I hope this finds you well in your world and enjoying your summer… đ
We’re having a blast at the lake and I’m so grateful for this business that enables me to enjoy this precious time each year with my family.
We’re just about two months away from my annual Online Business Breakthrough Workshop and we have just 3 seats left.
(Get more details here –> http://www.obbw2013.com)
Iâm quite proud of OBBW â of the content I provide in an intimate environment that enables you to take what you learn and put it into a plan of action that you can move forward with as soon as you get home (in fact, some attendees donât wait â after the first day, they start making changes and additions to their business in their hotels rooms that night!).
And Iâm committed to this OBBW being the best one yet (we have many returning attendees (some for the 3rd and 4th times!), so you can ask them at the end if they agree 
).
(and don’t forget my extra-special bonus: each attendee will receive TWO Bonus Tickets* to OBBW 2014. So you’re actually getting two workshops for the price of one – cool, eh?)
And because I know you may be wondering similar things, I’ve answered some of the most common questions below as well⌠but if you have a different question, just hit reply and let me know â weâll get right back to you.
Iâm sensing that you know if OBBW is right for you â and if it is, well⌠your seat is waiting.
http://www.obbw2013.com
Cheers,
~ A
PS: The early-bird price is just $497- (and it will be flying away soon). Iâll guess that youâve invested in an info-product or a teleseminar program that cost at least that much…
The Online Business Breakthrough Workshop is a full 3 day business-building workshop that is 100% content thatâs 100% implementable (even if you donât have one single team member yet) that meets you where youâre at â newbie or seasoned â in your business.
So if youâve become jaded by events that are mostly rah-rah, tempting you with bits of information but not giving you the done-for-you templates, scripts, flow charts, processes, timelines, calendars and more resources to take you from where you are to where you want to be in your business and your life⌠youâll be very pleasantly surprised by your experience at OBBW. That I know for sure.
http://www.obbw2013.com
OBBW Most Common Questions Answered
Q: Will you be offering a simulcast ticket option for OBBW?
A: No, OBBW 2013 will not be offered via simulcast. At the moment, OBBW is an intimate workshop, with no more than 50 attendees. In order to engage fully with the participants in the room, I have purposefully chosen NOT to simulcast the event.
If you want to learn from me on how to design, grow and manage a successful and sustainable business, part-time, and that honors whatever it is thatâs MOST important to you, then join me LIVE here.
Q: Iâm new in business. Am I going to be overwhelmed by OBBW?
A: Definitely not. Whether youâre a new business owner or have several years under your belt, what Iâll be sharing with you during our 3 days together is applicable and immediately implementable to ALL levels of business owners.
In fact, one of the unique ways I teach is in âlayersâ â youâll fully appreciate this at the workshop.
And itâs one of the beauties of hosting a boutique event like this â weâll be tailoring all of the content together for wherever you are on your business-building path (starting with a Discovery Questionnaire you receive via email before the workshop where I ask all about you and your business, your goals and desires, and what you want and need most from me at OBBW).
Q: Iâd like to come, Alicia, but I donât like traveling or attending events alone. Could I bring someone with me?
A: Sure! All regular ticket holders may Bring-A-Friend (spouse, colleague, friend, client, family member, team member, etc.) for a one-time non-refundable $97- fee.
What that also means is that if you have someone youâd like to split the ticket fee with, you are most welcomed to do that (working the details out amongst yourselves).
For example, if you purchase your seat for $497- (the current ticket price) and add on the Bring-A-Friend option for $97-, the total investment would be $594-. That split between two people would be just $297- each!
Bottom line? At the early bird price of $497- (or even better, the split price of $297- if you split it with someone), you have the unique opportunity to participate in one of the only small business events that is 100% (and immediately actionable) content.
As I write this, we only have 3 seats left for this yearâs workshop. With my own bigger picture plan mapped out, I can confidently say that this is the last year I will be hosting this intimate of an event for a full 3 days at this low of an investment.Hereâs that link for you to reserve your seat now:
http://www.OBBW2013.com
*BONUS TICKET: Everyone who has a reserved seat for â and attends â OBBW 2013 (whether itâs a regular ticket or a bonus ticket (guest, client, friend, scholarship, etc.) will receive 2 BONUS tickets to OBBW 2014. A Bonus ticket is a deeply discounted seat for the workshop and is non-refundable. You wonât have to book those seats until a later date, but we will keep them in reserve for you and be sure you get first dibs on securing them before we open the doors to the public. Super-cool 
Pinterest: 5 Ways to Use It Effectively
by Alicia Forest, MBA
The Business Shifterâ˘
Oh no! ANOTHER social media platform?
Oh yes – and it’s one you might want to take a look at, to see if it makes sense for your particular business. But a caution here – even it does – don’t feel you have to add it to your social media marketing. If you’re already overwhelmed just keeping up with your current social media efforts, then leave Pinterest be, at least for now.
But if it appeals to you and makes good business sense to add it to your business platform, here are five specific ways you can use it in your marketing efforts:
1. Less Clicks = More Conversions
The less clicks your visitor has to make to get to the information or product they want, the higher your conversion rates. With Pinterest, there are just two clicks from first seeing something of interest to visiting its site of origin. That translates into more leads and more sales.
