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Last week I was in Silicon Valley at the Wisdom 2.0 Conference.  The conference brought together over 300 dynamic people from around the world to explore the conscious use of technology.  The energy in the room was amazing!

Several people have already written good posts summarizing the conference.  Two I recommend are Mei Mei Fox’s  Social Media + Mindfulness = Infectious Enlightenment and Beth Kanter’s Wisdom 2.0: Living Consciously in a Connected World.

Given that you all are passionate about conscious business and success, I wanted to share with you some of the more surprising messages we heard from leaders at companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Zappos, and the like.

Here are the 3 Most Surprising Success Lessons From the Wisdom 2.0 Conference:

1) Inside factors contribute twice as much to success. Meng Tan of Google is a software engineer turned “jolly good fellow”.  Really – that’s what his business card reads.  Meng qouted research that says our Emotional Intelligence skills are twice as important to long term success as our outer skills.  Google created their School of Personal Growth because it’s good for business.

While few would deny that having strong career skills are important, it’s easy in the daily shuffle of our work lives to treat Emotional Intelligence as a luxury.  Meng and other conscious business leaders reminded us that it deserves priority treatment.

Tony Hsieh

2) High touch is more effective than high tech. Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos, a company that does more than $1 Billion per year of online shoe and apparel sales.  He told us that the most effective sales technology that Zappos uses is “the telephone”.  According to Tony, too many businesses get lost in the shiny new technologies of our age and forget to build “genuine emotional connections” with their customers.

The Wisdom 2.0 panelists reminded us that technology is just a means to connect with more people.  They advised us to treat every interaction – each phone call, tweet or web page – as an opportunity to build heart to heart connections with real people.  “High touch is more important than high tech” is Tony’s motto.

3) The most important connection is the one with yourself. Tami Simon is the founder of Sounds True.  During a panel called Wisdom Teaching in the Internet Age, she said, “The most important connection with technology is the one with yourself.”

Tami spoke very candidly about the tendency to “reach for the Blackberry” when we’re feeling nervous or down.  Instead of going for that momentary rush of an email or Facebook update, take a moment to notice your emotional state.  I came away from the conference with a deep commitment to notice my inner state before I push the send button.

If you weren’t able to attend the conference live, all of the sessions were video taped and will be posted for free over the next few weeks at the Wisdom 2.0 site.

If you’ve spent anytime researching social media as a client tool, you’ve likely heard a wide mix of experiences. Some will tell you it’s the single most important marketing tool every invented. Others tell you it’s a complete waste of time.

Is Twitter a waste? Can you really attract awesome clients on Facebook? How come some people seem to get BIG results from social media marketing and others don’t?

Attract More Clients With Humor

Remember when Grandma told you that you attract more flies with honey than vinegar? I’d like to suggest that FUN is a form of online honey. Let’s take a look at two very successful people and how they use humor as a client attraction tool.

Humor as a Shoe Magnet

Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com, a online shoe company that sells over $1 billion per year. And, he’s proud of being a little weird. In fact, he’s such a strong believer in fun as a business strategy that one of Zappos’ 10 Core Values is “Create Fun and A Little Wierdness.”

As I write this post, Tony is listed as having almost 1.7 million followers on Twitter – that’s a LOT of free attention. To give you a sense of Tony’s sense of humor, today he Tweeted:

Hosted screaming contest w/ 120 kids of employees. In other news, stores report an unexplained increase in sales of Excedrin.

In total, 499 of Zappos’s 1400 employees are on Twitter to date. While no employee is forced to tweet, the company actually gives classes on Twitter success. Humor is an integral part of what they are taught.

The Vibration of Laughter

That’s fine for the CEO of a $1 Billion dollar a year company Paul. But, most of you are coaches, healers or small business owners of one kind or another. How could you have more fun in your marketing and survive?

Jeanette Maw is a Law of Attraction coach that charges $350 per session and is booked solid. You’d think that a Master coach with a global business is pretty serious, right?

