Category: Business & Entrepreneurship

Bubble Your Pleasure, Bubble Your Fun

Some years ago, a friend saw an item for sale and immediately thought, “Yashoda will love this”.

I did.  Her gift was a bubble wand – the kind that made huge bubbles!  With practice you could even encircle your body with these bubbles!  And, if you added glycerin to the soapy water, glorious rainbows filled bubbles as they drifted towards the sky.     

The more bubbles I made the more fun I had.  I loved the way I could use the wind, gently turning my arms and body in a graceful way which made the bubbles.  I knew I wanted to sell bubbles as extra income.

Some time before, another friend and teacher, Leonard Orr, told a group of us “If you are really intelligent, you will create many sources of income – 50 sources of income!”  I thought he was daft, that it was easy for him to say because he is fairly well-known and is in many money making adventures.  But I remember what else he said: that when we have one main source of income a sort of dependency gets created; along with that comes an unconscious fear of losing that source of income.  I also knew of people who were in stifling uncreative jobs for that very reason.  So, since I already was selling other things, I decided to broaden to three sources of income.

I called the manufacturer and purchased 200 bubble wands, at about $2.15 each.  That was a sizable amount for me at the time, but I had this feeling that I could have fun and make money. 

My bubble wands arrived, I put on my best working boots and hat, something colorful and crazy in between, and set off for the Canby County Fair in Canby, Oregon, I rented a space and set up my table, bucket and a simple sign that said: “Mystical, Magical Bubbles…Bubble Your Pleasure, Bubble Your Fun!”

And I did.  I had fun.  I got so INTO making the bubbles, watching each as a surprising, magical occurrence, that I completely forgot that I was selling! Why, people were asking ME if they could GIVE ME money so they could have their bubble wand. 

In three days, I was delightfully wiped out!  And substantially filled out in my wallet! I sold the wands for $10 (I knew they retailed for $12) or two for $15.  I ordered more and sold them whenever I saw the opportunity, gave some as gifts, traded some, even took some as I traveled to Europe and India.  I sold them atop a hotel in London and traded my last wand in Katmandu for a night stay in a guest house – if I did the demonstration!  Yes, I was successful at selling these bubble wands.

Leonard also says it is smart to always have something to sell, I learned a valuable secret that has remained with me still:

  1. I was fired up by the product, thinking and feeling them to be so wonderful for me to demonstrate and for people to buy and,
  2. I forgot I “had” to sell them which gave me freedom to relax, to play…to sell!

Apart from my setting up and showing up, this experiment was not only easy, it was effortless because of the fun that I had.

It is intelligent these days for all of us to create many sources of income.  There are wonderful products that can be sold person-to-person, services and ideas (giving a workshop or class).  That is how money is made: ideas, goods and services.  Think about something that “turns you on”, “gives you a hit” or “fires you up”.  Get a few and sell them and make a profit.  Do you remember how good you feel when you find something that’s fun as well as a bargain?  Well you can do the same for people you know or strangers by offering them something that can enhance their pleasure or practicality of life.

Note: No one will do without because you “turn a buck”.  It is not true that there is only a limited amount of money in Humboldt County.  All it takes is imagination, some creativity and energy on your part.  And this is how most money making ventures begin.  Leonard Orr likes to make money jokes, here’s one: It is the not that money is the root of all evil…It is the lack of money that is the root of all evil.

 

Susan Deschenes leads classes in clientele building, energy breathing and spiritual purification practice in Humboldt County.   On her last pilgrimage to India, she left California with a train ticket to Montreal and $75…She returned 2 years later with $300 and never-to-be-forgotten experiences in England, Spain, Austria, Italy, India, and South Africa using these principles.

 (c) 2002 Susan Yoshoda Deschenes

Restructuring for the New Decade

When I started the project of converting this website to a blog, I had no idea that it would take me more than a month to get everything transferred over!!

For the past few years I have been encouraging my clients to set their websites up as blogs, and I have been playing with "static blogs" for the past few years myself.  With all the changes to WordPress, it is so much easier for the small business person or solo-preneur to create, modify, and maintain their site as a blog.  The freedom and flexibility as well as sheer number of plugins and widgets gives back the power to the independent business person – and saves a lot of money for the person who is just starting out.

However, I forgot to take into consideration that this site has been around since 1997, and currently has close to a hundred individual articles.

There is always a balance to be considered between time and money, and this is one time I would have been smarter to have simply paid someone to do the work instead of doing it myself (wondering if I'll ever really learn that one about letting go)!  I didn't even think about how many links would need to be verified, or how many other details would need to be addressed in order to bring the site back online after the restructuring.

I just knew that since it's become so much easier to maintain an active site using wordpress, I wanted to make that leap with the Career Life Institute. And since I was already in the middle of re-evaluating and shifting several key fundamentals for myself personally, having a little downtime with the site didn't seem such a bad thing. I didn't even notice until I was about half-way through that there were more little pieces to deal with than I had accounted for.

Any time you restructure things – whether in your personal life or in your career – you discover thoughts, ideas, pieces that just no longer seem to fit anywhere. When you attempt to hold on to those things which have lost their usefulness – instead of streamlining for the present so you can anticipate the future, you risk becoming inflexible, outmoded and being left by the side of the road yourself.  The challenge again comes down to a balance of values, and an updated vision that lights the way.

I'm reminded of something Phil Bookman, Vice President of Silton-Bookman Systems used to say every time we upgraded the software: "God was able to create the heavens and the earth in only 6 days because he did not have an install base!"

So, please forgive our dust as the new site settles in. We are bound to find dead-end links and gaps where pages used to be. And we'd appreciate you telling us if you find yourself at a 404 page unexpectedly. We hope you'll continue along with us as we make our way forward.

