Imagine Your Reality

The latest episode of Social Media Coach Radio is up.

I was a guest blogger on Search Engine Optimization Portland in a post about how to use video effectively on your website.

My latest article on Biznik focuses on how to take your social networking to the next level.

Upcoming Classes

Social Networking for Business 101

If you want to leverage your social networking profiles on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook, and other social networking sites to market your business, this message is for YOU:

Join us on Monday October 26th, 2009 at 1pm for a special 4 hour class on how to set-up and optimize your social networking profiles, where you will learn the following:

• How to claim your personalized url for Linkedin and Facebook, and why it’s important to do it.
• How to optimize your social networking profiles for search results and as a way to market your business.
• How to connect your social networks to each other.
• The key to developing effective connections on different social networking sites.

• Organize your thoughts, pick a key message
• Use current events to keep your status updates relevant.
• Write DREAMY, attention-grabbing copy

Social Networking for Business: One half day delivers killer writing and optimized social networking profiles!

Register here

Seating is limited register early.

Eight Steps to a Successful Social Media Marketing Plan

This is a 12 Week Webinar for Business Owners who are great at what they do, but feel overwhelmed when it comes to Social Media Marketing

If you’re like most business owners you’re frustrated by social media technology and having to fit it into your already busy schedule. Additionally having to learn how to market yourself on social media can be intimidating because it also involves learning the correct social media etiquette as well as the tools.

You feel discouraged because you know social media is becoming more important for marketing a business but don’t how to use the technology or you do know how to use it, but wonder why no one ever responds to your posts.

We meet twelve times over four months and will go through the 8 steps to a success social media marketing plan. You’ll work on setting up your social media presence and gradually develop a successful social media marketing plan.

You’ll be part of a powerful group of entrepreneurs who own businesses, just like you, who want to get unstuck with social media. You’ll learn the technology AND the marketing together.

The sessions will be a very focused combination of teaching, sharing, feedback, and support.

At the end, everyone will have a completed social media marketing plan and presence to take into 2010!

To register, please go here.

I just finished updating me website. If you haven’t visited it before or been back in a while, go check it out: Imagine Your Reality

This week’s radio show is with Feroshia Knight of the Baraka Institute. Next week’s interview is with the editors of Single Parent Magazine.

Why Multi-Media is Important for your Business and Writing

Multi-media is an increasingly important element of a successful business. And having a website is no longer enough, because while a website is an important element, people want more contact than a website can provide. Blogs, podcasts, videocasts, online social networking, and much more are multi-media components that successful businesses, and writers, need in order to reach out and connect with their clientele.

A blog, such as this one, not only connects with your database of readers, but also people who happen to come across it thanks to search terms and tags.

A podcast, such as my radio interviews, allows people to hear your voice and find out more about what you do.

Videocasting provides a further interaction because people can actually see you and hear you, providing nearly full access to both verabl and body language.

Multi-media gives writers and businesses an opportunity to let your clients interact with you on a variety of levels, which goes beyond just purchasing a product getting a service from you. Clients can rate your authority, share bookmarked and tagged sites about your business and/or writing and otherwise communicate a lot about you.

Your responsibility as a writer or business person is to be proactive and get involved with the different forms of multimedia so that you can make your own mark and provide your clients with more ways to get in touch with you, even as you connect with them about what you or they are already doing. Using multi-media doesn’t have to be hard. There are even ways to automate a lot of the multimedia, so that your workload is significantly cut down. I’ll discuss some of the ways to automate your technology in the coming weeks.

This week’s radio show is a half hour show about books I’ve been reading and how applicable they are to business, marketing, and related topics. Next week’s show is with Feroshia Knight from the Baraka Institute.

For today’s newsletter, I want to focus on the importance of good copy for your writing. What I do mean by copy? Copy is a specific type of writing. When you read a magazine ad, you are reading copy writing. When you got a website and see the sales writing on the site, that’s copy writing.

For both business and writers, copy writing is an essential element of your marketing. It not only informs, but it also persuades. Good copy writing expresses why someone should want to buy your product or service, but it isn’t too pushy or over the top. In fact, what I frequently observe of bad copy writing is that it tends to exaggerate the benefits that someone will get by buying a particualr product or service. Bad copywriting is like a bad salesman…it oversells the product or service.

