The Successful Dilettante
September 5, 2007 - Issue 29 - ISSN 1935-48866
Editor: Susan Henderson, coach@susanhenderson.com
Visit our website at: www.susanhenderson.com
In This Issue
1) Greetings/News
2) Susan's Musings - The Slash Effect
3) Featured guest: Felicia Slattery
With her expertise in communication, Felicia teaches other home-based entrepreneurs how to effectively present their best image in order to enjoy increased cash flow with communication skills. This creative mulitpreneur walks her talk.
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Greetings/News
Welcome aboard the good ship Lollipop! I am so pleased to make your acquaintance. Please feel free to contact me with questions, thoughts and your own story of how you came to learn that you, too, are a person wired to honor your innate curiousity and desire to make a living--full or part-time-- doing what "floats your boat." Once again, you join "successful dilettantes" from near and far, many who generously share their stories with us. This has been and continues to be a great ride. So glad to have you aboard.
Announcements
For many of us September is a time of fresh starts and new learning. If you know you are ready to redesign your career/life and would like help sorting through your options, coaching may be just the right thing to propel you into action. I have some openings in my practice and would be delighted to chat with you to see if I might be the right coach to help transition you from where you are to where you want to be. Contact me to set up time to chat.
Isn't it time you quit working in isolation? Nothing beats the support, accountibility, and brain-storming you get in a small mastermind group. Do yourself a favor and act now. Take the assessment and download an application to see if a Power of Five Mastermind Group is right for you. Groups forming now. http://www.susanhenderson.com/mastermind.html
Also, if you haven't had a chance yet to sign up for my ecourse, Five Secrets to Making a Living as a Creative Multipreneur, hop on over to www.creativemultipreneurs.com to learn more, read some great testimonials, and take the assessment to see if you fit the profile of a creative multipreneur.
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Susan's Musings - The Slash Effect
I am recommending a book to you here that I have only just started reading, but I feel so strongly that it could help you in your quest to figure out your own multipreneurial life that I feel an urgency to share it with you right now.
The name of the book is One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model For Work/Life Success (or as it also says on the cover: How "The Slash Effect" Can Work For You) by Marci Alboher who bills herself as an author/speaker/coach.
This book is filled with wonderful and inspiring stories of the many people the author has met and interviewed who are what she calls "slashes" -- people pursuing multiple vocations.
She says: "Listening to their stories, I realized that people who have figured out how to add slashes to their lives are an incredibly fulfilled bunch, both in what they think of as work and what they think of as life."
Part 1 introduces the kinds of people who develop slash careers and the many ways those careers tend to unfold. While Part 2 gets down to the nitty-gritty of how slash lives work once the pieces are in place.
I believe this is a great addition to your bookshelf alongside Barbara Sher's Refuse to Choose: A Revolutionary Guide For Doing Everything That You Love and Margaret Lobenstine's The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One.
And, soon to be joined by Chris King's book for Portfolio Careerists and my own book in progress for Creative Multipreneurs.
Isn't it great to finally be praised and encouraged in our pursuit of multiple vocations and interests rather than made to feel something is wrong with us because we can't/won't choose just one?
Hugs,
Susan
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Featured Guest: Felicia Slattery
Today's guest is such an inspiration. I first came to know of her through our mutual association with Alicia Forest's Client Abundance teleclasses and products. I signed up for her free ecourse on communication and was quite pleased with its rich content. Because I was on her list, I received a link to an audio of a teleclass she had given earlier on and that hooked me. I love her clear, direct, and self-assured style of teaching communication skills. She is a smart, warm, and generous woman who has created a great life for herself as a crative multipreneur.
SH: Felicia, how have you come to enjoy your life as a creative multipreneur?
FS: When I was a little girl, my favorite game was school—but only if I could be the teacher. I’ve been a teacher all my life and as a result, almost everything I have done has led me to using my creative talents to teach others.