For example, let’s say you have a book for sale and you pin the image of the cover from the book’s sales page to your board. When one of your followers sees your pin and clicks on it, it will allow them to share it with others immediately. And if they click it again, it will take them to the site where the image was pinned from, in this case, the sales page for your book.
2. Drive tons more traffic to your site
Because Pinterest has such a large following (10 million+ unique views at this writing) it’s a great tool for driving more traffic to your site via the links that are attached to the pins you make to your board. In fact, there are tracking stats that are showing Pinterest is driving more traffic back to websites than Facebook or Google+.
3. Easy for people to share your content
Pinterest makes it super-simple for your followers to share your pins and therefore links back to your site. Because every pin includes a link leading back to the source of the image, this can translate into a lot more inbound links to your website. So the more followers you have, the more those followers share your pins, the more traffic to your site.
4. Gain from user addiction
Some markets have already fallen in love with Pinterest, with more to come as more people become aware of and start utilizing this new social media platform. If your market is a fan of Pinterest, then you need to get onboard and get in front of all that traffic. Just start with one board, pay attention to what your followers are re-pinning (sharing with others) the most, and pin more of that content.
5. Connect it with your other social media sites
Since I’m all about leveraging your time and talent, if you’re going to use Pinterest, then you need to connect it with your other social media platforms to do so. You can connect Pinterest with your Facebook profile (hopefully they will add the ability to connect to your fan page soon). You can also connect your Pinterest account with Twitter so your pins are automatically tweeted. And you can add a “pin it’ button to your website, much like other share buttons, so your visitors can pin for you.
I’m really enjoying Making Your Creative Mark by Eric Maisel – and you know I love ‘chunked’ info so here’s an except I have permission to share with you… Enjoy!
CONFIDENT CREATING
By Eric Maisel
If you want to live a creative life and make your mark in some competitive art field like writing, film-making, the visual arts, or music, and if at the same time you want to live an emotionally healthy life full of love and satisfaction, you need an intimate understanding of certain key ideas and how they relate to the creative process.
One key idea is that you must act confidently whether or not you feel confident. You need to manifest confidence in every stage of the creative process if you want to get your creative work accomplished. Hereâs what confidence looks like throughout the creative process.
Stage 1. Wishing
âWishingâ is a pre-contemplation stage where you havenât really decided that you intend to create. You dabble at making art, you donât find your efforts very satisfying, and you donât feel that you go deep all that often. The confidence that you need to manifest during this stage of the process is the confidence that you are equal to the rigors of creating. If you donât confidently accept the reality of process and the reality of difficulty you may never really get started.
Stage 2. Incubation/Contemplation
During this second stage of the process you need to be able to remain open to what wants to come rather than defensively settling on a first idea or an easy idea. The task is remaining open and not settling for something that relieves your anxiety and your discomfort. The confidence needed here is the confidence to stay open.
Stage 3. Choosing Your Next Subject
Choosing is a crucial part of the creative process. At some point you need the confidence to say, âI am ready to work on this.â You need the confidence to name a project clearly (even if that naming is âNow I go to the blank canvas without a pre-conceived idea and just startâ), to commit to it, and to make sure that you arenât leaking confidence even as you choose this project.
Stage 4. Starting Your Work
When you start a new creative work you start with certain ideas for the work, certain hopes and enthusiasms, certain doubts and fears â that is, you start with an array of thoughts and feelings, some positive and some negative. The confidence you need at that moment is the confidence that you can weather all those thoughts and feelings and the confidence to go into the unknown.
Stage 5. Working
Once you are actually working on your creative project, you enter into the long process of fits and starts, ups and downs, excellent moments and terrible moments â the gamut of human experiences that attach to real work. For this stage you need the confidence that you can deal with your own doubts and resistances and the confidence that you can handle whatever the work throws at you.
Stage 6. Completing
At some point you will be near completing the work. It is often hard to complete what we start because then we are obliged to appraise it, learn if it is good or bad, deal with the rigors of showing and selling, and so on. The confidence required during this stage is the confidence to weather the very ideas of appraisal, criticism, rejection, disappointment and everything else that we fear may be coming once we announce that the work is done.
Stage 7. Showing
A time comes when we are obliged to show our work. The confidence needed here is not only the confidence to weather the ideas of appraisal, criticism, and rejection but the confidence to weather the reality of appraisal, criticism, and rejection. Like so many other manifestations of confidence, the basic confidence here sounds like âBring it on!â You are agreeing to let the world do its thing and announcing that you can survive any blows that the world delivers.
Stage 8. Selling
A confident seller can negotiate, think on her feet, make pitches and presentations, advocate for her work, explain why her work is wanted, and so on. You donât have to be over-confident, exuberant, over the top â you simply need to get yourself to the place of being a calmly confident seller, someone who first makes a thing and then sells it in a business-like manner.
Stage 9: New Incubation and Contemplation
While you are showing and selling your completed works you are also incubating and contemplating new projects and starting the process all over again. The confidence required here is the confident belief that you have more good ideas in you. You want to confidently assert that you have plenty more to say and plenty more to do â even if you donât know what that âsomethingâ is quite yet.
