Creative Wealth Building (CWB) is finished and has birthed the Spiritual Avatar. I, Nick Pfennigwerth, the author, am focusing all of my resources and energies to the Spiritual Avatar and will no longer contribute to CWB.

Typically, you write this type of post in January with a fresh start to a new year. However, I tend to lean on the side of "anti-social convention" and do things when I feel inspired to do them.

What’s this post about? Well, at least to me, it’s the end of an old state of consciousness and the beginning of a new awareness. The old state of consciousness was Creative Wealth Building (CWB). The new state of consciousness, the Spiritual Avatar.

This post gives a review of Creative Wealth Building, why it came to an end, and then gives you direction to what the Spiritual Avatar is about.

I do recommend sticking with this post because you’ll gain tremendous insight to what I have discovered that works in life/business and what absolutely DOES NOT work in life/business. You can learn from my mistakes and circumvent them for yourself.

Let’s get started…

What didn’t work?

The main area in which Creative Wealth Building fell short was not having a defined Who-Who-What. The who-who-what defines your customer focused story and establishes the initial relationship. Let’s break down each part of the who-who-what formula so you get a better idea of what I’m talking about.

The first "who" in the customer focused story is the demographic. Think of this "who" as a definable characteristic of your target audience, such as "active people in non-profits", "Belly Dancers", "Swing Dancers", "Pregnant Mothers", and so on.

Who did CWB intend to reach? I don’t know…people. This lack of clarity showed because I didn’t know who I was writing for. It was too board and lacked specificity; therefore, you couldn’t consume the article. Most CWB articles took up space in the already congested "web-o-sphere" and didn’t provide any usable value.

The second "who" in the customer focused story is a psychological characteristic. It’s what your target audience believes in and values. For example, "Belly Dancers who believe that dance movement heals." Or, "people who value a spirit-centered life." This characteristic is harder to define, but it’s essential to clarify so my target audience knows they’ll receive relevant information that’s helpful.

CWB was all over the board with this category. I helped people who believed in achieving success, creating a healthy body, managing time, etc. It was so unclear and undefined that I had a hard time maintaining a readership. There was too much going on and as a result many people didn’t bother to devour the articles.

It would have been better if I defined one characteristic, such as "values a spirit centered life," then people could relate and a responsive readership may have grown.

The "what" is the last element in the customer focused story. This element focuses on the problem or challenge this person or group of people are facing in a heart centered way. You search the web for solutions. Whether it’s learning how to mow the grass, dance, drink chocolate milk standing on your head, and/or search the web for pure entertainment, you want a solution to your present situation. However, you wouldn’t know what solution to search for unless you understood the problem you were having.

What did CWB solve for you? I don’t know. It helped you become successful…whatever that means. Is that even a problem?

Some good examples of having a clearly defined "what" are:

1. Belly Dancers that struggle doing hip circles.
2. Pregnant Mothers struggling with the decision to give birth using a midwife or at the hospital.
3. The Spiritual Avatar’s current "what" is active people in personal growth struggling with "what should I do in life."

The point is that Creative Wealth Building lacked this basic piece of information- who, who, what. Therefore, my readership became too broad, unfocused, and unresponsive. It never became the community I hoped to create.

I can’t tell you how many emails I received each day with offers of link exchanges or AD placements from foreign exchange currency companies and people asking for stock tips.

What the hell?

Obviously they didn’t grasp my definition of wealth building and it’s not completely their fault. However, they could have read a few more lines on the homepage and distinguish that CWB was not about stock tips and currency

What else didn’t work? Well, the above scenario was the biggest mistake, but truthfully I didn’t know any better. I was just an average dude who wanted to help people succeed in life. My writing at CWB probably helped me evolve more than the actual readers. I don’t regret anything I did because I learned so much. Hey…you gotta start somewhere, right?

If you’re interested in other aspects of CWB that did not work, here’s the short list:

1. Writing about keywords people were searching for. What this means is that you find keywords in demand that people are searching for in Google and write articles about them.

   I found this approach to work well for search engine ranking, but it stifled my creativity. Many comments came through stating that my material was nothing new and they’ve heard it before through the law of attraction. I completely agree. A lot of times I felt like I was rehashing saturated information already present on the Web, *cough*, law of attraction.

   Imagine writing articles to please Darth Vader from Star Wars. You would have to be very careful and precise to not go outside the box or you might be dead. When you focus your writing on pleasing the search engines, you put yourself in a little box that serves no one. They will come away using your information rather than becoming part of your tribe.

