Do you "Try" or do you go the extra mile?

From CEO Space to Rejuvenate Training many people and organizations are growing the presence of Cooperative Business instead of the current model of Competitive Business.

What does this mean for us as entrepreneurs, practioners, and coaches?

The first impact is the call to become more authentic and more willing to be aware of our intentions at any given moment. During a networking event, are you truly able to ask and hear the answer to, “What do you need next?” and consider how you can support the speaker in getting what they need?

And if you hear that you or someone else you know is a resource for this person, to what extent are you actually willing to be supportive? Over the past few months, I’ve heard many people say, “I’ll Try,” when talking about connecting someone to another individual who might be of assistance.

Remember the last time you used this phrase. Get yourself into the same physical position: sitting, standing, leaning forward or back. Re-create the feeling of saying, “Well, I’ll try.” Do you like that feeling? How familiar is it?

As kids, we learn that “I’ll try,” is a way to tell someone else I don’t want to do it so I’ll do only a little bit. And then you won’t be mad at me for not doing what you wanted or ask. Maybe you don’t believe me…that’s okay. Test it! Re-experience as completely as possible in your body, senses and by repeating what you said as many times and with as many different scenarios as possible. Be open and willing to feel what you really meant by saying to someone else, “I’ll try.” We've all heard Yoda from Star Wars say: Do or do not...there is no try. This is so much the truth! "I'll try is a platitude to cover up and say other things.

You’re probably wondering, why does this matter any way?

It matters because if your reaction to doing something for someone, even if it was your idea, is the response, “I’ll try,” it’s time to realize some part of you doesn’t want to do it!

Will you actually go the extra mile to be a Cooperative Business Leader?

Will you tell yourself the truth? Forcing yourself to do something you don’t actually want to do is not that great for anyone. In some way that conflicted energy will rebound with everyone it touches.

When the urge or the words “I’ll try “ come up, you have a huge opportunity to go deeper into your own reality and find places to clean things up so you can be a clearer, stronger entrepreneur. Here are some great ideas for places to learn even more: Unmasking--A Workshop with Sally Churgel, and another option: All Pain is Separation and All Healing Reconnects with Lansing Barrett Gresham.

Will you take the challenge to go the extra mile with yourself—and with others? Spend a week listening for those priceless, insightful words and see what you can learn.

Wishing you Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue

The World Needs Your Message!

Can you feel, deep down in your guts and bones, how much the world needs your message, your gifts?

Most of our formative years are spent learning how to hide, adjust, and pretend to be what someone else wants us to be. This process is smart! We know we need to survive and all of these are fabulous survival skills.

Then, we leave school, we leave our parents’ home…and we discover that “We are perfectly adapted for a world we no longer inhabit,” Lansing Barrett Gresham. Each of us has learned to operate on a gameboard that we leave behind. The new places we go, visit, experience, and live frequently have very different sets of rules. What usually happens? We unconsciously start searching for a place and people who are at least close to those forms we learned growing up. This is more comfortable, more predictable, and easy to manage. And it reinforces all the “Don’t Be Yourself” messages that started coming in early on.

Then, the organism of humanity suffers. Some of you may have heard me say or read in other places that I believe humanity is a single organism. We’re in a world of hurt if we all insist on being liver cells. We’re here to complete different functions for each others. It’s the reason all those ways to “classify” ourselves exist (Myers-Briggs, Jungian Archetypes, even the DSM-V). Some of us are gifted with words, with numbers, with concepts, with sound…and so on.

Staying out of connection with your core gifts means some other part of the human organism is working harder than it’s designed to function.

We really do all need each other. That is growth, support, balance—that highly desirable state of wholeness. Individual wholeness means greater possibility for the entire population.

Whatever process or coach you choose, connect with that inner self and seek the path of bringing your gifts to the world at large. I promise it will be more fun than you imagined. More work, too, perhaps, but not all work has to be suffering!

Dedicated to Coach Louise--thanks for so much inspiration!

Wishing You Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue

Delegate time-consuming, well-defined tasks...

If you're running around like a chicken with it's head cut off and you assign your VA (Virtual Assistant) to do that for you, it doesn't improve the order of the universe.

