Jennifer Earle Interview - Chocolate Ecstasy Tours

Jennifer Earle had a dream. A magnificent dream of sharing the pleasures of eating the some of the worlds finest chocolates with passionate chocolate lovers.
With the assistance of a Senn-Sational coaching program, Jen was able to take her dream and turn it into a reality. She now runs a successful business called Chocolate Ecstasy Tours in the heart of London and will very shortly be launching her very own online chocolate tasting club.

The Interview


Damien: What first inspired you to explore Coaching?

Jen: Realising that there were gaps in my knowledge and that the quickest way to fill them was to seek the advice of other people who knew better. It was also a bit of extra leverage as I was getting stuck and not moving forward with my business plan.

Damien: What did you want to get out of your coaching experience?

Jen: My main desired outcome was to create an effective web presense and learn about the best options for payment solutions and autoresponders. The assistance in looking at my business from different angles was a fantastic bonus!

Damien: How did you originally come up with the idea for Chocolate Ecstasy Tours?

Jen: It seemed natural when I love Chocolate, I love walking around London and I love speaking with people. I had seen other similar tours around the world and noticed there wasn’t one in London. Whenever I travel I always search for the best food, and particularly look for chocolate shops and I found them quite hard to find in London, so I decided other people might also be interested. And I thought it would be fun!

Damien: What has the feedback been like from people who have been on the tours?

Jen: Overwhelmingly good! It’s been so exciting to see other people as enthusiastic about the experience as I am. I love hearing people say how it was even better than they thought it would be and how much they enjoyed themselves!

Damien: What's been the most enjoyable aspect of setting up Chocolate Ecstasy Tours?

Jen: Getting paid to eat chocolate! More than that actually, I love sharing with people the difference between ordinary chocolate and what they try on the tours. It’s really exciting being the one to introduce people, and watching their reactions. And I love any time I eat chocolate I can call it “research”!

Damien: What major challenges were you confronted with before setting up Chocolate Ecstasy Tours?

Jen: Most of the challenges existed mainly in my own head. I built up a lot of fear about approaching the stores and other businesses. The more practical challenges were in setting up the ideal web presence and in discovering the ideal business structure for the idea.

Damien: How has coaching made a difference in your life?

Jen: It’s been the difference between setting up the business and not! This has helped me break through a huge amount of comfort zones, expanding my belief in myself and what I can accomplish. The practical advice also simplifies my life and takes away a lot of niggling concerns.

Damien: What's the best thing about having your own coach?

Jen: When you go into business on your own it’s easy to feel quite alone and it’s much easier for the motivation to wane too. With a coach you have someone to share the journey with you – to celebrate the successes with you and guide you through the obstacles.

Damien: What advice would you give to anyone thinking about hiring a coach?

Jen: In my opinion the best coach has walked the paths that you would like to walk, or at least has some practical experience that would be valuable to changing the areas of your life you are most interested in focusing on. Then I think it’s important that they have learnt some coaching skills (either through a coaching course or NLP) and finally what’s most important is that you “click” with them, and this is the point where you meet with the coach before signing on to a program with them. I used to be somewhat skeptical and thought coaches were for other people who were either really hopeless or were really high achievers, but they are useful at every level and can make such a powerful difference to your outcome.

Make your Life a Masterpiece!

I have always loved art as a metaphor for life, hence why I use the strap line 'Make Your Life a Masterpiece' for my Design Your Life Newsletter.

Here are 7 simple ideas to help you create your own masterpiece.

1. Set a clear intention for what you want to create. All achievements both big and small begin with a vision. Once you have a vision you need to blend it with a burning desire to see it manifest in the world.

2. Choose your environment wisely. You need to place yourself in environments that support the achievement of your vision. If you want to paint landscapes then you need to get out there and immerse yourself in the natural beauty of the world. Get as close as you can to the source of your inspiration. Sitting around in the studio is just not going to cut it!

3. Start painting. So many people have great visions of their masterpiece but fail to take the action necessary to make it a reality. You are never going to create your masterpiece unless you can take your brush, pop it in some paint and then apply it to the canvas. Don't be afraid about getting it wrong or about making mistakes. Just make a start and enjoy the incredible feeling of moving forward.

4. Keep adding paint to the canvas. Once you've started painting, you actually have to keep painting. Many people are excellent initiators but then fail to see their work through to completion. To focus on your end goal, you may find it useful to visualise where you are going to hang your masterpiece when it is complete!