I have multiple careers running simultaneously and each has been successful in its own right. First, I completed two master’s degrees, one in adult education and training and one in communication and have been teaching communication skills at colleges and universities around the Chicago area for more than a decade. I am a published researcher and writer, with my work featured in a popular textbook. Also as part of my academic career, I coach students on improving their public speaking skills.
Second, I have combined my expertise in communication and education to create a consulting and coaching practice. I teach small, mostly home-based business owners effective communication skills so they can generate more cash flow and better customer service. I also work with corporations training their employees in “soft skills;” things like listening, customer service, persuasive communication, non-verbal communication, and the like.
Third, my hobby since I was a child is scrapbooking. Since learning the proper tools and archival techniques while in my 20s, I have taught at local scrapbook stores, expos and conventions, received a “Bachelor of Scrapbooking Arts” from Creating Keepsakes University, and became a published (and paid!) scrapbook artist, having my work featured in one of the most popular scrapbook publications in the US. A few nights a month I still teach at my local scrapbook store.
Fourth, my husband is also an entrepreneur with his own personal training business. I have recently taken over for him as Vice President of Marketing. We work together to create and implement marketing plans in our local community to educate people about fitness.
Finally, I’m a Mom of two little girls, Grace who just turned five and Miranda who is every bit the two-and-a-half year old. Being their Mom is my full-time job and I love it! Everything else I do is ultimately for them as much as for myself.
SH: When did you realize you would be happiest engaged in a multitude of interests?
FS: My family used to call me “scattered” as a kid growing up because I’ve always had so many interests. I don’t think there is any one point in my life where I came to a realization about doing multiple things. I have always gone after what made me happy. Sometimes it’s worked out and others times, well, let’s say I learned from my mistakes!
SH: What systems, tools, or practices work best for you in juggling your life as a creative multipreneur?
FS: This is something I struggle with, honestly. What has helped me is having a regular schedule for several of my tasks. Class always meets on certain days and times, depending on the semester; I work in the speech lab on Thursdays only; crop nights (scrapbooking work session) are one Friday night a month with scrapbook classes on one Saturday a month. I mostly work on my business plus the marketing tasks I do for my husband in the evening after my daughters go to bed. I’m still working out
what’s best.
There is one thing I do that I find is crucial to my success--and sanity! Every night before bed, I sit quietly and write in my gratitude journal reflecting on all the amazing gifts I experienced that day. Then I pray, thanking God for those gifts and say the Prayer of Jabez, asking God to continue helping me.
SH: How do you manage your time? Do you make a plan?
FS: I manage my time with one basic calendar for all events in it, including work-related items and personal schedules for me and the girls. First thing in the morning I write a list of the things I want to accomplish that day. Then I prioritize the top three items. I do those first. After that, everything else I accomplish is gravy.
SH: Have you had any mentors, books or people, who have influenced you?
FS: The greatest influence in my life has been my Mom. I come from a family where no one went to college. But from the time I was a baby, my mother told me I would. She taught me I could be anything I wanted to be. And I believed her! To this day my Mom and I are very close, living just a few miles apart. She is responsible for much of my success. She takes loving care of my daughters several times per week, so I can do everything I need to with no worries about how my girls are doing while I’m away. Having my Mom’s help and support enables me to fully focus on the task at hand.
SH: What advice or tips would you share with our readers in their quest to become successful dilettantes?
FS: Focus on one project at a time. Do NOT multi-task. You end up taking way more time to get everything done.
Be grateful for the gifts you have in your life. By concentrating on the good, you invite more good to come into your world.
Finally, have a team of supporters and encouragers who you can count on and communicate freely with. No one is an island.
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Felicia Slattery lives in the far west Chicago suburbs and is thrilled with her multipreneurial life. With her expertise in communication, she teaches other home-based entrepreneurs how to effectively present their best image in order to enjoy increased cash flow with communication skills through teleseminars, e-books, audio recordings, and private coaching. She offers a free e-course where readers will discover how to Increase Business by Communicating Your Credibility available at her website, http://www.communicationtransformation.com.
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2006-07 Susan Henderson, All rights reserved.
