Monique MacKinnon

Is (s)he the right collaboration fit for you?

By Monique MacKinnon and Patricia Weber, Collaboration Strategists

My complete list of what I want in a collaboration partner is two pages but length is not as important as specificity.

Get it out of your head! Otherwise those attractive ideas, to bring you just the right partner, just float up and away.

So, let’s not assume we easily take the time to get clear on anything we want, including a joint venture!

Get your description of your ideal joint venture partner down on paper and you can start and then continue conversations at a pace that will likely surprise you. Knowing someone to the degree where trust moves the collaboration forward is more easily facilitated with clarity. Even with the ideal joint venture characteristics, other variables may mean conversations take days, weeks and even months to reach agreement. The time frame is dependent on mutual clarity, trust and goals.

One thing that can enhance the trust is to share this list with your potential Ideal joint venture partner. Make it part of your exploratory conversation. Joint venture success is more of building rapport and trust in both the beginning and ensuing conversations. When you get clear about what you want in a joint venture partner, you will find you also attract someone who is likely as this same stage in his or her search for collaboration. Willingness to share each other’s lists puts you and this potential partner at a similar starting point and you feel
more connected with commonalities.

One of the reasons for joint venture breakdowns is lack of rapport and regular communication that fits both partners’ preferred styles, which can lead to micromanaging or cheating. Issues like this can be minimized if the partners take time early on to communicate the factors that are most important to each, thereby deepening rapport and trust.

“The power of intention is the power to manifest, to create, to live a
life of unlimited abundance, and to attract into your life the right
people at the right moments.” - Wayne Dyer

What have you done in attracting your best collaboration partners, Dynamos as we like to call them?

What are one of your top tips in finding the best joint venture partners?

I’ve enjoyed giving you some ideas about collaboration and joint venture partners. But WAIT – before you order all four eBooks you see listed, make sure you apply the coupon discount code, available for a short time. It’s BOGO. A CODE to Buy One Get One f.r.e.e. HERE it is.

Attraction actions to give you more collaboration Dynamos instead of Duds

By Monique MacKinnon and Patricia Weber, Collaboration Strategists

If you want to attract successful and rewarding collaborations, you may have to occasionally go through some of the Duds. But you can have more Dynamos as you go further along. My Canadian collaboration partner, Monique MacKinnon of Energetic Evolution, and I co-authored eBooks about how to successfully joint venture. This is a continuing sneak peak of the eBook, Entrepreneurial Joint Ventures: Psychology + Soul. In the introductory post, Want to attract more collaboration Dynamos instead of Duds for your beautiful blossoming business? (refer to article below), you found the insider’s tips of knowing how you might be attracting the Duds. Now, let’s get past that!

How do you collaborate in a project with Dynamos, where everyone benefits?

In the six types of entrepreneurial profiles with the six types of commitment issues, you get a good look at the brief descriptions to determine which one best describes you. This helps you discover how you can attract more JV Dynamos instead of JV Duds to your beautiful blossoming business. Reminder of the one profile we are looking at:

1. The Adventurer: You’re a natural risk taker who is very adept at exploring new ideas and markets.

Attract JV Dynamos: As tempting and addictive as it may be, instead of automatically rushing in to start (or end) partnerships or change your partner, think about whether it’s premature or none of your business to give these ideas your attention and energy. Realistically, all you can and should control is you. You do yourself and others a disservice when you jump in and try to control (including fix) others. Regularly practice letting go of this control (and yes, it’s not exactly easy), as it’s not your responsibility or right in the first place. Also, tell your partner how your adventurousness and high levels of risk tolerance can complement her potentially less adventurous and risky ways. Be careful though that there’s not too much of a gap between where you and your JV each sit on the risk
and adventure scale. Most of all, allow your adventurous spirit to infuse your partnership with possibilities that may not have been there prior to you coming together.

What are the other types to know the Dud and Dynamo affects? Here are the remaining six types:

2. The Innovator: You’re a natural troubleshooter or consultant, who sees connections and finds solutions that others don’t.
3. The Maverick: You’re a go-getter who is highly individualistic and whose ultimate motivator is money.
4. The Nonconformist: You’re a daydreamer who is very talented creatively/artistically and intent on not getting boxed in.
5. The Thinker: You’re an intellect who needs lots of quiet time for thinking and self-reflection.
6. The Rebel: You’re a straight shooter who is willing to break rules to be successful.