Let’s take a look. Recently on Facebook, Jeanette posted:

Nice. Just left the office to go eat breakfast and realized I already have. When did THAT happen? Hope it was good. Maybe I should practice more “presencing” today. Ha!

If you follow Jeanette on social media or listen to one of her teleclasses, you’ll soon realize that FUN is one of the reasons that people are lining up to work with her.

3 Ways to Use Fun to Attract More Clients

1) If you’re going to make fun of anyone, make it yourself. Unless you’re a budding political satirist, it’s much safer to stick to poking fun at yourself.  Even comments made in jest can unintentionally alienate your prospects.  Jeanette is a master at laughing at her own humaness in a very attractive way.

2) Notice the idiosyncrasies of your field. EFT and meridian tapping, for instance, is weird looking stuff – there’s plenty of material for comedy routines here.  People in your field will love it if you help them find and celebrate your common weirdness.

3) Connect up with other humor magnets. One of the secrets to my practice going from zero to global in 15 months is that early on I got good at finding other people on social media who were fun to play with.  Sharing good times and field specific humor with other leaders in your niche build your esteem in a very natural way.  Even though your not in high school anymore, who doesn’t want to play with the cool kids?

Though grandma grew up BF (Before Facebook), she still knew that vinegar wasn’t going to catch many paying customers. Perhaps it’s time for a little more fun in your social media presence. After all, it only costs a smile.

In one of my Mastermind groups today, someone asked “How do you keep coming up with inspired content?”   In today’s economy, clients expect to be able to “try before you buy.”  In other words, they aren’t going to plunk down their money for your services until AFTER they have become inspired by your free blog post, newsletter, video or ebook.

Is your content inspiring?

These free things that you offer to inspire someone into becoming a paying client are called content.  You only have to offer free content if you want paying clients.

5 Tips for Creating Inspired Content

I assume if you’re still reading this that you: 1) want paying clients and 2) are open to offering great content.  The question becomes, how do you regularly come up with content that inspires people to say our 6 favorite words, “Do you have room for me?”

When you put 6 vibrant spiritual people on a question like this, you get some high vibrational answers.  Thanks to the members of the Thursday Mastermind group for 5 Tips for Creating Inspired Content:

1) Increase the number of juicy connections in your life. Carolyn Myss said, “We evolve at the rate of the tribe we are plugged into.”  If you want to create highly attractive stuff, it’s a good idea to have plenty of affirming and creative people in your life.   Social media sites are one place to find LOTS of these kinds of connections.

2) Practice mindfulness in your everyday life. Reality check – a thriving conscious business doesn’t mean you only practice spirituality during business hours.  When you start appreciating your everyday life more, you will naturally start to notice inspiring imagery more often.

3) Believe that you have valuable things to share. There are things that you know that others don’t but want to.  Use your spirituals tools to clear the self-negating voices in your head that tell you that you don’t know enough.  As you clear these limiting messages, you’ll be able to share what you DO know in increasingly inspiring ways.

4) Use your FUN voice. For millennia, the best spiritual teachers have always had a sparkle in their eye.  Your prospective clients don’t want to hear from a mindless (or worse yet, grumpy) robot.  They want to hear from a unique, vibrant human being.  Preferably one wearing a smile.

5) Consciously eat inspired content by others. Almost every spiritual tradition counsels us to stop and appreciate before we eat.  With that same sacred intention, regularly find and enjoy tasty content that other people create.  Don’t limit yourself to only your field of interest – a diverse diet of sacred stuff is good for the soul.

Inspiration is a natural outgrowth of a strong  energetic foundation.  These 5 tips will support you in creating the kind of free content that will allow you to attract more business in a relaxed way.

I’d love to hear any additional tips or thoughts you have in the form of a comment below.  Thanks for reading!

