In June 2008, I decided to do something I’d never done… create a community of like-spirited entrepreneurs who would get together twice a month by phone for the sole reason of giving each other support, learning the shortcuts and honoring their energy in business. This was the longest commitment I’d made in my business (I’m a catalyst – I do what I do – I get in – I get out!). I didn’t know how long it would last, but month by month, it became a staple of creating more of what we want in our lives and businesses through this connection point.

We talked about energy issues, how to do technical stuff, what to say when talking about our businesses, and the sticking points that kept us looped into old patterns. We talked about energy vampires, and clearing our energy to stay centered, and how our soul talks to us through what we’re doing daily. And it’s been my honor to shepherd our hearty band through a lot of growing. I’m in gratitude for the courage, commitment and candor that the members of the Catalyst Club have shared with me for the last year and a half. To every member of the Club who has ever been, thank you for being.

One of our esteemed members, Mike, wrote a poem that sums up our collective experience beautifully. I just had to share it… (it touches my heart every time I read it… thank you, Mike).

The Catalyst Club

Once there was a catalyst

Who aimed to bring us all more bliss

She formed a club that met by air

And guided us to feel and dare

She closed her eyes and tuned within

To bring to us more yang and yin

Her woo poured out and gave a psychic lift

Allowing us to make a shift

We made some friends and clicked on ning

We shared our highs and tried to bring

Our hearts into our working day

And smoothed our way with feng shui

We talked and cried and found our soul

And let it flow to make our business whole

The club that lived only in space

Has filled its members with God’s grace.

MRN

11/20/09

It’s a transition and a celebration of what’s to come. With gratitude and appreciation for what’s been up until now, here’s to the Catalyst Club and beyond… ~~~

There is an emerging ‘idea bank’ behind the ‘new’ models of successful entrepreneuring, and this idea bank includes such concepts as:

* Be who you are to be successful.

* Live from your passion.

* Risk taking what matters to you and share it with the world. 

That’s all well and good, but how can you tell when you are living into those qualities?

Easy… when you are pulling the power of your soul through everything you do, including your business.

Here are three questions to help you hear your soul’s message:

1. What would you (Universe, Source, Higher Power, etc.) have me do?

2. How do I feel about what I am doing in this moment?

3. Am I now best using what is available to me (time, energy and resources) to live my purpose?

The answers to these questions are your soul guiding you to what will bring you to your next best level.

You already know everything you need to know, whenever you need to know it. The challenge is that you either don’t have conscious access to it, you don’t know how to interpret the messages, or you don’t know how to apply what you know. However, many (if not most) people run around seeking their answers from the outside, looking to others for direction and asking for validation about who they are and how they are showing up in the world.

There’s a difference between knowing what you know and building your skills, just as there is a difference between know what you know and being willing to receive guidance on how to best focus that knowledge.

Make no mistake – I’m not advocating that people don’t connect with each other or participate in a community or work with a mentor. That’s exactly the point… when you rely on the intuitive genius of your being, you will have greater discernment about who to share your time and energy with and what to spend it on as well as being aware of who is in best vibrational resonance with you. This is about listening to your own wisdom to make better choices and investments of your precious energy.

The intuitive genius of your being is your personal antenna for assessing your world. It’s your inner compass, your personal navigator and your own fail-safe system for awareness. Your intuitive genius within won’t let you make a mistake, if you listen and speak the language of your soul.

Three Things You Can Do Today

1. Engage with life and then listen. It’s when you are in motion, dancing with life and meeting other people that you get more information. Just as a weather vane can’t do its job if there is no wind, the intuitive genius of your being needs life energy to stay vibrant. The difference is rather than seeking to find yourself where you are not (outside yourself, in other people), you are focused on the insights you are receiving from your intuitive genius.

2. Learn your language. Go back to the past for examples of how your intuitive genius has given you information previously. You may discover the last time X happened, Y is the message you got and maybe didn’t listen to it so Z was the result. For example, you wanted to take a particular route when driving but it just felt ‘off’ so you took that route anyway and found yourself in a traffic jam that you could have avoided. There are myriads of examples in your own life where you could have listened to a message but you might not have recognized it, blew it off or thought you were making it up. Learn the language of your intuitive genius so you can apply it to what’s happening in your life and business right now.

3. Consider the present. What’s sticking you or holding you back or something that you don’t want to deal with? Where are you waiting for someone to give you an answer that you already know? Are you waiting for permission instead of simply doing what you know needs to be done? There are messages waiting for you right now about your world that can help you make better decisions. Check in with the present to start receiving your insights.

Tap into the power of the intuitive genius of your being to shift your world. No longer will you need others to tell you what you already know; instead, you’ll be living from it.

Amy Porterfield of Social Media Examiner shares important news on what is happening in the world of social media. Here are a few of the major recent findings:

By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. adults will use Twitter monthly. Studies have shown that in 2009, Twitter will be accessed by 18 million U.S. adults on a monthly basis (which is a 200% increase over 2008). It will continue to grow an estimated 44% in 2010.

In September 2009, Facebook officially hit 300 million users, making the social networking site nearly as large as the U.S. population.

Americans spend 17% of online time on Social Media sites. Americans are now spending a lot more time on social networking sites as social media platforms continue to grow. There has been a 6% increase in time spent at social networking sites.

Advertisers are paying attention to this trend as online ad spending increased by 119% to $108 million in August 2009.