   Not all articles on CWB were keyword focused, but the majority of them are there to build a search engine presence. Lame.

2. Email marketing. The "experts" approach to email marketing is giving away something for free, and a few more benefits, in exchange for your email address. It’s called, "Opting in." At the bones, opting in is fine and dandy ONLY if you stick to your promises, which hardly anyone does.

   For example, if you land on most people’s subscribe newsletter webpage or any landing page, it would start with a catchy headline and then promise you over-hyped benefits that you’ll never receive. So, you believe in it (no worries, I fall for those pages, too) and opt-in. You get the free Ebook and the four inquiry follow ups as promised and think all is done. Great! Nope, not so great. What comes next are email after email about buying this or that or the next greatest product ever to be released.

   Side note: Do you ever find it funny that every iphone released they say it’s the greatest phone of its kind? Hmmm…Is there ever not going to be a great iphone?

   The problem with this approach is that these marketers have never asked my permission to keep contacting me. The deal was an ebook and four follow up messages. That’s it!

   From an online entrepreneur’s point of view, this tiny, but extremely important code of conduct, is overlooked 99.999% of the time. Just because you have an "unsubscribe link" in the email doesn’t give you or me permission to break the deal and keep contacting someone. I received many spam complaints and lost readership from overlooking this tiny aspect of customer relationship.

3. Product launches. A product launch is creating a series of free value pieces, such as three videos, that give you bits of information to consume, and then in the fourth piece of the funnel ask for the sale. Product launches are great for introducing a new product ONLY if the intention behind the launch is heart centered.

   Most people create a launch to warm you up for the sale and drive home scarcity tactics of being less of a person if you don’t have the product. I used to be victim of this and was laughing at myself one day on how ridiculously needy I became using inauthentic scarcity tactics. And here I am teaching abundance, LOL.

   Have you seen this scarcity tactic before? "Hurry up and order now because there are only 50 copies left of this Ebook!" Or, "Make sure you order now because there are only so many membership spots available." Here’s the problem: how can a digital product, such as an Ebook or online membership, be scarce? It’s not.

   Now, if you remove the scarcity tactics and fake social movement that everyone is apparently buying in on, then you can effectively help your customer make the right decision on whether to purchase your product or not. The free value pieces in the funnel become a way for your prospects to test-drive the product without any obligation, hype, or sneaky marketing tricks.

   CWB tried the product launch approach a few times, but from the wrong mindset. I bought into the online marketing product launch craze and left my heart at home. I gave value in the product launch, but the intention behind the value was to get a sale, not help you make a responsible decision. Lesson learned

Those were the basic elements of CWB that didn’t work and lost a lot of readership. However, not all was lost. During that time I learnt many valuable lessons in relationships, about myself, money, and life. I wouldn’t trade in those experiences and struggles for anything. Life’s greatest lessons are found in the apparent failures. I actually welcome and embrace failure on a daily basis because it’s a huge accelerator for growth

The best lesson learned that I can give you at this point is do not let "not knowing" or any inadequacies you think you have stop you from creating something. I didn’t know marketing, I didn’t know online business, and I didn’t know how to write (I’m still learning as we speak). Sure those inadequacies showed, however, if I let fear of failure stop me, I’d be stuck living out other people’s passions and not mine.

Time to shift gears…

What worked well for Creative Wealth Building?

In the later years of CWB, I knew that I wanted to share my growth experiences, learn from them, and hopefully help others. The mindset that I brought to CWB was one of providing value. What I cared about most was servicing others then receiving satisfaction from that service second.

The value based approach means that you place your focus on giving versus getting. It’s asking questions such as, "How can I give more in this situation? What is it that life wants to manifest through me?" Those questions will inspire you to go above and beyond what your customer expects. You will maintain a quality relationship with your customer and probably gain a life-long friend in the process.

I have created many prosperous friendships from CWB because I continually focused on how I could give more to this person. It’s very rewarding to surround yourself with loving people rather than surrounding yourself with green pieces of paper called money. When your life comes to an end, would you rather have loving friends and family surround you in bed or sacks of money and a Butler who is there because he’s getting paid?

What I also love about the valued focused mindset is that it’s heart centered. You give without expectations of a return. This approach is in complete alignment with the Universe and when you follow it, abundance will be knocking at your door.

