Save the Date: Creative Freelancers Conference

I've been reading the Creative Freelancer Conference blog for a while. It offers short posts and interesting info on the business side of freelancing--my favorite topic as a coach. So when I got an email from the organizers, I was thrilled. They wanted me to let you know about this freelancers' conference, and I'm always big on expanding your network and having new experiences as a freelancer. The following is just information. I'm not endorsing it and I have no ties to it. And they aren't paying for the announcement. I just thought it might be something you'd be interested it.

The 2009 Creative Freelancer Conference, presented by HOW magazine and Marketing Mentor, is coming to San Diego, August 26-28. Freelance designers, copywriters, illustrators, photographers and other solopreneurs will get the tools they need to drive their businesses forward from an expert panel of speakers led by Marketing Mentor's Ilise Benun and Peleg Top. Topics include:

. How to create compelling presentations
. The ins and outs of social media
. How to plan for estimated tax expenses
. And more

Plus, the opportunity to network and connect with other creative solopreneurs before, during and after the Conference will prove invaluable to the growth of any freelance business.

For complete program details and to register visit www.CreativeFreelancerConference.com. Freelancers who register by the July 15 Early-Bird deadline will save $50!

Serenity Tip: The joy of the bookend

You've got a client to call back, some contract changes to request, maybe even a story you're stuck on.

Call in reinforcements.

That is, make some book-ending calls.

Here's how it works:

1. Gee I'm stressed. I need to finish this story but it's just not coming. It's due tomorrow. What do I do? I need help.

2. "Hey Alicia. I'm just calling to tell you that I'm stressing out about this story. I've got most of the information I need, but I seem to be afraid to start writing because I'm afraid to discover that I don't have enough. I'm afraid this story is going to suck. But I've got to get it done. So I'm going to commit to working on it for the next hour and then I'll call back."

3. Work, work, work--sometimes easily sometime haltingly.

4. "Hey Alicia. I'm just calling back to say I did it! I worked on it for an hour and I have the skeleton down. Now I just need to insert quotes and get one more piece of information. Thanks so much for your support!"

That's it. Just call before and after doing something that's scary for you. It can be calling a potential client. It can be writing. It can be sending the query you've been working on for a while.

If you're on the receiving end of one of these book-ending calls, here are some ways to help:

Ask what she wants.
Does she want you to just listen and be supportive? Maybe she wants you to role-play the conversation with her, with you standing in for the editor/source/client. Whatever it is, ask at the beginning so the call can be of maximum benefit to both of you.

Offer to say what she wants to hear.
When she calls back, praise her for being courageous or diligent or a bad ass freelancer--whatever you want. You can even pretend again to be the editor/source/client and tell her exactly what she wanted to hear. It can be gratifying, even if we know it's all make-believe.

Return the favor.
People like to be helpful. Now you know her process. So hopefully when you're feeling stressed and like you can't possibly make the call or send the email or write another sentence, you know there's someone out there willing to listen to you with gentleness, support and just the right attitude.

Give it a try today.

Photo by Atilla1000.

Serenity Tip: Partner Up

Last week, I wrote about working with groups of other freelancers to increase the numbers of queries you send. But what if you don't have a crowd of fellow freelancers to lean on, or even three more? Could you find one?

Here's why you should.

The advice to partner up isn't just good when you're a little kid faced with crossing a busy street. If you're a freelancer looking to navigate the sometimes-treacherous world of freelance business ownership, you need a buddy, too.

In a formal capacity, this is what I do with my coaching clients: I help them navigate the freelance business world. We come up with markets, we set deadlines, and when we talk, they report back on their progress. I hold them accountable.

My support as a coach carries more weight because my clients are paying for me to be their accountability buddy. You can create that system with another freelancer, however. You just have to find the right freelancer.

She has to work at a similar pace as you

If you want to send a query a day and your goal buddy wants to send one a month, you may not help one another. Instead, the one looking to send a query a day may feel slowed down by the once-a-monther; and the once-a-monther may find herself comparing herself to the uber-prolific one and beating herself up. That doesn't help anyone and doesn't get either of you closer to a sale or a more serene business life.

She has to show up

Sure it's obvious, but it's also one of the most important requirements. If you agree to call each other once a day, she has to show up. And so do you for that matter. A flaky goal buddy will leave you working by yourself, and that will defeat the whole point of seeking support.

She has to be your cheerleader, not your critic

If you find yourself dreading talking to your goal buddy or you find it excruciating to stay on the phone with her because all she does is complain about what's not working, it won't help. It could even feed your own self-doubt and run down your stamina. Keep looking.

The only way to know if your goal buddy is right for you is to try it out. Sure, do a gut check when you first talk to each other, but then take the plunge, with the caveat that you'll reassess the relationship at a predetermined interval. I recommend a month, but you might know after two weeks. Or a day. Who knows?

Now that you've got a buddy, set goals for working together. Ask each other:

• What freelancing task do you struggle most with?
• What kind of support has worked for you in the past?
• What kind has derailed you?
  
• What step do you want to be held accountable to?
• What do you promise to do if you don't meet your goal?

With a freelance friend, we made a bet: We'd each send a query a day, and if either of us didn't make it for a month, we'd buy the other dinner. If we both did it, we'd split the meal, ideally with all the money we were making from our sales. It was a fun way to have it mean something and to build our freelance friendship.

Who can you recruit as your goal buddy for the month?

Photo by Rob Hoey.

Serenity Tool: Challenge Yourself, Part 2

One of my favorite and primary roles when I work with coaching clients is to help them refine, target and send queries. I love playing the role of cheerleader and editor. And when I need someone to play that role for me, I turn to my fellow freelancers. This week, I'll talk a little about working with others to make your querying goals come to life.

Monday, I shared a query challenge approach that requires lots of other freelancers to make it work. But what if you've only got yourself and a few others? Let me tell you about another challenge.

