business advice from unlikely places; or, design your own anarchist time-managing superhero

Just on a whim I started reading "How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead," by the fabulicious Ariel Gore. Now, on the surface, I'm not this book's intended audience: I'm not a writer, and I don't really want to be famous. But it's full of advice (her own and that of other published authors) about how to promote yourself so that you can make a living at something very few people understand, but that they might value. Sound familiar? Plus I realized that, while I don't want fame for myself, I DO want our clinic to be famous, at least locally.

One of the suggestions that Gore gives (and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the book on me) is to develop an inner superhero, who can do all the things your normal personality has a hard time with. For example, if you're shy, the superhero can be outgoing and do all the schmoozing. Maybe you hate keeping the books, but your inner superhero has no fear of numbers (or at least no fear of asking for help with the books). Got a lot of fire? The superhero can be nice and watery. I think for it to really work the superhero has to be fully imagined, with a special outfit and everything - it should be a whole subpersonality, a character. Gore has lots of other great ideas if this one doesn't work for you (personally I love it, and like how it dovetails with Lisa's "love your microbusiness" advice about reading lots of stories with heroes in them - http://www.workingclassacupuncture.org/e-book.pdf).

Here's an interview where Gore says a lot of other smart stuff: http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/features/interviews/arielgore/
For example, in response to a question about money and purity and entrepreneurship, she says: "When you're doing good work you're offering a kind of sustenance. I can go down the street to Junior's Cafe and Audra will sell me a plate of vegan spicy spuds and I'll pay her, and then she'll buy my book and we'll be feeding each other. There's nothing impure about that. Now, if Audra starts putting junk in her food without telling me so she can make an extra buck, or if I start giving her happy endings when my heart is full of tragedy just so I can get a big advance from Random House, well, now we're getting into trouble and pretty soon it'll be over." No translation required to see how that same dynamic applies to Community Acupuncture.

Heck, I was having so much fun reading about how other "cultural creative" types deal with being businesspeople that I followed one of the links at the end of that article and found more great tips, which I HIGHLY recommend:
http://nomediakings.org/vidz/time_management_for_anarchists_the_movie.ht...

OK, on that note, time to get back to fomenting revolution, step by step.

P.S. Ariel's published several great books (including something for everyone), so if you have readers on your holiday shopping list, you know what to do.