Love Duckie episode: the Creative Breeding Ground 

original in Dutch
translated by Love Duckie himself

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
Rock Star Writer

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This World Between Worlds blog is an element of “Rock Star” [phase 2]

Title: “Rock Star”
or “Rock Star yoga/ business/ writer”

artists: Suzanne Beenackers, little bear Puux           
art form: performance art
phase 1: earliest expressions, mixed work, July 2019 – March 2022
phase 2: April 2022 – 

3 YouTube channels*
1. English YouTube *: “Liberation”: Rock Star Yoga + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs
2. Nederlandse YouTube *: “de Catacombe” studio voor Rock Star Yoga 
3. YouTube Rock Your Business
 *

The headers from all channels have been changed already, so you know you re in the right spot.

* Filming will resume this week! I m fully healed! 

4 blogs
1. Rock Star Writer
2. Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga
3. World Between Worlds
4. Dutch blog: Suzanne Beenackers

2 Facebook pages
1. Rock Star Writer on Facebook
2. Dutch: Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver Facebook met beertje Puux

1 Twitter account
my personal Twitter account

🌍🌎 📚🛒
online bookshop

NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

 

 

There are stranger things than throwing out your tech

“It’s one thing to set a TV series in the 1980s;
it’s a whole other thing, however, to make it feel like it was actually shot during the Reagan-and-Rubik’s-Cube era.”

That was the opening line of an article in Rolling Stone magazine, July 2016. Six years later the series Stranger Things has lost none of its 80s nostalgia.

When I started this blog early ’21, and called it World Between Worlds, it was to create a playground for, and a better understanding of, that reality just behind our day-to-day one. The reality where art comes from.
I knew this space had something to do with the imagination, as main inspiration for art. With online interaction with others, communities and connections based on mutual interest, and thereby creating a social circle of affinity.
And I knew it had to do with what is currently referred to as digital minimalism, a choice to limit being online to the moments it is functional, and aligns with our values.

Artists have always had to find a way, to avoid being claimed by things that required or desired an immediate response. This is why women with children have traditionally been excluded from being artists, because they were always on call to take care of their children.
There is a meme about male writers, that their work becomes less impressive if you realize it was created with the luxury of someone else attending to your children 24 hours a day.

So having the opportunity to wall off the day-to-day, and having the luxury of time and space, in the infamous room of one’s own, has been a frequently featured prerequisite, to being able to do your artistic work.

But, and I expect you ve seen me heading for this, since digital technology and in particular the Facebook sparked algorithm revolution that spread like wildfire to every corner of the internet, we are dealing with a way our time and brains get highjacked that has more to do with addiction, and less with systemic exclusion.

Without wanting to underplay the cunningness of how our brains are being hacked, compared to the systemic exclusion of women as artists, and with the age-old elitist nature of having the time to create art;
resisting the urge to spend time online, and to avoid a symbiotic relationship with your Inbox, is an individual responsibility.
The latest challenge added to being able to do your creative work, is not an additional one of social inequality, but about fighting big tech.

interview Former Google employee Tristan Harris:
Your phone is trying to control your life [8:43]

Original story and report that got the ball rolling: 
Brain Hacking [ 13:47 ]

Right from the start of this blog World Between Worlds, I ve imagined the artistic space we should keep an eye out for, to be somewhere offline.
Or to be within an online context where we are emotionally involved, making us relatively immune to being distracted.

I ve come back to that desire to walling myself off from the ever expanding, ever evolving online claim, in a structured way. Not an ad hoc one, that you would have to change with every new feature.
But to look for personal rules and regulations, that you can then apply.

As the book Digital Minimalism says: This is about autonomy.

Can we reclaim our artistic space and harness our power, by being more discerning to how we show up online?

One of the ways I ve tried to grapple with that question is through the lens of time capsule work. 
This means pretending you live in another era.
Examples are a Dutch artist who lives as if in the 30s and an American couple that works under the name “The Victorian Couple”. You can read a 2019 longread about their work here.  
A quote from that article:

Many of us have realized [ .. ] that technology intended to make our lives easier has hideous hidden costs.

Where the book Digital Minimalism, and warnings that the addictive consumer technology will prove to be the smoking of our time, go for an emotionally detached, productivity based, and value based, approach;
I believe the perspective of doing it from the idea of living in a different era,  is one that is more appealing for creatives.

That walling off our time and life being hacked by big tech, becomes easier if we replace it with a project that comes with a bubble, a capsule, to live in.
And that does the work of filtering the world, for us.

Once again, the concept of digital minimalism, and of deliberately creating a world between worlds, has entered my life.
The same ideas as I ve had before, but perhaps this is something that requires mulling over in phases.

One aspect that is new to me, comes from the angle of aging;
I m turning 50 this year.

It is clear to me, personally, that I m speeding up my aging, by engaging in all these technologies that I did not have at home until I was over 30.
My personal computer stood for doing freelance work, and for doing my book keeping, and writing formal letters which I would then print and post.
I could get files to other people, by copying them on a floppy disk.

I loved my computer, and probably more passionately then, than I did later. For a long time I only had laptops, because I needed to move them around. So I had these slim, sexy laptops, that made me feel very Sex and the City, even though I never had an Apple and they were a plain grey.

Maybe because my laptop was offline, much like a book, I could love the way it felt, and the way the keys clicked. Could love opening and closing it.
It was not talking back, or asking anything of me, and I put them back in a drawer afterwards. 

I would say that now, in 2022, I am tied to my tech as if we are a disorganized and pretty dysfunctional family, where we compensate by constantly checking in on each other.
We rarely if ever lose sight of each other.

Where I used to relate to my laptop as to a well-dressed articulate friend, that you like but will never fully embrace. There would always be a respectful distance. 

In my late 20s I also got a mobile phone, but rarely used it. The phone was a backup tool, for when I traveled and missed a train or something.

In my early 30s, I got an internet connection at home. Up until that point I had used university, work places, business connections and internet cafes, to do my emailing. 

So with my computer offline, and my mobile phone rarely used, the only pieces of technology I frequently used either played media or they were a tv, or a phone.
The tech were not interactive. 
From the moment I got internet at home, two decades ago, that changed. And from there it has been a slippery slope, until now I am in this panicky  unhealthy relationship with my phone and my computers.

On the verge of turning 50, for me it is clear I need a digital life makeover.

So I am redesigning my life, and creating a framework that will hold for the next 50 years.

I ll be less online. One day, I want to look around in my house, and feel the same calm and maybe even hint of boringness, I felt in the year 2000.
Without the world pulling at me through every screen. 


I look forward to thinking of my mobile phone as just a helpful device to text a friend, if I ve missed the train.

I look forward to spending the rest of my life, just like I spend the first 3 decades;
In the relative quiet of the 20th century.

Stranger things have happened.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
Rock Star Writer

☕️ Buy me a coffee
🥳 PayPalMe
 
 🇳🇱Tikkie van de week [de allereerste! 🤗 ]

Subscribe to receive these posts in your inbox.
You can find the subscription button on this page, probably on the top right.

This World Between Worlds blog is an element of “Rock Star” [phase 2]

Title: “Rock Star”
or “Rock Star yoga/ business/ writer”

artists: Suzanne Beenackers, little bear Puux           
art form: performance art
phase 1: earliest expressions, mixed work, July 2019 – March 2022
phase 2: April 2022 – 

3 YouTube channels*
1. English YouTube *: “Liberation”: Rock Star Yoga + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs
2. Nederlandse YouTube *: “de Catacombe” studio voor Rock Star Yoga 
3. YouTube Rock Your Business
 *

The headers from all channels have been changed already, so you know you re in the right spot.

* Filming will resume soon. I m struck by a cold, and avoid talking as much as possible.

4 blogs
1. Rock Star Writer
2. Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga
3. World Between Worlds
4. Dutch blog: Suzanne Beenackers

2 Facebook pages
1. Rock Star Writer on Facebook
2. Dutch: Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver Facebook met beertje Puux

1 Twitter account
my personal Twitter account

🌍🌎 📚🛒
online bookshop

NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

 

 

I almost amputated the wrong arm

When I say I almost amputated the wrong arm, I mean I once again caught myself wanting to terminate a healthy part of my life, without noticing it was actually a response to introducing a not healthy part.