The Query-a-Day Approach

In the freelance writers group I belong to, I might be the most maniacal querier of the bunch, but I'm not immune to the need for support. When I found my querying slipping a few months ago, I emailed my freelancers group and asked if I could join them. They'd been doing a query-a-day challenge for a month already.

Here's how it's set up:

• Gather at least four freelancers, available via email.
• Pair yourselves off.
• Promise to report in daily on your progress.
• At the end of the week, one of you tallies the score and sends it off to a group email, in this case a Yahoo! Group.

It's pretty simple. Every day, my query buddy and I emailed one another our progress. It was just a moment to check in. Sure, you could say it kept us accountable. But I prefer to think that it gave us an opportunity to check in with ourselves on our intentions, our resistance, and our successes. We cheered each other on, we kept each other honest, and we got to know each other better.

The Rub

Now, there were no points required in this challenge--no tallying three points for this, one for that, etc. Our goal was simply to send one query every work day--defined as Monday through Friday for the workaholics among us. But what was motivating us? Wouldn't it be easy to fall off. There were no stakes, after all.Well, after I joined, I discovered that there were stakes: One of the writers had promised, if she failed to send the number of queries she intended, to donate money to the political campaign of someone she hates. Now that's motivation.

A Little Story

It was during this challenge that I resurrected a query I've been sending for two and a half years. It's a great story. I love it. But it's very specific, very niche and I'm determined that it deserves a wide audience. So I got an email from a fellow freelancer alerting me to change in leadership at a publication, and I sent the query off again.

I'm now in talks with the editor about possibly writing the piece for him.

It's not to say I wouldn't have sent the query to the editor anyway. But the support always helps. It's always welcome and it's always encouraging when you have an agreement with someone that they will cheer you on if you email them. That can never be a bad thing.

Friday, one more post on query support.

Photo by Heart of Oak.

Serenity Tool: Challenge Yourself, part 1

One of the primary roles I play with my coaching clients is to help them refine, target and send queries. I love playing the role of cheerleader and editor. And when I need someone to play that role for me, I turn to my fellow freelancers. This week, I'll talk a little about working with others to make your querying goals come to life.

If you've never buddied up and challenged yourself to send lots of queries, get started today. I'm participating right now in a query challenge organized by a professional writers' community to which I belong, and it motivated me to send 10 queries last week. Yeah!

I've participated in two different kinds of query groups. Today I'll talk about one of them.

The Mighty Mass Challenge

In the challenge I'm participating in now, there are dozens of freelancers chatting via Yahoo! Groups every day. We've been divvied up onto teams, and the goal is to make as many points as we can. The points are divided this way:

• 1 point for every query;
• 1 point for every letter of introduction; and
• 3 points for every assignment.

At the end of every week, we report how many points we've generated. My group is going like gang-busters: I think last week the gang generated 171 points between something like nine team members.

In addition to counting points, everyone gives a tip at the end of the week to stay motivated. But frankly, doing the challenge is motivation enough.

A Little Story

When I started freelancing a few years ago, I was in that gray area of working a lot for low-paying clients and not having enough money to live on. I loved the work. And my editors were great--don't get me wrong. But I wasn't working toward either my financial or my professional goals. So I heard about the query challenge and I took part.

I sent a query to a national health magazine on a lark--just to get the point, I told myself. It was the only way I could screw up the courage. After all, if I wrote for them, it would represent a huge leap in my writing business. I was writing for small local pubs that paid fast but paid poorly. They'd pay me $1/word and people across the country would read my work. If I thought too much about it--and I did--it could paralyze me.

So I sent it. And it bounced back. But I'd already reported the point. I felt obligated to send the query again. I found an anonymous editors@ email address. A month or so later, I got the assignment!

If it weren't for the challenge, I wouldn't have bothered. I would have just let it go. But the challenge, because I wanted to be honest, kept me going. It pushed me to be accountable and it supported me in being brave.

That's why I sent 10 queries this week. I saw what others were doing--sending tons of queries and getting tons of assignments by selling reprints or by meeting with editors--and it inspired me to do the same. This is where my competitiveness and my need for community come together to support my business. I got to know freelancers whose names I'd only previously seen on faceless posts on a bulletin board. Heck, I even sent first drafts of articles to freelancers I met on query challenges, and shared story ideas with others.

We work together to place story ideas, and we cheer each other up when we despair of paying the mortgage or getting enough work. While I still sit in my office alone, I don't feel it.

Keeping focused

But I want to add that I still maintain my querying standards: I send a minimum of 3 or 4 queries to markets that pay $1/word or more a week. It's easy to get points if you send queries to markets that don't pay enough to live on--they're desperate for writers.

But that wouldn't serve me. It wouldn't keep my accounts solvent and it wouldn't get me any closer to the kind of journalism I want to do. So I make the challenge work for me, not the other way around.

Tomorrow, I'll share another way to work with others to get your queries out the door.

How do you get support to query?

Photo by Heart of Oak.

30-Day Persistence Challenge: Passion + persistence = success

"Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse-sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success." - Dale Carnegie

Last week, I came across a great blog post that talked about the power of persistence in bringing your dream to life. The key, it seemed to say, was that you needed both components: Passion and also persistence.

The implication, the so-called Mrs. Micah seems to be saying, is that one without the other is like wood without flint: No fire.

"In an ordinary job, you can survive on inertia," she says wisely. "As a freelancer, you can’t."

Passion

The passion part seems to be getting back to the idea of what motivates you. She writes:

Passion is what keeps you going when you’ve just come off a project that made you feel like a sellout. Passion is what keeps you going when a client stalls on paying or turns out to be difficult to work with. Passion is what keeps you going when a project takes longer than expected and you have to stay up late or give up something fun.