Check out the full article here: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-must-read-social-media-marketing-studies/

Those of you following me for some time know that I like to get information from various esoteric tools, and share it in case you find it provocative and insightful. The object of my most recent attention is today’s date – November 11, 2009, or 11:11:11 (by adding 2 + 9 of 2009).

This is the first time this master number has shown up in a date (in what I understand our lifetime!), which is big energy on a number of levels.

To begin, 11 is the master psychic’s number, and focuses on intuition, spiritual truth, ideals and being a conduit for high vibration energy and insights. It’s not about being risky, reckless or even speculative; in fact, it’s the opposite. It’s making choices and decisions from a deep knowingness that transcends the surface ‘look’ of a situation, circumstances or relationship. When you (or any of us) operate from that place, you are following your unique insights, which is the only place to enhance our true creativity. Looking for the short, obvious answers stunts our growth, the remedy of which is to know what we know and be responsible for it.

The primary energy of 11:11:11 is (naturally enough) 1 energy, which is about leadership, new beginnings, fresh starts, pioneering, independence, self-awareness, consciousness, leading your own life and taking care of your own needs; however, the shadow side of 1 energy includes being selfish, arrogant, aggressive, egotistical and lacking tact.  The 1 + 1 energy of 11 is the number of connection – if you know that 1 + 1 equals two, but it doesn’t feeeeel right, it’s a sign that you’ve overlooked some details and your intuition is talking to you to help you connect the dots.

The 11.11 energy invites being fully accountable for your actions and how you are living your life from an evolved perspective. When not fully expressed, the shadow energy of 11 is living in fantasy, instability, paranoia, un-balanced, ignorant, manipulative, with an irrational fear of change and self-sabotage. It’s a powerful number that can offer clarity or delusion, depending on how you relate to it.

The 11 energy helps us to see things from different perspectives – even the 11 (when laid sideways) becomes an equal sign (=).  And 11 is made up of two 1s, symbolizing humanity by the 1 looking at itself (think 1:1 with the colon as the mirror). The 11 energy represents both the one person but also the ‘we’ that is formed by two. It is the individual reflecting on oneself at a deep level (not just the surface image) to grow into self-acceptance and more full contribution to the whole. 

11:11:11 (the date today) adds up to the number 6, which is the number of domestic responsibilities, home, family, stability, accountability and balance. The 6 energy teaches how to make the ‘right’ decisions, to rise above small-mindedness and to see the hidden aspects of your priorities and decisions – they have to go beyond your own interests to include your “family” (whether biological or chosen). There aren’t any quick fixes in the six vibration; instead, it’s about patience and taking time to let things grow (as we do with children).

In this energy, you are the parent – to shepherd positive growth, to teach, be a good role model, and be fully expressed from the inside out – for yourself and the people in your world. This may require some healing from the inside out too, which means letting go of that which you know no longer serves you emotionally, physically, intellectually, energetically, spiritually. This is the time to release those old patterns and heal, as the power of profound insights supports your change.

May you discover your insights and illuminated path by using the 11:11:11 energy today and beyond.

There are many paths to being an entrepreneurial business owner, and many of them may feel ‘accidental’. Somehow customers find you for something you didn’t think of as valuable, or you fall into having a business through inheritance or just doing what’s fun as a college kid that just kept going. Sometimes it’s because you just wanted to do a part-time business that was interesting and challenging because your job wasn’t fulfilling and, lo and behold, your business takes off!

In whatever way it happens, or even if it hasn’t happened yet but you can feel your spirit pulling you toward entrepreneuring, there’s a lot that occurs in the learning curve. You might think you are hanging your shingle to do what you want to do, but you’re actually signing up to do that and more in terms of everything else you never knew you could or would have to do in terms of marketing, operations, administration, finances and more. I often say that entrepreneuring is the accelerated personal development program on steroids… it isn’t for the faint of heart!

Then the danger becomes that you get caught up in the day to day struggle of trying to keep ahead of the needs of your business, of knowing enough, of trying to cover all the bases and sometimes that can take the joy out of why you started it in the first place. Or, you get a decade or two down the road and suddenly realize you’re not where you thought you would be by now, mostly because it doesn’t feel like you thought it would. And that’s the secret to increasing your business results… how it feeeeeels to be in business.

If it’s not fun, why are you doing it? What’s not feeling good about it? Is it everything or is it just that a few things need tweaking? See, the message is in the struggle, and we humans measure struggle by how we feel about it. The more we don’t like it, the bigger the message that it’s time to figure out how to do it differently.

Whether you’re in business yet or want to be, your business is a reflection of who you are and it’s where you will likely be spending a lot of your time and energy. If it doesn’t feel good more often than not, if you don’t feel like you’re making a significant difference, if you aren’t happy in your day, there’s a growth opportunity waiting for you.

Your business IS a spiritual calling when you are a soul-driven entrepreneur. It’s going beyond the basics AND the complexities of entrepreneuring to feeling your soul’s calling and making it manifest through your business. When you harness the power of your soul, your unique natural talents and wisdom, and feel really good about it, you increase your productivity, obstacles will seem to melt away and you will know what to do next in every moment. And THAT is the winning combination to create powerful, positive, and sometimes dramatic, business results.

The reason it’s so secret is that many entrepreneurs are too busy to stop and feel what’s happening, or they may devalue what they feel because they don’t know how to change what they’re doing or because the world seems to reflect a different perspective and they don’t yet have the personal power to overthrow traditional and social convention to be who they are in their businesses.

It’s only when you are in the flow of your feelings, and they feel goooooood, that your business can flourish. And that’s a secret you can take to the bank!