To celebrate opening applications for the new accredited Thrivecraft Coach training programme, Maggie is giving a series of Thrivecraft ‘Business Alchemy’ Top Tips on Facebook this month.
attract ideal clients or customers and increase income
– without selling your soul!
Combining practical business know-how with spiritual intelligence
Many of us are self employed practitioners or running our own small business. Between us, we offer a fantastic array of ethical products and services, inspired to help make the world a better place. We love what we do, but for some, the actual business side of things isn’t our strong point, especially when it comes to selling, marketing and making enough money.
Having founded Thrivecraft in 2003, Maggie Kay quickly identified the need to offer business coaching to many of her life coaching clients who were struggling to make the most of their soulful business. Combining her background in ethical business with her experience of spiritual intelligence, the popular course Mind Your Own Business was born.
For the first time in many years, Maggie Kay is once again offering a business boosting Thrivecraft workshop for ethical entrepreneurs and practitioners. On March 14/15, SOULFUL MARKETING guides participants through the practical and magical ways to find your niche, get known, attract ideal clients and customers, and increase income – without selling your soul.
The workshop is hosted by the Totnes Natural Health Centre and costs £149. (There are three places at £99 for those who need a concession). The magical part of this workshop means that participants often make their investment back by attracting new business almost immediately!
Be your true self and do what you love.
Create prosperity with authenticity and grace.
Attract opportunities, synchronicity and flow.
Thrivecraft – Practical and Magical.
For more info and to book, click orange button below:
In this video, filmed five years ago when I was still known as Srimati, I share some tips on how to launch and develop a business with author and leadership coach, Nick Williams of www.iamnickwilliams.com
The theme for this coaching day is creating prosperity in 2014 with your true vocation / soul work / creative endeavour / inspired ethical business.
During the day we will review where we are now in the fulfilment of our vocation and creation of prosperity, and explore where we’d like to make positive developments.
We will create a heart centered vision map for 2014 and practice magnetising whatever new business, income, support, resources, clarity, self belief etc we seek.
The Thrivecraft Group Coaching Day format is an opportunity for us to receive more personal input in a smaller group setting and deepen support and connection between fellow experienced Thrivecrafters.
January’s coaching day launches the Thrivecraft Programme’s business coaching module which will continue at the February and March weekend workshops (details coming soon).
Hot off the press from our Thrivecraft – Wake Up Your Wisdom – workshop last weekend, here is a video extract teaching the deep principles at work when we apply the Law of Attraction to manifest the things we want in our life.
During this relaxed workshop you can give your hard-working thinking mind a rest! Instead, you will learn how to easily tap into your own deep wisdom to find brilliant answers and solutions at every turn. But don’t be deceived by the retreat-like experience of the day – this stuff is powerful!
With a mixture of interactive practical exercises, talks and guided contemplations, you will be shown how to hone your hunches into reliable intuition you can depend on. You will learn how to make the secret law of attraction work for you and practice a powerful ‘make it happen’ technique that manifests your hopes into reality.
There will be opportunities to ask questions and give your comments along the way. And there will be plenty of time to connect with other participants – typically a calibre group of open minded professionals, creatives, innovators and conscious entrepreneurs.
You will leave feeling equipped to employ a whole new dimension of yourself – your own inner wisdom – in your life, love, work and business. With the constant wise support of your inner guidance and intuition, things will never be the quite the same. Just see what happens next!
In the last few days I’ve been reading a book by spiritual teacher Dr Wayne W Dyer called There is a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. It’s great – so relevant, uplifting and re-assuring – and is awakening many creative thoughts within me.
Wayne first became a source of inspiration for me after my husband Pat introduced his work to me eight or nine years ago. During the 1990s, Wayne taught the Ah meditation – a manifestation practice that he’d learned from one of his Indian Gurus – and Pat and I have been passing it on to friends, colleagues and clients ever since our Thrivecraft days.
Last year, I explored the practice in depth at my Entrepreneurs Find Inner Wisdom event, held here in Totnes, Devon. This was filmed, but apart from posting the videos on my blog soon afterwards, I have not really made a point of publishing them. Despite this, I have noticed that often people find the videos searching for information on the Ah meditation, so perhaps it’s about time that I made them more available…
Having plucked Wayne’s book off my bookshelf recently (and realised it was gifted to me by my special guest at Entrepreneurs Find Inner Wisdom – former BBC TV Dragon and business mentor, Rachel Elnaugh) I took this as a sign that it was time to run the Ah meditation video series here on my blog.
