Books – Life Unfolds Blog

Celebrating with family and friends

On Saturday my parents threw me a nice party to celebrate the launch of my book The Right-Brain Business Plan and my 5th anniversary of leaving my corporate job to pursue my dreams. My brother, Gregg, even flew up from L.A. for the event (even though he had already visited the week before). That’s us above with my cousin Robert (in the black on the far left). My dad gave a very lovely and thoughtful toast. So nice to know how proud he is! And many thanks to my aunt and uncle who graciously hosted the party on their beautiful patio.

My dear friends Hannah and Kate were there to celebrate. We all met a few years back through Ladies Who Launch and I just adore these talented and creative lovelies. And of course, Kate is the one who did all of the fabulous illustrations in the book!

And here I am with my book club ladies Lily, Francisca, and Kristen (we missed you, Christina!). While we were eating at the party realized we’re going on year 10 of our book club this year and started plotting a milestone celebration.

My friend Linda from my Old Navy HR days joined us as well. Our cubes used to be right next to each other and we sure had fun together!

And here I am with my college roomie Julie and dear friend Julie. She’s the absolute best and has been super supportive all these years.

I’m so grateful to be surrounded by such loving and wonderful friends and family! Thanks everyone! Couldn’t have done it with out your support.

March Recap

OMG, I can’t believe March is over! It’s been a whirlwind month filled with so many exciting things!

The first half of the month I spent immersed in a community of more than 2,000 creative souls who came together from around the world to participate in my first ever Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit. The energy and passion of all of these amazing people inspired me to no end. It definitely felt like we started a revolution of right-brainers in business! You can check out what some of the people have been up to since then on the RBBP Facebook fan page. And if you missed the summit, not to worry, you can still access the multimedia library to get inspiring and practical tips for running a creative business.

Oh and this is so freakin’ rad… toward the very end of the summit Jen Landis surprised me with this adorable Pincurl girl drawing of me. Thanks, Jen! I love it!!

Earlier this month I had my local book signing at A Great Good Place for Books in Montclair. Kate made my hubby take the photo above. I think it’s hilarious! I had a great time and was absolutely thrilled that it worked out for my friend Darlene from Canada to swing by on the first leg of her California trip.

I’ve also been busy doing a virtual book tour including guest blog posts, podcasts, and radio interviews. I just found out today that I’ll be on KOIT, a local radio station, next week. Yay!

As part of the video summit this month, I sent out many, many books all around the world. It’s thrilling to think about RBBP’s being made as far away as South Africa, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand!

I must say the two weeks of the summit were super intense for me and I certainly needed downtime after to recoup after all the excitement. In fact, I am still recouping! I made sure to have lots of rest and to schedule in some small celebrations for myself. I treated myself to a morning of painting back at Chris’ studio. It had been several months since I was there.

And last weekend, my hubby, our dog, and I took a lovely trip up to Napa for some much deserved and needed rest and relaxation. We spent most of the trip indulging on delicious food at the awesome dog-friendly B&B we stayed at called the Inn on First, and at fabulous restaurants including Ubuntu which serves the most amazing vegetable dishes (and they have a yoga studio in the restaurant – how cool is that?) and Morimoto Napa where we had an absolutely incredible dinner. Oh, I want to go back! Mmmm.

So those were some highlights from March. Hard to believe the first quarter of 2011 is over. I’m really looking forward to more exciting things to come in April and beyond!

Book Launch Bonanza!

This week is filled to the brim with exciting book launch activity! If you’re in the Bay Area, my local book signing is this Thursday from 7:00-8:30pm in Oakland at A Great Good Place for Books. I stopped by there yesterday to say hello and they were really looking forward to it, as am I.

Although I did dream last night that I showed up at the book store for the signing and forgot to bring all of my handouts and goodies. (Oy! It’s like those dreams of showing up at high school with just your socks on and forgetting that there was a calculus exam that day! Haha!). Remembering to breathe!

