The abbreviation TCB, stands for Taking Care of Business, and was created by Elvis Presley, to define the band and organization that would take him back on the road again.
He had announced his comeback after 10 years, in “The 68 Comeback Special” on tv, and now he would form a group of professionals and friends, also known as the Memphis Mafia, who would accompany him for the rest of his life.

TCB was an identity, a belonging, and a point of pride. It was a social structure, and not a formal one. And the TCB logo was adopted by the group of people surrounding Elvis, as well as used in custom made jewelry and clothing, and in Graceland.

And when building a business, you should be on the lookout for this joint collab feeling, more than for single transactions or “getting” clients.
Your clients are already there.
Either literally, like Elvis who chose collaborations with his highschool friends, family and from people he knew from his time in the army;
Or you don’t know them yet, but they already exist, and they already have the interests and the personality, that matches who you are and what you are about.
Clients are not created nor persuaded, all that will change in the future is that you then do know each other. 

The first thing I want you to do is to picture your Beyond-Belief client. Could be an organization, or it can be a specific person, but it would be a client that (right now) you feel a separation from.
You very much feel it is “No Way” that person or organization, will be wanting to do business with you, because you’re “not there yet”, not known yet, and so on.
These are all excuses, but I won’t trigger you going down that road, because whether you believe or not that person can already be your client now, is surprisingly irrelevant to this story.

Now I want you to take on board the idea that your job is to start HOLDING THE SPACE, for this client to show up.
It’s like if you were an investment banker, you would have to be comfortable moving around millions and millions, with the same grace and ease a baker moves around flour, dough and pastry.
You need to start to energetically hold the space for the presence, the personality, the topics and challenges this client or business partner will bring with them.

Leonard Cohen tells in the documentary Words of Love, about his lover Marianne Ihlen, something along the lines of:
“You can only fill each other up if you are of equal size”
Meaning not (just ;)) the physical union, but that two lovers need to have a similar size personality.

To be at peace and open to your dream client, you need to practice that and be the bigger sized you, now.

So this is the first part, of how to build your business, or how to start viewing the business that you have.

And now I offer you my personal definition of what a business is. You will not find it in any book, but if you become my business coaching client, we could see how this would apply to your business.
Setting price points, designing your product offerings, setting up your daily communication; All those things come on top of this, because they are a natural extension of it.
But if you start with the details you will never get to the definition of a business I am about to tell you.

Just like Elvis would never have gotten to the well-oiled machine of his TCB posse if he had just hired professionals for all different areas, and put them together on a tour bus.
He started with a vision for his organization, and so should you.

And if you already have a business, this definition allows you to develop a vision and bring your company to a way higher level, where clients feel at ease, and so do you.

This is my definition of a business:

To have a business is to be in an active and committed relationship with clients, potential clients and repeat buyers.
This relationship is based on a shared future vision, where the growth of clients, business owner and business, are a mirror image of each other.

It is the responsibility of the business owner to build and develop the company so that it embodies the desired future of both business owner and clients.

Suzanne Beenackers

In this modern world the people with whom we have a deep and meaningful relationship, are few. The true scarcity, is human connection. 
And what we are truly selling, is the future promise of a certain area of their lives taken care of, as well as the promise of a future relationship.

A bakery doesn’t sell a loaf of bread today; They sell the promise that the area of bread is taken care of for an indefinite future.
Applying the elements of growth and a future vision, can expand on that.
It can turn the promise of taking care of the bread, into a meaningful relationship.
The client should have an understanding what the long-term vision for the bakery is, and how they are part of it.

In the same way, I do not sell “business coaching”.
I have a company Catacombe, and it holds the space for the biggest rock stars of the world, through a variety of offerings just like a bakery offers different types of bread.
The question is not whether I get you on board to buy a loaf of bread, or a business coaching session today;

Catacombe is the place for your Rock Star self, now, tomorrow, and propelled into the future.

In a similar way it doesn’t matter if your client buys from you today;
Your job is to develop a relationship where selling and buying are a natural part of what you have, and they are surrounded with joy, reverence, and anticipation.
Buying is like the exciting icing on the cake, that happens ever so often.

Your job is to build a business where your dream client will feel at home and will feel taken care of. 

It is your job, to build a business under grace.

.
~Suzanne
become the Rock Star you were born to be

TCB Taking care of business, Rock Star
| 2023 03 01 Top offers 1: “Rock Your Business”
is the seventh Catacombe Rock Star post

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Catacombe offers international Rock Star mentoring & business coaching:
https://catacombenijmegen.com/current-offer/

& in-person business coaching in Nijmegen.
https://catacombenijmegen.com/nederlands-dutch/

In 2019 I got a vision. It was a three-part vision with regard to my career.  At the time I was a yoga teacher, and I had just started a new blog, Rock Star Yoga, because I was on my way to reinvent yoga to something that rocked.
Although since then I have thought many times that Rock Star Yoga was not for me, I never -not once -thought the vision I received was not for me.

