hurdle, and I got through it by practicing. It’s been something deeper.

There’s an ongoing belief in me that “front line” work is what’s valuable. Doing the coding changes on the website, getting the promotional email written, writing the content, answering the query from a client, teaching the course.

So, when my weekly calendar is full of meetings with HoB team members, or I’m needing to spend several hours just sitting and thinking about the business, it’s really hard for me to value that as important.

Kate pointed it out to me multiple times until I finally began to grok it. “Mark, there’s a tone of impatience that comes into your voice when we’re meeting, as if this isn’t really important and you can’t wait to get on to the next thing.”

It took many repetitions, but it finally stopped me in my tracks when I got it.

Got What?

You may just be in the place of getting your DIY solo practice started. You may never want to turn it into a company, which is just fine. And so you may be wondering how in the heck does this apply to you?

This is actually a critical, internal shift. Many people talk about the critical shift from “practitioner” or “expert” or “engineer” to “business owner.” And yes, that’s a critical shift, when you realize that you actually have a business, and that you are the sovereign of it.

But that’s not the shift I’m talking about.

It’s A Shift of Caring

There’s a very technical, very global-corporation-oriented book, The Leadership Pipeline, whose authors talk about the real nitty-gritty of what leaders and managers at different levels of an organization need in order to be effective.

The authors are talking about a shift in what activities you care about and see as valuable and worthwhile. Really getting it in your kishke, your guts, the value of these different activities, so your calendar fills with different activities.

The funny thing is, in this very corporate technical leadership book, what they are really talking about is a big expansion in empathy, humility, and caring.

This can be a tough one for many solo business owners. Often a practitioner is really in love with his client work, and wants to do that to the exclusion of all else. So things like marketing, systems, accounting, sales, content creation all fall into the “I know I need to, but they aren’t truly the real thing” category.

If you can find a job in an organization that will pay you to do that one thing that you love, and that feels right to you, fantastic! Go for it. If that’s not an option, you need to expand the reach of your heart in order to be an effective business owner, one whose business can bring in clients and money.

You need to find room in your heart for the business stuff, to tuck it in right next to what you already love doing.

Two Different Loves

First there is the impersonal, almost abstract love. You know, someone is rude to you at the store, you react to them. And then later, once you catch your breath, you realize they are human, they have a heart, and they probably were just stuck in a pattern. If you take the time you can probably touch into a universal love for them, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to hang out together.

Then, there’s the more intimate, personal, connected love. The one where you actually are interested in this person. You want to hang out, get in their space, and learn more about who they are and what makes them tick. The love carries you forward.

If you find the most you can access is the first kind of love for the different areas of your business that need attention, you probably are in for a rough time. I don’t mean to burst anyone’s bubble, but your new business needs a very personal and intimate love and caring if it’s going to really do well.

Getting Past Prejudices

Human beings like categories, especially in a crowded community. I personally live in an urban area with a million and half people, so if I meet someone who isn’t going to be a friend, it’s easier to unconsciously slot them into a category than to take the time to get to know them personally. Painful, but it’s something our brains do automatically, unless we bring a conscious presence to being aware of the people we meet.

Meet enough people in a certain category that you don’t like and it becomes much harder to really see a shining gem of a person in that category. The prejudice of previous experience gets in the way.

In last week’s article I spoke about the cycle of violence in business. In it I discuss the painful and damaging history that business has had over the last few centuries. By the time we’re adults in this society, we’ve met many, many examples of business practices we would never want to associate with, much less be caught in a dark alley at midnight with them.

Your business is not that business. Your business is a shining gem of a business—or at least it can be. Your business is aching to be seen as the worthy partner of the beautiful work you already do for clients.

If you could only see the beauty in your business, the potential beauty in your business’ marketing, accounting, and other aspects, what would be possible?

It’s been startling for me. In taking time and really caring about all of the things Heart of Business now needs from me, things like meetings with team members, clear vision and communication, allowing others to do the work and learning how to give feedback that truly supports them and helps them to grow… when I touch into the beauty in these things, my eyes blur with tears.

Like I said earlier, turning your solo practice into a company may not be on your path—it certainly doesn’t have to be. You can be perfectly financially viable and successful without a big team.

Yet still, if you want to be financially viable and successful, you need to see your business as the beautiful individual it is. You have to find the room in your heart to love your business as much as you love what you do. To see the transformational possibilities in what it can do.