So what makes good copy?

Writing which is coherent and to the point. It should state the case for the service or product without condescension or exaggeration. It should offer a description of what the service or product is as well as a list of benefits the person will obtain from said service or product. It should be short and to the point.

For writers, one of the best ways to learn how to write copy is read the back cover blurbs of books you enjoy reading. You’ll note that that they have a very limited space. They have to be able to offer a summary and description of what the book is about (and in some cases how the reader will benefit from reading the book) in a few paragraphs and perhaps a bulleted list of selling points. The backcover blurb is a concise statement that either convinces someone to read the book or put it back on the shelf.

Inevitably whether you are a writer or business owner you will have to write copy. Even if you write up a workshop description, you are writing copy. It is important to learn how to write effective copy. While I’ve mentioned looking at and/or practicing writing a backcover blurb for a book, here’s another exercise to try:

If you enjoy going to conventions or simply know someone who is offering workshops, take a look at the workshop description, and while reading it, pay attention to your emotional response. If your response is one of disinterest or reluctance, ask yourself what about the writing makes you feel that way. If your response is one of interest or enthusiasm again ask yourself what made you respond that way. Copy writing ultimately focuses on appealing to the emotions of a person. The goal is to make a person want to buy or attend something and the way to do that is to appeal to the emotions of a person. By reading the copy that other people have written you can learn about what styles work and don’t work.

The next step is to actually start writing copy. When yo uwrite copy, don’t copy and paste from what other people have written. Sit down and write it out and then test it on a few people. If they don’t find it interesting, test it one a few more and if the response is the same, revise the copy and try again. You’ll quickly get a handle on writing copy and a as a result will get people interested in what you have to offer.

This week Kare Anderson of Say It Better Center was interviewed by me about the elements of communication and public speaking. We also had a guest caller, the very first! Next week I will be doing half-hour show on books I have found enjoyable and useful in my journey to grow my business and change my thinking on prosperity. These books include Think Two Products Ahead by Ben Mack, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker.

The Business of Writing

I’ve focused a lot on small business and different aspects of small business that business owners need to consider as they work to grow and/or maintain their businesses. I am also a writing coach, and so for the next few posts I’m going to focus more on the business of writing. However business owners who read this newsletter shouldn’t tune out, because what I’m writing about is applicable to running a small business, and also because writing is a method for teaching people about your business.

When a lot of writers think about writing, they usually imagine themselves in a study or library writing away without a care in the world. The reality of writing, is that while actually doing writing is very important, there are other aspects involving writing which are equally important. Writing to publish a book means that you’ve chosen writing as a career choice. Now you might stop me and say, “But I work a full-time job. I don’t have time for another career!” Instead of telling you not to write that book, I’ll just say that writing can be a part-time career, but once you decide you really want to publish a book writing does become a career.

The reason writing becomes a career is because at that point you are committing yourself to developing a marketing platform or position which highlights your skills as an expert on the subject and also shows publishers that you are willing to do a variety of activities to promote your book, so that it will sell. It’s no longer just about the writing. And while writing is still an essential component of what you do, it’s not the only component or activity. For many authors, this is a hard reality to face, because many of them come into writing unprepared to market themselves, with a rosy vision that the publisher will not only arrange book signings and publicity events, but also cover all the travel costs of the author. While this can occur for an author, it’s rare for it to happen, and the author is someone who is usually well-established and well-known.

By approaching writing as a career you can plan on how to market your writing and promote yourself as an authority. Additionally you can get involved in public speaking and make money offering speeches on your area of expertise, while also selling your book. Writing as a career involves learning many skills that can help you communicate better in your writing, and result in writing sequels to what you’ve already published. In subsequent editions of this newletter we will focus on particular aspects of the business of writing, so tune in to learn more about what makes a writer successful.

