Business, Plans, Markets & Marketing - Get a Life!

I have recently reconnected with a person out of my past. She is the process of completing programs in advance of preparing a business plan. Her primary interest is in how I am marketing my practice. When I responded that word of mouth and referral were the most important methods of promotion for me, she replied (all of this by email) that, since she was not yet established in her holistic practice, referral would not yet work. Her response got me thinking. Before everything else we, as a culture, now have available to us, by which to attract business to ourselves, we had word of mouth and referral; not much else.  And it worked. 

I do not have any memory of my father advertising his machinery-moving business in Toronto in the Toronto Star or the Globe And Mail, when I was growing up in the 1950's and the 1960's. He walked King Street, when he started out, door to door to let the lathe dealers, and the safe and vault door dealers and downtown publishers know what he could offer. It just got down to his willingness to engage his presence and to speak his truth. His vibration was what created the attraction. That was how he built his business. Word of mouth and referral.

As I plunked down on the keys of my computer to draft my response to my contact, I knew that what I would write would become the blog that I had planned to write today. What follows in my blog is, in part, my response to her queries.

'Referral to me is the most pivotal approach to reaching people, second to putting myself 'out there', in terms of checking out already established networks, where I can insert myself to invite and to allow myself to be seen and to be heard in person, on my web-site, by my emailed newsletters, and through my blog. The metaphor of my retail experience over 22 years in 2 countries is that I created a welcoming presence through the conduit of whom I believed myself to be, with a meaningful and fun experience being its result, so that the referrals just came. I started from day one with the idea of referral, so I disagree with the notion that one has to be already established, before referrals can happen. However, we can put ourselves 'out there' - or not- in even the most innocuously considered (to us, anyway) ways. For example, I have an acquaintance in Arizona who gave a business card as a contact mechanism to a neighbour several years ago; while she has not seen this neighbour in 'forever', she recently landed a significant contract because of that one interface with the neighbour so many years ago. It was tantamount to a gift being delivered through the back door (we expect UPS to come to the front door, don't we, unless we have specified otherwise?). That is what referrals do. They carry so much potential (every door available, even the ones that we don't know about) and their only cost to us is that we, authentically, put ourselves 'out there'.

There are lots of ways to 'risk' exposure and there are lots of ways to hide. I know, because, in the past, I have mastered the paradox of external reference as a means of identifying what was important to me, alone, yet never quite getting to that place of importance 'inside' me. I pay for my referrals by being authentic to myself, first.

As Louise LeBrun (http://www.WEL-Systems.com) would say, 'Whatever you think of me is none of my business.' Perhaps, it is my age (62); perhaps, it's the 'stuff' that I have been through... whatever it is, I am putting myself 'out there' as I remain true to myself ' in here.' Traditional business plans do not, generally, allow for that, in my experience; they demand proof of performance. What this tells me is that I have to demonstrate that I can make it before I even get started, based on what has been decided as the cultural average. This is undeniably a default to the past. Banks and experts will only 'risk' on what is known - rarely on what is unknown (what is already present in the future that we have yet to experience and that still holds some infinite quality to it until it becomes finite at the very point that the outcome is achieved - and, often, it's an objective that has demanded sabotage of the original dream in order to ensure the security of an externally planned risk). We have come to believe that the motto/demand is: 'Do what we expect and we'll help you.' Well, what if I want to proceed according to what I know actually does work for me or potentially could work for me? Does that mean that I cannot help myself? Referrals are about helping myself. And... the cost of 'risk' is showing up, authentically.

I have never established a business for less than $100,000.00 start-up cost. I created the space, did the tenant build-outs, purchased the inventory, paid the rents, hired and trained my staff. When I started, I had my integrity, my genuine concern to help others and my motivation. I also had great fear... fear of the feelings that lay behind what I thought was expected of me by others; I actually made what I thought that others expected of me BE the thing that I expected of myself. What I now know, for certain, is that working to an externally referenced agenda that I adopt as my own so that I can 'get' the help that I have been told the I 'need' DOES NOT WORK... ever. That is the mechanism for self-sabotage. It closes the doors to potential. What ever happened to what I expected as possible for myself? I will, now, always refer myself (even in the face of the culture that could fault this as vanity), so that others are invited to refer me, too. It is my invitation to others to do the same for themselves. 

I have done some local newspaper advertising where I live. this has not been cost effective in terms of clients; however, my name is 'out there.' So, one has to decide what the purpose of print media is. Is it to identify you and your proffered customer benefits AND to attract clients OR is it one or the other? In every business that I have built, it was my physical presence and expression that created the referral. With referral, if I wait until I believe that I am 'established', then I will miss opportunities. Is anyone ever ready for the actual moment of the delivery of a child? I doubt it. It is established, though, that one is pregnant and that the child is coming. My business is 'established' in the moment that I conceive it as my dream.

