Artist's EDGE Blog has moved

This blog will no longer be active. Subscribe to the new blog, which now lives on the Artist's EDGE website http://artists-edge.com/blog. Thank the gods for Wordpress!

See ya there!
Debra

Exciting Changes for Artist's EDGE

You may have been wondering at the deafening silence of this blog. Over the last few months, there have been tremendous changes here at Artist's EDGE.

Wendy Keilin is moving on to new ventures. As of September 4, 2007, Artist's EDGE is no longer a partnership, but a sole proprietorship under the stewardship of Debra Russell.

While we're both sad to be parting, we're also very excited about the new opportunities we'll each be taking on. Rest assured that this change is fully amicable and we'll be working together in the future. If you are subscribed to the Artist's EDGE Newsletter, you'll hear about Wendy's new ventures and how you can participate in them if you choose to. In the meantime, she's still reachable through the Artist's EDGE Website.

Artist's EDGE will continue as before, with Debra Russell as your sole Artist's Success Coach. I'll continue publishing the Artist's EDGE Newsletter, posting in this Blog and creating new products as well as powerful workshops and coaching for the Artist's EDGE Membership.

But there will be a lot of changes to the Artist's EDGE Website - and what's really exciting is that you can be involved in those changes! I have an R&D Team and I will be asking my R&D Team to evaluate the changes and give me feedback and suggestions. You can contribute ideas and suggest changes - so that I can meet YOUR needs with Artist's EDGE and you will get first crack at all the new stuff!

But you're not obligated. Participation in the R&D Team is completely voluntary. You will be added to an e-mail list and periodically (a few times a month at most) you will get an e-mail from me asking for your feedback. You can respond to any of these messages that interest you, or none of them - it's always your choice. I truly value your feedback and ideas.

To join the Artist's EDGE R&D Team, just click here and follow the directions!

Thank you for all your wonderful participation in my ventures to date, and in advance for your patience and support during this transition.

The Law of Attraction - Revisited

My most recent Artist’s EDGE Newsletter has been generating lots of conversation. Here’s a great email that I just received from Andrea Anderson:

“Without doubt, negative thinking is dangerous and self-destructive. On the other hand, saying that a person can change any circumstances outside themselves is quite dangerous and puts them in a position of thinking that they have lots of power over other people, places and things. The whole idea, it seems to me is to change oneself. And that change attracts other people and situations.”

My response? Exactly! I love the way that Jack Canfield puts it in The Success Principles:

E+R=O

Events plus Response equals Outcome

You have control over your responses (both internal and external) and that determines your outcome. A lot of people went through Katrina – some people made lemonade, others just sit in the sourness – it’s not the circumstances but what you do with the circumstances.

But then there are those who manage to avoid the circumstances altogether – because it’s not what they’re attracting for themselves.

So when something outrageous happens, it’s not enough to just say, “How am I responding to this? How do I make lemonade out of these lemons?” It’s also important to ask, “How is it that I attracted lemons instead of that ripe juicy watermelon?”

The truth is that you DO have lots of power, but not over others, over yourself and your own circumstances. Other people have power over themselves and THEIR circumstances. Just because those circumstances exist in their world, doesn’t mean you have to invite it into yours.

And it doesn’t mean that you say – well, to heck with them, that’s their problem – either. But you can choose how you think and feel about their misfortunes and what you choose to empower about their misfortunes.

For me, I like to contribute money and time to organizations that are NOT about saving people, but about empowering people. Because I don’t believe we can save anyone. We can only give them the tools and encouragement to save themselves.

If you focus on how powerless they are, then you are attracting being powerless to yourself as well. If you focus on how individuals achieve, then you are attracting the experience of achieving. But beware, if you only focus on achieving in the face of terrible odds, then you are attracting, yes you guessed it, terrible odds!

So, focus on how the real professionals make it look easy and how you can make your own life feel easy and effortless, too.

Working Smarter, Not Harder

In February, we did a call for the Artist’s EDGE Membership called, “Creating Systems – Working Smarter, Not Harder” to begin to address one of the key mistakes artists make in their business. The essence of this mistake is to think of yourself in terms of a self-employed freelancer, going from gig to gig or commission to commission. This places you in an endless cycle of recreating the wheel. You spend all of your time looking for the next job, because if you don’t work, you don’t eat. Does this sound familiar?

