If you missed the show and you want to listen and learn how to position yourself for success, use this link https://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/136820/getting-what-you-want-positioning-yourself-for-success.

Last week I took time away from the office to participate in the 1% For The Planet Global Summit with Barbara Edelston Peterson, Founder and CEO of Whole Champion Foundation, one of our clients. Barbara and Whole Champion has been working with us for just under two years, and we have helped re-write and write books, curricular materials for K-12, a brand manual, written website copy and blogs and handled social media marketing. We enjoy and are grateful for all of the work we collaborate on and we are especially grateful to Barbara for inviting us to the global summit as it was a members-only event.

Participating in this three-day event in Los Angeles made us realize that all of the ways individuals and businesses—regardless of the size—can support the causes they hold dear, can contribute to changing the world, and can be that change. For example, you can choose to use a bank like Atmos Financial, whose vision is "​Everyone, everywhere, taking action towards a clean, fair, and transformed economy" and whose mission is "Finance the rapid  transition to the clean economy for all." Atmos is an FDIC-insured bank that provides 5 percent cash-back when you spend money on sustainable brands and charges no monthly service fees or requires a minimum balance plus free ATM withdrawals worldwide.  

Or you could join an organization like 1% For the Planet, either as a business member or an individual member. 1% for the Planet was started twenty years ago by Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and Craig Mathews, fly-fishing expert and entrepreneur. As they explained during opening night of the Summit, they wanted the nonprofit to challenge businesses to donate one percent of their annual sales (not profits—which could be diminished by big bonuses and other things—but sales revenue) to enviromental causes, as that was one of the ways that would be needed to counteract the damage we were doing to the planet.

As it says on the 1% website, "Currently in the United States only 3% total of philanthropy goes to enviromental causes...The global community - every business, every organization, every individual - has the opportunity to take responsibility for the planet and drive positive change." To join as a individual member, one pledges 1% of one's annual salary, and the membership dues for belonging to 1% come out of that amount. 

The organization explains under its FAQs, "Our aim is for every individual, regardless of income level, to be able to join as an individual member by pledging to donate 1% of your annual salary. Your 1% pledge should be an amount that is personally meaningful for you.Note that we require a $50 minimum membership dues payment to help cover the cost of the program, and to be able to provide you with the benefits listed above. Dues payments count toward member 1% commitments. For example, an individual who makes $40,000 annually has a 1% pledge amount of $400; $50 would go to 1% For the Planet as membership dues and the member donates the remaining $350 to the environmental nonprofits of their choice."  The nonprofits the member would donate to are vetted by 1% For the Planet, and the "money" you donate can be either actual money or the equivalent of time (which is calculated at $29/hour). 

By providing a low cost of entry/membership and multiple ways to donate, 1% For the Planet makes choosing to support environmental causes extremely accessible. 

While I would arguing that saving the planet should be the responsibility of everyone living one it, I acknowledge that other causes may also be aligned with the mission/vision and work of your business. Change in any area can be affected by us, when we step up and help, donate, colloborate, contribute, and champion the cause. So put your expertise, your passion, where you put your money, and a percentage of your sales towards a cause today and champion change for a better world. 




 

Creating the Freelance Career founder Jill L. Ferguson was featured in Authority Magazine on February 1 about what a writer needs to be successful. The article in its entirety can be read here.  And the video embedded in the article came from Jill's YouTube channel. Jill was grateful to be featured in this article and to offer advice to people who want to pursue writing as a career.  #writingadvice #writingcareer #writingcoach #author #authoritymagazine

Success can mean different things, depending who you ask. For some people it means having a lot of money. For others, it means being able to work from anywhere they choose, like the French Polynesian beach above or a mountaintop cabin or in the middle of a bustling city or from all of these places. Other people equate success with the privilege of doing work they love, regardless of the salary or benefits. And still others won't feel successful until others know their name, and they leave behind a "brand" legacy. 

