Resources and Recommendations
All resources come with our highest personal recommendation
Change Management
Recommended Reading
Immunity to Change from Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey is a brilliant book that uncovers the hidden dynamic of inertia preventing change within individuals and organizations. Why do we resist even when we want to make a change? This book presents a potent yet practical way to develop self-transforming mindsets so that new win-win behaviors can result.
Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life
Richard Barrett’s book Liberating the Corporate Soul: Building a Visionary Organization
Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
Nonprofit and Low-Profit Business Resources
Recommended Reading
Nolo Press’s book How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation has everything you need to incorporate and file for nonprofit status, with specific information organized on a per-state basis.
Nolo Press’s book How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation in California gives an in-depth treatment to California corporations.
Some new organizations may prefer to work under the sponsorship of an existing nonprofit corporation. Besides the obvious advantage of lowering administrative overhead, sponsoring organizations can provide training and networking opportunities for such critical functions as fundraising and grant writing. Fiscal Sponsorship: Six Ways To Do It Right instructs you on the details of this possibility.
Develop a simple business plan-at-a-glance with an easy step-by-step brainstorming process using the One Page Business Plan for Non-Profit Organizations workbook by Jim Horan.
Small Business Resources
Recommended Reading
Nolo Press offers the Legal Guide for Starting & Running a Small Business. It covers numerous topics including taxes, liability, and contracts. It will help you decide, for example, between forming a sole proprietorship, corporation or a Limited Liability Company (LLC).
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers was developed by 470 “Business Model Canvas” practitioners from 45 countries. It uses a colorful layout to show you step-by-step how to create a business plan “dashboard” with all the well-researched summary information you and potential investors need at a glance. To get started more quickly, see the explanatory YouTube video and canvas-building tool immediately below.
Business Model Canvas Explained is a 2-minute overview of the Business Model Canvas and a great introduction to the method.
Strategyzer Business Model Canvas provides a hands-on tool to generate Business Model Canvas dashboards. It outlines nine segments which form the building blocks for the business model in a nice one-page canvas. You can experiment with their 30-day free account.
Preparing Effective Business Plans is Audrey’s favorite business plan book. It was designed to be a university textbook, and has a wonderful amount of detail. It covers not only how to write every section of a business plan, but also gives you tips for brainstorming business ideas, teaches you how to do a thorough feasibility analysis up front and shows you how to present your plan effectively using a pitch deck. NOTE: If Amazon is out of stock, you can check other sources.
Business Plan in a Day is a thorough yet user-friendly guide to create a written business plan by Rhonda Abrams, a top-selling small business author and columnist. A series of questions guide you in filling out each section of your plan. One of the benefits of this book is a section with advice from angel investors, a banker and a venture capitalist.
Develop a simple business plan-at-a-glance with an easy step-by-step brainstorming process using one of the following One Page Business Plan workbooks by Jim Horan:
Branding
All of the designers below come highly recommended – either we’ve worked with them personally or one of our trusted colleagues has experienced their work. While every designer can adapt to your guidance in terms of style, the most effective way to choose the right designer is to find someone whose artwork naturally resonates with your taste — be sure that you like most examples in their portfolio.
Most web developers also offer hosting packages.
Stewart Snyder does web design. His focus is on the three criteria for a successful collaboration: great work, on time (actually, amazingly responsive), and easy to work with (he’s just plain fun). His IT background gives him a precision and can-do attitude that are very refreshing. Couple that with his own entrepreneurial experience and you’ve got a partner that will provide more than you imagine at an extraordinary value – and a process you’ll truly enjoy. Any time you need work on your website, put Stu on your shortlist. www.webdesignwithstu.com
Since 2000, Blue Marble Creative has focused on working with people committed to making a difference in social and environmental issues, by helping their mission-critical services, products and ideas have greater impact. Blue Marble Creative helps their clients clarify and organize their message, then create communication tools to connect, align and inspire their audience into action. Their areas of specialization include: brand positioning and communications strategy, website design and development, infographics and content development, publication design and layout and presentation slides and handouts.