And if you’re not in the area, there are plenty of ways you can celebrate the launch with me! For starters, tomorrow, we’re kicking off the first ever Right-Brainers in Business Video Summit! There are already more than 1,000 people from around the world signed-up to participate.

We’ve got an amazing line-up of experts who will share their insider secrets on how to run a creative business successfully. Not only will you get to hear their pearls of wisdom, you’ll get to see them in action because this is a video summit after all! And I’ll be there live to chat with you and answer questions. Just check out these inspiring speakers:

Would love to “see” you there! You can still sign-up here (and did I mention, it’s free to watch!)

As part of the launch, I’m doing a virtual book tour where I’m doing guest interviews and posts on blogs throughout the next several weeks and beyond. You can check out my past posts here and see the upcoming schedule. If you’re interested in hosting me for a guest post, please drop a line to info at artizencoaching dot com with the subject line “blog book tour” and someone will be in touch soon! Thanks!

Lots more goodies and exciting announcements to come, so stay tuned. Sign-up for my Artizen Coaching newsletter so you always get the latest and greatest.

A Visit to New World Library

Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of visiting the New World Library office to have lunch with my editor and meet the rest of the team. Everyone was so warm and welcoming and I’m very grateful to be partnering with them. I even got to briefly meet the co-founder and president Marc Allen who wrote the book Visionary Business. In it he shares that one of the keys to visionary business is to “write your business plan as a simple, clear visualization.” Well, get this, Marc always carries around his one-page visionary business plan. While we chatted, he reached into his back pocket and unfolded a well-worn, dog-earred sheet of paper that simply listed his goals and plans for the company. Very cool! You know I’m a fan of portable business plans!

Being at the office and talking about pub dates, seeing book cover comps, and hearing more about the production process made this dream of getting a book published feel that much more real. Woohoo! Many of my favorite reads are from New World Library (as you can see from my stack of books), so it’s thrilling to now be part of the family. By the way, one of their new books that I’m currently reading (on my new iPad!) is Hand Wash Cold by Karen Maezen Miller and am loving it (the book and the iPad!).

The following few months will be focused on artwork, photos of Right-Brain Business Plans, and interior design. Then, in the summer we’ll start discussing marketing. And then the book launch will be early next year! I know there will be plenty of steps in between all of that. So I’ll just continue to enjoy the process. Next up, meeting with my friend and illustrator Kate later this week to get started on the fun drawings. Yay!

Tranquilista Goodness

Britt Bravo and I joined Tranquilista Kimberly Wilson and her beau Tim Mooney for dinner at Cafe Gratitude in Berkeley. Kimberly was in town doing her west coast book tour for her fabulous new book Tranquilista: Mastering the Art of Enlightened Work and Mindful Play. We gabbed, we laughed a ton, and we brainstormed about our creative women entrepreneur event, all while enjoying a delicious raw meal.

Kimberly Wilson and Tim Mooney Here’s the darling couple. Tim is such a great guy. It was fun to learn more about all the cool stuff that he’s up to, too.

You can check out Kimberly’s TV segment about financial finesse on The View From the Bay below.

29 Gifts – Join the Giving Challenge

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This morning my friend Cami Walker, author of the new book 29 Gifts, was interviewed on the Today Show. Her story about how a month of giving changed her life is super inspiring, as is her fabulous book which I finished reading last week.

I participated in her 29-Day Giving Challenge last spring and got a lot out of it. It was fun to find creative ways to give gifts of all kinds (from flowers to feedback) and more importantly to be part of this positive movement. If you haven’t joined yet, why not give it a try? It could be a great challenge/structure for doing NaBloPoMo, which starts in November.

For those of you in San Francisco, Cami is hosting a book launch party on Saturday, November 14th. Hope to see you there!

CRAVE San Francisco Guide Book

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crave-sf-inside

Last night I attended the CRAVE San Francisco Guide book launch party. I enjoyed seeing so many of my fellow “entreprenesses,” as the amazing CRAVE founder Melody Biringer calls us. Melody is an inspiring entrepreness who has built her own CRAVE empire including CRAVEguides in nine cities and CRAVEbusiness – a fresh approach to modern business.

