Want to listen to this instead? Read or listen below…
Three years ago we were on one of our month long RV trips, stopped somewhere beautiful overlooking the ocean, and I asked my guides and angels to help me see what I needed to see regarding the offering of this work to the world.
I was tired. Exhausted from having been trying so hard to be and do the things my mind said I needed to do and be to get to my dreams and my next level. I was making myself sick, thinking that the next level successful me would have to be very different than ME, and trying to figure out and be whatever that is. Nothing was working. I was very successful in my art direction and design business and that was going beautifully, there was total ease in that… but this work of my heart and soul felt like trying to push a boulder up a sand hill. I was heart broken about it.
What I didn’t fully understand at the time, but would later, is that the reason it was not working was not only because there were places in me in disagreement and in need of care, but because I loved myself too much to let myself get any big success with something where I was not going to get to be comfortable and be ME. The part of me that loves and wants the best for me was like “no. not that way, not like that. because I don’t want you to have to feel like this, so we’re not doing that.”
For me, at that time, that was all the things I was being taught in the industry that I “had to do” to sell my work and make it appealing and make people “jump on it”.
I was deeply uncomfortable with marketing speak the way it is currently done: trying to appeal to “pain points”, trying to figure out what people want and offer it to them, “show the ideal outcome”, use “social proof”, “paint the picture of their future”, “help them cross the fence”, put on time crunches, add pressure, urgency, offer limited time sales so that will help them make their decision, show up constantly, get podcast interviews, go networking, email every day, be on social every minute, create a ‘relationship’, offer early birds so they have a reason to buy now or else they won’t buy, price it low, price it high, price it on a sliding scale… all of it made me sick, but I was telling myself I just had to buck up and do it.
At the time I had been in business for myself for 22 years and had made millions of dollars in that business without marketing a day in my life. I was sitting on the gold mine of knowing that I did not have to do it that way, and my own refusal to have done so all those years and how that paid off huge for me, and I was betraying myself because I thought this was different. So I listened to them when they said “times have changed!” – “you can’t do what you used to do!” – “that’s only because you are in the business of x, y, z”. And none of that was true.
There was a formula to that success, and there are a MILLION formulas for success, there are as many formulas for success as their are human beings, and marketing of every kind can be extremely valuable and effective for BOTH parties in the equation **IF** you are in full agreement with yourself about it and it feels good to you. But it did not to me, and I was not listening to myself, even though the very success and the miracle of a life that I was literally sitting in in that moment was because of me listening to myself. And not listening to all of that advice of what people told me I “had to do” to get ahead in this world.
So I was getting nowhere with this fast, because the bigger part of me did not want to have to do this then, and especially not for the rest of my life. So energetically there was this giant stop sign in the road ahead.
So I prayed, I looked out at the ocean, I closed my eyes, and I thanked my guides for helping me see. And the vision that came up in that darkness behind my eyes, was an image of Enya, and an image of the wind in the trees and the words “look it up”.
So I did, and I found out that one of my favorite all time musicians, who touches and soothes my heart and soul like nothing else for all my life since I was a child, who has hundreds of millions of albums, and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars… is a total introvert recluse who does not do interviews, does not go on tour, and does not do any of the promotion puppet dances that the industry told her she had to do, and is a grand SMASHING SUCCESS living in a castle in Ireland doing things her own damn way.
I sobbed. It was magical. I had NO idea any of that was true at the time. And the message was sent straight to me. It was my guides and angels letting me know that not only CAN I do THIS work my way too, but that I MUST if I want to get anywhere with it at all. That that is the way I am a guardian of the work itself, to construct the container and boundary from which this work sprung.
What I mean by that is, this work sprung from my desires to help people to create and live their most beautiful, joyful, free and fulfilling existence, to help them get free of the limitations which choke their spirits, to help them align with and realize their desires in ways that blow their own minds! But that came out of my own spaciousness, joy, and free fulfilling existence… from my own introverted no-need-to-convince-anybody-of-my-value space within me, and the minute I went outside of that space with some belief that that would “pay off” or that “that’s just the way it is” and I HAVE to do that… I was lost.
What I didn’t know then, but I do know now, is that I needed and wanted to apply the SAME understanding I had about my other business to this business… which is the SAME thing that Enya does in the business of selling her creations… which is simply sharing that thing you do and letting it sell itself by PURE DESIRE.
Pure desire is CLEAR as a BELL. It needs no coersion. It’s when your eyes light up and your soul lights up and it’s just “YES! Yes, this.” This happens when you see a sweater, a necklace, a book, a course, a designer, a piece of furniture, a tour, a song, a particular healer or therapist, a photograph, a piece of art, it applies to anything and everything.
Pure desire has no need of trickery or manipulation, it just IS. And I realized that the reason I wanted my things to sell by PURE DESIRE is because it was the only option where there was PURE CHOICE. The choice springs naturally from within the finder and there is no coercion needed, nothing has to be added to that.
Your only job is to stay in the work that you love and do and shine. It speaks for itself. All it needs is visibility. And it speaks for itself.
Some way, somehow. And like I said you can be a total introvert recluse and find a way to have visibility. But you find that way that works for you and it speaks for itself.
This is not the way for everyone. But if you’ve read this far in this long ass article, I would venture to bet it’s the way for you. Maybe you’re just starting out, maybe you’re millions of dollars in, but in either case I ask you:
how do you want to FEEL inside your business? How do you want to FEEL inside your ‘big success’? At peace in yourself? safe? loved? proud? happy? free? lit up? fully alive? inspired?
I am here to tell you that that is not only possible it is a MUST, it is a REQUIREMENT for you to move powerfully forward. Because you just won’t allow it any other way.
All over the world there are those who played by the rules and won, and those who broke all the rules and won. Which is proof positive that the only common denominator in both of these scenarios is that the player DECIDED they were gonna win and just did not give up on themselves until they did. In both cases they decided to play, and they decided to do it the way that they thought was best, and it WORKED in both cases.
There are people who use ads and make multiple millions from the incredible exposure power of them, and people who’ve never run an ad and make multiple millions from other kinds of exposure and word of mouth, paths to success are endless and varied, the common denominator is belief in what you’re doing and inner agreement with yourself.
But when we’re trying to do something that we DON’T think is going to work, or are in disagreement with ourselves about on some level, we’re split in two, and living in a fight inside ourselves. That is when you’re Stucksville, but it’s only because you love yourself and you’re trying to work something out with yourself for your greater happiness…
that’s what I was doing, and am still doing all the time: resolving points of conflict in me, and transmuting them into peace and powerful movement forward. That was the wind in the trees part of the image.
You’re on your way, you’re doing it. You are doing it right now. And if you’d like some company and help along the way, ‘My Work Sells Itself’ Course starts Jan 9th.
xo,
Sunni