Timothy Ferriss, The 4 Hour Work Week

I'm still laughing over this one...30 minutes later! Enjoy...

Heidi Sue

How are you insisting on failure?

If you’re launching a new product, changing what you do so you can attract more clients, or completely starting over, this lesson is incredibly important. And I want to shorten your learning curve…so let’s learn it together!

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to experience first hand one of the things David Neagle consistently talks about during his coaching, “The fear never goes away.” I desperately wish it wasn’t so. And in reality, any time we venture into new paths, fear is going to be one of the experiences on the journey. It’s human, it’s normal, its part of the process and a huge opportunity to learn.

My fear in launching new services and programs has focused on old patterns that were painful and I actually don’t want to repeat. I got a chance to notice how stability in my personal life inspires creativity and risk in my business life. The more my personal life is consistent, yummy, and supportive the greater my creativity and inspiration to build business big. With one huge problem: historically I had not built personal partnerships that were equal and up to the changes that can happen really fast when someone like me hits whirlwind mode in monetizing an idea or product.

I discovered over the past couple weeks I’ve been re-creating the fear that success meant my personal relationships suffered. In fact, on some level I’ve been insisting that this familiar weakness in how I’ve created my life in the past still HAD to be true NOW! The most interesting part is how much this is simply a lie. Those closest to me are completely behind my passion, work, and bringing my gifts to the world. They’re excited about Success & Heart Training, too.

And I’ve been really stuck in making myself afraid that I could have great relationships and friendships OR success in business. You know the extra craziness happening here? Over 90% of the people I talk to about these products and services are excited, have referrals to share with me, and other great boosts demonstrating the success potential for all this work is not just in my head.

Give me a couple hours though, I walk into the door of our house, and WHAM! Those old ghost patterns seem to rise up from the unconscious and before I even realize what I’m doing, there I go! Saying and doing the things that tell folks I don’t believe I can be happy and succeed.

Well, Celebrate and Shout! I can finally see and feel what’s going. That means I can make a different choice. I bet we can even laugh about it.

So I ask you, what are you doing that indicates on some level, in some way that you are insisting on failure? As one of my teachers, Lansing Barrett Gresham says, “Pain is information, suffering is optional.” How are you insisting that creating success also means you have to suffer?

I encourage you to pause, listen and feel in those moments when you feel so helpless and familiar you’re sure they can’t change. The actions in that moment are you own version of habit vs. current reality. We can change…and creating success in your life and business does not have to mean something else has to go wrong.

Wishing you Success & Heart,
Heidi Sue

Starbucks’ miss-firing in lots of places

Between Saturday and Monday and I visited 4 different Starbucks® stores. The first two just happened to be on my way for the regular things I was doing over the weekend. And the experience piqued my curiosity so I went out of my way to visit 2 more.

In what appears a desperate attempt to grab-back some market share in the slowing commercial coffee shop business, Starbucks launched Via® their new instant coffee brand this weekend. And they launched it with a huge presence and an equally large challenge: come taste-compare brewed coffee with our instant because we bet you can’t tell the difference. AND you can have a free cup of coffee just for taking the challenge.

Around Sonoma County, CA, I found the Starbucks’ engine frequently miss-firing. I visited the first store for one of the tea/lemonade drinks. I didn’t want coffee but was curious about the promotion. The displays were in place—and no tasting opportunity. I was surprised, the employees didn’t even offer the option when I placed my order. Huh. Maybe it was just that store.

Next morning, David and I specifically stopped at another store because we actually wanted to take the taste challenge. Hanging with a wine guy (www.winetopics.blogspot.com) usually means tasting and trying things gets done. Well, once again, big obvious display (it’s VERY orange!) and no offer or opportunity to compare tastes. I was now beyond curious, I felt a little annoyed: lots of hype, and nothing happening at the “ground” level.

So this morning on the way into the office, I stopped at two different locations about 20 minutes apart. (All the stores I visited were standalone operations and not in another retailer location.) The first one actually HAD the tasting station open and operating. (Sidebar—I did pick the brewed coffee for what it was. HA!) The second one however, did not. And we’re talking prime Monday morning coffee traffic time.

