Burned Out? Maybe It's Time to Split the Creative from the Professional

Sovereign Standard, Issue 16

Well, that was unexpected: entrepreneurship = a soul crushing experience

So many working artists and self-employed creatives are feeling the crush of entrepreneurship. It’s not the long hours or even the uncertainty that gets them. It’s the assumption that the goal has to be "build something bigger than you." They're told that success equals developing something that scales and sells.

Why have so many impassioned, independent souls got caught up in “make it bigger” even though that set them up for the dreaded “not enough” trap?

Because we mixed our creative passions with the reality of making a living. Instead of realizing a holistic vision of create-work-live, we've brewed up an unpalatable concoction that just isn't nourishing and definitely isn't sustainable.

Trying to make one sweeping entrepreneurial venture hold the creative dreams and the professional drive left them with too little time to create, too little in the bank account, and stuck in a chronic state of “not-enoughness.”

Oh, am I slipping into collective nouns here? I’m daring to speak for others on this  because so many readers - lets be specific: so many women business artists* - responded to my latest post, Nutella on a Spoon (Or, Why Entrepreneurship Can Leave You Starving).

We are sick of trying to get the mix just right. We're too tired to contort ourselves to fit into the entrepreneurial container.

What creative women in business want

We want freedom of creative expression and the power to earn an independent livelihood.

We want to make something that matters and we want to make some money.

Here's the kicker: we're mature enough to recognize that we won't always be doing both things at the same exact time.

For some, "what you want" may really mean being an entrepreneur and building a company (particularly if you’ve got a gift for sales). On the other hand, it may mean freelancing. It may mean getting a J-O-B in order to recoup the emotional and mental energy that went into being in business for yourself.

Living and working like the creative-in-business you want to be may simply mean adjusting how you do business by offering the basic, “useful” services.

You’re downshifting from entrepreneurship into freelancing. It’s time to do the work that immediate rather than pioneering a visionary program or building a firm (at least for now).

This is why I am shifting my attention to offering the right people my copywriting services while the “real” work gestates in the dark for a while.

In any case, it's about looking closely at what's working and what isn't working and making decisions for the future based on what really matters - personal relationships, creative practice, and earning a living.

When “I quit entrepreneurship” doesn’t really mean “I quit business!” or "I reject my passion!"

Things haven't been working for you? Maybe it's time for the “I quit!” epiphany. It feels so liberating to smash those glass walls and peel back those labels that were hiding who you really are.

But what if the “I quit!” breakthrough doesn’t really mean you’re collapsing your stall in the marketplace? What if abandoning entrepreneurship doesn’t mean you’re taking a vow of poverty or trying to remember how to draft a resume?

What if "I quit creative entrepreneurship" simply means that you're no longer forcing creativity to grow in the same container as the work you do for money?

You might be like Jennifer Boykin who boldly declared she’s quitting her Life After Tampons project. Really, it seems she’s rebirthing her relationship with her creation and finding a way to detangle her passion work from her purse strings.

The Wild and Wise Women Over 45 who love Jennifer's work will not see her as quitter even as she frees herself from the chore of building a business venture that didn't serve her. She's still going to show up, but she's not going to pressure her passion with the needs of her pocketbook.

My "entrepreneurial crisis" has been a personal one. I think Jennifer's was too. Many women are sharing their own stories about why the "e" word doesn't fit and how they're reframing the relationship between the creative work and the paid work.

Is your entrepreneurship problem actually about the relationship between life, art, and work?

My business woes were not about being self-employed. They were about how the “go big” entrepreneurial imperative was squeezing out what really mattered - being present when I was home with my kids, devoting myself to the real creative work, and earning the money to replace the steady income I abandoned five years ago.

Here’s the good news:

If you structured your business based on someone else's definition of success and basic misunderstanding of your own goals, you can readjust your course without tossing away everything you've worked to build.

When you make changes in your business in order to better suit yourself, most people will only notice that you seem happier all of a sudden. (They may also note you're wearing a new pair of shoes because you found a more reliable way to fill the bank account).

Big dreams got you into entrepreneurship. You're leaving entrepreneurship to preserve those dreams.

We know that many wise businesswomen feel trapped by their choice to mix creativity and entrepreneurship. The solution isn’t to abandon either. The answer - at least for me - is to decouple them.

Before you can mediate a peaceful split, however, you have to figure out why you hitched together your creative drive and the promises of entrepreneurship in the first place.

Big creative dreams like yours deserve a big, beautiful container, so you picked the grandest, most promising one you could find: entrepreneurship.

But then you realized that it takes a lot more than vision and passion to build and sustain a business that is bigger than you are. Marketing, staffing, bookkeeping (if you could even get to that level) takes more time and attention that you have right now. Most likely, you got distracted from your original creative dreams because you were scrambling to structure an organization.

What if the work you do for pay doesn’t have to hold all of your creative energies? Suddenly your professional venture doesn’t have to be so big.

Liberating the creative from the professional - at least for a little while - is how you create the right size container for your dreams, your responsibilities, and your financial realities.

This is how novels get written. This is how debt gets paid off. This is how happy women support their families - with love and presence as well as money for groceries and the college savings account.

And saying "no" to entrepreneurship may really be about saying "not right now." It's in the pause, in the freelancing or the day job that the signature approaches that make life more beautiful, bearable, and bold get created: in their own time by creative, practical beings who refuse to see their creative ambitions vanish in entrepreneurial smoke and mirrors.

***

* Deep bow to Jeffrey Davis for bringing the term "business artist" to the fore and for being the community creator who introduced me to so many of the brilliant women who make up my readership. Not convinced that you need to separate the creative from the entrepreneurial? Dive deep into Jeffrey's work, starting with this video - his approach to "business as unusual" may be exactly what you're looking for.

Nutella on a Spoon (Or, Why Entrepreneurship Can Leave You Starving)

Sovereign Standard, Issue 15  Every Thursday afternoon, I found myself at my kitchen island, trying not to get peanut butter and Nutella on my laptop. Mindlessly, I’d swallow spoonfuls of creamy fat as I massaged my weekly newsletter and blog post into a form I deem worthy of the creative entrepreneur.

By the time my daughter woke up from her nap in her carseat (I was writing and snacking with half an ear for the thin wail that would come through the propped door to the garage), I would have the post 85% written.

I would also feel 105% awful based on the crap in my stomach. Everything was curdled by the fear that I had wasted another perfectly good naptime on a piece of writing that was derivative or fraudulent. Though I still trust the quality and usefulness of what I produced, something was “off,” but I didn't dare name what it was.

(Yes, I was being hard on myself and yes, I would be incensed if any of my dear readers with their own business writing goals treated themselves so poorly.)

But I pushed on through indigestion and negativity and managed to click send on that email so it reached the Sovereign Standard audience by 11:35 AM ET on Friday.

I did this fourteen times. (Ok, so I published fourteen newsletters… my jeans still fit, so some weeks I must’ve satisfied myself with a cup of tea while I typed.)

I am pretty darn sure I am not going to do it anymore.

Why Entrepreneurship Is the Wrong Shaped Container

It’s spring. Our food, even if it’s imported from way too far away, seems to have a new vibrancy to it.

I want to be eating out of wide salad bowls. It’s time to start drinking from one of those smoothie cups that fall out of the cabinet every damn time I open it. I’m sick of sneaking into the pantry and stretching to reach the jar of goo that I stash behind the tarnished champagne bucket.

Yes, I’m done with palm oil and I am done with contorting myself into the shape of an entrepreneur just because it’s what I declared I would do when I quit my job five years ago.

Here’s the quick history of my entrepreneurship:

When I returned to work after my first daughter’s birth, I knew I had to get out of the windowless office where I spent my 9 - 5. Seven months later, my mom died of a totally unexpected heart attack. I gave my notice and declared I was starting my own business.

Five years on and now a mama to two, I am still straining to find the joy as a mother, a lover, a creative, AND the president Marisa Goudy Inc. (What is that, even?)

“An Entrepreneur Can Sell Anything” (Oh, Crap!)

This discomfort with “I’m an entrepreneur” has been around since the moment I took up the title, but it finally crystallized thanks to a conversation I had with Molly Morrissey, Traditional Astrologer and Vision Consultant.

As she put it, there are some people who are able to sell anything.

They’re not necessary unethical. They’re just able to see a need in the marketplace and craft the exact solution to make those people happy to pay them. (She mentioned something about a guy who sharpens pencils for a living.)

Molly inspired me to reconnect to what I already knew about myself:

I am a writer first. And a salesperson… never. At least not in a way that made me feel nourished and content.

Even as I’ve celebrated and explored creative entrepreneurship on this blog and with my clients, I’ve been haunted by my own late night kitchen breakdowns about never being enough. Most of the time, it has been impossible to be the mother, lover, and creative I wanted to be… not when my belly was full of leaden entrepreneurial dreams.

There’s so much about life that is bloody perfect, and for that I am grateful, but I just can’t keep relying on a sugar high to fuel my professional body of work.

Two key things I just realized about my entrepreneurial journey:

• I’m intensely grateful that the silver lining to the worst event in my life was leaving a job I hated
• I’m intensely crazy to think that I need to stick with a decision that was made in the midst of soul shattering grief

I think entrepreneurs are the awesome engines of our economy and I love ‘em. There so much I get about them. I still want to support them and work with them.

I'm just not so sure I'm supposed to be one.

Entrepreneur Versus Freelancer (Eek, does it have to be so divisive?)

Somebody once told me that it’d take as much effort to build a $50K hours-for-money business as it would to build a $500K+ firm. Armed with that “wisdom” (though really, let’s call it BS), as an overachiever who’d declared her destiny, I was obligated to create something bigger than myself.

After five years, I finally know that I have been feeding myself from the wrong source.  And I am bound to starve eventually.

Not only is entrepreneurship about building something bigger than yourself, it’s about devising ways to make money while you sleep, building something investable and scaleable and sellable, and supporting a staff.

I’m able to pull that definition straight from memory, but a good writer researches (or starts Googling stuff she already knows as an act of procrastination) and I found this seven year old blog post from Seth Godin:

The goal of a freelancer is to have a steady job with no boss, to do great work, to gradually increase demand so that the hourly wage goes up and the quality of gigs goes up too.