If you can’t find a passion somewhere in your work, then you won’t be able to keep going when you hit the wall. And you will hit the wall. No matter how good you are at what you do, no matter how easy it is, you will always run into things that make you think, if just for a minute, that you don’t want to keep going with your work.

Persistence

The persistence, she says, is how you put your passion into action. It's the marriage of the motivation and the to-do list. It makes sense: Most of us know a freelancer who's brimming with ideas but seems oddly averse to putting those ideas out in the world. Heck: Look in the mirror. Sometimes, that's me. We all go in and out of being able to act on our passions.

Mrs. Micah says:

Persistence is what makes you go out there and find the next project. Persistence is what you need when you keep losing jobs to other bidders. Persistence is the tool that unlocks your freelancing future.

And:

Persistence is what keeps you checking job postings, it’s what helps you network with others in the field when you’d rather just wait for the next person to approach you. I think my biggest failing…or learning opportunity…as a freelancer was not being persistent enough between jobs. I probably could have done more, had less downtime, earned more, and even developed better skills.

I was persistent enough to find new clients and I always made ends meet on the financial side. But if there’s one thing I’d advise freelancers to learn from my experience, it’s to be more persistent.

How do you put your passion into action? The way I do it is with a little prompt a creative coaching friend is always reminding me:

• Ask yourself: What's the smallest step I can take today to move toward that goal?
• Put it on your to-do list.
• Bookend the action by calling a support pal.

How about you? Where does your passion meet your persistence?

Photo by Kecko.

30-Day Persistence Challenge: Getting support

I talk here all the time about the power of your fellow freelancers to propel you forward when you're losing momentum.

So with that in mind, I want to invite all San Francisco Bay Area freelancers to join me and a few terribly persistent (yes, terribly, terribly persistent as well as fabulous) freelancers for a get-together tonight. Here are the details:

Date:	Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Time:	6:30pm - 9:30pm
Location:	Thirsty Bear Brewing Company
Street:	661 Howard St
City/Town:	San Francisco, CA

If you think you might attend, email me at heather @HeatherBoerner.com, and I'll be sure to adjust the reservation.

30-Day Persistence Challenge: Help with the Hardest Tasks

Yesterday, I wrote about Peter Ubel's unique prescription for overcoming lackluster persistence: "Marial Law." For those of you to whom such an approach is off-putting, consider that Ubel offers softer ways to enforce the structures we created yesterday.

Here's one:

Help!

I've been waffling on contacting new markets lately, as I've written before. Instead of trying harder and harder to force myself to want to do it, I simply asked for help. Some fellow freelancers are running their own query-a-day challenge and I asked if I could join them. Someone else had to drop out, I dropped in, and now I get daily emails from another reporter reporting how well she's doing.

This approach targets something else Ubel talks about in another part of the interview. Speaking of the irrationality of he real estate or fiscal markets, he said:

"We are social beings, too, and frequently judge our own decisions by seeing what other people are doing. If my neighbor added a new kitchen with a home equity loan, I might assume that is a good idea for me, even if a more rational weightong of my finances would suggest otherwise."

He's detailing a negative use of our social instinct, but setting up a "query buddy," "declutter buddy" or some other action partner is a way to harness that instinct for good.

Action: Take a look around your social network (and maybe developing a social network is a persistence project you have to work on in itself).

• Is there anyone in it who is struggling with the same thing you are?
• Is there someone who wants to tackle it the same way you do?
• Is there someone who's temperment meshes well with you and with whom you welcome closer contact?

You can answer these questions simply by talking to friends, sending a few emails or even posting to freelance boards about your quandry. Even if you don't find a goal buddy, you're likely to find people willing to commiserate.

I've written before about the power of support and finding the right support person. Those rules apply here, as well.

Photo by D3 San Francisco.

30-Day Economic Stability Challenge: More health group love

Yesterday's post on health insurance for the creative freelancer left me a little deflated. There might be one group there that might offer me better health insurance, but most of them were for New York City freelancers and therefore no use for me.

So what do you do if you don't live in New York and still want the warm embrace of group health insurance? Consider these options:

Your local Chamber of Commerce
I know most creative professionals think of chambers of commerce as a place for local restaurant owners, accountants and the owner of the biggest bowling alley in town--in other words, not our crowd.

But some chambers of commerce offer health coverage for sole proprietors and small businesses. All groups have dues, some of which are deductible, but you get the bonus of networking with professionals who could use a good writer or editor. Doesn't seem like a bad deal.

National Association of the Self-Employed (NASE)
Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs belong to this group, which offers discounts on everything from roadside assistance costs to term life insurance. It offers health insurance through the MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company. But beware: There are red flags on this company at sites such as The Ripoff Report and Attorney Pages. I haven't been able to find any reports on this from legitimate news sources, and would love to hear if you have experience with this company denying claims in bad faith. If that's the case, I don't see the difference between having health insurance through them and the individual market.

I also received a call from a group called One Person Group, which offers group health coverage to self-employed and sole-proprietor professionals. It claims to be the first of its kind, and I'd love to hear if there are freelance writers who use it and how they like it.

Know of others? Leave them in the comments so other freelancers can benefit from your knowledge.

Photo by woodleywonderworks.

30-Day Economic Stability Challenge: The power of serenity

I'm not a calm person by nature. I like to keep myself in a state of cat-like readiness so I can deal with problems as they come up. There usually aren't enough problems to keep my mind busy, which I think is part of why I enjoy freelancing--at least my fears tend to be real.

That natural nervousness is why I need this challenge. But my serenity practice is what helps me deal with any financial situation, particularly the one I experienced last month when a check from a longtime and cherished client bounced.

My serenity practice usually consists of:

• Eating healthy food;
• Trying to sleep eight hours a night (though I don't always make it);
• Daily 10-20 minutes of mindfulness meditation;
• Daily housecleaning of the mental kind--writing out all my fears and praying to let go of them;
• Regular exercise, including cardio at the gym and yoga; and
• Regular meetings/phone calls with a wide network of other freelancers.