Jennifer Hautman of Big Blue Design creates unique compelling designs. She’s a delight to work with and brings a fine arts detail approach to her designs.
Jo Anne Smith and Evangeline Welch are extraordinary facilitators and designers who founded Intuitive Leaps Creative Services. Its mission is to help people and organizations clarify and express the essence of who they are and what they offer. They will collaborate with you to articulate your mission, ignite your message and connect more effectively with your audience. Services include branding, website development, writing and editing, art direction and graphic design, and group facilitation.
Marketing
A key part of making an impact is reaching those you are meant to serve. Our approach places a high value on magnetic marketing, which is based upon gaining visibility with your intended target audience. Rather than working to overcome objections, it is about making authentic connections, identifying the need and offering the best of what you do for those you are meant to serve.
ActionPlanMarketing.com with Robert Middleton contains the best marketing training and resources Audrey’s ever found for service-based businesses. He is the one marketing expert she’s followed consistently since 2003, due to his brilliant approach that uses absolutely no hype. Browse his free reports and subscribe to his newsletter, which is highly valued in the service professional community. Better yet, sign up for his Marketing Club monthly program, where he has packaged decades of course material in one place plus regular group coaching calls.
Kendall Summerhawk’s programs focus on women entrepreneurs who want to increase their earnings. She offers a wonderful multifaceted approach that includes mindset as well as best practices for marketing and business-building. Kendall’s style is warm, personal and down-to-earth. Visit her site to find free video trainings as well as other valuable resources.
Marketing Without Advertising: Easy Ways to Build a Business Your Customers Will Love and Recommend
- encourage customers to spread the good word about your business
- attract new customers and gain their trust
- turn dissatisfied customers into loyal supporters
- list your products or services widely and inexpensively
- plan marketing events that will keep customers involved
- encourage the media to comment positively on your business
Get Clients Now! outlines a 28-day marketing program for independent professionals in the service industry. This wonderful hands-on process is taught through an approach that interweaves textbook and workbook elements. The author, C.J. Hayden, is as delightfully down-to-earth in her book as she is in person.
Printing For Less offers superb customer service and good rates for your printed marketing materials when attention to detail and quality are important to you. When Audrey once updated a brochure with a second printing, they caught a color error because they had compared her new order with the original print job from two years before. Impressive! They use green printing practices and have earned the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) Chain-of-Custody Certification for sustainable forestry.
Purpose, Vision and Values
Recommended Reading
True Purpose: 12 Strategies for Discovering the Difference You Are Meant to Make by Tim Kelley introduces his groundbreaking work for change agents who don’t yet have the inner alignment and higher guidance they need to succeed in their mission to make a better world.
This method teaches you how to get a precise and detailed description of your life purpose from your own trusted sources of inner guidance. Tim Kelley’s approach includes a radical method for clearing a pathway through your ego fears that normally keep you from living your purpose as your day job. You will also develop stronger two-way communication with your sources of guidance for support in manifesting this purpose.
There are several ways to use this book. Those with years of experience in shadow work and spiritual practice may wish to complete the exercises in this book on their own. You may read the background material to inspire and catalyze your own process, or have a guide support you through the True Purpose process.
Several Clear Change Group members are Certified True Purpose® Coaches and offer this process in private coaching sessions. Clear Change Group founder Audrey Seymour is also a teacher at the True Purpose® Institute and offers trainings for those who wish to offer this process to their clients. We believe this approach is by far the best among the life purpose methods available.
To learn more, download a free chapter of Tim’s book.
Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life by Gregg Levoy is a gold standard in the field of right livelihood. He addresses such questions as “How do we know if we’re following our true callings?” “How do we sharpen our senses to cut through the distractions of everyday reality and hear the calls that are beckoning us?” and “How do we handle our resistance to a call?”
