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emilyplaysotome · 3 years

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The Queen Makes Her Choice: Part 6

This is the final chapter to a multi-part smutty fic with the MLQC boys. This might be the filthiest thing I've ever written 😂

This whole series is for those 18+ only.

Catch up:

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5

Miracle finder makes it impossible to see anyone, and even if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t matter.

Gavin is on a mission, Victor is on a trip, Kiro is on tour, and Lucien…

…well, Lucien isn’t replying, or posting, or commenting.

No surprise there.

I have no idea if he’ll show on Saturday even though the rest of them will be there. I’ve booked us a private room in one of Loveland’s hottest “sky clubs” - a lounge located at the top of a high rise with nothing but large glass windows and views for days to accompany the drinks and people.

It was a splurge on my salary, but I have to do this right.

If I do this right well...

...maybe there's hope of keeping them all by my side.

There’s still no reply from Lucien as I get ready an hour before everyone is supposed to meet. I decide to tell him that I need him there, and let that be the end of it.

I don’t have much in my closet for this event, but buried in the back I find an old clubbing outfit from my birthday two years ago. The top is an iridescent blueish-purple with spaghetti straps, a revealing back, and cropped to show my midriff. I pair it with a flowy dark skirt that balances out its sex appeal, tying my hair back, and putting on a simple necklace to show off my neckline.

I feel pretty and knowing that I’m about to meet four (well, hopefully four) men who have all confessed to me, I feel confident that they will too.

—

I arrive early and finish my drink too quickly in the hopes of calming my nerves. The waitstaff gets me another and I tell myself to cool it for fear of getting too drunk before they all arrive.

The room I’ve reserved is bigger than I expected, with seating that could easily accommodate 25 people. There are standing cocktail tables and ink blue couches that have a soft, velvet fabric accompanied by tables for drinks.

I’ve settled into the center of one of the couches and I’m distracting myself on my phone, hoping that my nerves will fade when I hear the door open.

I’m surprised that its Lucien who I see first.

“I didn’t think you were coming?!” I say.

He kisses me before sitting next to me, looking around the room.

“I wasn’t sure if I would.”

“But why?”

He sighs and shakes his head, smiling.

“Too much thinking. Too much worrying.”

I have more questions, but I won’t get to ask them as Victor enters next. Upon seeing Lucien I can see his defenses go up. He puffs out his chest, tilts up his chin sneering at him, making no attempt to hide what can only be described as a very sour expression.

I get up and stand between them, gently taking Victor’s hand and guiding him to sit beside me on the couch. Sandwiched between him and Lucien, I thank him for coming. The mood only grows more tense with each addition.

Gavin is next.

Kiro is last.

It’s clear that they all thought I had planned something for them and them alone based on the disappointment I see on their faces when they register their competition in the room. Once they’re all assembled, Lucien and Victor on either side of me, Gavin pouting with his arms crossed and standing by one of the cocktail tables and Kiro who paces like a wild animal in a cage, I begin.

“I know you’re all eager to understand what this is about,” I say. “And I first want to thank you all for being in my life.”

There are gruff acknowledgments all around, but no real words or statements from anyone. I can tell by the way they’re drinking and refilling their glasses that they’re just as nervous as I am, and not wanting to drag things out I continue.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want in my partner, and I keep coming back to daily life. Waking up next to someone I love each morning, making breakfast, hearing about their day…”

It’s then I look at each of them, one by one.

“…and I’ve come to the conclusion that none of you can do that for me.”

“Now wait a minute,” Gavin starts to say and I cut him off.

“You’re always gone on some mission for God knows how long.”

I turn to look at Lucien, “You disappear on me at the drop of a hat…”

Then Victor, “…you spend 50% of your time doing business outside of Loveland City….”

And finally Kiro, “…and you’re on tour for the foreseeable future.”

They all seem bashful because they know I’m right.

They all know they couldn’t be 'the one' unless they all made major concessions for me.

“So I think for now, until things change, I will commit to none of you and all of you.”

There’s shock from Gavin.

Laughter from Victor.

Annoyance from Kiro.

Anger from Lucien.

Gavin quickly spits out “That’s…” but Victor cuts him off.

“Only fair. None of us can really run to her side when she needs us, but between the four of us we can take care of her.”

I’m stunned that he actually agrees, not just understands.

I thought that out of the four he might be the most difficult to convince, but suddenly I’m watching as he argues with Kiro about what it means to love me. Lucien is silent, along with Gavin. They listen as they wrestle with what they already know about our world to their ability to accept being a part time boyfriend.

There’s silence when Victor reminds them aloud of the danger I face.

Being with me is not just being there for the good times, though I’m grateful that lately there’s been many. This time of peace may disappear just as easily as it arrived and they all know it, even if they don't want to admit it.

I’m surprised when Gavin is the second to agree to keeping things as they are, with the caveat that I not think about anyone but him when we’re together. I find myself feeling shy and can feel the heat creep into my cheeks as I nod back at him, knowing that his request is easily fulfilled.

Satisfied by my reply he smirks before making it known that he doesn’t want to discuss things further and will invite me on a date soon, leaving me with the others.

I can tell that Kiro is close to compromising, but Lucien beats him to the punch.

“Alright,” he says with that smile of his. “This just gives you more time to decide that you love me most.”

The comment makes Kiro look as if he’s going to rip Lucien’s head off, and he charges towards him. Victor puts his hand out and holds Kiro back, reminding him that this is not about how they feel about each other but how they feel about me.

Lucien quietly laughs and whispers in my ear, “I will try sticking around in the future in order to prove to you that I’m all you need, if that’s truly what you’re looking for.”

“It is,” I say.

I’m not lying, but for now I’m relieved to have found a loophole.

I’m relieved that it seems I will not have to choose after all.

“While I don’t like the idea of leaving you with these two, I must be off to a prior commitment. I only meant to stop by because you were insistent. And because I will always be there for you, despite what you may think.”

He’s being mysterious but I can tell whenever we’re together he can’t help but be pulled back to me as much as he tries to run away.

I can tell that he looks for excuses to be with me, even when he's busy.

“Thank you Lucien,” I say and mean it.

I’m grateful that I don’t have to say goodbye, especially to him.

I’m surprised when he kisses me, deeply, in front of the others and I can feel that his eyes are on them as he does it, almost as if he’s challenging them.

When he pulls away I watch as Victor rolls his eyes as Kiro grows incensed again. Lucien pretends not to care and leaves, ignoring the string of obscenities that flows out of Kiro.

“Enough,” Victor eventually says, sighing and returning to the couch next to me.

“I understand why we’re doing what we’re doing,” Kiro says, still standing. “But doesn’t it bother you seeing that?”

“No,” Victor says coolly. “It only motivates me to please her more.”

I feel his hand wrap around my midriff and he kisses me, passionately, in front of Kiro. I let out a surprised moan and after a moment he pulls away with a smirk.

“See?”

I’m embarrassed and I quietly scold him for kissing me like that in front of Kiro. Not to be outdone, Kiro comes over and kisses me too. I can taste the cocktail on him and the wine on Victor and between the alcohol and their touch I realize that I feel a bit light headed.

As Kiro kisses me, I feel Victor’s hand travel under my skirt and up my thigh. He starts rubbing me and I moan, prompting Kiro to deepen his kiss, moving his hands from my face to my neck and then chest. When he pulls away, Victor capitalizes on the opportunity and kisses my neck as he slides one of his fingers into me.

I can tell they’re both more intoxicated than they’d ever admit, and to be honest, so am I.

Sober me would have stopped this but drunk me is flying high on everything that is happening. It feels too good to worry about the waitstaff walking through that door, and I close my eyes knowing that Kiro is watching Victor play with me, eagerly awaiting his turn.

He’s impatient though, and my top comes off leaving me fully exposed to both the men and the city beyond the large glass windows. I feel myself reaching for both of them, to make them feel as good as they’re making me feel and I feel Victor’s other hand unbutton his pants.

What happens next is a bit of a blur.

It’s almost as if I come back to myself, stripped bare and breathing heavily on a couch that isn’t mine and in a lounge where anyone could have walked in at any moment. I see the two men next to me, panting and satisfied on either side, tucking their shirts back in as they return to a disheveled version of the men that appeared earlier in the night.

I will pretend that I don’t remember bouncing on top of Victor as I sucked on Kiro. I will pretend that I won’t remember finishing both of them on my knees, with my hands and my mouth before letting Victor finish me with his mouth while Kiro watches on, all the while stimulating my other sensitive spots.