In the early 1990’s, I was a psychology grad student in Cambridge, Mass. I didn’t get it at the time, but I was surrounded by a quiet revolution going on in the understanding of how humans work.  People like Hebert Benson at Harvard and Jon Kabat-Zinn at UMass – influenced by their experiences in meditation – started looking more deeply at the technology of the human nervous system.

The result of this work is that the word “STRESS” is now a part of our everyday vocabulary.  We have begun to understand the effect of stress on our physical and emotional well-being and it’s a topic of conversations everywhere.

Success and Your Wiring

In January 2010, the well known business blogger Seth Godin wrote a post called Quieting the Lizard Brain.  This was one of the first popular acknowledgments of the role our nervous system has in success.

As a reader of this blog, you know that what’s happening in your mind and spirit effects your success profoundly. So before you rush off to that latest training in how to grow your business (even the one that I’m offering), let’s take a look at the three parts of the human brain and what they mean for your success.

It’s All About Survival: The Lizard Brain

Right where your skull meets your spine, sits the oldest part of your brain.  It’s concerned with the basics like eating, mating, and avoiding getting killed.  It is wired for strong emotions like fear and rage. When it’s activated, it takes over everything.

When a person or a team is being run in this manner, they tend to be guarded, reactive and resistant to new ideas.  Change and challenges are cause for great alarm and often lead to attacking whoever brought them into awareness.  Do I have to say more about what this means for success seekers?

Placating Heirarchy: The Dog Brain

The next part of the brain is the cerebellum or mammalian brain.  We’ll call it the Dog Brain.  It’s organized around repeating pleasure and avoiding pain.

When the dog brain is leading, choices are focused on social acceptance and placating hierarchy.  Decisions tend to focus on things like what to wear (the blue or black suit?) to fit in and how to keep up a level of performance that is acceptable to others.   While there’s lots of talk about excellence and innovation in business, the reality is that dog brain thinking is the norm in most organizations and the people who work in them.

Engage and Innovate: The Human Brain

The most optimistic part of all this brain stuff is that researchers like Stephen Porges say that we are hard-wired to connect, engage and innovate.  This is the cortex, our very human brain.  It’s our natural state, how we are born into the world.  However, it gets trampled under stress by the earlier part of the brain parts.

When a person or a team is operating from the neocortex, engagement is natural (scientists call it “social engagement mode”) and innovating together so obvious it’s like talking to a fish about water.  With corporate values like “Embrace and Drive Change” and “Create Fun and A Little Weirdness”, Zappos is my favorite example of a highly successful business operating from this consciousness.  When this part of your brain is in charge, you will naturally find yourself co-creating innovative and valuable solutions.   This is the key to effortless success.

Neuro-tech: The Technology of the Future

Later this month, I’ll be joining key players from companies like Google, Twitter, Zappos and Facebook at a conference called Wisdom 2.0.  The conference is focused on the need for mindful use of today’s technology.  Today’s leading edge companies know that in a noisy market place, getting anyone to listen to your message requires RELATIONSHIP and ENGAGEMENT.

Many of you know I’m a big fan of energy psychology tools like EFT to create this foundation for success.  My friend Soren Gordhamer, organizer of Wisdom 2.0, teaches mindfulness practices for this purpose.  There are many ways of activating this neurology.  The one thing that tends not to work is ignoring it.  That’s a strategy best left to the lizards.

One of the best known bloggers about inspired business, innovation and new media is Seth Godin. His new book is called Lynchpin.  It’s a great book that I highly recommend to anyone interested in conscious business.

In addition to being a remarkable book, there has been a very high level of interest in the book. Recently, the Social Media Examiner did an interview with Seth where he describes how he created this “firestorm” of interest using social media. It’s a great example of how authentic engagement leads to big results.  Click here to read the interview.

At some point in their journey, most of my clients decide to start their own business.  Many of best business thinkers of our time, such as well known blogger Seth Godin, are very outspoken about entrepreneurship as the best path to success and satisfaction.

