Random Musings Archives - Page 8 of 12 - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™

June 14, 2010

Why I’ll never win the lottery

Okay, the short answer is because I (almost) never buy a ticket. Which does, of course, make me slightly less likely to win than if I did (but only slightly).

But that’s not the real reason I’ll never win the lottery.

The real reason has a lot to do with a great post the Seth Godin wrote today. “Entrepreneurial hope,” he writes, “is essential.” But there’s a certain kind of hope that’s more damaging than helpful: the hope of the magic lottery ticket.

I know this hope only too well, and I’ll bet you do too. Who hasn’t fantasized about winning the lottery and never having to work a day in your life again?

It’s that same fantasy hope that Oprah Winfrey will read your book and turn it into a bestseller.

Or that your song will be catapulted onto the top of the music charts.

Or that your amazing performance/product/business will be magically discovered and become an overnight success.

The problem, of course, is not only that such fantasy hopes rarely come true, but also that putting energy into the hope of the magic lottery ticket takes energy away from doing the hard work necessary to create the life you really want, on your own terms.

Take a detour past the gatekeepers

I spent last weekend in Vegas with 100+ other music artists who have figured out that we don’t want a gatekeeper determining our fate. Forget trying to get signed with a label (or getting your artwork shown in a big gallery, or your writing picked up by a major publishing house). Smart artists take the reins of our careers into our own hands.

The thing is, with the right strategy, a musician (or artist/writer/creative) can actually make a better living (and possibly a better quality of life) by finding her audience directly than she would by signing with a label.

(Oh, how many sob stories have I heard about musicians signed with labels? Their biggest goal is frequently to get out of the contract that’s making the label rich at the expense of the artist’s creative freedom. Labels are set up to make the record company rich in the same way that the gallery system is set up to make the gallery owners rich.)

Having your work seen or heard or read by a million people is not the only way to succeed. How about 100 or 1,000 truly dedicated fans, who buy everything you create?

Yeah, it will probably take a helluva lot of hard work, but the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get there. Waiting for a shortcut in the form of miraculous overnight success will just keep you from doing the important work that’s calling to you.

As Godin writes:

When someone encourages you to avoid the magic lottery, they’re not criticizing your idea nor are they trying to shatter your faith or take away your hope. Instead, they’re pointing out that shortcuts are rarely dependable (or particularly short) and that instead, perhaps, you should follow the longer, more deliberate, less magical path if you truly want to succeed.

If your business or your music or your art or your project is truly worth your energy and your passion, then don’t sell it short by putting its future into a lottery ticket.

What he said.

The pleasure and pride that comes from building it yourself

Which brings me to the real reason why I’ll never win the lottery: I don’t really want to.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. If a pile of money landed in my lap I would certainly not turn it down! I’d be thrilled, to be honest (right now I’d sure love a windfall to pay off my debt!) But my goal is not to lie on a secluded beach sipping exotic drinks for the rest of my life.

I want to create something I’m proud of.

I want to prove to myself that I’m capable of building the kind of success I seek.

Although I’m grateful for help and support whenever it comes my way, I don’t want to be rescued, I want to rescue myself, thank you very much.

And though I have mixed feelings about the whole Law of Attraction thing, I do believe that to a large extent we create our own reality. If my overarching goal in life were to win the lottery, well, perhaps it would happen.

But on the other hand, if my overarching goal is to create my own success, a winning lottery ticket is almost certainly not in the cards.

And I’m okay with that.

Which, if you think about it, is a very good thing.

For another great blog post that touches on this subject, see The myth of the overnight sensation, at the Creative Penn.

June 11, 2010

Behind the curtain: an object lesson in the deceptiveness of appearances

Today I had a lunch date with an old friend I’ll call M, whom I hadn’t seen in ages. When we met a dozen years ago, M was just starting up a new business. I remember seeing the sketches of the business card designs. I heard the progress reports and watched in admiration as M’s business grew.

I was at the tail end of my marriage at this point, though I didn’t know it yet. With no real earning power (at least none that I was aware of), I felt trapped and powerless, so I envied and admired M’s business success.

