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Rapport and permission

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Lessons learned at a business event — that apply to all the conversations you get to have.

You know those meetings with facilitated networking?

Where you get to talk to someone you don’t know about your business?

I go to those. Heck. I run a women’s networking group of my own. The whole point of these events is to create connection, community, and support for each other in business.

Last time I failed miserably; instead of making a deep connection, I alienated someone. Nice. Another opportunity to connect kinda sorta blown.

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Declutter your brand

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I talk about decluttering a lot, and teach it to my coaching clients

Usually it’s in the context of physical decluttering — that spiritual review of everything you have that helps you get real about what you keep, and helps you see the opening to release what no longer serves you. Physical decluttering is so healing to do once a season. Like this: Pick up every single thing you own, one room at a time (don’t forget your car, your garage, if you have these), look at it, and ask your true heart:

  • Is this something I use now?
  • Will I use it in the next three months?
  • Is it something I cherish?

And if the answer to all three questions is No, release that thing. Give it away, donate it or just throw it away. Create space. Here is one blogpost I’ve written on physical decluttering and here’s one more.
decluttered branding

Today I’m thinking about decluttering in a whole ‘nother way — decluttering your brand
Okay, wait. This will (probably) make sense (if it doesn’t I’m sorry, and thanks for helping me work through this). Let’s look.

What is your brand?

  • Your brand is how your message is received — what people think and feel when they think about you and your business
  • Your brand is how you align your actions with your values, and how you show up for your commitments
  • Your brand is who you are and how that informs everything you do in your business and your career

Are you thinking: “Okay I get it. But why and how would I declutter my brand?”

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Branding and personal branding — living your best life

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What’s the difference between branding and personal branding?

There is none. Or, at least, there doesn’t have to be.

bestlife

That’s hard to believe sometimes, I know. It’s like you undergo a kind of identity change when you step into “work mode.”

You have a business that reflects your heart’s mission and soul’s purpose.

You’ve done so much work on yourself. You reached the point in your life where you’ve had the vision, felt the calling, allowed passion and purpose to motivate you into being of service in your business.

All the skills, learning, experience and practices have made you the woman that you are, and have brought you this far.

Your personal brand

Everything that comprises the woman that you are — a beautiful regal woman who walks her talk, who has a big and loving heart, who is generous, who feels called to serve — that’s your personal brand. Your values. The way you show up. Your self-care. How you love. All of the above… But what happens when you turn your attention and devote your bandwidth — your time, your treasure, your talent — to your business?

You’ve got so much on the line in your business.

When your livelihood ($$$) is on the line, you can easily lose that beautiful glowing silken cord that ties your heart to your business. Based on fear, you start interacting with your business and making decisions from stress instead of from love.

Fear of failure. Fear of loss. Fear can drive you to seeing our business as a foreign object, instead of as a manifestation, reflection and organic representation of your best and highest: your values, your passion, your mission and purpose.

Is your business, in all its facets, in alignment with your heart and soul?

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The holidays approach. Set your juicy intentions now.

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It’s early December, and the full-court press is upon us. Holidays.

For all of us, a socially intensive time of year, whether overfull with gatherings and family obligations or overfull with solitude. A tougher time than most to be single. I find that it’s tougher to be a single woman in December than at any other time (except maybe mid-February!).

Then there’s the pressure to spend money, to overspend, or worse, to go into debt buying gifts. I don’t know about you, but 90% of the paper mail in my mailbox the last three weeks has been catalogs, urging me to buy buy buy. (Here’s a tip: they go right into the recycling basket.) Have you thought about making gifts? Or regifting something that was once given to you that you are now ready to release? Or making a small donation in someone’s honor? Three simple ways to step off the consumer mainstream.

Oh, and the pressure of food. Every workplace reception area is decorated with shiny-wrapped candies, or cookies, or both. Hard to avoid, isn’t it? Some techniques that work: Eat a reasonable meal before going to a holiday party. Remind yourself daily (especially when you’re in the vicinity of the shiny sweet stuff) of your commitments around eating.