So here you are, a series of six short videos on the Ah meditation to dip into. Do let me know what you think – and what results you get! Enjoy!
1. Manfestation – You are a magician!
2. Introducing the Ah Meditation – Background and How to
3. Questions on the Ah Meditation – Do You Have to Believe for it to Work?
4. Preparing to do the Ah Meditation – Guided Relaxation / Opening the Chakras
5. Practising the Ah Meditation – Guided Practice
6. Concluding the Ah Meditation – Guided Om Chanting
Pat and I moved in February. Caravan dwelling came to a sudden end when problems staying on the field all year round prompted a rethink. The result was a move into this dinky modern house on the edge of the village with my 16 year old son Jamie. We are familiar with the house because its where Jamie has been living with his dad, Colin, and its been our support base whilst living in the wildfield. So Colin moved out and we moved in – taking over the main parenting role again and allowing Jamie to remain in situ in the big bedroom!
Weekdays have a different rhythm now – up at 6.45am with a quiet mug of earl grey in time to wake Jamie for school. Then its sandwich making, reminders about what’s needed for the day, making sure he catches the bus… By 8am I am out in the conservatory – the nearest thing to a caravan in the house – and getting on with my work. Evenings generally involve collecting Jamie from various after school activities, preparing a meal, a bit of TV – often with a foot massage from my guardian angel husband – and flaking out by 11.
I have to admit that I am relishing being a full-time mum again – and its much needed and long overdue. That’s probably why it feels so right. Colin and I have always lived near each other and co-parented amicably since we separated, but its the first time Jamie has been living in one home with me in all those years. The demands of Colin’s work has changed and its been hard for him to support Jamie on his own. With Pat and I sharing the home parent role and my work enjoying the flexibility of self employment, this is a much better arrangement for Jamie’s last few years of school.
The idea came out of the blue and fell into place immediately. None of us had been thinking along those lines at all. However, even Pat – a reclusive wild man and caravan-life adorer – was convinced of the plan’s merits as soon as it arose. He’s having the toughest time adapting back to ‘normal’ domestic life, but he’s doing his best for the greater good.
Part of the idea is that we keep the caravans and use them during the camping season. This means that any of us can escape back to the wildfield when we need to – just a stone’s throw away but a whole different world. And look out for a new retreat package I’ll be offering soon including accomodation in the wildfield – a perfect place to get away from it all.
Caravans in the Wildfield
So, only 7 months after the biggest downsizing move of my life, it’s been time to upscale again! Having given away all our furniture and household belongings, we needed to start over. However, the abundant universe soon showerered us with gifts and blessings. Within 10 days of moving our new home was all ready and we were celebrating a house-warming with our generous friends and family. Another plus is that after spending a severe, snowy winter in a 25 foot caravan, this modest 2up/2down feels like a palace of comfort and modern conveniences!
Living room to conservatory in new house
The move back into householder life marks the conclusion of an unusually introverted few months over the winter. By the end of October last year (the date of my last blog entry!) I was starting to put the breaks on ever expanding business plans and activities to concentrate on things closer to home. After more than a decade of being full on and ‘out there’ with my vocation, finances and family needed my full attention for a while. It was time to get my own house in order!
Initially, I simply wanted to be around my mum in Scotland as much as possible. She’s been going through extensive medical treatment and I could think of nothing better than to drop everything and be with her. In the event, Pat and I spent most of December up there. Mum lives in a lovely villa on a tiny island off the west coast of the mainland. We spent much of the UK’s ‘big freeze’ up there – helping with driving and hospital visits, enjoying family communion and filling our souls with the stunning beauty of the place.
View out to sea from mum’s upstairs window
Scotland was a tonic after spending November with my nose in account books. As well as doing my current end of year accounts, it was time to face some financial music about a business that hadn’t been doing so well and needed winding up. It was painful and confronting, demanding ruthless soul searching as well as loads of practical work. Every assumption, motive, decision, choice and step that Pat and I had made in recent years had to be examined. With no stone unturned on any level, it was excruciatingly personal and challenging to our self-esteem – and SO hard to forgive mistakes and let go!
As my colleague Rachel Elnaugh will tell you in her brilliant book, Business Nightmares, most entrepreneurs go through extreme financial challenges. Yet there’s a lot of shame and secrecy surrounding it – especially in the UK – and therefore its rarely discussed. But without sharing this crucial business experience how can we learn how to handle it from each other?
