David Lee Martin

Book buying and book reading habits have changed dramatically in the past decade. Gone are the days of judging a book by the fatness of its spine. Whether it’s 45 pages or 450, a book can be a life changer, and the instant availability at the click of button means we have more at our fingertips than ever before.

And it’s not only book reading that has changed beyond recognition, book writing has experienced a revolution too!

No longer are you stood in line waiting for a gatekeeper to give your book a thumbs up. You can choose yourself and publish freely and furiously to the biggest bookstore on the planet.

Technology has overtaken traditionalism and a new era has dawned for anyone who wants to share their words and worth with the world.

Don’t sit back thinking you must wait to be discovered before you put words on a page, put your words out where they can be read and let the discovery take care of itself. My encouragement to you is to learn well the art of “practicing in public”.

Kill perfectionism in a blitz of creative courage, and write and publish your book with all of its imperfections.

Instead of thinking you need to write the next great American novel, or a 21st Century classic, carve your way to a perennial bestseller with a small knife, one short book after another.

Lay your words as milestones on the road to fulfilling your destiny. Share the steps as you take them, not just after they have all been taken. Invite people to walk the road with you as you bring your wisdom to the table.

Remember this, your book is not about you. You don’t want your reader to be impressed by your eloquence. You want the reader to be impressed with themselves, when they internalise and apply what they learn from your writings!

The most significant Hero’s Journey is the reader’s journey, not your own. They are the hero of your story, and you act as a muse for their dreams and desires to become a bigger, better version of themselves.

Don’t deprive the world of this indescribable gift.

Words are powerful. The Scriptures say that in them we find the power of life and death.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” (Proverbs 18:21 KJV)

Your words carry life.

Pages are panting, thirsty for your wisdom. Pick up your pen, punch your keys, and set them free!

I’ve had some bombs when it comes to cars. There used to be guy who lived over the road from me, and whenever one car of mine gave up the ghost, I’d be knocking on his door for another poor excuse for a vehicle I could buy for a few hundred pounds. Seriously, some of the wheels I travelled in were shockers!

I wondered on many occasions if they would even get me to my destination, and sometimes my fears were founded and I was stranded by the side of the road waiting for a pickup truck.

I have a better car now, one I can trust with a great deal more confidence. And what is the trust I place in the car? That it will take me from A to B.

In the transference of knowledge world, the A is your mind and heart, and the B is the heart and mind of your audience. Your challenge and mission are to get all of that awesomeness from A (inside you) to B (inside your audience so they, in turn, apply it, and can also share it with someone else).

Vehicles of Value

Vehicles of Value, as I like to call them, are the means by which you do this.

In the simplest form these vehicles are words, video, and audio. There are numerous forms that these three main carriers of information and inspiration take, but you’ll find that most sit comfortably under one of those three umbrellas.

How can you bake your knowledge into written form so someone else can enjoy them.

Will video work best to show and tell your value to another?

Or will pure audio do the job?

The best vehicle may vary from audience to audience, or depend on the purpose and outcome you are promising. Often, you might want to leverage all three, and give those who are learning from you an array of choices that allow them to partake of what you are sharing in the way that best suits their preferred learning style.

The important thing is that all of your tremendous worth climbs inside one or more of these vehicles so it can transport from your heart and mind to those of someone else.

So long as our genius remains locked inside and has no way to travel it is very difficult to see an expansion of any kind.

The fabulous thing is that once you record your revelations and experiences, be it in words, pictures, or sound, it immediately becomes replicable, and can reach far beyond the short span of your geographical social circumference or sphere of influence.

Whereas some of the automobiles I used to drive were questionable and may never reach their final destination, the Vehicles of Value I’m advocating here, ones that package and transfer information and inspiration, can carry you to the other side of the world in a split second!

The crystallising of value is a key factor in becoming successful as an online trainer or coach. It’s very difficult to sell or share something that lives in your head or on your hard drive and never takes the next essential step.