This week, a journalist asked me to name five things that make an author successful. And to be honest, I had a difficult time narrowing it down to five things. You can hear those things in the video I created for that journalist. It is below.
​

In the video I talk about tenacity, which includes an unrelenting drive and persistence to reach your goals. Brendon Burchard also talked about those things on Amy Porterfield's podcast this week, when they discussed 6 High Performance Habits to Transform Your Life and Business. You can listen to that hour-long. inspiring podcast right here. 

In my opinion and experience, the things I think people need to be successful (as author or business people or in any endeavor are the following, in no particular order):

1) Tenacity. No one starts succeeding from day one. All businesses and building anything take work and dedication. Setbacks will happen. How will you handle them? Will they discourage you or will they strengthen your reserve? Without the drive to strive towards our goals, we will never succeed in anything. 
2) Willingness to Learn and Listen to Experts. Someone always knows more than you do about everything. Every top athlete has a coach and most likely has had multiple coaches. Even those at the top of their games can improve and get even better. It's a fact in sport and a fact in life. Surround yourself by those who know more than you. Learn from them. Be a sponge an absorb the lessons and incorporate them into your life and work. If you live life right, it is a journey of never-ending self improvement (not because we are in a state of lack but because the universe is so rich that we can never learn everything.) Open yourself to the abundance of opportunities and education that is all around you. 
3) Openness to Opportunities (and to see every interaction you have as a potential opportunity). I have been hired to do work I didn't know existed because I always remain open to opportunities. Be willing to listen to meet new people and to listen to their stories. Politely ask questions to show your interest. Seek ways you can learn and work with others to create amazing products and services. You never know what kinds of positive opportunities will "fall" into your life unless you are open to receiving them. 
4) Willingness to Collaborate. Some of my best-written and selling books have been collaborations, where our energy feeds off of each other and our creativity is boosted by our brainstorming. Collaborations also help us succeed more because we can work with people whose strengths shore up our weakness and vice versa. Often more eyes on a project means fewer errors. 
5) Basic Marketing Know-how. I am not saying to get an MBA in marketing, but to understand the basics of how to get yourself, your products, and your name in front of others. Excellent classes can be taken for cheap for free on LinkedIn, Coursera, Udemy, and others, teaching you social media 101 and the fundamentals of marketing and public relations. All of it will give you ideas of how to reach your audience or customers. 
6) Knowledge of Correct Grammar and Punctuation. The former English professor in me celebrates this one as no one responds as favorably to letters or e-mails or social media posts that are a mess of mispellings and mistakes. And if you are a writer, no agent, editor, or publisher will waste their time reviewing a manuscript with great ideas if the delivery method makes it painful to decipher. Use spelling and grammar check in your word processing software or e-mail program. Use Grammarly if you need more professional help. You know whether grammar and punctuation and spelling are strengths or areas that need improvement for you. Be honest with yourself and use what's available if you need it. 
7) Goals. It may seem obvious but if you don't create goals to strive towards and a plan to reach the goal, you will never be a success. Think about it in tangible terms. Let's say you want to lose 10 pounds. Wanting to do something and hoping isn't a strategy. In order to lose 10 pounds you'd need to set that as a goal and add a specific date to reach it, and then create an action plan. It might look like: establish current weight by stepping on scale, increase exercise by walking one more mile or 1000 steps more than usual each day, decrease amount of carbs every day and replace that by a fresh vegetable, drink no soda and limit alcohol to X, and drink eight full glasses of water every day. All of these steps combined will lead your towards your goal if you stick with them. 
8) Find Internal Motivation. In order to reach any kind of goal or to achieve success, you have to find internal motivation, something that means so much to you that can drive your actions. For example, some people are driven by the idea of providing for their families the most they can or others want to reach a level of success so they can repay their parents or buy them a house or still others want to see their names in lights or hear the applause of 10,000 people. What do you really, really, really want and why? Let that drive you towards success and keep that internal motivation in mind when the going gets tough--because it will. 
9) Vision. Regardless of what you think of Elon Musk as a human being, you have to admit the guy has vision. This vision is what drives him to make all of his companies successful. The same can be said of Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos. They all at one point or another saw how things could be and strove to make those visions reality and that drove their success. Martha Beck teaches that if we keep envisioning an outcome we want our brains think we have achieved it so it makes it easier to reach the goal in real life. Athletes use this techinque often to picture themselves on the podium. What visions do you have? Do you see yourself getting the accolades or deals you want?  
10) Have a Cheerleader in Your Corner. Successful people surround themselves with people who want them to reach their goals. These people will cheer you on when the going is tough and keep you motivated. They may not always be "yes" people but they have your best interests at heart and are they saying, "You can do this! You've got it! I believe in you." 
11) Have an Accountability Partner. An accountability partner holds you to the goals and plan you set for yourself. They ask for progress reports and offer encouragement and advice when you need it. You may meet with the person (or talk with them over the phone or on video) weekly or monthly or even daily depending on your needs. But they are always there for you and you for them, as it is reciprocal relationship, where you each report out to and encourage each other in the most authentic way. 
12) Understand How You Define Success. Attaining success is super difficult if you don't know what success means for you, personally. Without a clear definition of personal success, you will keep striving and never reach your end goal. This may make you frustrated and feel like a failure. Define success for yourself in tangible results. Then, after your reach those goals you can declare yourself a success. (And if you feel the need, you can always say, "I am a success, but I still want to strive for more," and you can set a new goal. One guy I know wanted to make his company a seven-figure company and that's when he'd know he made it. He did and decided that he wanted to share the recipe for success with others, so he has started a new consulting company to help others reach similar goals. That doesn't mean his original company isn't growing; it reached eight figures recently. But he's getting additional satisfaction by paying it forward and guiding others in how to attain success in their industry. 