For example, the Sun continually gives its light and warmth to the Earth so it can sustain life – your life. Wouldn’t it be awkward if the Sun gave expecting a return from Mother Earth? "Well, Earth…since I’m giving you my light and rays, I want 100 million gallons of your water to nourish my sun ray kids." Thankfully the Sun does not do that because we wouldn’t be alive today with that kind of ego. Abundance will be your natural state if you can give without expecting a return. Look in nature and you’ll see this truth.

The other aspect that worked well for CWB was writing from the heart. I know what you’re thinking…in the "what didn’t work well section," I stated that most of the articles were keyword focused. That’s still true, but a few articles were written from inspiration and the heart.

Taking the heart centered approach helps massive amounts of people solve their challenges rather than reaching massive amounts of people. Big difference, right? What do you think is more effective and loving: 1) a website that reaches one million people or 2) a website that reaches and helps 500,000 people solve their problems?

When I would produce a heart centered article, the feedback that came through was amazing. People were thanking me for the insight and wisdom and how it helped them solve a particular problem. This was very satisfying and worth the three years spent building CWB.

In my eyes CWB was a successful business. The reason why I was able to service hundreds of people per day was because of the value focused mindset. I’ve could have kept going with CWB, but my perspective on life and my state of consciousness has dramatically changed. The growth and evolution I have experienced from writing and meditating is what made CWB successful, not the money. Actually, money is relatively important to me. I keep a good relationship with money, but that’s about all the focus I give it. I don’t chase money, set money goals, need money to do things, or feel the need for more money. I feel completely abundant and sufficient for what I have. The only thing I use money for is a scorecard or tool to measure how well and how wide I’m spreading my service- that’s all.

Because my perspective on life totally changed, I felt that the message CWB was delivering and its branding was not in alignment with my state of consciousness; therefore, the Spiritual Avatar was born on impulse.

What is the Spiritual Avatar?

The Spiritual Avatar helps active people in personal growth spiritually awaken and become full functioning human beings, but struggle with the concept of "what should I do in life."

What the Spiritual Avatar stands for is helping you tear down the walls and barriers of separation from other beings and the world then help you awaken your Big Heart to feel connected and one with the Universe.

Almost everyone in the world thinks there is life, and then there is this separate entity from life called "me." This sense of separation from Life is illusion. However, human beings persist to believe that they have something called "my life" that is separate from Life itself. And because of this separation, dysfunctional states of being become the way of life. These states of being include, fear, anger, anxiety, more is better, not having enough, and that’s just the way it is. The effect for identifying with separation is unnecessary human suffering, such as war, violence, boundaries, greed, and destruction of the Earth. The reason you feel disconnected to the Universe is because your Mind is in the way and constantly identifies with future and past.

Awakening your Big Heart embraces and includes the workings of the Mind, but then moves beyond it to what I call "the integrated full functioning human being." The way you realize your fullness as a human being is to reconcile the inner movement of the unmanifested, unborn, or Big Mind and the outward movement of creation or doing.

Picture your true self like a flower. The flower is completely connected and in-tune with the One Source and yet at the same time blossoms into a beautiful creation. You are the open-ended conduit of life connected to the source and manifesting itself into creation. The mind or ego is like a stone lodged into the conduit. Remove the stone and you open the flow.

Always remember: What you do in the world has little importance. At best, it is relatively important. How you do what you do is of absolute importance and the only permanent thing in this Universe. The "how you do" is realizing and carrying with you Big Mind in everyday life. When you can do that, awaken to Big Mind, you manifest as Big Heart- the full functioning human being.

What to expect from the Spiritual Avatar?

• Frequent blog posts. My goal is to share with you the awakening process and how to live life from your Big Heart. My attempt is to 1) awaken you to Big Mind or the presence of now, 2) how to live with compassion, and 3) how to embrace and include Big Mind and Big Heart into the conventions of the world – money, health, relationships, etc. – so you become full functioning. If this interests you, I recommend subscribing to Letters from Big Heart.
• Community website. In the "online world" this is commonly called a "Membership Area." I don’t see it as a membership website because my intentions are different – I want to form a circle and community of people who want to awaken and bring that awakening to others in the world.

  So, what’s to come is a community member’s area (like Einstein’s combination of space and time to form spacetime) for the flowering of your consciousness and to surround yourself with highly conscious people. This is my current project as of this writing. I don’t have a launch date in mind.