The goal of the entrepreneur is to sell out for a lot of money, or to build a long-term profit machine that is steady, stable and not particularly risky to run.

In my heart, all I was ever aiming for was that life of a freelancer… I wanted freedom, steadiness, greatness, and quality. “Selling out for a lot of money” sounds nice... for other people.

The Courage to “Just” Be Free to Work in the Sweet Spot

There are a million people who’ve left the soul crushing job, whether it’s rat race corporate or ho-hum non-profit, to chase that entrepreneurial dream. What’s true for me - and for you? - is that the entrepreneurial container can be just as cruelly and impractically shaped as the salaried shlep.

Another part of that powerful conversation with Molly (she does this stuff for a living by the way, so do check her out) was to sit with my assertion:

“If I stopped doing my business as it is right now, I would be a failure.”

Molly handled my feelings around this with such mastery, it was abundantly clear that I’m not the only who believes something so damaging - and so stupid.

For me, to change course after five years would be a declaration of defeat… and failure. I had planted the pole of entrepreneurship and claimed my little patch of land, dammit. Who cares if it offered a meager harvest and the only greens that sprang up came from the poison envy plant?

I threw myself into the fire of entrepreneurship so many times that I stopped feeling the burns. I convinced myself that I was a phoenix rather than a woman who had been charred to a crisp by a work life I didn’t want.

Rejecting “Entrepreneur” Isn’t Just Semantics

I have been misusing the “e” word, even though, deep down, I knew better.

Shame on me as a writer for being imprecise, but I think there’s a collective fog around the term.

“Mom entrepreneur,” for example. Surely that ubiquitous phrase contributes to the confusion since many in that club are freelancers or multi-level marketers or crafters selling their own wares.

Like so many, I started to throw that word around as if it just meant “earning a living & being your own boss” rather than “building an enterprise that can be scaled and sold.”

Everything felt true as I wrote it - I still stand by pieces like this one and this one. Apparently, as I talked about "entrepreneurship" I was thinking about the adventure of creating one’s own livelihood, not about the reality of venture capital.

But this is what I know to be true, and it goes beyond word choice:

When every day you spend as an entrepreneur is measured against some dream of growing beyond yourself when all you really want to do is be who you are, you’re poisoning yourself.

When you buy into that grand entrepreneurial mission and realize that it takes too much and still doesn’t feed your passions (or your family) but still push on anyway you are setting yourself up for failure.

Blah, Blah, Blah Personal Epiphany… Now What?

I am writing this post to explore this new self-knowledge. I am publishing it because I can’t seem to sit on this revelation because everything suddenly looks so different.

And I’m sharing it because I don't think I’m alone in this.

Right now, I am full of more questions than answers and more possibilities than anything else as I consider trading the “e” word for the “f” word.

No, Really, If Not Entrepreneurship, Then What?

If freelancing soothes the soul and fills the piggy bank (if not the corporate coffers), bring it on. I’m seeking “enough” right now. I’m seeking a way to bring in an income and exert my creativity.

Thing is, it may be time for me to stop trying so hard to tangle up the two. "Creative Entrepreneurship" sounds like such a delicious combination, but in practice, it's a dodgy mash up.

Freelancing. Finding a work-from-home J-O-B. Some other way to use my writing to pay the bills that I can’t even dare imagine yet... I’m staying open.

If I can take the money stress out of each day and if I can stop trying to leverage my creative output into something bigger than myself... that seems like how I need to nourish myself right now.

This Thursday afternoon I went straight for my emergency stash of kombucha. I knew I deserved the life enhancing nectar of that tea, something that resonated with hope and promise of self care - not nasty comfort calories.

Tell me I'm not alone in this.

I  want to know if you’ve been starving parts of yourself thanks to the seductive soul crush of entrepreneurship - and whether it has been pushing you to your own unhealthy coping mechanisms, like Nutella on a spoon.

Is it time for you to feed yourself and the people you love from a just-the-right-sized container? I want to hear your stories… I think many bellies are rumbling with this truth. Is yours?

Why the Dalai Lama Can Simply Say “Be Kind” But You Can’t

The Sovereign Standard, Issue 14

“Don’t worry, be happy, Sessa.”

Whenever I was caught in the death spiral of preteen angst, that’s what my mom would say. She used that Bobby McFerrin line long after it faded from collective memory. In fact, I’m pretty sure she said that when I came to her with my working mother’s lament the weekend before she died so suddenly in the summer of 2009.

My mother was my best friend, and I treasured her wisdom (it went deeper than song lyrics, truly), but I always used to hate it when she said “don’t worry, be happy.” Maybe it was just because she was my mom. Maybe it was because I knew she had her own worries and I assumed that meant she didn’t have the authority to wave my troubles away with something as simple as happiness.

After all, I was contending with real, life-shattering drama (like a math test or whether I could quit my job and make it as a mom and an entrepreneur).  She was dismissing my dilemma with a pop song. The indignity!

But I’m carrying on the tradition. Suddenly I find myself trying to soothe my five year old’s wild mood swings with the same exact medicine. In the midst of her kindergarten maelstrom, my daughter seems to find the proclamation just as irritating and meaningless as I did.

Thing is, I finally understand that my mom was right. When it comes to most daily stresses, “don’t worry, be happy” is perfect advice.

It may be perfect, but that doesn’t mean everyone qualified to give it.

Some People Have the Authority To Offer Crazy Simple Wisdom

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”

When the Dalai Lama says that, you sigh into the perfect clarity of that wisdom. You’re grateful that he stripped away all of the striving that we attach to material success and all of the ritual we drape over spiritual expression.

Happiness is a baby’s laugh. Happiness is a cat lolling about on a sun-warmed sidewalk. Happiness is a lover’s embrace. Happiness is it.

You believe him. We all believe this smiling bald man. Even if you don’t have a Buddhist bone your body, you feel there’s a truth in those words.

Most People are Just Wordsmithing

Now, what if some average looking person you didn’t know made a similar declaration? Not quoting some famous, trusted source, but just asserting something just as simple as “the purpose of our lives is to be happy?”

Most likely, you’d dismiss them as a dispenser of fortune cookie wisdom and proceed on, unmoved by their statement, still hungry for real, venerable truths.

Talk is cheap - especially when anyone with an internet connection can throw their ideas into countless online arenas. And yet, some people’s pronouncements just seem to be imbued with special meaning.

Why is it that Bobby McFerrin can craft a #1 hit and the Dalai Lama is revered as a sage for offering simple wisdom when most other people are dismissed for being too simplistic when they share a similar message?

People Are Listening for Something More: Devotion & Presence

There’s a resonance in Thich Nhat Hahn’s, “Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”

To be honest, you might also imagine that line gracing a Dove soap ad. We all have the same 26 letters to work with, after all. An advertising agency could easily churn out nice words that sound a lot like those from the man people call Thây (Vietnamese for teacher).

Regardless of how much market research goes into a tagline, it’s the resonance of time, depth, and awareness that really matters.

When that sentiment comes from a Zen Buddhist monk who Martin Luther King nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, something much more profound ripples through to the reader. It’s an intangible quality, the essence of a truth that transcends the art of copywriting.

(I believe so much in this transmission of truth that comes from devotion and presence that I swore off being a writer-for-hire and now work as a writing coach, empowering you to discover your own story. More on that below…)

Devotion to Your Own Story Builds Your Presence as a Storyteller

The exemplary voices I am using in this piece belong to spiritual figures (from what I know about Bobby McFerrin, it isn’t a stretch to include him in such company). “Devotion” makes sense for them. Clearly the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hahn built their stores of wisdom over decades of devoted practice.

But devotion is equally as important for us everyday folks leading secular lives. Especially when you’re the kind of person who knows she has a Bigger Story that wants to be told.

It’s not sexy or exciting in our “do it now” world to say that it takes a long, steadfast commitment to your work to become a credible authority, but it’s every bit as true as “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”

You must explore your origins, your experiences, and your theories as assemble a Greater Story that conveys your signature magic and really connects with others.

Uncovering and telling your Greater Story takes time and focus. It takes devotion.

In time, you own your story so that people recognize the power of your message  either in person or through the written word.

When the Greater Story Becomes the Sovereign Story

Through my own devotional process, I am working to understand the Greater Story as the Sovereign Story.

Thanks to much journaling, discussions with friends and colleagues, and by looking at all of life in the spirit of discovery, I’m figuring out how my small “s” stories can be woven into the Sovereign Story that I was born to tell.

Your own Sovereign Story could be a novel, a school of thought. a product, a memoir… In my case, my Sovereign Story is the exploration of Sovereignty itself. I’m called to help people uncover and tell their Sovereign Stories and to empower them to understand why that process to them as creatives and as entrepreneurs.

Devotions are often an arduous, knee-bruising pursuit. It feels more like labor than enlightenment most of the time, but I am watching the ripples of my Sovereign Story reach new shores thanks to every deeply considered piece I publish and every conversation I have with allies and prospects. I trust that my own presence is gathering around me like a cloak lovingly woven, row by row.

You and I don’t aspire to be to next Dalai Lama (the position won’t be available anyway), but we can devote ourselves to unlocking and sharing the story we were born to tell.

And we can aspire to something even more vital a noteworthy presence - the chance to stand sovereign in our own lives and the opportunity to share a Sovereign Story that makes others’ lives more beautiful, bearable, or bold.

Is it time to connect with your own Sovereign Story? I’d be honored to walk beside you on your journey.

Writing for the Web Is Crushing Your Creative Spirit

Last week, we explored how to take a story from your own life and shape it into a narrative that bolsters your visibility or furthers your business. The goal is a simple one: connect to the reader through a description of a personal experience and then offer some useful or inspiring content that makes the reader the hero.

Essentially, invert that high school essay writing funnel: go from the narrow personal tale to the more universal message that speaks to the interests and concerns of your tribe.

I devoted two posts to this Art of Using Personal Stories In Professional Writing.  One was a basic “how to” and the other was devoted to modeling the process.

Part of me hates that advice and part of me stands by it… because I am about to do it again.

Note: I’m defying the form I just offered you and inverting  the “personal to universal” funnel.  I may switch to another metaphor completely. 

