by Tara Joyce | Nov 1, 2016 | Pay What It's Worth Pricing
Everyone can be your teacher, and everything can be an object of worship.
When you can free yourself from the scales of judgement in your lower mind—where one thing is held in higher virtue than another—in your higher mind, everything has the same value.
In this space, you see the teacher learns from their student, as the student learns from their teacher. In every exchange and in every relationship, there is value to realize.
When you can accept yourself and your true nature, you see this shared value. In acceptance of yourself, you lose the need to rank and weigh, and to judge any thing and any one as better or worse.
In this space of equanimity, you understand you create the value you give, and the value you receive.
What’s curious is that in this effort to understand our world and improve our self, we allow ourselves to realize the infinite value we possess.
photo credit: DorkyMum
by Tara Joyce | Dec 4, 2015 | Personal Branding
It’s About Sharing.
While the web is a powerful tool for developing our personal brand, it’s important to remember that the web isn’t primarily a medium for information, marketing, or sales. It’s a place for people to meet, talk, create, disagree, rant, and love.
In a similar vein, authentic marketing is about creating conversation and connection. You cultivate this by sharing what you care about, and what you know.
Putting this understanding together, that the web is a medium to connect with people, and marketing is a means for creating connection, we can conclude personal branding is about using the resources you have available to share your authentic signal, your perspective of the world, and trusting your right people will connect with the unique value your expression creates.
Four other things I think I know about personal branding are:
1. It’s a table for two.
2. The more value in your signal, the stronger it will be.
3. Your point of view matters.
4. There is no demand for your message.
photo credit : Lena
by Tara Joyce | Oct 8, 2015 | Pay What It's Worth Pricing
Recently, there was an interesting experiment conducted in not setting prices and charitable giving, by UC San Diego Rady School of Management and Disney Research. Conducting their experiment at a popular roller coaster, using post-roller coaster action photos as the item to be valued, they found not setting prices to be a viable pricing strategy and social responsibility strategy for companies–when the customer’s willingness to give is stimulated.
While the study focuses on stimulating generosity in a charitable setting, the study’s findings can be applied to any relationship and experience-based business. The researchers found when a customer feels more connected to what they are giving to—and in choice about what/how much they are giving—the more willing they are to give. When buyers know their money and generosity will benefit something specific, such as a charity, or someone specific, such as the business owner, they feel a more tangible and human connection to the value their giving is creating, and in turn, the more open they are to giving—and giving generously.
The study concluded not setting prices could be a tool for creating opportunities for “shared social responsibility” and this shared responsibility may provide the critical sustainability component that is often lacking in current social responsibility strategies. Fascinating.
photographed in my hometown of Toronto by Toban B.
by Tara Joyce | May 21, 2014 | Cultural Creativity
Each day that I am blessed with, I’m faced with a variety of choices. Some are small, others are not. The choices I make define me and my world.
Each day I work on my resistance to creating and to sharing. For creating and sharing are choices I make that, ultimately, I am not comfortable with, though I consistently work to choose them.
To create exposes me to my own judgements, and to share exposes me to yours. And for me, both are equally terrifying.
My history had taught me that to create was not only a waste of myself, but a sure way to ensure — internal and external — criticism. The expression of me was not safe. History’s lesson, it seemed, was that my wisest choice was to hide me, to bury it by pushing it down deep and out of site.
Yet despite these learned efforts at hiding, I just can’t deny my need to create or to share. I’ve tried and I’ve failed. I’ve tried to be who I thought I needed to be, a quieter version of myself, but I can’t keep it up. I can’t be what I’m not.
No matter how I’ve tried to fight it, my need to create and my fearful choice not to affects my entire world.
With time and practice, I’ve reached a new place with my fear. I’ve now accepted it. I no longer pretend that I am bravely ignoring it, or that I can sleuth-ily avoid it, or that it’s unreasonable and untrue. My fears about creating and sharing are neither true nor false. They simply are what they are. Attaching to them won’t help or protect me.
What I need to do with my fear is use it, to allow it to support me and my heroic heart in choosing to practice the art I am so afraid of creating, and sharing.
I could do one without the other — share without creating, or create without sharing — but I know they both need to live in harmony and balance within me if I truly want to thrive.
photo credit: Funkyah
by Tara Joyce | Feb 26, 2013 | Cultural Creativity
From the moment I learned of the existence of the web, I was immediately drawn to it. I couldn’t have told you why, I just was. I felt I belonged there, and I wasn’t used to feeling that way.
What I realize now is that I was so attracted to the web because is was the first medium that allowed the individual to share their unique perspective with the world.
Shine your light.
For the first time, we, the individual, have the power to touch and connect with people from all over the world. Before, we usually only had the opportunity to shine our light on those in direct proximity to us.
The web has created an opportunity for us to share our story with the people who truly want to hear it.
No one else is like you.
No one else is like me. No one else knows exactly what you know and communicates it in the special, amazing way you do. You have so much wisdom that only you can share.
And you now have the opportunity to make a difference in more people’s lives than you ever have before. We need to hear from you.
The very existence of the web is an open invitation for you to share your wisdom. This, I believe, is what it is here for and personally, I can’t wait to learn from you.
photo credit: kelley_leigh