The solution is to stop thinking of yourself as a freelancer and start thinking of your art as your business. You are a small business owner. Successful small business owners work on developing their business as well as working in their business. It’s a significant change of perspective. Think of your art as a product and think of your business as a series of systems that need to be honed to run smoothly without wasting resources. Create a plan to set your business up so you could actually take a few weeks off and your business continues to run and you continue to make money. Yes, I’m talking about a paid vacation!

If you dream of quitting your day job, if you dream of making a prosperous living doing what you love, you must learn to think of yourself as a business owner and run your business accordingly.

We're BACK!

Sorry I've been out of touch for so long. Google changed the blogger program and we were unable to access our blog for MONTHS! But finally, we got things straightened out and so here I am blogging again.

Look for quick blogs and longer articles on a regular basis in the coming months. I'm so happy to be back!

Procrastination v. Keeping My Word to Myself

How do I get myself to do what I’m “supposed” do? So often, that’s what procrastination looks like. I’m supposed to be doing “A”, but instead I’m doing “B”. I’m supposed to get up and shower, but instead I’m cuddling with my kitty and drinking more coffee.

But perhaps the problem is in the way I think about it.

Who says I’m supposed to be doing A?

The problem when you’re a self-employed, small business owner, working for yourself, is that it’s you. It’s all you. And we are not trained to be responsible to ourselves. We are trained to be responsible to others – our parents, our teachers, our bosses. So, how do we learn to be responsible to ourselves?

And therein lies the real skill of time management: being responsible to yourself, keeping your word to yourself. Because I create my own schedule and so, keeping my schedule is keeping my word to myself.

And therein also lies the trap. If I don’t keep my word to myself, what do I make that mean? Does it mean:

“I’ll never be successful.”
“I’m not worthy.”
“I’m a hopeless lazy flake.”

There are so many ways I can torture myself about not keeping my word to myself. But this is just another method of procrastination. Do you see the trap?

The way out of the trap is to embrace the process. Each success or failure doesn’t mean anything in and of itself. It’s all part of the process of me learning to keep my word to myself. I will make mistakes; I will fall on my ass, probably many times. But if I recognize that this is the process of learning to be responsible to myself, no individual failure means more than that one failure.

And so I can learn from that failure and grow.

What did I learn from not keeping my schedule this morning? I learned that the day after I work out, I tend to need more sleep. So, in the future I can schedule accordingly. Going to take a shower now….

Procrastination - A closer look

In the August Newsletter, I wrote about procrastination and I promised to write more about it in the Artist's EDGE Blog. And here it is 5 months later. The truth is, I've been procrastinating about blogging. Oh, the irony! In the Newsletter, my advice is to ask yourself, what's really going on. So -- let's do that...

When I ask myself -- "I'm procrastinating about blogging - what's that about?" The surface answer is "Oh, I'm so busy. I have too much to do. Other things are more urgent." And all of that is legitimately true. But it's not the source of the procrastination. When I look closer and get really honest with myself -- it's fear.

I'm afraid that I don't have anything important to say. Or that you, my faithful readers, won't find it important or valuable.

So, this is what I do when I identify fear. I move toward it (as I told the Artist's EDGE Members on our call "Overcoming Fear").

I have made a few decisions around my writing and blogging. And I want you to know them, so that I am accountable. First, I've committed to two hours of writing twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. I have many things I need to write, such as the Artist's EDGE Newsletter, our classes for the Artist's EDGE Membership and new web pages. Plus, I am also starting my first book.

But here is my commitment to you. I will write a blog post at least once a week during these writing sessions. You heard me -- once a week! So you have my permission to e-mail me and call me on it, if I miss a week.

Maintaining Focus in the Face of Chaos

During extremely busy times, times of emotional turmoil and major change, you may also find it difficult to focus on what you’re doing because your mind is cluttered with all the other stuff that’s going on. In our most recent Artist's EDGE Newsletter, I promised you a process that I use with my private clients to create focus. I learned this in Coaching School and it goes something like this:

At the top of each private coaching session, we use a process we call “Clearing the Space.” Very simply, you set each item aside one at a time by using this 4-step process:

1) Identify what’s going on - give it a title or a name, don't go into all the gory details. "What's going on in the background is the fight with my partner this morning."

2) Identify the emotions that are connected with that thing - just use a word or two for each emotion, leaving out all the justification for the emotion. "The emotions connected to this are anger, frustration and sadness." The tendency is to explain each emotion -- anger, because... You want to leave out the "because" and everything that follows it.