Since this post is about identifying and defying rules - as well as owning up to the pain of the online writing process and honoring the needs of your own creativity - funnel nixing and metaphor mixing seems acceptable.

But first, let’s establish some more rules - just so we can have the pleasure of breaking them. And so we can admit how we all feel a little broken by all these bloody rules.

Five “rules” for writing for the web

 When you’re trying to follow typical internet writing conventions, you make sure that every web page or blog post is:

• Focused - Devote yourself to one central question or theme. Go deep rather than broad and realize that most of your big ideas are actually the foundation of dozens of different articles.
• Brief - This isn’t just about word count since important, “substantial” posts of 1500 - 3000 words can be highly successful. Be sure to break ideas into bite sized pieces so that the distracted reader can digest what you’re trying to say.
• Clear -  Even if the goal is to raise questions for the reader rather than simply dole out a bunch of overly simplistic “shoulds,” don’t muddy the waters with your own ambivalence.
• Actionable - Every post should be the beginning of something - an ongoing relationship because the reader signed up for your list or the first step in the buying journey. You’re missing a huge opportunity if you don’t invite your reader to take a next step when they reach the end of the piece. 
• Fascinating - Well, at least be interesting... The previous four rules are pretty irrelevant if you're boring the reader.

You and I will ignore those writing for the web rules (is that ok?)

Rules are made to be broken, of course, and you can point to a zillion successful articles that annihilate these conventions. Such posts compel you and even go viral because  they’re aimed right at the collective sense of concern, outrage, or “awwww, so cute!”

One thing about those rule-breaking posts though? Readers may comment and share them, but they probably aren’t spending any money based on the content they've just consumed.  It’s hard to invest in a writer or a company who rambles about their own confused state of affairs....

It’s important to remember - the “be focused, brief, clear, and actionable” aren’t just guidelines that exist “because the internet.” They’re just good business sense.

If “the confused mind does not buy,” then the confused entrepreneur does not attract buyers.

But what if you don’t feel focused and clear in your writing (or in your thinking)?

As I said, I kinda hate the advice I gave about using your personal stories to frame a bit of useful business information - but I believe in it enough to do it again (and again).

Telling you about my ambivalent, nuanced relationship with the blending of personal storytelling and forwarding a brand doesn’t make for focused, brief, clear, actionable prose. So, most of the time, I keep the existential angst to myself.

I tell part of my story about storytelling, hit publish and feel just good enough that I offered my readers something authentic and worthy of their time.

But then I stew. For days.

I fill a couple dozen journal pages, questioning the role of entrepreneurship and storytelling in my life. I analyze my place in the entire capitalist venture. I long to abandon business and blogging and all the well-meant advice so I can hole up with a word processor and a dream of being a novelist.

Ok, so I don’t do this every week (I’d end up in alone, likely  in a van down by the river), but when I do get myself into this state, I write headlines like:

For I Will Go Mad If I Write Only for the Marketplace

I long to spool out meandering paragraphs that go on for pages, expecting the reader to stick with my muddled quest for clarity simply because she loves being along for the artist’s journey…

Invariably, I swing the other direction, glad that I’ve given up dead poets and all that opaque academic writing for the vibrant, immediate world of the creative entrepreneur.

I trust that there’s room in my life for the personal writing, the fiction writing, and the business writing.

I hate tangling my creativity in business goals and online writing rules. (Except when I don’t hate it.) 

This, my friend, is not the stuff you blithely toss on the blog and share to LinkedIn with the expectation that new clients will start tying up the phone lines.

Why am I revealing all this anguish? Anguish I cooked up by publishing my own useful, business-focused blog posts? Because I think you’re going through something similar.

This writing-for-your-business stuff doesn’t always feel good. What’s the source of the pain?

Your writing process is often a burden or an unanswered "should." Let’s be honest about why all this blogging and guest posting and website content creation is hard - or even painful.

Here are 5 reasons that the creative entrepreneur resists the writing-for-your-business process (at least some of the time). 

1. Creativity doesn’t like serving a single-minded master - particularly when that master is concerned with doing what’s necessary to sustain a viable business
2. Storytelling is an art in and of itself, and sometimes it feels like you’re selling out when you use your own stories to sell a product or service
3. There’s only so much creative juice in your glass, and when you drain it for something as ephemeral as a blog post, you resent how the “real” creative projects suffer
4. Certainty isn’t part of the creative journey - and you don’t want it to be… asserting your in-process vision as fact because the skimming online reader doesn’t see shades of gray feels reckless
5. You want to believe that stories matter because they matter, not because they’re a means to an end

Some of these are pulled right from my own fevered journaling sessions. Others come from conversations I’ve had with creatives who struggle with their online writing chores. All of them resonate with me, but I think, collectively, we could go even deeper.

Please share your reasons for resisting or resenting the writing-for-your-business process in the comments or on your favorite social media post (please do tag me and share this post!)

Why wallow in "writing is hard!"?

We're not throwing a "woe is me, the connected creative with a business and a following and a commitment to my art" pity party here. Instead, we're owning up to our resistance and our periodic crises of faith in the whole endeavor of building an online platform.

In a world where ambivalence or being "in process" is seen as a weakness, we must take a stand for the very real state of "becoming" and embrace the clarity as well as the mess.

Dare to follow the rules of writing for the web - sometimes. Put out posts that are focused, brief, clear, actionable and tell enough of the story to meet your own Sovereign Standard.

Other days, allow yourself to defy those conventions and just write into "fascinating." Write what you must write, not what the marketplace seems to demand.

But, do me a favor - breathe deep and pause before hitting publish. Some ideas must be allowed to marinate in the mind and in the journal for a while... even if you are dedicated to making this whole online writing thing work.

Let's make this writing-for-your-business work easier... I'd love to support you as your writing coach. Have a look at what I offer and we'll set up a free 15 minutes chat about how I can help you.

5 Reasons to Quit Curating Content and Just Get Writing

Content curation seems like an easy way to boost your online visibility and prove you're a useful, fascinating resource. You pull together ideas from lots of smart people and then weave them together with a common thread plucked from your own life and work. You publish and share. You tag both the new and established content creators who are featured in your piece. Take the weekend off and start it all over again on Monday.

I took it on good authority that this whole curated newsletter thing was a low sweat way to build credibility. And grow a list.

5 Myths and Truths About Content Curation for the Creative Entrepreneur

This list is based on ten weeks’ experience of research and writing about 15,00 words. Is this enough time to be an expert in the field of curated newsletters? No, but I am an authority on the Sovereign Standard and my own definition of what it means to be a successful creative entrepreneur.

My intention is to give you some insights from inside a content curation project because there’s a lot of good press about it out there.

Truth is, you might just be better off writing rather than curating. I’m pretty sure I am...

Myth #1: Content Curation is Quick and Easy

The Hope: Curating others’ content would be easier and faster than writing my own post/newsletter each week.

The Truth: Weaving together other people’s posts and interviews often took more time than just writing and organizing my own ideas. Though I started with three set categories (livelihood, message, and everyday creative magic) and intended to share a couple of posts for each, I quickly rejected what felt like an overly simplistic system and wrapped all the ideas together in prose. (Lots and lots of prose...)

Outcome: I was producing long, “heady” posts each week that were well-made but ultimately too much for the majority of my readers.

Myth #2: Content Curation Makes You Smarter

Hope: I would read more widely and with more focused attention.

The Truth: I stopped reading things for pleasure or personal growth and would scan only for Sovereign Standard-related ideas. It’s likely I missed out on the best stuff because I was preoccupied with my agenda - my topic of the week.

Outcome: Reading others’ content became a chore. And, for brief and terrible periods, I started playing Two Dots or Candy Crush to avoid it.

Myth #3: Content Curation Encourages People to Share the Posts

Hope: Content creators would be so happy to appear in the Sovereign Standard that they’d jump on my list and share the posts with enthusiasm.

The Truth: Some people were awesome about this. Heck, Margaret Atwood tweeted at me and must have visited my blog (because she thought I misread her poem, but still…)! For the most part, however, there wasn’t any detectable bounce from all my dedicated linking and tagging.

Outcome: Over this ten week period I was producing two posts a week. The post that was all “mine” and more directly related to writing advice was just as likely to be shared as the Sovereign Standard piece.

Myth # 4: If It’s a Good Idea, It’s Worthy of Content Curation

Hope: Great posts related to the week’s topic would be easy to share and link to.

The Truth: The Sovereign Standard is about setting one’s own standards. Everything that was included in an issue had to meet my own (rather exacting) standards. As a writing coach with extensive website creation experience, I size up the effectiveness and quality of a site in about three seconds flat. I had to reject lots of content related to my weekly topic because I didn’t think the post or the site worked overall. If the post didn’t include a clear call to action or the website left me wondering “what does this person actually do?” I couldn’t include it.

Outcome: I did identify some potential clients and I became certain that people need my help when it comes to clarifying their message and presenting it through clear website copy. (Yes, this ultimately is a win, but it never made assembling the Standard any easier!)

Myth #5: Content Curation Frees Me to Focus on My Own Creative Projects

Hope: As in point #1, I was seeking a quick and easy route to visibility because I have a novel to write (and children to mother and a husband to love and clients to serve). 

The Truth: Because content creation didn’t really feel like mine (even though I was expending loads of creative energy as I tied all those ideas and sources together), I felt compelled to write a second blog post each week that explored my signature idea - Writing to Sovereignty. The novel? I’d be lucky if I made few notes while nursing or hanging at the playground. Those two blog pieces took all my writing and production mojo.

Outcome: I started to feel like a fraud calling myself an “author” when I hadn’t typed a word of fiction since launching this curated newsletter. I was starting to resent whomever had appropriated my creative fire… and I realized it was me. 

Still Curating, Still Sending a Newsletter, Just Not a Curated Newsletter

When it comes down to it, there is nothing wrong with content curation. I’ll never actually stop doing it.

After all, every time you share something you’re a “curator.” And linking to other people’s posts is a longstanding tenet of blogging that deserves to be preserved.

The problem was the way that I went about it. I lavished time and attention I didn’t really have on a project that wasn’t giving back what I was putting in.