5. Be open to inspiration. Once you have set a clear intention and have begun your painting, you also need a degree of flexibility to benefit from inspiration as it flows through you. As you move forward, circumstances will arise that will support you in the creation of your dreams. You need to keep an open mind to firstly notice these circumstances and then to integrate and benefit from them.

6. Take time to ponder while you paint. It is incredibly important to take time out to ponder your work as it unfolds. Set an intention of making every brush stroke a true reflection of who you are and what you want to express into the world.

7. Pay no heed to critics. Anyone can be a critic. It doesn't take any particular level of skill. If you are going to take advice from anyone, make sure that it's from someone who is out their toiling refining their own art and who knows what it feels like to risk security in order to step out on a limb to chase after their dreams.

6 Compelling Reasons to build a subscriber list!

6 Compelling Reasons to build a subscriber list!

If you where to ask me what I thought the most important thing that an entrepreneurial service professional could do to improve their business prospects and I would have to say that it would be to build up a list of targeted subscribers.

Here are six compelling reasons why you should build your subscriber list.

1. You increase your earning potential. This is a pretty simple one. The more people that aware of the products and services that you offer, the more chance you have of selling your products and services. This is particularly the case when you communicate with a growing list of people who voluntarily stepped forward and expressed their interest in your business by signing up to your subscriber list.

2. You spend less time selling. Lets face it, how many people actually enjoy trying to sell things to people who just aren't interested? I know I certainly don't! When people sign up to your subscriber list what they are actually doing is stepping forward to let you know that they are interested in what you have to say and what your business has to offer. This creates the opportunity for you to spend less time selling and more time being of service.

3. It helps you to develop your expert profile. One quick indicator that people use to determine your level of expertise in any area is the size of your audience or following. If you can demonstrate growing numbers of interested people in your newsletters, products and services, people start to become a lot more interested in what you have to say.

4. You can gather global recognition for your expertise. Having a targeted subscriber list can help you develop global reconition as well customers for for your products and services. The rapid evolution of technology, in particular the internet, has created possibilities for people to create businesses with global reach all from the comfort of their home office.

5. It opens up Joint Venture possibilities. As you list develops and grows you will start to become more attractive to joint venture partners. Teaming up with other businesses that have built up targeted subscriber lists will enable your list and your business to grow exponentially.

6. You attract exciting opportunities to you. When you are out in the world sharing your expertise you start to attract all sorts of interesting opportunities to you. By building my subscriber list I have attracted invitations to speak internationally, write for magazines and was also invited to do a screen test to host a television program.

To find out more information on how to build a targeted subscriber please click below...

http://www.kickstartyourlist.com

Davide De Angelis aka "The Money Shaman" Interview

Money is such a big issue for so many people. So much so that they say that most people would much rather talk about the inimate details of their love live than talk about their financial affairs.

Enter Davide De Angelis, a.k.a. the Money Shaman. Davide spent years suffering in fear and anxiety brought about from from his relationship with money. With the help and guidance of two gifted teachers he finally confronted his money problems and overcame his financial demons. He now offers inspirational insight as to how others can do the same.....

The Interview

Damien: So Davide, what exactly is a Shaman?

Davide: Hi Damien, OK, the word shaman has become quite widespread over recent years.
In tribal cultures shamans would journey to other realms to find solutions to problems back on Earth. It’s often said that shamans can be viewed in four different ways:

1) The path of a healer, in which the Shaman is of service to the community - healing disease be it physical or mental.

2) The path of the warrior, which is not the one who makes battle, but the one who makes peace.

3) The path of the teacher or sage, the one who continues the transmission of the medicine way and the body of wisdom. This is where the path of the Shaman becomes a spiritual path.

4) The path of the seer and of the visionary. Here we recognise that the world is a dream and that we can dream it into being – and when you don’t dream it into being then you get caught in the collective nightmare that we are all living in.

In our modern, western culture however - a bit like yoga – the word ‘Shaman’ has come to symbolise a whole spectrum of healing methods and ideas. It is perhaps becoming more widely associated with the idea of transforming unwanted behavioural patterns than physical maladies. Some purists tend to get annoyed by this, saying that we are being disrespectful to tribal cultures, but I'm completely on the other end of the spectrum. My view is essentially, that if something is being used to bring greater awareness, healing and vitality into people's lives it's up for grabs. The essence of the original shamanic practices are still enfolded into the contemporary meaning, yet they have evolved to include something new. If the root of something is strong it can't be toppled so easily.