For an approach that combines spirituality with assessment questionnaires, work with this contemplative guide to creative livelihood design: Zen and the Art of Making a Living by Laurence G. Boldt.
What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles, is a classic self-help reference in the search for fulfilling work. It’s an excellent and very practical manual, combining text with a step-by-step discovery process.
Professional Development
Business Communication Skills
Author William Ury is a world-famous master of negotiation who helped resolve conflict and design treaties in ethnic wars in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as settings such as coal mine strikes. His book The Power of a Positive No is far and above other books on the theme of setting boundaries. The best-seller Getting to Yes, which he co-authored with Roger Fisher, is a brilliant approach to the art of negotiation.
Lee Glickstein’s Speaking Circles® work has changed the way we approach public speaking, and he’s transformed the entire industry. He is founder of Speaking Circles International, with facilitators around the globe offering his method.
Speaking Circle programs teach you how to compel rapt attention in your listeners by focusing on the essential first step missing in conventional public speaking trainings – attunement between speaker and listeners. Create a “field of belonging” in a group by holding the calm center, use your natural storytelling abilities to inspire your listeners, and develop Teleseminar Presence to create a welcoming transformational space for an audience that cannot see you.
Doreen Hamilton is a psychologist and the Training Director of Speaking Circles International. Her book Essential Speaking: The 7-Step Guide to Finding Your Real Voice shows you a simple and elegant process to understand your fears, normalize them, and transform them. This step-by-step method will take you beyond that inner critic in your head with compassion and patience. You will discover a new place within where your speaking voice is free to express the essential you.
Inner Development
Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Check out Dr. Rick Hanson’s second book Hardwiring Happiness as well. Gain a deep understanding of how your brain works rather than trying to push against its natural tendencies so you can foster states of deep inner happiness. It’s one of Audrey’s favorite books.
Resilient is another brilliant offering from Rick Hanson, PhD, including the additional wisdom of his son Forrest as coauthor. These days it’s hard to count on the world outside. So it’s vital to grow strengths inside like grit, gratitude, and compassion—the key to resilience, and to lasting well-being in a changing world. Learn how to grow an unshakable core of calm, strength and happiness by developing 12 vital inner strengths.
Neurodharma by Rick Hanson, PhD not only explores the new neuroscience of awakening but also shares seven practices for strengthening the neural circuitry of inner peace. This book shows you how to apply these principles to cultivate unshakable presence of mind, a courageous heart, and serenity in a changing world.
Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry by Buddhist psychologist and founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center Jack Kornfield takes a humorous and authentic look at the identities and roles that still trip us up even after moments of illumination and enlightenment. This book is rich with firsthand stories of spiritual leaders and dedicated practitioners from the Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and Sufi traditions. For example, imagine a Zen master handling a rebellious teenage son, or the Christian mystic visiting her parents over the holidays, and you’ll know what fun is in store for you.
Elements of the Real in Man (Diamond Heart, Book 1)
Rick Foster and Greg Hicks traveled the world to research the question of what makes people happy. By interviewing members of local communities who were identified as the happiest in town, they discovered a pattern of nine specific choices that happy people consistently make. Learn these simple and profound principles in their wonderful book How We Choose to Be Happy.
Predictably Irrational is a fascinating read by Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. He shows us in an entertaining way that we do not act in fundamentally rational ways. We consistently overpay, underestimate, and procrastinate. At the same time, our irrationality is systematic and predictable – learn how to predict behavior with the wonderful studies and insights shared in this book.
Disengage from the judge within using an in-depth experiential process developed by Byron Brown in Soul Without Shame. This book alternates between explanation and very practical exercises that will enable you to not only recognize when the inner critic is operating, but also to start shifting your relationship to it.