The hope was to create something credible and substantial. The truth was, I believed that no one would be interested in what Marisa Goudy had to say about writing, entrepreneurship, and creativity, so I decided to share the spotlight with other creatives (many of whom hadn’t asked for the privilege).

I was afraid to stand Sovereign.

I’m grateful for this 10 week journey - for all that it has taught me and for managing to fail quickly (to borrow Chris Brogan’s line). I’m taking this opportunity to reset my course so I can tell my own Sovereign Story and offer you, dear reader, something useful that will help you identify your own.

Focus On What Actually Builds Visibility & Brings in Clients

What will change about the Sovereign Standard? Even my most loyal readers may barely notice.

The important thing is that I am shedding a term that became heavy and restrictive for me. I wanted “curated” to be a container that helped me shape my thoughts easily each week. Instead, I was perpetually over-delivering (in ways that didn’t add tangible value to readers or boost my business) because that container was never the right size or shape.

Likely I’ll end up blogging on my own site once a week and focusing on guest posting (please go read my essay about grief, motherhood, and a crazy dog on Suzi Banks Baum's Laundry Line Divine). 

Most importantly, I’ll be making my foundational website copy absolutely perfect so no one ever says “I love your work! But… what exactly do you do?”

 Need help focusing in on what writing projects are really important to building your business? Let's set up a free initial consultation.

What Makes a Story Meaningful for Entrepreneurs and Creatives (and the people listening too)?

The Sovereign Standard, Issue 10

“Your story.”

What does that mean to you?

Is it the glittering through line that makes you who you are?

Or is it self serving? Is it the verbal unpacking of a lifetime’s baggage?

Is it something you’re meant to explore and expand?Is it something you’re supposed to expunge and escape?

What belongs in your story?

Is your story autobiographical, or is it that novel shored up inside you?

Are all stories created equal? Is fact worth more than fiction, or vice versa? And what about that gray place in between where you feel you have the most to say?

And do you have an obligation to your story? 

Must you tell it for yourself, your ancestors, your children so everyone understands something about your line and legacy?

Must you tell it for an unknown reader who may be inspired, transformed, even saved because your narrative assures them they’re not alone?

The Sovereign Standard is dedicated to inspiring fresh questions rather than churning out "shoulds" and one size fits all answers. This week, let’s focus on helping you set your own Sovereign Standard by asking what makes a meaningful story.

Your Story: Personal. Creative. Professional. 

I believe that your story is important. More than an account of “this happened” and then “that happened,” your story is an interweaving of the personal, professional, and creative. And, depending on your disposition, you may agree that it has a spiritual dimension as well.

Telling your story is important on a personal level because exploring the events, relationships, and dreams that carried you to this moment helps you understand what you really want from the present and the future.

You need to develop your story to feed yourself at the creative level too. Not just so you can make art or create compelling content, but because exercising your creative abilities enables to you to solve business problems and meet all of your life with greater flexibility and joy.

Your story is important professionally because running a business is never just about business… at least not if you’re a creative entrepreneur. All your “stuff” will come up as you deal with financial pressures, difficult people, and the press to be a success (however you define that).

That’s the crux of business writing that goes beyond blogging: when you explore and develop your own story and your brand’s story, your able to define "success" and understand the work you’re truly meant to do.

And your story matters to those who will hear it or read it.

We know that memoir has become a wildly popular art form in the last few years. Is it because we’re just a bunch of voyeurs? No, we can just go to People magazine for that.

Instead, we want to understand the alchemical process of living through a first hand account. We want to know how others have faced adversity, climbed great heights, and experienced everyday life with a level of magic and grace.

On Being a Student of Story

During a recent car ride I had a chance to meander through Krista Tippet’s On Being podcast library. Each conversation was rooted in story, even though each guest described vastly different experiences and perspectives.

I invite you to savor these samples and dive deeper into whichever story calls to you.  Below you'll find how the wisdom an activist, musician, and poet might help your transform how you perceive and share own story.

Stories That Empower, Stories that Don’t

Some stories do limit us, sustaining our victimhood through a tired recitation of how we’ve been done wrong. But other stories actually secure our sovereignty by uplifting both the teller and the audience.

Nathan Schneider, a voice for the Millennial generation who has published a book on God and another book on the Occupy Movement, was asked about the source of his despair and the source of his hope:

I think the sense of despair that I feel comes from the stories - when people tell each other stories in which they have no agency. You know, when we tell each other stories in which someone else has to do it for us.

And for me, the experiences of hope are often the stories I’m kind of grasping to be able to tell, and I know people are grasping to be able to tell, but that we see in the world where people are living that agency. And building the kinds of communities that we need, you know, to resist the injustice that has sunk so deeply into our world.

I hope that we can learn to tell those stories better.

Stories for Ourselves, Stories for Others

Joe Henry, award-winning producer and singer-songwriter, quotes the monk and spiritual writer Thomas Merton:

If you write for God, you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men, you may make some money, and you may give someone a little joy, and you may make a noise in the world for a little while. If you write only for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written, and after ten minutes you'll be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.

Henry adds his own thoughts about another writer who expressed a similar idea through a more secular lens, the philosopher, as an architect, as a social scientist Buckminster Fuller:

His thought was I am exponentially more successful when I am working for the good of the most people.

When I was trying to serve myself, I wasn't successful at all.

When I worked to benefit ten people, I was that much more successful. When my work was to benefit a thousand people, I was that much more successful.

And when I thought that the work that I was doing would benefit all mankind, I was infinitely beyond my imagination successful.

But You Don’t Transform the Story By Simply Playing with Pronouns

When you write for the web, particularly when you’re trying to persuade someone to take action, you’re advised to cut back on the “I” and focus on the “you.”

The reader is always asking “what’s in it for me?” and you need to make that clear by speak directly to her problems and her needs. When you just focus on what makes you so qualified or successful, you lose the readers’ interest quickly.

And yet… We know there is power in memoir, and Mary Oliver has certainly taught us that there is power in poetry. Her level of trust in her craft and in her relationship with the reader allowed her to tip that advice on its head:

And always I wanted the "I." Many of the poems are "I did this. I did this. I saw this." I wanted them — the "I" to be the possible reader rather than about myself. It was about an experience that happened to be mine but could well have been anybody else’s. And that was my feeling about the "I."

I have been criticized by one editor who felt that "I" would be felt as ego. And I thought, no, well, I'm going to risk it and see. And I think it worked. It enjoined the reader into the experience of the poem. I became the kind of person who did the walking and the scribbling but shared it.

Ultimately, the power of a story is about so much more than whether it employs the “I” or “you.”

How Will You Shape Your Story that Matters?

So much of what I have learned about story I have learned from Jeffrey Davis of Tracking Wonder.

On the blog this week I describe how working with him on my own fiction empowered me to transform my relationship with creativity and entrepreneurship, and even with my family and my very sense of self.

Last year, I attended his live intensive for authors and now I am helping him spread the word about his six month author’s mentoring program.

Find some details here or, if you are really intrigued, send me an email and I can get you access to the details and the early bird discounts. I'd love to tell you more about my experience and why I truly believe in the magic he brings to the world.

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Honoring Writing Deadlines - Even During Spring Break

The Sovereign Standard, Issue 9

Sometimes you have the luxury of staring at a blank page. An endless desert of time stretches before you but you can’t think of a single useful thing to say.

For the creative entrepreneur, the opposite is often true: so many ideas, so little time.

Business owning parents in particular know this uncomfortable phenomenon during school breaks - those trying periods when life stops for the kids but everyone else in the professional world is still pushing full speed ahead.

I’m writing this on a coffee table on Cape Cod, relying on the patience of grandparents who’ll play one more game of Candy Land while mama just finishes another paragraph.

The Entrepreneur’s Survival Tools: Writing. Balance. Reciprocity. Self Care.

It’s in the mix of these powerful, sustaining habits that I’ve found my way through this week of delightful disruption and business as unusual.

Writing, balance, reciprocity, and self care overlap and feed one another. I believe that if you honor each in their turn, you have a fighting chance of meeting the end of each day with a sense of “I am enough.”

Writing

Remember, your writing practice is meant to give back to you.

You’ll only sustain the practice and imbue your words with meaning if you’re motivated by something deeper than the dictates of the editorial calendar and the need to churn out one more blog post.

Writing is an opportunity for personal and professional growth. The practice will support you when the world seems to be falling apart due to personal crisis - or simply because the children are hanging about, using the dreaded “b” word. (Is “bored” a four letter word to you too?)

For me, writing is a refuge.

If  I didn’t have my writing deadlines, would I carve out any time for myself? Between the great processions to the beach (dressing for the wind takes more time than we actually spend by the water) and the endless task of keeping the toys off my folks’ stairs, it seems impossible even on "vacation."

Truth is, I almost always need “work” as an excuse to step away from my parenting responsibilities. I value self care, but often as an unattainable grail.

Self Care

The goal is to practice self care rather than just celebrate it. I'm still a work in progress in the implementation, but I am great at the research. That’s why I’ve been immersing myself in Koren Motekaitis’s series of podcasts with Jen Louden. I highly recommended a binge listen if you’ve got some long distance driving coming up!

For a quick dose of Jen’s medicine, watch this video on the self care paradox. I love how she describes the need to cultivate a relationship between “savoring and service.”

Because really, as important as the writing and all the other work commitments are, this is a special moment in your family’s life - or it could be. And taking care of work at the cost of your happiness as a mom means you're breaking a fundamental rule of self care.

We still reminisce about that April vacation in Washington DC in 1987. There’s no way my daughter will remember “the spring break mom sat at the computer” since that looks a lot like every other week of her life.

Balance & Reciprocity

Many say that work-life balance is a myth. If your expectation is that you’ll give exactly the same amount of time and energy to business and family and that this will keep everyone happy, it is a myth.

But the goal isn’t making everything 50/50 all the time. The goal is to give and receive in equal measure across the entire continuum of your life.

Lany Sullivan and I explore what reciprocity can really mean in your life and work in a recent Reach Connec Uplift Women interview. So much more than “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” transactions, it is about relationships and self care and connecting based on mutual recognition of worth. 