Those ideas you have? They have to be released into the wild.

It may sound barbaric, but the world is waiting to rip your ideas apart so you can receive vital feedback, grow some balls (forgive the surly language), and thicken your skin. I don’t mean to be rude, but believe me, once you are out there for all to see and criticise, rudeness may be one thing you’ll need to be accustomed to. Not dealing it out of course, but dealing with it when your baby creations are not received with the same devoted adoration you believe they should be.

And this I think is often the main reason we fail to translate ideas into action. Our cherished thoughts remain just that. Our novel stays unpublished, languishing on a USB stick somewhere. Our poetry has taken up residence on a dusty old laptop. Our paintings, songs, and writings have been resigned to mere wishful thinking along with our dreams.

The fear of what others will say prevents us pulling the trigger.

And even worse than what they might say, what if no one says anything?

No likes, no comments, no criticisms.

The tragedy of silence!

And still is yet one more thing more tragic than either of these two possibilities.

That you DON’T step out, despite the fears.

No courageous stepping out despite the anxious worries.

No possibility-opening activity that places your work where people can appreciate it and consume it.

Dear creative friend, you may be surprised.

Our “what ifs” and “buts” that prevent us right now can become our best friends if we’ll turn them around.

“What if it works?”

“What if people love what I share?”

“But it might change my life and the life of those I speak to!”

“But if I don’t step out I’ll always be left wondering what could have been?”

Don’t be a “what if widow” divorced from the dream of what could be. At least open the door of potential for those dreams to become a reality.

Crystallise what you know and celebrate who you are in public, through sharing your thoughts, ideas, and creations.

I can’t promise what the response will be, but I will guarantee you’ll feel a whole lot better for trying. And with each swing of the bat you’ll get better.

Money is a conversation that stirs up the pigeons. Not certain if that’s a universal analogy, but here in the UK it means the subject can cause a lot of flapping and squawking.

Most of the time the flappy squawk dance happens inwardly, anchored to erroneous attitudes and patterns of thinking that have nothing to do with the actual value of money at all.

Often it has more to do with how we value ourselves!

The controversial nature of money has many facets, of course, and the love of it has led to some monumental injustices that muddy the waters when we are trying to get clarity on the subject in our own heart.

An honest truth that I have found some people kick against mentally and verbally, but generally agree within their secret moments and their actions, is that we all would like some more of it. I know I do. Even accepting and saying that is a shift for me.

The money conversation was one I either avoided or grappled against, for many years.

The Shift From Cost to Value

The shift in thinking began for me when I moved my focus from cost to value. When someone begins to think and converse with the world in terms of value the picture changes.

What value can I offer to others?

How can I be valuable to this person, help them reach their goals and fulfil their dreams?

In what way can I exchange my support and expertise that will give someone else a leg up on their creative destiny, and open their eyes to the wealth they carry inside?

I mentioned Zig Ziglar’s famous quote previously:

“You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

I also want to bring another wise meditation to you today from Bob Burg’s life-changing little book, The Go Giver. In the book, Bob speaks about the 5 Laws of Stratospheric Success.

I planned to pull just one of them, but every single one is relevant to what I’m sharing here:

1. The Law of Value: “Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.”
2. The Law of Compensation: “Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.”
3. The Law of Influence: “Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interest first.”
4. The Law of Authenticity: “The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.”
5. The Law of Receptivity: “The key to affective giving is to stay open to receiving.”

Print them out and stick them on your mirror. Each one of them is a vital truth worth living by. They will help you navigate the cost/value conversation.

Give in value, take in payment. It is an exchange.

Focus on what you can give in value, make that your great quest, and then be open and receptive to the rewards. Know that what you offer is worthy of compensation.

Instead of thinking, “How can I get more of what I want?” Ask the question, “How can help others in a genuine and authentic way to get what they want?”