It all started last weekend, when I ordered a new laptop so I could start  a new business that was not hinging on my writing or my yoga. It would make me money, buy me time to develop a new yoga career, and also give me an identity until the more abstract and artistic things I really wanted to be known for, took off.
This was business coaching.

I have been contemplating my own art and business career as a coachee for almost four years now, I was an entrepreneur until 2020, have a degree in business, binge on marketing like others on Netflix (although I sometimes also binge on Netflix) and there are few things that excite me more, than when my entrepreneur friends allow me to think with them about their business.
The number of hours I have spent on thinking about business, money, and how entrepreneurship is the absolute best tool for personal development, for financial freedom and really for creating Rock Star Freedom as a whole, exceeds the number of hours I have spent on my yoga mat.

Business coaching was not just an acceptable business model to support my art; It was an exciting one. And one I knew I would never get enough of.

That was until I noticed I wanted to practically burn my yoga, delete all my yoga channels, and erase 25 years of yoga from my existence.
It all started getting very destructive, very quickly, the day I unpacked the new laptop, and I also heard what a pain-in-the-ass hassle it would be to organize yoga events.
And it was also the first time I realized I would basically be working for peanuts.

It was an understanding that real life events for the consumer market will always be way less profitable, as well as a lot more vulnerable physically, as well as mentally, when compared to giving one-on-one business coaching to entrepreneurs and artists, who would be making their investment back in coin and not in an experience.
And I would get to keep it all, didn’t have to pay anyone any fees, had zero travel time, didn’t need to plan months in advance, didn’t require tech support, no new wardrobe, it was age sustainable, and business coaching didn’t have intimidating physical requirements.
Plus it was pandemic-proof and didn’t suffer from impossibly high costs for heating or real estate.

But becoming a business coach in a global world was not just a solid choice, to support my artistic career(s);
It was also an affirmation that I was better off forgetting about art altogether. Because from now on, every hour on my yoga mat and every hour I would write, would cost me between €100 and €125. 
It proved how easy making money was, and how pointless art was.

For one whole shockingly unproductive week, this stuff festered under the surface, already doing its destructive work. But I didn’t know it.
I thought my lethargy was because I was adjusting to the idea that my new laptop would soon arrive and my new business would finally start.
A silence before the storm. Not that I was silently finishing off my yoga career.

It’s Sunday night here. Because I had such a bad feeling about wasting the past 7 days, I went grocery shopping to win back time for the upcoming week.
And while I made my way around the supermarket, I thought about the schedule I had made with all the things I needed to do to attend to all my businesses. And realized that practicing yoga would just have to be cancelled.

I was allowed to do all my yoga ON camera, so that yoga was productive. But with all the work I absolutely wanted to get done every day, something had to go, and practicing yoga was not making any money, so out with that one.
And once I decided that, I realized I would never develop my idea of Rock Star Yoga events, which were real life yoga classes or events, with rock music.

Without a daily yoga practice, I would not feel confident enough. Yoga events would not be what I wanted them to be, unless I practiced and developed them, every day.
I was a bit sad that I was now not going to have yoga events, but since I realized brick and mortar businesses in many industries, were really no longer part of real big boys economics anyway, and they do come with high costs and liabilities, the step to also delete yoga performer/entertainer together with practicing yoga, was a tiny one.

And then I wondered: Do I even want to teach yoga on video, anyway?
Or had I merely been suffering from a Messiah complex that I thought people needed my yoga to “get” it?
And before I was in the final section (pet food) I had decided, that although I had a lot of explaining to do, business cards to redo, and that it would be humbling to say the least, to quit my yoga career and abandon all my plans;
It was indeed for the better.

Without a daily yoga practice, without yoga shows, and without the hours every day it would cost me to make yoga videos;
Being a business coach and having 2 or 3 calls a day, indeed seemed way more manageable.

I was happy I had decided to take that late-night trip to the supermarket and had been able to reflect on the previous week, and learn its lessons.
Tomorrow I would end all things yoga, and my new life as a business coach would begin.

Until, as the title says of course, I realized that the real dream was never to be a business coach.

I didn’t hop up and down at the Bon Jovi concert in 2019, had that life-transforming experience where I knew the pieces of my life were falling together and that my purpose would very soon reveal itself, because I had a vision about business coaching.
I had one about Rock Star Yoga.

And although it has gone through different phases and different shapes, and it’s still not in a final form, I did know it STILL was YOGA – that was the core.
Not writing, and not business coaching, although they are part of what I have done and will keep doing.

My desire for a recognizable business model that would also give me an identity, had almost killed the thing I really wanted.
Which is to be a daily yoga practitioner, to have 2 YouTube yoga channels and to ultimately teach Rock Star Yoga events or shows.

A new Dutch series just started on Netflix, Dirty Lines. It’s all about how money and business success can make you forget who you are.
And I think when we’re talking about telephone sex, we understand that it is something that is done only for money.
That there is no purpose or meaning behind it, just money. And that you have to be very careful not to lose yourself.

But it’s when your business has the hallmarks of a respectable business, and when it would in fact be, someone else’s dream business;
That’s when you have to worry!

Those are business models and businesses that are way more difficult to identify, as the life-destroying paths that they are.
And
will make you give up your most unique, creative expression.

The dirtiest lines are the ones that look the cleanest.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🥳 PayPalMe
 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds to stay updated and to receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right. 

Title: “Rock Star”
or “Rock Star yoga/ business/ writer”

artists: Suzanne Beenackers, little bear Puux           
art form: performance art
phase 1: earliest expressions, mixed work, July 2019 – March 2022
phase 2: April 2022 – 

3 YouTube channels
1. English YouTube “Liberation”: Rock Star Yoga + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs
2. Nederlandse YouTube “de Catacombe” studio voor Rock Star Yoga 
3. YouTube Rock Your Business
The headers from all channels have been changed already, so you know you re in the right spot.

4 blogs
1. Rock Star Writer
2. Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga
3. World Between Worlds
4. Dutch blog: Suzanne Beenackers

2 Facebook pages
1. Rock Star Writer on Facebook
2. Dutch: Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver Facebook met beertje Puux

1 Twitter account
my personal Twitter account

.
NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

 

 

Categories art

Sometimes it snows in April | “Rock Star” is finally here!

The title of the legendary Prince song proved to be true, although the polar exaggeration of the weather forecast still made me think that it was at least a partial April fools day joke. I definitely did not see the 5-7 cm of snow, we had been told to brace ourselves for.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t magical.

And it invited the thought:
“If it can snow in April, anything can happen.”
And really, in my case, anything already had…

As if touched by a miracle, all the loose parts of my artistic expressions, and all the embarrassing gaps they had been causing, fell together into one smoothly oiled creative installation.
I titled it “Rock Star”; a project that began in 2019 with toying with, and writing about, the concept of Rock Star Yoga.
I ve called everything I ve done so far, phase 1, and I m now entering phase 2.

Rock Star is not built with a preconceived idea of success or failure. I will not abandon or tweak if it doesn’t perform according to the rules of worldly success. Although I did  wake up with an unexpected donation on my PayPal, so it seems to be bearing fruit just from energetic turnover alone!
But in general, No.
This assemblage is like a work of art, to observe, consume, participate in or ponder over. What is its meaning? What does it tell us about art? About business models? And are we given a glimpse of the future of yoga?

Although absolutely daunting in its number of moving parts, I will start working in Rock Star,  and you will be able to start seeing the first expressions this week.
See the wheels make their first cycle.
The first flags being planted.

What you will see will depend on how many of my outlets you follow.
I m also really looking forward to taking my yoga on the road, and to my first paid offer to rock your business.
You can find the full list of public and paid ROCK STAR elements below.

Prince wrote “Sometimes it snows in April” as a eulogy for Christopher Tracy, a gigolo played by Prince in the movie Cherry Moon. 