During that conversation we also refer to “ayni,” the Andean concept of sacred reciprocity. Eleanora Amendolara describes ayni in depth so you can embody this profound sense of equilibrium - internally, in relationships, and with the earth itself.

Good Medicine: Writing, Self Care, Reciprocity... and Support

My stepmom kindly recommended I take off my coat and get some work done while she took the kids for a walk.

Clearly I was exuding deadline stress, and I risked infecting everyone around me.

How could I be surprised that I couldn't get clear on my writing and I felt choked with "bad mom" guilt? I wasn't asking for the dedicated creative time I needed and so I was spreading myself too thin as I tried (and failed) to dot it all. 

I felt like a fraud, offering advice from and “I’ve got this” pulpit when I was actually just being a terrible, distracted house guest with a couple of needy dependents.

Gratefully, I took that gift of thirty minutes free of mom responsibilities to check back in with my real message, my lived experience, my own imbalance.

I think I found a story worth telling and I drafted a new container to tell it. And then I discovered the space to walk to the beach with my girls - twice.

3 Ways to Honor Your Writing Commitments & Other Deadlines During Times of Delightful Disruption (The Practical Guide) 

1. Take the pressure off by featuring a guest post on your blog  I’m honored to feature Karen Brody’s Exhaustion: It’s Time to Tell a New Story this week.
2. Go back to the well: rework and repurpose past posts Because I’ve written posts on reciprocity and self care recently, I worried about insulting you with rehashes of the same topics. Thing is, I didn’t remember exactly what I had written, so how could you? In writing this today I realized how writing, balance, reciprocity, and self care are my signature topics and these explorations are just the beginning. What can you learn about your own work by examining and amplifying material from your archives?
3. Keep it simple: think in lists, not in prose This is “do as I say, not as I do” advice today. What was meant to be a quick list of how to keep writing even with kids underfoot ended up becoming much more personal and involved than I had expected. But, if you can enter your next disrupted work week with a perspective on how you’ll integrate writing, self care, balance, and reciprocity, maybe you’ll be able to give yourself permission to write something quick, dirty, and helpful to your readers. After all - if you’re busy with kids underfoot, isn’t there a good chance they’re in the same boat and are also short on reading time?

Bonus Tip for Honoring Your Writing Commitments

Call on your writing coach for extra support. As a writing coach, I’m not a ghost writer who’ll put together a post for you, but I can help you plan your editorial calendar so you’re not working during your vacation. I can also help you implement the ideas in this post so you can develop a writing practice that truly serves you and your business.

Learn more about my writing coaching services.

5 Steps to Reclaiming Your Writing Practice

The Sovereign Standard, Issue 8 

A creative entrepreneur’s editorial calendar can be her salvation. Making a commitment to generate ideas, get the writing done, and put something in front of an audience signals to your community (and your brain and your spirit) that you’re fully invested in this work.

But, then again, a writing plan can just be a spreadsheet full of punishment and guilt. If you can’t seem to work the plan and meet your deadlines, does it mean you don’t truly care about your business or the people you serve?

Of course not. But when you’re blinded by the glare of the blank page or find every idea fizzles after two paragraphs, you start to panic. Especially when you’ve been on a consistent publishing streak.

You're thinking nothing short of a natural disaster should stop you from posting on schedule, but here you are, about to fail because you can’t find and stick to one halfway decent topic on an average Tuesday.

Step 1 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Set Your Information Filters

The problem isn’t a lack of ideas. Most likely, it's an overabundance of information and possibility that has you stuck.

So, the first thing to do to vanquish writer’s block is to practice discernment about what sort of information you consume.

In Relax, Their Blogging and Marketing Advice Doesn’t Apply to You I offer a case for why you can tune out what the majority of experts have to say about content marketing - even if you’re dedicated to writing a blog in support of your business.

But then, once you’ve shut off the information fire hose, you’re left with the paradox: now that I finally have some quiet around here, I’m just going to add to the noise.

Step 2 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Believe In the Writing Process

Is the ultimate cure for writer’s block simply killing the urge to write?

What if you convince yourself that producing more articles just adds to the chaos of the oversaturated digital stream? Then you can just walk away from the whole writing enterprise and congratulate yourself for reducing the information glut, right?

 No. That’s not right.

 There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.

- Maya Angelou

Writing is medicine. Words want to make alchemists of us all.

To shape your flashes of insight and prayers of gratitude and revelations of joy into a message that someone else can understand… that is the great prize of the human intellect, the greatest expression of aliveness in this Age of Information.

Writing has saved your sanity more times than you can count, but you forget this. I forget this. And so we research a little more in order to avoid taking the cure that is just as bitter as the disease.

Why is it that when it's time to write we open Google Search instead of opening a Google Doc? 

Step 3 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Avoid Writing By Reading About Writing

Proving that we need writing to sustain us, when I didn't want to write this week, I began to read.

 Seth Godin says:

Writer's block isn't hard to cure. Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

He’s right, of course, but the path to success he describes is outlined in traffic cones. Like me, I am betting you were hoping for velvet ropes or a seashell strewn path.

So turn to Kelly Galea who offers the same idea but prepares you a soft writer’s nest with the perfect writing implement and a beloved journal.

 Just express yourself. Just BE. So simple, really. Again, are you wondering where these thoughts and words are coming from? This pen. How is that for an answer? The pen is an instrument … YOU are an instrument. Be used to express this collective consciousness in YOUR voice – your unique voice, the voice someone (MANY someones) are waiting to hear, to call them forth, to bring them home. Lead them, guide them, help them, inspire them, teach them. Give them hope. Give them love. Give them that spark. Give them compassion for themselves.

Kelly got me cozy, but I might just burrow into that nest she crafted with her words and never write a thing, so I look to Jeffrey Davis to get me moving.

In Jeffrey’s Post Ecstasy Laundry List he addresses the inevitable come down after a peak creative experience, but much of this advice applies to you if you can’t imagine feeling creative ever again.

He’s telling you to keep writing too:

Make mistakes. The only catastrophic choice a writer makes is not to choose. Whether it’s genre or working story arc or angle. Show up. Get messy. Hit dead ends. Flounder. That’s part of the quest.

Step 4 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Assimilate Rather than Create

I allowed myself one more click before I told myself I would just walk away from the desk and pray for inspiration over the next diaper change (after all, it’s in moments of rest and boredom that the real answers flow).

Then I discovered Karen Brody’s work. Great goodness! She’s an expert in the struggle exhausted, depleted women who inspires you to change your way of being: “Because your life needs you fully charged.”

Life needs you fully charged, and so does your writing practice. Addressing writer’s block by staring at the page is like passing someone a Kleenex to cure grief.

Karen offers 9 insights into the art of being well-rested, and it's barely a stretch to apply each of these to the  “I have no idea what to write” lament. My favorite:

Welcome Everything. Think of all the hours you live in an either/or mentality. Real transformation comes when you can drop the false idea that you’re separate.

Apply this approach to your daily life, welcoming every experience as a potential inspiration for your next blog post or article.

Step 5 for Reclaiming Your Writing Practice: Practice Compassion

Bless you and your commitment. All hail your editorial calendar that can. You keep rocking that publishing streak.

But remember that your writing practice is meant to give back to you.

The hours you put in aren’t just in service to another post, another snack for the voracious internet marketing beast.

Your next post is a distillation of your presence in your life and in your business. It is a message from the heart of your work to the heart of someone who needs your wisdom, encouragement, or strategic advice.

The people who matter - the people who want to be beguiled and convinced and changed by your words - they don’t want you to look at a blank page gone blurry with tears of frustration. If they must, they can wait til next week.

And so can your spreadsheet.

But before you give up and beat yourself up:

• tune out the extraneous noise
• remember why writing matters to you
• seek wise counsel
• be present in the moment, and
• be kind to yourself

 I can’t wait to read what you'll write next!

This post was sent to Sovereign Standard subscribers first. To join our community of readers and contributors, please subscribe here.

Why Myth Matters to Your Writing and Marketing

We need myth. We always have, and we always will - if we want to retain our humanity.

Why myth matters to your writing and marketing

Called “a roadmap to the human psyche,” myths exist to explain the big questions like “for what reason was I born?” and “what will happen to me when I die?”

Myths lay out pretty clearly what is on the human smorgasbord: what we want, what we fear, what we would like to have, what we would very much not like to have. Those human fears and human desires really have not changed, and they're reflected in the myths that have been with us for a long time.

 --Margaret Atwood

Myths are also indispensable when it comes to less existential matters like creating a Hollywood blockbuster, writing a novel, and assembling a marketing plan.

The Myth that Everyone Knows: The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey as originally framed by Joseph Campbell is something of a cultural standard these days, particularly for storytellers.

Turns out, “everyone” wasn’t always aware of this great twelve part cycle until Christopher Vogler brought it to Hollywood’s attention in the mid-1980s (at least that’s how he tells it). Of course, it was hiding in plain sight as George Lucas’s Star Wars had already transported us to a galaxy far, far away and transformed movie hero-dom forever. (Later, John Wayne, we've got a farm boy with a character arc!)

Vogler offers great advice on following the Hero framework when crafting a story (this also applies to any attempt to lay your ideas over someone else’s framework):

As with any formula, there are pitfalls to be avoided... The hero myth is a skeleton that should be masked with the details of the individual story, and the structure should not call attention to itself.  The order of the hero’s stages as given here is only one of many variations – the stages can be deleted, added to, and drastically re-shuffled without losing any of their power.

The myth is infinitely flexible, capable of endless variation without sacrificing any of its magic, and it will outlive us all.

(While you’re brushing up on the basics of the Hero’s Journey, do check out the summary of the Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock too… I know I’m intrigued.)

The Hero’s Journey through the Marketplace

The hero's story is is a human story that speaks to us on multiple levels. At its best, the Hero’s Journey can connect people with resources that will better their lives. At its most banal, it can be used to make people buy stuff.

First, the “what NOT to do” example.

In Brand Storytelling: 10 Steps to Start Your Content Marketing Hero’s Journey, you’re guided through “The CM Brand Hero’s Journey."

Stop. Right. There.

Develop a marketing and content strategy with you or your brand in the hero’s role and you’ll alienate those who really matter to the story: the people who invest in your work and use it to change their own lives.

