What if your wacky, weird ways were the qualities that most contribute to your greatness?
This is the question posed by Karen Walrond, author of The Beauty of Different: Observations of a Confident Misfit.
In this gorgeous book, Karen shares her experience as a photographer and writer on a quest for beauty. She found beauty everywhere, and not surprisingly, in the uniqueness of the people she interviewed and photographed for her book,The Beauty of Different: Observations of a Confident Misfit.
Reading this book is like experiencing a meditation on truth, heart and courage. The photographs are intense and invite me into a sort of magical space where anything is possible.
Karen’s work makes me think about my own beauty, my own difference. Our uniqueness isn’t always easy to recognize, but when we feel it, when we claim it, we are more free.
How do you access and accept your difference and beauty? We’ll be talking about this and other ideas that The Beauty of Different inspired in the Creativity Book Salon.
Join us Friday, October 26th at noon MDT to explore The Beauty of Different. You must be a member of the Creativity Book Salon to participate. It’s free, and easy to join. Just go here.
Books for Creatives
Read This: The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Chris Guillebeau’s work at The Art of Non-Conformity and the World Domination Summit.
Chris’s encouraging approach to life as an adventure has always appealed to me. He applies his consummate curiosity to the subject of entrepreneurship in his latest book, The $100 Startup.
Filled with case studies and grounded, simple advice about how to launch and run a small business, this book will inspire those just starting and those who’ve been in business for awhile and who need a perspective refresher.
Chris just launched this book and has embarked on his book tour. We hosted him in Denver in 2010 for his Art of Non-Conformity book tour.
This year, he’ll be speaking on Friday, May 18th, 2012 at 7:30 pm at the Tattered Cover in Highlands Ranch. I’ll be there and look forward to the discussion that Chris will initiate about entrepreneurship.
Enjoy my video review, with a revelation of a surprise connection between my business and this book. Below the video I’ve shared about my own $100 startup.
My (Less than) $100 Startup
In May, 1999 I quit my job at the bookstore and struck out on my entrepreneurial path. I’d read an article about coaching, attended a weekend introductory course, and knew that coaching was the career for me.
I didn’t have savings, I didn’t have a golden parachute, and I didn’t have a plan other than to coach and write.
Frankly, I didn’t even know I was going into business.
I’m sure I didn’t have $100 but I didn’t leap from my job without ways to support myself. I’d always relied on multiple streams of income, so I moved forward on the bridge of my existing skills.
A financial bridge to fund the startup
If you’re considering self-employment, you may need to have a financial bridge to support you while you build your business. This could be made using the skills from your former work.
My bridge had these sources of income:
Personal chef Every week, I’d cook a week’s worth of delicious and healthy vegetarian meals for a family.
Cooking classes At this time I was in the middle of my ten-year career as a cooking instructor. I had a small following, and several of these people became my first clients and also came to my other workshops.
Writing classes I had been teaching writing since 1996. I earned money teaching classes at a local writing school and leading free write groups in my home.
Writing I was a columnist for Life on Capitol Hill. I wrote a monthly article and was paid $50 per. This of course was a pittance but it built confidence in my writing and gave me clips to prove I was a published writer.
Pushing the leap
The next year I pushed myself out of the safety net of Denver and moved to Boulder. With no money, no boyfriend, no job, no nothing, I needed to take a job while I built my business.
Part of me felt this was a defeat. But a friend shook some sense into me. “Girlfriend, you need cash! Just go find a part-time job.”
I went to interviews, and in one office, I broke down in tears. “I just want to build my coaching business,” I cried to the sympathetic woman interviewing me.
Finally, I found a job at the box office at Chautauqua. I sold concert tickets and made friends. In the winter I worked at a cooking school.
Both of these jobs allowed me time to develop my own business while earning money. (The first job also led to some lucrative opportunities for me, but that’s another story.)
In February 2001 I went fully self-employed. I haven’t punched a time clock since.
It’s possible to build a lean startup
I’m a lot like many of the entrepreneurs featured in The $100 Startup. I had an idea, the inspiration to help others and a perfect blend of courage and ignorance.