So you have decided that for you, Right Livelihood means offering the world your heart based services.  You know that in order for you to serve the world, the world has to know you exist. Your task is to help people to find out about your work in a spiritually aligned way.  What’s the best way to do this?

Get Familiar With the Menu

What’s the first thing that they do once you have settled in at a good restaurant?   After you have a glass of wine or sparkling water in your hand, your server goes through the menu with you.  They give you a sense of each dish available and what it’s key flavors are.

Too many new entrepreneurs approach their online marketing decisions like fast food.  Your spiritual business is SACRED – it’s way too important for this grab it and go approach!

So before you jump onto the latest online marketing craze, I want to invite you take a deep breath and join me for a relaxed look at the 7 Most Powerful Marketing Strategies for Spiritual People:

1) A Dynamic Website

You may have heard the term “Web 2.0″.  What is it?  The key word is INTERACTIVE.  Instead of just an online version of a brochure (my name is Paul, these are my services, here’s how to contact me, etc), a dynamic website is always growing and changing. You add information about upcoming events, have questionnaires, and give people who visit your site a chance to comment on what’s there.

The Inner Skills: On an energetic level, a successful dynamic website is created through an attitude of ongoing service, clarity about your purpose and a willingness to authentically present yourself.

The Outer Skills: Success means adding new content over time and basic website management skills.

Spiritual Example: The Wisdom 2.0 Summit site.

2) Social Media Marketing

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past 5 years, you’ve heard about the recent boom in social media sites.  For instance, Facebook just passed Google in number of regular visitors in the US.  In social media marketing, you connect with people on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and combine genuine relationship building with authentic marketing.

The Inner Skills: For social media success, you need a mindset of authentic interest in others, deep listening and clarity about your business.

The Outer Skills: Strong writing, time management, and community organizing skills will go a long way towards social media marketing success.

Spiritual Example: Deepak Chopra on Facebook.

3) Blogging/Vlogging

Blogging is simply an online journal about a topic that you are interested.  It can be in written or video form (known as vlogging).  With this strategy, you share the latest in your topic area as well as helpful thoughts in the field.  You also have the option of having your readers add their thoughts in the form of comments.

The Inner Skills: Good writing (or video) skills plus passion for and clarity about your topic are the foundations of success.

The Outer Skills: You need to know your topic area and know the technology of creating and maintaining a blog.  You also want to have the relationships that allow you to stay current with what’s happening in your field.

Spiritual Example: Law of Attraction Coach Jeanette Maw’s blog.

4) Video Marketing

Video is becoming increasingly important on the web.  Youtube is best known video sharing site, but many others exist.  In video marketing you use the medium of video to share your passion and your knowledge about your topic.

The Inner Skills: Video requires a high level of comfortable with being “out there”.

The Outer Skills: Producing and editing video, presentation skills, lighting.

Spiritual Example: EFT and LOA Coach Brad Yates’ Youtube Channel.

5) Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a fancy way to say people telling their friends about your business.  It usually involves sharing something of high value for free with the intention of inspiring people to share with friends and colleagues.

The Inner Skills: Solid belief in what you offer and the skill to share it a way that stands out from the crowd.

The Outer Skills: You need to produce good content and package it in a professional way.

Here’s a link to 47 Examples of Viral Marketing success.

6) Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the first forms of online marketing.  Though it’s influence is declining, it still can be a powerful marketing strategy.  As the spiritual business owner, you inspire people to share their email with you by offering a free ebook and/or a great newsletter.  Then, you send regular emails with tips, updates and information about your area of expertise as well as relevant information about your services.

The Inner Skills: Authenticity and ability to transmit your passion in words.

The Outer Skills: Strong copywriting skills and technology skills such as autoresponders and email management programs.

Spiritual Example: Attraction Diva Jen Blackert has built an email list of 10,000’s.

