I’m the opening event at this year’s SOBCon (Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference) in Chicago, IL on May 2, 3, and 4. The title of this year’s event is Biz School for Bloggers.

I’m going to one (and only one!) blogging conference in 2008. Here’s why this is it…

1 - I had a great time last year.

Liz Strauss and Terry Starbucker are the coordinators of SOBCon. My theory is that the promoters of any event attract audiences that are in alignment with their hearts and souls.

So, at SOBCon, the participants are authentic, intelligent, funny, amazing people. (Like Terry and Liz!) It’s small enough that you get a chance to really learn stuff, connect with other people, and actually ask questions. And it’s big enough that you can sit back and just absorb it all, too.

2 - Connecting on the web is one thing…

…meeting people in person is just an entirely different experience.

3 - I enjoy being a nerd.

Many of the people at blogging conferences have two lives. They’ve got their day-to-day natural habitat (offices, cubicles, retail outlets, art studios, etc). And then they have their blogging world - where they get jazzed about things that no one else they know gets jazzed about. I am no exception. At SOBCon, our inner (or not so inner) nerds get to come forth and shine. I love this.

4 - Who doesn’t need a little help in their business?

“Biz School for Bloggers” is a great theme. When I go to songwriting events, there’s always some music manager or agent offering a “bootcamp” about the music business. He drones on about the usual stuff - - which, conveniently, puts him at the top of the artist food chain. Press kits and agents and CD’s and on and on (and yawn and yawn).

Musicians and artists (and life coaches and healers and anyone who’s self-employed) need the perspective that this kind of conference offers. Why? Because it’s exciting. There is no food chain. It’s a whole new model. And it wakes up your brain. (Yes, the very brain that was put to sleep by the music manager at that last songwriting event you attended.)

5 - SOBCon is in downtown Chicago in May…

…and who can resist the experience of an 8 degree Wind Chill Factor in the springtime?

tags: SOBCon08, Liz Strauss, Terry Starbucker, blog, blog conference, christine kane

Many years ago, I took a step back from touring. I needed perspective. I wanted to deepen my approach to my music career and my songwriting.

I took workshops and got lots of mentoring. I tried to get clear about why I was doing music at all. I wanted to uncover my deepest motivations. Mostly I wanted to be free of my ego and do nothing in my life that was motivated by fear or neediness.

But there was this one slight problem.

I couldn’t get rid of the fear or the neediness. I couldn’t get rid of the ego stuff.

I explored the deepest parts of myself and found that, indeed, I had some beautiful intentions when I began my music career. I wanted to inspire people. I wanted to encourage and heal people. I wanted people to feel uplifted the way I felt uplifted when I left certain concerts.

But along side of that stuff, I also had these really embarrassing prom-queen-like motivations. They said things like, “Screw healing! I want approval!” It was clear that these voices were every bit as much a part of my motivation as my more noble intentions.

So, I told myself that I wasn’t going to do music anymore until those needy, smarmy, prom-queen, ego voices went away forever.

I find this hysterically funny now. So, I imagine, did my mentor at the time.

Recently, I’ve received several emails from women who are watching Eckhart and Oprah every week. They are concerned that they shouldn’t be setting intentions or having dreams because they notice that they can’t get their egos out of these intentions and dreams.

I tell them the very thing I discovered for myself…

You don’t have to.

When I finally did decide to go forward with my music, I allowed for both parts of me to go along for the ride. My noble wise self with her beautiful deep intentions. And my needy, grasping, approval-seeking self who wanted spotlights, applause and to get back at anyone who ever hurt her. The two could live side by side.

As I moved forward, I allowed my career to teach me how to live in the deeper self more often, creating lighter and better directions for me. I also let my needy self teach me how to expand beyond those old patterns and fears, and how to accept them when they arose. To say it wasn’t always easy is a giant understatement.

Sometimes taking action is the very thing that can help all that ego stuff burn away slowly. If you can stay present and watch yourself make choices and take actions with a clear awareness of what fuels you, then you’ll keep on growing and learning. Sitting and waiting for enlightenment is, in my humble opinion, a limiting option.

I thought I could do this. I thought I could wait for a more enlightened version of myself to show up before I did anything else ever again. Mostly I was desperate. I wanted to never feel pain again, and enlightenment felt like a good way out - sort of like a spiritual martini.

Experience has taught me to relish the path and take action anyway. It has taught me that spiritual perfectionism is every bit as insane as my old eating disorder perfectionism. The action I’ve taken, in spite of ego, has made all the difference. Those ego voices are only a tiny part of my life now. They show up on occasion and have lots to say, but I don’t try to get rid of them.

A year ago, I picked up an injured cardinal on the side of the road. I took it to a wildlife rehab center in my city. I wrote a post about it. On a whim, at the end of the post, I accepted PayPal donations for the rehab center. I got over $900 in three days. The two women who started the center cried when they received the check.

Weeks later, we had a conversation about their fundraising. They’ve always done it the same old way. Bake sales and benefit concerts. Both introverts, they loathe benefit concerts. In fact, they detest fundraising. Their talent is rehabilitating owls and hawks, and many other wild animals that have been shot, hit by cars, or wounded by some other human contact.

