I was crawling across the floor... or should I say I was trying to crawl across the floor.
Everything hurt. Every muscle twitch was excruciating.
Tears fell like hot lava from my face - and somehow, even THAT hurt. At best I was whimpering, at worst, outright wailing, as I made my way from the floor in the family room to the bathroom.
And then I had to try and stand up.
I was seriously entertaining the idea of just laying there - creating a pool of my own filth - just so I didn't need to move another millimeter.
But I kept going. I still don't know how I managed to "hold it" until I got to the toilet.
When my husband got home from work, we beelined to the ER. A few tests later confirmed that the sciatica that had disappeared months ago had come back with a vengeance. A pinched nerve that required neurosurgery to solve the problem.
Swell.
They sent me home with pain meds and told me to come back. The soonest they could get me in was 11 days away.
I'm sorry, what?!?!
Did you not hear the howling? Did you not see my wrenched up face and contorted body? I literally rode in the back seat of the car because I couldn't sit up straight, I was in so much pain.
I ended up having to reschedule my Creative Freedom Retreat because there was no way I could stand for more than a few moments at a time, never mind trying to lead a planning workshop.
At least with some pain meds, I could still get some work done. Right?
Wrong.
The meds took the edge off, but the pain was constant. I gave up trying to dress myself and ate as little as possible to minimize trips to the restroom... because said trips always required help. I practically had to be carried, it was that bad.
"Work" consisted of a handful of virtual appointments where I was strategically "propped and covered" so as not to reveal too much of myself on video. The less I moved, the less it hurt, so anything I could do without a camera on, I would attempt.
I had 4 semi-productive sessions before I finally gave up on the idea of doing anything that involved other people. The remainder of my "waiting" time, I was alone with my thoughts, wondering what would be left of my business when I was finally able to return to work.
Hustle taught me how to push — how to make things happen through grit, willpower, and sheer stamina. It trained me to override my body’s signals, distrust my intuition, and measure my worth by how much I could produce before collapsing at the end of the night.
Hustle applauds the late nights and the full calendars. It rewards the moments you say “yes” when your whole being is whispering “not now.” It’s a survival strategy dressed up as ambition.
When my kids were young, I wore busy like a badge of honor. So much so, that my kids thought I was always working and my youngest started to think his babysitter was his mom.
While I let a lot of that thinking go over the years, I was still the bottleneck in my business. I could outwork almost anyone, and I often did - until I couldn't anymore.
I told myself it was passion. Dedication. Proof that I was serious about success. And maybe that's a little bit true.... maybe.
What it really was, though, was fear.
Fear that if I slowed down, everything I’d built would crumble. Fear that if I stopped producing, people would stop paying attention... or caring about me at all.
I knew how to reach for the next milestone, but I didn’t know how to rest in what I’d already achieved. Every goal met, every box checked, every objective achieved only opened the door to the next one (and the next one, and the next).
Satisfaction never lasted long. It's a chronic condition for Fusion creatives - wind your key, put your head down, and go.
Ask for help? Naw. It's faster to just do it myself.
Celebrate? Maybe. Will there be cake?
Even with all the growth work I've done, I still didn’t realize how I’d internalized the notion that success is earned through exhaustion. That the more I sacrificed, the more I proved I was worthy of having it.
Well, crap.
It took being laid up in bed for 11 days to see how hustle had conditioned me to mistake constant output for consistent progress. To believe that if I wasn’t moving, I was somehow failing.
Double crap.
Hustle won't teach you how to hold success—how to sustain it without sacrificing yourself in the process. Because it’s one thing to climb the mountain; it’s another to live at the summit without losing your footing.
Real, sustainable success doesn’t demand more from you; it asks for something different: discernment, pacing, and the courage to stop performing your worth. It’s the quiet, grounded kind of success that expands your capacity instead of depleting it.
I knew how to climb the mountain of success. I'd been climbing my whole life. But I didn’t know how to live at the top without losing myself.
Hustle glorified the sprint and ignored the recovery.
Sustainable success is not about doing more; it’s about doing what matters with integrity and enough space to breathe. It asks you to trade urgency for rhythm, exhaustion for discernment, and constant striving for steady alignment.
It calls for pacing, not pushing. For courage—not the kind that conquers, but the kind that trusts.
The world doesn’t need your burnout. It needs your brilliance: steady, embodied, and alive.
Hustle culture disguises depletion as achievement. We’ve been conditioned to believe that busyness equals importance — but as leadership coach Ray Williams notes, being “addicted to busyness” actually diminishes well-being and real productivity.
The culture of hustle convinces us that constant output, all-in commitment and “always on” momentum are the marks of real achievement. Actually, though, research shows this mindset often leads to the opposite: exhaustion, declining performance and diminished creativity. Over-working (i.e., more than ~50 hours/week) actually reduces productivity, impairs cognitive function and stifles innovation rather than increasing it.
This is how depletion gets dressed up as achievement: you check off the hours, you hit the metrics, you keep moving — but the foundational capacities for leadership (clarity, presence, deep thinking) erode. The badge of “busy” becomes a mask for being drained.
When our identity is tightly bound to what we produce, our self-worth hinges on the next "result" - another client session, another set of deliverables.
Not that I speak from experience or anything. It took a LOOONG-ASS TIME for me to figure that out... and more time to do the work of unravelling it. And yeah, it still pings me from time to time... especially when my results aren't what I expect them to be.
The first six months of our move to the Pacific Northwest have felt like I was doing everything I could to just tread water. It would have been easy to slip into old patterns of feeling crappy about how little "progress" I felt like I was making.
Two things are at play here. First, I had to acknowledge that my capacity constraints had shifted in ways I was not planning on. I knew I was leaving my gig at the radio station, packing or selling everything we owned and finding a new place out west. But I didn't plan on Jim having 4 heart procedures, a cancer diagnosis, and surgery for said diagnosis during that same time frame!
So, um, yeah... a LOT was going on and my "results" were focused in the personal part of my life, not the work part!
Second, I had to acknowledge that I was doing something - just not what I had originally planned! My container was full - with different, and equally important things!
To begin separating identity from output, you might start by asking: “Who am I when I’m not hustling? What parts of me are independent of my last result?” Then create structural practices (e.g., a weekly non-work reflection, a non-output-related role) that remind you your value isn’t tied to what you ship. This shift frees you to lead from your whole self rather than your last achievement.
When I gave myself credit for taking care of a move, my partner, our home, and that my container was full in other, equally important ways, I could let go of the notion that I had to hustle. As I tell my clients, resting is doing something! And even if I wasn't actively doing anything, I am still priceless to the people who love me most.
Having a foundation you can depend on (rest, rhythms, boundaries, mission) while continuing to evolve, expand, and learn (without spinning or burning out) creates a kind of stability that allows you to keep growing in meaningful, effective ways.
Here's what your "magic paintbrush" image might look like:
Rather than growth that feels like sprint after sprint, you’re building a resilient ecosystem — the soil is strong, the roots are deep, the trunk is steady.
Growth happens up and out, not just forward at any cost.
You wake up feeling grounded and energized instead of on the brink of burnout.
You have a business that expands - without losing your weekends, your focus, or your sense of peace.
You feel like your effort actually sticks... compounding instead of constantly resetting.
Output is transient, but belonging and worth are enduring.
Belonging to yourself, and what really matters (alignment, integrity, impact, connection) instead of the misleading signals of “more" is what I mean here. Enoughness... in life and work.
