LivingUndaunted

Reading Lolita in Leonia

Finishing up Reading Lolita in Tehran and I find myself in the familiar pattern when reaching the end of a really satisfying book.  I'm slowing down, reading and savoring slowly, as if I could extend the book's effect on me indefinitely, holding on to a friend that wants to leave as the sun goes down.

Reading Lolita in Tehran - a Memoir in Books, by English professor Azar Nafisi is about reading forbidden books in post-Islamic revolution Iran, about the human spirit and what outside forces can and can't do to it, about the role of women in our world and in Islam, but mostly it's about the truth we find in great fiction.  For me, it brought back warm days on the quad, arguing about the themes in novels, crazy literary analysis and the yummy words between the worn covers of our books.  It reminded me that language is delicious, textured, warm, inviting, a treasure bestowed by a good friend. 

These days I find I read less fiction.  Even Reading Lolita in Tehran is memoir, despite its evocative narrative flow.  I immerse myself in the perfectly sensible How Tos and Take It To The Tops and walk by my neglected copy of Lolita, quite possibly the most delicious writing I've ever read, about which I wrote a fabulous high school advanced placement English paper which thoroughly perplexed and worried the dear old nuns at Holy Rosary Academy for girls.

Here's to Nafisi for reuniting me with Nabokov, to women suffering under oppression everywhere and to the human spirit that always remains undaunted.

Maria E. Andreu

Marketing - Make it better than a Friday Spelling Test

To Be Printed March 15th in Today's Coach (but you, dear blog reader, get a sneak peak)

Market with Joy and Abandon, (or How to make your website and coaching specialty more exciting than a Friday spelling test)

This article was inspired by a witty reader who responded to my R&D memo which asked, “What do you want to see in Today’s Coach?”  She replied, “what about articles on unusual niches? Get on the internet and you pretty much see the same coaching ideas for business and personal coaching. I am in the process of revamping my site as well. It is about as exciting as as a Friday spelling test.” Signed, Spelling Test Coach (names have been changed to protect the… is it innocent?  I wanted to write “the trite” but this cool reader was way too much fun to be labeled as such).

So, for you, dear Spelling Test, plus the thousands of other coaches out there wondering how to break out of the morass of “taking you to the next level”s and “reach your full potential”s, here is a quick and dirty guide for picking a coaching specialty that kicks butt and has your unique signature splashed all over it.

A few don’ts:

1.  If it sounds like a Hallmark card don’t bother to use it on your website, your business card or anywhere else where it could possibly be held against you by the Cliché Police.  Chances are if it sounds warm and fuzzy and vaguely familiar it’s not clear, urgent or distinctive enough to communicate to your potential clients what you are all about.

2   If you’re seen it somewhere else, don’t use it.  I know when I started coaching I looked on all the successful coaches’ websites I could find.  I even wound up paying $1,200 I didn’t have to the web designer of one of them figuring, “If they did the site of this important author, they must be good.”  What I got was a site that pulled zip and that didn’t differentiate me from other coaches at all.  (Plus it had a hideous picture of me on it that people still goof on all these years later).

3   If your best friend wouldn’t recognize it as yours unless your name was on it, don’t use it.  There is nothing worse than a website, a brand or a coaching specialty that has absolutely none of your personality or unique flair.

4.  If it makes perfectly logical sense as a niche for you (it’s the industry you came from, it targets a social group you’re a part of, etc.) and leaves you feeling completely flat and uninspired, run screaming in the other direction.  (Okay, maybe that’s a bit harsh.  Don’t scream.  But run).  Your coaching specialty is something that will be with you for a while.  You’ll be speaking about it, writing about it, and marketing it like mad for quite some time.  It had better make your toes tingle every time you think of it or you’re setting yourself up for yet another unhappy employment experience – this time with you as the uninspiring boss. 

5  If you can’t figure out who the target market is, it’s too broad, too boring, or just plain wrong for you.  Some coaches rebel against this rule, but it’s the truth.  For the overwhelming majority of us, coaching is a business endeavor.  Is it for you?  If so, you need to find a population to work with that A) has money (I’m not kidding here, folks.  It’s part of the reality of making a living) and B) you can find.  “People looking to go to the next level”… hmmm… let me think.  As those of you who have been to some of my marketing teleclasses will remember, my only-half-kidding question to you would be, “Where in the phone book do you look to find that group?”  If the answer is, “Nowhere,” then they can’t be your target market.  At least not if you’re looking to make money and achieve consistent success.   

A few quick Dos:

A favorite quote of mine (and I’m paraphrasing here):  “Where your talents and the needs of the world intersect, therein lies your calling.”  There is a unique spark about you – what is it?  Make sure it shows up in everything you write, every promotional piece you do, and of course, is reflected in your coaching specialty.  And make sure you’re marketing it to a population that needs it, wants it, and is able to buy it.

