Your marriage falls apart, you or your partner is laid-off,
or your spouse gets ill and you lose half your household
income.
The financial pressures sweep in like a sudden high tide,
and as one of my clients wrote me, "I feel so pressured to
make money I can't think."
What do you do in a situation like this? "Forget about the
bladdy-blah-blah of patience and organic growth, man! I
need to make the rent like, yesterday!"
Okay, but first you need to know about the two wings of
growth.
The Two Wings of Growth
The Sufis teach that in our growth and development as
humans, we fly on two wings: Hope, and Fear.
The Wing of Hope is when our hearts sing. In the ego we
know it as joy, in the heart as expansion, and deeper in
our soul we know Hope as a state of Beauty.
But, flap too much with one wing, and we fly in circles.
Too much with the Wing of Hope can carry us into
heedlessness.
Extreme Hope leads to fantasy island, where nothing is
real. In business, you can fall off the edge of the
mountain because you spent so much time visioning, feeling
good, having fun, that you aren't taking beneficial actions
and paying attention to structures.
So you need the Wing of Fear. Fear? Yes, Fear.
In the ego we know it as fear, but in the heart we
experience it as a natural state of contraction, and in the
soul we know it as Awe and Majesty.
A certain amount of healthy contraction is a great way to
grow. How else do you get the toothpaste out of the tube,
eh? Urgency about paying the bills has moved more than one
amazing heart-centered person out of the shadows into the
limelight of successful business.
But, Extreme Fear is not a good thing either. Too much fear
and all you do is spin your wheels, working harder and
harder trying to make things happen. You forget that there
is Hope, and that miracles are ever present.
Hope and Fear- your two wings for forward movement.
I'm still so scared about money I can't think.
If you're in the situation above, you have to flap your
hope wing. You have to break the cycle of fear. How? Take a
break.
Spiritual practice, and fun. Time in prayer, and time at
the movies. Time shnuggling your partner, or child, or cat,
and time on the meditation pillow resting your heart.
Fun loosens you up, brings you hope. Spiritual connection
deepens your ability to contain and experience that hope.
Fun distracts you so you can back up from the problem.
Spirituality lets you take another look, and see a larger
Truth in your situation.
Example: My client was panicked, and reached out for help
to me, and to The Business Oasis (our heart-centered online
business community). And then she also took time to hang
out with her daughter and the dog, watch a movie, laugh,
play, forget about her troubles for a little bit.
And she took time in her heart to see a larger Truth about
the situation.
She came back refreshed, able to breathe and think, and to
take in some of our good advice.
And about our good advice? Well, AFTER she flapped her Hope
wing with fun and spirit, then came the action steps.
Keys to Quick Cashola (from the heart)
• Assess your true needs.
We have a tendency to think 'I'm making it.' or 'I'm not
making it.' Look more closely. What's your true squeak-by
financial needs? And how much is coming in now? The truth,
not your 'hope-for.'
Example: My client, when she looked at how her new business
was performing, and her squeak-by financial needs, she saw
she only needed a few hundred dollars a month to bridge the
difference. That, she knew, was doable.
• Assess your business assets.
The only asset that means anything in this situation, aside
from cash in the bank, is a list. A list of people who have
already told you they are interested in what you offer.
And, if you don't have a list like that? Who do you know
that has a list? Churches, organizations, fellow business
owners who have more developed businesses. People who like
and trust you, who might be willing to introduce you to
their list.
Example: My client realized that she already had some
dozens of people on her email list. She also knew folks who
liked her work enough that they might be willing to help
promote her.
• Make me a personal offer.
The final step is to make an offer. Don't get fancy about
it- don't come up with some big seminar idea, or a shiny
new product that needs to be developed.
Create some kind of one-on-one individual support offer.
Price it at a rate that feels comfortable to your heart.
Don't low-ball it, but don't try to stretch too much,
either. Remember, you just got yourself out of the panic
zone.
And package it so that it's not one session at a time. Take
some time in your heart to ask what will it really take to
get your clients results they want? Four sessions? Twelve?
See if your heart, and perhaps some friends, can help you
find a middle ground between the ultimate package that will
fix everything, versus something so small that they can
barely get started.
Example: Someone in the Moneyflow class was talking about
how her friends had signed up with a bodyworker for a
five-session package. The results her friends were getting,
after receiving a session a week for five weeks straight,
really wowed her, and she's got her eye on signing up for a
full five sessions.
A single session wouldn't have created the same wow factor.
It also wouldn't have done the same thing for this
bodyworker's cash flow, who is getting five times the
business from the same customers, merely by having a
package.
Remember first: fun and spirit. Then, what do you need to
squeak by, what kind of lists of people can you access, and
package your individual services. You may just be days away
from getting out of the hole.
----------------------------------------------------
Mark Silver is the author of Unveiling the Heart of Your
Business: How Money, Marketing and Sales can Deepen Your
Heart, Heal the World, and Still Add to Your Bottom Line.
He has helped hundreds of small business owners around the
globe succeed in business without lousing their hearts. Get
three free chapters of the book online:
http://www.heartofbusiness.com
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