If you’re considering taking your own entrepreneurial leap, The $100 Startup gives both information and solid advice for bringing your idea into the business realm.
Over to you
What sources of income can you use to support yourself while you build your business?
Leave a comment below telling about how you’ve funded your startup and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a hardcover copy of $100 Startup.
Comment by Monday, May 21st. I’ll draw a winner at random and announce it here.
Read This: The Mother's Wisdom Deck Giveaway
Are you mothering with soul?
How would you know if you were?
A gorgeous new card deck helps mothers slow down, take a moment for themselves, and find a deeper connection to soul. My friend, writer Elizabeth Marglin, has just released The Mother’s Wisdom Deck, co-authored with Niki Dewart and with lovely illustrations by Jenny Kostecki.
I’m not a mother but I have great respect for women who are. Bringing up children is a full-time job and most mothers are also working outside the home.
Elizabeth gave me a copy of The Mother’s Wisdom Deck to share with you.
This is a gorgeous and inspiring deck. I wanted one even though I am not a mother.
Whether you’re a mother or not, you’re probably bringing mothering to something. I’m birthing my novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach, after a 12-year gestation period! When I pause to reflect on the whole process, I realize that yes, I mothered this project with soul. It’s the pauses – and using a deck of cards helps us slow down – that give us the true sense of soul.
Leave a comment below about how you are mothering with soul. On Sunday, May 13th, 2012, I’ll choose a comment at random for the winner of a copy of The Mother’s Wisdom Deck.
Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers and to all mothering efforts.
Read This: Creating Time by Marney Makridakis
I’m excited to recommend Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reclaim Your Life by Marney Makridakis.
This is a very clever and useful book that invites new ways to be with, think about, and mold time so we can create more.
More about the book.
Enjoy my video review.
Book Review: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This may be the most beautiful book I’ve ever read.
The descriptions of the Alaskan landscape, flora and fauna, weather patterns and animals were so beautiful. I never thought I would be eager for that place, but Eowyn’s prose was so lovingly rendered and gorgeous, it made me want to visit Alaska again.
The characters were well-wrought and absolutely lovable. The mysterious snow child and her roots in fairy tale offered just the right amount of magic and mystery.
I loved the beautiful surprises that came near the end (trying not to be a spoiler!). So delightful.
So sad and beautiful at the same time.
I highly recommend this book, in case it’s not already obvious!
I met Eowyn at the Tattered Cover’s annual Authors Meet Readers event, and she was a total dear. As a fellow bookseller-turned-author, I enjoyed our conversation about a life among the stacks.
View all my reviews
Make Your Creative & Graceful Return
When you come home from a trip of any length, you’re not the same person. You’re just not. It’s impossible to go out into the world and not be affected.
If you’re like me, you want to make the most of what the world has given you. You embrace the gifts of the journey – new possibilities, insights and confidence.
But it’s easy for all that to slip away into the ignorosphere – that place where your ideas and possibilities exist but you don’t do anything about them.
I’m just off the plane from Paris – actually two trains, three planes and two busses, not to mention airport shuttles.
I’m still in motion. It’s like that feeling you get stepping off a moving walkway, still cruising but off-balance while you try to integrate the new pace.
But I’m happy to be back in the office and using my tools from my e-book The Graceful Return to get my footing. In this week’s newsletter I want to share what I’m doing to cull the juice from my trip to Paris.
It would be easy to pull an article together from the e-book, and I often do that. But this time I’ll share what I jotted in my journal on the way home.
[Read more…] about Make Your Creative & Graceful Return
Earning Your A
Writers and other creative types are often notoriously hard on ourselves. Yes, I got published, but they didn’t pay much, you’ll hear. Or, sure I got a show, but it isn’t a solo show. Dissatisfaction is the bane of the creative’s existence.
It could be said that dissatisfaction drives the creative type to keep creating. If we were perfectly content with the world, we wouldn’t have to make anything new, would we?
Yet, this cranky perspective can also keep us from really enjoying the process of producing art. In The Art of Possibility, Benjamin Zander shares this exercise for banishing the ‘not good enough’ demons that haunt us. It’s called Earning Your A.
[Read more…] about Earning Your A