As part of the Courageous Year process, one thing I like to do is honor where we come from.

The idea is that even as you shift something in your life, even as you transform, you don’t look at where you came from as this place that was bad. It was simply another necessary step in your growth along this path. You shift as you grow. And for the most part, we’re almost constantly shifting (it’s a brilliant thing).

I was looking through some of my archives from one year ago. One year ago today, I was just a month shy of the realization that I wanted to grow The Courageous Year. One year ago today, I was living in someone else’s house, house-sitting, and had no idea where I’d be living next. One year ago, today, I was in contact with some people that I’m no longer in contact with, today. One year ago, today, my relationship to myself and to others and to my partner looks very different.

It’s important to note that a year ago, I had no idea that I was capable of creating (beyond that inner knowing that knows before anything is conscious) what I’ve created, today. I say that it’s important because so often it can be easy to think, “I can’t do that,” forgetting that in everyone’s life there is a time when they don’t know fully what they are capable of.

This past year feels like the fastest passing year of my life.

And so I bring you: The Courageous Year Flashback. Click the link, read what was happening one year ago (“Deserve” was coming up big!), and feel free to add your comments!

Where were you, one year ago? What has shifted?

Six months of courage from Kate Swoboda on Vimeo.

Oh, dear. Once I finally finished everything I realized that there are a few transitions in this that clip off a word. I hope you’ll forgive me…

One thing that I do with Courageous Year participants is offer the opportunity to take a moment for assessment. I think that this is, rather than being an exercise in self-hate (“Oh, man, now I need to assess myself and see all the ways that I’m STILL not doing what I should be doing…”) it can be an exercise in commitment & accountability and in acknowledgement.

This video felt a little tender to make–I am being courageous and leaning into that tender spot of admitting to fear (“terrifying” is the word I use most!)–but it is honest. Thank you for bearing witness.

Antique shop, Petaluma, CA.

It’s been a few days since my last entry, in which I shared a wee little secret I’d been keeping to myself for a little over a week–that I am writing a book (and by the way, the response to this news? So encouraging. Everything from comments to emails to FB posts–so much love going around).

It has been a really lovely couple of days, marinating in this writing process again. I’m really glad that I gave myself some time to let the work I am doing be my own little secret, to get some momentum. I’ve written before about how it is that we can choose to let telling others be part of our work with commitment and accountability, and in this case I noticed that having started some of the work before announcing the work, I was able to make some headway. I think that had I not started this work and just announced it, first, I would have experienced more fear of the “Oh, shit, I just told people I was going to do this sort of BIG THING, and now I’m going to “have to” do it because I told everyone” variety.

So, okay. I’ve told people what I’m doing. I’ve been working myself. And now the question comes in, one that is so important for projects of any scale, though particularly so with creative projects, and that is how to handle deadlines. Deadlines will either kill you or save you. It’s all in how you hold them.

I’m thinking of getting my M.A. in writing when I’m thinking of this. I had a friend who was really a lovely writer, with the one main consistent critique of her work being that she meandered a bit too much, went on a bit too long with a passage and then lost the narrative thread of the story along the way. And it occurs to me now that perhaps some of our strengths and weaknesses in writing (or anything else) are tied up in how we handle deadlines.

This friend of mine often struck me as paralyzed around deadlines. Our fiction workshops were set up in such a way that at the beginning of a quarter a rotating schedule would be determined to see who would be presenting on a certain day. This was done so that you’d know well in advance when you had something due, and you could make the appropriate number of copies for everyone in the workshop the week prior to when you were reviewed. Then we’d take those copies home, review them, and come to the next week’s class prepared (and the next writer in rotation  would be there with copies for us to take home and review).

Some people in the program wrote in big, passionate bursts–not procrastinating, but clearly following some kind of wave of creativity that would come in big and strong like water crashing onto the surf, then receding. I always leaned towards the “put a bit of time in several days a week” method. Other writers forced themselves to sit at a desk every single day, berating themselves if they missed a day. My friend tended to treat writing like it was “due,” an assignment that she needed to take care of. I can’t remember ever hearing her talk about writing just for pleasure during the two years that we were in school together, and as I look back I wonder how much I really knew her inner workings at all.  But I do remember what I observed, and what I observed was that she avoided writing in the weeks leading up to when something was due. Perhaps she’d do a bit here and there. But she didn’t really, really put time in until just a few days before, and the night before, she had to bring the photocopies to class.