Leslie Balleweg Barber spent part of 2021 working on her book Understanding Conceptual Figurative Paintings and How to Create Them, and we were hired to consult on this project. We helped her edit and refine the text and then go through the publishing process, choosing Ingram Spark because of their ability to do both hardback and paperback books and use high quality art-worthy paper. The result is a gorgeous tome that is not only educational but a gallery of Balleweg Barber's exceptional work. 

Thank you, Leslie for choosing to work with us on your project, and congratulations on your gorgeous book. If you want to add this book to your library or coffee table, you can buy it here or at any booksellers. 

This is our friend Mary Lou Wilson. She's in her early 90s and has always wanted to write and see her work in print. Jill has known Mary Lou for almost three decades, and they met in an adult education writing course.

Last year, Mary Lou asked if Jill would co-author a series of books based on her life and her family. With that request, she became a client of Creating the Freelance Career. Jill and Mary Lou have been at work on those books, but in the meantime, Mary Lou had an idea for an article. She sent Jill a draft of her idea and they worked together to create a marketable article, researched places that might be interested in it and wrote the query letter so Mary Lou could pitch it. 

NPR's Next Avenue bought the article about gift ideas to buy the elderly person in your life and they published it today. You can read it by clicking here. 

Mary Lou is overjoyed, as Next Avenue not only made the article a feature story, but they are also promoting it on Facebook and in their newsletter. We are excited that we got to help her make her publishing dreams come true. And this success has encouraged Mary Lou to brainstorm ideas for future articles and places to pitch them. Go, Mary Lou, go!  

Jill L. Ferguson, founder of Creating the Freelance Career, and author of 14 books and counting was featured yesterday in Billion Success. Billion Success is an entrepreneurship and authorship education platform that believes "every ENTREPRENEUR / AUTHOR has a unique story and life experiences." Their founder Herby Fabius, says, "Our goal is to share those stories and experiences to INSPIRE, EDUCATE and MOTIVATE [capitalization theirs] others to start their own success journey. We love to promote authors and founders. We do it to promote you; to promote your business; to promote your books. We want to play our part in making you a success."

To date, they have interviewed more than 500 entrepreneurs and more than 80 self-published authors and they have a social media following that is more than 15,000 and counting. Jill connected with Billion Success through HARO or Help A Reporter Out, which she has used for years to both find sources for articles and to be an expert and featured in Entrepreuner, Forbes, Business Insider and many other publications. She recommends all of her coaching clients join HARO as it is a useful way to get more press.    

