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I had some great press in January in both Boston Magazine and Cooking Light. Boston Magazine did a whole segment on "Change Your Life" and I was quoted in the section called "Be the Boss' with advice for striking out on your own. I was asked to come up with 3 questions all potential business owners should ask themselves:

1) Are you honestly passionate about the business?
2) Are you self-motivated enough to work without direction?
3) What's it really going to cost?

Whether you have owned a business for a while or are just starting out or retooling mid-stream, working on your own is a challenge. Yet in this era of disappearing lifetime jobs, globalization, and lack of security, asking yourself these questions on an ongoing basis is a key success strategy.

As my colleague Cliff Hakim says, "We are all self- employed" and we need to operate from that mindset. Even if we love our business, we can get burned-out, our referral sources can shift, and the marketplace can make new demands for skills and expertise we don't have and need to get. Change is contact and can be invigorating or threatening. We must learn to expect and embrace it to thrive. So, I want to add three more questions for you to ponder this month:

1) What are the key trends in my industry that I need to pay attention to?
2) What does my creative soul need to stay interested and inspired right now?
3) What kind of connections and support do I need to be more productive?

Get a notebook, find a mastermind buddy, or take two days off and muse and see what you discover. Working on your own requires your continual input and self-assessment. Good luck!

Best wishes for a creative and stimulating 2007!

Prosperity Affirmations

The Wealthy Spirit: Daily Affirmations for Financial Stress Reduction is a delightful book where Chellie Campbell engagingly teaches you the artful balance between prosperity thinking and action. One of my favorite concepts is her reminder that it is not enough to simply set intentions, we need to keep "sending out ships" to have them manifest. Her website is http://www.chellie.com.

Women and Work

A lovely Canadian woman, Healther Resnick, sent me her new book: Women Reworked: Empowering Women in Employment Transition which is filled with stories of women who have claimed their economic power and a comprehensive list of resources for women in the US and Canada. Heather's vision is to help women become happily self-sufficient. Check out her website http://www. womenreworked.com.

Creatively yours,
Gail McMeekin
http://www.creativesuccess.com Copyright, 2007. CreativeSuccess, LLC.