The Secret to More Flow

Getting into a ‘flow state’ or ‘the zone’ ensures that your best work gets the attention it deserves. Did you know that creativity jumps 500%-700% when you are in the flow state? And the brain chemicals that are a part of that flow state stay for 3-5 days, so the effects continue to work. Awesome, Yes?

When you are in the FLOW state…all the angst in the world just kinda fades away. You are fully in the moment, time passes quickly, the gremlin chatter vanishes and it allows your best, most innovative work to emerge.

And on top of all that, it feels really good!

How to get into the FLOW State with more ease.

There are activities that naturally invite the flow state. In fact, they are called High Flow Activities. These are the things you love to do, that engage you fully. They often feel like play. It can be anything from …skiing, running, reading, dancing, cooking, making art. They are things you do just for the sake of enjoyment.

The secret is that the more you do those things, (shoot for at least once a week) the more you train your brain to enter the flow state. Cool, yes?

Having more flow, leads to more flow.

And more flow means increased performance and powerful creative work.

Finally, a scientific reason to play more!

Identifying Your Ideal Client

And it’s so important. If you don’t know your ‘WHO’, it’s really hard to speak their language, understand their desires and challenges and to clearly let them know you get them and you can help.

Most often we get stuck identifying them by what we think they want, “I work with women who want to….” Sound familiar? It’s not as helpful as you might think. You want to come up with more concrete descriptors in order to find them and speak to them. Sometimes a new approach to the question will help shake out a clearer description.

Here are 3 ways to explore and identify your ideal client.

1. Who they aren’t
I know, this sounds counter-intuitive but it can yield some great info. You do want to write about who they are – their passions, interests, age, professional identity, what’s important to them, what they are committed to, etc. AND you also want to identify who they are not. Your ideal client is not passionate about x y z or has these interests or does this for a living. Your ideal client will start to stand out against the things you do not want to see in an ideal client.

2. Central Casting
This is such a clever way to explore the ideal client question. I learned about it from Danny Iny, although I’m not sure if it originated from him or not. The idea is to imagine you are going to central casting to choose the actor to represent your ideal client. Think about all of the TV shows you’ve seen, movies you’ve seen and find the actor that is a perfect fit. Describe what it is about them in their role that you love.

3. Get out of your head
Metaphors can open up lots of new insights as they get past the pesky left brain that has you in a rut. Consider thinking about your ideal client as an animal. And really allow your intuitive right brain to guide the way. Let’s say your ideal client is a big brown grizzly bear. What are the qualities of that animal? Cool yes?. Try it. You can use flowers, landscapes, colors, gemstones, cars, famous artwork and more. Use more than one and see where the metaphors take you.

Try as many ways as possible to answer this very important question for your business. It will make everything else easier.

Take a Power Break

How often have you thought to yourself, I need a day off, or maybe even a full week off to finally rest and recharge.

If you are waiting, waiting, waiting for that ‘big’ chunk of time off, you are depleting your reserves fast.

Contrary to what most believe, you don’t need a big chunk of time off to fill the well.

I know, big, long breaks are heavenly and you don’t need to wait to get filled up.

Try a power-break instead, or lots of power breaks!

I noticed something interesting recently when I hit a wall and needed a break.

I thought, I’ll just leave my office for awhile, play some games on my device and then get back to work. I did that, but every so often, I paused…I noticed how the sun was coming into the room, I enjoyed the patterns of light on the floor, I savored the warmth, I could hear the birds outside. And then I went back to playing games.

Here’s what I noticed. The game playing quieted my busy mind, but didn’t fill me up in any way – BUT, those moments of being with the sun coming in through the window did. That was the Power Break!

This can be done anytime, anywhere.

It’s about mindfully bringing your full attention and in particular your senses to the moment.

Being with the view out your window….being with the sounds in your environment…noticing the details of a treasured object. All of these types of moments can recharge you and bring you back to center!

In Positive Intelligence, they are referred to as ‘reps’. In part because repetition helps develop the ability to be in the moment with more ease and experience the benefits.

Next time you feel stressed because you are running fast and furiously…pause…turn away from your work for a moment. Look out a window or at something interesting in your environment and be with every exquisite detail. It will take the edge off and begin to fill your well.

How to be a great JV partner

It can look different from partner to partner. The intention is to create win-win opportunities.

The more successful you are at promoting someone, the more incentivized they are to do a great job for you too. Not only will it build goodwill, but you are also likely to make money or get new leads, depending on the arrangement. As you experiment you will learn what types of partnerships are profitable for you.

I’ve participated in quite a few partnerships over the years and I do best when I follow a few basic guidelines…

4 Guidelines for Successful JV Partnering

1. Choose well
Knowing what kinds of challenges the people on your list face will help you determine what types of offers to promote. You want to look for offers that support your clients in ways that you do not. The people on my list generally want more clients and that dream lifestyle. They also value coaching mastery and new ways to be of service. Plus my list leans towards creative approaches. Given that, I look for a mix when I choose who and what to promote. I also want to promote things I can get 100% behind.

2. Get familiar with the launch schedule
Not everyone does a full-out launch, but whatever the promotional plan, get familiar with it. If free gifts or trainings are involved, determine which ones will be most exciting for your people. Know when the actual offer will be introduced. If it’s during a masterclass or a webinar, definitely promote that, because this is when sales will happen.

Be aware of what bonuses are being offered and when, people love to get ‘deals’. And also plan to promote during cart close. If your people are teetering on the fence, a nudge from you can make a difference.

