Category: Guest Posts

Categories
Guest Posts

Ladies: Take Your Business to the Next Level with a Hot New Program

I just railed against the proliferation of sites that are about “how to be rich, be happy, quit your day job, have sex every day and live well.” I said something like these sites were “self-referential profanity of the mind” and “devoid of any value.”

So it is an unjust coincidence, let me tell you, that something I love would be named exactly, “Rich, Happy and Hot B-School.” Business coaches Marie Forleo and Laura Roeder run the online program, and I have a wee bit of a girl crush on them.

Once you watch one of their videos, you will understand. They’re smart, good-looking and uber-creative which would normally make me feel quite threatened (and a bit jealous, let’s be honest), but they only manage to make me feel all warm inside.

As a woman entrepreneur with multiple side projects and a full-time job to boot, I need guidance that can help my business and is entertaining, engaging and above all, effective. I need it to work. I don’t want it to take up too much time, and did I mention, I want it to work?

That’s my real problem with every other site that wants to teach you how to be rich and happy. I would never want to be like the people running it. I don’t want to emulate their lives; they’re sleazy! Not to mention, most have no freaking clue what they are talking about. They present abstract ideas that sound good in theory, but that’s where they stay, in theory, and never reach the tangible step of action and follow-through.

Marie and Laura, however, know what they are talking about. They speak from success and experience, and are focused on results. In an interview on Mixergy, Laura revealed that she made more than $300,000 from her business in 2010. Marie — who is a best-selling author, a “multi-passionate” entrepreneur and a master athlete — talked about how she has achieved so much during an appearance on The Rise to the Top. Besides all that, I would want to have drinks with them. Multiple times.

Let me stop gushing for a moment though, and let you know exactly why the Rich, Happy and Hot B-School gets me completely excited to rock my business:

  • It is refreshing to see women speak directly, with a great amount of humor and confidence (none of that self-effacing nonsense).
  • The duo are focused on helping women achieve, but anyone can get in on it. They skip the stereotypical and patronizing advice, and just dole out smart, effective and useful how-tos, tips, templates, stories and support that you can use today to increase the profitability of your business immediately.
  • They dive right into the nitty-gritty of what you don’t know how to do, and tell you exactly how to do it.
  • Their teaching style is amazingly fun; it is how learning is supposed to be. They’re exhilarating and give you all the right tools. They set you up to execute, over and over, and to do it well.

Shall I continue to count the ways I love Rich, Happy and Hot B-School? Probably not, I mean, you get the point, right? Now it’s time for you head on over and enroll.

It is single-handedly the best resource I’ve seen to start a new business or improve the one you have. I’m excited to see you there.

This was originally posted on Brazen.

Categories
Guest Posts Happiness

Why aren’t you happy, darn it?

Ah, happiness. It’s so elusive, right? My guess is that you spend the great majority of your time online reading and browsing aimlessly, seeking that secret to happiness, that thing that will make you motivated and feel happy for the rest of the day, maybe the rest of the week if you’re lucky.

In fact, it seems that everything is “how to be rich, be happy, quit your day job, have sex every day and live well” and in these five buckets (happiness, money, work, life, relationships), we’re seeing people repeat the same things over and over to the point where there is no value anymore.

Seriously, how many times can you read about how to be creative or how to execute your idea? You probably would be great at doing what you love, but you are too afraid to do so because we’re stuck in society’s delusion – that is, what we really want to do we’re afraid won’t be acceptable in society or are told to stay in whatever place society has created for us (particularly true for women).

There’s nothing stopping anyone from doing what they want and living their highest values except most people try to live in other people’s values instead of their own, or they expect other people to live inside their values instead of recognizing they have their own as well.

Le sigh. I’d like to suggest two solutions:

1) Recognize that happiness is not the end goal, but that you are always feeling happiness, and you are always feeling pain, in every moment. Struggle isn’t something to overcome then, but just is. Some days things will go your way, and some days they won’t. Accept it and find a balance.

2) Dive deeper. Happiness is not the be all and end all. There’s a whole lot more going on in the world like energy innovations, media, healthcare, philosophy, the sharing economy, technology, fashion, the food industry, political history. So, maybe stop reading so much about the processes of ideas, and start reading about actual ideas.

My guess is that by avoiding your pursuit of happiness for awhile, you’ll find more of it than you thought possible.

This was originally posted on Elysa Rice’s GenPink.

Categories
Guest Posts Happiness Inspiration Knowing yourself

You Don’t Need To Settle

This is a guest post from my dear friend and change-maker Sam Davidson. Sam Davidson is a writer, entrepreneur, and dreamer who believes that the world needs more passionate people. To help people find and live their passion, he has written 50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need. He is the co-founder of Cool People Care and Proof Branding, and lives in Nashville with his wife and daughter.

50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need from Point House Films on Vimeo.

Finding and living your passion is a process. It’s not something you do once over the course of an afternoon at a coffee shop and are done with. It’s a journey you live deeply, repeating as necessary until you die. It’s a commitment, a lifelong pursuit, and a work of epic proportions. Once you decide that you must find your passion, you cannot settle until you do.

This is something I learned from Rebecca Thorman. She doesn’t settle. And neither can you when discovering what it is you love, who it is you’re becoming, and what it is you’re passionate about.

I’ve met Rebecca once. Nothing about her was second rate. The coffee shop where we met, the sushi place we grabbed dinner, the martini bar we went to after that – it was all top notch. Look at her blog design. Read about her boyfriend. Check out what she does for a living. Look at pictures of where she lives (or used to). What about this woman screams compromise?

