Stopping childhood sexual abuse in children’s safe places by their supposed safe people is no popular celebrity-endorsed cause at the moment.
We don’t have any kind of critical mass on this issue yet.
No one is lining up to buy tickets to concerts to benefit this movement the way they are for
- stopping sex trafficking or
- addressing world hunger or
- fighting cancer
or any number of other key causes for our times.
Why not?
Well, for one thing, as I point out in my Think Tank strategy blog post, it’s not an easy evil to identify the enemy on! The ‘enemies’ we’re fighting are often the good guys–teachers, parents, family members and friends–trapped in this addiction, most often due to having been abused themselves.
Yes, there are some strangers who abuse children. And yes, there are true psychopaths as my father appears to be who have little to no remorse for abusing children. But 80% of those who molest children are normal, upstanding members of society.
This is not our classic definition of where evil hides.
That makes it very hard for society to even look at it and accept that it is happening–and at epidemic levels.
The Need: Making This a High-Profile, Well-Supported Cause!
So…
we have all these strategies for how to address it, but very little public support to start out with.
- Personal Stories need to go public in a compelling way in order to expose this kind of danger and all the damage it is doing to society.
- Think Tanks need to be set up to address all the complex issues in a balanced way in order to turn these tides.
- Edu-tainment Channels and gifted “edu-tainers” need to be put into place to help children know what to look for and how to respond.
All of that takes money if we’re going to move it into the mainstream and begin attracting attention and support and public awareness around the issue on a major global scale.
Difficult to get the funding before its a popular cause, right?
Difficult, but not impossible!!
Response:A Production Engine to Fund the Foundation!
If you haven’t heard my story of building a highly successful coaching business in a short time period, and only knew me from either my growing up years or from my past decade of diving into the “artist survival mode” it takes for a season to make it in a career like Storytelling and missed that crucial in-between phase of my journey (that I write about in my career journey note on Facebook), my suggestion that we can do this may sound uninformed or even delusional to you.
However, I have plenty of witnesses from those days who know that Entrepreneurship is in my blood!! I wake up in the morning thinking of new products that can be created to hit the mark of the current times and trends…
or of ways one product–such as this book trilogy about a story I’m working on–can be leveraged into 11 others:
- book on audio
- speaking engagements about the book
- movie version
- games based on the book
- video materials related to the book
- interactive tools like computer programs
- workbooks
- vision retreats
- individual coaching/mentoring sessions
- coaching/mentoring groups
- cyber courses.
And so on!!
And then there are the new things that have come on the scene since then that this project can easily translate into:
- reality shows
- phone apps
- coaching experientials
And more.
I have the Cheeseborough Pond and other entrepreneurs in my heritage; so it’s not just a figure of speech when I say that it is in my blood. 🙂
To me, it is an almost ironic redemption of the pain of my father’s secret life that the bloodline passed on to me through him is enabling me to do so much of this work!!
If you haven’t heard me get going yet on this kind of line and vision casting of what can be done, it may be hard to imagine I could have a clue what I’m talking about if you didn’t watch me do it once already!
But it doesn’t change the reality that I did.
It’s how I went from being a piano teacher and minister’s wife to a business owner with a six-figure salary knocking on the door of 5 six-figure deals for my coaching software program in less than two years past its creation and release–just before 9-11 hit.
I already know how to do this.
I’ve done it before.
But back then I was doing it for myself.
Since then I’ve had a major spiritual turning point (see my post The Long Run Home) that finally made me willing to give away my life for this cause.
And when combined with the strategies in the next post–Secret Weapon–I’m going to suggest to you in advance that this particular Funding Engine will be huge!!! It has to be in order to fund a movement. It has to be in order to address something this dark and this complex and this deep that has been buried for this long.
And the One Who cares most about the little ones and their protection has given us everything we need to do this–including this quirky entrepreneurial lineage and wiring of mine (that has attracted other entrepreneur types into my network–and me to theirs–as well!)
My Network:
So where does my personal network come into this strategy?
I have three completely different networks that have shaped me. And I can look back now and see how vital each was to the work I have been prepared for years now to do. Each of these can contribute a key element to the creation and funding of what is coming!!
These networks of mine are dramatically different not just because they are located in different parts of the country with all the cultural mindsets that go with major regional differences, but also because
- I was at different stages in my life in each place and
- connected with a completely different generation and socio-economic level in each place!!
Here’s the overview:
1) We Need Roots!! The Rural Midwest
This is the part of the world that shaped my formative growing up years. Specifically, I was born and grew up in the Moline, Michigan area south of Grand Rapids–with only one short phase from ages 1-2 1/2 spent in Kentucky during my father’s work on his Master’s degree in education and his student teaching.
My primary community in the upper Midwest was not my peer group, and that has been true for my return to the area for these past 42 months of work on the project and ongoing family issues as well.
I was the kind of child who was using her mind in a very different way from early childhood onward, so not typically at home with my peers. I wanted to be around the adults from my earliest memories (a little hurtfully to my siblings, cousins and school friends I’ve been told since, unfortunately, though I didn’t intend it that way at the time.)
I attracted a lot of mentorship and investment as a result in some of my early signs of using my mind in a unique way.