I will pretend I don’t remember Victor playing with time to drag out my pleasure when it finally comes, and that I do not giggle when Kiro whines, “Oh come on, that’s just cheating…”

When the waitstaff finally do enter, we are all fully clothed and in the process of sobering up with cold glasses of water. I worry that the room reeks of sex and that they know what happened, but it would appear that they are none the wiser.

Victor grabs the tab that I was supposed to pick up and pays for everything, leaving just as much in tip before saying to us, “Let’s get out of here.”

On the street we are silent - the cold air sobering us to the reality that lies beyond.

“Do you mind if I take her home?” Victor asks Kiro politely, and I’m surprised when Kiro shakes his head.

“I have to catch an early flight for our next leg of the tour.”

“You’ll keep in touch, right?” I ask, almost scared that the greediness of my actions will catch up with me, but Kiro just smiles his bright, pop star smile.

“Of course Miss Chips. Until we meet again.”

He kisses me sweetly, and neither he nor Victor seem to care that the other is present for this moment.

He leaves and Victor takes my hand, slowly walking me back home.

We’re silent for a few blocks before he starts chuckling out of seemingly nowhere.

“What?!” I demand.

“You continue to surprise me.”

I look at him, puzzled as to what he’s talking about and he continues.

“I’ll have to come up with a new contract to ensure I get at least one fourth of your time.”

He’s teasing me, but I know him well enough to know that he’s actually impressed at how I’ve managed to get what I want despite how things are usually done. He’s known from the start that I haven’t wanted to say goodbye.

That I’m not ready to.

There’s kindness in what he’s saying, and it’s not lost on me. As much as I know he wants me for himself, he won’t rush me.

He loves me too much to do that.

They all do.

The topic changes quite naturally and before I know it we’re chatting as if our salacious night never happened. He’s mocking me for being a glutton and I’m pretending to be outraged that he’d call me such.

I invite him in because I’m back faster than I expected and to my disappointment, he refuses me.

“LFG calls,” he says, and I can tell he’s disappointed too.

“Ok. Thanks for walking me home.”

He smiles and kisses me and just as I turn to open the door to my building and head inside, he grabs my arm.

“But now that I know what you want, soon enough you won’t have this excuse to keep the others around…”

He lets go and turns on his heel, not glancing back and walking away with the kind of confidence and swagger I know only he posses. My heart races as I watch him turn the corner and out of my sight before turning in.

—

I shower the night off of me and change into cozy pajamas, crawling into bed. I have four messages, one from each of them, all wishing me good night and reminding me that this is for now.

“One day work won't consume my life,” Victor repeats.

“One day I will prove to you that I can stay,” Lucien says.

“One day my mission will be complete,” Gavin promises.

“One day it will only be us,” Kiro muses.

One day.

But until that day, I will savor having all them in my life.

And I will love them all as much as they love me, for as long as I’m allowed.

This was fun to write and *very* out of my comfort zone. As always, if you’ve enjoyed the story, please show your support by sharing it with a friend, liking it, commenting to say that you enjoyed it/what you liked, or buying me a coffee!

While this is most likely the last installment of this short series, if you like my writing I hope you'll follow me for more in the future.

tagging:

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#mr love #mr love queen's choice #mr love lucien #mr love gavin #mr love kiro #mr love victor #mlqc gavin #mlqc kiro #mlqc lucien #mlqc victor #mlqc fanfic #mlqc smut

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frontlinesolutions-blog · 4 years

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Hey philanthropy, your capacity support partners still need you…and you need us too!

By: Melissa DeShields, Linetta Gilbert, Keecha Harris, and Trista Harris

The time of COVID-19 feels like a natural moment of contraction. You may find yourself second-guessing whether now is the time to engage in growth-focused activities. Should you really be pushing a strategic planning process right now? Applying an equity tool to your grants portfolio? Providing capacity-building support to grantee partners? As Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)-owned small businesses and partners to grantees, we are here to tell you that this work is crucial in the midst of COVID-19.

The truth is: without your continued investment and partnership in this moment, many of our businesses — and the capacity we’ve built to support equity and social justice efforts in the sector — may not be around to help you with this work later.

BIPOC-owned small businesses have an integral role within the social change ecosystem. We support philanthropic foundations and nonprofits and continually push funders to center justice and equity. Right now, foundations are scrambling to respond to the threat of COVID-19. In their efforts to shore up work happening on the front lines, presidents and program officers are rightly hustling for their grantees. Efforts that are deemed “extra” are in danger of being cut.

Our very survival is at stake. These cuts are already having a devastating impact on our businesses, employees, and partner organizations (many of whom are your grantees), as well as the overall capacity of the sector. Social change-supporting small businesses owned by people of color often have less access to business funding and financial backing. Although pathogens do not discriminate, our country’s social and political history of discrimination has directly led to COVID-19’s disproportionate effect on specific individuals, communities, businesses, and sectors — in terms of both health and economics.

The work that we do is not “extra.” Our closures would compromise the progress of the social change sector. The strengths and weaknesses of institutions loom larger in the midst of a COVID-19 response. Our functions within the sector — to leverage the strengths, coordinate resources, and help close the gaps — matter now more than ever. Lessons from Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters show that crisis response and recovery coordination require a diverse array of partners and supporting organizations.

BIPOC-owned small businesses help foundations to be effective, strategic, and anchored in the needs and realities of communities. Our services are critical in this moment: not only in the realm of diversity, equity, and inclusion, but in all areas of thought partnership. This is not about competing with nonprofit grantees for a bigger slice of the pie, but about making sure that there is a fully-functioning kitchen to produce plenty of the things we all need. We need to contribute toward determining how philanthropy operates during and after COVID-19. Nonprofits are counting on us to play this role.

Philanthropy must continue to invest in the institutions that are critical to creating a more equitable social change ecosystem. In that spirit, we recommend several tactics for foundations to ensure the survival of social change-supporting small businesses, particularly those owned by folks of color. These are relatively low-cost, low-effort ways to maintain our function and ability to partner in support of nonprofits:

Continue to pay invoices on time. Any delay in payment presents a major burden on our finances. Service-based small businesses need cash flow in order to survive, and we depend on clients to pay us according to the agreed-upon schedule. It is even better if clients can pay contracts out early. Support organizations will negotiate no-cost extensions or whatever changes are necessary to make sure that all of the work gets done. We are better able to do that when we are not managing cash crunches.

Consider using contracting agreements that allow an initial up-front payment. Time and materials contracts require us to front costs at the beginning of a project and invoice later. In a time of economic hardship, we need a proportion of our fees to be paid by the client initially so that we can pay our employees’ salaries. Otherwise, we may be forced to take out loans just to make it to the end of our contracts. Businesses owned by folks of color are much less likely to have such supports at our disposal.

Pre-purchase services that you expect to need later. Foundation staff likely already have an idea of the services and contracts that will be needed in the next 18 months. Pre-purchasing these services will extend cash flow to social change-supporting small businesses. The Jay and Rose Phillips Foundation has shared a sample pre-purchase agreement that can be adapted by other foundations.

Reciprocate and honor the flexibility of your partners. Organizations like ours are prepared to build flexibility into existing and future scopes of work, knowing that these are uncertain times with rapidly changing conditions. We need foundations to honor this flexibility in our budget and payment arrangements. For example, don’t necessarily assume that the travel budget should be removed because a project will now take place remotely. A travel budget could be repurposed for new expenses that arrive during this stressful time, such as bolstering our employees’ and nonprofit partners’ remote working capabilities and redesigning meetings to fit virtual needs.

Trust our expertise and judgement about whether a project can be done remotely. Social change-supporting small businesses are ahead of the curve in our knowledge of how to work collaboratively in a remote setting. We will give honest, informed, and customized advice about whether and how to conduct a project in the midst of social distancing. Partners you can trust will not try to sell you a project that isn’t feasible during this time.

Make affordable and flexible capital more accessible. Work with local or regional community financial development institutions (CDFIs) to create a no-cost pool of line of credit and fixed-term loan capital. With foundation guarantees and a modest subsidy, CDFIs could make needed capital available at special terms, sharing any increased risk with the foundation. This has potential to improve our access to capital and will allow us to help our nonprofit partners bridge cash flow gaps.

As many funders are already doing for nonprofits, philanthropic foundations have the opportunity to ensure that small businesses stay afloat and support the social change ecosystem during a time of great need. These are the gaps we need filled right now so that we can continue to support the sector. They are also tangible ways in which foundations can lean into their values during the current crisis and make progress towards economic and racial equity.