From this three-part vision, I understood the first two points , but I had no idea what the final point meant. 
And yet I had immediately recognized it as “true”.

Which is significantly better than understanding something intellectually, but your gut tells you this is not for you.
Your gut tells you, you will make your business a living hell, if you were to implement even the tiniest amount of this devilry.

Knowing something is true, and not having a clue what it is about, is what I would call entrepreneurial gold.

It is a question you get to chew on, try on a few things.
Until then one day, when you least expect it, the reality drops in and you know it!
After four years, I now know what the third part of the vision meant.

For the record I will also share the first two messages, which clicked right away. And then we’ll have a look at the third.

The first message was:
“Get in front of as many people as possible.”

Oh, had I mentioned it was a Rock Star message?
I got the message when I was developing Rock Star yoga, something that is still in a stage of experiment and does not have a final form.
So ultimately I had to let go of the idea of making this into this giant thing! Instead I am keeping it in my yoga lab, or even business lab or mental concept art studio, where I mix and match things, and just toy around with ideas.
Test drive a few things.

So the first part of this Rock Star message I received (meaning: the words and sentences just formed themselves, for no apparent reason) was:
Get in front of as many people as possible.
So true!
Get your story, whatever it is you do or sell, in front of as many people as possible.

The second part was:
Yoga is my art.
This was also an easy one, because the moment you take the yoga that was taught to you, and you bring it to your mental lab to dissect it, mix it up with other things, and start painting something new with it?
Of course you’re no longer a yoga teacher.

You are an artist, and you are expressing yourself through yoga.

The “Yoga is my art” message,  was loud and clear.

But the third one was the strange message:
“Album, tour. Album, tour.”

At first I was convinced it was not a message, but the echo of the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, which I saw 14 times in cinema between October 2018 and early 2019.
I thought the dialogue had ingrained itself in my psyche so deeply, that I was no longer thinking authentic thoughts but regurgitating. 
“Album, tour! Album, tour!” Freddie cries out, when he makes a point of how monotonous his life has become.

But at the same time I was intrigued by the riddle.
Had I really received a three part vision, where the third part was the result of mental short circuit?

The closest I came to thinking I knew where this puzzle piece went, was in my work for YouTube, where I recorded Bon Jovi inspired videos and yoga videos.
I thought maybe I would make a series inspired on a tour, and then a series inspired on an album, and so on.
But it never really took off. 

Just like my idea of developing Rock Star Yoga, creating Bon Jovi inspired videos and articles, has proven to be way more difficult than I expected. The material is absolutely not as light and pliable as one might expect.

Telling Bon Jovi stories, through video, writing or through yoga, requires a high level of understanding both their meaning as well as a good part of their material and its chronology.
Just like Rock Star Yoga, I suspect it’s simply a matter of requiring X to the X amount of time before the full mental framework to back it up, is finished.

So although there were times when I thought I knew how “Album, tour. Album, tour.” was to be interpreted, it ultimately remained a riddle.

But now I know.

Because after years of only being a writer and not having a company, I have started a new one: Catacombe. 
And instead of putting all my skills in there, and counting all my maker hours, blogging hours, as worktime, and all my blogs as work expenses and so on, I made a last minute decision to pull all those services out, and to just go with one service;
coaching.

I offer my Rock Star mentorship and I offer business coaching.

After years of juggling, and trying, I have thrown yoga out of my offerings, thrown my creative ambitions out of it, thrown my publishing ambitions out of it, and simplified it to one thing!
Just coaching, and it feels great.

And not only does it feel great, but I also feel that all the hours I don’t coach are free to do whatever I want.
It is playtime, and includes time in my “lab” where I develop new things.

In Catacombe, my only real work hours are the hours that I actually coach people.

And do you know why?
Because I have had entrepreneurship and running a business in my mental lab since 2013, 2014.
And I have studied marketing and personal development for business owners extensively, since 2017.
I also have a degree in business, but in my lab I just had theories and concepts I encountered later in life.

So the reason I feel so light and free, and excited to talk to people about their business, is because I have been nurturing, creating, researching and designing “this thing” of running a business and what makes a good entrepreneur, for almost ten years!
My business coaching is ready to rock!

For the past decade, my business coaching has been like writing, composing, and recording an album, wrapping it up and bringing it to the market.
After that, you want to take it on the road.
In front of a live audience, the songs take on a different meaning. Working with my clients, the theories I work with, take on new shapes. They start coming to life.