Then she’d show up in class with a worried look on her face, circles under her eyes, her hair clearly unwashed. And she was such a lovely person that I remember really feeling something for her in that, really having empathy for how much struggle she clearly put her tiny body through just to make that deadline. Had she felt she could drop the deadline altogether, I believe she would have. I mentioned that a common critique of her writing was that it was strong, but sometimes meandering–there were threads that went too far, things like that.

Had she had a different relationship with deadlines, would she have given herself time to see where things went to far and been able to edit them out?

This is where we get into deadlines as both friend and foe, the thing that will either kill you or save you. What kind of relationship do you have with deadlines? Do you loathe them? Are they paralyzing? And why?

As I’m working on my own book now, and I have a September deadline, I also have another deadline coming up–my own self-care vacation/hiatus. Back in October of 2009, I sat down with a 2010 Franklin Covey calendar and planned out my own Courageous Year–when I’d like to launch new things, when I’d like to hold retreats, when I’d like to take a vacation so that I could get some rest. I’ve learned over the years that my vacations are like savasanas in yoga, a space I can create between postures to completely relax and thus rejuvenate (P.S. Look for my upcoming article on this in the Courageous Conversations column at Wish Studio).

My savasana will be from June 12th-July 12th. I’ve been giving my postures (my life, my relationship, my work, my creativity) 100% of myself in these past few months, and I look forward now to just letting go in the in-between. I’m still going to be popping into the blog now and again–as someone who’s been blogging since 1998 as a labor of love, not something to do just for marketing props, I find it a perfectly fun thing to do while on vacation–but I do want to have the bulk of my workload mapped out. And I am finishing work on the Across Mediums e-book course, and adding a lot to it, and generally rocking out there.

So it’s all about how I hold the deadline. How much tension do I want to have around it? How will I hold space for meeting a goal? Will I hold it as a “have to” or a “get to”?

I think that deadlines are fantastic motivators. I know how great it feels to meet a goal, and I know that what I’ve found works for me is to create slow but steady work each day. I try not to get too caught up in the days when not a lot happens, or when I realize that after some editing, I’m cutting a substantial amount of work because it just wasn’t a fit. In the end, my ultimate deadline is to create this body of work that I look in the mirror and feel genuinely proud of, and I think that that’s what’s happening with me, with the Courageous Year e-book. I am waking up in the morning enthusiastic about something that I can put my heart behind. That feels amazing.

How do you handle deadlines? When are they helpful, and when are they not?

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Okay. So some of you might remember this post, where I realized that after taking some conscious time away from writing, I was ready to dive back in and start making it a regular part of my life practice, again. It has been a really blissful experience to fall back into this. I have started attending my writing group again. I feel at home.

And then something in me whispered: “It’s time to write that book.”

What book? I’m thinking. Which one? Because if there is anything that a writer has a lot of laying around, it’s those books that have been started but never finished. (“Creative abortions,” my grad school cohort darkly termed such things).

And then I realized what book it was.

The Courageous Year.

Of course.

There have been any number of moments of panic that I’ve had since I started flying solo. Unfortunately, being someone who rocks out at holding space for others does not mean being immune to such pitfalls as looking around in total fear and going, “What the hell am I DO-ing?” And after each of these moments, what I keep coming back to is that what I’m DO-ing is I’m being courageous. What I’m DO-ing is I’m having my own private Courageous Year, right here right now, and the cool thing about that is when I sink down into just living my truth, and that’s all it’s about, a switch gets flipped–the switch from DOing to BEing.

And that BEing is pretty blissful.

Which is why spending three hours in the library today, working on a book called The Courageous Year left me with that same wobbly-legged ecstatic natural high can you believe it life is so beautiful feeling. Also why a quick dig through a box of writing stuff in my closet quickly revealed the early drafts of this that began working on back in 2008, drafts that I had almost completely forgotten about the existence of, drafts that I had bound and sent to various corners of the United States to get feedback from test readers.

My inner little girl is doing the happy dance right now, because my goodness but it’s real–I’m writing a book. And this is something she has always wanted to do, and has done before, but then they get finished and filed away.

This one will get to see the light of day, because I’m going to turn it into a digital e-book. I’m going to include all of the videos and interviews and general courageous goodness and encouragement and the You Matter and the woo woo stuff that’s so fun and the practical tools, and then, because I don’t believe a book on its own can change anything and also because talking to people one-on-one is the best part anyway, I’m going to combine it with coaching. Also, I’m going to form a Courageous Community, giving people working the book the opportunity to connect with one another.