3) State your intention powerfully and in the present tense. "I am setting aside my anger, frustration and sadness so I can focus on writing this blog entry." Notice, we're not setting aside the fight or whatever, we are only setting aside the emotions. If you find those emotions to be stubborn, you can reassure yourself that you will come back to pay attention to them when you are done with this. "I'll give you the attention you're due after I finish writing this blog."

4) Give yourself a moment to set it aside with a deep breath or a visualization of placing that stuff in a closet and closing the door. Really allow yourself to set each thing aside before going on to the next item.

It is really important to leave out the details. The more you think and speak about the details of what's going on, the more present it becomes. And that's counter-productive, since the purpose is to set it aside. It is also helpful to do this process out loud. The whole thing takes about a minute and most people report feeling more grounded, focused and energized.

Conferences, Conferences, Conferences!

No sooner am I back from the Cutting Edge Music Business Conference in New Orleans, then I am leaving for the Foothills College Campus for the West Coast Songwriter’s conference!

Post-Katrina New Orleans was an experience. While the recovery and rebuilding is evident, so is the devastation, both in the physical environs and in the emotional milieu. But I love the hope that I felt at the conference. With folks wearing “Make Levies, Not War!” t-shirts and buttons, and the buzz about the rebirth of spirit in New Orleans, the Music Community is alive and singing.

This weekend I’ll be delivering a new workshop called “Building Your Belief Muscle” that we unveiled for our Artist’s EDGE Membership a few months back. And next week, for the Arts and Media Expo in San Francisco, I’ll be delivering my popular “Business Management for the Creative Mind.” The time and location are:

Thursday 9/14, 5:45 PM – 7:00 PM
Cell Space
2050 Bryant St
San Francisco

Details for these and other upcoming events are constantly being updated on our website - www.Artists-Edge.com/events.html

The Energy of Belief

I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of belief as a result of the class that we did for the Artist’s EDGE Membership called Build Your Belief Muscle. So forgive me, but I may get a little woo-woo in this post.

It seems to me that the law according to physics is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right? But when we think about the things we do, the actions we take, the interactions with others, why is it that the reaction doesn’t always seem to match the action? Why do we sometimes get a response that is out of proportion to the action we took, either in positive or negative ways?

Well, I have a theory. (You knew I would, didn’t you?) Our actions are taken not just on the physical plane but also on the energetic plane, as we are spiritual beings as well as physical beings. Unfortunately we are not always conscious of the tenor of the actions we take on the energetic plane. We just aren’t always aware of the energy we put out along with the actions we take.

So here’s my theory: When you take an action, your action is accompanied by energy that is completely colored by your beliefs. Since those beliefs are often unconscious, multi-layered and even contradictory to each other, so is the energy that you are creating.

So, if the results you are getting don’t match your intentions. Ask yourself – what am I believing about this?

If you feel like you are always pushing uphill against resistance when you try to accomplish anything. What you are pushing against just might be the energy that your beliefs are creating. So ask yourself – what am I believing about this?

Trade Shows and Business Conferences

Conference season is fast approaching. Frankly, I love going to Trade Shows and Business Conferences for the music industry and film industry. So much of my work is on the telephone, working with Artists. It’s a real treat to see people face to face, to hang out, listen to amazing music, see new films, and really create connections.

And isn’t that the point of these industry business conferences and trade shows? Whatever our technological advances, we are, at heart, a community. And your ability to succeed in your community – the Arts and Entertainment community – is based on your relationships and your connections.

One venue operator told me that he will often see an artist at a conference two or three years in a row, watching that artist’s growth, before choosing to book them into his venue. This is partly because he only books so many acts per year, but also because he wants to have a sense of the artist’s long term commitment to his craft and his career.

So, I recommend that you plan to go to conferences every year. And that you budget it into your time and your finances, with the intention of creating long term relationships.

Don’t look for the quick fix. Don’t be a flash in the pan. Commit to your long term success and take action accordingly.

On that note, one of my favorite conferences – FARWest – has extended their deadline for showcase submissions for one more week – until July 14th. Don't miss it!

You're Hired TV Interview

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Steve Piazzale, Ph.D., star of You're Hired! for local cable channels in the San Francisco Bay Area (and possibly beyond). This is a show that's about being successful in different careers. So, of course I spoke about being successful as an Artist and making a prosperous living doing what you love. It will be airing this month on various stations around the Bay Area.