• Spiritual Avatar TV. I plan on doing monthly talks and voice dialogs to help you own the many states of minds within. I have found voice dialog an amazing tool of inquiry to own the disowned aspects of the self, to awaken to Big Mind, and to become full functioning in the world.

My approach to the Spiritual Avatar is still going to be value focused. I’m not going to write for keywords anymore or participate in the traditional approach to email marketing. I AM GOING to write about topics that can help you become full functioning, awaken to Big Mind, and embrace your Big Heart. I’m going to write about people’s questions in life and give them helpful solutions. What it boils down to- I’m writing from the heart.

If you become a member of the Spiritual Avatar and/or subscribe to its newsletters and updates, I can promise you that I will give exactly what you’ve signed up for. What this means is that if I ask for your email in exchange for information, such as weekly letters of wisdom and a free ebook, that’s what I’m going to give you. No sneaky product launch emails and no daily "buy me, buy me" messages…EVER.

If I state that you’ll receive news about products, events, and workshops once a week, that’s what you’ll get once a week. If I state you will receive an ebook upon signing up and 4 videos to help you implement the principles within the ebook, that’s all you are getting an no further communication.

I get it now, really. Trying to get something from you is a mindset of scarcity. The truth is that you and I lack nothing (it took many times going broke to realize this). Abundance surrounds us every second of the day: the sun shining giving life, the green grass, the rain pouring from the sky, the food that keeps us fed, and the other billions of manifestations unfolding before our eyes. We must appreciate and acknowledge that simple abundance. When we do so, the Universe will acknowledge that recognition of abundance and things, if need be, will flow to you.

The BIGGEST lessons learned from being in five years of business and completely failing in two of the four businesses I have started are:

1. Stop separating life into compartments, such as "I have a business life and business stays during business hours. I have a time for health. I have a time for my wife," and so on and so on. You don’t have a life, YOU ARE LIFE. The totality moves in and through you carrying out its manifestations in the form called "humans." In other words, there is only one doer that manifests many doings.
2. The state of your consciousness is more important than what you do. When your attention is completely on the doing or the present moment, quality flows into what you do and everything you do becomes timeless and magnetized.
3. Do not focus on the result. The end result may come to you and you may even visualize it before it happens, but let it be and make it secondary. Focusing on the end result loses you in the mind and in an imaginary future. You become stuck in ego and you end up rebirthing dysfunction.
4. Enjoy the play of life, don’t get trapped in it. Everything you can grasp and perceive "out there" is impermanent. It will all go away someday and sometimes sooner than you desire. Enjoy the play of forms, but remain unattached to them. They will not bring you happiness and fulfillment.

   Treat life like eating an ice cream cone. If you consume too much, you’ll burst, be sick, and suffer. If you hoarder the ice cream cone, it will melt without you enjoying it and you’ll suffer. What you want to do is enjoy the ice cream cone and every lick that you take. Savor each moment, each unique combination of flavors, and the present environment in which you are eating. Then, when the ice cream is done, you wipe your face, clean your hands, and say, "That was good," and you forget it ever happened.

5. Give value, not your time. The dominant mindset people walk around with is "I give you my time and you give me something in return." Under this mindset you constantly have to worry about making it in the world. It’s very exhausting and limiting. You’ll never have an authentic relationship and you’ll treat life as a means to an end. Trust me on this; I took this approach in my Real Estate Business.

   When you give value, however, you are servicing. A true exchange of energy is in giving value. Who would you rather hire? Person "A" who has specific valuable services to contribute to your company and goes above what’s expected? Or Person "B", who puts in their time to get through the day?

6. It’s not about results. There is nowhere to go and nothing to get. From dust you started and dust you shall return. The saying, "It’s about the journey, not about the destination," is completely accurate and true. Live by it.

I know this post was insightful for you. Thank you for listening. There are a lot of key nuggets in this post about how to live life consciously and with enjoyment. You can also probably circumvent the business mistakes that I made by doing what worked for me and avoiding what didn’t work.

So..from here…I invite you to ask any questions or challenges you are having in life by clicking this link: Ask. I’ll do my best to respond in email or to write it as a blog post. There are no guarantees that you will get a response, however

Finally, I invite you to subscribe to this blog and stay up-to-date with the latest blog post and enjoy Letters from Big Heart. You can subscribe here: Start Here.

Peace and love,
- Nick Pfennigwerth
the Spiritual Avatar