I went to M’s wedding, M’s 40th birthday party, and watched with a certain amount of wistfulness as M and spouse bought a house and had kids, while I licked my wounds after my divorce and struck out on my own.

All the while M’s business seemed to be going great gangbusters. M seemed to have figured out a trick that eluded me: how to create and run a business that makes real money.

Behind the curtain

Cut to a dozen years later. We’ve been in touch only sporadically during this time, so when I saw M at the farmer’s market the other day I was astonished at how big the kids had grown, and even more surprised to learn that M had sold the business to be a stay-at-home parent.

Things must be going swimmingly! Good for M! We made a date to catch up over lunch.

Over a bunless turkey burger and a chicken salad I shared my tale of woe and radical transformation over the past four months: money crisis, debt, abandoning boyfriend, but now on a truer path and feeling happier and more in love with my life than ever!

Then M shared a story that took me by surprise. Turns out things were not as hunky-dory as they seemed from the outside: debt, debt, more debt, and a nasty lawsuit by a vengeful former employee leading to yet more debt, and finally, only recently, bankruptcy.

M had sold the business not because it was so successful, but because it was drowning in debt.

Huh.

I was only the second person that M had told about the bankruptcy, probably because my openness about my own debt created enough safety. The sense of relief to be done with the debt was palpable; indeed, I felt relieved for M!

I thought of the other people I know who’ve filed bankruptcy, and others who’ve come close. I thought about how cruel this economy has been to so many, and how my own situation is totally dependent on everything going well. One bit of bad luck, and wham, I could be next in line at the bankruptcy office.

But mostly I thought about how deceptive my perceptions had been. You never actually know what’s going on behind the curtain. That person who seems golden on the outside may have struggles you can’t even imagine on the inside.

I love love love my life, but it’s got its challenges. I’ve got deadlines up the wazoo but am still just climbing a mountain of debt; the fluffs of shed kitty fur are piling up on the floor while dishes pile up in the sink; I never get enough sleep… Honestly, there’s so much on my plate that sometimes it feels like I’m holding on by my fingernails. Today’s lunch was a good reminder that despite how it looks to me sometimes, I’m actually not the only one who struggles.

I certainly don’t wish bad luck on anyone, and I’m sad M had to go through such an awful experience. But I’m grateful, too, for the comforting reminder that I’m not alone.

Life is complicated and hard, and it’s so easy to assume that everyone else is doing it so much better. Some of my blog heroes (Dave Navarro? Naomi from Itty Biz? Johnny B. Truant?) had a conversation recently (on Twitter? damn my Swiss cheese memory!) about how your heroes are just as f-cked up as you are.

You know, it’s actually kind of a relief.

June 9, 2010

Anti-Networking, or how I figured out that networking doesn’t have to be excruciating

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you start thinking about something, that thing starts popping up all around you? Almost as if your thinking about it sprang it into existence.

Ah, serendipity!

Examples: You fall in love, and suddenly the radio is filled with love songs. Or you break up, and suddenly the radio is playing only break-up songs.

Of course it happens with all kinds of stuff, not just love. Serendipity is like that.

Just a couple of weeks ago it happened for me with, of all things, networking.

I’d made this cool realization that networking doesn’t have to be as icky and painful as I’d always thought of it (more on that in a minute), and then an Itty Biz newsletter landed in my box with a guest post by Amy Crook, which started off with a description of her experiences in BNI, a networking group.

Everyone in the group had to give a 30-second “infomercial” or “elevator speech” about their business every week.

“The first dozen times,” Crook writes, “it was really painful. And then, one day, it got easier.”

Yeah, what she said.

As a born introvert (Myers-Briggs INFJ, in case you’re interested), walking up to a stranger and engaging them in conversation, especially if it involves “selling” myself, has always been varying degrees of painful for me. Parties where I don’t know a soul are simply not worth the effort, and “networking events” are about as fun as a migraine in my book.

Which is why my recent discovery that networking doesn’t have to be that kind of networking was such a revelation.

