How many times have you bitten your tongue in a board meeting or muzzled yourself when your boss starts spouting off? How many times have you failed to speak up when you disagree with your business partner? How often have you ignored your intuition and kept your mouth shut because you’re afraid of creating conflict with your clients, colleagues, or superiors?

Here's my personal creative credo, synthesized into 5 lines (it's all you need, really):

1. Keep it pointed to where you want it to go.
2. Pay close attention to your creative fantasies.
3. Keep it lean and keep it clean.
4. Art involves risk.
5. Form informs feeling.

I've worked with a few dozen Fire Starter clients in the past few weeks on career optimizing, transitioning, start ups, reinventions, product ideas, social media strategies and balancing it all without burning it out. (And I adore each and every one of you. I'm thinking about you all right this minute and smiling hugely, because it takes kahunas to show up in the world and sell your soul with integrity, and to turn love into fat cash and ideas into fulfillment. Keep on moving.)

I've been hammering on the same concepts with lots of folks. I am known to hammer. I'm clear that I am not a coach -- I'm an adviser, so I can get away with being passionately opinionated.

Can you live a divinely-inspired life, connect to your calling, be an entrepreneur, and still make money?

That question has been buzzing in my head lately (see Part One in this series, "Do Well By Doing Good") and from what I can gather from those of you who are writing to me, talking to me at my public speaking events, and posting in Owning Pink comments, it’s on your mind too.

Many of us are jaded and disillusioned from the corporate world, so we’ve left behind boardrooms, hospitals, courts, classrooms, and other systems where
we went to practice our art and found ourselves lost. After leaving the systems that conspire to dim our lights, we often find ourselves faced with uncomfortable
choices as we align with our Inner Pilot Lights. We may desire the comfort, stability, ability to be generous with others, and little (or big) luxuries that accompany a lucrative paycheck. But many of us are simply done selling our souls for the privilege of that stable income.