Lessons

Lesson Info

Defining Initiatives

My friend charlie gilkey that writes that productive, flourishing he's a creativity coach I've done a lot of work with him and what he often recommends that works like a charm for its work for me and for a lot of my clients is when you think of for example, this whole next year right that year that's coming up if you have three major initiatives, so maybe it is too close a good deal of more business maybe it is to, you know, build strategic partnerships with people to get the word out, whatever it is right? And then maybe you wanna write a book or do a redo your website or something like that? You could have three major initiatives for the coming year for the next twelve months and then based on that in any given month that's where you might bring it down to, you know, to a specific objective that you can handle in a month. So of all the things that air your focus areas, what really is that the next focused area for the next month? What's one way you could take one of those big initiat...

ive, break it down to where what do you actually have to do this month? And then when you're looking at your weekly calendar, how are you making sure that your time is allocated appropriately to the big kinds of moves some of the stuff that needs to happen little bits and bytes and, you know, managing your finances sometimes you can offload that to somebody else. Sometimes you have it filled with in the gaps, but I know for me as an example of what I chose last year, I chose to really focus on one main program I used to have all kinds of short tele classes and things out there. I focused on building one main program, power boost marketing where I could work with people for twelve months. I wanted to get a book deal, so I focused on building that and I wanted to focus on building my speaking business. So I was doing the kinds of things to get more experience speaking, learnt about it and knowing those were my overarching themes. Then that was really where I focused my attention and energy in any time I got distracted by a million other things is where I came back and I actually have my initiatives that are always right by my desk. And so we'll get more to that in the planning stage. But it is an ongoing process of, for example, on monday mornings the first thing I do is look at okay what's happening, what does my calendar look like? What are the big initiatives, what our moves that I have to get done? Sometimes it works with internal motivation where you're just going to do the things that need to get done sometimes you knew little external motivation my my editor who was very patient with me knows very clearly that book never would have been finished by that last tuesday had she not been very clear about what the deadline wass right? So sometimes we need to build that in to have that external accountability but you know, the first piece is doing a strategic assessment of where are you and what do you need to be working on and then you bring it right down to a week by week basis and it really works you know it really works it doesn't mean that you can't make adjustments as you go but if you just have one big old honking to do list that's that's really where things start to go awry we have another question I know you mentioned before specifically two female audience yeah questions that they had so kayla says I'm currently entering into the dreaming and starting stage is my fear is to be able to balance both my business as well as taking care of my husband and children do you have a way to balance both call? I'm totally not even kidding she's actually you know she's uh that that's her focus area on dh that's an example right all of a sudden here you see a client need that's you know that's showing up I am a mother, I have two beautiful children and a wonderful husband and, uh, actually in the spirit of what I was talking to brooke about, you put your personal priorities as really important initiatives for example, you know, I don't want to tell my husband children, their initiative, talk about sunday corporate and awful, but really what it means is it could be a very specific priority, and I like even though I'm jealously not a graphic designer, I love the idea of design constraints of parameters, right? So you only have a piece of charcoal and some cardboard and, you know, one other a sharpie in order to create an art piece often when you have those constraints, is where then you can really make some beautiful art and not be overwhelmed. So in the case, where you do have a priority of taking care of your family that's, where you need to set up some very clear boundaries and priorities of saying I will not, you know, as an example, I'm not suggesting this is her formulations to figure it out for herself, but as an example saying, I will not work evenings, I will not work weekends or I will make sure that I'm going to be set myself up in a business where, no matter what, I'm able to take a phone call if my kid calls me or I'm always going to drop my kids off at school, I'm only going to travel this much, and one of the things I know for me personally, that's been very significant is I definitely could have taken a lot more opportunities to be away from my family, bigger speaking engagements and so forth, but because my family is so important to me and my kids are only going to be little for so long. I lovingly and joyfully said no to those opportunities I call it choosing between a crack pipe and wheat grass juice. I've never had crack, but sometimes the crack pipe is so I've been told is like, huge big opportunity. Oh my god, you could grow your business to this size, but sometimes that's actually not the