The brand is not the hero, just as the writer is not the hero. In case you forgot, Pamela Slim will remind you: It is not about you.

Lest we get sidetracked, deriding those evil marketers who cheapen and co-opt everything, there are clever, useful, sensitive ways to apply this wisdom to business.

Copyblogger’s Brian Clark masterfully re-envisions the role of the brand in the hero's tale: the magical mentor.

The mistake most often made in “marketing” is thinking of your business as the hero, which results in egocentric messages that no one else cares about.

The prospect is always the primary hero, because they are the one going on the journey — whether big or small — to solve a problem or satisfy a desire.

Another reason to tune in to this New Rainmaker podcast: Echoing the cyclical nature of the hero’s journey, you get a new perspective on the funnel: the concentric circles of belief. (If you're excited by the Heroine's Journey this "feminine" diagram of the sales process may really appeal to you.)

A New Mythic Model for the Magical Mentor

Brian Clark employs two of our most beloved mentors to illustrate his point: Obi Wan and Morpheus from The Matrix. You know these guys. You'd trust them if you were chosen to save the world.

Here’s another option that hasn't hit the multiplex: the Sovereignty Goddess.

As I describe in my St. Patrick’s Day post, 5 Lessons on Writing and Entrepreneurship from an Irish Goddess, the Celtic Sovereignty Goddess plays a vital - though fleeting - role in the creation of the hero. She owns her magic and never stresses about playing second fiddle.

“Just” having a supporting role in the hero’s journey is actually what being a storyteller or running a business is all about.

This introduces the paradox of the hero:

We don’t need another hero. Everyone is a hero.

You’re most effective when you realize you’re not the hero of the piece you’re writing or the business you’re running. And yet, you must remember you're the hero of your own story.

The Hero’s Quest: Be of Service

“The hero’s journey is to be of service”: that’s Lisa Engel’s “ah ha” statement at the end of this episode of The Jess, Scott, and You show, “In the Service of Others.” (I had the good fortune to be a guest on this particular show too.)

Though it’s true that it’s not all about you (here, Susie Moore explains why that is such a good thing), you are also on your own quest. You must practice self-care and act from self-love and self-interest in order to grow and meet your potential (we discussed that at length on the show).

You'll never prove your heroism through an egotistical romp aimed showing off your skills and authority. Instead, you become the hero through a willingness to imagine, learn, endure, transform, and then bring the magical elixir home.

Who are your heroes? How have you been called to take on the role of the hero? And what has that taught you about who is really in charge? Leave a comment or tag me with the answer on your favorite social media platform.

What do your readers expect: wisdom or knowledge?

The Sovereign Standard, Issue 6

At a time when information is increasingly cheap and wisdom increasingly expensive, this gap is where the modern storyteller’s value lives.

For this week’s Sovereign Standard, I was tempted to just send a link to Wisdom in the Age of Information and the Importance of Storytelling in Making Sense of the World: An Animated Essay by Maria Popova and introduce it “what she said.”

Even that title teaches you something:

Wisdom is foremost. Though we live in an Age of Information, the world doesn’t make much sense, but storytelling will help.

But, as these insights started lighting up my online and offline experience this week, I found there was something more to say. Is it wise? You tell me...

The Ladder of Understanding

Popova offers a brilliant metaphor: the “ladder of understanding.” (Turns out she’s applying Plato to our contemporary culture of noise.)

Information is everywhere - all those facts and figures and Wikipedia articles. Knowledge is the next step up  - you synthesize all that information to “reveal some truth about the world.”

At the top of the ladder: wisdom. From this vantage point, you're sculpting what’s known into what matters. Through wisdom, Popova says, we understand not only how the world works, but we also present an aspirational vision of how it could work.

Actually, she said “how it should work” but I do everything I can to avoid that word.

There are moments when we crave “should” - like when you go to a trusted advisor praying they'll tell you just what to do. (The best ones will do no such thing.) The problem arises when people who have not earned the right to give such advice start doing so. Brene Brown speaks masterfully about this.

Look at the “should” problem in the context of the Age of Information and the online world: so many people who are better suited to dole out information and facts are trying to jump a few rungs of the ladder. They are moralizing - and “shoulding” - before they have the credibility and experience to impart real wisdom.

What do you share: information, knowledge, or wisdom?

Examining the Ladder of Understanding , the thought-leader-in-process leaps up waving her hands “wisdom, wisdom! I wanna share wisdom!” (Me too, brothers and sisters, me too.)

Looking at my own position, I worry that I haven’t produced enough content, and I haven’t fully birthed my signature theme in a coherent, public way. Maybe I should (eek! “should”!) put a lid on all this blogging and just cogitate on the Bigger Story a while longer if I hope to offer up any worthy wisdom.

Thank goodness Tara Mohr talked me out of that. In this wide-ranging interview (the most compelling and useful one I’ve heard her give as she promotes Playing Big), she nails that tendency to hold back and over prepare.

Mohr invites you to squash that desire to do a little more research, training, contemplating. Decide “I know enough” and get out there to speak, to launch, to interact…

“Wisdom” May Not Always Be the Right Answer

The chronic perfectionist and overachiever (is your hand raised for that too?) sees the top as the goal. If knowledge is only halfway up the ladder then it must not be good enough. And mere information? Ugh. That can’t be the realm of the creative entrepreneur.

But are we all supposed to be climbing the ladder to the tippity top to dispense wisdom like a guru on high? Is there room up there or will too many soothsayers make that ladder topple right out of the sky?

After all, we still need that basic “how to” content to help us in anything from baking a cake to formatting a WordPress post to the basics of blogging.

And there’s great merit in collecting and organizing ideas in order to let people make up their own minds. Moralizing has its place, but sometimes it’s important to merely raise awareness and trigger curiosity. Trust your reader to refer to their own internal compass.

This week on the blog I explored the choices we have as individuals and as content creators. Every time you sit down to write you get to decide everything from the tone to the ultimate call to action. Some days a list post, some days a story that gets to the heart of the big questions.

But When You’re Called to Tell a Real Story…

A great storyteller is the kindly captain who sails her ship with tremendous wisdom and boundless courage; who points its nose in the direction of horizons and worlds chosen with unflinching idealism and integrity; who brings us somewhat closer to the answer, to our particular answer, to that grand question: Why are we here?

Popova brings her message home by employing the storyteller who navigates the deep waters of wisdom. Certainly, this is someone we can all aspire to be. Maybe not today, maybe not in that very next blog post, but certainly there are moments when you’re called to tell a story that bigger and bolder than any you’ve told before.

Godspeed on that journey.

And yet, keep in mind what Mr. Hendrix said (or might have said): "Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."

In the giving and receiving of story and silence we reveal the deepest wisdom of all.

This post was sent to Sovereign Standard subscribers first. To join our community of readers and contributors, please subscribe here.

Content Creation, Social Media, and Our Big Reciprocity Problem

The Sovereign Standard, Issue 5

We tend to give more than we receive. That leaves us feeling imbalanced and burned out. In such a state, the inner critic seems to find a bigger megaphone and resentment of all kinds gets free license.

Giving and receiving in equal measure is the art of reciprocity. Unfortunately, in this department, most of us are amateurs at best when it comes to self care, social media habits, and promoting the business.

Don't Blame the Baby for Your Self Care Deficit

If the majority are giving too much you’d think that would mean that there’s some big segment of the population getting fat on others' contributions.

First group that comes to mind - kids. Children can seem like massive energy vortexes that will suck you dry, but that’s their job, right?

Yikes! Is that sense of imbalance - and martyrdom - an inevitable part of parenting? It doesn’t have to be.

So grateful to find Jessica Michaelson’s description of a common problem we usually don't have a name for - Depleted Mother Syndrome - and what to do about it. Thank goodness every stressed out working parent doesn't have to wait two (or more!) decades to get their equilibrium back!

OK, so if children aren’t to be implicated as little vampires intent on draining their elders, and we still feel like we’re out of whack, who is there to blame?

It’s not necessarily a somebody.

Feeding the Voracious Social Media Beast

Question: Who takes but doesn’t really give anything in return?

Answer: The social media networks that are building mega corporations based on the endless contributions of users.

Ok, the social media platforms don’t give us nothing. They give us a place to connect and an unparalleled opportunity for global visibility in exchange for our personal data and the content that lures our friends and followers to sacrifice their own privacy.

Does that feel like an equal exchange?

Here’s evidence that we’re conditioned to give more than we get. Last fall, 380 New Yorkers gave up everything from their mother’s maiden name to part of their Social Security number in exchange for a cookie.

But maybe giving it up for a cinnamon Instagram cookie doesn’t matter considering everything data brokers know about us already thanks to our buying and clicking habits.

But Social Media is About People and Relationships, Right?

We're quite used to putting away our concerns about privacy (because worrying about Big Brother is next to useless, according to this New Tech City podcast).  Instead, we focus on the immediate benefits of social media - seeing and being seen.

The folks at Big Fuel explore the basics of reciprocity in social media.

They see our online presence as motivated by a dual desire to “be recognized as an individual, and belong to a community.” Online influence - something every entrepreneur wants - is the beautiful love child of posting your own content and sharing others’ stuff.

Optimistically they declare: “Whatever you give to a community, you earn in return.”

Well, that’s the ideal. That’s what reciprocity really is. But do we actually experience it much?

Paula Reed Nancarrow nudges us to witness the distracting dark side of the quest for reciprocity. Because social media is so easily quantified in followers and shares, it’s all too easy to lose focus and authenticity because you end up playing the numbers game. Reciprocity isn't about a blind series of obligatory back and forth interactions. 

Reciprocity at the Human Level & the Creative Level

So, as we give and we give to a faceless online beast (even though we’re assaulted by countless faces every day), how do we continue to keep track of our own mission, our own creative potential, and our own humanity? How do we cultivate the art of reciprocity?I don’t have any data for this one, but don’t need it. I know my favorite solution is to read, comment, and share like you mean it.

Writing and creating content are part of the job for most of us, but let's be honest about the days when you just don’t want to show up and churn out more ideas. You may be coping with an issue that you don’t want to share with your online community  or focused on a longer term project may have your attention.