Table of Contents

Wealth and Your Attitude

Book Review: Sell the Feeling by Larry Pinci and Phil Glosserman

DIY Planner

Upcoming Workshops

Article: Wealth and your Attitude

I recently wrote a post about wealth on my personal journal. In it I wrote about various people, places, and other parts of my life that made me feel wealthy. The one thing I didn’t write about was money, not because money isn’t a reality in my life, or even a form of wealth, but because having money in and of itself does not make a person wealthy. It’s what you do with the money that determines the wealth it generates for you. A person can be technically rich, and yet live a miserable life. Is that person wealthy? Not really. The satisfaction a person feels with his or her life is what generates wealth.

Don’t get me wrong though…having a sound financial plan, and good attitudes about money is an important cornerstone of wealth. In fact your attitude, in general, is what really determines the wealth you manifest in your life. If you’re a chronic complainer, always looking at what seems to be going wrong, then no matter how much money you have, you’re still not wealthy. In fact, chances are you’ll end up sabotaging yourself in some manner unless you change those attitudes.

The attitude you apply to your life is a good barometer of what is happening to you internally. If you feel unhappy on a consisten basis, try figuring out what makes you unhappy. By figuring it out and changing it, you can change your situation and your attitude, which in turn can help you start finding other opportunities for happiness and wealth.

The attitude we apply to life determines what we get out of life. If you consistently find yourself looking for the negative in everything, then that’s exactly what you’ll find. Some of the work I do with my clients involves helping them reframe their negative attitudes into positive outcomes, by showing them how they can take a situation that seems to be negative and change the motivation for that negativity into a desire for a positive outcome. Look at your motivations and ask yourself what emotion or desire is fed by that motivation. For instance if you find yourself saying:

I don’t like working at this job because it takes time away from pursuing my art.

Look at how the negative is emphasized over the positive. A solution isn’t offered in the above sentence. But if you reframe that sentence and your way of thinking, you change your attitude and encourage your abundance in life.

I will find work that allows me to pursue my art is a much a better sentence and way of thinking than the previous example.

Next time you find yourself feeling negative, try looking at how you think about and phrase a situation and see if changing that around can help you change your attitude and increase your awareness of opportunities that manifest wealth.

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Book Review: Sell the Feeling by Larry Pinci and Phil Glosserman

The authors utilize a story based approach to explain how successful sales works. The story format is a useful way of sharing ideas. At times though it can work against the message of the authors, particularly as they try to sell readers on going to their website. I suppose they might argue that it’s good selling, but at the same time, it also can work against what they really to explain. There’s the occasional little contradiction as well, but overall the explanation behind how sales works, and steps you can improve your sales makes the book worth a read or two. I know it reminded me of some of the skills I have at my disposal that I sometimes forgot I have. The stories and illustrations provide good examples of the principles involved and that can make it helpful for someone trying to learn how to sell.

4 out of 5 stars.

DIY Planner

D*I*Y Planner is the brain child of one Douglas Johnston, a Canadian who went and created his own planning form solutions after being disenchanted by what was on the market. These forms organize time, thoughts and projects. Giving back to the internet community, he published them for free under a Creative Commons license. They have been downloaded over 800,000 times in the past few years. The website is a community that launched in 2005 to bring people with a passion for productivity methods, creativity, and sharing their experiences. We offer the latest D*I*Y Planner forms, as well as free forms created by our members; a forum of extensive topics ranging from specific productivity types to personal creative endeavors; and a large library of articles written weekly by a talented blogging staff. Our articles range from sharing experiences with productivity to incorporating writing and art into your everyday life to product reviews. D*I*Y Planner is a non-profit project, with a part-time volunteer staff.

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Upcoming workshops

June 7th, 2008 from Noon to 6pm

Come to The Guiding Tree at 4831 SE Division St, Portland OR 97206 for the follow workshops offered by author, innovator, and life coach, Taylor Ellwood:

Body Consciousness: A new paradigm for embracing your body and living your life

In this interactive workshop, we will combine reflective internal meditation with breathing practices and path working techniques that will leave you feeling connected to your body and revitalized in how you live your life. If you’ve felt dis-ease or unhealthy, this workshop will offer you a new paradigm about your body and what it has to tell you about the healthy life you can live. Even if you feel healthy, come to this workshop and get in touch the consciousness of your body.

Come ready to:

• Connect to your body and appreciate it for the miracle it is.
• Listen to the consciousness of your body to learn how to live healthier Work with your residual body image to help you pinpoint how you can change your relationship to your body.
• Learn a meditation that you can use to talk with your body at any time.