Hustle promises short-term wins, usually at a long-term cost. It teaches you to sprint every race like it’s the last one—to chase visibility, validation, and velocity over intentionality.
You can’t build longevity on adrenaline alone.
The harder you push, the less space you have to integrate what you’ve built. Eventually, your growth outpaces your grounding—and the Noble Empire you worked so hard to build starts to feel like quicksand.
“If you just work harder / longer / push through, you’ll win and you’ll be safe.”
Whatever safe means.
I've said it to myself. My own clients have said it, too. I had to invite one client recently to consider that maybe, just maybe, their brain was lying to them.
Sometimes, it's true. When you're reaching the finish line, that little extra push can be exactly what you need to get over the hump and get it done. I call that "compassionate hustle".
I'm not anti-hustle. I'm anti-hustle culture.
Hustle culture sells the notion that exhaustion is a sign of commitment, that sacrifice equals reward. You're always "on" you can never rest, never quit, never replenish.
But the evidence says this isn’t reliable. It's not sustainable. Extended working hours correlate with worse health outcomes and reduced productivity — the premise of “more hours = more success” is flawed.
Because effort looks like virtue, it’s socially rewarded. It perpetuates the “ideal leader” myth of being tireless.
Also we lack good signals: when you’re busy and “on,” you might still hit goals, so the erosion is gradual — creativity diminishes, relationships strain, presence fades — but you still check the boxes that make it look like you're successful... while you don't feel successful at all. Meanwhile, culture normalizes overworking. One rocket-launching billionaire once tweeted that "nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week."
I call bullshit.
Working within your capacity means you’re not doing more — you’re becoming more effective, generative and whole. You're making space for what really matters so that you can grow with more ease - if you even want to grow in the first place!
Building from capacity (what I call your Conditions For Success) unlocks greater creativity and innovation. When you stop frantically "producing for the algo" and allow space (for reflection, rest, and integration) your mind generates richer ideas, your leadership voice deepens, your presence becomes magnetic rather than frantic. One report says that constant “output” pressure stifles the very creativity that innovation demands.
It’s built inside seven domains:
When these conditions work together in your favor, growth stops feeling like a tug-of-war—and starts feeling like a rising tide. Just knowing that they exist can make a big difference in how you choose to show up and what you choose to take on in your life and work.
Imagine building your business from stability instead of strain. Growing with rhythm, not reactivity.
You don’t have to chase balance because your systems and energy naturally support it. Opportunities flow because you’re operating in resonance—not resistance.
To slow down enough to hold what you’ve built.
To lead with clarity instead of compulsion.
To measure your worth by your alignment, not your exhaustion.
Become a member of my Rising Tide community (it's free, yo!) and you'll get access to my upcoming Conditions for Success workshop. Together we'll walk through the seven domains of sustainable growth, so you can build momentum that lasts, without losing yourself in the process, and create growth that doesn’t drain you.
Early morning. You roll out of bed, feeling heavier than you did when you went to sleep. You got your 8 hours, but your brain is already racing through the daily to-do's before your feet even hit the floor.
“Let me check my email,” you mutter under your breath. But the thought of doing even that feels exhausting.
On your phone (because you're so "efficient"), you open your calendar and see all the tasks you planned yesterday—and start putting things off. Not because you don’t care, but because your mental energy is already taxed. That important client follow-up gets pushed to “later,” and you justify it:
“I’ll do it after I finish this big project.”
So, you skip breakfast and jump into that project, but your excitement is gone. Questions that used to energize you now feel irritating, and you find yourself thinking, “Why am I even doing this?” Small frustrations feel magnified, and the enthusiasm that once fueled your vision feels muted.
You grab food and eat lunch at your desk to squeeze in another task. Coffee replaces nourishment. A walk or a moment to breathe feels impossible. Energy dips, muscles ache, and your patience thins—yet you keep pushing.
By early afternoon, even simple decisions feel heavy. Should you reply to that email now or wait? Should you tackle marketing or bookkeeping first? Your mind cycles endlessly, and your usual creative solutions feel out of reach.
Headaches creep in, shoulders tighten, and stomach discomfort reminds you that stress is taking its toll. You notice the small signs, but there’s no time to pause. You push through anyway, hoping it will pass.
"There's too much to do. I'll sleep when I'm dead," you joke.
But that joke's not funny anymore, and you're starting to think you're calling something into existence.
If this feels eerily familiar, you're not alone. What looks like just another day "on your hustle and grind" could also be the red flags of something else that's going to keep you stuck at a plateau indefinitely.
You’re working harder, thinking you’re “doing what it takes,” but results stall—or worse, regress.
More effort doesn't always leads to more success.
Leaders often focus on enhancing their competencies—skills and knowledge—believing learning more or doing more will solve the problem. Fusion Creatives are known to be "credential collectors". And my neurospicy and multipassionate folks may also find it challenging to accept that knowing more isn't insurance against burnout. In my experience, it can sometimes even hasten the onset!
I kind of blame Einstein for this. He's the one who said we can't solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them. This leads a lot of people to think that more thinking is the solution.
That only works if you've got the capacity to execute on that new way of thinking!
Capacity development involves building the internal resources to handle complexity and change. Without developing the capacity to manage increased demands, even the most competent leaders can struggle to maintain performance (source).
When your effort outpaces your capacity, you create drag. Systems strain, decision quality drops, and your creativity - the very thing that built your success - gets buried under exhaustion.
Before you know it, effort is outpacing capacity, and your business suffers. Recognizing this early can allow you to course-correct before burnout hits.
It starts small... procrastination or task avoidance (source)—but then it compounds. Decision fatigue. Emotional friction, self-neglect, and physical fatigue slowly creep in.
Here's another scenario:
A colleague invites you to a connect. You decline. A friend texts to check in. You don’t respond. Engaging socially feels like extra work. Your world narrows to your tasks, leaving less energy for connection.
You feel like you’ve run a marathon in slow motion. Your mind is foggy, and your body aches. Sleep might come tonight, but even rest won’t fully restore you—because the cycle has been building for weeks.
Maybe months.
Mistakes you normally wouldn’t make have slipped through the cracks. Deadlines are missed or postponed. You know you’re capable of more, but your current capacity isn’t enough to support the level of effort you’re putting in. Anxiety creeps in as you think about tomorrow—and the day after.
This is the pattern your business can fall into when effort outpaces capacity. It starts small—a skipped break, a postponed task—but compounds into a full-blown misalignment between energy, attention, and output.
The good news? You don’t have to reach this point.
Many leaders equate increased effort with greater impact, assuming that doing more (working harder or longer) will yield better results. However, this overlooks the importance of aligning effort with capacity.
Without sufficient capacity (resources like time, energy, and money, among others), additional effort can lead to burnout, not to mention losing your effectiveness (source). Success, then is not just a function of effort. It's also a function of the capacity to execute effectively.
Or said differently, your strategy has to match your capacity.
"Success ...is not just a function of effort. It's also a function of the capacity to execute effectively."
- Lisa Robbin Young
Look, I get it. When things get stressful, we often look to what we can do to fix things. Because not doing something feels wrong. We've heard "somebody do something" in so many crisis scenarios - in life and on TV - that it has become sort of a cultural default setting.
According to an article in the Harvard Business review, busyness has become some sort of status symbol. The article mentions research report that shows how, in various parts of the world, "people consider those who exert high effort to be 'morally admirable,' regardless of their output." So, this isn't just a U.S. phenomenon.