Attention Deficit (ADD / ADHD) Resources
NOTE: Although the standard medical term is “Attention Deficit Disorder” or “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD or ADHD), there is some discussion in the industry as to whether it is always a disorder (unless medication is needed to function effectively). Rather, it could be viewed as a form of “differently wired brain” that is often a characteristic of pioneering visionaries and risk-takers, who will thrive when teamed with a detail-oriented business partner or assistant.
ADHD Reference Books
Driven To Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood by psychiatrists Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey (who also have ADHD) has been a very influential reference for understanding this tendency, whether severe or merely a response to stress. It is full of entertaining case studies and valuable self-assessment tools.
Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder is a valuable sequel to Driven to Distraction by the same experts. This book includes a great collection of practical strategies for specific situations as well as more case studies and self-assessment tools.
John Ratey’s latest book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain is another treat from one of the foremost experts in the field of ADHD. It’s fascinating and describes how the attention system of the brain is linked to the motor system. He demystifies the process of learning in the brain as well as the impacts of stress, ADHD, and exercise.
Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates And What You Can Do About It by physician Gabor Mate comes highly recommended by one of our clients. This book combines research and personal storytelling to make a powerful case for the crucial role that the social and emotional environment plays in the genesis and healing of this disorder. Dr. Mate speaks from his own experience and that of his three children with ADHD.
Online ADHD Resources
ADDClasses.com is a educational organization helping people affected by Attention Deficit Disorder, whether for themselves or for someone in their life. Learn more about this kind of differently-wired brain and how to build on its strengths. They offer numerous resources including free teleclasses and an audio library.
ADDResources.org is a non-profit educational organization that offers free articles, a bookstore, and a lending library by mail for anyone in the United States with over 450 titles of ADHD books, audiotapes and videos. They also offer in-person workshops and support groups in the Seattle area.
CHADD: Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder is a national non-profit organization providing education, advocacy and support for individuals with ADHD. Besides their website, CHADD publishes a variety of printed materials to keep members and professionals current on research advances, medications and treatments affecting individuals with ADHD. They also sponsor the National Resource Center on AD/HD, which can be found at help4adhd.org.
ADD/ADHD Mental Health and School is a program available at the University of Nevada, Reno associated with the online Masters in Social Work. For more detail see their very informative page that has a large amount of advice in supporting a child with ADHD.
ADHD and Relationships:
http://www2.nami.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Mental_Illnesses/ADHD/ADHD_and_Relationships.htm
This article from the National Alliance on Mental Illness offers helpful advice on how to manage your ADHD in your romantic relationship.
Treatment Options for ADHD in Children and Teens: http://www.effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/ehc/products/191/1148/adhd_con_fin_to_post.pdf
Parents whose children are struggling with the disorder will find this printable guide to be rich with information on many of the treatment options available to your loved one.
Creating the Optimal Living Environment for a Child with ADHD: http://www.homeadvisor.com/r/creating-the-optimal-living-environment-for-a-child-with-adhd/#routine
This guide contains valuable information on creating a soothing home atmosphere, a key factor in fostering the focus and wellbeing of your ADHD child.
Coping with Adult ADHD:
http://www.healthywomen.org/content/article/coping-adult-adhd?context=ages-and-stages/34&context_title=
There are many techniques you can implement into your daily routine to better manage your most troublesome symptoms.
ADHD in the Workplace: Your Legal Rights and Tips for Success: http://www.myfloridalaw.com/employee-laws-in-florida/adhd-in-the-workplace/
This article not only informs you of your legal rights regarding your ADHD at work, but also gives pointers on strategies to try at home and work that can help make your career aspirations a reality.
To learn more about ADHD, you are welcome to read Success Strategies for the ADD / ADHD Entrepreneur or contact Audrey to schedule a complimentary initial consultation. Imagine achieving the focus and followthrough you need to meet your objectives. Learn how to build systems that will build on your strengths and manage your vulnerable areas. We look forward to connecting with you!