#philanthropy #consultants #nonprofit #covid19 #social justice

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thescalers-blog · 5 years

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The 2019 Guide to Offshore Development Services in India

The software industry has become unbelievably saturated, with some even suggesting there will be over a million different software companies in the world in less than 10 years’ time.

Since most of these businesses are tightly-packed into Western Europe and North American cities, competition is fierce and the cost of doing business is always climbing.

Almost inevitably, offshore software development (or simply ‘offshoring’) has risen as a solution for western businesses looking for new approaches to business.

So what are offshore development ‘services’ exactly?

In the software world, offshoring is where a company opens a new office and employs a brand-new team of developers, all in another country. They are regular employees in every sense except that instead of working locally with your in-house team, they’re based elsewhere.

These are called offshore software development centres, and there are many reasons a company might choose to establish one:

Operating costs - Building teams in Eastern Europe or India is less expensive than Paris, or London, or New York. Premises, equipment, and salaries are all lower thanks to the more affordable cost of living.

Scarcity of talent - Across Western Europe and America, highly-qualified software engineers can be hard to nail down. Tech economies like Bangalore produce more world-class IT engineers than anywhere on the planet.

Limited expansion - Quickly scaling-up business can be difficult. Going offshore lets businesses purchase larger offices, change more dynamically, and not worry about finding adequate staff.

To name just a few.

How is this different from outsourcing?

We've covered this in more detail with another blog post (see our outsourcing versus offshoring post) but to put it simply, these are fundamentally different approaches to business.

These vendors typically hire developers on an ad-hoc basis for sporadic projects.

But these developers do not work for you: they cater to different clients and different projects. Since the main driver for outsourcing is cost, companies push hard for the lowest price possible.

The end result is almost always below expectations, since the developer has no real investment or incentive to do a good job.

What is offshoring?

Offshoring is a totally contrasting approach.

We’ve already had a quick look at why companies look to build offshore teams. One reason is cost, but it’s far from the only one. Offshoring is so much more than a temporary solution or patch.

For starters, going offshore means creating a permanent office of developers, either to compensate for a lack of good local talent or to manage increased workloads. These full-time employees get a good wage, professional structure, and a respected brand to commit their work to.

As long as you work with the right partner, offshoring allows you to produce software exactly how you do at home - except it’s cheaper, and quite possibly to a higher standard.

How an offshore team actually works

Establishing your new team all starts with choosing the best offshore development partner. This is the local company that collaborates with you to create the best-fitting team for your business.

Through in-depth meetings and regular contact, your partner will build an understanding of exactly what you need. They then coordinate:

And all the other administrative jobs that need taking care of. Naturally, you would have final say over any major appointments or decisions; as we keep saying, this is all still your business.

Vetting an offshoring company

There are bad eggs in every industry. If you’ve shortlisted a few candidates but aren’t sure how to proceed, here are a few tips:

Look at their work history - Case studies are a great way to see what kind of work the company has done, their reputed success, and what level of clients they’re used to. These demonstrate the ability to solve problems and build teams that are tailored to specific requirements.

Get on the phone - By speaking with the sales VP or even a CEO, you can get to know the ethos, temperament, and attitude of those running the business.

Ask real questions - Tell them your situation and ask for their advice. What should we do? How would that work? What would it cost? If they’re the real deal, they’ll be able to supply answers.

Why India?

Moving your software development offshore will always be a huge business decision - and that means the benefits must be significant and tangible. Let's look at the main two.

Talent

A study conducted by the Institution of Engineering and Technology showed that six out of ten employers in the UK feared that the growing shortage of engineers would negatively affect their business.

The problem? The employable developers will either lack the necessary technical skills or be overworked and overpaid.

As of 2016, the US has only 568,000 STEM graduates - India has 2.6 million and rising. Since the country puts significant emphasis on IT and English education, these engineers are more than capable of filling the American shortfall.

When building a team, you’ve got a 5x larger talent pool and get your pick of the bunch. That is what quality offshoring gives you.

Cost

Most major software businesses are based in cities; cities are notoriously expensive, and therefore wages, rent, rates, and virtually everything involved in running a business is also expensive.

In India, the cost of living is significantly lower than the UK or US. So when you pay a “cheap” wage (relative to your engineers at home) you’re still paying above-average in local terms.

On average, a decent developer will cost anywhere between $60-100 per hour, plus employee-centric benefits like health insurance and travel. Of course if you go through recruiters, there’s an extra whack for that, too.

The average developer salary in India - even in tech-focused economies like Bangalore - is significantly lower. When you consider the cost of rent, travel, health insurance, bonuses; it’s a huge difference.

Crucially, your team are still producing outstanding work. And when revenue grows and expenses fall, that means profits shoot up.

So where’s the compromise?

If the output quality is the same, the developers have fluent English, and all the costs are lower, there must be some catch, right?

The only perceived drawback is that part of your development team is now in India, not in your home office. But is that a problem?

The reality is that remote teams have never been easier to manage! With instant messaging and video calling apps you can speak to anyone, anywhere, and at anytime of day. Task-scheduling tools are already prolific with in-house teams - all you have to do is add more users!

So how do you get started?

The first step is to look at your requirements: what do you need to accomplish, and why?

Then it’s a matter of looking for an offshore development partner who can answer your questions, give advice, and that you can trust.

Bangalore is one of the most highly-rated cities for offshoring in the world. Known as the ‘Silicon Valley of Asia’, it is home to hundreds of thousands of engineers, with many more entering the field every year.

Bangalore offers thriving and talented IT communities, and is full of developers who could exceed your expectations.

Want to learn more?

Establishing your own offshore team isn’t as intimidating as it might seem.

Here at The Scalers, we have a proven record of walking companies through the entire process, from establishing early requirements to signing off on a job well done.

And those companies are thriving today. If you’d like to chat with one of our executives and learn more about how offshoring could work for your business, simple reach out!

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asenseofagency · 7 years

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Easy as That

After several days of being gloomy and non-communicative, my husband approached me last night and announced with trepidation that he thought we should separate. I knew it, or something like it, was coming. He was clearly heavy-hearted about speaking his mind. I, on the other hand, had to hold back my DELIGHT.

There is nothing like the feeling of coming to the same hard-won conclusion at the same time. The overriding feeling was relief for both of us I think and I’m so proud that we were able to be honest - with zero enmity so far - about the fact that our relationship had more or less traveled its course and that we wanted different, irreconcilable things out of our futures.

Mine is still unclear; I don’t wrap up grad school interviews until the end of February and it could be well into March before I’m sure what my options are. At the moment, under the best of possible circumstances, I’d end up in Southern California by the end of the summer but the reality could be very different and a lot more humble. We’ll see what materializes.

I’m a little sad, a little scared, and a lot relieved.

The fear is a product of the realization that as I take a shot at my academic dream, I’ve jettisoned a lot of personal relationships along the way. This has been mostly a coincidence of timing. I began to see that a lot of the relationships in my life took more from me (in an energetic, emotional sense) than they gave back. So I’ve been letting go of a lot. That’s all good and arguably healthy but it has served to isolate me. My relationship with my soon-to-be-ex-husband was one of the last really emotionally intimate relationships I had with anyone. Breaking that off strips me of essentially my last confidante, my last emotional safety net, the last person with whom I was able to be fully, unreservedly honest, which feels, admittedly, dangerous.

I’m also aware that if I did want to replace that relationship with a new one, the trust/honesty/communication bar is set almost impossibly high.

But maybe a high bar is a good thing. And if I do get the opportunity to move, I’ll be rebuilding a life from scratch anyway, and maybe the stripping of personal ties will turn out to have been inevitable. In doing it ahead of time, I might have saved myself some later grief. You never know until you know.

The fear persists. I know I have a tendency to isolate myself. Though I’m not shy or socially anxious, I’m an introvert through and through, preferring coffee and books and cozy rainy days at the house nine times out of ten to parties, events, and girls’ nights out. Losing my husband (and best friend) in this process means making a conscious effort not to allow my natural isolation to become pathological.

Again, a relocation could make a lot of things academic...

I’m a little sad because I know, once the distance happens, once the real break takes place and we’re not co-habitating anymore, I will start to miss his companionship in earnest (and probably vice versa). We lived largely separate lives for sure. That, I expect, will make the change less noticeable but our routine included various weekly dinner and brunch dates, shared sit-downs in front of whichever TV series we might both be following at the time, and the absence of those things - our opportunities to bond and catch up with the events of each other’s week - that absence will be the thing that stings most. Repeatedly, and for a while. That will be hard to prepare for.