When you have mastered the thing you are good at, you have finished your album. The only way it can become even more, is through interaction with others.

The business you started is not a career;
That was only your first album.
And the first year or years in business, they are your first tour.

Maybe it is a success, maybe not.
But just like artists who have their eyes on the entirety of a career;
Don’t let it crush you if the first years are not a success. 
Nor let it blind you when it is.

You’re not here for one album, and you’re not here for one tour.

My first album was my yoga career.
Then I thought my second album was Rock Star Yoga, and it didn’t take off… I just couldn’t let it out of the lab. It wasn’t ready.
Then I concentrated on being a Rock Star Writer and started Bon Jovi inspired videos on YouTube but that too…. No.
Haven’t found a final form. This is not my second album.

Then I realized that I had my second album on the shelves!
Business coaching.
And not only is the album finished, and am I dying to take it on the road;
That really is the ONLY way this album can grow!

My business coaching (and Rock Star mentoring) really, and I mean really,  does not belong in the lab anymore. 
Its value is now in sharing it with my clients and in the joy of interpreting the songs together, and make it into a song they like to sing.

I am on tour with my double album “Rock Star Mentoring”  and “Business Coaching”.

And Rock Star Yoga?
I have that scheduled as the next album.
Followed by an opportunity to hire me for yoga events, or organize them myself. Maybe teach private yoga.

And Rock Star Writer?
I think my 2025 album! The skill I will take out of the lab in 2025, and share it with the world.
Maybe I will be hired by Bon Jovi to write their biography, or maybe I will be giving Bon Jovi inspired talks.
Maybe it will be more than Bon Jovi, and it will be the Rock Star philosophy I am sharing on this blog, but applicable to everyone.
Not just to business owners.

So what does this mean for you?
Whatever it is you do in your business, see it as your LATEST album and your CURRENT tour.

You probably won’t believe me, but the majority of your clients are there for you. Not for what it is you have to sell, but they are there to see you in action. They like to be in a relationship with you.
Even when it is a working relationship.

Just like many of my former yoga students turned into friends, or took my Yoga for friends class when I quit my formal teachings.
And many of my business coaching clients will also become my future yoga clients.

KEEP PLAYING YOUR OLD ALBUMS!
Keep offering whatever it is you are selling now, just like a band will keep playing their hits.
But add new things, keep making new albums.

In the future, as a Rock Star Yoga Mentor, I will never turn away people who want my business coaching. In fact I see a 50/50 offering of yoga as well as business coaching and Rock Star Mentoring.
Catacombe will be a place for both.

But even if I would become only a yoga teacher, I would always offer ways to keep working with me, to my existing clientele.
Just like a Rock Star will always respect the fans who like their older albums!

But as soon as you, business owner, release an album, which means as soon as it is a business model, start working on the next.
This can be the next program, the next product, or it can be something else entirely.

As soon as this work, your current work, is out in the world, it will develop on its own.
It develops because of you and your clients developing it, in relationship with each other.
It is no longer just your thing, that is in your lab.

Your last album, the album that is now out, already belongs to the world.
Let it go.
Just meet the people who come to you, and be there for them.
Like a Rock Star is there for the people in front of them, and for the joy of singing the songs together.

But start writing, start composing, start thinking about your new album.
What is it that you want to be making in your lab of experimentation, and things and concepts that you like to toy around with?
My current lab has a yoga mat in it and a playlist I created on YouTube, months ago:
369 Days Catacombe Rock Star Yoga
My current lab revolves entirely around yoga.

But my lab could also have been about the development of membership programs, funnels, setting up a mastermind program, an academy, or studying the work and biographies of the 6 most famous Rock Stars on earth.
You decide what your next album is. You decide what the next phase in your business, is about. 

Just like a Rock Star on tour, you too can start writing your new album while you are on tour.

But you could also go all in, and not think about your next album. But then my suggestion would be to plan for time off at a specific point in the future.
Plan for it, every 18 months or so, to let your next offer come through.
Your next album. 

And then you go on tour again. You take your new offer on the road, and meet your clients old and new. You set your offer, your album, free and hand it over to the world.

Album.
Tour.
Album.
Tour.

That, is the pulse of a Rock Star.

.
~Suzanne
become the Rock Star you were born to be

Album, tour. Album, tour. How to build your business like a Rock Star
| 2022 02 18
is the fifth Catacombe Rock Star post

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Catacombe offers international Rock Star mentoring & business coaching:
https://catacombenijmegen.com/current-offer/

& in-person business coaching in Nijmegen.
https://catacombenijmegen.com/nederlands-dutch/