One of my core messages is that creatives and artists have tendencies to self-sabotage, because what society views as success in life and business doesn’t accommodate to the natural cycle that is creative work.
But creative and artistic energies, and personalities, are really not that complicated to deal with once you understand them. They need change. They crave to be in a never ending game, where they can keep playing forever.

Blowing things up, is nothing more than a primal expression of a deeply embedded need to be in an forever changing game.
We blow it up, when it’s the only way to change it. 

Sometimes it snows in April, was written and performed with Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman of backing band The Revolution. [ credit source
“‘Sometimes It Snows in April’ was really the pinnacle of our relationship together,” Lisa says about that collaboration. “And when we wrote that song, it was just the three of us sitting together in a room. I really loved it, and I had hoped that we would follow that trail further.”

But it would turn out to be the last album of Prince and The Revolution.

Sometimes it snows in April
Sometimes I feel so bad
Sometimes I wish that life was never ending
But all good things, they say, never last

If you re a creative you will not deliver your best work if you keep repeating yourself. You have to lean in to change, decay and have to remove yourself from any trails that are from the world.
And not the artist’s.

When Prince moved away from the collaboration with The Revolution, even though they were successful and it could have lasted them for decades to come, he did it because he knew standing still is an artist’s biggest enemy.

That the really good things, the exquisite things, the things that still move us to tears 37 years down the road;
Should not be built to last.

They should be, like snow in April.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers
☕️ Buy me a coffee
🥳 PayPalMe
 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds to stay updated and to receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right. 

Title: “Rock Star”
or “Rock Star yoga/ business/ writer”

artists: Suzanne Beenackers, little bear Puux           
art form: performance art
phase 1: earliest expressions, mixed work, July 2019 – March 2022
phase 2: April 2022 – 

Public Rock Star Offerings: 

3 YouTube channels
1. English YouTube “Liberation”: Rock Star Yoga + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs
2. Nederlandse YouTube “de Catacombe” studio voor Rock Star Yoga 
3. YouTube Rock Your Business
De headers from all channels have been changed already, so you know you re in the right spot.

4 blogs
1. Rock Star Writer
2. Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga
3. World Between Worlds
4. Dutch blog: Suzanne Beenackers

2 Facebook pages
1. Rock Star Writer on Facebook
2. Dutch: Suzanne Beenackers Schrijver Facebook met beertje Puux

1 Twitter account
my personal Twitter account

Paid Rock Star offers: 

I BOOKS
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
See below this post for more delivery options

II Rock Star mentoring (Zoom)
at Business, Artist or Rock Star level.
Starts May 2022

III Live in-person events 
starting summer 2022:   Rock Star Yoga sessions in Nijmegen
starting summer 2023:   Rock Star Yoga shows in The Netherlands, with the possibility of expanding to Europe

 

NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

 

Categories art

Watch Warhol on Netflix | YouTube Warhol Playlist

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.
Andy Warhol

In celebration of the Netflix series The Andy Warhol Diaries, I have published this playlist with Warhol documentaries. It was originally set to “private” but I can imagine there will be more people wanting to know more.

Warhol YouTube Playlist [ created August 2021 ]

I ve loved Warhol since the 80s, and actually got the diary around 1989/ 1990, as well as a box set with drawings of cats “by Andy Warhol’s mother” That box is one of the stories I learned the whole background story from, in the older documentaries you can find in the list.

Sadly, I donated the books, purging my book collection. It must have been somewhere between 2002 and 2015, when I often had semi-permanent housing, caused by moving to another part of the country where I did not have a place to live.
And then another round began when a relationship ended. 
I needed to find housing again, and often had temporary leases.

During that time I got rid of all my art books, with the exception of the Keith Haring ones. Mainly because they were smaller.
But I got rid of all the others. Which at the time seemed, or maybe was, a small price to pay to keep volume manageable.

But every time that hardcover first edition Warhol Diaries comes by in the Netflix series, the black and silver, with the orange letters, exactly the one I had received as a gift and that had been mine;
I cringe.

The new Netflix series talks a lot about how little Warhol was appreciated as an artist, during his life.

But I think it took me until now, or maybe summer 2021, before I finally caught up.

Whatever happens, whatever life throws at you; Keep your art.

You will miss it more than everything else.

Suzanne L. Beenackers

The Andy Warhol Diaries 6 part mini series is on Netflix

NEW: Rock Star Yoga Studio

My YouTube plans: After the war in Ukraine started, I set aside my plans to start teaching Rock Star Yoga. But my English channel is active & Dutch channel will start this week.

I will start making yoga videos this week.
New videos + new channel trailers soon! 

Subscribe to:

English channel, (yoga) + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs (talk)

Nederlandse YouTube 
nieuwe trailer en de eerste lessen volgen deze week

I would love to know which parts spoke to you!
You can share in the comments, or include a note with your donation on Paypalme 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds and receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

YouTube Rock Your Business
YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs 

NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

Also by me:
my personal Twitter account
Rock Star Writer
Rock Star Writer on Facebook
Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds (current site)
Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Liefdeseend en vintage yoga (Nederlands/ Dutch)

beertje Puux op Facebook (Nederlands/ Dutch)

 

Categories art

Capitalism, “Spice” and why I will teach online yoga for free

A very warm welcome on this grey February morning in 2022, where after three storms (Dudley, Eunice, and today we’re in the tail of Franklin), I am feeling kind of cheeky writing you this.
Thoughts in my head are:
“Can I really do this? Can I just like that, decide to start a free online studio?”
And it goes even further than that, because there’s a WE! 
Can WE, just do that?

We, YouTube lovers, music lovers, perhaps occasional yogis or aspiring yogis but truth be told, we are usually too easily occupied by things far more interesting and enticing to make it to the mat.
Can WE, already in the red when it comes to being civic-minded, take this whole thing about doing things our way and in this case, the whole bit about how yoga is supposed to work, upside down and basically, just wing it?

Ignore we are supposed to neatly organize around a yoga-teacher who has their class schedule all figured out, and who has a proper website where you can see how much it would cost to join in-person classes, or private yoga, and how much to get an online membership-
Can we just bypass that and say: “No thanks! We’re good here.”

I m going to bring it home what’s going to make us unique, but before I do that I have to warn you: 
No one has ever done this.
Not THIS.

So before you start yelling “YES!”, “I’m in Suzanne!” “Let’s do this!”, you have to realize that you have no idea what you’re up against.
And, perhaps more disturbingly, neither do I.
I have no idea what we’re going to encounter, and how our Rock Star Yoga Studio is going to pan out.

What I’m inviting you to do with yoga, if you join me, will not so much change the yoga you are doing, or that we are doing, compared to how others have been doing it for decades;
But it has the potential to change your entire life.

Because it isn’t just yoga, that has been on a slippery slope down from capitalist hill, with the occasional entrepreneurial Wunderkind climbing back up, marketing and packaging up their services and absolutely thriving!
It’s not just yoga where we can see this pattern;
It’s every profession that is based on what we call the service industry, which I would label as professions based on work women have done for free for thousands of years.

There is equally much to be said about the role of art, artists, teachers, and philosophers within a capitalist society, but in general they have been more aware or awake that they were not included in capitalism.
That they had to look for patrons, they had to establish their own school of thought if they wanted to get paid. Or they had to in some other way work with the fact that the world did not have a place for their work.

And there is also equally much to be said about the makers, the craftsmen, the people who build everything it is we need as well as the things we desire.
Late 20th century The Netherlands placed all their cards on creating a meritocracy, meaning that professions based on knowledge, or in support of some sort of paper reality, were deemed high-paying jobs that offered security and had status;
And all work based on real skill, was downplayed as being, basically “not what you wanted for your child”.
This was of course a terrible choice, and next to traumatizing and insulting, also unwise and unpractical.
A society where pushing paper is rewarded over real skill, is one where the collapse of civilization has begun. And this was decades ago.

Then, in theory, I could also include how the liberalization of the financial markets in the 80s, as well as the globalization with regard to raw materials and polluting chemical processes needed for our (often luxury) products, as well as the globalization of those same financial markets, has allowed for capitalism to absolutely spin out of control.
By now there is little to no connection between the one who earns money (investment companies, and others operating solely on the financial market such as bitcoin traders) and the ones who add value, or the places in the world that are being used, polluted, and politically destabilized because of traders looting their lands.