I know, sometimes it gets hard to feel grounded and balanced and like we’re living into our highest good at this time of year. I get it. I feel ya.

You might find yourself tempted to let some of your commitments and practices slide as the month goes by. Adequate rest, eating well, workouts, walks and other wellness regimens all can suffer when we get disbalanced.

There are all kinds of good things you can do to keep yourself on track during the rest of this month, things that will set you up to start 2012 off in the most inspired, productive and juicy way.

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Bringing the juicy* back… Want to give a thoughtful, meaningful, easy and no-cost gift?

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Hello, precious one!

I hear questions and comments like the following when I talk to the clients in my practice, when I talk to the women I meet at business events, at the gym, at community gatherings:

  • I feel a strong call to make a change; how do I figure out what I’m meant to do?
  • My life used to be more juicy*; how can I get that back?
  • How can I align my brand and my website with my values?
  • I see vibrant women all around me being daring and audacious; I want that!

*Wondering what juicy means? Check it out:
Juicy, adj. 1. full of juice, succulent   2. very profitable, appealing, interesting, satisfying, or substantive   3. very interesting or colorful, even slightly scandalous

Here’s a thoughtful, easy way to gift someone you love/admire/care for. I’m offering one-hour consultations for any busy woman you’d like to honor with a gift. You can give this gift (as many of them as you’d like, actually) any time, until 12/31/11. Oh, did I mention it’s free? That’s right, $0!

No cost? Seriously?

I’m not crazy. I’m delighted to do this. I want to give as many free sessions as possible to powerful women who know there is more to life than job/career/children and who are open to getting support for their wildest dreams. This way I get to hold space for their sanity, creativity, mindfulness, purpose and balance during this holiday season. These sessions are also designed as a way to dive into topics and questions that can have a big impact on the present and the future, like those listed above.

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What’s “personal” have to do with “brand”?

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My take on personal branding is a bit different from what you might see and hear from others.

It’s very simple really.

Imagine:

What if the way you show up for work, play, with your family, in your community, all matched? What would it feel like to live a life that integrated your best self in all its facets?

Ask yourself:
What is my mission?
What am I here to accomplish?
How can I best be of service?
What is the mark I am meant to make on my community? On the world?

Your answers to these questions are your core values (see more about that in the Personal Branding section of my Magnolias West website. When your behavior matches your core values, you are living into your greatness, your highest good, and being of maximum service and value to all whose lives you touch.

It’s quite a simple concept, and as I know well from my own development and the work I do with my clients, it’s not that easy to manifest.

In our culture, there’s not much support for living and working in a way that expresses our highest selves. It takes fierce determination to commit to living a positive, contributive life—to transform from what we were in the past to what we want to be today and in the future. It means releasing victim consciousness. It means recognizing and choosing not to dwell in self-pity, resentment and bitterness. It means developing the skills required to 1) recognize negative thinking and 2) change your thinking, on the spot, to something more useful.

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Creative ways to market yourself and your business/practice

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I am so happy and grateful about the wonderful article just published about me, my daughter, my passion for magnolias and my business. This article is a first for me, and I’m so glad that I was alert to possibility, that I asked the right question at the right time and that I took the right actions.

Here’s how it went (there’s a bit a background story, please be patient):

As I’ve often written before, I’ve been taking pictures of my daughter, Rose, with the magnolias in bloom as a backdrop, since she was a year old. Every year. As a native New Yorker, I became very skilled at looking for and identifying signs of spring. The crocuses, the tiniest buds on trees. One of my favorite signs was the swelling of fuzzy buds on the bare branches of magnolia trees even in the dark cold of east coast February days.

And then when they’d bloom! In New York this is often around mid-April, when the days would be warm enough to release their magnificent sultry perfume. It was natural that I took Rose with me on my annual pilgrimage to the magnolias. And combined my passion for the mags in bloom and joy in my daughter in these photo sessions.

We continued the tradition after we moved to Sacramento, even though here in California the magnolias bloom really really early (even before the daffodils, and it’s often so darned cold when they bloom that you can hardly get a whiff of their lovely fragrance). Lots of years of photos in the cold gray rain.

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