Tag Archive: sobcon

Entrepreneurs Can Be Authentic Without Getting Naked

authentic without getting nakedOur title is not an original to us. It came from Liz Strauss, who along with Terry Starbucker co-founded SOBcon – the premier conference for Successful Online Businesses. We highly recommend it!

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Are you amazed by some of the things some people say on social media? It’s bad enough when it’s John or Jane Doe.

But do you ever find yourself shaking your head in disbelief when an entrepreneur complains about a customer or talks openly about cash flow problems?

You can be yourself without revealing everything. A little mystery makes your business sexier.

Don’t bare it all to funders

A small business owner came to us because he was experiencing cash flow problems. We determined he had
a timing problem, not a money problem. He was growing too fast for his capital base.

We introduced him to an investor. Unfortunately, all the entrepreneur talked about was the cash flow problem and the issues it was creating.

People don’t invest in problems; they invest in opportunities. If you can’t see the opportunity in your business, neither will your potential funders.

Don’t overexpose yourself to customers

Customers don’t want to hear it either. If you aren’t doing well – and they know it – they may get nervous. They wonder if you will continue being a dependable source of supply. So they start shopping. Overexposure opens the door for competitors.

The opposite is also true. You may be doing great. You brag about it. Your customers may question whether they are paying too much for your goods and/or services. They pressure you for better prices.

Don’t take it all off

All of your employees don’t have to know everything either. Completely open-book management requires a certain level of maturity. If that maturity isn’t there, employees tend to focus on the negative.

It makes them nervous. Nervous employees start looking for work elsewhere. Your best employees are the first to get hired away.

At least keep your hat on

Even your spouse or significant other doesn’t need to hear it all. Deal with the entrepreneurial terror yourself so your spouse can keep supporting you, the entrepreneur.

How can you be authentic without getting naked?

  • Be yourself while simultaneously being true to yourself.

    You may occasionally modify your real opinion to avoid hurting someone else’s feelings. Do the same for yourself.

  • Filter what you say and to whom you say it.

    Think need to know. Obviously, you have a duty to keep certain people in the loop. Why does any single person beyond that group need to know?

  • Frame it in a positive way, unless there’s no other way.
  • Find a mentor or a coach with whom you can let it all hang out.

    We’ve walked a thousand miles in your shows. Maybe we can help. E-mail us at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com or leave a voice mail at 888.455.2444.


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Image in this post from obyvatel

Believing is Seeing – Part 1

vision_boards.jpgWe were thrilled to visit with Christine Kane on The Bigg Success Show today. Christine has sold over 100,000 CDs and her songs have been sung by a number of Nashville stars. She was recently featured in First magazine for her innovative strategies for taking life to the next level. If you listen to the show, you can hear part of her great song, “Right Outta Nowhere.

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icon for podpress  Hear George & Mary-Lynn talk with Christine Kane on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player to listen while you read: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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georgeWe heard you perform live at SOBCon a couple of years ago and I have to tell you … you rocked the boat!

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christine_kane
Or the boat rocked me!

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georgeIt was a little breezy in the Windy City that night.

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What is a vision board?

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marylynnOne of my favorite girlie magazines is First magazine. So, when I saw your picture in the March 30 issue, I said to George, “Look, Christine is featured.” You were talking about how vision boards have helped you achieve your dreams. So, let’s start with, what is a vision board?

