Tag — soulful business
Magpie Confessional: Small Business Neurosis
As you know one of my little trademarks is that I try to be transparent on this blog. Mostly this is because I do not have enough energy to do otherwise. (Masking is soooo draining.)
Also, I am a terrible actress.
So today I want to give you little peek into the neurosis that is me, trying to build a model for my work that is sustainable. (ie. some stuff for free, some stuff for fee)
As you know, I’ve recently launched an online soul spa, Flock: Soulcare with Magpie Girl. You may also have heard that I’m in the process of writing a book and creating content for several ECourses. Oh, and P.S., revamping my website. Right now most of these are in various stages of production, and all of them are stuck until my lovely designer can finish the artwork. (Apparently this does not happen by magic, nor overnight. Damn.)
Oh, and p.s. more money is going out than is coming in.
I have been blogging for 7 years, false-starting books for the last 3, and trying to figure out how to offer soulcare to a happy band of misfits for as long as I can remember. Now, when I’m ready to send things out in the world I feel stymied and stuck.
I can’t tell if I’m “going slow to go fast,” or just fucking things up.
My Gremlins are telling me that I’m charging to much, and that people don’t like me, and that my lack of art and computer skills are going to bog me down forever. Basically all the normal things the Gremlins say. I’ve fed them taffy and made them martinis– I’ve even taken them out for a walk, and nothing is calming them down.
So here is what I am going to do:
1) I will tell you True Things about this process.
2) You will SEE them.
3) This will help the Real feel more Real.
So if you could, if you wouldn’t mind…after reading this could you please put a note, or at least “I SEE YOU” in the comments? That would really, really help.
Thanks!
1. “Honoring my Work Makes it More Powerful” — This is my mantra. It reminds me to charge for things. (I have to say it a lot.)
2. Heretics break new ground. Don’t fear the stake.
3. “It’s all happening.”
4. Your creative pattern is “wait, wait, GO!” Watch for the green light.
5. You don’t have to be afraid of being big…
6. …and Small is Beautiful.
7. Generosity is a form of wisdom. Even if the people you promoted don’t promote you back, it is still worth taking the time to help out.
8.Eventually you will tip, go viral, and find (more) of your people.
Okay folks, time for me to go back to creating products. I knew I could count on you!
Thanks for being here.
How to Use Muscle Testing for Resonate Price Setting
As a part of my quest for migraine relief, I learned a technique chiropractors and other doctors use called applied kinesiology or muscle testing. This technique taps into your body’s intuitive knowledge to diagnose various problems. Muscle testing helped me determine which foods would trigger my migraines on any given day. A truly skilled practitioner can even determine how much of a given food will trigger a migraine, or how many tablets of a given supplement you might need to take. But even rudimentary skills at this technique can proved helpful in any number of settings.
Lately I’ve been using muscle testing to determine what to charge for the things I’m offering on line. Muscle testing is great for getting around chatty Gremlins and circumnavigating self-sabotaging thoughts. Here’s how to do it in a few easy steps. (You’ll need a friend to help you.)
Write the different prices you are considering for a service on small pieces of paper. Create a whole range of options, from the lowest you’ll go to the highest you could hope for. If possible have whatever you are setting a price for in your line-of-site while you do the muscle test.
First, shake your hands to discharge any tensions or energy you are holding around the price setting process. Ask your friend, the Tester, to do the same.
Extend your non-dominate hand out to one side. Have your Tester press down on your forearm to gauge how much strength you generally have in that arm. (The Tester can put one hand on your opposite shoulder for counter balance, but this may not be necessary.)
Now hold the first price in your other hand. Extend your non-dominate arm again and have your Tester press down on it with the same amount of force. If your arm remains strong, your body is intuitively telling you that is the right price. If it weakens or goes down, it’s the wrong price.
Between each price test, move away from the slips of paper and shake off your hands. (Have the tester do the same.) When you hold each price in your hand, think about the thing you are offering and imagine charging that price to someone.
You can also do this “blind” by folding the pieces of paper in half. It’s interesting to see if you get the same results.
If you get a range of prices with the same strength, you could play within that price range. Maybe you get $35, $40, $50 equally strong. Make $40 you base price, $35 your discount for people who are on your mailing list, and $50 the price you bump up to as the service expands.
For more tips on Resonate pricing, Pam Slim has an excellent round-up here, including posts from Mark Silver of Heart of Business, and Naomi Dunford of Itty Biz.
What techniques to you use to make sure you are setting the “right” price for you? And how do you stick to your guns once you set it? Do tell in the comments below! Thanks for being here.
How I Started an Online Soulcare Community: Flock
A few months back I was honored to give an interview at Kristin Tennant’s excellent blog, Halfway to Normal. (I LOVE being interviewed!) Kristin asked such good questions, I thought I’d run it again here for folks who want to know more about the process behind Flock: Soulcare with Magpie Girl. I hope you enjoy it. And do stop by Halfway to Normal, where Kristin is ”Daily defying what it means to be a divorced-Christian-liberal-remarried-Midwestern-mommy-writer.”
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How did you come up with the idea for Flock?