It's a lot of work, but it also pays amazing dividends. I learned this last month, when that check, most of my money for the month, disappeared from my account, leaving me with a negative balance. For one weekend, I had $13.

But I got through it without making it worse. I maintained a positive relationship with my client, I continued to do my work, and I didn't borrow money or use a credit card to get over it. In future posts, I'll explain why that's important for me.

Today, I'll explain how I did it:
I called lots and lots of self-employed colleagues.
There's a place for rage and fear and confusion and hopelessness, but it's not with your clients. I called friends who were Realtors, writers and career coaches. When I had to send a pointed email to my client, I ran it past several more veteran freelancers to make sure it was based in reason, not emotion. I spewed my spleen with my friends and loved ones. I broke down more than once and called friends and colleagues hysterical. But because of my daily serenity work with writing, meditating and yoga, those moments of hysteria were shorter than they've ever been in my life.

I did loving kindness meditation for my client.
I've written about this before, and I know it's the last thing you want to do when you've been wronged despite doing everything right. But the fact is that I just wanted the problem to be solved, and I don't like how I feel when I'm enraged and full of self-pity and self-righteousness. Those aren't feelings I can afford to nurture, so instead I prayed that my client would have everything I wanted for myself. That goes for my bank, too.

I did the paperwork.
When I got the email from my bank saying I had a negative balance, I thought it was a phishing scam. When I realized it was real, I knew just what to do:

• Email my client and ask what happened and for a new check;
• Call the people to whom I'd written checks to see if they had deposited them and if they could hold them. They could. I even called a magazine to whom I'd sent a check and asked them if they could hold it. They couldn't but I tried;
• I called my bank; and
• I transferred funds from other savings accounts to cover myself in the meantime.

I could do all of this because I both knew the checks I had sent and knew where to find their information. Being organized is a godsend in this situation.

I was persistent.
Persistence doesn't just pay off in querying. In a situation like this, willingness to keep showing up for the next piece of bureaucratic monitoring--calling the bank, checking to see when the reissued check would arrive, calling the bank again, visiting the bank--meant the issue got resolved. I did what I could. Then I used my serenity practices to try to let go of the rest.

I exercised.
Even though I was emotionally wrought and just wanted to sleep, I forced myself to keep up my writing, meditating and exercise regimens because I knew they'd help me recover faster. And they did. The writing and exercise helped me express my feelings in constructive ways. The meditating soothed my very frayed nerves. I even added one more meditation practice onto my week for extra care.

I prayed.
I know it sounds hokey (again), but I know in these times to be a self-employed person takes faith. My faith has been shaken by this situation, but I tried to bolster it by practicing gratitude. In my morning writing, after writing about my anger, I focused on the good things I had instead of the things I lacked, and thanked god for them.

Outcome

The result is that my account is flush again, thanks to quick action by my client and my own advocacy with my bank. I also stayed on track with my other clients, kept querying for more work, completed the last blog challenge and continued to meet with friends. I didn't do any of this perfectly, of course, and I definitely felt the need for more sleep. My nerves are still a little shot and I need a day off. But it could have been worse, and I could be feeling much worse now--still resentful, self-righteous and completely distracted from what my clients need from me.

And the best part is that I could see how much support I really have, how strong I've become and learned how much i really know about managing my business.

How do you cope with economic crises?

Photo by zieak.

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Get Yourself Connected

How's your networking?

That's the question posed by UpMo, a marketing coaching program that helps you set and track marketing goals, including marketing. They have a great free networking self-test to get you thinking about all the forms of marketing and how involved you are in your network. (If you must procrastinate, this is a great way to do it.)

A few tips I learned from taking the test myself:

Don't just meet people. Help them.
There's a difference between knowing a lot of people and having colleagues who respect your work so much they'll recommend you to editors. A great way to gain their respect--ethically--is to be of service to them. Send along stories that may interest them, mention markets and editors that might be right for their idea and generally offer to help.

This is common courtesy and something I notice many freelancers do intuitively. But this remains a good opportunity. Are you doing all you can to help your fellow freelancer?

Staying abreast of the industry counts as networking.
To stay nimble in today's scary market, you've got to be able to bob and weave around ailing markets and towards ones that are thriving. To do this, read up on changes in your coverage area. How's health doing? What about business? Or shelter pubs? And how do you get most of this info? Chances are, you'll find it by sharing experiences with other writers.

Join writers groups, participate in email boards and as your favorite writers to lunch or coffee.

Diversify, diversify, diversify.
Just as you should strive to have lots of different clients in order to weather market changes more easily, you should have lots of different types of people in your network:

• People who are at the same level as yourself for commiseration;
• People who are where you want to be in 5, 10, or 15 years;
• Editors;
• Publishers, etc.

The list goes on. The point is to stretch outside your comfort zone. Take a look at the industry folks you talk to regularly. If none of them intimidate you, you've got some work to do on your network.

The bottom line

Just like with any marketing effort, you should have a plan.

How many times a month will you strive to meet with editors? How many times a month do you meet with other writers? How often do you talk to former colleagues or editors for whom you haven't yet worked?

Strive to do some networking every month.

As I've written before, I rely heavily on my freelance network. I started a freelancers' group on LinkedIn. I belong to two writing groups. I have an action buddy to encourage me to take scary steps in my business.

Stumped on how to find fellow freelancers? Our friend Jenny Cromie has a great post on The Golden Pencil laying out just that.

When I looked at where my income came from last year, I found that nearly all of my new clients came from referrals from those in my networks. It's a great feeling to be attached to so many people, especially when you work most of the day in solitude. And for those connections to be profitable is even more wonderful.

How do you network? Where do you want to expand your network?

