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An ARO Conversation with Jeannette Maw

I can’t remember exactly how I discovered The Good Vibe Coach, but if memory serves, it was through Pam Slim (both are Martha Beck trained coaches). I started following Jeannette’s blog, inspired by her ability to produce consistently informational and entertaining content, her true engagement with her readers and followers and her strong business acumen.  I admired her both as a Law of Attraction coach (who’s services I can vouch for!) and as a savvy business lady.  [FULL DISCLOSURE: After years of following her and often quoting/linking to her, she recently became a client. THAT is a whole other conversation, I think. But long before that happy occurrence, she was a significant part of the inspiration for my blog's focus: authentic, relevant, organic business practices.]

Not everyone I talk to here will meet all three of those attributes but Jeannette most certainly does  and is the reason I ALWAYS wanted her to be my first interview.

• Authentic: she is up-front and clear about her struggles with relationships…and foster animals
• Relevant: she started Law of Attraction coaching a year or two before Oprah broke The Secret and made LOA common terminology
• Organic: she built her incredibly loyal following by caring, by interacting, through incredible generosity

In addition to coaching, Jeannette has a variety of popular information products (e-books, cds). This year saw the unveiling of Good Vibe University: a full-service membership site that is crammed with content and every day reveals what a brilliant and loving group of individuals have chosen to interact with Jeannette on this mission of hers.

So, let’s talk!

Hey Jeannette! How long have you been The Good Vibe Coach?

Lady Gaga, Oprah and My Own “Ah-ha!”

One of my business ideas from way back (like at least 10 years) was doing a magazine called Characters. I even reserved a domain name, drew up a structure but just never got around to making happen. It would be about, well, characters-those individuals who are truly individuals. They have little regard for popularity or convention and a lot of regard for following their own inner compass. I LOVE these people (there is a fantastic goth drag queen in me trying to get out…she just never does).

 

Given that the theme of this blog is Authenticity (and relevance and organic growth), I thought “why can’t the Characters idea be combined with this?”

Of course, it can because in this world I am (goth) Queen and I make the rules.

Why can’t I explore, with you, thoughts on creativity, individualism, non-traditional community and often how it relates to the online business world?

I can! I can!

Here is my first thusly inspired post (this post fits the model and so does this one):

Lady Gaga was on Oprah Friday. Wow. I knew little to nothing about Gaga (as her friends call her).

You can watch the segment on YouTube. It is worth your time even if you don’t like glam dance music. She is a true character and original.

Here are the takeaways from Lady Gaga:

 

• LOVE your people. CARE DEEPLY for your tribe. She was moved to tears talking about her “little monsters” (Gaga fans) and how she felt her purpose was to encourage everyone to be their own (freaky) little selves

 

• Be yourself

 

• Do something that inspires you to get up and get to work first thing every day

 

• Use visuals. Play! Dance! Be weird! (or be utterly traditional if that is your schtick)

 

• Love and honor, but ignore, your parents and their concerns. This one is YOUR life!

 

• Spread praise. Gaga and Oprah have little in common yet there was clearly a mutual admiration society between them

 

• Do good. Gaga is offering a lot of opportunities for people to contribute to Haiti (like my friend Kelly Diels) on her web site. Ticket and merchandise proceeds on certain days will be donated

Here’s to the return of glam rock (I tweeted that I want a Gaga/Lambert duet!) and being your own freaky self. Go Gaga!

Fear

You’re afraid. You don’t have enough followers or traffic or clients or buyers. You focus on fear instead of your vision, the probability of failure instead of your list of successes, what went wrong versus what went right. You are overwhelmed with online marketing “shoulds” and info and opinions. You aren’t making millions, or hundreds of thousands, or maybe even hundreds. You are paralyzed.

Make a commitment right now to do these three things:

1. Look at what has gone RIGHT in your business (Read Switch. I’m through the first 1/2 and it is brilliant). Do more of that.

2. Look around for someone you can support, cheer on, promote. Take the focus off yourself. Do this for the right reason-because you BELIEVE in someone. The world is big enough for all of us cool, lovely people to win. You don’t have to worry about competition. Stop focusing on numbers.

3. Be consistently yourself. I say this and I suck at practicing it, but those writers/bloggers/online business folks who are REASONABLY consistent (not 15 times per day. Boring!) and entertaining get the attention of others. If you are going to use social media, don’t just link to blog posts, don’t just stick to business. Let people know who you are. The medium is useless otherwise.

Be wary of social media and online marketing sales people. They are everywhere. Unless someone has built a trusting relationship with you, do not give them money for a 2-day seminar on how to sell your e-book or set up an online business! If they knew what they were doing, you would already know them, trust them and long to give them your money. Otherwise ignore.

