Remabulous

Notes from Remabulous: Video is the new thing here!

Hello all!

It has been a while since I wrote a post talking about where Remabulous is in the current climate and what our plans and dreams are for how we can serve you. I am delighted to share that after studying the market as it is extensively the last few months that we are upgrading our offerings to better serve you and your needs at this time.

This had been a crazy ride the last year, hasn't it? We have seen an incredible amount of change. Fortunes have been lost, and made as many things we took for granted have done a total about face. This time has been scary for many, but if we are smart, it has the potential to be quite exciting and an opportunity to embrace the new.

Just as the internet made it more possible to share information with millions (now 1.5 Billion users, with a new internet user joining the community ever 3 seconds!) with very little effort or expense, recently the jump in technology has made an even more intimate connection possible through video.

You may have noticed that we now have a vlog and feature video as often as podcasts and written posts... read on to learn why: (and see a little poll I have put together as well...)

Monday Inspiration from Grasshopper.

Mondays can be tough for entrepreneurs. It's hard sometimes to shift out of weekend mode and into work mode (especially if you didn't take off for the weekend at all!), so I wanted to share this little video that a colleague from Smarty was kind enough to post on our mailing list this morning:

Put your intentions into your playlist!

As I write this post this morning, I am listening to Lionel Richie's "Dancing on the Ceiling." Searching through flickr for my image of the day, I found this one by Stebbi. It made me so happy I had to use it to show how I feel listening to this song.

I have been thinking a lot about play since my marketing seminar this past weekend. We need to feed our creative brains and so I was, pardon the pun, playing around with the word play.

We have always been music-loving beings. we made drums very early in our evolution and early on we learned to dance. When we were little we danced without concern or shame. As adults, many of us say "I don't dance" when the invitation is given to us.

What a shame. Even if it's only in the privacy of our homes or our cars, getting into music that moves us is so good for our bodies, our cells, and our world.

Imagine the reduction in road rage if we were all rocking out to happy music?

Part of my training as an Expressive Arts Therapist was in Music and Dance Therapy. Here are my tips about how your playlist can help you bring your a game and your best life:

image: "What a feeling. Dancing on the Ceiling" by Stebbi.

Bring play back into your working life.

All work and now play makes us dull. Today in the newsletter I shared how we need play much more than we realize.

Play is linked to the creative as well as to free-form thinking.

When we are grinding away on the same track over and over, we're not having new ideas. We're not expanding our approach or our abilities. We are just hammering over and over again on the same points.

What if we brought play back? How would that help us?

When we all started our professional lives, we had years of play informing our choices. Remember being a kid and playing at professions you wanted to try? I pretended to be a lawyer, tromping around the house with my dad's old briefcase and legal pads.

What if we played at being our most successful selves?

This week, play a little. Get dressed, make coffee, sit in a cafe, have meetings and make phone calls live your most sucessful self.

"What are you playing at?" is a put down many of us heard as kids. What if we took it back?

What do you want to play at this week? Think big. Think as big as you can about where you are dreaming of going.

Then play like you've made it. Have fun... the best ideas come to us when we are happy.

If I don't have a big laugh every day, I know I need to re-evaluate.

Have fun playing- and share your results with us!

image: "Little monks playing in the afternoon" by Sukanto Debnath.

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How I spent my Sunday this weekend. If you want a burst in business, your view will look like this:

Marketing is changing faster than we can think these days. I decided I hang out with awesome women at a SMARTY LA event this Sunday and learn what is up now. And guess what? Lorrie Thomas of www.webmarketingtherapy.com made it fun. Find a class in your area and reach out to people who will benefit from your business. I promise it will be worth it.

Luxury of letting go #2: Rethinking Shopping.

We are a nation of shoppers. After the attacks of 9/11/2001, who can forget the advice that the best thing we could do to help was go shopping? Before we gave blood, before we volunteered. Go shopping!

Many of us have had to adjust our shopping budgets and where we put our dollars is more important than ever now. I was just reading this month's Bust magazine, which makes a good point: while big banks and corporations are receiving government money and bailouts that allow them to keep getting bonuses, small business owners are having difficulty covering their bills.