Taking Personal Responsibility

My friend Maggie wrote an interesting blog post about all the complaining she and others have been hearing from people about the state of the economy.  You can read about it by going to her blog.

Well, it got me thinking about how tired I am of hearing people complain about what they don’t like yet not being willing to make the changes that would give them more of what they want.  So, I wrote the following response to her blog entry:

“Every success begins with a dream. Every “failure” is the result of abandoning that dream.

When you know what’s important to you and keep it alive, the rightful action will show up for you to take. We only falter when we take our eyes and vision away from the passion/dream that we’ve identified for ourselves.

It’s easy to blame the outside world for the results you have in your life – easy and mistaken. The circumstances are simply the playing field. The real game is inside each of us. Until we can acknowledge that we alone are responsible for our successes, it’s pretty difficult for us to claim them as “our” successes.

If I’m not the one responsible for how I show up in the world, then everything here is a whim anyway and I have absolutely no control over who is and who is not successful. Nice excuse for giving up, but not very effective for having the results I want!!

My personal experience is that when I recognize my passions and my dreams, and take full responsibility for seeing them through, I always find a way to get what I want.  It’s only when I drop the ball, stop looking for better results, or claim someone or something outside myself is holding me back, that my results are less than what I really wanted.

I can’t always control what’s happening outside myself, however I absolutely control what’s going on inside. Only by staying focused on my dream and where I do have control will I be in a position to recognize the inspired action that presents itself as my next step in moving towards my goal.

So long as I am diverting my attention to the distractions of trying to make the world different from how it “really” is, I am fighting a losing battle. Keeping true to my personal vision gives me the insight to recognize the opportunities for what they are.

I really appreciate you standing up for personal responsibility in a world that seems to want to blame everyone else for their own inadequacies!'”

Let’s face it, we all have circumstances we don’t like. It’s a part of the game. If everything was easy and smooth all the time, how complacent would we all become? Personally I don’t really want to live in a Utopia. I think I would be bored stiff.

At the same time, I don’t want to live in a world where there is only struggle and strife and nothing I can do to improve my circumstances. If I am not responsible for the results and consequences of my actions or inactions, then basically I have no control, and that means there’s nothing I can do. How terrifying that would be!

Fortunately I recognize that the divine spark inside me is what gives me the power to define for myself what the circumstances outside of me mean.  It also gives me the power to focus my energies in the directions that either improve my lot in life or destroy them.  I have that choice every single moment of every single day so long as I am on this planet breathing.

That doesn’t mean I make the absolutely best choice every time – that’s part of the beauty of it all! I get to try things out – decide what gives me the results I want and what I want to do differently next time.  And so long as I am continuing to adjust, there is no failure.

Ultimately, that gives me control over myself and my life – being able to make choices, try things out, and readjust as necessary – all the while being able to define what those results mean to me.

However, this only works if you truly believe you are the one in control of your life and your results. As soon as you start blaming someone else, you are giving over that control to an outside source.  Once you’ve given over control, you are doomed to being “at the affect” of whomever assumes the control (and trust me, someone will step in to take it!).  No wonder people who blame others feel depressed or angry!

The only antidote to the feeling of helplessness is to resume control of your thoughts, your actions and your life. Even when you can’t change the circumstances (and most of us can’t at a National or World level), you get to decide what they mean to you.  That means you can change the way you interact on a personal level, and ultimately that spreads out to the society as a whole. That’s true power, and it’s yours to take back whenever you’re ready to.

In fact, we need you to do exactly that. It’s the only way we’ll ever get back to feeling good as individuals or as a society.  And wouldn’t that be a welcome relief right now!

P.S. For a fascinating study of what happens when people retain or relinquish their sense of personal responsibility and control, read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Life is a Journey to Be Enjoyed!

Earlier this week we had to take a trip to Sacramento for personal business reasons.

We took advantage of the trip to visit grandkids on the way down, lunch with an old friend in Sacramento, and stop overnight in Calistoga for the hot tubs on the way back.

After soaking in the morning, we took a leisurely drive through the Napa and Alexander Valleys, wine-tasting our way home.

The weather cooperated and it was a pleasant late fall afternoon.  It was a lot of fun to take our time, visiting some of our favorite wineries and picking up some very nice wines at some great prices!

We stopped at Fieldstone

Fieldstone Winery – Hwy 128 – Alexander Valley (between Napa and Sonoma Valleys)

White Oak Winery – where I got a good deal on a case of Sauvignon Blanc.

White Oak Winery – Hwy 128 – Alexander Valley

Hanna Winery – which is always lovely, has great wine, nice artwork and entertaining staff. And where I tasted the first Chardonnay in a really long time that I truly enjoyed.  At $42 a bottle, though, I decided to pass it up this time since I didn’t think it was twice as good as the $23 bottle I had bought the day before at Sequoia Grove.

View from Hanna Winery – Hwy 128 – Alexander Valley

Sausal (known for their Zinfindels) and Mosaic Winery – where there was a great sale going on so we picked up a case of red and a case of white!

We even stopped for a late lunch at a cute little place called Jimtown which had antique toys on display in the back.  They had a great butternut squash and ginger soup which we split along with a turkey panini – just perfect for the fall afternoon.

We were lucky that it didn’t rain until we got to Ukiah, and then there was a light rain all the way back home.

What was so great was that we took a sorta business trip and made it a lot of fun.  Hubby and I agreed that this was a great way to travel – breaking it up into fun little parcels that turned the whole thing into an adventure.

Not only did we take care of most of the business that was the reason for the trip in the first place, we had fun on either side of it. Or perhaps, we had a fun trip with a little bit of business squeezed into the middle of it.  Either way, the secret to a great life is to enjoy whatever you are doing and this was one time when it was easy to be successful!