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christine_kaneVision boards got really popular after The Secret. I’ve been doing them forever. In the late 90s, a friend of mine was trying to change her career around. I was trying to uplevel my career in music. So the two of us and another friend did them. I ended up getting the house I put on my vision board. It was completely effortless. Then I noticed that, after my shows, I’d end up having a circle of women, and sometimes men, around me asking how to follow their dreams. So I started doing women’s retreats to answer that call. The first day we work on intention. The second day we look at what blocks our intention – the little patterns that come up. So by now they’re deeply connected with who they are, what they want and all their old patterns. After that, we do vision boards. We just take poster board and a huge stack of magazines – I have hundreds of them at these retreats. They grab photos that speak to them. Sometimes they speak to your soul and you don’t know why. Sometimes they are totally in alignment with what you want, like a new house or a new car. I tell them not to get uptight about it. You tend to know which image is right for you. I don’t give huge instructions because I think our creative side – that’s my songwriter side – knows where you’re going to put those images and how you’re going to lay out that board. I like to have people put a picture of themselves in the middle of it. Then you put that board above the desk in your office, your walk-in closet, in your bedroom behind the door. You just let those images be with you every day. The idea behind it is you’re welcoming in new images from a new paradigm that you want to create. That’s the power of our subconscious. As a creative person who has created a songwriting career out of nothing, I believe in the power of these kinds of tools. I don’t put everything on the idea of a vision board, but it’s one of the many ways that we can create better things in our life.

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Blocking out mental blocks

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marylynnChristine, let me go back to something you said early on – we have those “blocks.” As you were creating your vision board to help you take your career to a new level, what was a block that you recognized and what was something you put on your vision board to get past that block?

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christine_kaneThat’s a really great question. You have to take this to your own career. For my career, there’s a point where every songwriter, artist, or entrepreneur gets to where they have let the original people who showed them the ropes give them all the “here’s how it is in your business” or “here’s the only way you’ll be able to do it.” I had that and a lot of it was very negative. I was playing at bars. Sometimes I was at a festival playing on a rickety stand. I truly had this mindset that it was the best I could get. I was lucky to be an artist. I sat down by myself to do my vision board on New Year’s Day, which I do every year. Now this was not my first vision board; this was when I had been doing them and really got it. I pulled out the image of Celine Dion on stage in Vegas.

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marylynn
That was quite a stage!

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christine_kaneIt didn’t mean that I wanted to be Celine Dion because I don’t. It represented that I wanted to start playing on stages that are substantial, that didn’t smell like spilled beer, that weren’t a pile of wood thrown together for some make-shift festival that someone put on.

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marylynn
That weren’t rocking!

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christine_kaneExactly! If you’ve ever walked backstage at a great theater, you know what it feels like. You feel those spotlights come on. That image of her stage was the center of my vision board. Literally within six months of doing that board, I got an invitation from a ballet company. They had seen me at a showcase and fallen in love with my music. They choreographed a ballet to my songs. They wanted me to tour with them. The tour lasted for three years. From that point, I was on those stages. We were around the country at performing arts centers. Those spotlights. That strong sturdy stage. After that, a lot of the performing arts centers that I went to with the ballet company had me back as a solo artist. So my career literally did a u-turn. I got more money. I really got what it felt like to have imagined that thing on my board. It required that I get really deeply in touch with what that picture represented to me. It wasn’t just, “Hey I want to be Celine Dion and do cool things.” It was, “What does this stage mean to me?” It means no longer saying “yes” to anything that is less than this image. I really got what that felt like inside of my body.

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Don’t know what you want? Do you know what you don’t want?

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georgeThat’s such a great story, Christine. This was part of the article from First magazine. And by the way, may I say that I’m man enough to read Mary-Lynn’s girlie magazine! One of the things that jumped out at me reading that, and now hearing it again, is that sometimes we get to what we want by, first, knowing what we don’t want.

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christine_kaneOh yeah. You know it’s funny – my retreats have become so popular that I created an online course and then it turned into a coaching program called The Uplevel Your Life Mastery Program. It’s a seven-week program. One of the exercises in the first week is about getting in touch with what you want. So many people say they don’t know what they want. So we start with writing down what they don’t want. That is a perfectly valid place to start. That’s what has to start turning around. That awareness that I didn’t want to play at places where people were drinking. That was my first thing.

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Learn more about Christine and download her free vision board e-book by visiting her site, christinekane.com. Also check back tomorrow when Christine tells us about the three kinds of vision boards.

Thanks so much for reading our post today. Until next time, here’s to your bigg success!

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
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(Image in today's post from Christine Kane)

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