Nothing.

Take heed: you can’t settle when you’re looking for your passion. You also can’t settle  – once you find it – as to where that passion takes you.

For some people, a passion becomes a profession. For others, it becomes a wonderful hobby to explore after work or on the weekends. Some become passionate about a cause and others about people. Be warned: when you decide that you can’t be anything but passionate, you are beginning the journey of a lifetime.

But, what a wonderful journey it is! I firmly believe that the world needs more passionate people. This is why I wrote 50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need. Using the excuse to eliminate excess from our lives, I also detail how getting rid of what doesn’t matter can help you discover what does. The same is true in reverse: once we find what’s truly important, everything that isn’t can fade into the background.

Have you seen pictures of what Rebecca cooks? Doesn’t it want to make you do the same? Your passion will be similar. Once you find it, others will see the contagious fire within and want to find theirs. And when they do – when a friend or colleague tells you that they want to be as passionate about something as you are, make sure to warn them. Let them know that if they truly want to find that which makes them feel alive, they can’t compromise. They can’t settle. They’ve got to follow the journey until it’s logical and exciting conclusion. Your passion demands nothing less.

Serious applicants only.

Other things (actually in the book) that you don’t need:
#3: Untaken risks
#12: Pictures that don’t mean anything
#47: A job you hate

Contest:
Share your passionate story in the comments. What is it that you’re passionate about? How did you find it? How long did it take? Where has it taken you now? One lucky commenter will receive a signed copy of 50 Things Your Life Doesn’t Need.

Categories
Bonus Content Engagement Guest Posts Inspiration Philanthropy

A plan to change the world

I have a dream book. Not the kind where you put your sleepy, bleary-eyed memories of the night before under shut-eye, but the kind where you sprint to write down all the excitement in your chest before it escapes you forever. The kind where you write down how, exactly, you plan to change the world.

I’ve had this dream book since Christmas of 1998, a gift from my mother. I read it over the other day, and smiled at this entry –

“I want my generation, the time that I live, to be great and remarkable and groundbreaking. I want my generation to be the one with the first black and woman presidents.”

This was before Obama and Hillary declared their intention to run for President of course, and before I knew how close my dream would soon be a reality.  And as I read those words, I got goosebumps that something that I desired so badly had come true.

Most of the dreams laid forth in the book aren’t as grand though. They’re more to do with me, less to do with the world. And yet, for eleven years, the same themes keep popping up. Keep returning and haunting the page. For eleven years, I’ve wanted to change the world in the same ways, and for eleven years, I haven’t.

Now, to be fair, I’ve done quite a bit. And an outsider would probably say that my involvement in changing the world, while not extraordinary by any means, is passable for the average human. I’ve made a difference. And that’s good.

But in my dream book, the one where it’s quite visible that my mind is racing faster than my pen can keep up, I don’t want to be average. I want to inspire and empower and make change. Like in education. And equality in design. And the environment. And public art. Things that connect people and community and show our common humanity.

And at the end of my life, I hope it’s goosebump city from so many of my dreams coming true. Today though, I’m going to stop writing in my dream book, because there are enough words. Now it’s time for action.

This was originally posted on Akhila Kolisetty’s Be the Change series. Go ahead, take a peek, and share your comments over there. 

Categories
Bonus Content Guest Posts Happiness Knowing yourself

Gratitude is hard for me sometimes

Note: This was originally a guest post for Sam’s Appreciation Revolution. You should check it out.

I’m an extremely lucky person. Really. Sometimes I can’t even believe how lucky I am. I have the best mother, best job, best boyfriend, best condo, best everything.

And yet still, I want. I still have that hunger for more. Selfishly, I am often found in dark corners brooding over the infallibility of life, the unfairness, the annoyances, and over that stupid guy who cut me off this morning in the white Dodge Ram with a ladder strapped to the top and a license plate forever seared in my memory. I did not feel lucky that I didn’t skid off the road to my untimely death. I just wanted to hurt him.

In retrospect, I do feel grateful, immensely grateful, that when I sped up, tailed, and yelled obscenities at the man in the Dodge Ram, that we were going sixty-five miles per hour and there’s no way he could have heard me. I’m grateful that at the last moment I decided not to show him the slender nature of my middle finger. I’m grateful that my exit to work arrived before I really gave him a piece of my mind. I imagine – as he well should be – he was grateful as well.

This is the ugly side of appreciation, the not so fluffy and pillowy kind. There are chapters of my life when I am overcome with the sweet and sugary kind, when I am surrounded by rainbows and treats and sparkly revelations. But mostly, I have little patience for swaths of gratitude to envelop me.

Gratitude is hard for me sometimes.

I imagine it’s hard for most people, even the big teddy bears of appreciation. It means accepting a whole litany of injustices and bending your eyesight towards what is beating both in and outside of you simultaneously to which, I’m sure, only the heartfelt natures of Gandhi or Mother Theresa have fully mastered. It means not being afraid of the past, the future and the ever-so vast present, because really, gratitude is about living in the now.

So, you could write about the things you are happy for daily – which I do. Or, you could take a moment every Monday morning to reflect upon the previous week, which I do. Or, you could look up at the ceiling occasionally, through the drywall, up through the six floors above you and up to the roof, all the way through the clouds and at the sky and say, “thank you.” I do that too.

Or you could just drive to work like you do every day, embracing the good, the bad, and the dick in the Dodge Ram. Sometimes, that’s gratitude too.