Once upon a time on Leap Day in 2008, I had a wild, spontaneous thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d like to try this blogging thing I had heard of. So I clicked around, fell down a few rabbit holes and finally stumbled on something called WordPress.com and discovered to my utter amazement, that there was a place where I- techie-challenged-little-old-me- could have a website up in a matter of moments.
So I did. And sat there and stared at the lure of a perfectly empty blog.
I knew nothing about blogging. I had only read a handful of blogs in my entire lifetime up to that moment and none of my reading had prepared me for running a blog or website or having a clue about what to do next.
Luckily for me, a lifetime of small business management kicked in and I asked myself the only logical question I could think of, the one I would have asked any client beginning a new adventure.
“What do you want to say? Who are you speaking to? How do you want them to feel when they are done hearing your message?
That question was the easy one.
Inspired. I knew I wanted them to be Inspired.
Life’s Little Inspirations was born that fast.
I finally wrote post called Pig Farms that was published soon after and the rest has been…an amazing journey. (if you read that link, notice the referral from Brett Legree, my first internet friend, who referred me to the web designers at Men with Pens, where I met my business partner Deb Dorchek. Deb designed LLI , we became great friends and now have gone on to write a novel and run a company together. All from Pig farms and Brett. Thanks Brett!)
For a few years. I wrote a crystal clear message about inspiration and the many ways it shows up in our lives.
Last week, Deb and I launched the fourth leg of our Blue Sun Studio, inc Network, Creative Clarity Coaching. For the past year, CCC has been sharing space at LLI, blurring the message between growing your creative talents and gifts in business, and posts of inspiration for everyone.
But for me, for the last year, the struggle to find my voice from the original intent of inspiring people to find their passion had gotten diluted. The perception of what the website had started out to be had changed. The audience had changed. Many of the original readers had faded away and even my own writing felt like it had gone sideways.
The coaching message needed it’s own home.
Even though I sensed the problem, I don’t think realized the extent, until the Coaching website was finished, how much I had missed my humble Life’s Little Inspirations.
Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a desire to bring back the original pale pink sunset, our original lighthouse and our simple messages of little inspirations. The kind that never really felt that small because they touched that spot inside where all of our memories and emotions live.
Ah….comfort. Inspiration. Simplicity.
It feels like I’ve come home. Back to the beginning.
Back to where it was when there was no trying, no business, no company, nothing that needed to be said.
The Lesson Learned
Sometimes things change. Sometimes we have more than one thing to say. We grow, evolve, expand into a bigger, broader version of ourselves. And in our growth, we try and cram all of our messages, all of our learning and sharing into one small space and we try to share it with one same small audience. Instead of being perceived as a wise expanding expert, we are seen as a cluttered, diluted mess. We miss the lesson that the ideal audience for our first message may not be interested in the second aspect of our growth.
We miss that is time to have faith and spread our wings.
I believe wholeheartedly in the message that our company has to offer. We will continue to help inspired artists build their companies with beautiful design, we will expand our coaching services for creative entrepreneurs and help new authors learn to take their writing dreams and bring them into reality through our network at Creative Clarity Coaching, Blue Sun Studio and Behind the Words.
But here,
Just words, inspired from the heart.
The most powerful kind of words there are.