30-Day Marketing Challenge: Saturday Bloglink Edition, Now With Extra Twittering

To follow up on yesterday's Q&A with Jenny Cromie, I decided to take the plung. I'm Twittering (or is it tweeting? I don't know the lingo yet) at HeatherBoerner. Follow me!

Now for some helpful links.

Speaking of Twitter, I'm loving Robert Middleton's more frequent blogging efforts, and his most recent post breaking down some rules for tweeting. The gist: Focus your tweets on a narrow specialty area, make sure they're of value and link, link, link. He says more, though and you should check it out.

And one more great post from Robert: Time to reevaluate your professional Web site or create one? (Remember, Jenny mentioned yesterday that having a professional Web site is one part of a marketing plan.) Robert gives you some clues about how to rate your Web site and ways to make it more marketable. It's given me some great ideas for improving my site as well.

If you're guilty of avoiding marketing--and who isn't?--consider reading Janine Adams' great post on what to do instead when you want to check your email, Twitter, Facebook or organize your sock drawer instead of marketing.

Finally, I'll end this bloglink edition with Elizabeth Stark's literate and inspiring post about why we market in the first place. Using the analogy of throwing the ball around (an activity she says is more fun when you "push the ball away" instead of holding it close), she says the joy of marketing is sharing your creativity with the world:

You throw the ball when you take an idea and toss it onto the page. You throw the ball when you edit this work and renew it, and again when you show it to someone else, and again when it bounces out and back to various publications, agents, editors. You throw the ball when you blog, too, or comment on a blog. It’s a handy little game of catch, not the World Series, but a friendly back and forth while you chat about what is going on in your life.

Finally, let's be honest: Being a freelancer right now is scary. But you can't let the fear stop you from marketing. Consider Linda Formichelli's great post on the Renegade Writer blog that details six ways to eliminate the fear, or at least manage it. Some may look familiar to readers of this blog.

Now take a few minutes to relax, and let the marketing ideas come to you. Happy Saturday!

30-Day Biz Planning Challenge: Reaching Goals with Support

There are as many ways to do business plans as there are creative professionals. But you wouldn't know that looking at the business planning section of your local library. So in this challenge, I've enlisted some friends and colleagues to describe the way they found their business plans and what works for them. I'm hoping one of them will inspire you.

Today's post comes from healthcare freelancer Karen Childress , who had a former life as a creative coach. She finds success reaching her business plan's goals with formal and informal planning groups. If doing it alone is daunting, consider her approach, described in the Q&A that follows.

You said in our private email conversation that you've been a "goals gal" forever. What do you mean?
In the mid-1980s I started listening to Brian Tracy and other motivational experts on audio tape and became inspired to “be successful.” Over the years I’ve belonged to several goal-setting, business-success, and accountability groups and have found the process to be very helpful.

Some of these were informal groups of friends or co-workers and others were formal, facilitated groups that I paid to join. Around 2000 I became a certified coach and had the pleasure of helping clients identify, clarify, and work toward achieving their goals. Then at the height of the dot-com frenzy I founded a small Internet company that was, in part, a membership-based online goal-setting and tracking system. Unfortunately, that business didn’t take off and I eventually shut the site down. It was an expensive but valuable lesson.

So, basically, I’ve believed in goal setting for years. Some people shy away from this sort of planning as being too structured, but I find it to be useful, especially at the start of a new year.

Why a goal group instead of managing and monitoring your goals on your own?
I think it’s the accountability piece that makes it work for me. I can set goals and make action lists all day long and then blow off doing what I say is important if I get busy, distracted, or just feel uninspired or lazy. But if I’ve shown someone else my list and made a commitment to accomplish certain tasks toward achieving my goals then I’m much more likely to follow through. It’s nice to report successes to other members of a group and get support and feedback when I’m stuck on something or need to hear an objective point of view.

Do you have an individual business plan or does the goal group function as a business planning group?
Typically at the beginning of each year I write down a list of personal and professional goals. That, in addition to a simple marketing plan is really the extent of my business plan. But my business is very simple. It’s just me and a fairly steady group of clients that I write for. But each year I know a few clients will drop off for one reason or another, so I’m always in marketing mode to some degree in an effort to keep new business coming in.

You mentioned that you make annual, monthly and weekly goals. How do you choose those?
I strive for balance. I have business and financial goals, but also have categories related to taking care of myself, projects I want to accomplish around my home and property, and things I want to learn in the coming year. For example, in 2009 I plan to earn a little more than I did this year while maintaining life balance, and also learn to use PhotoShop and InDesign so that I can support a couple of my clients who need simple marketing pieces in addition to what I write for them.

How do you use your goal group to accomplish business goals? Can you remember a specific business goal your goal group helped you reach?
Mainly for accountability, but also to get fresh ideas from other people who are in business for themselves. It’s energizing to hear what other people are up to. I haven’t had a goal group for a few years (just getting started in a new one with a group of writers for 2009) but I do recall when I first went out on my own as a consultant/coach many years ago that being in a group was the thing that helped me jump start my business.

If readers want to set up their own goal groups, what should they look for in other members? How should they structure it?
Compatibility, mutual respect, and commitment. They should decide if they want to be in a group with members in the same business as theirs, or in one with more variety. In the group I’m about to get started with, we’re all freelance writers (six of us total). We’re scattered all over the country, so our plan is to meet weekly by phone for 45-60 minutes.

There are also consultants who run these types of groups as a business. I’ve done some writing for a client, Blair Koch in Denver, who runs The Alternative Board,groups of business owners who meet in person monthly to solve business challenges with Blair as their facilitator and coach. A friend of mine, Valerie Taloni, runs Peer Success Groups, which are facilitated by telephone. Her groups meet monthly as well and I believe she also coaches each person in the group privately between the group gatherings. Another client, Joy Chudacoff in Los Angeles runs success circles exclusively for women.