Sometimes it’s hard to write because you can’t reconcile the time it demands with the needs of the people who are right in front of you and the fear that your latest blog post won’t get a response.

In this week’s blog post, What You’ll Gain From a Business Writing Practice (Besides Blog Posts) I offer up all the ways that your writing-for-business practice gives back to you because I think that we can keep the dream of reciprocity alive.

Start with creating a positive give and take with your own creative endeavors and then apply that to your relationships with clients, colleagues, and the people you love.

It meant the world when someone I haven’t interacted with lately shared my latest post with a few heartfelt words. I quickly searched out her wonderful Hudson Valley summer camp and posted it where I could. I was motivated by gratitude and its soul sister, reciprocity.

This was not an obligatory "you scratched my back, I hafta scratch yours" share. I believe in this woman's work and she opened the door for me to share in the spirit of reciprocity with an initial act of generosity.

Look for the deeper benefits in every act of content creation to make sure you're caring for yourself. And then, read, comment, and share like you mean it to ensure you're showing your care for others.

Reciprocity is Sacred and It's Something We Can Cultivate

The indigenous peoples of the Andes have a word for profound reciprocity: ayni.

As Eleanora Amendolara of the Sacred Center Mystery School describes it “When you move through life inspired by the spirit of ayni you balance the great scales between yourself and the earth, the cosmos, and with all the people in your life.”

Listen to the  Virtual Wisdom Council call that I co-hosted on topic The Rhythm of Reciprocity and Gratitude. Though we won’t be talking about entrepreneurship or your online message, Eleanora is a channel for creative magic. The discussion and group meditation offers an opportunity to see reciprocity from a broader perspective and will help you find your equilibrium.

This post was sent to Sovereign Standard subscribers first. To join our community please subscribe here.

Find the Magic and Do the Work Even When Your Creativity Freezes Up

The Sovereign Standard, Issue 3

Margaret Atwood wrote an ode to this frozen month.

“February,” she declares, “month of despair, with a skewered heart in the centre.”

Even if snow hasn’t been swirling ‘round your front door, there’s a texture to February that has people across the northern hemisphere yearning to hide under the covers. But “despair”? There are plenty who really suffer from seasonal affective disorder - it’s real, and it’s hard - but what about the rest of us who are just grouchy and feeling off our game?

We don’t have time to feel skewered when there’s a business to run and children to be entertained and a book that isn’t going to write itself.

We have to push through. But first we must acknowledge that it can be hard to find the silver in this gray and white world.

Make Friends With Reality: Reclaim the Snow Day

Remember when snow days weren’t just kids’ stuff (and massive productivity drains because there’s work to do and childcare to provide)?

Jesse Singal writes and elegy for the adult snow day in New York Magazine:

The grown-up world has a tendency to strip things of their magic a bit, but the snow day still served as a wonderful stop sign from the heavens for myopic, overworked adults. What else could grind to a halt, even temporarily, the exhausting, striving adult world of meetings and reports and office memos? What else could not only suggest to the workaholic that he take a day off, but force him to because the roads were too icy, the subways all closed? What else could unite father and son on a sled on a snowy hill in the middle of a weekday?

I too mourn the loss of the snow day and believe I’d be a better business owner and a better human if I let myself take a few more of them. While researching this week’s Sovereign Standard, I read way too many sunshine and sparkles blog posts from small business owners declaring "I don't need snow days because I love my work and my clients so much!"

Oh, please.  Let's admit:

1. all this snow and cold is making us feel less than... optimal
2. we feel cheated of our rights to snow days (after all, it’s one of the few consolations we have when it’s so cold you can’t make it to the mailbox without the skin on your knuckles cracking)
3. playing hooky as Mother Nature intends would do the business, the family, and the creative work a world of good

 Everyday Creative Magic: Reclaiming the Spark of Aliveness

Again, we’re not here to despair, even as we recognize that this is the season of our discontent. Nor are we here to whine as our “bored” children home for the third day in a week are taking care of that already.

We’re here to recover some of that everyday creative magic (the kind that Singal notes has been stripped from our grown up world).

Let’s consider summer for a moment… Here in New York’s Hudson Valley, we have a treasure of an organization called Wild Earth. Many families stare down our fear of poison ivy and Lyme disease and send our kids to their camp in July.

The few and the bold send their teenagers to overnight in the woods in the middle of this deep freeze. Tyler McNamara reveals the vital pulse at the heart of winter and why experiencing and yes, embracing, this dangerous cold is essential to being alive in this piece about eighteen young adventurers.  

But maybe we don’t need to sleep outdoors in order to find meaning in this dark season. Suzi Banks Baum of Laundry Line Divine shares notes from her winter retreat.

Where YOU are IS your point of entry, in to inner attention.

Wherever you are, mired in wild living or utter sameness, each are invitations to slow down, for even a few breaths and listen to what your heart requires of you. For even in the thrall of the clock, your voice is there, masked by the chaos perhaps, but it is there.

And if it isn’t the right time for you to sleep in a subzero tent or enjoy the luxury of solitude, there this sweet interview with artist, designer, and mom Johanna Winter-Harper at www.craftingconnections.net, a site dedicated to creating art with your kids. It gave me hope that it’s possible to make and mother amidst the mess. 

Message: It's Never Too Frigid to Speak

“Writing forces people to reconstrue whatever is troubling them and find new meaning in it.” So says a UVA psychologist professor quoted in the New York Times blog post Writing Your Way to Happiness. Studies show that students who engaged in “expressive writing” were healthier and performed better in school

But we know this. Writing reveals what we really thing and who we really are (eventually). Writing is hope. Writing is healing.

Earlier this week, I dove into the places that need plenty of exploratory, personal writing, but which just aren’t the stuff of a public online presence. In Online Visibility, Transparency, and Authenticity When You’ve Got Other Things On Your Mind I hope to give you the permission to admit you’re human and that your human experience will get in front of your entrepreneurial imperatives to be visible and authentic.

Read on for a few suggestions about how to show up even when you’ve got a case of the Februaries.

Livelihood: How Winter Impacts Work

 Finally, a few practicalities about winter and the business world...

Economists don’t really know if snow storms negatively impact the economy. Apparently, “it’s more an art than a science” to figure out whether lost wages, delayed purchases, and all those flight delays have a long term impact.

If you run a brick and mortar business when the roads are closed or have remote employees who can’t work because an ice storm knocked out their power, do you pay them? This article from Entrepreneur is a place to start.

 Ultimately, How Will You Survive February?

 Clinical psychologist Paul Lichtenberg posts on his Facebook page:

It reminds us that self-care: in the boiling of the tea, rinsing with salt, epsom baths, sitting, gentle restorative yoga, soup, slow mindful walking, self-massage, asking for help; all these minute-to-minute actions with the intention to heal bodymind bring us back to the most simple message: be kind to oneself, be gentle, care for the body and quiet mind. That is healing.

In this case, Paul is talking about coping with mortality, but we can use this wisdom to navigate the last weeks of this frozen world.

And so, we can move through, taking what medicine is available and appropriate to our temperament. We can occupy the present moment and actively seek healing and vitality, rather than mere survival.

Or, write a hot harangue at a poor blameless cat. Atwood’s “February” that opened this week’s issue is actually addressed to a feline who insists on sneaking into her bed. Proof that “kick the cat” syndrome is real, even in Booker Prize winners:

Cat, enough of your greedy whining and your small pink bumhole. Off my face! You’re the life principle, more or less, so get going on a little optimism around here. Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

How Business and Creativity Thrive When You Go Beyond the Online/Offline Divide

There are no barriers between the real world, the digital world, and the creative world Remember how there used to be was a wall between “real life” and our internet habits?

Maybe you had a blog you never talked about with friends.  Perhaps you used to feel like your connection to online business contacts was somehow different from your relationship to local clients and colleagues.

Those barriers and distinctions have all but vanished. And with the disappearance of the fourth wall between our online and offline lives, everything has gotten simultaneously more simple and more complicated.

We are both actors and spectators in the electronic and the terrestrial world. We can't go on believing that one space is make believe and the other reality and hope one has no influence upon the other.

When I first started asking questions about the way we performed in our digital and in our analog (read: real) lives, I was troubled that most people didn't seem invested in the topic. Finally, its time has come and we’re all thinking about what the phones and the social media presence is doing to our relationships, our work, and our creativity.

What Photos and Videos Offer… and What They Take Away

Last spring, when typing was nearly impossible thanks to the infant in my arms, I experimented a lot with video. Despite the low production value product, it was an important exercise in visibility and finding my voice in a time that might otherwise have been very insular and isolated.

Online and Offline Balance in Business, Life, and Family highlights the questions I was asking related to the future of Online Empowerment (which is having its own exciting new future without me), but I lay some much bigger questions on the table thanks to inspiration from David Amerland’s Semantic Search:

Forward thinking questions aside, it's worth noting that I have absolutely no memory of making that video. Was it mommy brain (see that I was holding a sweet faced girl who was still working to keep her head up!) or was it "photo-taking impairment effect"?

This NPR story talks about how capturing an image alters the quality of our memories and experiences is part of a bigger conversation going on about how cell phones are squelching creativity.

So, if our brains are being repatterned by our tech habits, what does that do to our business practices?

Livelihood: Thank Goodness We’re Not Digital Marketers!

At this point, we’re pretty much past the question of whether you can build a brand or a platform without social media (though it still gets asked).

Instead we’re seeing that online marketing is so ubiquitous that people are catching attention with headlines like Social Media Has Killed Consumer Trust.

According to Sensei Marketing, the “pendulum has swung back to traditional word of mouth and away from “the wisdom of crowds.’” That means we’re done using “likes” as barometers of quality and are re-dedicating ourselves to the tried and true “ask a friend” approach.

But as creative entrepreneurs, aren’t we “digital marketers”? We blog and tweet and sweat out our online visibility because we know it’s how we’ll grow a business and share our unique wisdom with those who need it most.

This is when we must remember we’re always going to rely on relationships and personal recommendations in a way that the digital marketing behemoths cannot. You are not Coke or Apple (thank the gods!). You are you, and that is so much more attractive to the individual clients you wish to reach.

By virtue of being a real person you are already bridging the real life/digital divide. Now, just be yourself.