When you are in the thick of the social media life and you are devotedly following Darren Rowse or Chris Brogan, and you are trying to build your own following, you can feel like all the spots are taken. Try to remember that active social media-lites are a microcosm of the Universe, like going to a small private school. It feels like everyone knows every one and there is no room for you.

There is always room for you and anyone else doing good work for the right reasons.  

Don’t be afraid, grasshoppa! Keep on truckin’.

Serendipity, Therapy, Love…and more

If you are blessed to have a therapist like I have in the elf, you could never completely let them go It has been awhile since I saw her, but post-birthday I wanted a check-in/check-up. See, I’m in a complicated relationship. That might be an oxymoron (like dysfunctional family) but this is the meaty juicy kind of love that fills you up so much that you cannot let it go despite it having some significant barriers to what you want and think love should look like. I needed to mull over words like “codependence, love addiction, attachment hunger” and more.

Luckily for me, my therapist prefers words like “bullshit” and “fuck”.

When I walked in, she had a book by her that I owned and loved (Cries of the Spirit in case you are interested). She mentioned stumbling on a piece she was sharing with someone and we settled into therapy and didn’t discuss further…right away.

About halfway through our examination of the current status of said relationship, she said “Hmmm. Let me read you this piece and see if it resonates.” (When she say stuff like this, you can be sure it will).

And it did.  Here it is for you. Print it off. Mine is now on my fridge where all important things reside.

Much love,

Kelly

Our Passion for Justice – Carter Heyward

Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling, not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being “drawn toward”. Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one’s friends and enemies [emphasis mine]. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggles, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not a warm fuzzy experience. I think also that sexual lovers and good friends know that the most compelling relationships demand hard work, patience, and a willingness to endure tensions and anxiety in creating mutually empowering bonds.

For this reason, loving involves commitment. We are not automatic lovers of self, others, world, or God. Love does not just happen. We are not love machines, puppets on the strings of a deity called “love”. Love is a choice-not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. Love is a conversion to humanity- a willingness to participate with others in the healing of a broken world and broken lives. Love is a choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh.

This beautiful, very human photo is by Mozinos and Flickr via Creative Commons.

A Sweet Birthday Video

Thank you Robert Madison!

Reality vs. Reality: Pick the Better One

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy, the amount of work is the same- Carlos Castaneda (via Twitter @goodvibecoach)

I’m reading Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. Brilliant book that will probably be my top 2010 business book unless something equally stellar comes along. Like all good non-fiction, it is a quick easy read packed full of lessons. Those lessons are mating with my brain along with lessons from The Art of Possibility and other books leaning on positive psychology.

Human being seem to be drawn to the negative, train-wreck watching version of life. We get tangled up in the looting of Chile and not amazed by all of the good being done at the same time these frightened (dare I say smart?) people are fighting for their upcoming survival. I’m not going to poke around into the why’s of negativity. I personally think we gawk at anything that reminds us of our own mortality and weakness because we are less afraid of that than our strength-which dares us to be and do impossibly great things! You can read this often quoted piece by Marianne Williamson to get a sense of what I mean.

I’m an optimist. I usually have people counter with “I’m a realist” but I question whether they really are. Our daily realities are subjective. If I get on the scale and weigh 195, that is reality. Whether or not I’m fat is subjective. If my husband abuses me or my kids, he’s a bad husband. That’s reality. Outside of that and some other unforgiveable sins, whether he is a good or bad husband is subjective. Good job/bad job. Good friend/bad friend. Clean house/dirty house. Subjective.

So, if your viewpoint is your reality, why not tilt it more towards the positive? If you weigh 195, why not say you are prepared for a Chilean catastrophe more than your slender soul sisters? Why not move towards the positive?

Switch encourages you to find the things that are going right and DO MORE OF THOSE. The Art of Possibility says we create boundaries for ourselves through socialization that simply do not exist. Marcus Buckingham has built a career on telling us to abandon improving our weaknesses and focus instead on playing to our strenghts. We hear things as they are not, see things as they are not. If we are doing this, why not make life more pleasant and productive and lean in to the positive viewpoint?

Discard what isn’t working and focus on what is. Celebrate accomplishments by noting them and what was going on, what you DID when they happened. Get a new client? How? Did you ask for business? Was your house clean when you spoke on the phone? Jeannette and the Law of Attraction both say move towards what feels good and away from what feels bad. These business books all say the same damned thing.

I have, in reality, few reasons to feel optimistic. I choose to be so. Why? IT FEELS BETTER and, I believe (and so do many many others), feeling better creates a more fertile, compost-rich environment for good things to grow than subjective reality. Thoughts? You can respond on my website.

You Might Like to Follow:

Some online loves of mine:
Fabeku Fatunmise (sound healing, cool guy), Kim Woodbridge (Wordpress hero and blogger), Shawn Decker (writer and “positoid”-look it up) and Apartment Therapy for all things design and small space.