I remember being in a discussion which franchise invented the term “Spice” and “Spice trading” first: The Dune books in the 80s or the Star Wars movies which started in the late 70s?
Spice, in these stories, is a highly valuable sand-like dust, traded across the galaxy like drugs, gold, or weapons on earth. Spice trading featured recently in the Star Wars Boba Fett series.
The discussion revolved around whoever was second, Dune or Star Wars, and had stolen the term. But in hindsight, I believe that the story of faraway territories being looted for their Spice, and the trail of violence and corruption that the transport and distribution of it, the whole criminal network surrounding it, leave behind, cannot be told too often.
So what if one franchise was first, and one second. Do tell.

But despite these stories, it’s like we didn’t fully understand, what the consequences of a Spice driven world meant then, in the 80s.
And we still seem to not fully understand what it means now.

What does it mean for a society, and thereby for you as a person deciding how you want to make your money, when value has been dumbed down to being a monetary success?
When real value has no place in our economic system, and you re allowed to exploit, pollute, and make money on the financial markets that are highly energy intensive because of how computer/ server-intensive that trade works – without any costs?

Why would anyone want to become a doctor, a teacher, a cobbler or open a yoga studio; When they could become a bitcoin trader instead, and be a financially thriving member of society?
And as someone with money they are able to help out those around them, and build stable homes from what they make as financial investors.
Far more appealing than having a traditional occupation or being a traditional entrepreneur with a brick and mortar business, for multiple reasons but just recall how during the pandemic real businesses were closed or restricted.
Yet, financial markets thrived.

People working in what we would call high-level professions, have to invest up to 15 years in training, years of hardly making any money, and they have to stay up to date with their industry, and engage in life-long education.
Yet their work is financially less rewarding and far less autonomous, than that of those operating on the financial markets.

Entrepreneurs, brick and mortar businesses, are submitted to government regulation, fees, liabilities, loans, all the hardware and software costs they have to make, in particular if they work on the consumer market; Plus they have monthly costs in rent, inventory, and copious amounts of time and money spent on aspects of the business that do not make any money.
Again:
Why would anyone do that, now that we’re living in a world, where you can make the money online?

All good things to know and think about when you think of your local bookshop, your physical therapist, and your local yoga teacher and yoga studio.
Appreciate them, praise them, and if you can, pay them and pay them well, I say.
Be grateful that they showed up to being our boots on the ground and are here to make our communities and our world a better place. 

But I really am, getting ahead of myself.

Because these are all relatively recent developments. And although I think it is important to understand these financial market and internet-driven dynamics, if only to understand how  determined you must be if you insist on having a traditional business or occupation;
What I want to explain, and I touched on this at the beginning of this post, is why teaching yoga and other professions in the service industry, have not been part of the economic system way before the internet or Reaganomics even began.
The problem the service industry faces, is I would not say “of all times”; But it has been around since ancient Greece.

Ancient Greece was already capitalistic because the money was for the few, and the whole system was driven by the larger part of society being excluded from access to the money.
The economy was based on slaves and women doing unpaid labor and and craftsmen worked for modest pay.

In the 60s, women in the Netherlands were fired once they married.
And nurses, to this day, have the lowest higher education salary out of all of them, because their work is so interwoven with women’s work being taken for granted, that even in 2022 they do not have a competitive salary. 

Also at the beginning of this piece, I briefly mentioned that some people in the service industry were savvy enough to ask high prices for their services, and managed to become successful despite being in an industry where people worked for low rates.
I described it as: “the occasional entrepreneurial Wunderkind climbing back up, marketing and packaging up their services and absolutely thriving!”

This is often talked badly about.

An example are the rise of coaches here in The Netherlands, but it’s a worldwide phenomenon. As is the occurrence of people talking badly about these coaches charging high sums of money for their packages, and many coaches not displaying any interest in getting formal education or joining a professional association.

Yet in my opinion, trends like this are merely people stepping out of their unpaid or low paid women’s work narrative, and charging their worth in the same way men have charged theirs.
It’s just that the society at large has been built on the majority of people being underpaid, or not being paid at all.
That s why it stings when, usually online, service providers, who had less or an unknown education make more money, than those who bend over backwards to be trustworthy and registered professionals.

In the battle of the underpaid nurse, as well as the over-qualified, in all probability overly- responsible, professional, versus the rogue entrepreneurs of the (usually) online service industry; 
The first one is bound to their heart, their ethics, their “in what type of world do we want to live in”.
But at the same time they are often bound to “delivering” their work in identifiable units. Doctors are being paid per patient, and the amount of money they get is determined based on one identifiable big medical procedure, or a pre-set course of tests or interventions. To talk, pay attention, look for diy solutions: In The Netherlands it’s usually not what they get paid for.

So back to the coaching industry, or any industry that has their origins in the service industry; Here the identifiable units, traditionally, are also weird and dare I say arbitrary aspects, of ALL that they offer and have to do.
For example: An hour’s work. One yoga class. A 30 minute massage.
All just random outtakes of what used to be something WHOLE and what was traditionally given for free, usually by women.

The big trick capitalism has played on us, is that it has given us the idea that our work, that we want to GIVE from our hearts, first of all NEEDS to be chopped up into identifiable and sellable units; which is a heartless, soulless, criminal act to begin with for sure.
But it gets worse: Because it has also convinced us that it is normal to do that, AND that we, as professionals, working from one “neatly cut-out and paid- for” unit to the next, will become valued and fully functional members of society, by being independent health care workers, independent coaches, independent yoga teachers.
When we’re not.

Not unless you are willing to fall in love with marketing, move away from the humble majority of your industry and at the risk of being cast from it, and start selling high-end packages and solutions instead.
If you re ready to tear the idea of the identifiable, sellable unit of your industry to shreds, make your own rules instead and charge whatever the hell you please?
Then yes.
You have beat capitalism, and you have done it, in my opinion, in the most gracious, serving, and inspiring way imaginable.
You have cast the yoke of your industry.

If I had known this, 20 years ago when I started my yoga business;
I would have chosen differently than to “just do” what was common for a yoga teacher to do. Right then most yoga was taught in community centers and yoga teachers earned very little money. It also didn’t have a great amount of energy behind it. 

If I had understood the background of “women’s work” within capitalism, and the possibilities of marketing for our industry, I would have gone what was then in The Netherlands, absolute the rogue, entrepreneurial route.

I would have been excited to build a modern, colorful studio with back to back classes and a vibrant community!
We’d have international guests, teacher trainings, and so on, but more than that our common ground would be a feeling of belonging and identity.

And it is this vision…did you feel it? 
Did you feel it coming to live when I wrote it out for you?
Did you feel the excitement of such a thing?

Because it is this vision, that has inspired me today, to commit to the 2022 equivalent of what would have been a turn-of-the-century modern yoga studio.

I want the community.
I want the comradery.
But I am choosing to say No to the idea of “me” being the entrepreneur, and “you” the one who is a consumer. Object, subject, service provider, client;
We’re not going to base our relationship on money or capitalism because that has a history of thousands of years of keeping people small and trapped in a system that was never built to let them thrive.

You and me; We both live under the threat of our version of Spice trade destroying the world we live in. We both have to choose how we are going to deal with that, and I think you and me starting off with some identifiable, sellable unit from me to you, should not be the start AND should not be an endgame either.

I think we should just be together, on my YouTube channels, on my blogs. And you pay me when you want to, and if you don’t that’s fine too.
But if we start off as having some kind of business arrangement, we’re going to fall in the same traps as all the generations who came before us.
So let’s not do that.

Let’s start simple, let’s start small.
And most importantly:
Let’s start in freedom.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers

NEW: Rock Star Yoga Studio

I will start making yoga videos this week.
New videos + new channel trailers soon! 