Have you identified your type? An excerpt may help you decide and then you can be further along to attracting those JV Dynamos you want to help build your business.

You can get your excerpt of this eBook or take a peak at all four HERE.

But WAIT – don’t order them yet because we have something special planned for you!

Want to attract more collaboration Dynamos instead of Duds for your beautiful blossoming business?

By Monique MacKinnon and Patricia Weber, Collaboration Strategists

One of the things that is almost critical for business success today is being willing and able to collaborate. Whether it’s being a guest blogger or co-hosting a telesummit with a dozen guest speakers, I have a track record of both failure and success. A most successful and rewarding collaboration I partnered in with Patricia Weber of Professional Strategies, Inc. subsequently led us to co-author eBooks about how to successfully joint venture. Here is the first sneak peak of the eBook, Entrepreneurial Joint Ventures: Psychology + Soul, and a series of posts intended to give you an insider’s tips of knowing how to select who you collaborate with in a project where everyone benefits.

According to Jim Edwards and David Garfinkel, authors of the Ebook Secrets Exposed, people’s Top 3 (out of 10) most powerful motivators are:

(1) Make money
(2) Save money
(3) Save time

Here, I mix and match the six types of entrepreneurial profiles with the six types of commitment issues. Take a good look at the brief descriptions below and determine which one best describes you, and how you can attract more JV Dynamos instead of JV Duds to your beautiful blossoming business.

1. The Adventurer: You’re a natural risk taker who is very adept at exploring new ideas and markets.

Attract JV Duds: Your habit of being in overdrive and thinking about the future can at times impair your creativity and judgment about who a good match would be for you. Since you enjoy being on an adrenalin high, you tend to spring for partners who are unavailable, overly dramatic, or inappropriate. This habit keeps you stuck in the cycle of attracting short-term partnerships that over time suck the life out of you and your business. Plus, because you prize your personal freedom, you fear losing it. Even just the thought of living a boxed-in life makes you gag. Why else did you become self-employed anyways? What does freedom mean, specifically working solo… that you have liberties that partnerships do not themselves offer? Ah yes, that may be so. However, the grass can be greener – and that includes financially more prosperous – on the other… the JV partnership side. JV partnerships can give you freedom from financial insecurity and worrying about having to do it (your business) all alone. They also allow you to contribute to your target market in a bigger and better way: a perk that the corporate world doesn’t offer. A word of caution, though, this financial security comes only when you first feel emotionally secure… alone, before even venturing into partnerships. The reality is, a healthy and prosperous JV relationship ensues when both parties come together to create an exponentially powerful outcome. It’s not like the Jerry Macguire movie, where Renee Zellweger romantically reveals the following to Tom Cruise: “You complete me.”

Does The Adventurer sound like you? If it does, you’ll want to stay tuned for the part about Attracting JV Dynamos to complete this style.

If you are an Adventurer, what do you do to attract the more successful collaboration partners?

What is the sexy solution to more prosperity?

By Monique MacKinnon, Creativity Expert & Hand Analyst, Energetic Evolution

Okay, so I’ll skip the foreplay (*smile*). The sexy solution to more prosperity is… more honesty about what you desire — be it with your business-career (aka money), relationships or health. (*Were you expecting a saucier solution? *LOL*) So, what does being more honest with yourself and others mean? Well…

Think back to when you first fell in love. Do remember feeling excited, happy, nervous, awkward, special, and apprehensive — all at the same time? You were very much in exploration and discovery mode… finding yourself, including what you wanted in a romantic relationship. And after a few dates, flings and relationships, what you needed and wanted became clearer to you. Through trial and error, the answer organically revealed itself to you.

It’s the same with money. Let me shed some light on this notion, with my own personal story: I developed a relationship with money at the ripe young age of 9, when I was a newspaper carrier and then a babysitter. And while going to high school, I worked for the public library and during the summers, as a tennis instructor, camp counselor and researcher. I fell in love with working… because being entrepreneurial and having my own money, beyond what my parents would supply me, gave me more independence, including the financial freedom to get the trendy clothes and hairdos I desired. What fun! Now fast forward 30 years. I had worked steadily for over 20 different companies in a variety of positions and industries. And although I still had financial freedom, this wasn’t enough to motivate me to maintain that relationship of working for others. Why? - Because not having the freedom to be fully authentic, including emotionally expressive, made me feel, well… like I was in jail. And to this day, I still have the picture I had drawn of myself behind bars, as a reminder to not go back “there”. Now… I can say with 100 percent conviction, and based on 7+ years of experience of being happily and successfully self-employed: Nothing beats doing what you love for a living for the people you love helping!