I’ve been a soulcare provider and community builder for many, many years. Two years ago we moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, and a consistent community base has been hard to come by. I miss having a physical soultribe to turn to, and in its absence I am grateful for the online tribe that has formed around me while I lived abroad. I am fan of Ecourses, but wanted something that was more ongoing, something where we could all sink a little deeper into relationship with others. So I decided to try forming an online soultribe.
Flock has several components. Did they all come to you at once, or did the idea begin as a specific component and then grew from there?
Everything I offer in the Flock has emerged organically from topics and practices that have been in embryo at Magpie Girl. I wanted to start with the High Holy Days, to provide an anchoring rhythm to our seasons. The Ask an Expert feature emerged out of the guest interviews I’d been organizing at Magpie Girl. The rites and rituals in Priestessy Things are part of the work I’ve done ever since my days as the Urban Abbess. And the Read-a-Longs…well, who amongst us doesn’t have a stack of books they’d like to talk about with their friends? You know that saying, “Nothing is ever wasted”? I’m finally seeing the truth of that as my seemingly random blogging matures into what is now being offered at Flock. Someone recently said to me, “At Magpie Girl, you feed us great stuff, but the Flock is where the real meat and potatoes happen.”
You have been blogging and interacting with readers for a long time. Are you able to pick up on certain questions and needs that lots of people seem to have? How did those themes translate to the creation of Flock? [Read more →]
How to Hatch a Flock
The publishing and writing schedule for Magpie Girl and Flock…as scribbled out during the kid’s gospel choir rehearsal last night. (Work where you can.)
I am on pins and needles waiting for my designer to upload the finalized version of our new endeavor – Flock with Magpie Girl. Flock is “a nesting place for restless souls” with lots of courses for spiritual nurture, all offered at one monthly price. Think of it as a spa for your soul! The bonus to this method is that it creates an on-going place for a soultribe to gather, and it allows for the kind of teaching-learning process I so adore. We can really fill up the giant pool of wisdom with the Flock!
I like knowing how artists and other creative people work. If you are intrigued by that too, here’s a peek into the process of starting our Flock.
Initially Flock started out as an idea for two Ecourses. But as I worked through 31 Days to A Better Blog and started on the elevator pitches for my Ecourses, I realized what I really wanted was an ongoing on-line soultribe. I’d already done some vocational work with my amazing life coach, Jena Strong, and knew that community building was a skill I’d been practicing for a long time. The short-term nature of Ecourses wouldn’t scratch my community building itch. Since reading Chris Guillebeau’s Art + Money, I had been thinking about opening a membership site. But I had allowed the outside voices of Conventional Wisdom and Fear to negate my intuitive pull towards that option. As I embraced the membership site as a viable choice, things started moving into place.
Jennifer McGuiggan helped me move through the wheel of work, which made me realize I needed a partner to get through the bottom half of the wheel – the execution half. So I scraped my money together and hired Neil Sittler of Stickflower Design to help me get a website ready. This was important because my work with Jena had already shown me that “beauty” was high on my list of guiding values, and that if I didn’t have a esthetically pleasing site, I wouldn’t be able to tap into the right energy to sustain a long-term project such as an online soulcare community.
While Neil worked on the site, soulsisters Lisa Alexander and Jamie Ridler coached me on values-based pricing, so that I would not consider my pattern of chronically under-charging. I was still struggling with setting a price that truly reflected the value of my work, when Jen Lemen suggested I do muscle testing to connect with my inner wisdom on the matter. After a truly amazing round of muscle testing with my daughter Eden, I finally came to a place of confidence with my pricing choices.
I also decided to face my fear of asking for help so I asked a few soulcare providers I know and adore to come on board as expert advisers for Flock. And while I cannot announce who quite yet, I’m happy to say that my dream team of (therapist, life coach, and dream analyst and more) is starting to come together for our “Ask the Experts” column.
Finally, yesterday I sat down and wrote out a schedule of what I’m going to be posting each day both at Magpie Girl and at Flock, and what day I’d have to write it in order to get it posted professionally, on time, and well-edited. Because my health is a bit of a crap shoot, I included a day to write “stockpiled” posts so I have something to keep the goodness flowing when chronic pain sets me back for awhile.
Now I’m just waiting for the last odds and ends to get done on the website, and before Christmas we will have sign ups ready for our New Year’s launch! (Join my mailing list for a grand opening discount.)
As I write this post I realize once again how blessed I am to have this (almost entirely virtual) community around me. Those mentioned here, and others as well, helped me get past my sticking points and uncover the “ah ha” moments I needed to get through this process. I’m also struck by how Jen Lemen’s advice to “write to the tribe you’re starting to form”; and my mentor Ed Cook’s adage “you always preach the sermons you need to hear,” have both been proven true. All of the links embeded in this story were written by myself, or by Magpie Girl guests, because I needed to hear them, and so did my tribe. Now I can see them as the work The Muse and The Universe were doing to get us where we need to be — that is, together.
So thanks you so much, dear Magpie Girl reader, for being a part of this process. Your comments and visits have encouraged me more than I can say. I cannot wait until we are all gathered together in our Flock! Thanks for being here.
Much Warmth,
Rachelle