My inner little kid is doing a total happy dance right now because yeah, we’re totally going to combine things she loves and rock out and play with it. Also, she’s pretty happy right now because, uh, we actually already started working on this book. And it’s FUN.

The Courageous Year will be available as a downloadable book in September 2010–and I’m doing pre-orders, now. And rather than trying to do the scarcity-fear-harried-panic thing, I want to inspire “I get a bonus!” glee in anyone who decides to pre-order, so all pre-orders are getting a chunk of immediate downloadable goodness called Shift : Plan. Click here for more details.

Courageous Question: What gleeful, joyful desire lurks beneath your waves? What would have your inner little kid doing the happy dance?

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Okay, then–this is the last and final key (so far, anyway!). If you missed any of the keys, mosey on over to Part One, and then the links to click through each key will be towards the top of the page, arranged chronologically.

Key #10: Trust that your right people will find you. It never ceases to amaze me how right on the universe at large can be. Trust, trust, trust. I learned (or, re-learned) this back in January/February. I was totally stressed during that time, feeling myself acutely in the middle of the throes of “what am I doing?” and “will I be able to pay rent?” Tons of fear. Tons. It was all normal, related to me doing something I was new at. The fear would reach a certain threshold and then I’d use a tool and I’d get unattached to outcome again, and then–calls came in. I know. It sounds all woo-woo. But I’m going to defer to Key #7 on this, and say that my way might differ, but I honor it. When I’m clinging, not only does my life not work but I believe that I block my own access. And when I say that calls come in, I don’t mean that clients necessarily come in. I mean, during the weeks when I was in the thick of it, it was like a dead zone. When I let go of attachment and trusted, a supportive email would come in. An invite to collaborate on something. A new idea that ended up resonating with people. So I’m not talking about letting go of attachments and trusting to get more money (though I don’t knock that). I’m talking about letting go of attachment because it’s a better quality of living and opens us up. We look less desperate and are less inclined to violate Key #9 when we’re open and in acceptance of where we’re at with our process.

So really, perhaps the biggest thing I’m learning as I define for myself what Courageous Marketing looks like for me is that I’m powerful when I both go towards my inner YES/what resonates, as well as when I allow the process to unfold.

I share the Courageous Marketing Manifesto with you because I know that there are some entrepreneurs out there, some people who are also working on how to find ways to get the word out about what they do, to risk being seen, and they want to do what works but they also want to do what feels good and authentic. Feel free to pass this along.

And also? What would you add to this? Are there any Keys that you’ve discovered for yourself that might be helpful to others?

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I’m continuing with my Keys in Courageous Marketing from my Courageous Marketing Manifesto, a way that I’m defining for myself what is comfortable to me and what is not around spreading the word about what I do. If you missed Part One, read it here.

Key #9: Don’t manipulate! Like the coach who had her assistant call me the other week, implying that she was interested in starting a practice with me, saying she wanted to “collect research” when really, she was collecting info on how I run my business? Yeah. I thought that call seemed fishy, and a quick input of the phone number into Google showed me what was up. To not put too fine a point on it–That’s nutty behavior. Not at all authentic. Hopefully not the behavior you encourage in your clients. Call me up and invite me out for a lovely cup of rooibos tea and I’ll tell you anything you wish to know, because I have nothing to hide. But for goodness sakes, no attempts at subterfuge.

QUESTION: What have you seen that you considered manipulative, on the web? Have you had anyone call you as I was called?

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I’m continuing with my Keys in Courageous Marketing from the Courageous Marketing Manifesto, a way that I’m defining for myself what is comfortable to me and what is not around spreading the word about what I do. If you missed Part One, read it here.

Key #8: Create win-wins. My favorite kind of Courageous Marketing, my de-facto, my default, the thing that I like to do the most, is anything that creates a win-win. I admire greatly the people who are so popular on the web that people will blog about them or tweet about what they’re doing without any prompting. Certainly, it would be nice if a whole collection of people were going, “Gee, that Kate Swoboda. She’s spiffy. Let’s share what she does with others” and I needn’t do a thing. But even if that were the case, I think I’d still immensely enjoy win-win marketing: both of us win. So for instance, any time you see an interview online, that’s totally marketing. Of course it is. But to me, it’s win-win marketing. If I do an interview for someone and they post it on their website, I win because their readers learn about me and they win because they get content on their site that their readers want to see. I’m going to spread word about the interview, and so will they. Danielle LaPorte did this beautifully when launching The Fire Starter Sessions, recently (see below for the link).