Breathe Easy: Simple techniques to energize your life with breath

Each breath taken offers you the potential to live a full life. In this interactive workshop, we’ll learn breathing techniques that will help you feel more energized and aware of your body’s health. When you leave, you will know how to use breath to both relax you and dissolve internal tension and stress.

I will show you how you can even change negative behavior patterns into positive life affirming outcomes.

Come ready to:

• Dissolve internal tensions and blockages Identity and change negative behavior into positive outcomes Breathe easy and enjoy life with renewed vigor Learn how to empty your body of negative emotions and revitalize your energetic self.

Become Who You Want To Be: A Workshop On Identity and You

Have you ever wanted to be someone else? Or have you wished you had more confidence in what you did or felt more focused in achieving your goals in life? How would you feel if you could create a new identity that would let you feel that confidence? In this workshop, I’m going to introduce you to an innovative method where you can create a persona and become that persona when you need it. I will show you how to identify key attributes that will help you define the persona that you create. You will use those attributes to create a Neuro-Linguistic Programming anchor which you can then use to invoke the persona when you need it.

Energize your life: Techniques for creating change in your life

Your energy is your life. If you feel drained after a long workday or being around certain people this workshop is for you! You’ll learn the principle that where your attention your energy flows. We’ll try on some energy work techniques you can use to maximize the energy in your life, while also safeguarding it from energetic leeches and other potential problems. When you leave this call, you will come away with new skills you can use to energize your life everywhere you go.

Come prepared to:

• Learn how to sense your own energy and other people’s energy.
• Adapt yourself energetically and emotionally to your environment.
• Protect yourself from energetic leeches, drama llamas, and anyone else who makes you feel drained.
• Recognize where your attention is going and your energy is flowing so you can reclaim your energy for yourself.

Total cost for the day: $80

Total cost for your sense of health, well-being, and abundance: priceless.

To register call (503)-239-7458 or call (503)-869-0163 or contact us here.

I realized something today. I was taking a teleconference marketing class on how get more clients and I realized that I still had a nebulous ideal of who my clients are. But as I got to thinking about it, I realized who my kind of client is.

My client is the person who tells him or herself that s/he should be happy with what she or he has or is doing, but struggles everyday to find any sense of success or happiness with what he or she is doing. My client is the person who tells him or herself that she or he is content, even when in reality she or he is actually dissatisfied with his or her life and doesn’t know what to do to find satisfaction. My client is the person who settles for less, but knows she or he deserves more. My client feels blocked, creatively, or in the ability to live life. My client wants help and sometimes she or he doesn’t even know it. My client chooses to just get by, but what my clients wants is to really start living life. My client complains about the circumstances in his or her life, but doesn’t know how to move past the complaints and start changing his or her life.

Know someone like that? Refer that person to my website at http://www.imagineyourreality.com

I can show my clients how to turn their imaginations into realities where they start living the life they deserve and stop giving up on themselves and their dreams.

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I’m now a certified hypnotist through the Hypnosis Motivation Institute. What this means is that I know how to hypnotize people. I plan on pursuing further education in hypnotherapy in the near future. This certification is another step in achieving my goal of being able to provide a variety of self-help servies to my clients so that they can benefit and change their lives.

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My latest article on DIY planner is on meditation and how meditation is used to organize your thoughts and plans, and how it can be used to help you use your planner efficiently.

Workshop at the Body Mind Spirit Expo

Oregon Convention Hall B Room 2

777 NE Martin Luther King Blvd, Portland, OR

10AM to 11AM April 19th

Breathe Easy: Simple techniques to energize your life with breath

Each breath taken offers you the potential to live a full life. In this interactive workshop, we’ll learn breathing techniques that will help you feel more energized and aware of your body’s health. When you leave, you will know how to use breath to both relax you and dissolve internal tension and stress.

I will show you how you can even change negative behavior patterns into positive life affirming outcomes.