Be sure and run your ideas for a niche or a website past an objective observer (not your Aunt Myrtle who thinks you’re the cutest thing with dimples).  Here’s where having your own successful coach comes in handy.  A few questions to ask, “Does this work?  Can you hear my unique voice in it?  Would you buy this?  Is it clear what I’m offering?  Do you know what the action is that I want you to take?”

Don’t be so paralyzed by perfection that you do nothing.  After reading a tip list like this do you think, “Okay, gotta make sure I write great copy, make it look perfect, have 12 of my best friends think it’s witty and expresses me perfectly, check, check, check.”  If so, STOP.  Perfection will paralyze you.  Yes, from my experience it’s probably true that your coaching specialty (and especially your website) could use some work.  But start where you are and move from there.  Even if you just go over your marketing materials with ONE of these tips in mind you’ll improve.  Your coaching specialty will grow over time – if you’ve been coaching longer than a year you know this already.  Do what feels right, get out there and speak and meet people, get clients, attract strategic partners, and over time your perfect market will find YOU. 

The point is to enjoy yourself and offer your gifts to the world.  Your clients – present and future – need your unique voice and the coaching profession needs you as an emissary for the amazing changes we are helping to bring about in the world.

Want to talk more about expressing your unique voice in marketing and through your coaching specialty?  You’re invited to a one-hour teleclass – Market with Joy and Abandon!  An overview of my 6-Week Marketing Plan Class.  It’s f*r*e*e, fun, interactive.  So come get your questions answered and catch the bug of joyful marketing!  Click here to register today.  (Sign up quick – these fill up fast).

A new understanding on Lotus and Stilettos

The Lotus and Stilettos - A Practical Guide for Finding Spiritual Balance as a Woman in Today's World is alive and well and getting worked on as inspiration strikes.

I am currently engrossed in Reading Lolita In Tehran and just bought the DVD of Motorcycle Diaries.  And as I engaged in both these great pieces of art, I came to understand something new about Lotus and Stilettos.  I wrote a new intro to it.  It is below:

I wish to write you a poem, a long prose poem full of truth and light and understanding.  The prism?  Spiritual development.  But through this conversation I hope to tap you with the wand of a deep and practical understanding, a questioning of how it is to be in this world and how to adapt what you learn to take possession of your own life.

The question is fundamental and it’s age-old.  Are we subservient to a higher power or are we the heady gods of our own universe, intoxicated with the beauty of all we create and yet sobered by the stark reality of the amazing power we wield?  The battle has been fought between the individualists and those who would aspire to represent the higher powers here on earth and so circumvent personal liberties and appropriate decision-making and morality for a select few.   We’ve seen the battle lines drawn between those who would keep the old ways of herb and earth and magic and those who would usurp that knowledge for the established religions.  We’ve seen the lines drawn between those who would be bewildered and slightly repulsed by the idea that earth is something we can own and those who would claim strict ownership of everything that’s precious in our world.  We’ve seen the lines drawn between those who would fight for individual expression and those who would impose an ideology or religion on even the unwilling, often at the barrel of a gun.

You can choose to enter the fray however you desire.  But make no mistake – this battle is yours too.  For me, I chose to end years of frustration over political oppressions and overreaching governments by understanding that there is a truth deeper than the worldly concerns of control of information and regulation of daily activities.  There is an even deeper freedom to be cultivated – the freedom of the spirit.  It is through this journey that this book was born, the journey to find the untapped and limitless power that exists in all of us, in you as well as in me.

Born in a world that denied me decisions, raised in a church that alienated me from the divine and processed in a methodology that emphasized my foibles and doubts despite its best intentions, I spent many years feeling the cold touch of an indifferent fate buffeting me.  I was told everywhere that I needed to be circumvented, restricted, overseen, mostly for my own good, lest I hurt myself.  I was raised in a society that didn’t trust I’d have enough sense to figure out what products to use safely or what decisions to make to best suit me, but instead, in the name of freedom, restricted and legislated even the most innocuous of decisions for the “public good.”

This may sound like a political manifesto.  It’s not.  It is the story of how one journey began and how through a series of seemingly disconnected roads and explorations I found my way to freedom, self determination and joy.  Certain parts of it may sound like self-help, others like memoir, still others like recipe book.  Ultimately, this story is told so that you who have felt similar stirrings and questions can look at your own journey and decide whether everything that is in your current experience suits you.  Your journey will be your own.  Yet, in my experience, there are no coincidences.  If you have found your way to this writing it is because something in these pages will suit you, help you, guide you, inspire you to find the answer (or the question) that you need right now.

So thank you for reading.  And know, if nothing else stays with you, that I believe in a limitless universe of power and ability in each of us.  That means you too.

Maria

March 5, 2005

Leonia

,

New Jersey

in my living room after watching the DVD of The Motorcycle Diaries