Dawn Barclay

Helping you align all that you do with your core values

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I F*cked It Up This Week, What Did You Do?

The week between Christmas and New Year is my navel gazing week. It’s the week where I get out all the creative bits and bobs, play the tinkly-pinkly-hippy-a-go-go music and ask myself what do I want to create next year? 

Two projects that have my attention right now:  Business Blogging School (or BBS as we call it) and the other The Moxie Project, which went ‘live’ last week.

BBS is just tickety-booing along all lovely, except for the last week when I caused the white screen of death for a couple of hours, but I knew exactly what was up so was easily fixed.

But The Moxie Project has been one problem of the technical variety followed by the next, and the next, and the next. It’s been a nightmare getting all the parts of that in perfect working order.

Now look, I know when I mump and moan that I’ve been 5 days sorting out bugs and looking at code, most people look at me as if to say, ‘And? You think you have problems?’ they are right of course. It’s not a problem, not really.

There’s a lot worse shit happening in the world.

People have real problems.

But you know how it goes, if it’s your problem, it always seems bigger than it actually is, huh?

During the Chaos of the Week That Was, it wasn’t just me seeing the problem, so were customers. Read: Arggghh!

You were buying because I f*cked up and had put a live link to the website.

In real life, this would be: have you ever had people drop by your house with we were just passing phrase and you were mortified because the place was a complete tip? One of you entertains the guests, while the other nips and gives the loo a quick clean?

That’s what it felt like, the site wasn’t ready. Things were disappearing, not working, getting stuck, heck, you name it – whatever could go wrong, went wrong.

In situations like these I recommend this: 

1. Getting dressed because you can’t solve a crisis in your pyjamas.

2. Calling in help. Send the SOS.

3. Stepping away from the problem.

What!

I mean it. You can’t look at solving a problem while your mindset is fixed in the frame of ‘this is impossible to solve’.

I recommend walking away for a bit. Do something for you. Completely distract yourself from the current problem.

Here’s the truthful reason about screwing up:

Forget the technical bits and bobs – The Moxie Project is all based on the premise you’re allowed to F*ck It Up and be totally okay with it!

And here I was doing the exact opposite. I was so not okay with it. 

Did I need this little reminder before we start? Me thinks so!

As I write everything is in perfect working order, thanks to some very lovely friends who I can call upon, the technical support was given, and the dogs who had extra walks this week. Could it break again? The answer is: maybe and I say this publicly, I am okay with it.

Take-away tip:  if you’ve just scrolled to the bottom, you probably won’t remember this post in the next hour but you may recall the following video in a few months time. Get help, allow for support, step back if you need to, celebrate your achievements when you get there.

And, lastly. Want to join us at The Moxie Project – no, I won’t promise you perfection, but I can promise you support to becoming who you know you are.

There Is Nothing to Fear In Getting Paid. Pinky Promise

Maybe you know someone who has no fear but I can’t think of any solo business owner who hasn’t got some resistance somewhere when it comes to their business:

  • Asking for payment + being paid.
  • Putting themselves out there
  • Hitting send and publish
  • Speaking about prices
  • Networking

The two that will ensure don’t have a business for very long is speaking about prices and asking for payment of services, or in short … selling.

For many they would rather run-away to hills and hang out for bit, they are what I call Stuck in Production Mode (or staying safe and bankrupt) with only doing the free creation rather than ask for payment.

Production Mode all depends on you and your business activities but I’ve seen it include: only offering free services, only offering free content, creating content (blogging, articles, guest posts) if online but missing or ignoring selling, no calls to action and marketing of services, doing things for people to help them out (while at the same time wishing they could be paid for their work), tweaking a website when it doesn’t need done, taking course, after course, after course when you already have the skills and resources your need but you would rather stay a learner than a seller.

Let’s face it, the excuse of ‘I’m not ready yet‘ is better than ‘I’m really fecking scared!’

Usually people stuck in Production Mode will have all the reasons and excuses not to sell: the website isn’t ready, the product isn’t perfect, I need to do this first (when they don’t), I’ve not done it yet because. Sometimes what they say is accurate but those resisting and stuck (I believe) 100% know the difference and when real reasons are just bullshit.

Look, we all need time to produce. We all need space to work out what the market wants and create it. But you haven’t got a business unless you take it to market and people buy it.

Even us, the people who don’t want selling and marketing to be like that guy, who want to stay close to our core values and not become slimy, sleazy, unethical beasts we still have to eat and pay the bills. Otherwise we don’t have a business, we have a very expensive hobby.

Many of the people I meet would rather throw up rather than ask for payment, sell or market. They would rather reduce all their prices with the mindset this will be cheap enough for people to say yes/come/take part. They only thing that happens when you keep changing prices, offering reductions, bargain offers, specials is people don’t trust your own pricing structure and you.