The past 6 months have been an emotional and physical roller coaster for me. Moving from Bloomington, Indiana to the Pacific Northwest was just the tip of the iceberg. The stress of caregiving for my partner after 4 heart procedures and surgery for cancer was a lot. Oh, and I am filming for a reality show while also trying to find a new editor for said show, because my editor went back to school to pursue an IT degree when federal funding for public media was cut.
Clients don't stop needing support just because things in my life go off the rails. There are still sessions, deliverables, and meetings that have to happen. And they do. And I still have to take care of myself.
Which... to be honest... wasn't happening. I was waking up with a sense of dread - not because I didn't love my work, but because it all felt like too much for one person to carry. I stopped saying yes to social invitations. Me. An extrovert who mostly LOVES being where people are.
That's when I remembered to review my Conditions for Success.
I'd fooled around with this concept in workshops in the past, in a somewhat generic way. There's a sheet in my annual planner where you record the things that help set you up for success. That helps you be intentional about creating an Environment of Empowerment that gives you as many advantages as possible.
Maybe that means starting the morning with coffee in your favorite mug. Or maybe that means getting the right amount of sleep in a bed that's actually comfortable. Whatever those things are for you, document them and start arranging your life to include them.
But this time, instead of just making a quick list, I went deeper. Because I'd seen where this surface-level ideation wasn't always helping my clients. Sure, a good cup of coffee can start you off right, but those effects wear off. What about things that would have more of a lingering effect?
Yes, your environment, but what else?
Turns out, your Conditions for Success aren’t just about energy, tools, or mindset—they include the world you choose to live and work in. Sometimes, the smartest move isn’t more effort, it’s moving toward contexts that naturally amplify your zone of genius or your ability to find success for yourself or your work.
In my exploration and research, I've identified 7 domains that range from the highly personal (that we can control) to the more global (where we have minimal individual influence).
In all, there are about 25 different things inside these 7 domains to consider in your Conditions for Success. Even though you can't control or directly influence all of them, awareness that they even exist gives you the ability to better design your Conditions for Success.
By assessing your 7 Domains, you can identify where effort is exceeding capacity and course-correct before burnout, inefficiency, or frustration take hold.
When you operate in full alignment - meaning your values, goals, energy, resources, and client work are all moving in sync - a number of shifts happen. These changes are often subtle at first but become deeply impactful over time, both internally (how you feel, how the team functions) and externally (client results, reputation, growth).
When your values and purpose are aligned, leaders report much greater clarity. Decisions become easier because they have a filter: does this align with what I care about? What I stand for?(source) You waste less time on deliberation - playing “should I or shouldn't I?” - because you have internal criteria for what fits.
Doing work that aligns with your values ignites intrinsic motivation — doing things because they matter, not just for money or recognition (though, that's great, too!). That gives you the ability to stick with things when it gets hard.
When your work, your client relationships, and your schedule all align with your values and capacity, you reduce internal friction. You tend to take more sustainable care of yourself: rest, breaks, saying “no” more often (because misalignment often forces those to fall by the wayside). Full alignment supports self-care, which helps you replenish your capacity (source).
Being aligned means you're more likely to show up as your true self. That builds credibility. Teams, clients, collaborators sense authenticity, and trust increases. when you are clear about your values, your way of working, and your goals, you attract clients who match (source). That means fewer misalignments over deliverables or expectations. Relationships become more collaborative and less draining.
That’s exactly what the Conditions for Success workshop will help you do: spot the gaps, understand the root causes, and create a plan to work smarter, not harder.
Give yourself the gift of commitment to YOU. Set aside a minimum of 15 minutes in your weekly calendar. Treat this pause like a meeting with your most important client - you (or your business). Honor this commitment as best as you can.
Review your tasks and calendar commitments for the urgent and the important. What tasks are sucking up energy without delivering proportional value (busy work, low-leverage admin, etc.)? Be ruthless. Especially if you've got extra capacity constraints, it's important to focus your resources on the items you know are the most impactful and require the fewest resources. I call this HI-MR-C. You can see it in action in my One Move That Matters for Greater Visibility workbook. While that version is for your visibility efforts, the concept applies to any situation where you need to invest limited resources and need a positive return on that investment. So, really, anywhere. Focus, as much as you are able, on things that are high impact that also require the fewest resources.
Will other things slip onto your radar? Probably.
Sometimes you'll need all your spoons for something unexpected. That doesn't mean throw out your regular plan, it just means pause it, for now. Set a boundary to protect your capacity as you are able. And give yourself recovery time - even something small like a 5-minute reflection, stretching, or journaling.
Humans are not machines. We are not always predictable nor are we always built to be efficient. We are complex organisms, functioning inside a complex ecosystem. Hijinks will ensue.
-Lisa Robbin Young
Notice, I keep saying "as you are able" - because our capacity to "do" varies from day to day. Society wants us to believe something very different than that.
Why?
It's called the Capitalist "machine" for a reason. Machines are often predictable and built to be efficient, so creating metrics around "machine-like precision" are very attractive. But they also set up the very unrealistic expectations that underpin many of the problems with Capitalism.
Humans are not machines. We are not always predictable nor are we always built to be efficient. We are complex organisms, functioning inside a complex ecosystem. Hijinks will ensue.
The goal then, isn't to eliminate the complexity so much as to work with it. To have a strategy that matches the flexing capacity of our very human nature.
Make the commitment to take time for yourself... even small "stolen" moments make a difference and help build momentum. Over time, as your alignment improves, you'll find yourself "finding" more time and adjusting your capacity. Maybe even growing it.
But for now, awareness is a good place to start.
My latest workshop, Conditions For Success: The 7 Domains That Shape Sustainable Growth is happening Friday, November 7 at 11am Pacific US Time (2pm Eastern). It's free to all members of the Rising Tide community. Not a member? That's also free (for now)! Get signed up and save your spot!
I've been looking for reminders lately.
Things that remind me who I really am... who I really WANT to be in the world.
That happens sometimes when you start questioning everything. When everything starts to feel unsteady, uncertain, unsure.
Two things from my annual Creative Freedom retreat this year keep coming back to me.
The SWOT Analysis - where several folks listed the outcome of this year's election as a potential threat to their business - and the reminder I shared with everyone on repeat:
Remember who you are.
When the world is off-kilter, dangerous, and hard to take...
Remember who you are.
Stand moored. Resolute in what it is that you stand for, what you believe in, and what you're about in this world.
Remember who you are.
Don't let the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" take you out of the race.
Remember who you are.
Gird your loins, light your torch.
Remember who you are.
Mount your horse, draw your bow, raise your shield.
Remember who you are.
Sing your song. Create your art. Dance your dance. Speak your mind.
Remember who you are.
Protect your peace. Honor your boundaries. Rest. Then RISE.
Remember who you are.
Don't let the bastards get you down.
Remember who you are.
I wasn't trying to wax poetic when I started this. I was actually trying to get you to think more about who you are. What YOU stand for. What you WON'T stand for. Where do you draw those lines in the sand?
Believe it or not, those are important questions for your business, too. I'll share more tomorrow, but for now...
Remember who you are.
At the end of March, I had the honor of speaking at the TEDxBloomington Salon and it was amazing.
Salons are generally smaller scale TED-style events that are locally curated, like any TEDx event. Unlike a larger, full-day event where the talks can range pretty widely, Salons are generally on a more focused topic. Our topic was (sustain)ABILITY.