Anything else I didn't ask that you wanted to add?
I’d encourage your readers to think about their goals seriously and be ambitious in setting them, but not so ambitious that they feel overwhelmed. Better to achieve one or two important goals than make a list so long that you don’t know where to start. And don’t set goals related only to business and money. Life balance is important, especially for those of us who are self-employed.

30-Day Biz Planning Challenge: How Kim Does It

There are as many ways to do business plans as there are creative professionals. But you wouldn't know that looking at the business planning section of your local library. So in this challenge, I've enlisted some friends and colleagues to describe the way they found their business plans and what works for them. I'm hoping one of them will inspire you.

Today's post comes from freelancer Kimberly Olson , who has covered many topics, including architecture and design, health, business and technology, for 15 years. How does she do it? It turns out she asks herself some simple questions. Here, she shares them with you.

Some say January 1 is a day like any other. Nothing to get excited about. I couldn’t disagree more. The New Year—as arbitrary as the date may be—offers the perfect opportunity to reflect on what’s working and what’s not. For me, it’s a time filled with the hope of new possibilities.

So as 2009 approaches, I’ve been immersed in what has become an annual ritual—setting my business goals for the upcoming year.

Whether you want to raise your income or take a longer vacation this year, you need a game plan. Developing a clear strategy with small, doable steps will help keep you on track. So plop down with paper and pen and answer the following questions:

What do you want to achieve in 2009?
Would you like to bring in ten new clients? Create a Web site for your business? Get more media attention? Write down your goals—and be specific.

What action steps will you take to get there?
Think about the steps you’ll need to take to achieve each goal. If you dream of getting your Web site up, you’ll need to write your Web content (or hire someone to do it). Find a Web designer. Research Web hosting companies. Jot down the tasks involved and estimate how long each step will take.

Bonus points: Develop a task schedule to help you stick with your program. If your goal is to bring in more clients, for example, make a commitment to reach out to a specific number of prospective clients each month. Then, beginning in January, keep a log of your accomplishments to track your progress and stay motivated.

What barriers might prevent you from taking your action steps?
Think about what has prevented you from achieving your goal in the past and come up with some strategies for overcoming barriers. If you still haven’t taken that evening marketing class, why not ask a friend to join you? We’re more likely to follow through if we know someone else is counting on us.

Who will be your support person?
No matter how committed you are to achieving your goal, there will be days when you’ll wonder what you were thinking when you decided to boost your profile by doing a public speaking engagement for 500 people. On days like these, it’s important to have someone to turn to who can cheer you on. Support people may also have helpful ideas for overcoming barriers to success.

How will you reward yourself?
Setting up a reward system for yourself can help keep you motivated throughout the year. You released your first e-newsletter? Treat yourself to a movie. You just scored that blue-chip client? Schedule a massage. Of course, as you achieve these mini-steps, the greatest reward will be forthcoming—as your business booms!

30-Day Organizing Challenge: Buddy Up

Day 17's goal: Get Help and Have Fun

Ever feel like you're on the losing end when you try to face down a pile of clutter? Maybe it's because you're doing it alone. Today, the fantastic organizer June Bell is back with another entry in her ongoing guest-blogging series on the fundamentals of organizing. This time, it's about safety--and effectiveness--in numbers. If you have questions directly for June, feel free to email her at junebell at aol dot com. Otherwise, leave a comment below.

You’ve got a friend …


A big part of my job as a professional organizer is to be an empathetic listener, a fresh pair of eyes and a low-key encourager. You probably take on those roles from time to time for a friend, colleague or partner. So if either of you needs help getting organized, you can tap one another for support.

Here are some ideas:

 Smashin’ fashion show:

Hang the contents of your closet on a clothes rack and ask a trusted friend – the one who’s French, always well dressed, or works in a boutique (or all three!) – to suggest some new outfits using the separates you own. Also ask her to flag any garments, shoes and accessories that look dated, shabby or worn. Don’t argue with her. Just discard or donate them.

 Two’s company:

If you dread tackling stacks of paper in your home office or fear getting your tax papers ready for April 15, find a friend in the same boat. Work together at your home to halve the burden of filing and sorting. Then commit to meet at his house to do the same for him.

 I’ve got your back:

There’s no one like a good friend to help you become a better version of yourself. That might mean getting you back on track when you’re slipping or helping you acquire a new, positive habit. When you’re out shopping and begin eyeing yet another black sweater, this friend will kindly remind you that you already have at least six similar items in your closet. This very same friend will, for your birthday, upload your favorite ‘80s songs onto your iPod so you can discard those dusty cassette tapes under your bed.

 Set a goal together:

If you’re both committed to reducing clutter or using a new calendar to better manage time, work together to achieve your aim. Break down the steps you’ll each need to follow to meet the goal, set a timetable for action and then check in with each other daily, every few days or weekly to chart progress. Make sure to set an appealing reward that you’ll both enjoy upon achieving your mission. Having a “goal buddy” lets you draw energy from your pal’s motivation even when you don’t feel so enthusiastic.

Next week: So much for a paperless society. Despite our reliance on (and addiction to) e-mail, we’re still deluged with paper. I’ll have some tips on how to manage it, organize it and control it.

I can vouch for the goal buddy idea. I have one of those, and have used her to help me make scary phone calls to my student loans, to help me face my taxes and other scary tasks. And I've sat there and helped another goal buddy face down the clutter on his desk. It really works.

Have you ever had a friend help you with your organizing? How'd it go? Would you do it again?

What keeps you from inviting a friend or partner into your disorganized space?

Serenity Tip: Be Honest

I often write about sharing your concerns with safe people--other people in your field with whom you feel comfortable and from whom you experience no ridicule, etc.

But let's be honest: When you're at your reunion, honesty is not the forefront of your mind. I would like to suggest, however, that being honest with your colleagues there can also be wonderful.

