Today Charly and I had a talk to Shelagh Jones from the Spiritual Marketing Directory. Shelagh started out by helping small businesses getting their marketing strategy right, then she went on to coaching and helping entrepreneurs in a more wholistic way by identifying blockages that stopped them from moving on.

Over time she found that there was a lot of insincerity around the issue of internet marketing. The problem is that a lot of communities exist on the internet but they do not want any marketing to happen in their forums or other places on the internet where they “hang out” so to speak. Anyone wanting to gain access to potential customers who might be interested in their products had to pretend to be there for different reasons and this way of establishing yourself on the internet gets very frustrating, time consuming and insincere.

So Shelagh decided to create a directory and community that was purely for marketing and showcasing your business.

She also is a firm believer in the Law of Attraction – like is attracted to like.
She found that a common wish was to” find more customers who are just like me.”  People who have the same values, who think like me about life, how to run a business, how to have business interactions work out to the best advantage of all involved.

She wanted to create a place where people looking for a company in a particular industry could find out about the values of businesses, about what motivated them, before starting a business relationship with them. I think that this is a great idea. It will also make it easier to ask the right questions before going ahead with a purchase or bigger project.

Shelagh tries to make things simple for members of the directory. Once the entry is in the directory is does not have to be added to or updated all the time (unless you want to). Participation in the forum is completely voluntary but very valuable. Businesses who do not have a website established yet and find that task daunting can get themselves a domain name and point it to their page in the directory till they manage to set up their own web presence.

I am finding that there are very few yoga teachers who have a well established web presence. It seems all to much work, too daunting, too technical and time consuming. I think that those of us that spend a lot of time with people and doing our own practice are not naturally drawn to the online world. It is very different, somehow artificial and not very “yogic”. To establish and maintain your own website is quite a task. The Spiritual Marketing Directory might be a simple solution to take your business out into the world or to find people you want to do business with.

To find out more, listen to our interview here:

Shelagh has also made a very generous offer for our listeners. She will give a 2 month free subscription to the Spiritual Marketing Directory when you join the directory through the link below:

http://stretchyourmindandbody.com/blog/spiritus

To find out more about the directory you can go to:

http://www.spiritus-thespiritualmarketingdirectory.com

It is all about creating authenticity in marketing, sharing your values and being able to show who your really are. This philosophy is very much in alignment with the values of yoga.

Connie

from

http://www.yogainahurry.com

I am a bit late in telling you about this great opportunity, but I guess late is better than never. My friend and businesspartner Charly Leetham is interviewing some fascinating, successful business women on how to balance their family life and work. How did they achieve success?

 I am sure this is a topic we can all benefit from.

 Check it out here: http://ladiesinbusinesstoday.com

Connie

Your Yoga Partner

from

http://www.yogainahurry.com

At the moment I am participating in a “Giveaway Event”. This means a group of people (usually internet marketers)  get together and put up gifts for everybody to download.

I am really proud to be associated with this particular giveaway and have contributed a gift myself. This is the first time I have done this, please go and have a look.

http://www.wonderfulwebgiveaway2008.com/members.php?id=286

Any giveaway is only open for a limited time (this one closes in 2 weeks). There are lots of gifts. Head over there as soon as you can because it will take you a lot of time to download all the gifts you are interested in.

I am sure you will find something of interest there.

Here is the link again:

http://www.wonderfulwebgiveaway2008.com/members.php?id=286

Till next time

Connie,

Your Yoga Partner

from

www.yogainahurry.com

I attended the world Internet Summit in Sydney over the past weekend (13-16^th March 2008). By chance I ran into one of my mentors, Yaro Starak from http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

We had a brief chat and I told him that I was going to report about the World Internet Summit on my Yoga Blog. He was curious how I was going to go about this and then he went on to say something along the lines that it would be quite natural if you loved both…..

That comment really got me thinking. Yes, I love Yoga, every bit of it, for what it has been able to do for me during my life and the lives of others that I saw being transformed. It takes a lot of perseverance and discipline to get results with yoga but there can be instant changes as well. Sometimes these changes cannot be explained.

Like one young woman, many years ago, who came to my class, having suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome for over 2 years. She spent most days in bed, could barely have a shower and get dressed, let alone do any housework. During that class we did a lot of breathing exercises. I gave her some very gentle postures to do and, quite frankly, I didn’t think she would return.

One week later she came back, all excited, she had been able to do housework, she was able to stay up for nearly a full day every day and she felt so much better. Her life had changed. I cannot explain this, it is not logical. I am simply grateful I was able to witness this transformation. I love Yoga.

But Internet Marketing? Loving Internet Marketing? How on earth could anybody love that stuff?

Then it dawned on me – yes, there are quite a few people who truly love internet marketing, they love the internet and the opportunities it has given them. They love marketing and they love the results they get from it. They love numbers, statistics and analysing things. They love to develop new ideas and try them out, they love sharing their knowledge. They can barely wait to jump out of bed every day. I could observe their excitement when they were talking on stage. These were all very successful people – collectively they have made millions.

So I decided to try and find yoga within the World Internet Summit – in things that were said, within people on and off stage, within the topics covered. That way, I thought, I might be able to start to like Internet Marketing and eventually love it like I love Yoga……and become good at it in the process.

Lesson learnt: it is much easier to become really good at something you love than something you don’t care about or even dislike.

More about my quest in my next posts. Please also read:

Yoga Moments at the World Internet Summit in Sydney (Part 4)  

Yoga Moments at the World Internet Summit in Sydney (Part 3)

Yoga Moments at the World Internet Summit in Sydney (Part 2)

Connie,

Your Yoga Partner

http://www.yogainahurry.com/