When the economy was up, anyone could get a loan and many creative people benefited and were able to get started. Let's make sure we budget to help them keep going. Here are some ways to cut back on shopping and still boost sales for those who need the money most:

image: Irargerich.

Thoughts on the good life, whatever that may mean.

It's funny. the past few weeks I have been hearing the following phrase a lot: "You have a really great life." Someone this past weekend was kind enough to say that if she could go back to being my age, she would want to have my life.

I started thinking about this when someone reacted to my newsletter the same way last week.

I wondered what kind of life they think I have. Where they fill in the gaps of what I don't share online. Because the truth is, all of us who choose to have lives in this forum are quite careful about what we share and what we don't.

Since my business is one in which I am trying to help people have the lives they have dreamed of, I am quite careful to stay on the upside with my public persona and to share those things that I do that may inspire others to follow their dreams as well.

But I started to wonder this past week if I am doing people a disservice by giving the incorrect impression that this life is easy or isn't a ton of work every day.

Self-Care: Ways to keep it going in a tricky time.

One of the ways I have always taken care of myself is by going to yoga class. But between moving, having to find a new studio, and trying to economize during this time, I haven't been for a while. After spending six weeks sick in bed, it has felt a bit daunting to get back into a class.

So... in the interest of encouraging people to find ways to keep up soothing and grounding rituals, I have found the most amazing free resource: yoga downloads, a free yoga podcast. Friends of mine had recommended it, so I downloaded a gentle hatha class from iTunes and decided to give it a try this morning.

I have never been a big fan of yoga videos- I can't seem to connect with them, but for some reason this was totally different. I streamed it from my computer to my stereo and laid out my much neglected mat in the middle of the living room and did the 25 minute class and loved it.

The only challenge was dealing with my cat Oskar's (pictured above)tendency to jump up on me- he can reach my shoulders- and use me as a jungle gym during warrior poses. But still- real life is grist for the mill.

I certainly still advocate going to a real class- especially if you are new to yoga as getting form correct is essential to avoid injury. But for those of you who want to do yoga more often or at home, this podcast is a must try.

It's thinking big that brings the joy.

This has been a big fat juicy week. We have a new president, officially, finally and for real.

We have a country that is turned upside down in many ways, but we are also looking at this change in a better way than we have been in years. No one is sticking her head in the sand to avoid looking at what is anymore. And this is what leads to greatness.

One of the things I did take away from the time I spent running the administration of an art gallery soon after I moved to LA is that band-aid solutions are no good. The owner encouraged me to look to the root of the situation, come up with a way to improve the entire foundation and then create new policy from that place.

Just as the country has to learn to do this, we too can move ahead to create new opportunity for growth and change in our own lives. In fact, the world right now needs us to do this.

Here's how I am moving ahead into the most joyful time I have ever seen in my life, even in the midst of chaos:

Image: DonnaGrayson. (She took it on Hollywood Blvd!)

Top 7 reasons you know you're a sick entrepreneur; that is, an entrepreneur who's ill.

I have been stuck in bed the past 2 1/2 days, a slave to my defective tonsils. Bleh. But, I have noticed some new trends in my sick habits since I started Remabulous. You know you're ill like the self-employed when: 1) A friend tells you to stop e-mailing and get in bed and you have to reply that you are in bed. With the blackberry. 2) You lay on the couch watching movies all day, getting newsletter ideas and trying to think of how you'd market to the characters. 3) Your one trip out of bed the first three hours of the day is to print out marketing handouts for the course you're taking. 4) You're getting more consolation about being sick over your website and online networking than you are from normal phone calls. 5) You lay in bed, feverish, and feel guilty for being behind on your blog. 6) You post to the blog at 11pm when you should be in bed, with a thremometer hanging out of your mouth. 7) )Your internet is wonky, and you are too tired to dig around a rewire it, but instead of giving up on the idea you post anyway. From the miracle Blackberry. May we all survive the holidays stronger than we were before and hopefully, flu-free!