Subscribe to:

English channel:
Rock Star Yoga (yoga) + Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs (talk)
And you can follow my Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Nederlands YouTube: 
Klassieke Yoga, Maan Yoga en Yoga voor Generatie X
nieuwe trailer en de eerste lessen volgen deze week

I would love to know which parts spoke to you!
You can share in the comments, or include a note with your donation on Paypalme 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds and receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

YouTube Rock Your Business
YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs 

NEW: Books!

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

If you live in The Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, you can also order these books from me – just go to the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter
to check out which ones you want, and write me an email at s_beenackers@hotmail.com.
Payment is via PayPal or bank transfer.

Also by me:
my personal Twitter account
Rock Star Writer
Rock Star Writer on Facebook
Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds (current site)
Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Liefdeseend en vintage yoga (Nederlands/ Dutch)

beertje Puux op Facebook (Nederlands/ Dutch)

 

I Dreamed Of A Silver Beaked Raven

The images I could find, of real birds, did not come close to what I saw in my dream. Even the word “raven”, must be seen as a perhaps too eager attempt, to determine what the dream was about.
Ravens are spirit animals, they have a meaning in all nature based religions. They are also biblical animals as they refused to come back to Noah’s arc and chose to feed on the carcasses the flood had left.

Ravens are high in symbolism, and when you dream about them, you can find a thousand videos on YouTube about what they mean.
Except:
It wasn’t a raven.

It was a slender looking bird, and if it had not been for the fact that its beak was made of silver, I don’t think we would have been watching it.
“We” were the residents on a square, dome, or mall. It most closely resembled an indoor living community, with a lot of light. If you looked up you would see a few stories of balconies or hallways of the upper floors. But it was so large you would not be able to distinguish anything.

But towering way overhead, was a roof.
Like a dome that could hold an entire habitat or artificial climate underneath.
But that wasn’t the case: Aside from rain the glass roof was not holding anything out, and birds were not supposed to be there.
It wasn’t the ideal environment for birds, and although I m sure pigeons were common there, this bird was a special one. A true bird of paradise.
No one knew what it was, but looking up, the first people started to say things like:
“Look!”
“It’s silver!”
And then I saw.

It was a black bird, with long silver beak. Sometimes I thought it was elegant, a long bill curved downwards. At other times I thought it was sturdier, with a strong base on its face.
The bird was making hummingbird like movements, and possessed the long thin end on its beak, that I know only from hummingbirds. When landing it was clapping its wings swiftly, until it could hold on to something. Maybe a pole?
It was still too far up for any of us to reach, and other birds too, were flying around it.
Making it hard to think of ways to catch it or reach it.

The bird was black but there were white feathers on its chest.
Not spotted, like a sparrow. But like a few white feathers on its chest, just like most black cats have a few white hairs on their chest. We realized its white chest markings too, were most likely silver. But because we were so taken by its beak, and wondering how we would get him out, we were not particularly concerned with the chest.
But it was a beautiful bird, that much was certain.

A middle-aged woman in a long blue dress and curly brown hair, had joined us. She connected to the bird, who immediately understood she would take him outside.
He landed on her head, so she could walk outside.

We were all very worried that going through a corridor or tunnel, the bird would suddenly fly up and hurt itself.
But of course it didn’t.
It understood the purpose of letting the woman carry him, and sat down comfortable on her head.
It pulled its neck in, looking around with one friendly looking eye.

When I later looked for what bird looked most like this bird, it was this eye, at the side of the head not at the front close to the beak, that convinced me it had been a singing bird or non-violent bird.

The dream ended and I wondered what it had meant. The only thing I understood immediately, was that it had been positive. The people on the square had all been compassionate, and the bird had been beautiful. And everybody had trusted each other.
And a bird with a silver beak was of course a sign of prosperity.

When I later Googled for birds, I found a silver bird brooch that had the unique combination of a strong beak at the basis, but a long curled bill at the end.
I decided to buy the brooch, so that I would never forget the dream.
When I later Googled where the store or online platform was located I saw it was in the city of my dreams: San Francisco.
That is the city where Basic Instinct is situated.
Catherine Tramell has been my “writer persona” for ever. And it is my dream to once go on holiday or even write there for a month or a few months. In the town where Catherine Tramell has her beach house, in Stinson. 

The brooch, a Google search result when I was searching for the meaning behind the dream, came from there, my personal holy ground when it comes to what I consider to be success in writing.

But there was more. Because another picture came up. That of the medieval plague masks. These masks have a story of their own, because there are signs they were never used as such. And that it was actually a Venice masked ball invention, which was incorrectly classified as something plague doctors wear. 

But wether the medieval plague beaks were really used by doctors, or not, is besides the point I think. Because it gave me the clue, I had managed to miss.
That the beak in my dream was of course, a reference to the pandemic.

And it had a silver lining.
The people were working together.
They were all in awe of beauty, and there were those among us, who knew what to do.
They had a deep wordless understanding of nature, of animals, and the bird of paradise who had visited us under our dome, where we were keeping the world out, that bird understood she would take him out.

The time has come, to leave our dome.
The time has come, to live.

.
Suzanne L. Beenackers

I would love to know which parts spoke to you. You can share in the comments,
or include a note with your donation on Paypalme 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds and receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

YouTube Rock Your Business
YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs 

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

Also by me:
my personal Twitter account
Rock Star Writer
Rock Star Writer on Facebook
Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds (current site)
Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Liefdeseend en vintage yoga (Nederlands/ Dutch)

beertje Puux op Facebook (Nederlands/ Dutch)

Rock Star Business: New YouTube channel on how to rock your business like a pro

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photo from the series Girlboss (Netflix 2017)

Just as I was considering writing out the pretty lengthy description box of my Rock Your Business video, into a blog post for this World Between World blog;
YouTube stepped in before I could even weigh the pros and the cons on making cross-over content, reposting a video as a blogpost (a practice I support in theory yet usually end up not caring for at all, when other YouTubers do it);
Before any of those conscious decisions could be made, YouTube already started flashing red lines in my face that my description was WAY too lengthy!
It wasn’t having any of it!

If I wanted to post that video, I had to cut corners with my description, and my model of the three different types of businesses, and the fourth one, the Rock Star Business, would just have to be crunched into bullet points or something.

Naturally, I could not allow for that. 
So here it is! The description slash blog post YouTube refused to post.

And the official launch of my new business channel.
From now on my new business channel, Rock Your Business, will focus exclusively on the Rock Star Business.

Subscribe to Rock Your Business here.

There’s no business like Rock Star Business: channel introduction 2022

The past 3 years – or perhaps the past 30! depending on how you count – I ve been knee deep both in studying business models, as well as in having a business because I was a professional yoga teacher.
And trust me when I say, it was a messy journey!

And a preventable one, ultimately, had I known then what I know now.

Which is that there are THREE types of businesses, which I did not fully understand to be entirely different things.

The three types are:

1. the service provider

makes money from selling their services (hours) but their time investment/ non-monetized hours could be as much as double that.

Focus of the service provider is on the well-being of their client or customer (helping), and they position themselves as an expert in their industry including taking regular extra training, diplomas, and professional specialization.

2. the entrepreneur

Makes money from selling a package, or a clearly defined experience.
Not only does an entrepreneur have a clear vision about which hours are connected to cash flow, and which are non-money making activities (minimizing the latter);
But the entrepreneur can even make money without selling hours, which is called passive income. This means they sell automatically, with payment and delivery handled digitally, and they do not have to do something nor do they have to invest time later.

Focus of the entrepreneur is on the well-being of their business, which is a separate entity that can ultimately be ran and sold independently.
A good book to read how to get from 1 to 2 (how to stop seeing yourself as a service or goods provider, and uplevel to being a business) is
The E-Myth Revisited
Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
by Michael E. Gerber

3. The Artist

Instead of designing their work around their clients or business, an artist builds their work around their art.
Some artists make work they can sell, but the focus of an artist is to work on their art. Not their client, nor their business or income are a priority, but the quality of their work.

Artists who want to monetize their skills in the form of a professional side career or side-hustle should focus on how to become entrepreneurs, and how to package up what it is they can do in a way that is guaranteed to make money.
For example as a photographer, have a fixed fee on your website for photographing a wedding or a studio photo shoot, and avoid terms like “tailored to your needs”.
Artists who want to provide for their creative projects by making money from their craft, must avoid the trap of becoming a service provider. There are too many unpaid hours there.