FREE Teleconferences

Wednesday April 30th from 7pm to 9pm (PST Time)

Making Your Financial Attitude Work

Financial management is treated by many as an intimidating task to be dealt with as little as possible. However it doesn’t have to be that way. In this workshop, we explore some common attitudes people have about money and financial attitudes and then I show you techniques and strategies you can use to organize your finances and actually have fun learning about how to make your money work for you, instead of working for it. We’ll explore the role of individual choice and show that individual choice plays a larger role in how you handle finances than the broad economic trends. To Register click here or call Taylor at 503-869-0163

Monday May 5th

5 p.m. to 6 p.m. (PST time) 8 p. m. to 9 p. m. (EST Time)

How to get your book published and what to do once it is published

You’ve got some great ideas and you have friends who tell you that you should write a book. But is that all there is to the writing industry? In this workshop, I’ll offer you my perspective as an experienced writer and editor for a small press company. We’ll explore the importance of promotion, marketing, and of course writing. If you want to get a book published, come to this workshop to learn what to do to get your book ready for a publisher. You will also learn what to do once the book is published and available. To Register click here or call Taylor at 503-869-0163

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Read my latest article in DIY Planner on using bullets in your planner to inspire your creativity!

What you think is what you manifest, or to put it a different way, where thought goes, the energy flows.

This concept has been around for a long time. You find it in metaphysical books, books on finance, books on psychology and even books on physics. And there is some truth to it. How you approach situations in life mentally can determine how those situations resolve. A person who sets out to accomplish a goal and imprints that goal in his or her mind will likely achieve that goal.

On the other hand, it’s easy to sabotage yourself with your thoughts. For a long time I sabotaged any sense of happiness I had with a belief that I had to struggle to achieve that happiness. It wasn’t until I spent time really looking at that belief that I was able to change it…and change my life. I spent a lot of time meditating and examining where that pattern had come from before I could change it, because I had to know where it came from in order to know how to let it go. Turns out my mom had always held the belief that life was a struggle. When I realized where I had gotten that belief from, I asked myself if I had to continue to hold to that belief and I realized that I didn’t have to anymore. I let it go, and embraced the belief that I don’t have to struggle for happiness. Since then my life has gotten a lot easier, because I’ve been able to look at situations differently and not create or embrace a struggle.

A current pattern of thought I’m working through is a tendency to generalize. I’ve caught myself in the last month making generalized statements which aren’t really representative of the people or situations they’ve been applied to. Instead of being specific or even admitting that perhaps the only person holding that view is me, it’s been easier to apply a general statement. A generalized statement avoids responsibility, however, because it passes the buck onto other people, without really accepting the responsibility for who is really making that statement (me!)

While the concept that thoughts can shape and create reality is a powerful concept, it’s important to acknowledge that this concept can be used for your own good or ill. Recognizing the patterns of thought that lead to unhealthy behavior can help you recognize changes that you may wish to make in your life. Recognizing patterns of thought that lead to healthy behaviors can help you reinforce and support those thoughts.

A good way to recognize how you think is to spend time meditating. The concept that meditation is about emptying the mind is only partially correct. In fact, sometimes meditation is about simply standing back and listening to what you think so that you can recognize what you think about and how you think about it. In meditation you might pick a specific area of life, such as finances, and meditate on your thoughts about finances in order to figure out what beliefs you hold about finances. To change a belief, meditate on the thought, ask it for its history, where it came from, and when you know what that is, dissolve it, let it go into the rhythm of your breath, so that it is formless energy returned to the wholeness of your being, to become something healthier.

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I just had an article publisher on DIYplanner.com on the importance of planning a day when you’re in between jobs.

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SERVICES

It’s April now, and the weather in Portland is a mixture of sun, rain, and hail, and clouds, every fifteen or so minutes. It’s actually quite beautiful, if somewhat chaotic. Is your life chaotic. Are you finding yourself bombarded by a variety of experiences or opportunities? The key to handling that chaos is to find the right balance and sense of priority with each opportunity that comes your way.

Whole Person Design

Do you have an area of your life that you want to change? I help individuals and groups manifest healthy, positive changes, with a recognition of how that change effects not only the person seeking change, but also the environment around that person.

If one area of life is changing, other areas of life will change as well. If you’re ready to ramp the changes in your life up and go to the next level, contact me at imagineyourreality@gmail.com for a free half hour consultation that could change your life.

Taylor Ellwood

Imagineyourreality.com