The theme still lends itself to some pretty wide-ranging topics, including a sonnet on sustainability, the importance of preserving indigenous language for future generations (and the tech to make it accessible to everyone), how kindness and generosity can sustain us, the 3 steps to find healing in business, and more. I look forward to sharing the talks once they're all uploaded, but for now, I can share my talk on How the Marginalization Tax impacts finding Enoughness for micro businesses. You can also access the bonus resources for my TEDx talk here.
My life is a paradox. As a business coach and entrepreneur, I rely on Capitalism to keep food on the table. And I help my clients to do the same. But as a human being, I also rail against what it seems like Capitalism has become: a money-grubbing, soul-crushing free-for-all for the wealthy elite that would rather leave our big blue marble than invest in healing, protecting, and sustaining it.
About 40% of my clients are multiply marginalized, many with a chronic illness, disability, or other capacity-limiting constraints that have essentially forced them to leave traditional employment and go out on their own because it works for how they're built. Forced, because capitalism asks more of us than we can consistently give, and no one feels this quite as much as the marginalized people of the world.
Entrepreneurship then, becomes a way for them to "leverage" the capacity they DO have - but not everyone is equipped to meet the challenges of entrepreneurship.
The incessant invitation to grow for growth's sake is a siren's song that hypnotizes entrepreneurs into the trap of adding one more zero to our revenue… and then another… and then another. But that "MORE" doesn't include room for things like more rest, more play, more ease - unless you hustle your face off first. There's this persistent myth that if you just work hard enough long enough and do your best, you'll make it to that "some day" where you can retire in style.
But Capitalism asks for more than many of us can give. And it has a bad habit of moving the goal posts on us.
With so many companies shooting for the moon - both literally and figuratively, this incessant drive for "More" isn't a sustainable path. How do we find the sustainable path in business? We strive for Enoughness instead.
When we look to nature, a cactus can thrive on very little water and a lot of sun. That is Enoughness for the cactus. If you flood the desert, the cactus rots. If you take away the sun, the cactus starves.
So Enoughness looks different in different situations.
For the folks that I work with, Enoughness is a result of building a business that works for their unique situation.
They are not corporate behemoths. They are parents, artists, travelers, authors, healers, activists, and more. They want a living wage that allows them to retire a spouse or provide for their families, and be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors - even when Capitalism tries to ask more of them than they can give on their own.
For years, I've taught what I call your Enoughness Number. It's essentially the revenue your business needs to bring in on an annual basis in order to have an experience of Enoughness. Not excessive, but appropriate. Not just subsisting, like so many marginalized folks do, but thriving.
But then one of my non-normative clients pointed out that I had not taken into account the additional resources required to navigate a world that asks more of you than you can give. We dubbed this added cost The Marginalization Tax.
At that time I was still under the spell of meritocracy. Just work harder. Keep working, and eventually you'll get there…. however long THAT is. I had always been able to keep working… until the day I needed back surgery. For eleven days I was unable to walk, stand, or otherwise move my body without substantial pain and significant help.
I was lucky I had help at home and owned my own business. If I'd been in a traditional job, I probably would have been fired or forced to use all my time off. And then where would I be for the rest of the year?
This tax is a spectrum of disadvantage based on a number of things like skin color, religion, gender expression, geography, age, body shape, economic status, social status, and basically any circumstance where there's a power imbalance that puts one group of people at an advantage to the detriment of others.
For example (and this isn't exhaustive, but you'll get the idea): I'm a cis, straight, neurodivergent, mixed-race, black woman that presents as white and able-bodied. I'm almost 50 and my body shape is not the socially accepted norm. I have a mix of privilege and disadvantage that impacts the resources I need. The more resources I need, the greater the marginalization tax I pay to participate in this world.
So let's look at what Enoughness looks like both with and without the Marginalization Tax applied so you can see how this works.
First, what are your total living expenses? Let's say $60k
Now add to that your growth. Maybe you've got a nice-to-have or a want that you'd like to see happen in the next year. That's your take-home pay requirement.
If you're a business owner, on top of your take home pay, what are the other "living expenses" of your business?
Then add your business growth to that. Maybe you want to launch a new offer and need to invest in infrastructure or support. Put it in your total.
Now add all that up and add a 10% cushion for unplanned surprises. They happen.
That's already a large number for a small business.
But, now we add the Marginalization Tax.
Based on where you fall on the spectrum, this could be anywhere from zero to as much as 50% of the total. Think that's steep? According to a 2021 report from the national women's law center, black women make a million dollars less over their career than white men. That's 37% less. That is the Marginalization Tax in action.
So we total this all up and there it is - one Enoughness Number that's drastically different than it would be if you didn't have to pay this tax.
Unlike the taxes you pay to your government each year, the bill for the Marginalization Tax comes due each day. This weekend my husband bought some cookies for $4. But I can't eat those cookies because some of the ingredients will hurt me. If I wanted to have a comparable amount of cookies that I can eat, I'd have to pay nearly 3 times as much - or I could spend just a few dollars more for all the ingredients and make them myself. Which would take an additional 45 minutes out of my day.
He can just open a package of cookies and go to town! The Marginalization Tax means I pay significantly more either in time or money - resources I may or may not have - just to enjoy a cookie.
Now you might say, "But Lisa, that's a cookie. A treat. You don't NEED a cookie. You can live without a cookie."
Yes, but why should I have to settle for less just because my body is built differently than yours?
But, let's say you're right and look at another case: One of my clients applied for medical disability long before we started working together. She had a profitable business that she'd built around her chronic illness which was so severe and variable that she never knew what her capacity to work would be like from one day to the next. Once she got approved for disability, she shut it all down. She said to me, "I can't jeopardize my disability payments. What if I go off disability and then my business has a down year? I'll have to re-apply and go through all of this all over again - and I might not survive!"
I don't blame her for wanting to protect herself and know that she can survive in a world that makes it hard for her to just exist. I blame the system where the deck is stacked against some of us and not others. That is the impact of the Marginalization Tax.
Everyone should be able to experience enoughness - a fully belly, a warm bed, and the safety of knowing they have what they need to thrive. There's certainly plenty on this planet to make it possible. But the playing field isn't level. What's worse, Capitalism keeps moving the goal posts.
But I believe that the best way to change a system is from the inside. That's why I'm a business owner. That's why I help other business owners - who aren't trying to hustle their face off to be a squijillionaire. They just want to find the balance that allows them to be paid well, within their capacity constraints, and have the time and energy to enjoy the fruits of their labors.
We don't need more rockets into space. We need more business owners striving for Enoughness for everyone.
When we have Enoughness it's… well, it's enough.
Like I said, it's a paradox.
If you've ever read my book The Secret Watch, then you probably also know that the story was inspired by my own encounter with a woman on a plane. She told me that I'd write a book about a magic watch that revealed special secrets and it would become a best seller.
I did... and it did!
As I wrote the book, I imagined how my life might be different if magic watches were real. If I could just pop open a pocket watch and be inspired by a new inscription every day, would I be able to make the most of it like my character, Tina, did? That's actually how our virtual coaching card deck came to be!
While I have yet to find a real secret watch (unfortunately), I'm lucky that I don't have to wait around to find inspiration. I create my own inspiration every year with my annual goals.
Yeah. I hear you. They're often overdone at the beginning of the year. But by February, according to a 2020 survey, about 30% of folks see their well-intended goals fall by the wayside. Since I gave you my Annual Review rundown earlier in the month, I thought it might also be valuable for you to see what I'm driving toward this year.
You know, besides more ease.
To be clear, this isn't about having you hold me accountable. My past experience has shown that sharing my goals with you will not help me stay accountable. That's not how I'm wired.