7) Organic Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves the appropriate and deliberate use of deliberate keywords in a natural way in the text of your website.  You do this so that search engines like Google and Yahoo will list your site towards the top of the list when someone does a search for keywords related to your business.

The Inner Skills: Clarity.  Clarity.  More Clarity!

The Outer Skills: Keyword research skills and strong language skills.

Example: One company’s results with SEO.

I hope this post has given you a sense of what main marketing options are available to you.  No one is going to be an expert in them all – I usually recommend to new clients to look for 2-3 to start with.  Then, we come up with a custom plan to combine them in synergistic ways.  That’s a topic for another blog post.  In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions in the form of a comment below.

Lately, an increasing number of my clients are asking about social networks.  They have heard that sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Google Buzz are important to success.  Nobody has time to do them all. Where do you start?

On one level, the answer is – it DEPENDS.  On who you want to connect with.  A computer programmer looking for a tech job wants a different network than a crystal wielding new age healer seeking more clients.   It’s like that old saying grandma used to say, “Different channels for different folks.”

Most of the readers of this blog are coaches, therapists, consultants and healers of one variety or another looking for more clients.  Practicing what I preach, I recently asked the question “What’s the best social network?” to energy psychology fans on a number of social networks.  The results were clearer than a healing stone.

Facebook is the SECOND Best Social Network

The always lighthearted EFT and LOA guru Brad Yates immediately chimed in, “The Energy field”.   This lead to a number of comments like this one from EFT practitioner Jade Barbee:

Right now, Facebook feels best.  But, I echo what’s been said – the woo hoo freakin’ energy field is where it’s at.  

As someone who is not ADHD enough for Twitter, I really Like Facebook the most!  It goes at my pace. Yet I can reach enough people should I desire to do so.

Coach and Law of Attraction fan Terry Marquez Wildemann had this insightful comment:

I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.  I prefer Facebook because it’s so visual and easy to use.  Linkedin would be my second choice. I was super active on Twitter and over the last few months am on maybe once a week. I was recently told by a marketing guru that the life span of your average twitter person is about 3 months.

Facebook is the Largest, Most Fun and Effective

As has already been said, Facebook is the easiest social networking site to make sense of visually.  It’s also full of fun and high energy people – there are currently over 400 million people on Facebook.  You can find wonderful people to support your success goals no matter what they are.

Like anything else, there are strategies that are more and less effective on Facebook.  I’m curious – what has your experience been with Facebook?   What questions do you have about how to attract more of what you want there?  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the form of a comment below.  Happy manifesting!

As I write this post, there’s snow on the ground and the sky is grey with possibility.  In the Northern Hemisphere, we’ve just passed the longest night of the year.  Little by little, the light is returning.

The new year is on many people’s minds.  While I don’t have any magical devices to show me exactly what the coming year will bring (sorry to disappoint you), I do believe that 2010 is going to be an awesome year for many readers of this blog.  Right about now, you’re probably asking, “What the HECK is he talking about?!?”

3  Reasons Spiritual Success Seekers Will Love 2010

1) It’s almost impossible to succeed without a clear sense of purpose. In the past, making money and things like purpose were hard to put into the same paragraph.  One of the things that has changed over the past year is that most people are spending money very differently.  They are asking more questions and exploring more deeply before they buy.

For spiritual people, this is GREAT news.  We know about intentions and purpose and the energy that lives underneath the surface of things.  While yesterday’s leaders with the old “pound them with advertising until they buy” mindset should be scared, our ability to have deeper conversations about what is truly valuable is an essential strength in today’s economy.

2) Spiritual people understand the power of NOW.

Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

Eckhart Tolle

These days, many people are trying to figure out how to get back to a point they were at in the past.  Similarly, many people – some with very important titles – are trying to figure out how to rush into a “new future” as fast as possible.   As a spiritual person, you know that both these efforts are wasting tremendous amounts of energy.