And here is my fourth, and new, business model: The Rock Star Business model.

4. The Rock Star

If you are a rock star, you re in an equal, non-monetary relationship with your fans or audience. You probably don’t even know who paid you and who didn’t.

The audience knows what the Rock Star has on sale (albums, concert tickets) but their bond is defined by being in a relationship with each other.
The Rock Star with the audience or fans, and the fans or audience with their Rock Star.

Their relationship is one of great freedom, and without any promise of continuity. Each party can leave, whenever they want to.

– The freedom;
– the equality between parties;
– and a relationship that is not defined by monetary exchange;
Are all unique traits of the Rock Star Business, that are not found in any other business model.

My business channel will all be about the latter from now:
How can YOU change your business into a Rock Star one?

And if you do choose to monetize your skills for extra cash flow, how can you make sure you focus on the money making activities, and avoid the traps of doing a lot of work for free?
Doing the majority of your work for free, not being paid in advance, and other practices that are (in my opinion) a disservice to everybody, including your clients, are so common in a lot of industries.
How can we avoid them? One of the many things we’re going to find out in our work together.

Watch this first video about the bare bones of what it means to have a Rock Star Business.
Or watch it at the bottom of this post.

And rock on!

Suzanne L. Beenackers

I would love to know which parts spoke to you. You can share in the comments,
or include a note with your donation on Paypalme 

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds and receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

YouTube Rock Your Business
YouTube Life lessons in Bon Jovi songs 

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

Also by me:
my personal Twitter account
Rock Star Writer
Rock Star Writer on Facebook
Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds (current site)
Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Liefdeseend en vintage yoga (Nederlands/ Dutch)

beertje Puux op Facebook (Nederlands/ Dutch)

 

If we want to keep yoga in our neighborhood, we have to act.

Today I received my first debriefing on the current status of yogaland, since I m looking for ways to start teaching locally again.
Ironically, I only intended to teach to friends, since I gave up being a business owner slash yoga teacher, in 2020. Covid had taken away my last classes, I stopped two weeks before the official decree came, when the time I spent disinfecting the studio after class had become the same length as the time it took me to teach it.
But there had been more.

Two years earlier I had downsized, only teaching at my own small studio and no longer renting extra space. And when I ultimately ended the lease of my unused studio, late 2020, I still did not fully grasp why being a yoga teacher had not worked for me. Why there had been something not working, way before Covid.

Why I had always felt there was something inherently “off” with being a yoga teacher, without any concept of what that was or how to improve on it.

I was empty handed and could not offer any consolation or alternatives, to my fellow yoga teachers, not to my yoga students, not to myself.
Which was less dramatic than in sounds because aside from my own yoga students – who were of course affected by me not finding my way around being what they wanted or perhaps even needed me to be- aside from those directly involved, everybody else seemed to be fine with the dominant business model of students paying a yoga studio, a gym, a community center, or an independent yoga teacher, in order to attend a real life class. 
I seemed to be the only one who felt something was not going the way it should be.
And even I did not know what it was.

The history of yoga as a business, or teaching yoga providing a full income, is a relatively new one.
In the 70s and 80s yoga had been the domain of alternative communities and women, in particular in The Netherlands where we have a high percentage of home-deliveries. For decades prenatal yoga was the most dominant recognizable “type” of yoga.

But yoga changed with the arrival of Ashtanga yoga in America.
Ashtanga yoga is a very athletic form of yoga. It was already in America but it really propelled yoga into a whole new universe, as the go-to exercise, when Madonna revealed it was her yoga, in 1998 when promoting her album Ray of Light.
The more athletic forms of yoga were embraced by the fitness industry, and in their slipstream all other forms of yoga and meditation followed.

At the beginning of the 21st century, yoga studios were still an absolute rarity in The Netherlands, but in America they had been on the rise since the 1990s. As had the intensive teacher trainings  and rise of teacher trainings at large, that were needed to accommodate these studios, and meet the high demand.

Around the turn of the century I began reading the American Yoga Journal. To this day, this blossoming yoga culture with its rich and colorful studios, remains one of my biggest inspirations.
Drop-in classes, unlimited class passes; It was all unheard of in The Netherlands, with the exception of a few yoga studios located in the largest cities of The Netherlands such as The Hague, Amsterdam, and Utrecht.

I soaked up the concept of how these professional yoga studios were ran, what message they presented, and how amazing they made me feel.

Around 2015 online business coaching had started to take a leap, and I worked with a Canadian business coach.
But to my deep frustration, it did not have any effect.
It inspired me, but I felt it did not inspire my students at all, nor did I get any new ones other than from Google advertising which did not require any marketing skills just spending money.

I also studied marketing for yoga studios with two other teachers, although not one-on-one, and I learned about marketing for health coaches and therapists, which was already more general than a focus on how to make a living teaching yoga.
Then I went on to studying marketing of how to run an online businesses. These coaches were also very mindset-focused.

From 2017 and up, my study was no longer of diversifying yoga classes, knowing my audience, target group, niche, elevator pitch, and instead I learned how to create multiple online income streams.
For example: 1-on-1 coaching, group programs, home-study courses (pre-recorded material), selling books and membershipsprograms.   

But I only dipped my toes in the water, execution wise.
Online marketing or having an online business has never been my thing.

It was 15 years later, and all I wanted (still) was a colorful, rich, local yoga studio with drop-in classes, unlimited class passes, visiting international yoga teachers, and yet I was the furthest away from realizing my dream as I had ever been.
I felt like I had actually gone back, in going for my dreams. And was frustrated that I had been unsuccessful creating what I had wanted.

Yet, do you know what I did have?
I had the most amazing group of people in my classes, who by now had known each other for years, and who wanted fixed class times and a reliable yoga teacher. Every time I tried something new, or got new students, I realized I was unable to melt it all together and let the group grow.

I was not so much incapable of teaching classes within a tight community, because I adored my students and they are the reason I m currently looking into ways to start teaching to friends. They will all, one way or another, receive a notification or see a blog post. When I have my new intimate classes up an running (also Covid regulation wise) I will invite them back, and will be the yoga teacher they always wanted me to be.

But it wasn’t because I was unhappy with what I had created, that I failed to appreciate it.
It was because I did not know how to grow it. I didn’t know how to make a healthy business, out of it.

Sure! I had been originally inspired by the dynamic, early 20th century, American yoga business.
And the only marketing I understood – in hindsight – had been for those.

But I basically pulled out of my business not because the dream did not match reality but because it wasn’t growing. I quit before my classes or business would fall apart from natural decline in numbers, of people moving away, etcetera

I quit reluctantly.
And very angry with myself that although I had a Masters in business, had studied marketing both in the 90s as well as picked it up around 2010, specializing in 2015, and absolutely binging on it from 2017 and onward;
It had not made any, any difference.
My yoga business failed.

It took me until 2020 to figure out WHY even the best, most modern, marketing, tailored to my industry, had failed to work in the most spectacular way;

Because the marketing of local yoga studios cannot be compared to those of the biggest cities of America.

And if it had been available, I doubt I would have been inspired by marketing for yoga studios in small towns where maybe they had one or two yoga studios.
Because I was inspired by the buzzing streets of New York city where on the rainy dark streets you could see the foggy windows of a brightly lit yoga space, on the first floor above the shops.  
Or where you had to take elevators to the 10th floor, and the doors opened in the middle of a tranquil yoga shop where bamboo flute music was playing, staff spoke in hushed voices and students in colorful leggings walked around with a yoga mat under their arm.

The big difference between an inner-city, with an abundance of yoga studios, and a suburb or small town where there are only very few studios, is that if there are only few studios, it will be picked for its location and its convenience in class time.
All other aspects, even price, are of little importance.

In a small town or suburb, you can niche and market all you want, but even a class Badass Yoga for Badass Motherfuckers, will only attract an audience if it’s at 8 PM on a Tuesday. 
And it will be people who would have preferred the thing to be called just “yoga”.

