Posts Tagged ‘Body Mind and Business Breakthrough Telesummimt’

Learning to Love Your Business

Love Practices For Your Business

Since we are in the first week of the Body, Mind and Business Breakthrough Telesummit, I am sharing with  you some guest posts that our amazing speakers have written.  On June 8th, Laura West will speak about “How to Market Your Business Like A Business Goddess for More Success with Grace and Joy. You can listen to her call for free so do sign up to catch Laura and the other inspirational thought leaders in this field.  This is just a slice of what Laura is about, so I hope you enjoy the article -

Love practices for your business?

Yes!

Love is the most powerful of emotions… we also know it as joy, passion, inspiration, connection, flow, beauty, creativity, and leadership.

We are literally yearning for more love in our businesses. We are tired of the same old sales letters and boring products that lack creative fire and beauty.

Love in your business makes your day feel full of joy. You are engaged and alive. You feel like you just resuscitated lives by helping make someone’s life better through your product or service. Love is that spontaneous flow of inspiration and ideas that you don’t know where it’s coming from, but you trust it for how awake and engaged you feel and the impact you can see you have on others.

Here are 5 ways you can consciously practice infusing love in your business:

1. Love Your Creativity – Freedom to creatively express yourself in your business is one of the highest values for most passionate entrepreneurs. If you find yourself nodding in agreement, then you want to make sure you schedule time for your creativity. As your business grows, it’s easy to lose touch with your creativity if you aren’t consciously giving it attention and time. Schedule creative retreat time each week to get out of your office. Spend some time journaling and mind mapping and reviewing what’s working in your business and where it needs to go. Then use some of that scheduled time to create the program, project or article ideas. Put your attention on what you want to grow!

2. Love Your Marketing – Let go of old stereotypes about marketing and what it means to market your business. These old-style limiting beliefs will just hold you back. Today’s marketing is all about creating relationships with your clients, potential clients, and potential collaborators. The more creative, fun and authentic you are, the better you’ll connect with your clients and grow your business. Successful marketing is also about having a generous mindset to help each other increase visibility and success. So… love your clients, love your colleagues… and focus on loving them in success. While you do, you’ll find you’ll be more successful too.

3. Love Your Money – Money loves being paid attention to. That means learning about money strategies, keeping your Quickbooks™ up-to-date, and knowing how much money you’ve spent and created. If you ignore money, then don’t be surprised if you aren’t making very much! Spend time nurturing your money and its flow in your business. Welcome sales into your business as a sign that you are getting your purpose (your love) into the world!

4. Love Your Life and Relationships – If you are like me, you started your business to have more freedom and flexibility in your life. So make sure that you build a business around your life, not the other way around. You want to love your life – your family, friends, hobbies, travel – whatever you love. Your personal joy is to make room and time in your life and let your business support your life.

5. Love Yourself – As your business grows, you’ll keep running up against your upper limits of success. Those beliefs that will limit how much joy you’ll allow into your business as far as money, success, recognition, great clients and enjoyment. Be aware that everyone hits upper limits of how much success they’ll allow into their businesses (think lottery winners who lose all their winnings within two years). You have to love yourself enough to allow the success in.

Where in your business can do you need to make room for the love? Which area do you need to start with first?

If you would like to use this article in your newsletter or blog please feel free to do as long as you include our credit information: Written by Laura Howard West, Center for Joyful Business (www.joyfulbusiness.com). I would also appreciate it if you’d send us a copy for our media files.

Before You Can Help Others, Help Yourself

Are you at risk?  Risk of burning out?

Too many of us are really committed to helping our clients, but often it’s at our own expense.

Read what Body, Mind and Business Breakthrough Telesummit speaker Alexis Neely has to say about this.

I am sharing this article because of the authentic way she addresses this topic.

And if you want to hear her speak for the telesummit, go to www.BodyMindandBusiness.com

You can hear her and 10 other amazing women share what it takes to put all the pieces together.  The best part…it’s all free!

by Guest Blogger Alexis Martin Neely -

Several months ago, I heard Marianne Williamson speak at an event.

I asked her about the idea of combining spirituality with the business side of business.  The legal, insurance, financial and tax parts of business.

Her response was “Do Your Work.”

At the time, I thought she meant that I needed to re-immerse myself in my own spiritual practice.

Looking back now with the benefit of all that has happened since then I realize that the work she was talking about was not what I thought at all.

It wasn’t about more meditation.

The “work” I had to do was my work, the work of LIFT (my signature system for getting the business of your business on a solid foundation) in my own life and business.

I had to start looking at what I wasn’t looking at.  My messy books.  My lack of legal agreements.  Having no business insurance.  Unclear job descriptions.

Little did I know at the time that looking at those things would or could be a spiritual practice.  That doing my own work on my own business would bring up all my old patterns and fears.  It would show me what I really believed, underneath all the words, thoughts and actions.

And it would starkly show me where I wasn’t being true.

As I created my LIFT Foundation System and began to take the steps to do the LIFT work in my own business, a major shift began to happen.

I began to see what I hadn’t been seeing.  I saw exactly why I had given up on the dream and it wasn’t at all what I thought.

I began to see where I was holding back (and holding on too tightly) because of the fear that I didn’t really have what it took.  And I saw that when it came to the business parts of my business (the LIFT parts), I didn’t.

Sure, I had a great business from the outside.  It made lots of money and helped a lot of people.  But peek behind the curtain and there were a lot of shadows.  Drama.  Tears.  A company culture I wasn’t proud of.

As I’ve done my own work on my own business, the dream I had once let go of has been re-ignited and along with it the resources to make it a reality.

Just this week, I brought a CEO into my company.

I chose him as opposed to others I spoke with because he is committed to creating a company culture based on congruence, open communication, and community.  All things I stand for and believe in, but wasn’t really living in my own business.

I didn’t know how.  I was taught to manage and lead from the example of the law firm partners I grew up under.  Poor role models to say the least.

But, I didn’t know any other way to be.  The patterned behavior so ingrained.

It took a commitment to LIFT my business and do my own work on myself and my business to see the truth of what was needed and to admit that it was beyond my own capacity to bring forth.

Hitch will run the day to day operations of the company, lead the team,  carry out the initiatives and cultivate the company culture.

That means I’ll get to do what I do best – dream, create, innovate.  Appear in the media.  Write books.  Teach.  And not spend so much time on the business part of my business – the parts that do not bring me energy and joy.

But, here’s the big secret that so many of us miss.

Before I could attract this level of help, I had to admit I needed it.  I had to face and do those things I didn’t want to look at and didn’t want to do – the LIFT things.

I had to be willing to get the basics in place so he could see I was serious about this business.  And once I became willing to do my own work, it made space for him to show up.

The process we went through to document the agreement governing our relationship alone was eye-opening.  Our line by line open-hearted discussion of the agreement told me he was the right one.

Someone of his caliber, experience and possibility never would have been attracted to come on-board if my books hadn’t been ready, if I hadn’t had a semblance of foundation in place.  My personal expenses completely separate from the business.  My three businesses all with their own entities, balance sheets, bank accounts, and projections.

I wonder … does this apply to you as well?

Not the part about LIFT.  I KNOW that does. You NEED to face the business of your business from a place of empowerment, not fear, head on. (And I can help you do it and make it a whole lot easier.)

I mean the part about needing to do your own work on yourself?  Do you want to help others, but find yourself not serving at the level you wish you were?  It could be because you need to help yourself first.

Maybe you are a marketing consultant/coach without a clear marketing plan.  Or perhaps you are a communications expert with a fuzzy message.  Or a spiritual teacher without a personal practice.