YOU are the Magic!
How Self Confidence Perfects Marketing with Our CMO
This year on Substack, we’re doing things a bit differently. Every week, you will get a Substack from one of the people on the Rise Team. This week’s edition is brought to you by Lauren Porté Schwarzfeld, Chief Marketing Officer over here. You’ll get to know the Rise team as we rotate guiding the podcast and substack conversations and see how this quirky and dynamic group brings our wild personalities together to make some magic! Now let’s get into it!
We start most of our Rise Literary business meetings by pulling a tarot card, we’re guided by our intuition, and we check in with astrological charts when making decisions. We pair the “woo” with action, and we create MAGIC.
There’s a Picasso quote that I love and refer to often:
“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
You can’t just sit around waiting to be inspired - the cure for writer’s block is to write… If you’re looking for magic, make some!
On the podcast this week, I talked with my [truly magical] friend, Michelle Garside, about the absolute magic that is overflowing in her life right now as she’s preparing for her first book to come out next year. She used phrases like “I was so lucky” and “THIS IS NOT NORMAL!” in describing some of the incredible opportunities she has right now as she’s starting to promote her book. Garside lived the ultimate dream when an agent reached out, declaring that she should write a book and offering help to get it to print. INSANE. While that’s not how it normally happens, it happened when Michelle was looking for and creating magic in a really special way. Not a magic potion, not a spell casting, but putting the effort required into bringing about her own kind of magic.
(My millennial brain just conjured up an image of the boys from Weird Science creating Kelly LeBrock. Oh the 80s, what a time to be alive and unsupervised.)
The magic Michelle and I talked about is deliberate and expansive; it’s not formulaic like a+b=c, but rather, something that feels like yellow+four=haircut. It doesn’t make sense because it’s relying on a concoction of action and faith, not a specific vision you’re clinging to too tightly.
When good things get thrown upon your doorstep, it can feel random, but it isn’t passive. You’re rewarded for continuing forward, moving, doing what feltright, aligned, and inspired. It is only through alignment that you suddenly find yourself, completely unexpectedly, exactly where you’re supposed to be.
You get to make your magic however you want, however it fits you best and makes you come alive. It’s rarely my style to tell someone how to do anything, but if you’re looking for some guidelines or a starting point to bring some magic into your life, the combination of BELIEF, MOTION, and LETTING GO OF THE DETAILS will take you far.
You have to believe in yourself, with your whole fucking self. You just do. Practice. Find a person who can help you, but YOU have to believe that what you’re doing and working toward is absolutely yours for the taking.
Keep moving. You have to do something. Get up and get going. Negativity has a harder time hitting a moving target, but magic loves to bob and weave. Staying in motion pushes you towards it, and it’ll catch you from there.
If you are stuck on a specific detail or vision, you are likely going to miss out on something even better. Let go of the timeline, the exact picture, and all of the details. Hold onto the big picture of what you want your life to be and stay open to BIG possibilities!
I’m the Chief Marketing Officer at a publishing company. I have a finance degree. I was an accountant, a doula, a real estate agent, a PTA president, and the COO of a non-profit. Last year, kind of by accident, we produced a TEDx event (quite possibly the best professional day of my life), and now we’re launching a new global speaking series. I stand right now in a spot I could never have imagined, and yet everything I’m doing fits so perfectly into the life I imagined for myself. I believed it, I kept running towards it, and it ended up feeling like magic.
Just like inspiration has to find you working, so too does magic. Michelle’s story of an agent tapping her on the shoulder and suggesting she write a book almost sounds too good to be true. But she tapped her on the shoulder while she was out making moves, working her butt off, showing up and saying yes, and doing anything and everything to create the life she craved. Michelle was building her career, but she’d first done an enormous amount of personal and professional development to be able to show up in alignment with herself and her clients. She said yes to opportunities - even the ones that scared her. That tap came to her shoulder at a cocktail party, not her front door while she was sitting on the couch.
There are so many more things I could say about magic and showing up for yourself, but I’ll let you listen to it. Michelle and I talked about this on the Write Now. podcast - listen and tell us how you’re showing up for yourself!
In this episode, Chief Marketing Officer Lauren Porté Schwarzfeld sits down with brand architect and debut author Michelle Garside to discuss the magic of making bold moves while writing and promoting your book. If you want some guidance as to how to create an experience that brings your book to life and lights you up, this is the episode for you!
Let us know if you’re ready to tell your story!
Lauren + the Rise Literary Team
What You Might Have Missed:
Spend two days romancing yourself, reviving your creativity, and falling back in love with your story. Story Magic is a two-day immersive retreat for writers, artists, and storytellers who feel the quiet ache of something more. More depth. More truth. More pleasure in the act of creating.
Author Alchemy is LIVE!
Are you tired of dreaming of being a writer but are now ready to become one? Whether you’re looking to write fiction, nonfiction, memoir, or poetry, Author Alchemy is about understanding who you are as a writer and who you can become as an author.
What Kind of Writer are You Quiz
What kind of writer are you? We launched a free quiz (with writing prompts) this summer to help you find your writing archetype and break through your writing hurdles.
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