I’ve written a lot about how marketing can be healing, about the creativity and heart in systems, and how business itself can be healing.

Now It’s Up to You

There’s a lot of nitty-gritty stuff to get done. Before you tackle your business to-do list with a sense of exhaustion, overwhelm and resentment, wondering when you get to do “the good stuff,” stop. Take some time.

Set aside, for a moment, the love you have for the work you do, and like with a forgotten younger child, turn to your business and all the things it needs you to show up for and see if you can find the love in your heart to be with it. The love that allows you to get more intimate and personal with it. The love that brings an appreciation and a desire to learn about what it truly needs and how it wants to express itself.

And then get to work with love in your heart.

Come share your thoughts in The Tent.

There are many nice and wonderful things to say here, including how humbled I am when this kind of connection happens. But we’re talking about search engines, Google, and your business, so let’s focus there.

It’s a wonderful thing, eh? Someone you’ve never met, who you’ve never reached out to or put much effort into finding, finds you through their own efforts using a search engine. Voilá! You have a new client.

The magic that makes this happen more often and more dependably comes with something called “Search Engine Optimization” or “SEO” for short. You, or someone you hire, takes the time and energy to optimize the language and coding on your website so you pop up in other people’s search results. They click through, fall in love, and become your client without any other effort on your part. Pretty nifty.

When you have a new business, or an older business that until recently has done well with word-of-mouth and referrals newly visible on the web, the lure of SEO can be strong, appear so magical.

You don’t have to get in anyone’s face.
You don’t have to do awkward networking meetings.
You don’t have to be perfect.

It’s all done through a machine-like intermediary.

Although it may sound good, I have to admit, I don’t recommend folks spend much money on SEO early in their business.

(Short break while all the SEO experts whip me with wet spaghetti strands.)

Am I Trashing SEO?

No. I’m not. I’m just saying it has a time and a place. Putting a lot of effort and money into SEO early on in your micro-business is not necessarily the best option.

I tend to work at the opposite end of the spectrum. People have been telling me for years to get on the SEO bandwagon, and I’ve “been meaning” to get to it for that long. I do know folks who have invested in SEO and seen results. It can work like the dickens.

It can also cost like the dickens.

I guess I haven’t really pursued it because we’re overwhelmed, waiting for the Tooth Fairy to do our SEO for us, doing pretty well with what we’re doing. And what has been working so well, Mr. Heart of Business, you ask?

The Generosity of Happy Customers and Colleagues

When someone comes through a Google search, all she has to make a decision about your offers is her trust in Google providing a relevant link and the strength of your written words. Sometimes that can work magic, if the moment is right for her.

But when someone comes as a referral, it carries so much more weight. Having someone she trusts lead her to your website can allow her to look beyond the occasional weak or unclear spot in your writing. Someone who loves her telling her to go to the site and sign up for the newsletter” may just cause her to follow that advice, without looking around too much.

This gives you some room to focus your attention on making sure your website is warm, welcoming, and clear. You can write with the idea that many of the people will come to you because someone told them directly, or because they clicked through on a link from someone they like, respect, or otherwise trust.

Which Is Easier For You?

If a good friend of mine showed up with someone I should meet, I’d have a much easier time speaking to them both than if a stranger showed alone on my doorstep. I can do both, but the first situation seems a little more natural, doesn’t it?

I’m more relaxed, and so are my visitors. It makes for a much pleasanter conversation.

Which Is Exactly What Happens For Us

When someone joins our email list, we ask them to give us one additional piece of information beyond their name and email. We ask them: “How did you hear about us?” By and large, people tell us.

Here are how ten randomly picked subscribers found us recently:

How: [name] (Meaning they wrote in someone’s name, but we don’t want to publish that name without permission.)
How: Friend referred me
How: a colleague
How: Biznik (A business networking site we participate on.)
How: My partner
How: My friend [name] is using your workbook and shared the link via Google Wave
How: I received the link from a friend who bought your book
How: I don’t remember! Sorry!
How: [link to a blog post] (There was an actual link. Strangely, the link didn’t mention us at all, but we were on that person’s list of blogs they read, aka the blogroll on the sidebar.)
How: Through Havi’s web site (www.thefluentself.com)

Ten subscribers on this particular day and not a single one came through a search engine. Of course, if we had great SEO, maybe we would’ve had 15 or 20 subscribers, or even more. And that’s why we should do SEO. (Okay! Okay! We’ll do SEO! In 2010…)

But it’s also why it’s not strictly necessary. If we never did SEO, we would do just fine. And you’ll be just fine, too.