Being a Copycat

Kelly Diels was quipping around about her imaginary boyfriend post from December on Twitter (which included Oprah and Michelle Obama-why not have a boyfriend AND a girlfriend list) so I opted to do my own. I’m able to change and tweak as I please so beware..

Boyfriends

• Adam Lambert
• Ira Glass
• Robert Downey, Jr.
• Mos Def
• Marilyn Manson
• Dan Pink
• David Garrett

 

Girlfriends

• Adam Lambert
• Kelly Diels
• Maggie Gyllenhaal
• Stephanie Klein
• The Bloggess
• Edie Falco
• Any woman who plays the cello

Love…from Unexpected Places

Love, love, love. I’ve had so much yesterday and today that I could simply burst and get a bit o’Kelly everywhere.

I wrote a post for the previous incarnation of my blog about believing Twitter would die. The pursuit of numbers was becoming increasingly obscene to me (a behavior I kept having to check in myself) and I was, and still am, convinced that it is about the quality and not quantity of your online relationships that matters. Then Naomi Dunford wrote this and I began to feel a bit embarrassed.

And now I’ve been even more reminded of the capacity of strangers to support you.  I do have a tiny little Twitter/FB family out there and they are amazingly generous people. I think it is because I am most drawn to individuals who are REAL ( I do get tired of hearing myself say “authentic” especially when Oprah says it so much). I worry I come across as an online stalker at times because, when I’m excited about someone, I will promote the hell out of them. I’ve done it with Pam Slim, Jeannette Maw (who is now a major client and no, I never saw that coming), Danielle LaPorte, Kelly Diels and now, my first couple of boys are about to get it.

I simply believe in the goodness and talent of these unbelievable folks.

Yesterday, after having struggled for 5 days with this broken, hacked blog and an insufficient backup and really poor tech support from Netfirms (no link on purpose), the Twitter love came oozing out of the woodwork. It looked a bit like this:

KellyDiels @kellylivesay and oh honey, I’m so sorry. @websiteweekend’s site has lots of tips on security. and eff eff eff eff eff. so sorry hon.

shawnmummert @kellylivesay If your site is well-indexed by Google, you may have cached versions of them online, if you don’t have other copies.

safetycomfort @kellylivesay Hope the recreation process goes really well, and that you’ll be back up and running very soon now. Hugs x

GrowMyAfro @kellylivesay ah, gotta love caching. Whew!

websiteweekend @kellylivesay How uptodate were your backups?

There were emails from Kelly Woodbridge and Eric Hamm too. And, in the end, I was able to salvage ALL of the content except for comments.

In the meantime, three nice men came and dug my car out of the snow (ok, it was for money but still) and today (after being dug out yesterday), my neighbor helped me again.

Lately love has come to me in unexpected ways and social media played a real part in this.

Please follow the above people if you don’t already. Please. They are good. Really good. And talented.

(This site isn’t fully reconstructed yet. I’m using Jing to take screen shots of each step so I won’t wonder what color my background was if it ever gets lost again. I’m learning more about security and Wordpress and database backups than I wanted to…but it is all ok…because of the love. )

Anxiously Awaiting “Switch”

It will be a long time before a business book compels me like A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink did, but Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard may be the one. By Made to Stick authors Dan and Chip Heath, I was genuinely excited after I read a brief excerpt in Fast Company’s February issue.

I’m a die hard optimist and, despite massive problems, believe that the best of human beings will always compensate for the worst. I trust people and they generally don’t let me down. Generally. I adore the positive psychology movement and focusing on what is going right versus wrong is the theme of this book (clearly boiled way down).

Chip and Dan talk about finding a “bright spot” in a problem (the thing that IS working) and trying to do more of that. Seems simplistic, right, but human beings generally focus on trying to fix what’s wrong instead of “cloning” what’s right. We do the insanity thing (same thing over and over expecting different results) because we don’t know better. I think this book will really offer to a wide audience a new way.  Reminds me of Marcus Buckingham’s series on focusing on honing your skills instead of trying to fix what you can’t do well.

Times are tough. Change is hard. Yet we will all still find a variety of successes in each day. Looking at why that is and making more of them seems like a fantastic way to structure a day and a life to me.

Share your thoughts..

Thank You Eric Hamm!

I just finished the basic design of the new site with Frugal Theme (3.2 is MUCH IMPROVED) and the banner is done with, gasp, Microsoft Digital Image Suite (which is about as low brow as you can get).

Anyway, anyone who knows me at all knows that finally getting my own WP site is a big step. And I’m pleased with the outcome thus far (and I love the learning-perhaps one day I’ll be a WP Diva).

So, friends who I’ve invited to view, let me know what you think. Is it hard to read? Does it feel good?

Much love,
Kelly