How can they? How can they really know what value and benefit your product or service is if you don’t have faith in it or keep it consistent?

Hate Asking for Money/Payment?

First, awareness is good. So you’re on track here. Second, it’s a confidence issue. Yours. I’d suggest you work through the issues you have about money and asking for payment of services.

I’m going to assume you are genuine and sincere about your work. You believe that what you do helps people and changes lives, and you are confident about your ability to deliver it. Am I right?

So can you see the faulty wiring needs repaired in you? You can see clearly when you know what you do is a solution to many folks headaches, yes? You aren’t selling a pile of old crap – what you do isn’t shameful, it’s not embarrassing, you have no need to feel any guilt about offering solutions to peoples headaches or nightmares.

You are helping people. That is the mindset to start with.

Next, the more you ask for payment of services (for what they are worth) the easier it becomes. While you waste time playing and dancing with resistance – the quickest way over it is to break it, you could be two-stepping around it for years otherwise.

How?

You need to communicate with the source: with the people who want or are interested in your services, your audience or ideal client.

It’s a waste of time asking everyone because they aren’t your market.

Ask them for feedback: offer a limited amount of free session each month. Ask people to comment on what you are working on. Only give people what they want to buy.

I can’t tell you how many solo business owners I know who are totally frustrated – having spent months creating a product only for no one to want it at the end. You can get out of Production Mode quicker if you know people are waiting on what you are offering.

Listen to your audience: ask them ongoing questions about what they want, perhaps ask them to take a survey, offer a space for them to tell you their common fears, frustrations, and solutions they want achieve.

Test the market: tell people what you’re working on, ask them for feedback, ask them to contribute their thoughts. offer beta products at a reduced cost.

Find out what they want: then produce it (assuming it is something that people pay for!)

Mention money somewhere: if you offer everything for free don’t be upset when people are bit peeved when you start asking for money. You set the tone, you raised that expectation not them. Have something to sell with the value of what it’s worth on your website, materials, marketing information – talk money. If you say you are business owner people know you sell stuff.

Offers/Reductions: you may be tempted to reduce everything, and give offers for everything you do. Or worse use language that isn’t yours but borrowed from someone else because you haven’t dealt with your own resistance: this is a steal, it’s a great offer, for today and Friday it’s only…

You are training your own audience that you are the ‘offer and reduction’ person. Worse (again) it may not be what the value is. It could be worth a lot more to the person who is going to get the results. Getting into the ‘cheap and free rut’ is really hard to pull yourself out from. If you don’t know the value and benefits to what you are selling, neither does your audience. On that, are you selling to the right audience?

Take action: resistance is like a rusty door. It’s not locked but it’s hard to open, almost impossible at first. But the more you push and scrape away at the old rust it gently begins to push. Get comfortable. Lean in. Work away at it.

If you’ve ever had resistance to asking for payment, how did you overcome it?

Will You Just Start Already

Where are you stalling? 

Where are you saying ‘I’m not ready’.

Where has fear got your guts truly locked in?

Just start. Start now. You don’t need to have the full colour picture of the end result in your mind before you begin. Any end result before you get there is just a projection anyway, it’s not fact or truth as it is yet to exist.

There are no guarantees that what you are trying to achieve is going to be successful beyond your wildest imagination. There are no guarantees that what you are creating people will like and buy. There are no guarantees that what you are working on today will be your best work in 10 years time.

In fact, there are no guarantees about anything.

You have no control over what’s going to come up, neither do I, we don’t have that power. And yet, we cannot survive for long on the imaginary edge in business of will I, won’t I – eventually you have to move. Do you move forwards or retreat backwards?

The bottom of all the work you are doing today could fall out by tomorrow.

So, I’ll ask again where are you stalling?

What are you not doing but you know it needs done?

What are you waiting on?

What piece of irrefutable evidence are you seeking to confirm to you that what you are doing carries no risk? It doesn’t exist.

Are you lurking around waiting to see how stuff works for others? Are you too busy watching what everyone else is up to, watching them fail and have success so you will eventually have enough proof that you can go-ahead or not?

You have choices to make: you can choose to stay in love with excuses or you can choose not to. Your call.

You can use excuses of I don’t have the skills, abilities, knowledge, power, influence, connections, technical know-how and whatever others you can think up to keep you stuck. Fear loves that, it loves the fact it’s immobilising you.

But you don’t have them? They aren’t excuses? That’s the truth. 

You’ll never learn them until you start. You can’t over obstacles in your way if you aren’t heading somewhere and letting them come up. You have to start. What’s to appear will come up in good time, at the right time,  it will present itself to you and because you started, because you overcame the obstacles of yesterday you will be in a better place for the ones today.

