Where to go for inspiration and ideas once you have the basic foundation for marketing your business
When you notice things all starting to line up and point in one direction, it’s helpful to look at the horizon and ask a few questions about what’s out there.
What’s curious to you? What’s drawing your attention?
Those are the questions we ask when we read energy. And those are the questions we ask when we write creatively (or paint or dance or quilt…)
And those are also the questions you can use to help guide you along in growing and sharing your business.
Yes, there are the basic foundations you need to have in place for your business.
The Basics
First, you start with your who and what – who you help and what you help them with. If you aren’t clear about this, it will be very difficult to create an effective message that can touch your ideal clients. After that, you create an effective offer, one that answers the questions your potential clients have and creates the right environment to help them feel good about saying yes to working with you.
After that, you focus on your website, making sure you have all the elements to help potential clients feel seen and understood, and letting them know important aspects about you – how you work, what you believe in, your essence. Next, you turn your attention to creating resonant content that helps your ideal clients and lets them see you as someone who can help them, while sharing it in a medium that feels fun and easy to you. And finally, you couple all that with consistently making authentic offers.
Going Beyond the Basics
But beyond those critical pieces (and I’m not trying to minimize the time it takes to put those in place – it’s likely more than you think if you aren’t there yet), where can you go for ideas to keep yourself creating? To help you reach new people? To support you in finding fun and authentic ways to share your ideas and work?
This is exactly the time to hand the reins over to intuition. That’s when you pick your head up and look out at what’s around you to what’s calling you. You ask yourself - what’s drawing your attention?
For me, lately, it’s a focus on intuition and creativity and for making even greater space for my creative writing.
As I’ve been watching my own energy and what’s emerging, everything is now pointing in this direction. I’m getting to know a new writing teacher. I’m carving out more time during my day for my own creative endeavors.
And, I’m endlessly curious how my intuition waits like a lovely spry little fairy, flitting here and there, to help point my attention toward exactly what I need to notice for my writing.
It’s been delightful.
Why I Write
Here’s something I wrote a while back, to share with you why I write.
I've found many reasons to write in my life. I've written while traveling alone, staying at hostels across Italy and marveling at the vibrant kindness of strangers. I've lived in Morocco and Argentina, and I've written through culture shock and through not speaking the language, desperate I'd never understand. I've also written through the loneliness of moving to new places, following family for new opportunities, and leaving friends and comfortable spaces behind.
I've written through the exhaustion and worry of becoming a new mother, when I placed so much weight on my shoulders I wonder how I stood up every day. I've also written to try to catch my girls' fleeting childhoods, hoping to hold as many whispery memories as I could before they slipped away - the scent of their soft hair, their little mittens reaching for snowflakes.
There were many times I wrote through gritted teeth. I'd decided I wanted to be a Writer, and I had to create something. There were also many times when I didn't write. Although after awhile, I'd always somehow find myself writing about not writing.
Lately though, I've sensed a shift. I delight in putting a scene together, watching the images appear at the very moment I need them. Time disappears as I race to catch the words of a sentence. I like playing with words, too, rummaging around to find the perfect one. It could be "sapphire" or "cerulean." Or maybe it's simply blue. I love to tinker with the order, too, making the phrase sound just right, and I get a delicious thrill when a sentence clicks into place. Sometimes when I write, I am filled with awe, momentarily taken aback at the beauty of an image. Other times, I feel a sense of wonder. Like a child, clapping her hands. Look at how pretty that sentence is!
My sister and I used to spend long afternoons in our room, spinning stories onto loose-leaf paper and hurrying to read them aloud. Now, it seems I've found my way back there again, creating characters and dialogue, playing with sentences and words. I'm enchanted by writing, and when I pull out my notebook and begin to write, I move into joy. I write because it makes my soul sing.
What about you? What is it in your life that makes your soul sing?
When you know what that is, commit to spending a bit more time than you usually do doing that thing. Ask yourself, what’s the connection between this, this thing that fills me FULL, and my work in the world?
You might be surprised by what you hear from your heart.
And who knows where that curiosity will lead you.