Context is more important than content. I am the context; what I 'do' is the content. What I found in my retail business was this: once my client had found the content (product/service), they continued with the best context in their experience. That is why 80% of clients continue to engage the context (sales person/practitioner) and not, paradoxically, the content (product), which was the original impetus for initiating the engagement. If they have a choice of whom to engage for the 'what' that they want, as they do in a franchise situation (I have personal experience of this) - or not - clients will always go for the agent first and the product/service second. We are the messenger that the message at one and the same time.

So, the following is how I have chosen to 'market' my business/practice as the beneficial result to my clients of me 'being' authentically me:

I am simple aloha here and now. I help you to pay forward  your relationship to yourself, so that others can too. 

I set up my business as the extension of who I want to become, so that it lights me up. As such, I AM the greater context in which the business, as process, unfolds. What the business 'sells' is only strategic to the initial process of engagement, and as such, is irrelevant.

Less is more. Simplicity works always, in all ways. Complexity lies not in the number of skill sets available but in the inability to position these skills, SIMPLY, as strategic to the greater context of the individual as a Quantum Biological Human, sacred and brilliant.

Location is everything. As a metaphor, however, location means so much more. Being well located presupposes clarity in and to myself. Being home to myself presupposes being lit up in and to myself. My 'business plan' is the extension of the depth of my own clarity, nothing else, nothing more.

The greater my clarity, the simpler (and, for me, the richer) my experience of living. 

I am already enough; therefore, I am already established. My own best referral is me in my own clarity. I refer others toward me, practically, by paying forward my own clarity in myself, so that others can pay forward, theirs.

I market my business/practice by me 'showing up' - at least, to myself, if to no-one else. My own clarity demands that I lay bare all the times that I hide to myself, so that I digest and metabolize that information in a breath, further deepening and enlivening that clarity.

In practical terms, there are many ways that I can choose to show up and engage: tactile, auditory and visual approaches/media; networks. As allegories for the nervous system as infinite, who can I become and to whom can I connect as I choose to surrender to my own unique vibration (my inherent potential that is always present - including what I do not yet know about myself)? My surrender to the potential of my unique vibration, is what calls TOWARD me, is what attracts. It IS my business card. It IS my media. The only thing that I require IS that I show up to myself, for myself. That MEANS inviting others to play with me, so that I can further my evolution, while they accelerate theirs. I am paid to 'show up' authentically.

Finally, I remember a significant day, in 1999, in London, England, when I was participating in a program for profitability consulting. The awareness right now, as I remember that time, is that, as usual, then, I had chosen to sit to the rear of the room so that I could engage a global perspective. While this was true to a degree, that choice had always offered me the chance to remain 'invisible'. It made it easy to hide and to 'quit' the potential for engagement. The paradox is that I was searching for the keys to profitability, yet I denied visibility even to myself, if to no-one else. How is that profitable?

From the rear of the room, I was looking at a slide of a financial statement on the stage at the front of the room. The epiphany that occurred to me in a breath, at that time, was that my own financial statement was a reflection of who I believed myself to be, my cultural conditioning. Now, I really 'grok' that a P & L statement is a reflection of my willingness to show up for me. I profit when I 'risk' showing up as me, for me, to become even more, while the culture would epitomize 'performance' as 'right' instead. I lose when I default to patterns that are ascribed as 'right' and 'correct' by the culture, yet not 'right' for me. Therein lies the paradox of being present IN my business, being present TO my business, yet being NOT OF my business. While the culture demands that all is 'real', when is it not all an illusion? 

Traditional business approaches would declare my thinking unorthodox and confused. It is, however, so CLEAR to me. ALL THAT I HAVE TO DO, FOR ME, IS TO CHOOSE TO SHOW UP, TO ME, SO THAT YOU CAN CHOOSE, FOR YOU, TO SHOW UP, TO YOU, TOO. I call it paying forward my vibration with intention, by allowing myself to NOT know how what I want will manifest; I just know that it will. That demands that I state clearly what I want. It also demands my surrender to its chosen process to manifest itself. The paradox is that giving it up completely and without question is the best 'control' there is. It opens the doors to what we do not yet know; that is where the potential for magic and miracles resides.

So the best 'business plan' for me is not less than and not greater than showing up to me and for myself, so that I invite and allow the strength of my unique vibration to become even more.

I have four questions that I like to ask myself to gauge where I am, what I am doing, how am I doing, why am I doing what I am doing, what IS the choice in the moment that I can make to move forward, who can I become and to whom can I connect. Here is what I ask, myself:

How's it going? Am I defaulting to what I know or am I moving into the unknown of an emerging future - to the more that I can become?

What is my biggest concern right now, in this moment? Which will I choose? What I already know, or what I do not yet know?

What is the one thing that, if it magically, started working, would transform my business as the by-product of me 'being' me? What if I simply de-cloak, while staying present to myself, in my full expression of me, so that I invite others to do the same?  That is the best referral of all.

What is that worth to me? When I tell myself my truth, then everything that I choose to 'do' is my own result. Nothing to keep track of. Simply de-cloak and show up. Just 'BE'. The resulting economy relative to material, financial, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual abundance is potentially much greater than our present realization. Think about it!'

Aloha,

Sheila.