healthy thing that we want. Maybe you want that good old daily wheat grass juice that you know, oxygen, it gives oxygen to your blood makes you feel good. You're connected with your family, the important thing and, like mom's weaken get all crazy when it comes to discussions of judging each other, you know, should you work it all? Should you not it's I'm really hoping that we can, we can learn to just have a good, healthy discussion. Overall, the on ly thing that matters the only thing is what you think personally you want to do for yourself and your family you can learn from other people but nobody lives in your home and with your family, so you really have to win all the options you know, put some clear design constraints around your time and then really live with this kind of repercussions I think that's so critical and I love that their initiatives just like everything else it's true like if you you it's easy to not put them in the same pool and so when you do that and you're structured about it that's that's way to go okay, so we have a question from eighty far who is in england and is a regular here created live who says since finding created by last year have become more confident and have great belief that I would that I will achieve my goals no matter how unrealistic they may seem he's a photographer trying to get into fashion um however, there are always people who tell me that you can't do something and you need to be more realistic and sometimes it's hard to ignore what he says ignore the truth how can we overcome this? So how do you how do you move past what people are telling you are right or wrong versus what you want to dio very good said some important words right there truth right and wrong are all just made up mental constructs first of all right to get all philosophical about it right uh what is the truth? The truth is a completely subjective thing that is based on our own experience right in what what we deem to be true for us the same thing with right and wrong business decisions so that said we can have some wonderful people in our lives who have who see things about our own experience that we don't see right sometimes parents sometimes friends and we never want to be I think in that mode of just like I just have my vision and I don't want to listen to anybody going to block out all the naysayers that khun b a missed opportunity to actually learn things from people first of all some who may care about you and don't want to see you harm yourself so you can hear them out and second could be people that have some useful information now the key is is you want to have a set of filters so you can take that feedback and not try not to let it trigger you personally emotionally right that's their opinion based on their own experience people often project I know I project another people like oh that's not really a good idea vanessa maybe because it wouldn't be for me not that it would necessarily be for you right? So hear hear them out like tell me exactly rodney, what do you think is bad about my idea wan't to know specifically gather the data and then you want to have a sifter and you want to sort through and say what of this information resonates for me? What are areas that I also feel a little bit insecure about? How can I take that information? But then how can I let all the rest of it go? Mike, what are you thinking? You've given up your corporate career like awesome, I totally hear you and I appreciate that, but I'm personally not going to be carrying that on with me because you don't need to take that kind of feedback, so I think when you can get used to listening to people, sometimes what we do is try to tune them out or even mohr effective not is try to debate with them, especially when it comes to relative oh my god don't just don't go there some of them there is no way you are ever ever going to convince uncle joe or grandma or mom or dad that what you're doing is okay and therefore you just want to be very respectful and say thank you so much, you know really listen to them and what it is the advice that they're giving you and then you can choose to do with it what it is that you want to do with but you always have to remember the metaphor by jim collins who wrote a great book called good to great he gives the metaphor of being on a bus and he says you want to be very thoughtful about who is on your bus in which order and I say never forget that you are the one driving the bus eso sometimes you want to lovingly invite people off the bus and this happens very frequently people who have been wonderful friends or colleagues in the cubicle with you that you had great times with you khun still maintain a good friendship but they may not be the people who really can help you go in the new direction that you're going and that could be a painful thing but it's a very important thing that's part of building your courage your personal strength for the journey I wrote a whole chapter in my book about relationships because when you go in business your whole family goes in business right even your pets think about it right I mean everybody you know spouses family members and so it is it is a family affair and you have to figure out what's the best way to do it and do it effectively cool great do we have any questions from the audience before we check here rodney um specifically about fear yeah I sleep well, everybody here is kind of already in that moment square one is square to you yeah and even just coming up here this week I felt the fear okay? And I'm dreaming and scheming and I have these ideas and they're really tangible, but I'm I gotta admit, I'm you know I'm really scared yeah, you know the fears kind of coming