Remember: that fourth wall between actor and audience, digital you and real people has fallen down - permanently. There has never been a better time to be a human being talking to another human being, regardless of whether it's face-to-face or over Facebook.

Message: How to Play Nice and Learn Something, Regardless of Medium

There’s a simple way to break down that final barrier between our online and offline consciousness: Stop believing there’s a difference between them. Lany Sullivan reminds us that the social side of media is not different from the social side of life.

That brings us to my favorite post of the week: Building up your swipe copy files: how to make the most of the B-school bombardment. Tanja Gardner of Crystal Clarity Copywriting makes the ultimate lemonade from the Marie Forleo-stamped lemons that will start filling our inboxes and newsfeeds.

Tanja's response - to watch and learn rather than grouse and delete - felt like a grounded, “real life” reaction to unwanted solicitation.  After all, when you meet someone at a networking meeting and they’re promoting something that doesn’t interest you, you can’t just roll your eyes and click delete or unsubscribe. Instead, you find a way to engage and find the point of connection (because really, the person pushing B School is probably still awesome even if she’s obviously motivated by a nice affiliate fee).

Everyday Creative Magic: Knowing When to Engage & When to Turn Within

Every breathing moment is part of our reality, regardless of whether we're glued to a screen or wholly entranced by a sunset, but we still need to protect the primal realms will forever resist hashtaggery.

Our creativity depends on quiet incubation time that can’t yet stand the light of day - or the glare of the screen. Jeffrey Davis offers this video on how to shape online and offline time to balance the “in the woods” and “in the sun” time.

If you’re in the flow and the BIG IDEAS are filling up the journal, please don’t stop writing. When you do emerge from your writer’s den, however, you don’t necessarily have to spread yourself thinner to show up on social media - unless you want to.  You have (at least) four choices about how to approach digital publishing and your online platform when you’re working on the bigger story.

And if you’re feeling like that private creative flow is elusive and you’re being drained by all the digital obligations and distractions, open yourself up to Nancy Seibel’s list of creativity boosters that don’t require a WiFi connection.

The “Problematizer”

One of my favorite college professors coined the term “problematizer” and generally used it to describe any person or idea that disrupted business as usual in Catholic Ireland. The problematizer tended to tip over a few sacred cows, and that's important to the Sovereign Standard ethos too - though we don't limit ourselves to topics in Irish studies!

For all this conscious examination of the online/offline continuum and the reality of both spheres, there are times we like using the online world as a wall to hide behind.

Scary Mommy boldly owns the truth: we use our devices to escape boring, painful situations. Maybe we're goofing off and spacing out. Often we're preoccupied with the phone because we just need to get some work done so we have a shot at cooking dinner instead of serving up another frozen pizza.

And sometimes, that’s gotta be OK too.

This is the second issue of the weekly curated publication, The Sovereign Standard. Get the next issues delivered to your inbox by signing up today.

Set Your Own Sovereign Standard

You know those magical creative moments when it all just flows? The story or the business idea or the picture emerges and it’s like it was just waiting for you to finally discover it. That’s what it was like for The Sovereign Standard, this new weekly curated newsletter.

In the midst of a typical family Saturdaymorning, the idea announced itself:

Set your own Sovereign Standard - livelihood, message, everyday creative magic

The Sovereign Standard takes its stand at intersection of livelihood, message, and everyday creative magic and aims to give creative entrepreneurs access to noteworthy insights from across the web.

But you know how it is - you careen from visionary brilliance to obsessive wordsmithing. All the initial genius leaches out and the concept begins to feel overanalyzed and underdeveloped.

Sometimes the fault line in an idea stems from a single word.

The flaw in the initial Sovereign Standard “download”? “Intersection.”

Intersection indicates that business and communication and creativity all merge, but it also implies that they’re distinct tracks that are only drawn together from time-to-time by a project like this one.

In truth, you're constantly braiding together of all those strands - all of the elements of life and work, body and soul.  To set your own Sovereign Standard, you take all aspects of your life into account and, consciously as you can, integrate them all.

Why Would a Writer Want to Curate Other People’s Stuff?

Thanks for starting with me from the very beginning. Here’s a window into the “why” of this new Sovereign Standard adventure.

In a word: connection.

The goal of a weekly round up + commentary is to expand your connections in a meaningful way by introducing you to fellow creative entrepreneurs as well as leading thinkers in business, creativity, and progressive leadership.

The Sovereign Standard community may be rich with solo entrepreneurs, but this is not a bastion of the DIY mindset. To borrow a term from a great community builder, Jeffrey Davis of Tracking Wonder, it’s about DIT - Do It Together.

Jeffrey names the contradiction  that so many creative entrepreneurs face: “We want to feel supported in our work, but when we receive it, we don't know what to do with it. We don’t trust it.” In this detailed and, yes, lengthy piece he lays down a compelling case for why support and collaboration are vital to even the most brilliant solo acts.

That support may be found in hiring a WordPress whiz or a writing coach. You may get the support you need by simply opting into the e-newsletters that really speak to you.

In the process of building up this publication, I’ll also build my own connections as I read with your needs in mind. I get to create relationships with smart, tuned-in writers and media makers who are saying things that matter.

And, yes, I admit that I am working to build my email newsletter list. I trust that the insights carefully gathered from at least a dozen other sources will be more compelling than sending you the same single voice each week.

These aren't new ideas. They don't have to be.

Curation encourages connection and community

Think you may want to build community in a similar way? You wouldn't be copying me. You’d be joining a growing cadre of content curators who understand that their tribe is plagued by information overload. Your tribe would appreciate it if someone they trust would handpick some “must reads” each week.

I trust Copyblogger products and after investing many car rides in the Rainmaker podcast, I can tell you I trust their CEO Brian Clark’s instincts.

He has launched his own new curation project. The process is detailed in three episodes beginning with this on Content Curation Positioning. I immersed myself in this topic over the last few weeks and can also recommend an earlier episode that gives an overview of the entire curation as content concept.

Soon you’ll notice that many of the people you trust most on the web are building a community by assembling useful, compelling resources all the time.

The day before I announced a weekly feature that would speak to livelihood, message, and creativity, I came across Gina Fiedel’s article that drew those exact ideas together - and curated the hell out of some quality content too.

Her post, which ostensibly focuses on how to connect to your creativity even when trying to feed the content beast blossoms into a chorus that celebrates the blending of writing and marketing, creativity and productivity, and work and play.

Gina offers: “Here’s a secret I told myself. If I start with play and if I continue in that vein, what I end up with contains more overall creative style and elements than if I hadn't done that. I achieve both creative process and (hopefully) a creative product.”

This is the delightful pivot point. All this writing, all this curating, all this community building that our work depends on is enlivened by play.

Play is How We Make Friends and Build Connections

"We are fully human only while playing, and we play only when we are human in the truest sense of the word." - Rudolf Steiner

Play is the space we learn how to engage with others.  Play is also the space we learn to engage with ourselves.

Play makes taking risks feel less threatening. Play is riddled with successes and failures.  It’s suppose to be. Failing means learning.

Play is how we learn and grow; long into adulthood. Play is a doing activity, not a trying activity. We don’t try to play, we play.

When you're hooked on productivity, play seems like a chore. We work to build community (yep, I say above that I am "working to build my email list"). But really, do we win friends through work or play? Really, any newsletter list worth having is full of people you'd like to call friends.

Better to attract new friends to your hive with the sweetness of play rather than the sweat of work, right?

Recently I’ve been redefining play in my house to make for our collective imagination and really see one another. If knocking a few Disney Princesses off their thrones appeals to you, check out When You Wish Upon Someone Else’s Marketing Star.

Saundra Goldman of The Creative Mix is a self-professed “serious girl” (but I can attest she has a great laugh!). She is making 2015 the year of #ContinuousPractice. This #365project is intended to document her daily writing practice and to encourage others to show up to their creative endeavors each day.

Though not ostensibly about play, sharing evidence of your daily practice can build connections in much the same way that playing can… You show your authentic self and you dare to be vulnerable. You invite people close in a way that efforting never quite permits. Since you're not a photographer it's ok if every image isn't perfect.

It’s an honor to know that Saundra credits me with inspiring her photo-a-day project. My 365 Project as a Creative Process appeared on her blog recently. Just a few other creatives who have picked up the 365 habit include Brenna Layne (#rootsandwings), Ginny Lee Taylor (#livetrue), Deirdre Walsh (#justbreathe), and Lauren Ayer.

As Saundra asks, “What would it take to make today Day One?” If you need a little more encouragement or incentive to consider launching your own #365 project, here’s a post on how daily photos make you a better writer. If it feels overwhelming you may want to modify the yearlong project to suit your needs and resources.

But Is Everything Supposed to Be Integrated?

I’m a self-avowed #365project evangelist, but what are the downsides to all that photo snapping and sharing? Is it play or process? Is it obsessive brand building? Is it an exploitation of your own intimate moments?

In When a Picture Breeds A Thousand Questions Blair Glaser asks some probing questions about why we’re motivated to capture a sunset and then share it. Blair concludes “I write this post not as a judge, but as a witness: A witness to the changes that are happening in my business, in my brain, in my life, and in the way our culture is shaping these changes.”

#365SovereignReality blank slate for the #newtechcity Bored and Brilliant challenge

She then introduces the Bored and Brilliant project from WNYC’s New Tech City podcast. It’s a collective experiment in putting down the phone and embracing the power of daydreaming. This is “challenge week” and they’re putting out daily podcasts encouraging you to change your phone behavior.

Tuesday’s challenge: don’t take a photo.  Not only do I have a photo-a-day commitment, but it was my daughter’s first birthday, so I failed miserably (but cheerfully).

Listen to the episode (only 6 minutes) and make up your own mind about the “photo taking impairment effect” and whether it’s detracting from life as you’re living it. I won’t be quitting my #365SovereignReality practice, but I will be monitoring how I’m using the camera to witness the moment and decide if I'm shortchanging my senses and my memories.

Setting Your Own Sovereign Standard

This is the first step in a new adventure - finding the Sovereign Standard that serves each of us as individuals, but doing it collaboratively.

To get The Sovereign Standard delivered each week (and to let me know you'd like to be featured in future editions), sign up today.