Here’s what happened:

I’ve got a client, Juliette, a top business coach, who was putting together a partner program and a book of offers to be unveiled at an invitation-only business coaching event on May 25th, the Business is Booming tour with “the world’s #1 business coach,” Brad Sugars. My job was to do all the graphic design and some copywriting for the invitations to the event, as well as for the book of offers.

Since Juliette invited me to be one of her partners, I was also on the hook to distribute a stack of invitations and personally invite any and every business owner I knew.

Cringe.

This is the kind of thing I have historically kind of sucked at, to put it bluntly, and I had to rack my brain to think of people to give these invitations to!

Then a funny thing happened. I had an appointment with my insurance agent, one of those every-couple-of-years meetings to go over my coverage and make sure I’m not over- or under-insured. And during the meeting we chatted about this and that – what I do (the various and sundry things I do and offer) and what he does (turns out he owns a couple of other businesses) – and suddenly it occurred to me that (doh!) this guy is a business owner. Perhaps he might be interested in the BIB seminar.

So as we were chatting I pulled out an invitation from my bag, and I told him about the event. And it turned out he was really interested.

Click!

I basically just had a conversation with this really interesting person, and shared some info I thought might be of use to him. And told him about my business, and learned about his. It was actually fun, and guess what: it was networking!

Inspired by this surprising turn of events, when I stopped in at a salon down the street to ask some questions, I realized here was another business owner who might be interested in the BIB event.

So I pulled out another invitation, and in our conversation I mentioned that I design and install websites for technophobes, and it turned out not only was she really interested in the coaching seminar, but she was also really interested in having me redo her website for her.

Click!

Once again, I had a conversation with a really interesting person, and not only did I give away one more invitation, but I had a potential client!

It was right about then that I realized that this is what networking is really about: getting to know someone, finding out who they are and what they do, and sharing who you are and what you do.

The problem with most networking events I’ve been at is that nobody’s really interested in who you are, they’re just interested in what they can sell you or what they can get out of you.

Blech. No wonder I avoid those events like the plague and the rare ones I’ve attended always make me feel like I want to take a shower afterwards.

What I was doing with my insurance agent and the salon owner, on the other hand, was not this at all. It didn’t feel like networking; it felt like anti-networking.

It felt like a real, human interaction. A real conversation, looking for ways I might be of service, not for ways that I might squeeze something out of somebody. I wasn’t trying to push something on anybody, I was interested in offering them something I thought they might find value in.

Click!

At its best, this is what networking, what selling, is all about! Trying to push something on someone when they don’t really need it or want it feels sleazy, let’s face it. Blech blech and triple blech.

But sharing something useful, something that a person could really benefit from, that feels good.

Talk about a paradigm shift. Suddenly I was excited to meet people at the BIB seminar. I didn’t have to try and “sell” them, I just had to have conversations with people! And I like meeting new people!

Suddenly every interaction is an opportunity to make a connection, to share, to possibly be of service. How cool is that?

Anti-networking is the new black. Try it on yourself, and let me know what you think.

June 2, 2010

Why I LOVE making mistakes

Actually, I hate making mistakes.

BUT.

The truth is, many of my worst, Want-To-Dig-A-Hole-And-Bury-Myself-In-It mistakes have turned out to be the best things that ever happened to me. Usually not right away, but still.

I made one of the most painful, humiliating mistakes of my business life to date just a few months ago. Let me paint the picture for you.

Money was tight. I made some bad business decisions last year, trying out several marketing ideas that did not pay off. (I’ve since learned not ever to pay for marketing with debt – thank you Naomi Dunford of Itty Biz – but unfortunately I hadn’t learned that yet).

Suddenly I found myself with mounting debt, no financial cushion, and (because my main business as a ketubah artist is wedding-related, and hence very seasonal), minimal cash flow.

Ask any business person worth her salt and she’ll tell you: cash flow is king.

Yeah. Well.

So there I was, totally stressing over money, barely able to think about anything else but how to pull myself out of this pit. There were a number of potential clients on the radar, but the sales cycle for wedding artwork tends to be very long (ie, it takes clients freakin’ forever to make up their minds), and none of them would hand over their damn credit card.

It was excruciating.

Finally, one client left a message that they were ready to buy. And not only that, but they actually wanted to buy not one but two artworks: a ketubah and a Quaker wedding certificate!