The relief, however, comes in many, many forms.

If I get the opportunity to move in conjunction with grad school, or even if I move for the purpose of taking another job, housing becomes infinitely easier under some circumstances. My needs are very minimal. In fact, I thrive on a streamlined environment, for a long while in my young adulthood not owning so much as a single piece of furniture. I look forward to the opportunity again. Minus a partner, a pet, and a pile of shit, subsidized campus housing in the form of studio apartments becomes a really appealing option to me.

And I’m relieved because my husband, at least at the moment, wants to stay in the house we’re currently in. That house feels every bit an anchor. I haven’t got the first idea legally how it might transpire and perhaps it’s financially disadvantageous to me but if given the opportunity to sign the house over to him instead of putting it up for sale indefinitely, I’d gladly take the easy way out to get the payment off my hands. His ability to make that payment on a single salary is what’s in question. He’s got a line on a better job, so it could be an eventuality, but I’m skeptical. In either case, the possibility of having the house end up squarely in his hands is ideal to me. We’ll see under what circumstances it can be accomplished. A troubling outcome would involve living in another state on a shoestring and remaining jointly financially responsible for a monthly mortgage payment; I’m motivated to avoid that at all costs, so it’s imperative we remain on the same team as we sort those problems out.

I’m relieved he was able to be honest with himself too. I didn’t dread anything so much as him convincing himself to relocate and then regretting the decision later. He was able to be totally honest with himself, even when it was painful and awkward, and I’m so happy about that. He likes where he’s at, he likes his small circle of friends and family, and he has zero desire to uproot. Easy as that. I don’t understand it but it was a matter of him acknowledging his own truth. If or when I move, that unloads me of a huge emotional burden; I’ve only got myself to manage.

We had also become more roommates than spouses. There hadn’t been any kind of romantic feelings in a long time and no rekindling was forthcoming. That transition is probably inevitable with all long-term relationships: the slow dying of passion and its replacement by... sweatpants and familiarity. We talked about that openly, that maybe monogamy as we know it is a scam. My mother-in-law, with whom my husband had apparently rehearsed some of our conversation, confessed to him that had it been socially acceptable in her day, she might never have stayed married as long as she did (!). Also, some of our mutual acquaintances who seem the most self-actualized are committed bachelors and bachelorettes, without the stability of a life-long partner, yes, but free to take life’s opportunities as they come. The likelihood that either of us gets into a long-term relationship in the immediate future seems vanishingly small and that doesn’t speak to any kind of bad experience we’ve had together as much as it does the realization that lust (certainly) and love (often) die. Friendship remains, which you can have anyway, at any time, with essentially anyone, to your chosen degree of intimacy. So maybe it’s time for a change of perspective with respect to what you’re looking to get out of romantic relationships. At the very least, it’s worth sampling and an ancient, long-subdued part of me is excited about the idea of casually dating again at some future point in time, without the expectation of longevity. It seems bewildering to navigate at the moment but on the whole, what a relief.

The separation also alleviates some of our long-held grudges. Though we’re great friends, we’re incompatible on some level. I’m disciplined; a thinker, a worker, a grinder. He’s short-term-oriented, easy-goin, and basically unambitious. Those aren’t statements of personal worth or value but they are fundamentally incompatible modes of operating and things that were never going to change about either of us, I’m sure now. He was almost certainly irked by my obsession with productivity; I grated at his escapism and lack of motivation. It’s a relief not to have to fight that fight anymore.

But if I’m relieved that there are no bad feelings toward each other now, I’m cautious, too. We’ll have to live apart for a year before we can legally divorce and in that time, I know, feelings can change. Resentment can grow from the smallest kernel of inconvenience and bad communication, so I’ve got to remind myself that even after we’re not living together I need to prioritize keeping the lines of communication open and constructive. We’ll be disentangling our financial lives from each other for a while and that’s just the type of thing that can go badly wrong if you lose common ground and end up at cross-purposes. Though it seems impossible now, I want to make sure we avoid becoming, in any way, adversaries.

Still everything feels... movable, unencumbered now. There are plenty of compromises to be made but they are the mundane compromises of timing, convenience, money not of personal desire or ambition. It’s an indescribably strange feeling to have made such a big decision and not be able to act on it quite yet either, to be in a holding pattern while the options develop themselves. We’ll be living together at the barest minimum for two or three months more, likely longer, watching, day-by-day with bated breath, as the future pieces itself together into something recognizable, actionable. Without a doubt, it forces you to live in the moment. You put one foot in front of the other and trust that the path will materialize as you go.

#personal #journaling

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shervonfakhimi · 4 years

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What I Learned From Attending Lakers-Thunder

When I was sitting on my family’s couch on the night of December 28th, 2019, I had no idea what awaited for me as my brother had been touting a gift that would knock my socks off, to put it lightly. Turns out, he was right, because he helped get me (and himself) tickets to see my beloved Los Angeles Lakers play the surging Oklahoma City Thunder on January 11th, 2020, my first live sporting event of the new decade. I was much more thrilled then than the afternoon of the game itself, where we both learned that LeBron James (my brother is quite the LeBron stan) would not play due to the flu on the second night of a back-to-back after another stunning performance against the Luka-led Dallas Mavericks. Learning that Anthony Davis and Danny Green would not play a few hours later seemingly set the stage for what looked to be a potential blowout of the Lakers, but we drove through slight elements anyway to one of the most shocking results of the season at essentially its midpoint, with the Lakers stunning the Thunder, on the road, on the second night of a back-to-back 125-110. It was a blast. Not only did we have a great time, but I learned a thing or two that I didn’t quite know for sure beforehand.

Forgot About Kuz

As Kyle Kuzma went to the free-throw line after getting fouled on a jump shot, the stadium ops at Chesapeake Energy Arena briefly played the ‘Forgot About Dre’ instrumental by Dr. Dre featuring Eminem, surely referencing Kuzma’s Slim Shady-esque blonde hair. Well, that only got him going as he went full renegade mode, dropping a season-high 36 points. What was most impressive was the variety of the buckets he served on the Thunder defense. Pick-and-pops, transition, put-backs, even being the primary ball-handler at times. He was electric and filled the gaping scoring hole LeBron and Davis left behind and showed exactly why either the Lakers shouldn’t trade him or did them a favor by boosting his trade value. I’ve always been in the camp of the former, for a myriad of reasons: 1) he’s still only on the third year of his rookie-scale contract with restricted free agency coming in the summer of 2020. Having young players in tow is key to sustain great teams and I believe he can be a part of those said teams. 2) Because he is on that contract it is hard for the Lakers to match salaries to bring back an impact player for him. 3) He has a skill-set the Lakers could very much use. Consistency has been an issue for Kuzma throughout his brief NBA career, but I’ve seen him have games like this and now just saw one live to reinforce my belief in him. The trade talk surely must be inescapable for him if even fans in the arena were chirping him about in the game. Who knows what will happen between now and the trade deadline. I understand Kuzma is not a perfect player and why he can be had in trade talks. But at least for one night, Kyle Kuzma showed his game, his worth and his potential as an impact player… for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Playoff Rondo Lives?

Rajon Rondo has not been all that great this season. Some nights, he’s been flat-out bad, a caricature compared to the mythical ‘Playoff Rondo’ figure who rears his head in April, May and sometimes June. Well, Saturday gave perhaps a sneak preview, as Rondo out-floor general-ed longtime buddy Chris Paul to the tune of a near triple-double with a 22 point, 12 rebound, 8 assist outing, repeatedly pushing the ball and setting his teammates up for success. He did most of his scoring damage in the first quarter but slowed down in that area in the second half (In the third quarter, he apparently injured his finger, which I didn’t know until after the game had ended. He also shot an airball on a three, which prompted the esteemed gentleman sitting to my right to proclaim ‘we know Rondo can’t shoot!’ as he proceeded to put a dip of tobacco in, which I guess is allowed in NBA arenas?). Scoring from the perimeter has been the glaring weakness of this Lakers team this season and Rondo has been the unofficial poster boy from fans, myself included (I repeatedly nudged my brother, asking him ‘where the hell has this been!’ when Rondo is pouring bucket after bucket early on. I still think the Lakers need another perimeter ball-handler capable of creating his own shot, though Quinn Cook stepped up big in that role as well alongside Kuzma and even Troy Daniels running off screens and hitting timely shots. Maybe Rondo is saving himself for the postseason, where the last two times he’s been a participant he was a major positive for the New Orleans Pelicans and Chicago Bulls. I don’t know. But the fact he let me and the world know he still has it and can change a game for the better was quite the welcome surprise.