Jill looks forward to seeing how this opportunity of being in Billion Success affects the sales of her books. :) Promoting the article all over social media has already resulted in at least one person saying they needed business coaching. 

Some of our clients need to draft business proposals to perspective clients and they come to us to help with that task. We've written before about crafting a book proposal and in some ways the process is similar. You need to have a clear idea of who your audience is who will read the proposal and how your idea or book fulfills a need. 

For example, one client (we'll call her Marcy to protect her privacy) was doing part-time work for a company as a contractor and the company asked her to write a job proposal for what the role might look like if it was a full-time employee role that included not only the work she was currently doing but expanded to be a type of coordinator role that would need to communicate with and work with not only current company employees but also three different levels of external stakeholders. The CEO of the company told Marcy to justify the expansion of the role in the proposal (even though he suggested this possible change in the first place). 

Marcy asked us for advice. Jill said to her that she should start the proposal with a short introducation and by talking about the challenge the company is currently having because of the current structure, hourly limits, and roles. Then Marcy was instructed to talk about the value that creating this new position would bring to the company. Next, for section three of the business proposal, it was advised that Marcy list the job duties (what the position would do and for how many hours each week). For section four of the business proposal, Marcy talked about her qualifications in detail and why she was the most qualified person to fulfill the position if/when it was created. In section five of the business proposal, Marcy covered her history of working with the organization since she has almost ten years of history with them.

Lastly, March wrote an actual proposal for the new position including what the position would like and the proposed salary range. This part can be a stand-alone document of the job description, the kind that would be housed in HR. 

None of the sections of the business proposal had to be long but they did need to be long enough to provide levels of detail so that the reader wouldn't have more questions than were being answered by the business proposal. 

While this example was specific to a contractor being asked to write a proposal for a full-time employee position, much of the advice can be used in writing a business proposal for other means. If you are writing a business proposal to get investors or funding, then you also will need to include marketing plans as well as budget, as Jill explains in this article that was published by SCORE LA.    

Patti DeHoff released her first book, Picture This! A collection of heartwarming sights, a compilation of photgraphs of found hearts. DeHoff explains, "Over the years I kept seeing hearts everywhere so I started taking pictures of them since they brought me so much joy." She shared some of the photos with friends and family members and they enjoyed them so much that they encouraged her to create a tangible product of them. 

Since DeHoff had never written a book before and was unfamiliar with the publishing process, she talked to some colleagues about her plans and that she needed some guidance and one of those colleagues introduced her to us. We are grateful to have gone on this journey with her and watch this book come to life. 

Picture This! makes a lovely engagement, wedding, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, or just because gift; it's great for any occasion where you want to give love to someone. And a portion of all book sales will be donated to the American Heart Association. 

Picture This! can be purchased directly from Heartwarming Site and DeHoff is in the process of creating a line of found-heart photography greeting cards, calendars, and other gift items to continue spreading joy and love. #hearts #love #photography #giftbook #newbook #weddinggiftidea #engagementgiftidea #AmericanHeartAssociation 

On August 9, Talyn Fiore's  book of photography and poetry, Brown-Eyed Girl releases on the Fiore's thirtieth birthday. We are thrilled for the screenwriter, actress, and interior designer, and we are equally excited that we got to be a part of her journey bringing this creative and heart-felt book to life. (And a big shout-out to Barry Schweiger who insisted Fiore contact us.) 

Brown-Eyed Girl is a product of the pandemic, born from a relationship heartbreak, where Fiore found herself pouring out her heart and soul in poems. When her grief passed, she was still writing and had an epiphany that creativity can erupt from any emotion, not just pain.

The photography and design of the book (all done by Fiore herself) is stunning and she's incorporated her belief in numerology into its structure and pricing.

Brown-Eyed Girl is available from booksellers everywhere, including Target and Amazon. 

Congratulations, Talyn Fiore on your first book!