Ka-ching!

I called back and spoke to the bride, who was so hot to trot. She said they were even considering having me create their wedding invitations for them!

Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

Except that it turned out she wanted to talk everything over with her groom one more time.

Oh nooooo! Mr. Bill!

And this is where everything fell apart. Because I was in such an enormous state of money panic, my brain flew out the window. All I could think was that I needed to pay my mortgage, and I absolutely had to get her to hand over her damned credit card right now!

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger, Will Robinson!

Let this be a lesson to any of you out there, do not, I repeat, do NOT ever let your money panic determine your interaction with your clients. Your clients are your lifeblood. It’s all about trust, and the relationship they have with you. If you screw that up, you’re, well, screwed.

And yeah, that’s exactly what I did.

Totally contrary to my own way of doing things, against my better judgment, my intuition, and any semblance of sense in my body, I latched onto something I’d read or heard a business person say recently: create a sense of urgency.

Now yes, this is a tried and true method of getting people to buy. It’s certainly gotten me to make my share of purchases. But if the sense of urgency you create is accompanied by the slightest whiff of anything that might read as desperation or greediness or just plain not caring on your part, you can kiss that sale goodbye.

Which is exactly what happened to me. I offered a special value-added upgrade for no additional charge… if she was ready to purchase right now.

[Insert “you lose” buzzer sound here.]

Well, the bride got all nervous, and I could pretty much tell when she got off the phone that I’d blown it. And sure enough, later that evening she emailed that our conversation had “made her uncomfortable,” and they’d decided to go “a lower pressure route.”

To say that I lost it would be an understatement.

I seriously hit bottom. I was absolutely hysterical. I had pinned so many hopes on this one sale, and then I went and scared it away by going completely against my nature. In that moment, all I could do was cry, and write an honest apology to the client.

Which she appreciated, but still took her business elsewhere. And I can’t say I blamed her; I would have done the same thing. I hate high-pressure sales!

Yes, there is a good part

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably wondering what the up-side is. I know I sure didn’t see any at the time.

But in fact, that horrible, humiliating experience is what got me to finally look at my work life and start making some changes. I’d been beating my head against a wall, trying to grow my ketubah business, and the fact is, I was climbing the wrong damn ladder. Although I made my living as an artist, I had created a business in which I spent most of my time doing administrative tasks, and barely any time at all creating art.

Something was seriously wrong with this picture, and I hadn’t actually been happy with my work life for a very long time, but it wasn’t bad enough to get me to look up and see that there might actually be an alternative.

Now it was seriously bad, and it appeared I had to find an alternative.

Which is what led, via some twists and turns, to this blog. And to a new writing business. And to my new habit of creating art every day. And a level of happiness and balance that I haven’t felt in years, or possibly ever.

Yes, I still have debt (which I am determined to pay off by Valentine’s Day 2013), and I’m not rich yet (ha!), but I’m happy, and excited, and learning new things, and hopeful about the future. Which is 180 degrees from where I was before that dreaded client phone call.

Now if I could just learn to make radical, forward-moving change without having a crisis…

Until then, I’ll work on embracing my mistakes, and trusting that good will come of them. Eventually.

May 17, 2010

How the worst mistakes and crises are sometimes your greatest gifts

Dispatch from the EBK

In today’s Empire Building Kit* email (day 41 of 365), Chris Guillebeau shares a horror story from his upcoming book (Penguin, September 2010). Some years ago, when Chris was working as a volunteer in Sierra Leone, he was also running an online business back home. One night, while checking email via his flaky satellite connection, he discovered that his fulfillment center had gone out of business.

Not only would no more orders be shipped, but it turned out orders hadn’t been shipped in three weeks!

With a lot of help from his brother back home, Chris managed to figure out a solution to this crisis. I won’t go into details here, but the important part is that this admittedly pretty awful experience had some pretty amazing results:

It forced him to think creatively to solve the problem
He emerged with a new sense of confidence that he could handle any problem that came his way.

In his own words, he learned “that you can come back from anything.”