The Lakers Defense Is Real and Is Spectacular

It was fascinating to watch the Lakers defend in real life. To hear the communication and watch them swarm from one defender to another, to help and make the proper rotations, etc. Anthony Davis is *the* major factor as to why the Lakers are dominant on that end, but they truly do defend on a string. Watching Jared Dudley as the backline of defense from the back of their basket recognize in an instant he had to protect the rim to alter the shot of a rampaging Hamidou Diallo was amazing. They were tremendous. Sure, Oklahoma City shot just 29% from three and missed shots they normally would make, but the Lakers did everything in their power to make those as difficult as possible. Saturday Night was the crowning jewel of the Frank Vogel Coach of the Year campaign.

Lakers Team Depth and Chemistry

The Lakers’ depth has been brought into question this year, but this performance should quell some of those concerns. Perhaps the Thunder took this game lightly after James, Davis and Green were ruled out, but the Lakers withstood a late Thunder push when they made it a 12 point game. The Lakers played 10 players and all of them made an impact. They can use another piece or two, but the Lakers have plenty of guys right now outside of the dynamic duo who can contribute. But outside of that, what really stood out was the team chemistry they have. Any time someone would do something the bench would get up. They played together as a team knowing they don’t have their two best, most dynamic players. LeBron even got up off the bench to whisper something to Alex Caruso during the game as if LeBron was a coach. Anthony Davis interviewed Rajon Rondo after the game for the local Los Angeles TV crew. They’re a legit team through and through, on and off the court.

Shai’s Got the Goods, Dude

I mean, two teams did in fact play, so I might as well talk about the other team. The Chris Paul / Danilo Gallinari two-man game was able to put the Lakers’ defense in compromising positions, but the biggest thing to me was how easy Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was able to score. He’s one of those guys who can just glide to wherever he wants to go and score at any level. That is especially impressive to me considering I believe his playmaking is at the very least on the same level and perhaps better than his scoring ability. He is going to be very good for a very long time.

(By the way, I typed this *BEFORE* Shai delivered a 20-20-10 performance in his next game)

A Brief Soliloquy on Load Management

When fans and analysts would go after players and teams for their load management tactics, I would normally just shake my head in disgust because they would not put the players’ health in front of their own self-interests. And then… LeBron James and Anthony Davis didn’t play in a game I went to in very large part to see them do their thing. Load management is real, y’all. After this game, the only time this regular season the Lakers will play in an area close to where I live in Fayetteville, Arkansas is in Memphis on February 29th. I don’t mind and very much understand why they did, in fact, sit out: Anthony Davis hurt his butt (of course he did) defending a Julius Randle shot at the rim and LeBron conveniently caught the flu the night before when he played the Mavericks. To say our mood was shot getting the news neither would play was an understatement. I even offered to just stay at home and not risk travel through some snow that came down the night before in the Arkansas/Oklahoma area. I still very much wanted to go because the Lakers are the team that I’ve rooted for my entire life but I felt especially bad for my brother, the two little kids I met at the end of the game who also traveled from Fayetteville and the numerous others in attendance who wanted to see LeBron and Davis play. It sucks, but that’s just the way it is. Teams don’t have us fans in mind when gauging whether their players should play on a back-to-back in January; they have their players’ health and championship quest as their priority and rightfully so. I don’t know what the solution is. At least we knew LeBron was not playing before we left and pretty much knew Davis would follow suit. You have to figure if the NBA were to lower the amount of regular-season games and carry on with their sort of ridiculous in-season tournament that no one seems to want that there still would be *some* back-to-back games. My brother didn’t know that two weeks after he bought the tickets that Anthony Davis would injure his butt and LeBron would get sick essentially the night before we wanted to see him. I really wanted to see them play, but even just seeing them, in general, conversing with teammates was really cool to see. Even going made my night, personally (especially since it had been over half a decade since I had gone to an NBA game live), but I don’t know if I can say the same for everyone else. The fact that the Lakers won *without them* made that night even more special for me. It was a blast and was a night I don’t think I’ll ever forget. Go Lakers!

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cheapshoesggdb-blog · 5 years

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mymillymollymo · 6 years

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Writing Retreat? Arvon? “It’s Not For Me.”

When it comes to Writing Retreats, Arvon is up there on a pedestal for those wanting to master their craft. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that. It’s hugely expensive. You probably know that too. There are grants, not as many know that.

I first found out about their isolated houses thanks to The Newcastle Writers Conference. More experienced authors talked of no distractions, of making friends, of being challenged. I looked at the price and balanced that against other things I needed, the kids’ uniforms, the rent, food, bills, debts, all that. One week would cost me more than I paid for my car, and that needed replacing again soon. Arvon? A nice dream. I didn’t need it. I so didn’t belong in that swish place.

Oh, so quiet.

Then a friend recommended it. A week to yourself, time to write. Time! Ha, a distant wish. My family need my time, not my writing. Work needs my time, not the book I’ll finish, one day. Time? That’s just a dream. I don’t have time to organise cover for my weekly routine, the cost of childcare, time off work, the burden of having to ask for help for a week!

No thanks. It’s not designed for me, I know my place. I can’t afford its supportive environment. They can keep their course designed to target that thing I was struggling with and the two experienced tutors you could approach about that same thing. That course doesn’t cover my genre, and I’d have to cook and share space with a bunch of strange people.

I don’t need that. I can find a way around, I’ll figure out this problem in the end. Arvon’s miles away from Hull anyway.

Isn’t that the point?

I don’t belong there.

When are you going to take this seriously?

I do.

Fill in the grant form. They can only say no.

They didn’t. It wasn’t going to be a free ride. I still had to find a lot, including the travel and the childcare and…

You can’t turn down an opportunity like that.

My week at The Hurst was a Christmas, Birthday, Mother’s Day present all rolled into to one. (And few other compromises.) It took Arvon for me to grow. It took my family’s support to allow myself that space. That’s huge.

From Arvon we all brought home friendships forged from a group of strangers who didn’t want to step out of their comfort zone, but needed to grow. Different lifestyles, one shared goal. Words.

Industry professionals Rachel Kerr and Nikesh Shukla were amazing tutors, both inspiring and friendly. Their advice, insight and consideration went far beyond previous experiences of workshops. Together they were really supportive regardless of what we were writing.

Friendships forged from words.

Thanks to, to the staff, working tirelessly to keep the fridges full and the lights on. Giving guidance when asked, but never fussing or distracting. Their’s is a true skill in such imposing grounds. Their work gave my week life.

Clare Alexander crowned it all with anecdotes and knowledge only someone of her experience could possess.

We all discovered that how much we did/didn’t know about genre, or wine, had nothing to do with connecting to our work. We gained an understanding that it’s not all about the word count, the opinion, or even the market. Exploring deeper, some profited from how to structure a day, and if we really paid attention, how look after yourself mentally and physically as a writer.

That’s on top of the workshops.

We left with lingering visions of the novels we were working on, honed in those morning classes.

Blue plastic bags and London Markets. Smog thick air of Victorian times. Owls at 4am. Poledancers, and 1980’s dialphones. Family, secrets, divides and divorce. The ache of missing mother and her favourite book, a can’o lager shared with mates. The unfinished books we all want to read. And mint.

An inability to cook has no reflection on an ability to write, your skill isn’t pigeonholed based on salary or commitments. Voice is found in all walks of life.

I miss this!

So many things impact your writing, it’s not just the words you put on the page. Your story is just as important as mine. You won’t have my experience, it was personal. Yours will be what you make it. I didn’t attend the SFF course, (yes they do Science Fiction and Fantasy at Arvon, Crime, Poetry, Plays and YA too…) I knew what I needed to develop. I went to learn, not in the hope of a book deal.

It wasn’t the challenge I expected, or the one I was warned about. But it was the one I needed. I treasured the One to Ones, the workshops cast a new light on how I approached things. I won’t forget the stupid-o-clock times I would sit in front of the Aga watching the house wake. Or my surprise at my room, space to hide away from everything. I will cherish the clarity.

There are other places, especially for Science Fiction and Fantasy, like Milford SFF’s Retreat, or the recent one organised by Jo Zebedee in Northern Ireland. Scotland’s Moniack Mhor offers SFF and more, or try the Welsh Tŷ Newydd

Cuppa, quiet, and the warmth of an Aga.

You can find the course that will help you grow, as a person and as a writer. You can figure it out alone, I’ve often said that you can get great workshops at conventions and literature festivals. You can learn and figure your way through the writing maze cheaper, because even with a grant, it’s still costly. But working with others does wonders for that nasty nagging doubt. Give yourself time, give yourself permission. You might not know your place as well as you think you do.