What to Do Instead of SEO

As I mentioned above, instead of SEO, focus on making your website warm, welcoming and clear. And the way to do that is to focus on how you’re using your words, both in what you’re saying and how you’re saying it.

Make the conversation with your web visitor comfortable. To do that, you can adopt a few methods that good conversationalists use. And by “good” I mean people enjoy speaking with them.

• They listen.
• They ask questions.
• When they do tell stories, they make sure they are relevant to who is there.
• They notice people’s moods and respond to them.

Entire forests have been felled (oh, the trees!) to print all that’s been written about healthy communication. But let me hit some key points.

Keys to Organic Referrals

• Listen to your clients.

When your clients and customers tell you about their pain or struggle, listen. Notice the language they use. Do they say, “I need to transform this block in my relationship?” Or do they say, “I just wish we could put this constant, gut-wrenching arguing behind us?”

Often our clients say things, offer insight into how they perceive their situations, that have a lot of vitality and oomph to them, things that hit you in the kishkes. Our challenge as business owners is to use what they say in our marketing copy without taking all the oomph out.

Make note of the phrases they use that just pow, hit you in the oompher. Then use that language exactly, or nearly exactly, on your website.

• Talk about yourself. But not too much.

If you feel the desire to describe yourself and what you do, think twice. Ask, “Do I just need to write, or would someone visiting the website sincerely want to know this about me, or what I do, right now?”

You may notice that you can get away with saying a lot less than you think you need to. I learned this recently when my nine year-old niece asked a question about God and the devil. I had to bite my tongue to keep from going off on a long esoteric explanation. Instead just answer the question she asked.

Nine year-olds, as well as potential clients, get bored easily when there’s a lot of information that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what they are asking. Sure, you may see the relevance. But if they don’t, or if it takes more than a few moments to make that relevance clear, they’ll get bored and wander off to go play archeological dig in the backyard with the kids from next door.

• Answer a lot of client questions. A lot of them.

Our website is full of answers to little questions our clients ask. Not questions about us, but questions about the problems we help to solve. When a client likes an answer, they sometimes send people they know who are asking the same question.

And don’t just answer the question, be a little daring. Have strong opinions like, new businesses shouldn’t spend money on SEO. Show your personality by writing sentences with phrases like “hit you in the oompher.” Make your writing more than helpful, make it memorable and personal.

The Funny Thing That Happens

As you do these three things–using your client’s expressions of the problems you help them with, talking about yourself and your services only as they relate to what people want to know, and answering lots of questions–not only do you get referrals, but you  also get Google juice in the form of organic Search Engine Optimization.

That’s right. Unadulterated content has its own kind of clout with search engines. Organic Google juice squeezes out of all the authentic, client-centered, heart-centered website copy you write helping you rise up higher on search results.

Here’s how some other subscribers found us:

How: googling
How: search engine
How: searching for “mastermind”
How: search for “money and heart”
How: internet search about money and spirituality
How: I searched for home page solutions
How: Through Internet

If you are new or struggling as a self-employed person or have a super-small business, please don’t spend gobs of money you don’t have on SEO. By writing to and about the folks you’re helping, you’ll get some of that good stuff anyway.

When you have more clients and are making more money, you can procrastinate hiring an SEO person like we have. Except don’t do the procrastination part.

p.s. Free call today: You’ve Got One Year, Go!

It’s no secret that the early-bird deadline for Opening the Moneyflow year-long course is coming up. Over half the spots are definitely taken, and we have a whole group of eager-beavers with their applications in that we’re still working through. If everyone who applied ends up joining, 45 out of 60 seats will be gone.

But “everybody else is doing it” is not a good reason to jump in. That’s why I’m doing a no-cost call on “You’ve Got One Year: Go!” I intend to outline why we’ve put together our year-long program as we have.

Yes, it’s to help you consider taking the year-long course. But it’s also to help you think through how to structure this next year so your business has a good chance of moving toward momentum, even if you don’t spend the year with us.

The no-cost teleclass is going to be mostly content, with a small chunk of time devoted to pitching the program. If you think you can gain some benefit from listening, please feel free to register for the call even if you have zero intention of joining us for the year.

Check out the details and sign up.

And while you’re at it, check out the Opening the Moneyflow program itself, if you’re so inclined.