Right here in this moment – right now – there are TREMENDOUS opportunities. However, the person whose mind is clouded by fear, regret or a desire to rush into the future is going to be unable to take advantage of them.  As a spiritual person, you are more equipped to see the current opportunities.  You also are more able to take mindful actions that will birth these opportunities into the world.

Keep in mind that, because this moment is like no other, your opportunities may look very different than those that were present for your parents or even those in your life a few years ago.

3) We’ve practiced the art of mindful community for generations. About 8 years ago, I heard a prominent Buddhist teacher talk about the important of what the Buddhists call Sangha – the community one practices in.  It was one of those talks where you could feel the power of his words vibrating off the walls.

In sum, what this teacher said is that we humans are deeply relational critters.  Nothing impacts us more than the thoughts and feelings of those we are surrounded by.  So, one of the surest paths to ongoing spiritual growth is to surround yourself with others who are on a good path.

Unless you’re a recent transplant to planet Earth from some other corner of the universe – in that case, let me say WELCOME – you know that we are in the midst of a networking revolution.   For instance, there are currently over 50 million registered users of LinkedIn.  A FREE social networking site dedicated to the business user with 50 million subscribers – our grandparents had nothing like this.  Online and off, there never been more options for spiritual success seekers to tap into the power of mindful communities.  And no one is in a better position to make skillful use of the power of the Success Sangha than the readers of this blog.

What is 2010 going to be like for YOU?

Your success is very important to me.  In fact, it’s the reason I’m here on this beautiful planet.  I’d very much like to hear what you see ahead of you in 2010.  Please share your thoughts and questions in the form of a comment below.  And, thanks to all of you who make this community such a vibrant place to be part of.

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of social media when it’s used mindfully.  For those of you interested in the mindful use of Twitter, my friend Soren Gordhamer wrote a fantastic blog post for the popular social media blog Mashable.  It’s called the Tao of Tweeting and you can read it here.

Around the globe, hundreds of millions of people are involved in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.  As I write this post, estimates are that there are over 270 million users on Facebook alone – if it were a country, Facebook would be in the top 5 in the world in terms of population.  While not quite as many numbers wise, there are also tens of millions of people around the globe who are passionate about the Law of Attraction.

Law of Attraction and social media

For those of us who share the belief that your thoughts, feelings and actions form your reality, there is a tremendous opportunity here. Combining the Law of Attraction and social media offers anyone with access to the Internet a chance to directly interact with just about anyone else – from Oprah to spiritual leaders to important business decision makers.

What does mean for spiritual people? It means that through the conscious combination of the Law of Attraction and social media, we have the ability to tap into a source of creative support that previous generations could only dream about.

However, not everything that is happening on social media sites is helpful to the conscious creator. In fact, much of it is not. Here are 4 tips that will help you combine the Law of Attraction and social media in useful ways:

1) Be clear about your intentions. Chatting about what you ate for breakfast or the actors in the hottest movie isn’t likely to lead to what your heart of heart wants.  Deliberate creation is built on a foundation of knowing your intentions .  In order to attract people who can help you attain what you want, you need to be clear about what you are looking to attract.

2) Practice the Law of Reciprocity. Spiritual people throughout the ages have said that you need to give in order to get.  To attract people who can help you, you need to explore ways to help others.  Look for ways to share your knowledge, find a resource that will help someone else, or just say an authentic kind word to someone who needs to hear it.

3) Build real relationships. The human nervous system is hard wired to want to help people we know and trust.  Social media is a relationship building tool – not an empty numbers game.  Find people who share your interest and get to know them.

4) Have fun! Joy is one of the most attractive emotional states there is.  Spreading good news and creating smiles attracts positive, helpful people.  And, remember that the Law of Attraction says that feeling good comes before getting what we want.

The Law of Attraction and social media are a natural match.  I have seen people use this combination to increase their success, find a new home, attract a wonderful partner, and much more.  If you’re looking for ways to have more of what you want, I encourage you to follow these tips to help you put the power of this combination to work in your life.