Still think Arvon isn’t for you? Fill in the grant form.

Arvon might say ‘not this time’, but they’re Open To All.

Writing Retreat? Arvon? “It’s Not For Me.” was originally published on MillyMollyMo

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bathrem22032 · 7 years

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Transcript of The Myth of the Starving Artist

Transcript of The Myth of the Starving Artist written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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John Jantsch: This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by SaneBox. Get some sanity back in your inbox. Take control of your inbox. Get all that stuff out of there that is dragging you down. I’m going to give you a special offer later in the show. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jeff Goins. He’s an author, blogger, and speaker, founder of an organization called Tribe Writers, an online community for writers, and he is the author of a new book we’re going to talk about today called Real Artists Don’t Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age. Jeff, thanks for joining us.

Jeff Goins: Thanks for having me, John. Pleasure to be here.

John Jantsch: I know you’re in the Nashville area.

Jeff Goins: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Jantsch: I play a little guitar and so-

Jeff Goins: I know you do.

John Jantsch: Last time I was down there, obviously I’m going to check out the music and I’m always floored at these guys. I’m like, “Dude, I would pay so much money to see you play,” and this guy has a guitar case open on a corner.

Jeff Goins: Yeah, I know.

John Jantsch: Playing for tips, and I think that’s a little bit of what you get out here, isn’t?

Jeff Goins: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, I’m surrounded by creative geniuses in this incredible town, writers, even entrepreneurs and musicians, and many of them have the starving artist mentality that regardless of how talented you are, there are just some things that people aren’t going to pay for. Obviously, I believe that’s not true.

John Jantsch: Are we waiting for that big break? Are we waiting for somebody to tell us we are good enough? I mean, because you also see people that have that record deal that they’re not that talented.

Jeff Goins: Yeah. I think that’s true. You know, the whole idea of Real Artists Don’t Starve is I wanted to debunk the myth of the starving artist, and I was talking to an old friend of mine. When I first moved to town, I worked for this organization as like a telemarketer calling people and selling them music subscriptions. I met the CEO of that company. I just ran into him and he goes, “What are you doing?” I go, “I write books now.” He’s like, “What’s your latest book?” I told him, and I said, “It’s about the myth of the starving artist.” He’s like, “A myth? You mean to tell me that this guy that can’t make a living traveling 200 dates a year, like that’s a myth?” I was like, “Well, you know, myths are stories and they may or may not be factually true, but myths are stories that we tell ourselves to help us make sense of the reality around us.”

When we tell ourselves these stories long enough, whether or not they’re accurate, they become true to us, right? Growing up believing the Santa Claus myth, that was real to me. That was true to me. Same thing with this myth of the starving artist. If I tell myself, and this is something that we still say in our culture, that there’s no money in art, that you can’t make money as a musician or a writer or an artist, then you start believing it and the things that we believe have a way of coming true in our lives.

I think the same thing is true with the other side of the story, the story of what I call the thriving artist. If you believe that story, that can be true too, and so whether or not you starve as a creative, it’s really your choice, and that’s why we see people who are very, very starving because they’re neglecting what it takes to thrive, which is you have understand marketing, you have to be willing to get into the business side of your art. It’s also why we see people who are succeeding who may not be that talented, but understand the business aspects of their craft.

John Jantsch: One of the real pressures I think that people who consider themselves artists fall under is this idea of what you talked about, marketing and selling is selling out.

Jeff Goins: Yeah. Absolutely.

John Jantsch: How does that hold people back?

Jeff Goins: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a spectrum. I actually believe in the word sellout. Some people don’t, you know? That they think that’s just something that people … that’s a word that people say about you when you start to succeed.

John Jantsch: Right. That’s people who can’t figure out how to make money. Right.

Jeff Goins: I think obviously there’s some truth to that, but I do think as somebody who really cares about good art, good music, good writing, I’m very aware of that. I don’t want to be a sellout. A sellout to me, John … and I think it’s very subjective. What it means for you to sellout is not what it means for me to sellout, and so I have no right calling you a sellout and vice-versa. What it means to sellout, in my definition, is that you are making art, which Lewis Hine calls a gift, and I agree with that. Art is a gift that we give to the world and I think we have a responsibility to make money off of that so we can keep giving that gift, but the gift itself is a gift, you know? It’s not something that we’re trying to necessarily hawk. If at some point you start making things for the sole purpose of making a buck and you begin to compromise the values that first got you started in this …

I think you can do this in anything. I think you can do this in business, marketing, art, creative writing, craft making, whatever. If you got into something because you loved it and you wanted to change people’s lives with this, and then at some point it gets flipped and you’re doing this just to feed the beast, to make more money, for me that feels like selling out and very averse to that. I don’t want to do that. On the other hand, I don’t want to starve, so this is sort of the spectrum from starving to sellout. I think in between those two extremes is I what I call a thriving artist, and this is somebody who doesn’t make art to make money, but they have disciplined themselves to make money so that they can make more art.

John Jantsch: In some ways, I think, would you agree that who and what we call an artist or who and what we call art is probably broader than most people accept?

Jeff Goins: I agree with that. Seth Godin talks about this in his book — I know he’s a mutual friend of ours — on The Icarus Deception. You know, he says, and he talks about this in a few of his books, but art is something that you create that changes someone or something, and I think at its purest essence, art is a creative gift that you share with the world, and so do you have to mark art? Is everything art? No, not necessarily, but anything can be art in the sense that you can take a gift that you have, and when you share it with the world and it impacts at least one other person, I would call that art and I think it is the thing that makes us human. It is the thing that connects us to each other, is the ability to make things that in one way or another the world has never seen, at least like this, and it connects you to me and me to somebody else and so on.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and I would suggest there are a lot of business owners out there that have created an artful solution to solving someone’s problem who would never consider themselves an artist.

Jeff Goins: Absolutely, yeah. I think any time you’re making something that is building on what has come before, but you’re iterating and you’re innovating and you’re changing it in some way that has a greater impact on people’s lives, absolutely. I think that’s art. I also think that a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs can have a starving artist mentality about their work, which is just any time you think your passion, this thing that you care about, this gift that you want to share, like has no innate value, that it’s not something people are willing to pay for. I see this. I see this with people who have gone out of business or are frustrated. They’ve got some great bakery or some big idea or an app, and it just doesn’t work and they start telling themselves, what? This story, which is, “Well, nobody wanted this anyway and it wasn’t really worth anything and I’ll just go do something that’s a sure bet.”

The point of the book is, art actually, in spite of what we heard, is a pretty safe bet as long as you do the things that real thriving artists have always done and you don’t try to go at it alone or pretend like the way the universe is setup in terms of what it takes to succeed in any craft, in any business … These are rules that you have to follow even in the arts.

John Jantsch: Tell me a little bit about Tribe Writers.

Jeff Goins: Tribe Writers is this course that I’ve been teaching since 2012 and I kind of came upon it accidentally. You know, online courses are a big thing now, but back then there were some, but it was kind of a new thing. That was the year that kind of changed everything for me. In 2011, my wife and I decided to start a family. She got pregnant. I was working a full-time job at a non-profit and I was actually fundraising my salary at that organization. She was working with a record label here in Nashville, and we could not afford for her to stay home and be a mom for a while, and that’s what she really wanted to do, and so I was trying to figure this out. I’d started to blog at this point. I started writing about my own journey as a writer, and it was just kind of this experiment. I was writing every day on it, just trying to share my ideas with the world, and it had grown to tens of thousands of subscribers.

People kept talking about how to make money online and I’d never had any luck with this, but it was something that was interesting to me, and so I wrote an e-book called You Are a Writer. It was just my journey of how I’d started this blog, built an audience, and I’d actually just signed my first book deal, which wasn’t a ton of money, but it obviously was a big deal, gave me a lot of confidence, and so I’d done some things that writers want to do: build an audience, get published. Then I wrote this other book. Actually, while I was waiting for my first traditionally published book to come out, I wrote a second self-published book in between turning the manuscript in and it coming out because I needed to make some money. I just self-published it, and it was called You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One). It was just my journey as this short, little book, like 20,000 words.