Add to that my father pulling me in and out of situations to keep the secrets hidden, and I had little close exposure or chance to build lasting relationships with my peers.
Reconnecting with my childhood community after 15 years away from it also put me back closer to and interacting more with those my parents’ ages and older–for a variety of reasons.
I think it was meant to be.
The group is primarily conservative and living at very modest income levels. Even those who have often live a much more no-frills lifestyle than they could afford.
Most of the area is supported by farming and factory work, so has a practical and grounded approach to life.
This generation and cultural mindset would typically be overlooked by my other two core networks, but I believe they will be key for what is coming, and can provide essential elements.
It’s from this group that I learned essential lessons for the hard times economically that we’re facing right now in our country: frugality, simplicity, resourcefulness and a strong work ethic.
And I could not have completed this critical behind-the-scenes preparation portion of the journey without them!!
2) We Need Pillars!! The Dallas Business Culture
Both of my first two careers exposed me to this world.
As a young pianist and piano teacher in my 20’s, I went in and out of the homes of one of the wealthiest areas in America: the Highland Park area of Dallas. My students included the children of Vice Presidents of major corporations like AT&T and Exxon.
I learned key lessons there for the work that is coming!
In particular, those who were examples of what is sometimes referred to as good breeding taught me much about what great parenting looks like–with the skills passed down generation after generation.
Going in and out of their homes weekly with the piano business observing them and playing for their private parties in their homes as well gave me amazing opportunities to learn a new way of stewarding and treating children: as the future pillars of our society that they are!
Then in my 30’s as a business coach and minister’s wife in a very well-to-do church, I was coaching and co-shepherding (with my minister husband) CEO’s, doctors, financial planners and so on–and rapidly adjusting my own lifestyle to match theirs as my income quickly grew beyond what I’d ever imagined growing up in a household where only one parent brought in income, and that teaching salary while in a private school was below the poverty level for part of my childhood. This was a whole new world for me coming from factory and farmland…and it shaped me and taught me much about the world of business–by immersion.
This 15 years of my life was the only time when my peers were the most significant influence on me, so most of my friends from this region are my age or slightly older or younger. From them I learned much about starting and building businesses, about interacting in professional environments, and about gracious living and social etiquette.
Many of them are powerhouses when it comes to understanding the world of finance and generating funding. What a role they can have in what is coming! “Come to the Kingdom for such a time as this…”
3) We Need Stars!! The Artistic Community of Santa Monica
And then there are my young artist and entertainment industry friends!!
This is an amazing group with incredible Star Power, from the Millennial generation.
Most have connections, talents, gifts and opportunites that will allow them to take big dreams and visions into the public eye overnight when it’s time for that.
They think very differently from either of my other two networks, and the rhythm of their ocean lifestyles and path of breaking into the arts is completely distinct as well.
But they have an energy and vitality and mindset about the key issues of our time that I believe will literally help us change the world.
I call them, in fact, the world changers.
I believe these three groups–
- the young stars and artists and thinkers and dreamers in my network in the Hollywood area;
- the skilled business people and oil money heritage of DFW;
- and the loyal, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth types in the region that shaped me (with their key understanding of the issues surrounding my father’s secret life)
–hold all the pieces we need to launch this Vision of a powerful Funding machine when the time comes!!
I believe (per the concepts on the Connector role in books like Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point and Superconnect) each key person this strange and winding path has connected me to–even across such regional differences and generational mindsets is going to have a major role to play in the Movement that is coming.
***
Can It Really Be Done??
Someone who has been watching me gradually step into the projections made on my life by coaches, mentors and counselors along the way asked once, “But if you’re called to catalyze a movement, and if you were designed in advance and shaped by your story to do it, how can you be so sure you can actually do the work when the time comes??”
I replied, “I can’t. I’m terrified about that on some days if I think about it too long!!
But it does help that I’ve had some small level of practice already.”
That seems to be a major point in why the coaching business was in my life–even though the career fit ultimately.
It schooled me in how to do what will be needed to fund this movement, by giving me practice setting up a little mini-funding machine, one step at a time.
Now I am
- more than a decade older,
- with painful new character lines carved into me and
- a greatly expanded network (in terms of its world-changing power and potential)
so that I no longer feel as alone or ill-equipped for the task at hand!
Perhaps most of all the shift has been to recognizing that I am just a piece on the Chess board for this key issue at this key time, and that the work is going to be done through me, versus my trying to make life happen (as per my prior pursuits!)
I find myself approaching this the only way I know how, exactly like I did my coaching business–
- starting with a small but very quality foundation,
- getting things done, but then adapting to refine and get them right as I go
- promoting what’s there (even if I have to swallow my pride plenty to promote things that are still rough & below my standards at the messy creation phase!)
- catalyzing those around me into some of their big dreams and visions
- and then watching it explode from there!!
You who backed the successfully funded Kickstarter project are already helping in incredible ways, since it is the first seed to start bringing in both public attention and early funds from the proceeds of the books to launch and activate the rest.
It may look very small now, but great oaks begin, as the saying goes…
Please consider joining us in any way that you can!! We have a great adventure ahead of us.
Stopping Abuse 
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