And if you’ve been thinking of seeing if we could collaborate on an interview, but were afraid to ask? Ask away!

QUESTION: How do you create win-wins with what you do in your job?

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* Truth Never Attacks: An Interview With Danielle LaPorte

I’m continuing with my Keys in Courageous Marketing from the Courageous Marketing Manifesto, a way that I’m defining for myself what is comfortable to me and what is not around spreading the word about what I do. If you missed yesterday’s Key, visit the “flying solo” category.

Key #7: Honor my work in my way, even if it differs. You’ve probably noticed that just about every other coaching site out there has packages. Lots and lots and lots of packages. Small packages and big ones and upgrades. I’ve heard that some coaching schools include courses on marketing as part of their programs and that the package thing is big. For years now, I’ve thought about the package concept. Did it work for me? And what I keep coming back to is that it’s not a match. For some coaches, it seems to work beautifully in attracting clients. It doesn’t vibe for me. Mostly because I think to myself that I worked for two years (and continue to find ways to work more) to gain a specific skillset in how I show up, how I am present, with another human being, and that that skillset is valuable and outside the realm of needing to be packaged to help ease someone into buying. I don’t see therapists–who trained in their own, different but just as valuable skillset–offering packages. Or doctors. Or lawyers. Or teachers. Or artists. Or accountants. Or really anyone, except in a few select industries and the coaching industry happens to be one of them. So I just do a flat-rate because that’s what resonates with me and I know I’m worth my rate (and other coaches can laugh at me and roll around naked in piles of cash; that’s okay). This doesn’t just happen with packages, by the way. It happens with how coaches use certain terms (the inner critic vs. gremlin vs. monster vs. self-hate vs. whatever being a term that many people differ greatly on). At the end of the day, I’m behind my choice and trusting that they are behind theirs (so I honor them for that. My way’s not better, it’s just my way).

On Monday, I’ll be updating with Key #8, Create win-wins. In the meantime:

QUESTION: How do you honor yourself with what you do? Is there anything that’s commonly practiced by others in your field, that you consciously choose not to do because it just doesn’t resonate for you?

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I’m continuing with my Keys in Courageous Marketing from yesterday’s Courageous Marketing Manifesto, a way that I’m defining for myself what is comfortable to me and what is not around spreading the word about what I do. If you missed yesterday’s Part One, read it here.

So we continue:

Key #6: Don’t over-do it. Now, the “over-doing” it part is highly personal. So as you read what I write next, keep in mind that I’m just sharing what works for me, within my own concept of Courageous Marketing. For instance, I think “over-doing it” shows up in the form of attaching one’s business name to everything. I personally am turned off when I’m in a space that is supposed to be ad/marketing free, such as an e-course, and someone is using an icon of their business instead of a photo, or their business name as a username, or a tagged link to their business appears with every post. I find it has the opposite effect–instead of being more interested in what the person might offer, I want to get away from it. It doesn’t feel authentic, because I know that that person is not their business. The person is a person first– a brand or business, second. Now, I have heard that it’s something like for every 1,000 times someone sees your business name, only 1% of the time will someone act. Something like that. I wonder if that idea is changing in the new business world, because people today know when they’re being marketed to. I know that that top-level athlete doesn’t really drink a ton of soda in order to improve his basketball game–he’d be an idiot to do that. You know it, too. So I’m thinking that over-marketing it something like telling a joke one too many times. I’d rather open my heart in a real way with you the few times I do encounter you, than practically use blinking text and a highlighter to let you know when I’m opening an e-course again (And again, some marketing people might laugh at me while they roll around naked in their cold, hard cash; that’s okay).

Tomorrow, and each day for the next several days, I’ll be posting one new Key, some piece that resonates with me about how to share what I do in a way that honors who I am. Are you on board?

So I share the Courageous Marketing Manifesto with you because I know that there are some entrepreneurs out there, some people who are also working on how to find ways to get the word out about what they do, to risk being seen, and they want to do what works but they also want to do what feels good and authentic. Feel free to pass this along.