There have been too many times in my non-normative life where that kind of "accountability" put too much pressure on me to perform - and then, I'd either choke, end up stressing myself out, or resent the entire thing. Sometimes all three.
Like when all those internet marketing gurus were trying to convince you to sell something before you built it - and then you just "build the plane as you fly it." It might work for some folks, but not me.
There have been too many times in my non-normative life where that kind of "accountability" put too much pressure on me to perform - and then, I'd either choke, end up stressing myself out, or resent the entire thing. Sometimes all three. Plus, people often have their own thoughts and opinions about my goals.
Frankly, ain't nobody got time for that!
But I do believe in being transparent. Whether or not I hit my goals is up to me, not you. But transparency is a way to model for you - to see what I am doing and see how you can apply my approach to your own situation. As a business coach, I help my clients set and achieve goals for themselves. To be in integrity and "walk my talk", I think it's only fair to share my goals with you. I've used the Dreamblazing tool to define what success looks like for me for almost 15 years now. Some years, I hit them all, and most years I fall short in at least one, but that's how I expect things to go because I aim pretty high.
Your mileage may vary, but by seeing my thought process, it might spark something for you. THAT is the reason I'm sharing my goals with you.
So, based on the 5 key areas of success, here are my 2023 goals, in priority order:
My Freedom Goal is my number one priority. I am a hard worker. I was raised with a strong work ethic and a deep programming that the only way for me to break out of the poverty I was born into was to work. like. hell.
So I know what hard work looks like and I know how to do it. I don't need anymore practice.
That's not to say that there won't be times when I need to hustle a little. But that's what I call compassionate hustle. I can't live and work on the hamster wheel.
What's more, I don't want to.
So that means finding ease. Not working for it, figuring it out, or struggling/striving/stressing about it.
That is not the way of ease.
It looks like asking myself "What's the easier path?" and honoring that awareness.
But what's the easier path? To struggle and fight and strain and stress, or to enjoy where I'm at right now and see where the road takes me?
In Dreamblazing, you set two goals for the Key Area of Fitness: one for your physical container and one for what's contained within it. This is my inside the container goal.
My personal history has been more body shame than body confidence. I've had major surgeries 2 years in a row and that really knocked me on my heels and had me feeling like my body was betraying me - as if that could even be a thing! I knew that I needed to adjust my attitude and rekindle an appreciation for who I am inside and out.
I'm lucky as hell that my current husband makes a point of telling me he loves how I look. I didn't get that much in my first marriage. It's been a growth edge for me to really hear, receive, and believe that feedback. I'm still working on it.
But what's the easier path? To struggle and fight and strain and stress, or to enjoy where I'm at right now and see where the road takes me?
Right. So, I'm all about enjoying the journey this year... wherever it takes me.
If I had listened to them, I never would have written 2 best sellers or recorded 3 albums - or any of a number of other things I wanted to do with my life that I was told was "too much" for a kid who was born in the ghetto.
Chosen family is a big part of how I manage to keep my shit together. I love my birth family, but they are distant, and most of them rarely ever talk to me. That road runs both ways. I rarely ever talk to them. Growing up, I didn't feel like I had much support from them - they didn't understand my goals or dreams, and thought I was aiming too high.
If I had listened to them, I never would have written 2 best sellers or recorded 3 albums - or any of a number of other things I wanted to do with my life that I was told was "too much" for a kid who was born in the ghetto.
This year is about deepening connections and cultivating a community of folks who get me. Surrounding myself with encouragers who believe in who I am and what I'm up to in the world - who want to see me succeed and want to be part of making that happen in some way.
I've been part of an international women's networking group for several years, and have been lax about connecting with members. Although I have a few friends in that community, I've not been great about maintaining connections. That needs to change, if for no other reason than there are some pretty amazing people there and it would be cool to have more friendships with people like that.
Jane Fonda said in a recent interview that "you have to pursue people that you want to be friends with." I've never been a pursuer. More like "if you build it, they will come." Which is hysterical when you realize the irony. So, like Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, I'mma be in hot pursuit this year.
This is both an invitation for me to follow my own success path and to come out of hiding. That's another reason why I'm sharing these goals with you: coming out of hiding.
I've done a lot of hiding since I moved to Mississippi. It's easy to cocoon when you're in a rural town where nobody knows your name and there's nothing doing because a global pandemic has shut nearly everything down. Then there was a wedding, surgery, a move (we bought a house), another move (back to Nashville), more surgery, and yet another move last year to Bloomington, Indiana.
All that movement made it easy to lose myself in the details of those moments. To start to identify myself by those moments (or the results of those moments), instead of being intentional about the life and body of work I want to have/create for myself.
When you shine, it's either because you're emitting or reflecting light. I realized that I wasn't really doing either - and I want to do both.
To shine my own light through my body of work but, also, to share the light of others in my world. My clients are mystical, magical Unicorns. They are smart and brilliantly gifted. I want more people in the world to know about them!
When you shine, it's either because you're emitting or reflecting light. I realized that I wasn't really doing either - and I want to do both.
That means more video, another live event, and monthly live workshops for my clients. I'm also going back to doing more video and having more guests on the show. That was a hard step for me to take because I am so leery about who I share with my audience. A lot of people look good on paper, and then they open their mouth and it's trash. I care about my audience too much... and my reputation. So adding guests will be slow going, and mostly from people I've either already worked with (like my interview with Dr. Mazur), or folks I know and trust in other ways. All the more reason I need to connect to more people!
This is the goal related to my physical container. I've had major surgery two years in a row that stem from life-long health issues. My doctors and physical therapists have given me specific instructions that I intend on following. Some of them are easier than others. The hardest one is being up and moving 15 minutes for every hour that I'm awake - that's 2-4 hours of movement every day. That's not necessarily exercise, but it is getting up and moving around. Thankfully, walking around the house, putting away dishes, and doing laundry all count toward that activity goal.
But it's still a huge adjustment to my daily routine. It gives me about 5 hours of useful worktime, and I can't sit for more than a couple of hours at a time. Really, 45 minutes is best, but some of my appointments don't lend themselves to that possibility.
I have no illusions of getting my "20-year-old-me" body back. That's not optimal health for me... making sure I'm doing what I can, as I'm able, to rehab my body to the best is can be right now is.
But my body needs to heal. I just had my 1 year follow-up ultrasound from the first surgery. I'm waiting on the results, but I'm hopeful that what I've been doing is working. In the meantime, I've adjusted my coaching calendar and I have a standing desk. So if we're in a long workshop, you may see me stand up and pace around at my desk in order to get my movement in.
I have no illusions of getting my "20-year-old-me" body back. That's not optimal health for me at almost 50. Making sure I'm doing what I can, as I'm able, to rehab my body to the best it can be right now is.
I was intentional about the wording for this goal because those words carry a variety of meanings, depending on your audience.
Wealth, as I'm defining it, is about total well-being, not just my bank balance. Yes, income is important - a girl's gotta eat! But so is showing up happy, healthy, and in the right frame of mind for whatever comes my way.
If you were in our Customer Journey workshop last month, you saw how our offer stack is changing in the coming months. We're also right-sizing our pricing and rolling out some new, free workshops over the course of the year. Last month, it was the Customer Journey workshop. In March, it's a content creation sprint, and May we're hosting a brand new workshop about Enoughness, based on the TEDx talk I'm doing at the end of March.