Stage 10: Simultaneous and Shifting States and Stages
Iâve made the creative process sound rather neat and linear and usually it is anything but. Often we are stalled on one thing, contemplating another thing, trying to sell a third thing, and so on. The confidence needed throughout the process is the quiet, confident belief that you can stay organized, successfully handle all of the thoughts and feelings going on inside of you, get your work done, and manage everything. This is a jugglerâs confidenceâit is you announcing, âYou bet that I can keep all of these balls in the air!â
Manifest confidence throughout the creative process. Failing to manifest confidence at any stage will stall the process. It isnât easy living the artistâs life: the work is taxing, the shadows of your personality interfere, and the art marketplace if fiercely competitive. If you learn some key ideas, for instance that you must act confidently whether or not you feel confident, you give yourself the best chance possible for a productive and rewarding life in the arts.
**
Eric Maisel is the author of Making Your Creative Mark and twenty other creativity titles including Mastering Creative Anxiety, Brainstorm, Creativity for Life, and Coaching the Artist Within. Americaâs foremost creativity coach, he is widely known as a creativity expert who coaches individuals and trains creativity coaches through workshops and keynotes nationally and internationally. He has blogs on the Huffington Post and Psychology Today and writes a column for Professional Artist Magazine. Visit him online at http://www.ericmaisel.com.
Adapted from the new book Making Your Creative Mark Š2013 by Eric Maisel. Published with permission of New World Library http://www.newworldlibrary.com
I’m loving RenĂŠe Peterson Trudeau’s new book Nurturing the Soul of Your Family, and this passage in particular really resonated with me… enjoy!
Upon Arrival, Proceed to Baggage Claim
An Excerpt from Nurturing the Soul of Your Family
Relationships of all types can be challenging. In particular, family members, partners, and children often develop a sixth sense for how to push our buttons. For myself, to become less reactive, Iâve had to slowly become more self-aware, compassionate, loving toward myself, and attuned to my needs â which has made me a much more emotionally present parent and partner.
Some of the keys are to show up in our relationships with a soft and open heart, a healthy perspective, and a full cup rather than a half-empty one. Before we can do that, however, we have to examine ourselves: we have to release and heal old self-limiting beliefs by understanding what weâre holding on to and why.
We all have emotional baggage. Ever heard the phrase âthe issues are in the tissuesâ? Our beliefs, scars, and old patterns from our family lineage, childhood, culture, education, and birth order all significantly affect our worldview and habitual ways of being. These, in turn, guide how we show up and relate to our family members.
Some days we get easily triggered. Maybe our child not putting their dirty clothes in the laundry room sends us over the edge, while other days they could break the front door and weâd just roll with it. Our state of being has the most impact on how we respond to external circumstances. Some days we receive the gift of observing when weâre stuck in an old pattern or way of seeing things, and other times we just feel stuck, or else constantly critical or judgmental, thinking of our partner or children: âIf theyâd just listen to me, weâd all be happier!â
When this happens, look inward to see if you have any unclaimed baggage. For instance, when my son, Jonah, was about to turn ten, he and I went through a really difficult patch. Heâs a beautiful, passionate, mature, intense kid, and as he reached adolescence, his level of defiance at times overwhelmed me. A simple request to finish homework or put his dirty dishes in the sink could invoke an emotional tsunami. Since I have a tendency to be controlling, our interactions were a Molotov cocktail.
After a particularly hard stretch involving lots of crying jags (mostly mine), I called Terri, a parent educator, and asked if my husband and I could see her for a session. I was exhausted from the stressful interchanges and needed help. After I explained our situation, Terri turned to me and gently shared, âYou are going through mourning â Jonah is no longer a child. Heâs an adolescent.â Terri went on to highlight some of the science around early-adolescent behavior and how best to support my son; in short, offer love and acceptance, not solutions and tips for improvement. After that illuminating session, things got much easier in our home â not yellow-brick-road happy, but the crying and yelling diminished greatly.
In part, the improvement occurred because my husband and I tweaked our language and gave Jonah more freedom, but mostly things changed because my husband and I shifted ourselves internally. We realized we were holding unrealistic, supersized fears that were causing us to be overly critical; our heads had become filled with visions of our out-of-control nine-year-old turning into a sixteen-year-old heroin addict. We were âparenting from the futureâ and from our own fears and wounds, rather than from the present moment, which was what our son most needed. This aha moment and shift in our awareness are what created the big shift in our family dynamic that we needed. Often we have to break down in order to break through.
# # #
Life balance coach/speaker RenĂŠe Peterson Trudeau is the author of the new book Nurturing the Soul of Your Family. Thousands of women in ten countries are participating in Personal Renewal Groups based on her first book, the award-winning The Motherâs Guide to Self-Renewal. Visit her online at www.ReneeTrudeau.com
Excerpted from the new book Nurturing the Soul of Your Family Š2013 RenÊe Peterson Trudeau. Published with permission of New World Library http://www.newworldlibrary.com
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