Doing your most authentic and great work is sometimes like leaping into a void: a pit of unknowns, no safety net, no sure guarantees that everything will happen in the exact order you want them to happen. Doing your most authentic and great work is always about pushing through your own barriers and excuses. Doing your most authentic and great work is leaping when you aren’t 100% ready.

Every step you take is unknown, sometimes each step is riskier than the last. Overcome your own excuses and objections by starting, today’s obstacles will become something else tomorrow and that’s the way it goes.

Start. Or retreat back of the ledge. You may be more comfortable and safe but is that what you really want deep down?

Start now, start from where you are with all that you have at this moment. Start now with the resources you do have, with the passion you came with. Start now meeting the needs you see today and the skills you have to meet them. Start now with a picture of the end result you would like but be willing (and sometimes need to) change it. Start now and invent as you go, create as you move along, accept help when needed, give it when asked.

Please. I urge you to just start.

JoyFear Moments + In Related News …

So Monday came around last week and on the write it down and hope to have least done a couple of things by the end of the day list was the Living Moxie Not-Really-A-Newsletter thang.

I sat for two hours and had nothing, brain freeze. I started the odd paragraph. And then deleted. Started. Deleted. Started. Deleted.

Then I did come up with something and the cat walked across the keyboard, the computer got all pissed and shut down.

So then I had a JOYFEAR moment, what would happen if I told people I had nothing. So I did.

What happened? You replied.

And you made me laugh. You really are witty peeps.

Apparently having nothing is a shared experience we both have, huh? Thank you for your advice of have a bath, you need coffee and quickly, take a break, go and walk the dogs, which makes me even more surprised, you remember the smaller details, the things that I don’t think matter, you remember. Dogs? Coffee? Bath to think?

There was a time when I wouldn’t have had the guts to send an email like that. Here’s my thinking there is so much that I still do in business that is ‘monkey-style’ or ‘parrot fashion’.

What this has reminded me is that nothing compares to just being open, vulnerable and human.

It’s where we can all meet. 

Life Is More Fun

This Isn’t About Margarine

Never Be Afraid

Isn’t it funny how as soon as mainstream media start printing, sharing and talking about a subject the majority of the population sit up and listen?

The other day the Mail Online (UK newspaper) printed an article telling us that margarine was bad for us and butter is better.

No way. Really. This is news.

The article states ‘For the past 50 years, we have been advised to reduce our intake of saturated animal fats, and eat more of the polyunsaturated vegetable fats found in margarine.’

Oh, but this is the good part, the article then says that the research into how bad this yellow substance is has been around for 40 years.

I’ve known for at least 25 of them that margarine is one molecule away from plastic, that flies won’t even land on the stuff, that it used to be fed to turkeys to fatten them up, but when they started keeling over the creators of this shit wanted their money back so made it into human food.

I also have had people said to me, ‘Rubbish‘ or ‘Don’t be daft’ or ‘It’s much lower in fat’ or ‘Butter causes major heart attacks, margarine has essential fats’ when I spotted a tub of this crap in their fridge and gave them the ‘you’re eating Tupperware’ line.

Mainstream wasn’t saying it, so why would anyone listen?

This isn’t about margarine.

This is about blindly trusting the messages that are thrown in our face day in and day out by mass (and regulated) media.

We’d rather believe an advert more than what our bodies tell us? That doesn’t make sense to me.

This is about questioning, we aren’t in school any more, as adults we no longer have to accept  the ‘don’t ask questions, just do’ line.

Yes, I know we went to school to learn, but we came away having learned to stop asking questions.

This is about accepting information from the masses as valid proof before doing any research of our own.

I think, this is how people get stuck in traps.

The not-normal trap.

The don’t rock the boat trap.

The best keep quiet trap.

The people will think I’m weird trap.

I ask people to question everything they believe to be true and what they perceive about their lives and usually the problems they have weren’t even created by them, they were put there by the media or secondary source once they’ve broken it all down and can look at clearly.

It’s an onslaught. A daily barrage of bullshit coming our way 24/7. And repeated often enough it gets in, it becomes the percieved truth in our minds.

What to experiment? 

Don’t watch TV for a month. No news. No radio. No newspaper. Dare I say no Facebook!

Once the month is up, switch on, then come and tell me what you noticed.

Scary huh?

This.

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” Philosopher Arthur Schopenhaur

I don’t want to live life being willing ignorant.

What you and I perceive as true may not be, the way you and I see the world is constructed in part by what others want us to believe. Why? Take the margarine for example, someone, somewhere benefited from that research not coming out, just follow the money.

Let’s make a new pact:

Let’s ask questions. Let’s go deeper. Let’s scare ourselves every now and then by questioning our beliefs (and the messages thrown our way!)

Or don’t.

What do I know, I mean, really what do I know?

Rant over and out.

What have you believed in the past that you know now is complete twaddle?