Generosity takes many forms... including generosity to myself as well as others. Putting my oxygen mask on first is not being generous. That's a bare minimum that hasn't always happened. I want to move beyond that and really enjoy being exceptionally good to myself. Sharing the spotlight with my clients, as I mentioned earlier, is also rooted here. So is improving our client experience. We're moving our community off facebook this quarter. We're also migrating our Rising Tide learning library and all our courseware to a new platform as we prepare for a website redesign in the next year. I wanted a stable, easy to use place for everything to live, so that we can create a better customer experience. So that I can afford to be more generous to everyone in our circle.
Generosity takes many forms... including generosity to myself as well as others.
Being an entrepreneur signals my desire to keep getting paid (and paid well) doing work I love. Being an employee is challenging for non-normative people. Ageism and racism are real; so is fat phobia. The easier path for me has almost always been entrepreneurship - even when owning my own business has been hard.
I hope my transparency inspires you. Above all, define what success looks like for you this year, then go for it! Whether you need support to help you stay accountable or not, whether you hit all your goals or fall short, what matters most is that you are moving in the direction of your dreams.
[Note: I started doing an annual recap back in 2010. You can find previous years here: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2021 - 2020 got skipped for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the pandemic that shall not be named.]
Here's the TL;DR: last year was hard as hell, so this year, it's all about creating more ease in every possible way. I'm not accepting any more Incubator clients after June, limiting my coaching availability, raising rates on coaching & consulting, and offering more free training throughout the year inside our new community.
Last year's recap was a podcast episode. While it was expedient to do it that way, it left me feeling... well... like I didn't do it "right".
Shoulding all over myself. Not-enoughing it. Cranking it out and then feeling bad about it.
But it is what it is. And it's done. Over. Finished.
Just like 2022.
I almost wrote an apology for the length of this post, but I'm not going to apologize for being real. My best clients read long posts. They want the details because they know the details matter in business and might save them a world of hurt. As a business coach and consultant, I've never apologized for being my own guinea pig. It's how I learn what really works and how to translate that to my clients for their own success - without the painful learning curve.
So yeah, this will probably be long. #NotSorry
While we did okay income-wise, it was a roller coaster of a year.
Just before the year began, we returned to Nashville from Mississippi. Jim accepted a new teaching job, so we sold our house and moved. Rental rates being what they are in Nashville, we signed a 10 month lease, thinking we'd have plenty of time to find a home, put in an offer, and move again before we had to renew.
We thought wrong.
Jim's employment situation ended up being more precarious. Two jobs after we moved back to Nashville, Jim was physically exhausted, emotionally drained, and by January of 2022, decided to take a 6 month sabbatical.
My eldest had also joined us from Michigan. It was his "Hail, Mary pass" - he certainly didn't want to leave Michigan, but he didn't have a place to stay. He found work doing foam insulation and settled in for a while. Having another person in our otherwise empty nest made for some growing pains, but we managed.
The physical and emotional demands of 2022 took their toll on me. It drove home the point that I'm not 20 anymore and my mental and physical health have been low-priority for too long. Having major surgery two years in a row also took a toll on my mental health. By the end of the year I wanted to take a break from EVERYTHING. Even after I took my year-end vacation, I came back to work with a sense of dread. Too much of what I didn't want and too little of what I did want... and I had painted myself into this corner in many ways.
I started 2022 by celebrating my birthday with COVID.
It was, hands down, the worst start to any year. Even the year my ex forgot my birthday I was at least able to go out and be with friends. This year, I was alone, sequestered in my office. Tortuous to an extrovert like me.
The physical demands of the year were steep: I got the final stent out from November's surgery. I had sciatica on and off for the first half of the year that led to back surgery in September. And we packed our home and moved again. This time to Indiana. We had to stay in a hotel room for three weeks before we could move into our home, so we really moved TWICE - once into a storage unit and then a second time into our Indiana residence.
My doctor said I need to be walking more throughout the day - meaning I have to change my work schedule to accommodate my new physical demands. AND I'm in physical therapy as part of my recovery from back surgery (I still have numbness in parts of my foot).
But the emotional demands were even greater.
The added financial and emotional stress of having a partner out of work left me feeling like I was carrying too much for too long. I'm thankful that I'm married to a swell guy who understands the importance of communication. We were able to keep talking throughout a very stressful time, which did help things. That and providing for my son - while he looked for a new job after our move to Indiana - increased my emotional load.
I've pretty much ignored my physical needs for most of my life - mostly putting other folks first to my own detriment. It's a hard habit to break. Now, basically being forced to put so much attention and time into caring for myself was as much of an emotional adjustment as it was a physical one.
The depression and anxiety around being able to work (or not being able to work), hit me hard when I spent 11 days laid up in my bed while I waited for my surgery date. Every movement was excruciating, and I've never cried as much as I did then. I lost 10 pounds because I only ate or drank what was absolutely necessary. By the end, I wasn't even going to the bathroom anymore because there was nothing in me.
To be clear: my family brought me food and drink. I just didn't consume much because everything hurt all the time and I didn't want to make things hurt MORE.
The cherry on top was that the earliest my surgery could be scheduled happened to fall right in the middle of my annual client retreat.
Well, FUCK!
Laying in bed for 11 days gave me plenty of thinking time. About everything we were doing inside my company - and everything I wasn't doing that I wanted to be doing. About how things needed to be different when I got back to work. I remember sharing in one of my mastermind meetings that I was doing so much stuff, but so little of it was what I WANTED to do. It was more about keeping commitments and fulfilling obligations I'd made long ago.
Because the hotel was kind, we were able to re-schedule my client retreat. I'm grateful that people re-arranged their schedules and I LOVE doing this event every year. Still, it took a lot more out of me to ensure that folks who couldn't attend got what they paid for. I don't regret doing it, because I love my clients. It was just harder to make everything work.
Then, I got COVID again for Christmas. It was harder this time. I still have an infrequent cough that leaves me gasping for air every time it strikes.
DAMN, I feel old!
Integrity and honoring commitments are important to me. Maybe a little TOO important!
The older I get, the more important ease becomes. You never know when a pinched nerve could take you out of commission for 11 days! Having a business that fully supports me, regardless of what's happening in my personal life, has to be more important than continuing to honor commitments that don't support my well-being.
I learned the hard way that my company can't yet handle more than that.
Thanks to the Federal EIDL, I made several investments in my business. Some turned out great, while others are still waiting to see a positive Return On Resources.
I expected my messaging work with Dr. Michelle Mazur to be a year-long adventure - because it takes time to roll out new messaging and get it to stick in the mind of your audience. As part of that roll out, we planned to redirect some of our marketing energy to Linked In, to build an audience there. My existing VA was training my new VA to handle the projects that weren't time sensitive. Between the two of them, it looked like we were finally going to get some momentum in our marketing.
Then... MAN DOWN!
My "old" VA found a full time job and transitioned out by the end of the month. The "new" VA I had just brought on to cover low-pressure projects was suddenly thrust into doing EVERYTHING.
So, um, LOTS of... um... pressure.
I should have slowed down, scaled back, and focused on one thing at a time. But I didn't.
I found a VA agency to work with and that sort of helped. My new new VA was learning from my old new VA, which was more like a game of telephone than making meaningful progress. I didn't have the spoons to take the work back onto my plate, and our income wasn't supporting having so many people on the team.
We were able to get the podcast up and running, but not much else. It was at this point when I almost shut everything down and walked away.
If it weren't for my clients, that is. Having those commitments kept us afloat. Even if I was stressed to the max on every other front, working with my clients gave me hope for a better tomorrow.