I published it in 2012, and put my email address at the back of the book and 10,000 people bought that book and started emailing me at the address, asking questions. I couldn’t keep up with all the questions and I would tell people to go read my blog or I would answer the question or I would send them to another research, but people just kept asking me to show them how to do these things that I’d done: start a blog, network with influencers, grow a personal brand, get published, etc. Finally I was like, “Okay, what people are describing is a course. I just need to create a course,” and so I built the course with my community, with my audience. I said, “What do you want?” “Oh, we want to learn how to do this.” Okay, I’m going to put this in the course. “What do you want?” “I want to learn how to do this.”

I built this course while still having a full-time job. At the end of each night, I’d put my son down for bed. I would sneak through his nursery and I’d on to my home office, and I would whisper into the microphone these lesson plans. I’d do this every night from like 11:00 at night to midnight and it took months, and I built this course and launched it. In about a week, I made practically my salary for the year and I thought that was like an anomaly, so I went through the course, I taught people the material. Eight weeks later, I launched it again. Same thing, maybe even more money. By the end of the year, my wife had quit her job and I was getting ready to quit my job. I’ve been doing it ever since, writing books and teaching writers how to succeed.

John Jantsch: That’s a awesome story. Thanks for sharing that. One of the themes in the book, and I’ve actually heard this from other folks, this idea of being an artist doesn’t mean that every word that comes from your mouth and every brush stroke is something original.

Jeff Goins: Yeah. Steal Like An Artist, that Austin Kleon thing. Love that. There’s an old quote that I am particularly fond of, by a guy named Will Durant who’s a historian. He says, “Nothing is new except arrangement.” In the book The Rule, there’s 12 rules in the book for how to not starve and how to be a thriving artist and whatever your vocation is. You know, the idea here, the rule is don’t try to be original. So many creative people, particularly young ones, I think are trying to be original. They’re moving to a cabin in the woods to write a book. They’re sitting in their basement trying to write a song. You know, they’re going someplace by themselves trying to come up with an original idea.

The irony here is all of their heroes, all of the world’s most creative minds throughout history did the exact opposite of this. They stole from their influences. They borrowed the best ideas from their predecessors and they rearranged them, they built on them, and then they shared them with the world. When I talk about this, people are like, “You don’t really mean steal. You mean, you know, like learn from.” I go, “Well, I don’t know about that.” You know, there’s the story where Steve Jobs calls Bill Gates and he’s mad at him because Windows had just come out and Windows, as you may remember, John, looked a lot like the operating system for the first Macintosh.

John Jantsch: The first one, sure.

Jeff Goins: Steve Jobs was mad at Bill Gates. He said, “You stole from us.” Bill Gates, “What are you talking about, I stole from you?” He goes, “You stole from us. You know, Windows, it looks just like the Mac.” He goes, “Hang on a second, Steve. The way I see it is we both had a rich neighbor named Xerox and when I broke in to steal his VCR, I saw that you had already stolen his television.” What he’s referring to is back in the day, Xerox would let people come in and look at all their stuff. Steve Jobs brought the entire Mac team in there and copied some. They basically invented the mouse and this graphic user interface.

They co-oped in all that stuff and they stole from a bunch of other people, and they rearranged into something that looked original to them, but they were building on the work that had come before them, which is the only way we do great work. I think it’s Austin who says this where if you steal from one person, you’re a thief. You’re a copycat. That’s plagiarism. Don’t do that, but when you steal from many people, now you’re an artist.

John Jantsch: Let me ask you a question. How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? 100, 1,000, 10,000? But you can’t just delete them all. There has to be a way to take your inbox back over if it’s running your life. There was a point in my business where I felt like all I did was delete email, and then I found a tool called SaneBox. It really allows you to take back control of your inbox, of your email. It starts off by taking everything you’ve got in there today and figuring out what’s important, what’s not important, and creating folders and places for it to go that in some cases you’ll never again, but in another cases you can quickly check. There’s also tools in there to remind you when you need to follow up on an email. It’s actually incredibly accurate, and I have worked with the folks in SaneBox to get you a discount, my listeners. If you visit SaneBox, that’s S-A-N-E B-O-X.com/ducttape, you’re going to find that you can get a $25 discount just because you are a listener of this show. Again, S-A-N-E B-O-X, sanebox.com/ducttape.

One of the other themes that I love, practice in public. I think there are a whole lot of people that think they have to practice behind closed doors and figure it all out, and then come out to the world and say, “Here it is.” Now, boy, from the very beginning, the get-go of my business I said, “I’m a speaker. I’m an author. I’m a consultant. Then I’m going to go out and consult and I’m going to write and I’m going to speak, and maybe I’ll actually become one of those things.”

Jeff Goins: I love that. Yeah. I don’t think you fake it till you make it, but I do think you believe it till you become it, and this journey takes faith of becoming an artist, an entrepreneur, something that you are not yet but want to be. It takes a little bit of faith and it also takes a lot of practice. My friend Bryan Harris calls this learning out loud. He said, “Don’t wait to be the expert.” If you want to start a blog, build a business, you can do this honestly and basically share what you’re learning as you’re learning it. I remember the first time I was hired as a consultant by one of my friends and he paid me $1,500 for an afternoon. At the time I was making like $12 an hour, so this was quite a raise. I sat down with him and I said, “What do you want to focus on?” He goes, “I want to focus on focusing.”

I said, “Okay, we could do that.” He wanted help with his marketing and I’d been a marketing director at a non-profit for about seven years, and so I’d read a lot of Seth Godin books, I was familiar with online marketing. I started just kind of rattling off all these books I’d read going, “Well, you know, Purple Cow says this. Permission Marketing says this, and so and so says this, and John Jantsch says this.” My friend stopped me. I was trying to get through all that, so I was, “You know, [inaudible 00:17:57] let me tell you some stuff you probably don’t know.” He said, “Hang on a second. I haven’t read any of those books, I don’t know any of that stuff, and I will gladly pay you $1,500 this afternoon for you to just sit here and tell me what you’ve learned from other people’s books. You can distill dozens of hours of reading into an afternoon. That would be worth my time because I’m not going to go read those books and I’m okay paying you to tell me other people’s ideas.”

That was like a big change, a big shift for me to realize I didn’t have to be an expert necessarily. I didn’t have to be somebody that I wasn’t. I could just share the things that I was learning. I know you’re a musician. I’m a musician too, and I remember when I got way better at playing guitar and I got way better at playing guitar when I stopped practicing by myself in my basement. I got pretty good. I learned how to chord. I could kind of play a few riffs. I didn’t realize I was consciously doing this, but whenever I messed up playing guitar in my basement, I’d stop, I’d go back to the beginning of the song and start over again. Then I started playing with some friends. We started playing in a bad and I realized, first of all, I was learning from being around other people and I started to get a little bit better doing that, but whenever we messed up, we’d still stop, go back to the beginning of the song.

Then we started playing shows and I realized like, if I messed up in the middle of the song, unless it was really bad, I couldn’t go back and start over because people would notice. With an audience there, maybe only two or three people sometimes, it put this pressure on me to bring my A game because now I wasn’t rehearsing. Now I was performing. The best year of my life as musician was the year that I toured with the band playing all around the country and we’d play five to seven, sometimes 10 shows a week.

John Jantsch: Wow.

Jeff Goins: It was all practice, but I was playing in front of people and I got really, really good because I had to be good, and so if you want to be a writer, start a blog. Practice in public. If you want to be a musician, learn your chords, get some basic knowledge, but as soon as you can start booking shows, that’s going to accelerate your skill that much more. You want to get paid to speak? Go start speaking. This is the number one way that we get really, really good at something. We do it in a setting where it’s going to be embarrassing to fail, and so put yourself in those situations as quickly as you can, not to embarrass yourself, but so that you know what it feels like to actually bring your A game.

The more you do that, the better you’re going to get, and the fun part is people will see you getting better, so you don’t have to start out amazing. I didn’t start out, as a consultant or as a writer or even as a speaker, amazing, but when I was performing, people were watching me. Over time people see your skill increase and they start rooting for you. It’s kind of the fun thing, to bring an audience along in your journey.

John Jantsch: I had a music teacher once, and I always remember this and I apply this to a lot of things in life. He said, “It’s okay to make a mistake when you’re playing. Just make sure that you make it again when you come back around so that the audience won’t know the different.”

Jeff Goins: That’s right.

John Jantsch: Yeah. Here’s the hardest question I’m going to ask you today.

Jeff Goins: Okay.

John Jantsch: But it’s one that I think my audience will appreciate how you answer. What would you think small business owners need to be artists in their own right?

