Chellie Campbell is on my top 10 list of favorite teachers.  In regular rotation, I read from her book, “The Wealthy Spirit” almost every day.  This book not only offers daily bits of wisdom on being spiritually grounded, it also has some very practical tips for making money.

One of her concepts is Sending out Ships.  Some might call it Sales and Marketing, but this is more fun and, I think, more encompassing. It includes everything you might do to move you toward your goal.  For instance, if you want to be a dancer, a ship you might send out is calling up the local dance instruction studio and seeing what they have to offer.  I think of it as contacting people. Getting my words and my message out there.  Chellie calls it simply,  “taking action to achieve your goal.”

It pays to think clearly about ways you can send out ships.  It can vary from person to person.  Chellie says, “the money’s in the phone.”  For me, it’s in the Internet.  But the same concept applies.  There are the more obvious ships like sending e-mails, but also social networking and posting comments and guest blogs.  Every time I post to my blog, I send out a ship.

This is a more lively and breezy way to think about marketing.  Sales and marketing can sound so dry and boring!  And onerous.  Who wants to do that?  But when I think of it as filling my ships with my best stuff and launching it, bound for exotic seas, it feels a lot more fun.  It helps me, too, to get a grasp on all the many ways I can equip my ships.  What ways can I put myself out there to get what I’m after?  Whether that’s clients, students, a job, a mate, or a particular piece of gear.

Chellie says that it is up to us to send out ships, but not to bring them home.  We wave good bye to our ships and get busy readying more.  Not all ships make it back.  And once they’re at sea, there’s not much we can do. So we can focus on just putting more in the water and casting them off.

It is a great day when a ship comes sailing back into harbor, loaded with good things.  Sometimes the ship was launched not long ago, but it could be a ship you sent out months or even years before.  You never know when they will come in and what they will bring!  That makes it even more fun.