QUESTION: What would you add to this? What is “too much” for you? How do you know the difference (for you) between “too much” and “fear of being seen”?

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On the side of a newspaper dispenser in San Francisco.

Okay. So. Those of you who have been following my blog for awhile now, know that an area of seeming discontent for me has been around marketing.

Here I am. I run a business. I need to “market myself.”

But what exactly does that mean? I found it both surprising and–to be completely honest–a bit disappointing that much of my time would necessarily be taken up with learning about, and implementing, something that involved “marketing myself.” I laugh to think of it now, but it seriously did not occur to me that this was something I’d need to spend much time on beyond getting my website in good shape, SEO-wise. And as a side note? I am not a fan of the word “marketing.” It’s too similar in my head to another m-word…”manipulation.”

It seems to me that at the heart of most marketing messages is some attempt on the part of the person/entity doing the marketing to make whatever is being sold seem as easy and effortless to implement as possible. And I have been so, so resistant to participating in that because let’s be real. With what I do, working with people–frankly, sometimes transforming yourself and rocking out your life, and sometimes even just relaxing enough to have fun and PLAY is not so easy and effortless, is it? I’m not committed to a Story that it “has to” be hard and I’m convinced that a ton of fun can be had along the way. But the quick n’ snappy , 1-2-3 steps to a perfect life thing? Nah.

There are a few keys I think I’m picking up along the way, and I’m pulling them together into my idea of what I call “courageous marketing.” Yes, that’s right. I am redefining it for myself because in the face of some of the stuff I see online, it seems I have the choice to either get defeated or to empower myself to construct it for me.

So here’s Part 1 of my Courageous Marketing Manifesto, complete with handy-dandy Keys that I use to determine what works for me, and what doesn’t.

Key #1: Show up online like I show up in the world. That is to say: silly, tenderly irreverent, funny, joyFULL, committed to my vision, in process, willing to ask good questions, observant, intelligent, serious, not too serious, willing to be utterly random. This is #1 for me, because if I start even trying to write copy that conforms to anything I’m not actually interested in writing about, my joy levels go way down–and that is not why I decided to start doing work that I love.

Key #2: Make my courageous marketing work about how I can a.) get the word out about what I do, while b.) being completely transparent as to what I see the process being about, while c.) letting people know that I’ve done my own work, I continue to do my work, and I know my shizzle and can help someone through.

Key #3: While soliciting people to learn from, ask lots of questions to begin with to make sure you’re connecting with someone who has a shared vision. Early on in trying to learn more about how to spread word of what I do, I purchased this e-book/consultant package. I was super-excited, spent a bunch of time (we’re talking hours and hours) going over this e-book, prepping my questions. The consultant was billed as hot stuff, we had a half hour, and I wanted to be ready to rock and roll. But when it came down to the consult? They hadn’t looked at my website or concept or anything.  Scheduling the consult itself was a nightmare of unreturned emails and unnecessary complications. And the call itself? A nightmare of rushing, plus a disrespectful tone of voice at one point. I will never purchase something from that person, again, and I’d hesitate strongly before purchasing something from anyone they collaborated with. BUT–at the end of the day, we’re all adults, here. You and me–we’re grownups, now. We gotta ask questions, beforehand. If we need something, we gotta speak up and say what we need. I made assumptions about how the process would work based on my own standards. My standards aren’t everyone else’s.

Key #4: When something new doesn’t feel like a match, give it time rather than speaking in absolutes. There was a point in time when I swore that I hated Twitter. Now I find it kind of fun. I’m trying to notice where, when I think of a new way to share what I do with others, I might hesitate because I’m afraid of either a.) risking/being seen or b.) judgement/coming across as one of those “marketing types.” The fear is a comfort zone issue, not a marketing issue.

Key #5: Stick to your guns when it really hits a nerve. Perhaps the thing I’ve found most appalling when I’ve read about marketing is the encouragement to suck up to people who get a lot of traffic so that they’ll think you want to be friends and then start pimping your stuff. This hits my “manipulation” button in big ways. I’m open to the idea that I might reframe it more positively in the future (see Key #4), and yet at this point, it seems vitally important to me that I’m only connecting with people with whom I genuinely resonate, and that I let those connections be organic. I want to connect with people who have open hearts and a willingness to share their wisdom. Period. And I hope that anyone who reaches out to me has the same desire. Period.

I’ll be updating these Keys each day this week–check back for more.

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