So...a further answer to your question would be: in a contemporary context, a shaman is someone - be they male or female - who seeks to shed light on unconscious fear-making patterns and transform this fear back into life-giving energy. A shaman is someone who has lived and experimented with the notion of a 'higher' guiding principle and takes action to bring understanding, wisdom and ultimately healing to an area where people are experiencing problems.

Damien: ... and what does a Shaman have to do with money?

Davide: Moving on from my last answer, money is a particular area that reflects back to us a vast amount of suffering. As I say in my course, I don't use the word suffering lightly. We tend to associate suffering with more extreme situations such as war and depravation. But I see the constant fear and omnipresent anxiety that countless people are experiencing around not having enough money, being in debt or simply feeling that they are bound up in a world of threat, struggle and scarcity, as one of the most deserving areas to bring a sense of empowerment and healing to.

In essence, so many people spend their entire life in a dark parallel universe, where there is no possibility of expressing their full capacities. In this context the work of a shaman is to strip away the veil of fear so that we can all see that nature wants nothing more than for its children to exist in abundance. The shaman's job is to expose the illusion of a dog-eat-dog world as the phoney it is. We have all been taught to search in the wrong places to find our true worth. We've been taught to search for love in 'things' which have no ability to love us back. When this illusion is finally seen for what it is, money then becomes a miraculous force in nature with no other purpose than to experience more of what life has to offer. It becomes a force to bring about a transformation. And the very first transformation is of our own life.

Damien: Why do you think so many people have issues around money?

Davide: In many ways this is going to sound like a contradiction or a paradox, but actually people don't really have issues around money. In fact, money is never really the issue. Money is more like a very powerful mirror that reflects back to us our beliefs about life. These are the filters through which we look out onto a world that can, at times, seem so utterly devoid to love and compassion. When we begin to see money as this mirror and work with it as a means to dissolve limiting beliefs, money is allowed to flow into our lives for no other purpose than to bring about a state of natural flow and equanimity. Underneath everything that we do and experience in the world is the desire to come home to our true self. And that true self is limitless being. In this way, money is the great teacher showing us where we need to look.

Damien: A lot of what you teach in the Money Shamans course is borne out of your own personal experience. Tell me a little bit about your own financial journey?

Davide: Oh wow! Where can I start. From an early age I found myself heavily in debt. I was a consistent under-earner despite running my own successful design company and working with people such as David Bowie. I had always neglected to pay myself enough to live on and this reflected a deep-rooted belief that somehow I didn't deserve to be rewarded for my talents. At times this brought me to almost comical crisis points. It allowed me to hide behind a identity constructed on lies.

In many ways, money became my ally, helping me disguise just how terrified I was of being rejected. Whenever I was about to really step into my power and needed to take a leap of faith, money would be there to make sure I didn't get rejected. After all, how could I be rejected if I wasn’t even participating? It works every time. Part of us never wants to get hurt, but sometimes we’ve got to ‘sweat our prayers’. Lack of money and a belief in struggle gave me a great excuse for not really doing the things I knew would help me to grow. In other words, I used money as the false protector, the excuse preventing me from embracing the adventure of life. So money wasn't the issue, I was deeply afraid of being rejected or refused, but it took me one hell of a long time to see how money fitted into this drama.

When I started working with the concepts given to me by Paulo and Carolina Santoro, it became apparent how money was reflecting these deeper issues of self worth and fear about the process of life. One of the most powerful things I learnt was that using the physical body as a means to bypass the mind's habitual limiting patterns can initiate a process of rapid change and integration without the need for years of analysis. I came to understand that unless we are able to gently release or unravel fixed belief patterns pulling us away from abundance, it is practically impossible to implement any money-making system. After years of struggling around money, I started to see that living an abundant life is not about escaping the up's and down's - the pain - of life, but rather to fully embrace this as part of our being. To live an abundant life means becoming intensely interested in life, and seeing that life is always already intensely interested in us. Money is the by-product of our willingness to step into the unknown and meet life head-on. It's absolutely not about getting the money first and only then doing what we want. There's nothing stopping us showing up for our own life: do it now - right now...
I came to understand that the most vibrant and successful people are all experts at getting things wrong. And then responding instead of reacting. They’re not waiting for the big ‘one liner’.

Damien: So what was you own lowest moment with money?