And Melody knows how to throw a party, after all she started CRAVEparty, too. A fabulous party is not complete without delicious food. Several of the featured foodies in the book catered the event last night. The brownies from Batter Bakery (pictured in one of the pages above) were absolutely to die for! It was like licking the bowl of rich, yummy batter. Oh, how I wish I pocketed an extra one for the road! I’ll just have to go visit their shop in the city.

More than 100 women-owned Bay Area businesses (including mine, Artizen Coaching!) grace the pages of this beautifully designed book. I love that the book also highlights the women entrepreneurs by asking questions like, “What’s was the inspiration behind starting your business?” and “What is your indulgence?” If you want to get to know some super inspiring women and learn about the hippest shops in the city, order your copy below.

CRAVE San Francisco Bay Area: The Urban Girl’s Manifesto, Second Edition by Melody Biringer, 237 pages, full-color

$19.95 plus tax (I’ll cover First Class shipping to orders in the U.S.)

The Power of Play

Play

When you were a kid, what were some of your favorite playtime activities? Did you enjoy building forts out of blankets? Playing a game of tag with your friends? Putting on talent shows for your family? Stuart Brown, author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul invites us to bring more play into our lives by conducting a play history.

Here are just a few highlights from my play history: When I was little, I enjoyed drawing, painting, coloring, making things like books or games, playing with my stuffed animals and Strawberry Shortcake dolls and pretending I was Pipi Longstocking. When I was about seven or eight, I used to do “fashion shoots” with my friends. We’d get dressed up, put on frosty pink lipstick and sparkly blue eyeshadow and strike poses for my Kodak disc camera. In college, I got a kick out of passing scribbles back and forth with my friend Julie. As our environmental studies professor droned on about eutrophication we’d create funny pictures out of each other’s doodles.

Reflecting on my play history and on what has always brought me joy, it’s pretty clear to me that I have The Artist/Creator play personality perhaps with a dash of The Storyteller. While I’m not great at telling stories (and am even worse at telling jokes!), I have The Storyteller’s emotional connection and vivid imagination. Stuart describes eight play personalities including: The Joker, The Explorer, The Kinesthete, The Competitor, The Artist/Creator, The Director, The Storyteller and The Collector. Your play personality may be a combination of a few of the types.

While Brown doesn’t like defining play as it’s more of a state of being, he describes play as not seeming to have a purpose, something we engage in voluntarily and want to do again and again, where we lose a sense of time, we become less self-conscious and we experience improvisation. Even though play seems to have no purpose, Brown asserts that play, which combines emotional, physical and intellectual experiences, is essential to our continued growth and development.

Check out his TED Talk below to hear his brilliant insights firsthand including amazing examples of play in the animal kingdom and how play in the workplace increases innovation.

If you’re hankering for some creative playtime and are near the Boston-area, then please join Leah Piken Kolidas and me for our Creative Play workshop on September 19th. And, if you can’t make that, then come play with us over at the Creative Juicy Living podcast with Connie of Dirty Footprints Studio as Leah and I talk about Creative Play today at 3pm PT.

Perseverance and Inspiration

I just got Carolyn Rubenstein‘s book Perseverance in the mail today. I was teary-eyed before even making it to Chapter 1! Carolyn is truly an inspiration. She has championed kids with cancer since she founded her non-profit Carolyn’s Compassionate Children when she was 14 years old. I’m excited about Carolyn’s book because it provides a positive, uplifting look at cancer survivors and what we can learn from their courage and strength. Cancer has shown up in my family quite a bit, with eight people who’ve been affected by the disease. Fortunately, my mom, sister-in-law, cousin, and aunt are survivors.

Take a look at the inspiring video of Carolyn talking about her new book and pick yourself up a copy (along with some tissue, as you’ll no doubt be touched by these amazing stories).