What do I want us all to learn from this? Friends, if you’re going to make an offer, make it happen! Don’t cook up some offer, program, or scheme and drop it. Not only will people be confused, they’ll be so annoyed they just might write about on a blog you’ll never even see! One of the mistakes people make in small business or practice is “ad libbing” things when talking to someone who seems interested and not actually following through on their words.

This Starbucks challenge was an expensive marketing campaign with a lot of visibility. My predominant experience of this massive exposure: carelessness and a lackadaisical implementation of a strategy smelling of desperation. I’d much rather go to my local coffee shop, Golden Bean in Rohnert Park, and after this little experiment, my commitment to support this fun, hip, funky local store with fabulous coffee has gotten even stronger. Big corporate made public promises and did not deliver. Whatever tiny pip of loyalty I had to a brand primarily built on ubiquity is down to nil or less. Please don’t make the same mistakes with your precious clients! Deliver what you promise!

Wishing you Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue

What’s your best way to begin?

I got great lessons this week on dancing with the unknowns. My new coach/healer training program has my passion, my interest, and piles of intentions with it. And since it’s not even launched yet—October 22 baby!—it’s not an income stream.

And I learned a good lesson this week. One I really want to share with you. I feel that money is a way to exchange money, its how our culture quantifies how and what we do. Sure, there are probably better ways to do that, and its still the dance in most of the Western world.

I spent about two years building my healing and yoga practice. And by most standards, it went really well (I’m a big dreamer, so I was always looking for ways to increase my research). When I realized what I really called to was teaching others how to handle the business parts of being in independent practioner in ways that didn’t take over the work they love to do, I “got” that my touch and yoga teaching activities are really lovely hobbies. Well, this week I saw a couple of my core clients—those long-term folks who’ve been a huge support and help on the way and I feel really good about serving them in ways that continue to be okay with both of us. And I subbed a yoga class for a women who got married this weekend and couldn’t find someone to take her Saturday class.

And you know what I discovered? Since making money is something that really matters to me, I feel SOOO much better when even smaller amounts are coming in not just going out during the program development stage I’m in. What does this come down to?

Each of has a different balanced, healthy way to create and transition. Sometimes, maintaining some of the earlier activities will feel like holding back from the new effort. Other times, that bit of maintenance can really be a jumping-off platform. Likewise, when it no longer feels like a platform, it’s time to let those things go.

I discovered that as long as it feels ethical to me, still doing some of the “older” activities is actually really healthy for me. I feel more independent this way, more balanced, and actually more powerful to create the new space—since I don’t have to feel so desperate and pressured.

What is your best way to start your new evolution? It may not look like anyone else’s answer, and that’s okay. Notice when you feel supported and free, when you feel desperate and crazy. I believe in reality, a good balance of what has been vs. what will be means feeling some of all four! May you find your best way to move forward in your life.

Wishing you Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue

What are you really here to do?

I firmly believe we are each here for a reason, a purpose. I feel and experience that divine has a direct connection to how we got here and what gifts we bring to this life.

So I wonder, what are you specifically here to do?

I need your gifts. Others around you need your gifts. Can you imagine each of us as a cell in the organism of humanity? Consider yourself as a unique and significant part of how the whole grows and moves forward. Well, we’d be in a serious mess if every cell in the body decided to be a brain cell or a blood cell, or a skin cell.

Just like each of our bodies need all the different functions and processes from the billions of cells we are, so we need each other. When any of us hold back on bringing our most precious gifts to the world, some other part feels the lack or the overwhelm of picking up the slack.

It’s time to tap into your purpose and passion to support the change that is underway in the world. Culturally, being a professional is how this happens. Do you want to be part of the wave of change going through the world? Do you truly want to help others with your phenomenal gifts (that I KNOW you have!)?

Then come on, I dare you, I double-dog dare you to find a coach, a program, a system for getting your abilities out into the world in a way where those people who are hungry for your work find you and get what they need! AND you get the monetary support you need to have a good life, keep helping people and have some fun!

Can I help you get there? You bet! Would I love to have join the www.managementrefugee.com journey? Yes and Yes! Even more though, I’m not attached to who you work with or what approach you resonate with for your journey. What matters to me most is that you get out there and do it! NOW is the time to start your new service business.

Wishing you Success & Heart,

Heidi Sue