This year marks 11 since I graduated from The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. I know, fancy. To be honest, I've always been a little embarrassed about it. We all joked at the time that we were waiting for the admissions department to drop the bomb: "Oh I'm sorry, we meant to admit Heather Boemer, not Heather Boerner. This nice security guard will escort you out." And when you tell other writers that you went there, they tend to look at you like you're hopelessly pretentious.

So when I went to my 10-year reunion last year, I went with my insecurity in-hand. As a relatively new freelancer, I was taking whatever work I could get. That meant that I snuck into the computer lab there as the students were finishing up their investigative journalism master's projects as I pounded out a 10-page advertorial on... flooring.

Not my most shining moment. And I was pretty ashamed, to be honest. It's not what I thought I'd be doing.

So I was very guarded with my colleagues. I was prepared to tell them just the highlights--"I got my first article with Yoga Journal! I wrote for my first national magazine last year! I write for the San Francisco Chronicle!"--and not the reality.

Something has shifted. I've been emailing with a colleague who writes regularly for the New York Times Science Times about the paper. The shift happened last week when, after I sent that a query to that frightening publication, I asked her, "Were you intimidated? Because I'm scared!"

I know it sounds small, but it changed me, almost molecularly. To be honest with someone I admire, who has the career I want, was scary. When I didn't hear from her for a few days, I was convinced she was sitting in her New York apartment laughing at me.

Then, this week, I got an email relieving me of that delusion. She'd been sick. She told me the story of her first piece for them and how she kept writing for them.

I gave her a chance to be human--and, more importantly, I gave myself a chance to be human. It brought me more peace. It increased my serenity. It brought me relief from my own nagging doubt that I can include myself in her ranks. It's great to not have to pretend.

So for this weekend and for today, I ask you to let someone in to your process, to give up the brave front and be a little more human.

Serenity Enemy: Email Encroachment

Every so often, I get questions on ways to make work life more serene. Have one? Send it to heather (at) heatherboerner.com.

Today's question is:

My chronic work problem as a self-employed writer is compulsively reading and responding to emails like this. If that sounds snide, the snideness is directed at me and at no one else!

I hear you. As I've said before, I definitely know the allure of the email siren song. There's something so gratifying about the ding!, isn't there?

Tomorrow, I'll write about a new management technique that's allowed me to feel less beholden to my email. But before I share it, I think it's important to talk about motivation--that is, why are you obsessed with your email? Ask yourself:

* What should I be doing instead?
* Do I want to do it?
* What are my feelings about my assigned task?
* What am I afraid of?
* What am I ashamed of?
* What do I really want to be doing?

Email procrastination can arise from a number of sources, and to figure out how to squelch this serenity enemy, you have to know what yours is. Some of the reasons I hang on every single email are because I don't have enough information to start writing, I want to go to the gym but I feel guilty for leaving work, I'm stressed about money, I'm resentful or deflated that a marketing effort got rebuffed.

Each of these requires a different treatment. It may be that going to the gym will actually make me more productive than sitting at the computer and trying to talk myself out of going to the gym. It may be that I need to get honest aobut why I can't write and figure out who else I need to call. It may be that I need to call a work support person and get consoled about my flagging marketing efforts. Maybe I need to make a to-do list so I feel less overwhelmed. Maybe I need to look at my expectations of myself and see if I'm being too rigid.

But before I can do any of that, I have to be willing to tear myself away from my email and figure out what it is. Sometimes, it's easier to sit with email--and feel bad about it--than it is to face the thing you're avoiding. Indeed, email procrastination may be an attempt to avoid dealing with my 1 percent.

Think about that and tomorrow I'll bring you a few tips.

Serenity Enemy: Clutter

Recently a self-employed person came to me with this block to her serenity:

During the week, I'm too busy to clean my office, and just can't seen to be able to justify taking the time to organize it all. On the weekends, I don't feel like going in my office and doing work stuff. So, cleaning my office seems to fit in no where. It's a great space, really the best in my condo, and where I spend the majority of my time. But it's so disorganized and undecorated (aside from matching furniture I bought at IKEA when I moved in) that I don't enjoy being in here at all. I'm embarrassed when others see it, and I complain about it all the time.

This is such a common problem. Is this about serenity? I'm not sure. I do know that being unable to find things (especially bills) can lead to tremendous stress, discontent and worry. And if you don't like what you look at every day in your office, chances are you aren't enjoying your work as much as you could be. (And as I've said before, if you're happy and grateful, you are much more likely to pay it forward.)

So what to do?

First, I'll suggest something that I do once a month:

Sit in a comfortable position, before the stress of the workday is upon you (you can do this in bed as you're waking). Close your eyes and breathe deeply. As you settle in, ask yourself this question: "What do you want your office to look like?"

You can get more specific, and I often do:

* What would be most abundant and serene for you?
* What do you see when you look at your office in your mind's eye?
* What's one thing you can do to make your office more like this today?

This is, as my friends call it, a visions meditation. Create a vision for yourself, something that excites you and gets you enthusiastic about making the change in your office.

I do this once a month and I often have the same vision: Cherry wood desk with tempered glass top, lots of plants, free of clutter, overlooking a big window with a view of trees or a garden.

When I look around my office this very second, I don't have that view. But what I do see is a big window, a bookshelf with cherry wood and tempered glass shelves and a small bouquet of dazzlingly yellow freesia. It's a small thing, but it makes me happy. And I'm aware that it's a process.

Now, there are lots of ways you can bring this vision into being. The way I do it is to do one hard thing toward cleaning your office a day.