I made two other investments that still haven't panned out: I hired an agency that guaranteed placements on top podcasts. The original commitment was that they get results for most of their clients within 4 months. That seemed pretty ambitious to me, especially since this was being presented as a beta test offer. But hey, it was guaranteed placement, so I figured the ROI would be worth the investment.
A year later, I'm still waiting for half of those "guaranteed" bookings to materialize.
I also hired a company to direct and film my videos. This was part investment, part experiment. I wanted to get video editing off my plate, so I took a chance to see if someone else could handle it. This company promised to help script, direct, produce, and edit my videos.
I thought this would be a great way to bring video back to Season 7 of our show, but it didn't turn out that way. Sadly, their editor lived in Ukraine and, well, WAR broke out over there, so everything stalled.
I'm no tyrant, so of course I was willing to change our timelines. Besides, this was an experiment. I didn't put all my eggs in this basket. We went ahead with Season 7 as a podcast-only season. We managed to make it through the year, but our results were less than stellar.
By June, the agency director had shifted directions and was focused on short-form content for social (think: tiktok & reels). Short form content is NOT my jam, but I filmed a few pieces of content under his direction. He also promised me access to a course he was teaching to help me learn how to create better short form content.
It is February of 2023 as I write this and I am still waiting for access to the course that was promised last year.
Trying to keep too many balls in the air was a disaster - and resulted in a LOT of dropped balls! This year's focus on ease should help, but it's also an important reminder to me to focus on one thing at a time, since we're not a huge team of people that can tackle eleventy jillion things at once.
By the end of 2022, I was feeling apathetic and "meh" about so much. As I considered every aspect of my business, I recognized I had strayed from my own mantra of "define and achieve success on your own terms".
I was letting other people's terms dictate what was possible for me.
Over the past 7 years, I've focused a lot of resources into supporting our Incubator clients. It became our primary income source, which was never the goal. Combined, our handful of clients have created close to two million dollars in real revenue. Many of these folks started from zero, so that's a major accomplishment we can all be proud of!
I love seeing them make progress toward their dreams, but it's happening at the expense of my own.
As I said, the Incubator was never meant to be my company's primary income source. My original vision for was to be able to fund the program to the level where we had dedicated staff supporting clients on all the admin as well has having a spare coach to pick up some of the coaching hours.
We probably could have hit that goal, were it not for the pandemic of 2020. Too much team instability meant we couldn't get our systems locked in.
You can't grow if you aren't stable.
And we simply didn't have the level of stability, nor the cashflow to do things differently. So while I'm proud of our accomplishments, that old Marilyn Monroe quote keeps playing in my head:
Sometimes good things have to fall apart so that better things can fall together.
I wrestled with the question: Do I want to continue trying to work this model at the expense of the other dreams I want to pursue?
Nope.
But then there's this: I have my own anxiety around not leaving anyone hanging. I don't want to let people down - especially not my clients! I can't just quit what I'm doing and leave them in the lurch!
I love my clients. I love helping them AND I want to see my own dreams take root and grow. Those things shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
I enjoy coaching and consulting, but I have to do it in ways that work for how I'm wired to work.
That's why we're phasing out the Incubator and introducing some new ways to work with me. I'm not accepting new Incubator clients after June (if you want in, you better get moving!). Anyone currently in the program can stay until they graduate. We'll phase out the program through attrition.
In order to grow our audience and continue to support our existing folks, I'm rolling out a new workshop each month during the first half of the year. We hosted the Customer Journey Workshop in January and our Build Your Promo Plan Workshop series is next week! March will have our content creation sprint, and quarterly planning. April will see the return of our Cashflow Creator workshop. We'll cycle through these workshops throughout the year and unveil an all-new three day event in fall: Creative Freedom LIVE! It's nothing like our client retreat, which used to fly under this banner, so if you've been around for a while, know that this is an entirely new event, built around the content in my book.
As a Fusion creative, I need to do more than one thing, otherwise I feel stifled. I enjoy teaching business building concepts and I especially enjoy working hands-on with folks to help them get results and clarity NOW. But I have a growing need for the flexibility of short-term commitments, which are also better for how I'm wired to work. That means I'll be offering more short-term coaching and consulting, including one-day/half-day intensives and single sessions.
Giving people a way to work one-on-one with me in a more concentrated way works better for how I'm wired. Plus, my best clients often prefer to work in this way - a 2-hour sprint or a day-long intensive to hammer out a plan and start seeing results before we're even done. They don't have months to consume a course and learn as they go. They need clarity now.
I enjoy being on podcasts, but hosting my own podcast isn't as fun or profitable as I'd hoped. According to our numbers, the "shelf life" of an audio episode doesn't begin to compare to our video show. So, we're bringing it back.
I tabled the video show half way through 2021 because of our move. I wanted to resurrect it in 2022, but our experiment failed and then we were moving AGAIN! Housing uncertainty is NOT a good situation for shooting video!
That said, the numbers don't lie. Video is better for me for a variety of reasons:
Since it looks like we're going to stay in Indiana for a while, I'll have a base of operations to make video production easier. It may mean editing content in-house, but it's worth it to reach more people, have a bigger impact and see our audience growing again.
The plan for our show this year is to split the difference: videos with deeper, richer content, but not as long as the podcast episodes. Instead of going 10-15 minutes, our show will likely run 15-20 minutes and live on both our podcast and video feed. We'll re-assess at the end of the season to see how the numbers shake out.
It seemed like the only thing that was easy last year was my relationship with Jim. Despite the ups and downs of the year, Jim was a steady, loving presence through it all. Where my previous partner would shut down and not communicate, Jim stayed in the room. He was willing to have hard conversations and make tough decisions with me, instead of leaving it all up to me to figure out.
He raised me up and kept believing in me... in us... through all the hard stuff of the past couple of years. Even on his sabbatical, he was consistently showing up in our relationship. THAT is the greatest blessing I've ever experienced.
In fact, one of the hardest things I've been able to do is lean into his love and support. Trusting that he really DOES love me, that he really DOES think the world of me. That he means it when he says "I love you forever. No take backs!" I haven't been able to trust that in the past, and his steady, loving presence is a strength I get to learn to trust.
And I want more.
More supportive, trusting relationships that lift me up, see my potential, and want to see me shine. I'm being more proactive in my outreach - despite how scary it feels sometimes. Last year, I invested in a mastermind group that helped open that door. Our facilitator really gave a damn about us... about me. I could feel that in our conversations. I learned more about what being "coffee worthy" really meant.
This year, I'm amping that up. I'm part of an international networking group for women. I'm actively connecting with more of them on a more consistent basis. Not necessarily to drive more business (although, that's nice), but more so to develop a solid, supportive community around me.
If there's one thing I've learned about myself, it's that I don't "do alone" very well. I get in my head and sometimes get stuck there. But I also don't "do community" the way other people do (hello, neurodivergence!). It takes a lot of effort and energy for me to feel connected or feel like I belong in a group. That's my growing edge.
I'm also curating a community space of my own. For years, we've hosted our Accountability Club on Facebook and our Rising Tide learning library on my website. Neither was fully optimized and both languished a bit because of it. It took time to explore some different options that made sense. For a while, no one wanted to leave Facebook. Now, you can't stop them from jumping ship. After a bit of research, we made the decision to migrate everything to a new platform this year. Migrating and integrating everything takes time, though. Our goal is to have the new Rising Tide/Accountability Club space ready for visitors in Q2.
I recorded this mashup almost 10 years ago...long before I left Michigan (or my first husband). But it's pretty appropriate for this year's focus. I was sick that day. But I showed up anyway. And I kept it easy.