3. Choose to be all in
For me, this means two things; 1. Setting an intention to do well (aka getting on the leaderboard if there is one) 2. Sending out more than a couple of emails. I will send throughout the launch. I’ll definitely send for the event that first introduces the offer and I’ll participate on cart-close day with several emails and a bonus.

4. Segment your list
When I’m all in, I may send 4-10 emails promoting someone, but I don’t send all of those emails to everyone on my list and you shouldn’t either. If, for example, I plan to send 10 emails, only 3 will go to everyone. The others might go to just those who opened an email or those who clicked on links or maybe even those that didn’t click a link. The last couple of emails is really targeted toward those who’ve shown interest.

Partnering may not be for everyone and you do need to have a list of some sort to participate, but it’s worth considering if your intention is to grow and scale your business

Hey, do you ever wonder why some intentions stick and others don’t?

One possibility is that there is such a difference between a list of ‘shoulds’ (aka resolutions) and intentions aligned with the client’s heart and big vision.

One thing is clear, ‘shoulds’ live in the head so helping clients get out of their heads and

talking about what their heart really wants is the first step towards intentions that stick.

Once they name it, it’s important to make it “3-D.” Make it come alive, involve the senses, engage feelings, feel it in the body, etc. I call this activating the intention. Below are 4 easy ways to do this.

4 Ways to Activate Intentions

1. Make it Visual
Collages are a wonderful way to do this. I prefer old school, cutting words and pictures out of a magazine. But there are some great online tools to do it digitally too. You could make a collage for each intention or the overall result when all of the intentions are achieved.

2. Infusion Words
I learned about infusion words from my friend Laura West. This is about coming up with three words or short phrases that hold the energetic focus of your intentions. These are words that connect you to your heart’s desire and that bring you alive. They will make you smile and will feel expansive. They are not ‘should’ words or even things you want to do – it’s what you want to feel or experience – they are about attraction energy. You may need to noodle with them to get them resonating for you. Here are two examples: brave, be, let go, and playful focus, dancing energy, believe.

3. Visualize
This is about taking just a few minutes a day and imagining the end result. You have already achieved your intentions or better. Tap into how that feels and what it looks like. Make it 3-D. Engage as many senses as possible. I find it easiest to set a timer and write it as a story in the future. For example…I loved getting up this morning, making coffee and watching the sun rise from the window of my beautiful remodeled kitchen…etc.

4. Revisit Regularly
Once you’ve activated your intentions, it’s important to keep revisiting them. Otherwise, before you know it, life gets in the way and you’ve forgotten about the intentions. Create a FUN way to revisit your intentions monthly or quarterly. Create a ritual or a game. Do it with a buddy. My husband and I have a monthly ‘meeting’ to revisit intentions and goals. We give it a fun name, go out for a drink and an appetizer and talk about progress, celebrate successes, maybe make revisions, and renew our commitment. This year’s monthly outing is called ‘Twist & Shout. (we’ve had a music theme going for a few years) The name makes it fun and something to look forward to. The key is to actually get it on the calendar.

A list of ‘shoulds’ will fall flat every time. Find the heart of the intention and activate it in meaningful ways.

Whether you are promoting a free gift, doing a full-out launch or enrolling from a stage, it’s good to have a measure of how well you did. How do you measure success? And does your way of measuring give you useful information so you can improve your results?

This is where “metrics” comes in. Metrics is a fancy way of saying, look at your numbers. What do they tell you? But for creatives and heart focused entrepreneurs, the mention of metrics can cause a brain freeze.

But it’s not as complicated as you might think. Once you know some key numbers to look at and what they mean, you have information that will allow you to get even better results next time. I’m going to do a basic breakdown for a webinar and for an email campaign on what to track and why.

Webinar
You will probably have a landing page for people to register for the webinar. This is the first thing to track.

Webinar Landing Page
How many visits did you get to that page?
How many of those visitors registered for the webinar?

What to look for.
You want as many people as possible to come to your page and register for the webinar. If a lot of people come to the page and very few register, there is a disconnect. In other words, it isn’t clear to the visitor why they should sign up.

Room for Improvement: Revisit the benefit statements on the landing page. Is the promise clear and compelling? Experiment with this and see if you get more of those visitors signing up.

The next place to look is the webinar itself.

Webinar Delivery
What percent of those registered actually showed up?
How many stayed to the end?
How many purchased your offer?

What to look for.
If you have a low sign-up-to-show-up ratio – take a look at the reminder emails. Are you sending them and do they remind the person why they will love this webinar?

If people stay to the end, they are engaged and interested – yeah! However, if they stay but don’t purchase, take a look at the webinar content. Did it set up the offer as the solution and did you articulate the transformation that will happen when someone purchases?

Room for Improvement: Beef up the reminders and revisit the content of the webinar.

Now let’s look at email campaigns. You will want to run each email sent through this same process.

Email Campaigns

Per email sent
What is the email subject line?
How many people was it sent to?
How many opened it?
How many clicked through to your offer?
How many purchased your offer?

What to look for.
How many people open your email gives you information about your subject line. Once they read the email, how many click through to the offer gives you information about the content of the email. How many purchased once on the sales page is information about the sales page.

Room for Improvement: Experiment with subject lines and pay attention to which ones get opened. Tweak the ones that don’t get opened. Revisit the email content to make it more compelling for the reader to want to click through.

Your numbers are your friend. It’s so good to know what’s working and what’s not. When something doesn’t deliver the results you expect, the numbers point you towards improvement and that’s way better than giving up.