Business Nightmares is such an encouraging, inspiring and informative read. By revealling the inside stories of how even well known and successful entrepreneurs struggle, Rachel makes you realise you are not alone. And far from being shameful, knowing what the entrepreneur has been through makes you respect them even more. Do get yourself a copy if you haven’t already. It’s so well written by the wise, warm and witty former TV Dragon, Rachel Elnaugh. Click here to find out more www.rachelelnaugh.com
Telling the Coaching Connect conference about Rachel’s book
During November’s process of intense self-examination, it also dawned on me that I’d become a little bedazzled by a kind of ‘ambitious glitz’. I’d spent the previous 18 months vigourously developing my expert platform (as its called!) – glamming up my public image, publishing blogs and videos, courting book and media deals, launching new workshops, speaking at conferences, cultivating exciting new colleagues and establishing an international network via social media.
All that had been so much fun that I didn’t realise I’d got a bit carried away, taken flight and lost touch with my home ground, or that a certain pushy “must have big success” had crept into me. I knew something wasn’t right because things stopped coming to fruition and I was feeling increasingly strained. Eventually I consulted my inner guidance about it and the message came through loud and clear – “Just STOP, Srimati!” And so I decided to drop everything and take some time out.
It was scary letting go and not knowing what was going to happen, but my courage was rewarded. Having followed my soulful beckonings through the dark of winter, I did find myself back on firm ground and free from the burden of grasping after future success.
There’s a new ease and relaxation in my approach to my vocation and I feel deeply contented and quietly confident that the right work will come to me at the right time. Of course the universe has received my telepathic energetic transmission instantly and a graceful wave of wonderful new work is now gently cascading into my well balanced life. It sure beats chasing the big time!
So I’ll leave you with a video of a conversation Rachel and I had last year. We are talking about telepathic marketing – the art of attracting business opportunities by paying attention to our inner life. It draws on the universal principle that life simply delivers to you whatever you energetically expect will come – whether good or bad – and whether you are conscious of it or not. To find out more about this phenomenon, see the book Ask and it is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks.
The trick is to be aware of your beliefs about life and the signals you are therefore putting out. With a little inner work, you can make sure that they are genuinely aligned with your best interests – and so the universe delivers what’s in your best interests. And as I can testify, there’s nothing better than graceful waves of wonderful things cascading into your life because you’ve put your own house in order!
Do you trust your own rhythms? Do you allow yourself to do nothing and stare into space just because you feel like it? If a rush of creative ideas wakes you up at night, do you get up and start scribbling or smother it down because ‘you must get your sleep’? When all your energy has vanished, do you force yourself to get on with some work or allow yourself to rest?
Observing the ebb and flow of my creative energy here at the wild field has prompted me think about this. When we first moved, it was easy to see why I wasn’t dreaming up any new workshops or enthusiastically promoting my latest inner wisdom product – I was knackered! Then the weeks went on and I settled deeply into my inner world – wanting to do little more than meditate and write.
After a while, I started to get a bit concerned. What if all that creative juice has gone? Should I try to drum something up? But no matter how I looked at it, I just did not feel like it. I know from hard experience that it’s counter-productive to exhaust myself trying to swim against the tide, but it’s not always easy to keep the faith. None-the-less, this time I managed to wait and trust that the change would come naturally.
Then, a week or two ago, it happened – a huge uprush of creativity and inspiration came bursting through. Ideas, excitement, enthusiasm and energy aplenty – fully formed and in such abundance – and my new workshop was conceived. A couple of phone calls were made and the people and resources I wanted fell into place beautifully. There was a quality of effortless co-operation with a power so much greater and wiser than myself. My job was to be switched on enough to notice the turning tide, fit enough to get on the surf board and keep my balance, and from there-on-in simply have a wonderful ride!
And so I can announce to you with enormous enthusiasm and excitement that I’m taking my new workshop to Glasgow in Scotland next month. Wake Up Your Wisdom – a day retreat for entrepreneurs and professionals ready to develop red-hot intuition and learn the secrets of mind-to-mind marketing. My fabulous colleague, Rachel Elnaugh (former Dragon on BBC TV’s Dragon’s Den), has agreed to give a presentation on her experience of using inner wisdom for business success. I can’t wait to give my first ever workshop in my home city! More details here – www.srimati.com/events
To me, one of the greatest gifts of my self-determining lifestyle is the delicious opportunity to follow my natural rhythms more truly. Sometimes its an emotional rhythm – feeling slow and sad or fast and excited; sometimes its intellectual – clear as a bell or dull as dish water. Then there are physical rhythms prompted by hormonal changes or meal, exercise and sleep patterns. And of course there’s the environment – the light, the dark, the sun the moon, the seasons, the weather, the surroundings…
Our bodies and psyches are fantastically engineered sensing machines. Should you pay attention – simply pay attention! – you get all the bio/psychic feedback you need in a nano second and you will KNOW what’s right for you at every turn. However, if you override this awareness by getting too busy and out of touch with yourself (or giving too much of your power and freedom away to an over-demanding person or job), you lose one of your most precious abilities – to regulate a happy, balanced lifestyle for yourself. What’s more, regulating yourself like this is your primary responsibility in life. No one else can do this for you or be blamed if you do not do it for yourself.