I won’t pretend that I have mastered this conversation, it is an open discussion for me, one that bounces back and forth between numerous voices who want to have their say; limited thinking has his moments at the table, self-esteem ebbs and flows into the boardroom, ambition and courage sometimes stake their claim.

It is not an easy one to win, because in truth, for many of us who live in countries where we have liberty too choose our path of life, the only limits we live by are ones we place upon ourselves.

I have certainly found that looking at money as a convenient means to exchange value is better than esteeming it in other ways because this philosophy focuses you on two things:

1. Value what you have and who you are more fully.

Don’t underestimate or undervalue who you are, what you know, and how you can help change someone else’s life. The real work of expansion and growth is one of self acceptance and self worth. You are bigger, better, and more powerful than you think.

2. Find ways to share that value with others in an authentic way

This is the primary focus of the Christian Creative Academy, helping Christians to crystallize their amazing worth in ways that can be consumed and shared by others. There needs to be a conduit for your wonder, and technology has made this easier than ever.

Prosperity starts with the statement, “I am valued and I am valuable” and flows from there.

Two major forces determine the direction people take in life, and affect the decisions they make. Avoiding pain, and pursuing pleasure. Pain avoidance is primary. People will pay and invest in those things they believe will help them avoid pain.

Pain takes many forms, ranging from cosmetic such as steering away from social embarrassment, to traumatic, such as healing a terminal ailment. The more urgent and pressing, the less willing we are to put up with it any longer.

Once the pain of change exceeds the pain of staying the same SHIFT happens.

Pain often precipitates change.

When the pain of staying the same, rolling around and around the same mountains, becomes more than the pain of changing and challenging our status quo, things happen.

Ask anyone with a transformative story and they will in almost 100% of cases relate how a pivotal point was reached when change and breakthrough became a non-negotiable. Win or die, it had to happen! Even more so if the change needs to happen NOW, not some fuzzy day in the future.

The back story of most breakthroughs often tells a back-to-the-wall scenario. A painful circumstance, a disaster, a painful realization or seeming failure that catapulted the person into a no-holds-barred decision to discover a solution.

That solution then becomes something they can share with others, helping their fellow humans circumnavigate the painful pathways so they don’t have to climb the same mountains or swallow the same bitter pills to reach their special breakthrough moment.

It is easy to read the books, browse the magazines, watch the documentaries, or look at sale pages and the results others are displaying, and envy them. Most of the time, however, their pathway to WOW was two-thirds OW!

These Hero’s Journey backstories are powerful.

The overcomer becomes a guide for others on the road.

Your question today is this.

What is your hero’s journey? What pain have you traversed and risen from as victor?

It could be something dramatic, but let me free you from the thought that you have to have a radical tale to tell before you can be helpful and valuable to fellow travelers.

Here are some of my heroic wins that have translated into profitable products:

1. The pain of learning how to use the writing software, Scrivener, and then being able to show others how to in an online course I took time and effort to create.

2. The pain of not knowing how to self-publish a book, and discovering how so I could help others do the same, all the while continuing to publish my own books and rake the royalties.

3. The pain of prayerlessness and frustration in my spiritual life, and breaking through into a rich and powerful relationship with God, then sharing those keys in books and seminars.

4. The pain of now knowing how to sell products online, build websites, create landing pages, build email lists, and so on and so on…

You have what someone else is seeking!

You are the answer to the prayer some else is praying (even as you read this).

For others, it might be the pain of not knowing how to eat well, exercise, or lose weight. It could be the pain of financial illiteracy, or not knowing how to stop your puppy pooping in your neighbor’s garden.

First-world problems many of them, I know, but they are problems people are looking to fix.

How about the pain of failing marriage? Or the restoration of a broken heart and shattered self-esteem after a marriage that has already failed? The pain of bankruptcy, and the subsequent rise from the ashes?

Believe me, you have your own heroic feats that are worthy and willing to become your story, and it will be your story that sells the solutions that you bring.

Don’t discount the power of your “OW!”, and its ability to help you reach your WOW!