Yet after solving this riddle, after understanding that in a smaller town you let go of the New York dream, and go for generic, community focused, weekly classes, for a broad audience, and absolutely ignore everything anybody has ever told you about marketing?
I was on absolute fire!

Not only was I relieved that I had finally answered the riddle and knew why I had failed;
But I was excited!

So excited, that if it had not been for Covid, I would never have ended the lease of my yoga studio, and would have rebooted my group programs, with so much enthusiasm!
I would have STEPPED ON IT in 2020, and be reborn the happiest yoga teacher in the history of  the world. 

Except: there was Covid.
And instead of stepping on anything, I had paused my classes for friends when Covid started and ultimately ended the yoga studio and my business December 2020.

Because of Covid, 2020 was the worst time to be a yoga teacher, topped only by 2021. Which has beaten 2020 as worst year of being a yoga teacher. At least where I live.

But you know what?
This post is absolutely not a story about feeling sorry for me, nor for the yoga industry. We have the option of transferring our work, which is teaching yoga, online.
The thing we get PAID for? With a few modifications, we can keep doing it.

Sure, there are challenges to teaching online, and different rules to making it commercially successful. And some teachers will stop, but then others will take their place.
But as a whole, the survival of teaching yoga as a business model is definitely not at stake here.

What is at stake are our local communities.

What becomes clear now that yoga teachers are going online and the burden of taking care of real-estate and the costs of brick and mortar studios, when those studios can no longer be used (currently the Netherlands is on a 5PM lockdown and all evening classes are cancelled) or when your students cannot come because they are in quarantaine, or are not vaccinated (in The Netherlands you have to be vaccinated to enter);
That burden and those costs have become evident, now.

All those years, we’ve gotten used to the yoga community being there as a bonus, a side-effect, as not being the thing it’s really about, because we said we “did yoga” or “taught yoga”, and it was about breath, health, meditation, mindfulness, philosophy.

Well, what if we were wrong?

What if I wasn’t the only one who, in pursuit of a dream, failed to notice that the most valuable thing was right there in front of me?

What if we all failed to see, that the most valuable aspect of yoga in particular in smaller towns and suburbs, is not yoga;
It’s community.

It cost me my yoga studio.

Whether you have a studio, or are attending one, trust me when I say;
Save it.

Now that you still can.

 

Suzanne L. Beenackers
Paypalme

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You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi and The White Tigress Yoga Workbook
at the bottom of this page:
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Also by me:
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Rock Star Writer
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Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds (current site)
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Liefdeseend en vintage yoga (Nederlands/ Dutch)

beertje Puux op Facebook (Nederlands/ Dutch)

Dharma and Greg, where Dharma plays a yoga center at a community center

a case for sexual freedom from an amateur | + Rock Star Business preview (from a professional)

8019f83ddc5cd100c481c48fad8e9107
detective: Are you a pro? Catherine: No, I’m an amateur. [Basic Instinct, video bottom of this post]

Within 24 hours I was invited to talk about sexual freedom, and also saw an opportunity to support someone who believes in sexual freedom and who was going through a hard time.
I noticed how I took up on the second, to give support but in private, and passed on the public one. I wondered why.
Why did I not speak up for something I believe in?
If you would ask me what my deepest value is, I would have answered in a heartbeat;
Sexual freedom.

And not just was I passing on the opportunity to speak up for it publicly this one time – to promote a book The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
which I had labeled under polyamory, because I figured that was the best fit-
No, I was actually, and conscientiously, making a principle choice to never speak in favor of sexual freedom of any kind ever again.
Yet when I reached out and supported someone in private half a day later, it left me wondering:
Why?

Declining had felt aligned with my purpose, the unique thing only I can do.
That work is to teach Bon Jovi Yoga, in short.
And the elaborate description is that my purpose is to guide within a system, Rock Star Yoga, that will develop itself in upcoming years, 
Rock Star Yoga is the bigger picture, and less copyright infringed, version of Bon Jovi yoga.
Given this choice, it made sense I had decided to not speak on a subject that would divert from it.
I would never speak on the subject of sexual liberation, equality and diversity from this day forth.

Yet when I supported someone in private shortly after, and heard how passionate my words were, I wondered why was I keeping those words from the world?
Why was I not offering that statement in favor of sexuality, to everybody who needed support, and share it in a way so people could see it?

Because I did not feel it had been out of some concern that standing up would conflict with teaching Bon Jovi yoga. Quit the contrary!
I felt the two were related. 
But how?

Why had I both declined the invitation to speak publicly about sexual freedom, and supported in private, with an understanding that both choices were in full alignment not just with each other, but with the work I had decided to go public with as well?
How was that possible?

And suddenly I saw the light!
Through another area of expertise I feel very vocal about, even though it has nothing to do with yoga, nor with Bon Jovi, nor with sexual freedom (at first glance!), which is making money as an independent.

I do not say “as an entrepreneur”, because just like Rock Star Yoga is a system that is still developing itself, my “business model” too, the angle that I am going to take on this, does not have its feet under the table either. Let alone that I would narrow it down to being an entrepreneurial model.
That’s why I chose the word independent.

Since my last video for my business channel, this new business model is taking shape in my mind.
I know a lot more than I did then, but it’s not complete and I have not written nor spoke about it.

Which I will now, for the first time.

The new business model I am working on, and that I will start using myself as well as advocating it through the business channel to other service providers, entertainers and artists, is the Rock Star Business model.

Although I personally only encountered the following, old, business wisdom recently, since McDonalds invented franchising there has been a book available how to upgrade a business for the consumer market.
It moves you from doing, exercising a certain skill set (baking hamburgers and french fries), to creating a systemized business and a standardized client experience.
I know the words sound boring, yet this way of doing business does not just increase the value of what you are doing, because the customer now knows what to expect and you get a chance to specialize and keep improving on it, but it also minimizes stressful fall-outs and the daily hiccups of just winging it.
Standardization is as essential to the customer’s well-being as it is to yours.

It is sanity in the midst of chaos.

If they had taught us this book The E Myth at university (which they didn’t), or if they would have taught its principles on one of my two yoga teacher trainings (which they also didn’t) I would probably still have a regular yoga business.
Possibly even despite the pandemic.
Offering a standardized, meaning predictable high quality, experience turns your clients into fans. It has the potential to tighten a commercial relationship as close as family ones.

Perhaps even strong enough to sustain 20 months of Zoom connections.

So even without my new Rock Star Business – model, which will be developed in conjunction with my second yoga career, I could have made the first career so much better if I had read this book:

The E-Myth Revisited:
Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
Michael E. Gerber 2004, original 1986

The customer reviews under this book on Amazon, will give you an indication of whether or not it’s for you. Although I agree with the criticism on this book, and I also see why it’s not scientific enough to teach at university, it was eye opening for me to read.
Maybe not despite the lengthy, colloquial stories about building a business from passion;
But because of it.

If you want to build or rebuild your service based business, (owning a cafe, a barber shop, a yoga studio), basically any business where you are in control of the whole process from client intake to getting paid, this book will completely transform the way you think about your business.

Its biggest perks are increasing customer value and limiting your stress and making it more manageable, but the big fish is that standardization, when done based on a vision, a philosophy of what your company stands for, leads to business systems which then start doing the work for you.
It makes your presence in the business optional, not mandatory.
You can now afford to take time off if you want to or when you need to, and you can sell the business too.

So I say, regardless of its perceived flaws and the book not being the perfect fit for everybody;
Hooray for The E Myth
And I will share with you a private YouTube video to the audio book version so you can start studying this book that would have saved my first yoga career if I had known it.
And I will learn from it for setting up my second career in yoga, as an independent, as well as use elements in the Rock Star Business system.

But the reason I m not bitter over the fact that I did not know The E Myth, and that my first yoga career eventually did come apart at the seams, is because this system has its limitations.
Just like the yoga I taught had its limitations.

Having it fall down has given me this chance to rebuild them both, as a unique system I create myself. And not yoga or a small business, in the more standard way I did them.