I’m quite impressed with Paul McKenna’s work with regard to this. Paul McKenna www.paulmckenna.com is a British hypnotherapist who has written many excellent self-help books including I Can Make You Thin. The core principle of this book is that to eat appropriately (and therefore lose excess weight) you simply need to tune into this self-regulating ability. By slowing down and paying deep attention to what food your body really wants, you naturally find your optimum weight. I used this method myself last year and effortlessly shed 20 lbs in so many weeks. (I seem to be in a ‘putting it back on’ phase at the moment – but that’s another story!).
However, there’s another whole dimension of rhythm in our lives – the ebb and flow of INSPIRATION – our spiritual rhythm. When you are inspired you feel a creative energy rising up within you, giving you the ideas, direction and impetus to make something new happen. It seems to bubble up from inside you even if its triggered by an external source like a stimulating talk or a sublime piece of music. Sometimes it just seems to come from no-where.
The Buddha taught that inspiration can only be experienced when you have prepared yourself to receive it. When you first start to meditate, it can take a while to draw all your disparate energies into some sort of coherence. That’s what meditation does for you first of all – it helps you feel less scattered and more focussed and more whole and complete. This is the initial stage of INTEGRATION (bringing together).
Only then – when you have a sense of being in possession of your whole self – can inspiration start to come through into an adequate container. This second stage, not surprisingly, is called INSPIRATION. Having pulled yourself into some sort of shape, your natural creative energy has a place to arise and a vehicle through which to express itself. It feels like you have a well-spring within you, constantly bubbling up from your deep inner source.
I explain these two aspects of meditation in this video – Meditation for Integration and Insight
As a coach, I’ve always preferred to work with inspiration rather than motivation. As well as being a carrot rather than stick approach, it is a much more empowering and graceful way to work. Helping people ignite their own natural joyful impetus is more independently sustainable for the client than trying to push them up a mountain they’d rather not climb.
Sometimes I think we’ve got it all wrong – that we think we have to ‘make’ ourselves do stuff because it’s ‘good for us’. No, no! Spend the time to develop the self-love and find the thing you really want to be doing because you were meant to be doing it! Then its just a matter of lighting the touch-paper and standing back while an inspired new lifestyle takes off!
Inspiration is a massive force for the good. When you are inspired you are in touch with who you truly are and feel moved by love and joy rather than fear and dread. One of my favourite tips is the one that tells us how to know when you are making the right decision. By asking yourself , ‘Am I making this choice from love or fear?’ you can discern whether you are doing things for the best (the best way is ALWAYS the one that is inspired by love rather than avoiding fear). If you are making a choice based on love, you feel expanded and free. If you are making the choice from fear, you feel contracted and strained. You can feel that expansion or contraction in your body – often in your tummy area. There’s a reason why we use the term ‘gut instinct’.
I go into the art of following the right inner promptings in this video – ‘Which Voice in Your Head Do You Trust?
So please do keep the faith, dear people – you do know what’s best for you. Your only responsibility is to cultivate sensitivity to your rhythms and allow inspiration to flow. Of course many of us have busy lives with many demands, but even within that, it’s possible to invest a little time developing awareness. Meditation is a brilliant way to do this. Just ten minutes a day – sitting quietly, feeling your breath move through your body – is a wonderful start. For superb meditation guidance, try www.wildmind.org
In this video, Maggie Kay asks business mentor and transformational coach, Rachel Elnaugh (TV’s Dragons’ Den) about her approach to marketing and agrees that the law of attraction and telepathic marketing are powerful hidden factors that draw clients and new business.
In 2010, Rachel attended Maggie’s one day training retreat for professionals – Entrepreneurs Find Inner Wisdom – where telepathic marketing was taught and practiced.
Thrivecraft with Maggie Kay 