Jeff Goins: I mean, I think the way that you need to not be an artist, first of all, is to not think your business is precious. Maybe this is counterintuitive, but I think this is true for any artist, is when you look at the thing that you create as so precious, you call it your baby or whatever, you are doing yourself and the business a disservice because you’re not going to do the hard things that you need to do to help this thing survive. It’s kind of like parenting, right? My kids are precious to me in the sense that I love them and cherish them and don’t want to hurt them, but I also have to be tough and stern with them and discipline them because I want them to survive. I often tell my son when he’s misbehaving, — he’s five — when I’m disciplining him, “Buddy, I’m doing this so that you understand life has consequences, and that if you do this in a different setting, not around mom and dad, you could get hurt or things could not turn out well for you.” I mean, that’s the thing not to do.

The thing to do, why you should treat your business as an art form and why you should think like artist is because I love the idea that art is about changing people and changing things, and ultimately leaving a legacy, so in the book I tell the story of how I met Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the moon. What’s incredible about him is at 50 years old he quits NASA to start painting, because he sees it as his duty to paint the moon because he’s the only man who’s ever walked on the moon, who can..

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How To Negotiate Salary Skilfully Without Being Pushy

Warning: If you think you’re average, don’t read this.

This article is specially written for talented people who want to get a higher pay when getting a new job. If you think you’re just average, this article might not be suitable for you.

Most employees would love to have a higher pay when they get a new job. However, not all employees have the courage to negotiate a salary raise, as the discussion of salary is very often deemed as a taboo, a subject that agitates employers.

As a matter of fact, there can be still much room for negotiation about the details before you sign the contract. As long as you dare to voice out your thoughts, there is a high chance you land in getting what you expect.

This article will provide you with skills suggested by experienced HR and managers on how to negotiate a salary raise before and when you receive an offer.

Before the interview

Make sure you understand the job market

It is important for you to have an expected number in mind first. Otherwise, very likely you will be led reluctantly by any experienced HR.

As Ramit Sethi told in “I Will Teach You to Be Rich”: “If you walk into a salary negotiation without a number, you’re at the mercy of an experienced hiring manager who will simply control the conversation.”

And about what number you should have in mind, it is essential for you to gain some knowledge about what is the usual payment of your position in that industry in that geographic area.

Glassdoor is one helpful source for you to better understand the job market. In this website, when you type in the job title, you can have a glimpse at what salary other people usually get in that post in the specific district.

Should I reveal my expected salary in the cover letter or not?

The question that troubles many job hunters is whether one should write the expected salary in the cover letter or not.

And the answer is: don’t do that!

It is not reasonable to write your expected salary in the cover letter if it is not required in the job ad.

Showing the expected salary in the early stage runs a big risk. If you state something lower than what you deserve, you lose; if you write something higher than what you deserve, you lose too, as it may cost your chance of getting an interview!

In this light, it is better not to state your expected salary in the cover letter if you are not required to do so.

But what if you are required to state the expected salary in the cover letter?

It is not unusual for the companies to want to know the candidates’ expectation in advance. To them, it is a matter of time efficiency — they want to pinpoint the potential employers who will accept their offer, and they do not want to waste time on those who are beyond the benchmark they are willing to offer.

In case you are asked to state the expected salary in the cover letter, you have a few options.

Dodge the question and show your maturity as well

You can dodge stating it directly. You may redirect the focus from the salary to your passion. For instance, you can state: “Salary is only one of the factors I consider paramount in weighing a job offer. I am delighted to discuss it once I am as determined a strong candidate for the position.”

State a range that the company won’t say no to

Or you can state the range you and the company are both comfortable with. In order to provide a safe salary range, you can once again refer to Glassdoor to have a look at what your counterparts usually get. Besides Glassdoor, you are also advised to inquire the personnel in that company beforehand to have a better understanding about what the price your targeted company is comfortable to offer.

State the exact number like $ 53,750

Or you can directly state the exact number you hope to settle on. Even though it is riskier to state exactly the number, sometimes stating the exact number may do you good. According to researchers at Columbia Business School[1], employees are more likely to be given an offer closer to their initial request, state a more precise number in their initial negotiation request when they state a more precise number in their initial negotiation request. The reason is, as the researchers explain, the employers assume you have prepared extensive research into your market value when you reach that specific number.

Also, when you state the exact number, you can also aim higher than the usual range. It is because psychology shows that your bargaining partner has the feeling that he or she is getting a better deal if he or she negotiates down from your original ask. Given that your employer will almost certainly negotiate down your term, you may need some room and still end up at a salary you are pleased with.

Should I still state it when a standard salary is already stated in job ad?

There are jobs that are fixed with a price. For example you may see figures like these on a job ad: $ 22/hr, $ 50/day. For jobs like these, can you still negotiate a higher salary? The answer is yes.

The point is, you should let your employer know how far you exceed their expectations.

In order to persuade your employer, your approach is to emphasize your past achievement and your potential contribution to the company.

For instance, you can negotiate in this way: “I wonder if the salary is flexible. Based on my achievement in education and my past experience in this industrial field, I’m confident I can help the company get 70% growth in the coming year. I wonder if you might be able to offer $ Y instead”.

However, one golden rule you should bear in mind is that every employer does have a range in mind. That is to say during the interview you may not want to present yourself as if you were ignorant of the salary information stated at the start. Show them you know it very well but at the same time you know you can over-deliver.

During the interview

When being asked about your current salary

During the interview, the employer may inquire information about your current salary.

However, revealing your current salary may put you at disadvantage if the job you are applying can offer a salary much higher than your current one.

To encounter situation like this, you are advised to quickly draw attention to other topics. Instead of focusing on your current salary, you may once again highlight your skills, your responsibility, and your contribution to the company. As employers desire capable candidates, showing your ability can put you at a better position in the interview.

Besides promoting yourself, you can also express your outlook about the company, and your passion of growth. This can also underscore your ambition, which is also the quality that companies desire to see in candidates. In this way, the flow of the conversation will be around your advantages, instead of your history in the current company.

How to handle if the employer says “NO”

The rejection may sound daunting to you. However, according to Pynchon[2], a negotiation does not really start until someone says no.

She explained: “It’s not really a negotiation if we’re asking for something we know our bargaining partner also wants. Negotiation is a conversation whose goal is to reach an agreement with someone whose interests are not perfectly aligned with yours.”

Therefore, other than feeling sorry for yourself, you should rather be glad that you get a clearer picture about what your employer wants. At the same time, your employer also understands your requirement better.

If your current suggestion is higher than what the company is going to pay, you may lower your term in the negotiation which you still comfortable with, and see if the company still rejects.

Try to reach a common ground with your employer.

If the employer still refuses to compromise, despite asking for a raise in salary, you may change the battlefield from the salary raise to other benefits, such as traveling compensation or vacation days. These all are matters that you can also bring up to the table and negotiate.

Do not accept the offer too soon

If you are landed with an offer, congratulations!

Meanwhile you should still remain your cautiousness. You should not accept the offer too soon. A lot of people are shy to hold on the offer, as they are scared their employers may pull back the offer.

However, most of the time, as affirmed by Chase the career couch, employers don’t do this when they have already spent so much efforts on negotiating with you.

Accepting the offer too soon may cost your opportunity to negotiate better terms. Despite the offer itself, some details can still be negotiated, such as the salary, the bonus, or other benefits. These all have room to be negotiated.

After the interview

Reevaluate your offer

Following the discussion above, you need not accept the offer immediately. Instead, you can ask for more time for consideration. You can ask the employer: “I’m thrilled you want to hire me. Could you just give me a couple of days to think about it?” If the company values you, it will be happy to allow you time to think about.

When you are considering the offer, salary should not be the only determiner. Besides salary, there are also other factors that are worth consideration.

These 7 things, as suggested by PayScale, are things that are also worth your consideration.

Vacation time

The skills you may learn in the company

Exercise

Traveling compensation

Clothing allowance

Means of telecommunication

Access to the company’s product or service

These important factors also have huge influence on whether you will be happy in that company, thus worth of your serious reevaluation.

Show your excitement no matter you’re ok with the salary or not

After receiving the offer, you should first express your appreciation of the company’s decision to hire you. But don’t make it like you really need the job to survive. Instead you should show them how excited you are to contribute for the company and achieve your career goal with them. They will be able to feel your passion and eager to work with you soon.

Only after this you can reveal your stance whether you’re fine with the salary they offer or not. Now, since the company has acknowledged your appreciation, they will be inclined to accept the terms you suggest.

Reference

[1] ^ Science Direct: Precise offers are potent anchors: Conciliatory counteroffers and attributions of knowledge in negotiations [2] ^ The Muse: How to Negotiate Salary: 37 Tips You Need to Know

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