Lessons from the music and performance world

Reading Chris’s EBK email reminded me of a “crisis” of my own, that, while admittedly a lot smaller in the scheme of things, had a big impact on my outlook.

In 2005 I started singing jazz, and for several quarters I was enrolled in an amazing jazz vocal solo class at a nearby community college. Our final exam was a public performance in a local bar, where we’d each get to sing two songs.

At one of these finals, as the pianist played an intro, I realized I couldn’t “hear” my starting note. I panicked, and did what you’re never supposed to do: I asked to start over.

Okay, that was embarrassing, but that wasn’t the really bad part.

Because I was so nervous, and I was so afraid of not being able to hear my note the second time, I asked the pianist if he could just play my starting note for me before launching into the intro. He played a note as requested, and I gripped that note in my brain like it was a life rope. I would not blow it this time.

But when I launched into the song, I could tell something was wrong. I knew that what I was singing didn’t sound right, but I couldn’t quite figure out what to do about it! I knew I’d sung the note he fed me, but I also knew it sounded wrong.

I was on a train headed right over a cliff.

Don’t let them see you sweat

Since I didn’t know what to do, though, I just kept right on going, all the way through the song. I was cringing internally, but outwardly smiling.

True to typical jazz standard form, I sang through the song, then the rhythm section played solos before I came back in at the top. The break while the band was soloing was enough to get me centered again, so when I did come back in, I was on the right note this time. (Thank God!)

After that song was over, I went into my second song, and this time I nailed it. Nobody would have know that I’d screwed up the first song so badly.

Still, when I got offstage and sat down with my then-boyfriend, I was so horrified and humiliated at my performance of the first song that I burst into tears. How would I ever live it down?

(Later, the piano player came over to apologize: turns out he’d fed me the wrong note! Though as the bass player [and a mentor of mine] said, it was still my fault; as the singer, it’s my job to listen to the introduction and sing from that, rather than from the note I was holding in my head. And he was right.)

When the initial trauma and humiliation calmed down a bit, though, I realized that this train wreck of a performance was probably the best thing that could have happened at that particular stage of my singing life. Why?

It showed me that even when the worst thing happens onstage, lightning doesn’t strike.
I learned that even if I mess up, I can go on to give a great performance on the next song (which is a pretty important skill to learn as a performer, since, as the bumper stickers say, shit happens!)

These two big lessons proved to be crucial in my development as a performer. If the idea of messing up paralyzes you, you’re never going to take risks, and never going to get very far. But if you know you’re going to screw up at some point, and you know you can recover from it, suddenly you’ve got total freedom to try anything!

The moral of the story

So many times when we want to try something new and big and scary, we let the fear of something going wrong stop us from even trying. But the thing is, bad stuff does happen, and if you let your fears stop you from going after your dreams, bad stuff still might happen, but you won’t be any closer to what you really want.

My unsolicited advice (to myself as well): just fasten your seat belt and brace yourself for the ride. Whatever slings and arrows life throws at you will probably result in some amazing lessons (and possibly a good story or two).

Now get out there and follow your evolving Bliss!

—

*The Empire Building Kit is a 365-day course for people who want to launch or grow a very small business. It’s filled with video interviews with entrepreneurs with all kinds of unconventional “lifestyle businesses,” PDF case studies of several more, and video tips from Chris Guillebeau from The Art of Nonconformity. It will be available for sale tomorrow, May 18, for 24 hours only.

If you buy the EBK, every day you’ll receive an email from Chris, with one thing to do toward creating your own empire. Some days it’s a business principle to think about; some days it’s a video to watch or an audio recording to listen to (a few days ago there was a special bonus recording with “Career Renegade” Jonathan Fields).

For a more in-depth review, see my post on the first month of the EBK. Upshot: I was super-anxious about sinking so much money into something when I didn’t really know what I was getting, but I’m awfully glad I did. I’ll share more as my “year of empire-building” proceeds.

Note: If you buy The Empire Building Kit or any Unconventional Guides product from any of the links here, I’ll get some affiliate income, and will be forever grateful. If you don’t buy at all, or you buy through another link, I’ll never know, so don’t lose sleep over it.