I will never sign up for the full entrepreneur package, when I need just a few elements. In 2020-2021 it were small businesses, who had to execute Covid regulations set by Dutch government. Instead of confronting citizens directly, the government, meaning politicians, chose to put small business owners in the role of policing their own customers.
And this is on top of regulations about when you had to close, how many people you had inside, and so on.
It was easier to mandate business, than to individually try to control citizens.
And this is on a system that was already unfairly straining for small businesses, and easy on the larger corporations.
Small business climate in the Netherlands is so top heavy in administrative and legal load, that you have to ask yourself if you can even afford to have a business here.

The second time around I will be incredibly picky in weighing the pros and cons of every choice I make in business. 
Doing something (the actual work) should be a Hell Yes to begin with, but the legal side of it will be weighed more carefully.
Will the increase in possibilities, impact, and income outweigh the extra mental bandwidth, the liabilities, the hours spent on taking care of the administrative trail?

One of the reasons I ve often found myself making a case for sex work (one sex worker called me “sex work positive”, which I think must have been the biggest compliment anyone has ever given me) is because being an independent escort is in my opinion the highest level of being an independent service provider.
All service providers have got to do their own marketing, their own taxes, have a target market or a concept of who their ideal clients are, but independent escorts have to manage (and sometimes juggle) so many other factors such as safety and legal matters since most countries including the Netherlands, make it practically impossible to do your work without being burned at the stake.
And the actual work itself is also more complex, in terms of social skills, and knowing the basics or more of psychology and medicine.
I cannot think of a line of work where the professional has to be so professional, as when you are an independent escort.

As is abundantly clear from the last paragraph, sexual freedom and that includes the emancipation and normalization of sex work, is a topic I am passionate about. 
And yet, a chance to stand up and speak up for it?
I would pass.

An important note:
I think that no one should speak about sex workers, without a very good reason why that spot should not be taken by someone who actually does sex work.
Talk with sex workers about sex work. Period. 
It’s like if someone would ask me to talk about Bon Jovi, then I would only do that from the perspective of being a fan. Not an expert.
It is in those same terms you must see me wondering why I would decline having a public conversation about sex work.
Or why I would be clear on my motives for being there.
Regardless of the topic, I would be hesitant to take up a chair if there is a better fit, in particular if it’s a group often talked about.

However the offer I got this week, to stand up for freedom of sexuality, was not on sex work but on polyamory.
But if it had been about sex work it would have taken me even less time to see how it did not fit my agenda of setting up my second career, this time teaching Rock Star Yoga.

I would have said No.

I would have seen all the good I could do, and even would want to do, I would understand the necessity of speaking about it, and yet?
I would still pass…..
And now I know why.

I even know why not a day goes by without me thinking about marketing, business, and entrepreneurship.
As well as why I keep coming back to yoga over and over and over again, no matter how often I toss it in the bin of things that have become completely unusable because there is simply too much women-, body- and sex oppressing toxicity attached to it.

Because it goes all together. It ALL goes together! 
The sexual freedom I refuse to stand up for, even though it is my absolute highest value over all the others?
It becomes very difficult without the other two: Financial freedom and bodily freedom.

Financial freedom is needed because if your choices have financial consequences it is very hard to see what you really desire, and very easy to talk yourself into desiring what keeps you financially safe.
I believe the biggest amalgamating force of monogamy is because most couples simply cannot afford to be non-monogamous.
There is scarcity of time, money, resources (housing, in particular in the Netherlands), which means that most couples need each other, or that people need other people, in order to make ends meet.
The reason I m so passionate about thinking about new and better business models that are agile, and do not burden you the way small businesses in The Netherlands are, and also the reason I am so passionate about it! An at first sight dry topic as business development!- that reason is because let’s say the easy way, the most friendly way (for all those involved) to think about sexual freedom, is by first being financially free.
By first ensuring that your income stream is portable to wherever it is you end up, once you start giving yourself more space to move and more directions to explore.
And that how much money you make is enough to sustain you as a single.

Financial freedom as an individual, not a couple, gives you the luxury of being in the conversation with, and thinking about, sexual freedom without consequence. 
If you aspire to be sexually free, you should aspire to be financially free.
And if you want to be in this conversation with your partner, then your prime efforts should be in efforts to make you both financially independent.

If you want your loved ones to be free in choosing their sexuality; Support them in creating a business that does not conflict with personal growth and sexuality, but supports it.
Or, alternatively, encourage them to build a business like the E Myth books teaches, so they can sell it if they move on in life. 

But I think this article has kind of surpassed the point where we’re going to settle for a business we want to sell, wouldn’t you agree?

This insight was huge for me.
I now saw how my nothing-to-do-with-yoga-nor-Bon-Jovi eternal fascination with business and marketing, had actually been, and still was, a life-long devotion to, and understanding of, how financial freedom is the easiest road to personal and sexual freedom.
Tommy and Gina, from the song Living On A Prayer, were very lucky to have each other, but they also deserved to be financially independent and free.
Showing up for each other should have been a choice and not a necessity.

It became clear to me, that although the story of Living On A Prayer is beautiful in its display of true love, and a for all we know powerful monogamous relationship;
That I always, instinctively, refused to interpret it as romanticizing poverty.
I had wanted Tommy and Gina to be financially independent. It was why I was always studying personal growth, mindset, business and marketing.

It had little to do with big corporate things I learned at uni.
This was personal.

And now I could also see where yoga fit in.
It had been more than just wanting to teach it to Bon Jovi fans, a group generally not addressed by, nor attracted to, normal yoga.

Yes, Rock Star Yoga was indeed more than the fact that we’d make a cool bunch, more than the fact we speak each others language (we all speak Bon Jovi!) and that I look forward to the future where we can have post-Covid live classes, doing yoga to the beat of Richie Sambora’s talkbox.

Where my interest in business had the deeper lying motive to create more financial freedom for industries and for people who are traditionally excluded from wealth, or where only a few make it;
My interest in yoga and the reason I keep coming back to it, regardless of how many times I think I ve given up on it and let patriarchy have it and keep it;

Yoga was, and is, about freedom of the body

So the reason I do not show up to make my heartfelt case for freedom of sexuality, is because I put first things first.
Financial freedom, with Rock Star Business, which I will soon introduce on my business channel.
And freedom of the body, which I will pick up teaching Bon Jovi Yoga on my Dutch and English YouTube channels.
Those two precede sexual freedom.
Those two, financial freedom and the freedom of the body, give you a gentle, friendly path to walk towards your sexual freedom, even inspiring others to create freedom. 
Sexual freedom is for everyone and (not but) it is easier if you have a joyous, free relationship with your finances as well as your body.

The past two weeks have been stressful because I had many technical malfunctionings. All for the better, because this is my first post typing with a modern computer, the latest software, spiffy backup systems that were absolutely “about time” for anyone looking to set up a career from home.
And I have an internet connection faster than the speed of light.
But as is the case with these hiccups, leading to serious problems, and to things needing to be replaced;
It is seldom a clear cut path, and it was indeed stressful.

But at the same time I thank these weeks where all my available time went to solving problems, which often felt like doing nothing because more often than not I could not do anything-
I credit those weeks for this big picture vision I shared with you today.

I will be your professional for doing Rock Star Yoga and for creating a Rock Star Business.

And with regard to Rock Star Sex, I will be with you in spirit.
As an amateur.

 

Suzanne L. Beenackers
Paypalme

Subscribe to this blog World Between Worlds and receive these in your Inbox.
The button is on this page, probably somewhere on the right.

new content soon:
subscribe to -> YouTube Rock Your Business
subscribe to -> YouTube Bon Jovi Yoga English
abonneer je op -> YouTube Bon Jovi Yoga Nederland

You can find my books The Little Mistress Who Turned Into A Baby Koala
and A Boyfriend Like Jon Bongiovi
at the bottom of this page:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/rockstarwriter

Also by me:
my personal Twitter account
Rock Star Writer
Rock Star Writer on Facebook
Art & Popular Culture: World Between Worlds (current site)
Yoga Blog: Daily Bon Jovi Yoga

Liefdeseend en vintage yoga (Nederlands/ Dutch)

beertje Puux op Facebook (Nederlands/ Dutch)