how you specifically I mean some specific examples of how you get past that definitely well and we're going to dig into that were totally going to dig into fear actually at the end of today to look at some very specific you know items, but first of all, I think if there's a way to be thinking about it from a positive perspective of fear is here to protect you that's why it is that you're feeling fear is because the lizard brain that's right the basics you know, right right the top of your neck is is there to protect you to make sure that you're always taken care of and it's always blasting signals that there's not enough to eat and somebody's trying to kill me there's not enough to eat somebody's going to kill me right that's why we've been alive for so many generations of human beings is because we have that protective force so it's not here to harm you it's a good thing the other thing is what I'm calling in my new book, full contact, full color living, which is the more that we you get used to realizing that when you do feel your emotions, when you do feel fear, sadness, grief, joy, it means that you're really opening up yourself so that you can learn something and there's nothing wrong with feeling your feelings. Now the very best thing you could do is to be here in this class because that's, why we're here you have friends and colleagues, which is always a very first recommendation, right? Connect with people who are like minded who are going to be supportive of your journey, who help you problem solved. I know you have a very close knit family who are too totally in support of you, which is a wonderful thing that you have going for you not everybody does, right? And the other thing is where you begin to work on things testing and trying in little bits, right? When you're early on in the journey may be a lot of what you're going to be focusing on first is understanding yourself in your ideal clients, maybe for a while you want to take a a job is a side hustle, right? Something that can pay your bills so that you don't feel like you have to be under so much stress if you need to start a business right away. But what we're going to be doing is to breaking breakdown the huge big picture into for you and actually for everybody else and everybody else out there what's the project, right? Life's a series of projects, so when, you know, like I got this, I can do this next stage of the project, and we'll get very specific about that that's often what can really ease the fear and the understanding, but you are not alone. I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you, you know? I know you I care about you, folks. Here we are and a lot of its just showing up, you know? You've done the hard stuff, which is getting through your fear, applying and getting here so well, get very specific and tactical about it, but life is just a series of projects, and you can do it, right. You've done projects before. Yeah, you got this. When we come back, we're actually going to jump into specifically the first step, which is understanding yourself. So we're going to dig into some of the assessments that you did. We're going to be looking at your strength and your experiences and your ingredients on dh that's, that's what we're doing next, can we give a huge round of applause for emily? Look at this amazing, awesome I know is I was speeding up the steps I was like, okay, now she can really show us her stuff, but that was amazing, so beautiful and it's going to be so helpful for us to kind of track where we are. So emily shepherd and we confined you on, linked in? Yeah, for emily shepherd graphic recorder here in the bay area and available for travel to paris. I don't know other plans, right? Thank you so much. Plan. This was great. And emily again, huge shout out from the internet killer just loving this and it's shepherd within a chorus. H e p a r d thank you, thank you and yeah, and we'll be referencing this throughout the course, so everybody is excited to continue to see more of the details, and I just want to remind everybody to enroll for this class if you haven't already, there are a huge number of bonus materials that are going to come along when you purchased the course, but just by enrolling pam is going teo give you access to a podcast that she has done with author steven press field, which I know I'm going to go listen to cause I haven't listened to that one yet author of do the work and the war bart so amazing one so thank you for providing that with enrollment of the course which you could do on the course package yeah you can as you said the internet's been really engaged with this in the chat rooms air blowing up like we said a lot of positives for you louis says the illustrations are amazing she's been loving them susan bear chimed in saying that happiness exists in the intersection of what you love to do and do well and what your audience really needs I wilson has a quote he liked your quote we're all heroes in her own journey that's going to be his new mantra mark our says a great business is growing to be built on your own strength on who you are. So just to recap a little bit of what we talked about this morning it was great to hear all the different business ideas that the people in the studio audience hand as well as the people charmian chat room we connected a lot of the viewers to the squares and change model that you discussed we learned some helpful montrose that you mentioned that people were really loving chatter we even managed to tie in some star wars humor. Yeah, bring it all together myself. Done. I think the successful morning so far, so with that, we'll see you all back here in fifteen minutes after a break.