I offered that they eliminate the Bake Sale paradigm from their business model. (You gotta bake a lot of muffins to raise $900.) “Start a blog!” I said. I suggested that one of their volunteers could write daily reports about different animals. She could add photos for every story to create connection and heart. I explained how blog software links up and networks, and how Google eats it all up. I said that their donations could now come from across the globe - not just from the locals.

They were interested. But they told me they didn’t have the time or the resources to do a whole new thing in their lives as they could barely keep up with the work they do already. They have not started a blog, nor have they changed their website.

Muffin, anyone?

New Success Requires Letting Go of Old Paradigms

Here’s the Indie Musician’s version of the Bake Sale paradigm:

Find ways to get money to make a CD. Use credit cards. Ask your mailing list to pre-order CD’s. Then, make the CD. Go on the road for at least two years doing shows to support the CD. Borrow more money for promotion. Pay back debt and hopefully make extra money, too. Hope for Big Shows, opening act slots and festivals - along with all the other musicians.

It’s not a bad paradigm at first. I’ve always made my money back on my CD’s. I’ve obviously made a pretty good living at it. Lots of my friends have as well. Many people barely scrape by, though. And the rest of us get tired of the constant touring. Some nights we get sold out crowds. Some nights the seats are half full. Sometimes we drive 8 hours to get to the next gig, only to wake up and do it again. By 35, we look like Keith Richards.

And of course, the new issue is that lots of people aren’t buying CD’s anymore - especially on college campuses. (At one college last fall, many of the students had their laptops open during my performance. One of them actually admitted to being on Limewire and downloading my songs for free as I was playing.)

As careers get better, you might make more money, but you then have to subtract 20% for agents, and 20% for managers. And take into consideration that retail store CD sales offer pretty low profit. You have to stay on the road and keep feeding that paradigm. It’s a hungry paradigm.

An Example of The New Paradigm

So, what’s the new paradigm?

The thing is, there isn’t one yet. And there may never be. What it’s really all about is a new way of thinking, and a whole new set of ideas directed towards new kinds of goals. And there’s a feeling that happens when you start to “get it.” There’s the internet and all of its conversations and ways of reaching people.

I started my blog two years ago this week. My blog audience is not songwriters. I don’t write about the craft of songwriting, even though that would’ve been an obvious choice for me. My blog audience is my music audience. My posts don’t appeal to anyone in the music business, necessarily. Nor are they designed to publicize my music. I started writing my blog mostly to continue the conversations I was having with people as I signed their CD’s after each show. That’s it.

So, here’s what’s shaping up to be typical of my new paradigm:

I wrote a post about my personal experience of creating a Vision Board at a friend’s house. It was months before The Secret DVD came out. Upon the release of that DVD, people began to Google “Vision Board.” My blog post was the very first thing that came up. (If you Google “Vision Board” today, my follow-up post on the subject is on top.)

At that time, I was facilitating my retreats for women once or twice a year. I only offered them to my mailing list. At my October 2006 retreat - seven months after my blog was born - two women who had never heard my music or seen me perform attended. This was the first time that had happened. They had found my blog after they saw The Secret, and went to Google to find Vision Boards. Then they started reading my blog. Then they came to a retreat. They bought my music there. I still see them when I tour to their city for shows, etc. (One of them is going on a beach trip this summer with the other women from that retreat. They’ve all stayed in touch.)

In 2007, I offered four retreats. It was the most I had ever offered in one year. They all sold out, and each retreat was attended by a handful of people who had discovered my music because they found my blog first.

At the retreat I facilitated this past weekend, (2008) over half the women attending had found my blog first. This same expansion has been happening at performances as well - though I don’t make the audience raise their hands or anything. Mostly people tell me about it at the CD table after the show.

The Siren Call of the Old Paradigm

If you’re creating a new paradigm, you might have many days where you just want to give up and do it the old way. This has been my biggest challenge.

In fact, most music biz people aren’t all that thrilled about my new paradigm example because it seems like a painfully long wait for someone to “discover” you. It’s also lots of extra work, they say. After all, you can perform at a festival and stand up in front of 5000 people. Or you can get on NPR and the whole country can hear you! Why not invest your time and effort into that?

The festival thing is valid. You really do build your audience when you play at festivals. And nothing can propel a show into a sell-out like a great interview on a local NPR or community radio station. I won’t deny that.

However, if you have a new CD and you want to get it out to NPR, then most radio promoters begin at $8000 for a several week push. Several weeks is all you get. And most of them do little more than put some postage on your CD and send it to the stations, then follow up with a phone call about your CD (and the other four CD’s they’re getting paid $8000 a piece to promote that week). And since NPR is the only thing in the world music business not owned by Clear Channel, that’s what everyone is thinking. Every single person who’s releasing a CD - from Lucinda Williams to your cousin Travis - is looking to NPR for their airplay.

Festivals are cool. There are a handful of great ones. But they’re only in the summer. And most of them don’t want the same artists year after year. And most of them are heavily booked by certain agencies that offer deals to the promoters for booking more than one of their artists. If you do get in the line up, you have one hour to do great. And then you need to follow up in that same community later in the coming year, and promote the show well. In other words, one festival doth not a career make.