Bottom line is, clarity about what you authentically want in your partnerships — be it in the money, love or health department — and an active commitment to making it happen, no matter what the Universe throws your way, is required before you can have any degree of self-confidence and success with these. For instance, if and when you have doubts about making money from doing what you love, guaranteed (just like taxes and death), the Universe will send you people, events and situations that will either further shake or strengthen your resolve: the up side of doubt. Here’s just a few of the many symptoms I’ve witnessed with clients experiencing doubt about their ability to be prosperous, professionally or personally: They…

- Cut back on their marketing and sales activities, and instead focus on improving their business offers or personal relationships.
- Tightly hold onto to their lack of money or time, and fail to see, have faith in, and spring for the opportunities that would bring them more abundance.
- Stay super busy with different activities, with the hope that something…anything will pan out for them.

WalkYourSoul Nudge: This week, I encourage you to be gentle on and ask your self where and how you are potentially keeping yourself small. I promise you, this staying small will act as the popcorn trail back to your self-doubt and insecurities. Next, allow the summer sun, in its full splendor to be a powerful reminder of how beautiful, capable and valuable you already are. And if you have have been minimizing, hiding or even exaggerating who you authentically are, then please do yourself a favor and seriously consider joining the Prosperity of Self-Compassion Movement.

How attractive are you to prosperity?

By Monique MacKinnon, Creativity Expert & Hand Analyst, Energetic Evolution

As I was leaving my home today to catch my morning Firm Parts class, my knapsack strap got caught in the spring of our house’s outside door. My first response was to tug at the strap. However, no matter how much I pulled and also played with the angle of the door to free the knapsack, it stayed stuck. As a Capricorn, I pride myself on being efficient. And with no extra prep-and-travel time to spare, I knew that the answer about what to do with my stubborn knapsack was already there. I had visions of climber Aron Ralston, who literally got stuck between a rock and a hard place while hiking at Utah’s Bluejohn Canyon in 2004… and had to saw off his arm off to free himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have lived to share his heroic story. Okay, Drama Queen aside, if worse came to worse, I could always cut off the end of the strap. This may sound silly but… because the knapsack is NEW, I wasn’t springing for that solution.

Then I remembered this: that space was required for my knapsack to get lodged into the door. Add to this the fact that, if the available space in the spring was what caused the problem, then it could also be part of the solution. So, I created space within myself by surrendering to the situation and trusting that I would get to my class on time. Once I did this, the door spring released the knapsack from its grip! Go figure, huh. Bottom line is, solving problems and moving towards prosperity isn’t best achieved by “figuring it out”: from the “logical egomind”1. Instead, it’s about using your intuition: a more “holographic, direct, inspired way of knowing”1.

Who would have known that a knapsack could teach you a thing or two about prosperity? Check it out…

Forcing vs. Letting Go: When you put your question out to the Universe, the answer will arrive just in time — as long as you believe and trust that it will. This is about letting go of your need to be right, smart, efficient, or whatever adjective best describes what keeps you stuck. How? By allowing your self to, not-think, not-know and not-do.

Rigid vs. Relaxed: Guess what prosperity is attracted to: you being rigid or relaxed? On a more human level, would you prefer to make love with someone who’s relaxed or rigid (*smile*)? When you’re relaxed, there’s ease in your thoughts, feelings and actions — and prosperity consequently flows more easily to you.

Present vs. Future or Past: Prosperity happens in the now… present. As Penny Peirce succinctly states: “To attract answers” (and move towards prosperity), “you must first get in touch with, and experience fully, the feeling of need, desire and incompleteness. You must want a response so badly you can taste it. This creates the energetic magnet”, and I would add… for prosperity to be attracted to you.

There’s a happy ending to this story. Not only did my knapsack escape unharmed, when I returned from my class, I received an invitation to partner with someone very high profile that I was desiring to work with. Woohoo! So, the prosperity adventure continues. Now, how is yours going?