Changing Course Newsletter: Issue 247

In the Life

The big news here, as much of the rest of the U.S., has been the weather. I was on vacation when Hurricane Irene hit. Fortunately the brook in front of my house was high but in no danger of flooding. The cloth placemats on my porch didn't even blow off the table.

Not everyone of course was so lucky. Nearby Vermont was hardest hit with washed out roads causing dozens of communities to be completely cut off. A breached dam in Vermont also caused massive flooding in two areas I'd visited not two weeks before with a group of workshop participants.

The historic Deerfield Inn where the group had dinner is closed indefinitely after the entire first floor was submerged in water. West in Shelburne Falls flood waters washed over the Bridge of Flowers. The raging river picked up the building housing one woman's quilting business and deposited it downstream. A vintage bookstore lost most of its inventory and several restaurants got hit hard. A few had flood insurance. Most did not.

Click to View

The Bridge of Flowers
before the storm

The flooding in the northeast, tornados in the mid-west, and the unrelenting heat and drought in Texas have hit small businesses and farmers especially hard. If you live near any of these areas please make a special point of supporting your local entrepreneurs.

You don't need to spend a lot of money. If enough of us take just ten or twenty dollars we might have spent at a big chain store or restaurant and instead spend it locally, it can mean the difference between going on or of going under for many small businesses.

On a lighter note, the unusually rainy summer has spawned a huge harvest of mushrooms. On Sunday I took part in a mushroom identification walk through a local state reservation sponsored by my local Audubon society. Naturalist and artist Marty Klein (who I've dubbed the Mushroom Whisperer) not only has a vast knowledge of mushroom he's also a really fun-gi.

And on the book front, I've come up with a fun way to reward people who pre-order three or more copies of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women. All the details are at www.impostorsyndrome.com.

For as long as she can remember "Cathy" has loved being of service to older people, so much so that on Saturdays she offers low-income seniors free haircuts.

Cathy's is a one-person mission. As it turns out there's a larger coordinated effort happening around the country which links the Cathy's of the world with seniors who wish to remain in their homes.

The so-called village movement began ten years ago in Boston's upscale Beacon Hill neighborhood. Knowing that it's often the little things – like not being able to climb a step-ladder to change a light bulb or shovel snow – that force older people to give up their homes and move into a retirement or assisted living community, a group of residents set out to find a solution.

Today the Beacon Hill Village – and 56 other Villages across the U.S. and one in Australia – serves as a liaison between volunteers and older people needing assistance. Volunteers can be younger neighbors, other able-bodied seniors, or college or other youth service groups.

In return for an average of $600 in annual dues, members can get help with things like bookkeeping, yard work, and shopping, and have access to a list of vetted home-maintenance contractors. They can also tap into work exchanges where one member might give another a ride to the theater and receive help organizing files from someone else.

To get a feel for the village concept, click here to view a short video the Beacon Hill Village put together.

Opportunity Knocks

Each village is run by one or two paid employees who coordinate everything. Ordinarily anything that involved being an "employee" wouldn't interest me, BUT…

It occurred to me that for people like Cathy who like serving seniors and who enjoy coordinating people and events, starting and running a village could be a very satisfying way to essentially create your own job.

Given that there are one hundred-plus more villages in development tells me that a lot of other people have the same idea. Beacon Hill Village creators received so many requests for information that they put together a how-to manual. At $350 they make a nice profit simply by teaching people to do what they did.

A manual is great for some people, but others thrive when they have more on-going training and support. Enter the non-profit Village to Village (VtV) Network which also uses the member model.

For an annual fee of $350 members who either run an existing Village or who want to start one get access to monthly Webinars, peer-to-peer mentoring, and the chance to attend the National Village Gathering happening October 24-26 in Oakland, California.

Put the Power of Continuity Income to Work for You

Certainly the community angle is a big factor in the Village movement's success. The opportunity to be a part of a larger community is why a whopping 94 percent of the people who take my Profiting from Your Passions® Career Coach Training Program opt for the Inner Circle option.

But what makes this non-profit financially viable is, like Consumer Reports, that it's based on the membership model.

With this or any continuity model, members or subscribers agree to have their credit cards billed on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis in exchange for access to things like information, training, support, coaching, networking, exclusive access, and so on.

So if you have 100 people paying $97 a month for a coaching program, that's $9,700 a month. On the other end of the continuum if you charge $7.97 a month like Consumer Reports does and you have 5,000 members that's $39,850 – a month.

Last week over 350 people joined the Webinar I hosted on how to create a business with a recurring income stream. Among other things, we talked about how the continuity model can work for products (socks, soap, or wine of the month), training (knitting lesson or yoga class of the week), or industry or affinity-based associations (association of lavender growers or gun owners).

For a limited time you can listen to the Webinar replay at www.ChangingCourse.com/ryanreplay.

Or, if you're already familiar with the continuity model and you'd like to be part of a weekly coaching group that includes the chance to engage in live Q&A, you can learn more here: www.ryanlee.com/changing As a heads up, the price is going up this Friday.

Profiting From into Passions^® expert, Valerie Young, abandoned her corporate cubicle to become the Dreamer in Residence at ChangingCourse.com offering resources for people who want to work at what they love. Her career change tips have been cited in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today Weekend, More, Kiplinger's, Woman's Day, and elsewhere and on-line at MSN, CareerBuilder, and iVillage.com. Valerie is also the author of The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women: Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome and How to Thrive in Spite of It with Crown Publishing/Random House available October 11.

Affordable, Immediately Useable and Practical Career Advice on How You Can Get Paid to Work at What You Love… On Your Own Terms

Affordable, Immediately Useable
and Practical Career Advice on
How You Can Get Paid to
Work at What You Love…
On Your Own Terms