Well, I made it back from the Emotional Alchemy workshop in Albany, NY. It was BEAUTIFUL, but humbling, as big weather events always are. I'm grateful to be back in North Carolina!

The workshop was most interesting, and if you've not already read Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, be sure to ask for them for the holidays. I have been a big fan of his work for several years now.

I also was introduced to his wife's work. Tara Bennett-Goleman has written a book called Emotional Alchemy, which combines aspects of Jefferey Young's Schema Therapy with Mindfulness meditation and vipassana practice. She talk about us all having "the natural ability to turn our moments of confusion or emotional pain into insightful clarity." Heady stuff, and a remarkable weekend.

The other exciting thing about the weekend is that Tara and Dan are also horse people, having just gotten an Icelandic to bring into their already existing herd of two.  I introduced the idea of EAP/EAL to them, and they were most interested in what it is and how it works! I'm honored to bring this concept to their door.

Anyhow, hope you all are warm and well, and best wishes to my new friends digging out from the snow in New England!

Trailblazers, look for more from me on the Emotional Alchemy workshop shortly...

Happy Trails & Holidays!

Shannon

Prepare to think differently about the year ahead.

Look to see what’s working and what’s not.

Adjust your focus as you head into the New Year.

Now is the time to create one (a plan, that is).

PLAN. Such a simple little word that creates such stress for new entrepreneurs but provides real relief and solutions when actually done. Planning is one of the very best tools that an entrepreneur has to help save time and money. Why is planning so critical for success?

1. A plan gives you a roadmap. It helps you to focus your ideas so that you know how to put one hoof, er, foot in front of the other. As Shannon says, you’ll take a rifle approach instead of a shotgun one. This is true for marketing, budgeting, client building, grant writing, physical plant, etc.
2. A plan helps you answer the questions “Should we spend money on it?” and “Should we invest the time in it?” Makes a difference when you’re working on a shoe string budget and if you’re a small operation.

This is a great time of year to create a plan for your business. It doesn’t have to be elaborate. One of my favorite plans was designed by some clients of mine 5 years ago when they decided to start their business over dinner one night– they sketched it out on a cocktail napkin!

Two favorite resources I’ll recommend for your planning pleasure:

Attracting Perfect Customers by Stacy Hall and Jan Brogniez – An attraction based approach to doing business. Create a Strategic Attraction Plan in just 2 hours and watch your focus get clear and inspired!

The One Page Business Plan by Jim Horan – an easy to use guide with interactive exercises for the creative entrepreneur – that’s you! – helps walk you through five critical stages: vision, mission, objectives, strategies and plans.

Happy Planning!
--- Coach Elizabeth
www.elizabethbarbour.com

Having just hosted a Making EAP Work onsite workshop this past weekend, I talked a fair amount about what I call the "unsexy" part of starting and running your own EAP/EAL business. The horses, the beautiful outdoors, the "aha's" for clients...all these are the most fun and exciting parts of EAP/EAL. Talking about billing and insurance, however, just ain't fun. But is it necessary and important? If you're doing mental health it is!

I know I too have struggled with the necessary tasks of running my business, and am better and worse about tending to what needs doing. As I was thinking about it, I was reminded of a quote I have hanging on my wall, by author Stephanie Burns:

"Avoiding an unpleasant task is normal. You cannot rightly be called bad or weak or a procrastinator when avoiding or delaying unpleasant activities!

Doing an unpleasant task is not normal, it is exceptional. It requires a strategy to override this innate mechanism.

NOT learning this strategy may mean that we have to forever hope that the path of least resistance leads to an interesting place to be!"

Much of what we cover in the Making EAP Work workshop is the "unsexy" part of EAP/EAL. But what I hope I have helped our weekend workshop guests to do, and hope to help you do as well, is develop a strategy to get past the blocks that keep you stuck in the same patterns, and thus with the same results. It's my goal also to give you tools to systematize and simplify those unsexy tasks, so we can all get back out to the barn and enjoy!

Interested in more from Stephanie? I recommend her two books without hesitation: Great Lies We Live By and Move Closer, Stay Longer. I also recommend her Labyrinth course, an online course. To learn more about her, visit http://stephanieburns.com/.

Happy Trails!

Shannon

When I started my business six years ago, I didn’t have a dime to do marketing or get any marketing materials done professionally. It took some ingenuity to make myself look presentable in a tough market. Sound familiar?

As the New Year looms close, the perennial problem of marketing on a tight budget comes to a head. Start-up and smaller programs rarely have the budget for professional marketing collateral, and even larger programs are loathe to having every flyer and handout professionally produced. Here’s a few pointers to create respectable marketing materials when dollars are limited:

• If you have to choose one thing over another, invest in your logo. And use a bona fide graphic designer; you will get what you pay for.
• Keep your message very basic and straightforward. Have a headline, a few key points, a closing statement, and your logo. Put contact information at the bottom of the page.
• Work with one basic font.
• Give the eye breathing room on the page by leaving plenty of empty space (called white space) around your message elements.
• Think spare. Make it easy for the eye to go where it’s supposed to go. Your headline should be large, bold, and prominent. Your logo should be second in prominence. Body copy and all other info should be standard 12- or 14-point type.
• Use the same design for all your materials. Together, your materials should all look like they came from the same place, not four different companies.

Simple always translates more credibly and professionally. A sure sign of novice design is going crazy with font styles, sizes, colors, photos, and graphics. A professional designer uses white space extensively; a novice creates wall-to-wall words. If do-it-yourself design looks like a long-term proposition, invest in a class on layout and design, and read design books to educate yourself further.

Even better, if you’ve come across more creative ideas for producing marketing collateral on a do-it-yourself budget, leave a comment below. We’d love to share!

When your flyers, brochures, handouts, and folders look respectable, it goes a long way toward projecting a respectable image for your program as well.

Peace,
Brenda
www.CreativeInc.net

Grantwriting has been on my mind a lot lately, as we head into Winter. Things get a little quieter in December & January, so we turn our attention to developing a grantwriting schedule for the next year, and to clearing away the time to write the grants we've selected to apply for in 2008.

A recent telecall with myself and Lisa Wheeler, Practice Adminstrator here at Horse Sense, went line-by-line through a grant we wrote last year for a local community foundation. The call was, by all accounts, quite informative and helpful to those participating. I had a great time talking about it all, too!

If you only have time to read a few lines about grantwriting, here are three key points about developing Measurable Objectives for your grants from the recent call:

Measurable Objectives should be...

• Carefully crafted to be succinct and truly measurable
• Relevant and significant in terms of the population you wish to serve
• Something you can live with! Don't say you'll follow up with clients every day for a year, or else you'll have to!

If you have a little more time, sign up for the second telecall in the series, scheduled for December 19th from 2-3pm. In this call, we'll help you develop a grantwriting cycle for 2008, and tell you the key items you need to have already written and ready to go to be prepared for those grants, so you're not going crazy at the deadline!

If you are super-invested in getting your grantwriting ready for the new year, join us for the December 19th telecall and get the MP3 of the telecall from November. You can listen to the information-packed call over and over again to get all the important details.

Questions about Grantwriting? Email me at shannon@HorseSenseOtc.com

All the best,

Shannon