The question of whether you have to suffer or sacrifice for your art came up. I enjoyed shooting down that misconception. We here at Artist's EDGE, pride ourselves on helping artists make a prosperous living doing what you love, on your own terms and according to your own values.

The real truth is there is a price to pay for success in any arena. And that price is not necessarily selling-out. But it is the price of commitment, time, energy, consistency and investing in your own learning and growth. The misconception of having to sell your soul to the man for success seems deeply routed in the artistic mind-set. But I have found that the truer you are to yourself, the more real success you experience.

It is a bit of a soap box issue for me. The starving artist mythos. I expect you'll be hearing more about this topic in blogs to come.

Following are the Local Northern California Television stations that will be carrying the show. Check out their websites for show times:

Community Media Access Center in Gilroy, Hollister, San Juan Batista, and other nearby areas

KSAR15 In Saratoga

Pacifica TV in Pacifica

KCAT15 in Los Gatos and Monte Sereno

Do What You Love, and the Money Will Follow

I believe in this deceptively simple principle.

And if you're reading this, chances are that at least at some level, you do too ... or you want to believe it.

And, if you're like most of us ... like me ... you're also conflicted about it. You're not sure you can trust it.

Your whole life, you've been bombarded with messages that say you can't - messages telling you to do something "practical", "sensible" (read "boring") if you want to be "successful".

Driven by this inner conflict, most of us are either living the "sensible", financially comfortable, but ultimately unsatisfying life the messages have led us to ... or we're defiantly bucking the pressures of the mainstream, doing the creative work that we love, and struggling to pay the bills. Or some combination of or compromise between the two.

And since virtually everyone around us is also living according to one of these two models, the evidence seems to confirm the messages we've absorbed - that it's nearly impossible to make a prosperous living doing what most deeply moves us.

But I assert that what this really demonstrates is exactly the opposite.

People are not living unfulfilling lives because a truly prosperous creative life is impossible or unlikely or difficult. Rather we are living this way because we believe that's the case, and therefore have shaped our lives according to this belief.

So what can we do about it?

As Henry Ford once said, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right."

So if you want something other than what you've got, it's essential to remove those beliefs you've unconsciously bought into that hold you back ... and replace them with new beliefs that are consistent with the life you want.

We'll be practicing Building Your Belief Muscle in the Artist's EDGE Membership call on Monday. If you're reading this after that date, or can't make the call, fear not - a recording of it will be available to Artist's EDGE Members.

Building Your Belief Muscle

I’m very excited about the upcoming newsletter. It’s all about building your belief in yourself and your success as an artist. Belief is a funny thing. It affects what we think and feel from moment to moment. It impacts our confidence and our ability to act. It even affects the opportunities that we attract. Artists, being sensitive beings, can be easily derailed by a single errant belief. And so it’s really important to believe in yourself, in your ability to succeed, and in your fundamental worthiness of success.

But beliefs are so intrinsic, so below the radar, that most people don’t even realize they have beliefs that run their lives. And even those of us who are aware of limiting beliefs have no idea how to change them or that it’s even possible.

We believe (pun intended) that they're like the color of your eyes – you’re stuck with them. Sure you can disguise those negative beliefs, act “as-if”, but then you just end up feeling like a fraud and undermining the success you do experience. So what’s the answer?

Ah, you’ll have to read the newsletter when it comes - better sign up if you're not on the list already. If you're very patient, you can wait until it’s up on the archives page. Or better yet, come to the Members-only call on June 26th, Build Your Belief Muscle and get the real skinny!

Welcome to the Artist's EDGE Success Coaching Blog

Hello and Welcome to the Artist’s EDGE Success Coaching Blog! We’re over the moon to be finally joining the blogging world.

We are here to speak to your issues as artists around such varied topics as success, time management, business management, and – most importantly – making a prosperous living doing what you love.

So we’d like to invite you to subscribe to our blog by clicking on the appropriate button for Yahoo, Google, MSN, or your favorite blog reader – whichever is your pleasure.

If you're new to us, we invite you to sign up for our Artist’s EDGE Newsletter, filled with solutions to your most pressing problems. And if you have specific problems you would like us to address, please use the blog to let us know how we can best serve you.

Joy and Success,

The Coaches of Artist’s EDGE – Wendy and Debra

Commit to your Success
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