Besides, this old paradigm is driven by the agents and the managers and the promoters. The new paradigm is more fun. It’s artist driven. It’s reader driven. It gives me the option of doing it how I want to do it. I am not only wealthier now. I am also decidedly happier. Just ask my closest friends.

(My retreats are all in my hometown, by the way. No travel.)

The Unavoidable Challenges of Two Paradigms

I’m on line a lot. I read blogs. I get eBooks. When I can, I study anything from on-line marketing to code writing to WordPress plug-ins. When I’m in this world - even though I’ve learned a lot - I’m a moron. Everyone knows more than I do. This world is filled with on-line marketing secret formulas , mixed up with lots of code and Google analytics. I bow to the gurus so I can monitor all the changes. It is a big world.

Then, I turn off my computer and do a performance. Or I go to a radio interview. Then, I wonder where all those people in that on-line world live. In this other off-line world, lots of people still use AOL. And in terms of computer know-how, I’m Steve freakin’ Jobs. In this arena, I say the name “Seth Godin,” and I’m met with blank stares. I say “Brian Clark” and the stares get blanker. In fact, in this arena, many of the presenters, DJ’s, promoters, and managers are a bit disdainful towards my on-line-ness. One radio interviewer got an attitude when we were on the air. He asked me why he or any of his listeners should care that I have a blog or that I’m ranked on Technorati. (He pronounced Technorati wrong.)

So, I’ll be the first to admit that moving over to a new paradigm will take some courage, some weird looks, and some mistakes. And it might mean you feel a little on your own. And for a while, it may even mean less income. But as Seth Godin said in his oft-linked-to music business talk,

“The only way you get from here to there is to just do it. Now, you might be wrong. But the alternative is you WILL be wrong.”

He’s right.

tags: blog, blogging, google, seth godin, online marketing, music, christine kane

Alison Lee has a wildly popular podcast called Craftcast. She’s all about creativity, crafting, art, music, and writing. She’s also a great interviewer. Her guests have ranged from best-selling authors like SARK to celebrated musicians like Gabrielle Roth to fabulous artists like Claudine Hellmuth. I am honored to be her guest on this week’s Craftcast Podcast. Our conversation is a lot about creativity, a little about building a career, and all about being a pioneer.

Click here to listen.

This is Part 4 in this series on the snarkiest (and most common) ways we misinterpret the Law of Attraction.

Quick review: The first misconception is about blame. The second misconception is making it a part time thing. The third misconception is taking it personally.

So, now we arrive at the fourth snarkiest misconception about the Law of Attraction…

#4 - Forgetting freedom

I have mentored performers and artists, both through my retreats and my e-Seminar. They’re intending success in their creative work and in their careers. Sometimes one of them gets a bad review, has a bad showcase, or doesn’t do well at an opening. She calls me in a panic. Her instant fear is that her career is over. Done. Finished. “You’ll never work in this town again!”

I don’t say anything about “attracting” this situation. I tell her the very thing that I’ve learned over and over again in similar situations:

Only you get to decide whether or not your career is over. You still have that choice. No one out there makes that choice for you. This is the ultimate freedom in your life.

When she begins to understand this, she breathes a sigh of relief.

Once she gets over the grief and the emotion of the incident, I encourage her to get back to focus. This means getting clear about who she is, and what she wants in her work. This means putting her attention on the happy feeling of success and the direction in which she is headed.

This does astonishing things to shift her energy. She is then free to look at the situation and ask herself if she created it, or attracted it and most importantly, what it can teach her.

This is one small example of one small incident, of course.

But, no matter what the incident might be, these incidents and daily choices are exactly where you can apply the Law of Attraction. It’s tempting - in so many situations - to believe that the outside world controls our destiny. It’s easy to head straight into the panic without remembering that our thoughts about the situation have enormous impact. There is always a point of choice.

If there’s one gift I’ve received from working with this principle - even with my own snarky misconceptions and resistance - it is this: The Law of Attraction is about taking responsibility for your life - your thoughts, your actions, your speech. Accepting that responsibility is pure freedom.

Pure freedom is knowing your life is in your hands - whether that be your thoughts, your actions, your translation of the situation, what you choose to believe, or what you choose to say to other people.

Pure freedom is knowing no one else can define your joy, your light, your delight, your success, and your abundance. You define those things for yourself. You choose them.

Pure freedom is knowing if you created the things that you don’t like about your life, then you can create something different. There’s only one place you need begin - inside of you.

Pure freedom is knowing that you can keep choosing this over and over again, instead of waiting for something outside of you to rescue you. You can try a different action, a different thought, a new approach.

Taking responsibility for your life is not a burden. Taking responsibility for your life is liberating. Being clear about who you want to be and what you want to do and then moving in that direction is powerful work indeed. It will teach you that the limitations you experience are more about your insides than about the world out there.

You get to choose how to think, plain and simple. It takes constant and compassionate practice, for sure. But when you start to understand the feeling of freedom, you’ll know why so many people believe in the value of this work.