But professional organizer and former freelance writer Janine Adams uses an online motivational tool To help her clean off her desk at the end of every workday. Here's what she says:

"My big obstacle when I was freelancing and until recently as a professional organizer was as messy desk. I couldn't get myself to clear it at the end of the workday, even though I knew I was much more productive on the rare occasions that I had a clean desk when I arrived at work in the morning. But this year, it's changed. I cleaned my desk off thoroughly on January 5 and, with the help of www.dontbreakthechain.com to build the habit, I've cleared it off every single day, save one Saturday when I left my knitting on it. That habit alone has really, truly affected my work serenity."

There are still other ways you can do it. You can set a timer and do 5 minutes of cleaning every day. I even have friends who have "clutter buddies" who come over and sit with them as they clean their offices, because they can't seem to motivate without that kind of support.

The point is, of course, not to do this the One Right Way, but to make a start.

What do you do to bring serenity back to your office?

Serenity Tip: One hard thing a day

If serenity is about accepting what you can't change and acting on what you can, then this blog has spent a lot of time discussing how to let go and less about how to act when acting is called for.

Here's my suggestion of the day:

Make a list of all the hard things that make you seize up when you think of doing them--and then just try one step towards one today.

Such a list has the potential to cause more suffering than it alleviates--at least at first. Getting clear about what is stopping you, and looking at each big scary thing in its face, can feel torturous. It can look like a mountain or the Grand Canyon, depending on your sensibility. Either way, it seems like something you can't conquer.

The good think is you don't have to conquer everything at once.

If you have a business plan you may have your list of what Franklin Covey calls "big rocks" already written down: Make $X this year, break into certain publications, etc. That's a great thing. That plan should also give you steps to make those things happen: If you want to increase your income significantly, what mix of clients/projects will bring you to that income level? How much work is required?

Take one of those big things and break off a small piece to start on. Today. Don't hold back. Don't block out the business plan because it seems more like a pipe dream.

Just start, with the faith that something will shift, even if you don't get the results you want in the timeline you've determined.

If you don't have a business plan, chances are your list of scary Big Rocks may seem like a wish list instead of an action plan. So maybe your first big hard thing on the list is to finish or start your business plan. It's not too late. Gather a friend in your field and meet once a week for an hour until you get it all down. It doesn't matter if it doesn't get done till June. That just means the second half of the year will be that much more serene and prosperous for you.

The key here is to remember that mountain doesn't have to scaled today. Just make a start on it, some small bit. And then show up for it--and your business--again tomorrow.

Dealing with a bad day

We all have them: A client strings you along and then drops a project he or she promised. You do a lot of work on a project and then the higher-ups decide to go a different direction, etc. It's enough to make a self-employed person tear her hair out.

The key is a few things:

1. Adapt the mantra: It's not personal.

It can feel very personal: It effects your work, sometimes it effects your wallet and often it effects your serenity. The only way to make it worse on yourself if you take that moment and use it to feed your monkey mind, the part of you that's always looking for a place to stash your most corrosive negative thoughts.

Now, of course it's normal for it to feel personal, but take good care of yourself by not wallowing in that thought. Every time it comes up again as a personal attack on you or your business, just repeat the mantra: "It's not personal."

2. Check in with yourself.

When I have a bad day, sometimes I'm not capable of checking in with myself until the end of the day, by which time I am so worked up and so reactionary that I'm no fun to be with, even for me. My brain is not a safe place to be in those instances.

The venerable yogi B.K.S. Iyengar in his seminal modern yoga book Light On Yoga writes about his two kinds of anger:

There are two types of anger (krodha), on of which debases the mind while the other leads to spiritual growth. The root of the first is pride, which makes one angry when slighted. The prevents the mind from seeing things in perspective and makes one's judgment defective. The yogi, on the other hand, is angry with himself when his mind stoops low or when all his learning an experience fail to stop him from folly. He is stern with himself when he deals with his own faults, but gentle witht eh faults of others. Gentleness of mind is an attribute of a yoga, whose heart melts at all suffering. In him gentleness for others and firmness for himself goes hand in hand, and in his presence all hostilities are given up.

Sound like a tall order?

It is, if you try to simply will yourself into that state of mind. I'm sure there are many ways of getting to that kind of clarity: prayer, yoga, meditation, etc. But one of the ways that work for me, because I'm a writer, is to write it all down.

The key in Mr. Iyengar's concept of yogic response to anger seems to me to be a few things:

* When you're reacting to others our of pride (i.e., taking things personally) you aren't seeing clearly. So any business decisions you make in the face of such a reactive mind are bound to need correcting later--and bound to send your serenity ricocheting all over the room.

* The yogi's heart "melts at all suffering." What that means to me is that it melts at *your* suffering as well. So his charge to you, I believe, is to find a way to be "firm" with yourself/take responsibility for your part without subjecting yourself to suffering. If you're prone to perfectionism, it's easy to take this edict as a sign that you need to beat yourself up. That's not yogic in my mind because it's full of pride. It's all about you.

So how do you separate pride from firmness? Write it all down: Your fears, your resentments, your beliefs about yourself, and what you can learn from the situation.

Then just sit with it for a bit. The thing about having a bad day is that you can't right it in an hour--at least not in my experience. If something rocks your core or your bottom line, it's going to take time to go through the feelings and feel steady again. Let it be, and continue to work on the work in front of you.

3. Reach out for support.

I write a lot about support in this blog--for good reason. There's nothing worse than gritting your teeth through a bad day and then vomitting all your fear and anxiety and resentments all over your mate when he or she returns home.

We've all been guilty of this, but here's a promise: You don't have to wait till the end of the day to get the support you need. If you set up a system of people who support the sane and serene operation of your business, you can call through that roster until you start to feel a little better. That way, if your partner gets home and he or she had had a bad day, too, you aren't adding to your own or anyone else's stress by forcing that person to be everything for you.

One warning about support, though: It's important to clear out what's your side of the street and what's out of your control before you pick up the phone. Otherwise, you run the risk of simply ramping yourself up and feeling more anxious, fearful and caught by the monkey mind.