Davide: There have been so many. But perhaps the very lowest must have been when my dad died and I went to pay for the flowers to go on his coffin and my card was refused. I had a grand total of £5 in my wallet. I stood there in the florist and understood that things had finally reached rock bottom. I had to telephone my mum and ask her to pick up the bill. The other sting-in-the-tail being that I hadn't even told her just how strapped for cash I was, and to my desperation, I heard my own voice - as if detached - concocting some elaborate lie about how the date on my card had expired. This really brought me low!

Damien: You were fortunate to meet some quite extraordinary teachers to help you overcome your own struggles with money? Tell me a little about them.

Davide: In the course, I outline how I came to meet Carolina and Paulo Santoro and some of the amazing ideas they were putting forward. And in the years since those events took place, I've often asked myself if time has somehow enhanced their capabilities - embellished the teachings with attributes culled from all I've learnt in subsequent years. And Perhaps the answer is, yes. What I will say is that we all have pivotal encounters in our lives. Unfortunately many simply get brushed aside in the blur of busyness and our reluctance to believe that life actually does contain the quality of magic.

In the case of Paulo and Carolina, they were able to break the trance of fear and struggle long enough for me to see that something far more wonderful is available. In a sense they were visionaries that had dedicated their lives to experimentation and adventure. The thing that absolutely stood out about them was that they were not afraid to play with life. This energy moved through their business and personal lives. They saw that ultimately every thought emerges from unconditional love, and therefore no matter what, can always be traced back to this source. This quality is so rare. If we stumble across it, it stops us dead in our tracks. It's a bit like seeing an angel walking along a busy high street - we can't quite believe it but at the same time we're compelled to stop and investigate. I'm not for one moment saying they were angels, but they were not afraid and that radiates something unique in a human being.
And in essence, what I've just said about Paulo and Carolina is really what the course is about. They used business and working with money as a way to crack open problems and find the treasure that lies hidden within. And that treasure is always connected to love. I firmly believe that if you only ever got as far as doing the first two practices that they gave me - as outlined in part one of the course - your life could be transformed.

Damien: So how is the Money Shaman e-Course different to other money programs people are teaching?

Davide: The writer of the book or course is in truth the only one who knows absolutely what was meant – even then the complexity of the human mind means that it can never be 100%. We all view the world in our own way. We do this because of the totally unique experiences and influences we’ve had throughout our lives.

One of the biggest reasons why so much of the information that comes into our lives is unworkable is that we haven't ever been taught how to translate information into our own individual way of understanding things. The course guides you through the most powerful way of translating information into your own unique vocabulary. I think so much of what's out there dealing with money totally misses this point: and it's actually crucial to making anything work.

In some ways this can take the shape of first understanding how to unlearn what we've been told is true about life. For the most part we've been sold a fake version of reality and what's possible for us.

But ultimately, when it comes to money - or anything else in life for that matter - no predetermined system or fixed manoeuvres can fix what's inside. And this course has nothing to do with fixing problems. The course is fundamentally about using the 'dross', the raw materials of your present situation - no matter how bad they may seem - and turning them into gold. This is actually more like how the true alchemist works. And each person moving through the course discovers how to turn the base elements of their life into gold: that includes the unpaid bills, the overdrafts and the tear-stained bank statements. Personally I'm not interested in just papering over the cracks, I want everyone who comes into contact with the material in this course to find their brilliance. Otherwise there's no point in doing the course. If anyone is looking to just read it and come away with something then they will be disappointed.

The real objective of the course can be summed up in the words of the Taoist Master Chuang-Tzu, "if our entire life is a dream, then why not bring the full power of dreams into play to create a beautiful dream instead of a nightmare."

The course is not about paying off your debts or making huge amounts cash, although that may well happen - it's about creating something compelling and transforming money into the energy that enables you to spread joy to as many people as possible.

Damien: What kind of money challenges does your Money Shaman Course help people overcome?

Davide: As you can imagine, over the years I've been working with this material and sharing it through the course and seminars, I've seen practically everything. Because the course has been specifically designed so that each individual finds their own way of working with the ideas, I would say that it moves with what each person brings to the table...
“Bring it on!” - as the saying goes :)

Damien: Are there any other thoughts, insights, or advice you would like to offer people who are looking to improve their relationship with money?

Davide: Always invest in life first: it's the only real investment we can ever make. And let the process of transforming your relationship with money and opportunities invite you to step into the unknown and try things you never thought you would dare to try.