Easy, like Sunday morning.
That's my theme for the year, so this song makes perfect sense - and it's a silly video that reminds me of how much fun it was to do this work then. I'm bringing that fun and ease back in every possible way.
Hope to see you on the ride!
As a creative entrepreneur, you've got LOTS of ideas. How do you keep track of them all? Can they even be managed? How do you decide which ideas to pursue, and which ones to table for later (or even give away to someone else)?
You're in luck because this week I'm sharing some useful tools and resources to help you organize your ideas and get clear on what you're going to move on now, and what can wait. You'll be able to end the distractions and stay focused!
Rising Tide community members can login and access your free downloads here.
Not a member yet? It's free! When you register for the Rising Tide, you also get email updates, the FREE learning library, and access to episode transcripts, worksheets, and more!
Special thanks to our Patrons for your continued support.
Music: “Welcome to the Show” by Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com. Music licensed under creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
You've probably heard the phrase "riches in niches" more times than you care to count. As a creative entrepreneur, finding a niche can feel challenging if you don't solve a "problem" or "pain" with your Great Work.
That's why I don't support the idea of looking for a pain to solve, but instead, looking at core values - which are a clearer indicator of why clients buy from you (and keep buying from you for years to come). In this episode, I'm stealin' a process from the manufacturing world to help you hone in on why clients buy from you and how to find more clients just like 'em.
Rising Tide community members can login and access your free downloads here.
Not a member yet? It's free! When you register for the Rising Tide, you also get email updates, the FREE learning library, and access to episode transcripts, worksheets, and more!
Special thanks to our Patrons for your continued support.
Music: “Welcome to the Show” by Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com. Music licensed under creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
If you're a heart-centered creative entrepreneur struggling with pricing, there's good news: you don't have to subsist on a survival-level income, and you don't have to price gouge your clients in order to be successful. There's a middle ground that's profitable and sustainable.
Your pricing tells a story, and it's personal. For creative entrepreneurs there is no topic more in need of a mindset shift than pricing. Pricing is more than just materials + time. It's about your pricing mythology, your audience expectations, and other considerations that we'll run through in this episode.
P.S. Tickets for the 2020 Creative Freedom Retreat go on sale soon! We're going to NOLA, baby! Make sure you're on my email list to be one of the first to know more!
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Special thanks to our Patrons for your continued support.
Music: “Welcome to the Show” by Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com. Music licensed under creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Feeling like you can't focus? You're not alone.
According to a 2015 research report from Microsoft, our attention spans are shrinking and may now be on par with goldfish. Since 2000, our ability to concentrate has shrunk from 12 seconds to about 8 seconds. A goldfish has a 9-second attention span.
Citing a possible evolutionary response as we shift to a multi-tasking, multi-screen digital world, the Microsoft report seems to suggest that we can't focus on anything for more than a few seconds at a time.
So explain to me why binge watching Netflix is on the rise (and feels so good), and how my kid can stay rapt in his Minecraft world for hours on end?
In Daniel Goleman's book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, three types of focus are identified. Goleman uses scientific method and extensive case studies to show that these three types of focus are needed at different times for different reasons. Too much focus in one area for too long creates an attention deficit that makes it hard to focus in other areas. What are these types of focus?
According to Goleman, "Inner focus attunes our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions." This is our opportunity to look within, serve our own needs, and make sure we have our own oxygen mask on first. I dedicated an entire chapter in Creative Freedom to what I call the I-Matter paradigm, and it begins with knowing what really matters to yourself.
This isn't being selfish. I've said before that self-care isn't selfish. We've got to make sure we're taking care of our basic needs, and so often, that doesn't happen. Binge-watching releases dopamine, which triggers feelings that make us feel good. Emotional eating does something similar. Many creative entrepreneurs put their own dreams, desires, and needs on the back burner in order to serve the needs of others. The result is a form of personal deprivation. It makes sense, then that the only thing you want to do after a long day at the day job is sit on the couch for a little "Netflix and chill" time. You've got to re-fill that Inner Focus "tank".
Goleman writes that "outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world." You've got to be aware of your surroundings, your environment, and the constraints under which you're operating. Otherwise, it's difficult to be a citizen or a creative entrepreneur. Like trying to walk blindfolded through a dark room you've never been in before. If you don't know what's in there, you're probably going to bump into a lot of stuff before you make it across the room.
As a creative entrepreneur, you serve a market. That market exists in a larger environment. Can you create whatever you want? Sure, but creating in a vacuum doesn't usually pay the bills. You've got to be aware of what the market wants, and make key decisions about how you're going to respond to those needs. Can't do that very easily if you don't know what's going on in the world. Plus, for many creatives, the world at large is a great source of inspiration for your material.
Lastly, Goleman says that "other focus smooths our connections to the people in our lives." Some people are jerks who couldn't care less about the people in their world. Some people have mental health issues that prevent them from being able to connect with others. But empathy, emotional intelligence, and the ability to read people and respond appropriately are valuable tools for any person - including creative entrepreneurs.
When you make that deeper connection with your customers, you develop Raving Fans. These people love you to pieces, recommend you to their network willingly, and share your Great Work with the world without being paid to do it. Aside from the financial benefits, it's the kind thing to do. Developing compassion for the people in your community (virtual or otherwise), gives you greater perspective and developing stronger connections helps your own emotional and mental health as well.
Looking at these three types of focus, it makes perfect sense to me that a lack of focus in one area can create ripple effects in the others. In fact, as a creative entrepreneur, you'll use these types of focus in different combinations, depending on your Creative type. I've identified these "focus blends" that tend to show up for creative entrepreneurs in different situations:
If you're a Chaotic Creative, you'll lean on Charitable focus more frequently - which is part of why Chaotics are more likely to undercharge than their Linear counterparts. Linears tend to use Professional focus - sometimes to the detriment of their own health and well-being (Type-A personality anyone?). Which means that Fusions are caught in Personal focus a good portion of the time - resulting in a chronic state of analysis paralysis. Learning to develop a more Global focus exercises all three types of focus more evenly, and helps creatives see their own blind spots a bit more readily.
So how do we improve our different focus styles? Practice. Goleman writes that "Attention works like a muscle - use it poorly and it can wither; work it well and it grows." Here are a few ideas to help improve your focus:
Inner focus - You might choose to meditate, or simply sit quietly and pay attention to your body. As a kid, my high school drama teacher taught us an awareness exercise. "Feel your socks on your feet and your feet in your socks. Feel the pants on your legs and your legs in your pants. These subtle shifts in awareness help you focus on you, what your body is experiencing, and what you're feeling in the moment.
Outer focus - Use soft focus, or peripheral vision to experience the world around you. Instead of fixating on something in front of you, close your eyes and listen to the sounds of the room you're in. Pick out voices in conversations or instruments in a song. Find ways to experience what's going on around you that don't directly involve you.
Other focus - Playtime with kids is always fun. Volunteer your time and attention. I try to donate blood as often as possible. Find a way to help someone else, or just ask them how their day was and really listen to them. Put your attention on someone other than yourself.
These are all ways to strengthen your focus muscles in various ways. Which ones will you try?
Sometimes you just need someone else to be in the room to keep you on task. A-Club has regular co-working sessions to help you stay focused on your goals and dreams. We meet several times a month on Zoom to work together and celebrate our progress on our goals. If you'd like to have personal support to stay focused on your dreams, enrollment for A-Club is now open and includes personal one-on-one coaching every few months to help you make even faster progress.