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Skills, Interests & Income

So right now I have another exercise for you. It's a exercise that I learned back in the mid 1990's. A teacher of mine ran me through this. There in your notes, for those of you watching online, if you can grab a blank piece of paper. What'd I'd like you to do is to give yourself a three circle Venn diagram. I'm actually going to give you a little model here so you can see where we're going. Make your circles loose, they don't need to be exactly circles. If you have the Workbook that you've printed out, I've got a page in here with those there. What I'll have you do now this could be an exercise that you bring back to your team. This could be a exercise that you bring back to the place you volunteer at. Do I have any parents in the audience today? Any parents? For those of you who are parents online, great activity to bring back to the kids. Sometimes that diversity of thought, what a 30 year old sees, what a 10 year old sees, what a 60 year old sees. We can look at the same prompts an...

d see wildly different things. A mentor of mine who wrote a book, Andy Christiansen, Andy if you're out there, Hey, he wrote a book called The 40:40 Principle. His thesis is to get to our next level of wherever we want to be. We need to find someone who can help us who is under 40 and over 40. It doesn't matter if they're 39 and 41, but find someone who's in that range. Okay, everyone got their three circles? You got your three circles. So the way that I label these is I use the terms Skills, Interests and Income. So let me write all of these in here so that you can see it. For those of you who want to take notes while you're going along. So if I'm gonna think strategically and if I wanna blend or balance this idea of whether I'm thinking about the process or the product, at some point in time, depending on the definition, I have to point my thinking somewhere. I loved, Kevin, your definition of strategic where you said it was deciding part of it. Was deciding what to say no to. So when I can see out of my head okay, do I want to point my attention here or here or here? Sometimes writing things allows me to get a little bit more focused. It allows me for a moment to ignore what's in the periphery. So what we'll do is we'll start with that first one of Skills. What I'll invite you to do is, I don't know, give yourself maybe three or four bullet points. That when you think of the next 12 months, what are the strategic thinking skills that you'd like to get better at? That you'd like to step more fully into? That you'd like to develop. Let me turn to the audience and just get you to write a couple of things. I'm gonna talk to the online audience. I'll repeat that prompt. Twelve months from now what skills, related to strategic thinking, do you want to sharpen, you want to practice, you want to get better at? For those of you who might be in a leadership role, what do you want people to point at you and say "She's a strategic thinker and she has skills in XYZ." A if you get a fourth one. Again, with the in studio audience, I'm just gonna give about 20 more seconds for this. For those of you tuning in online, let yourself imagine or image in. If you fast forward it 12 months from now, you're standing in line at a coffee shop and there's people ahead of you and they were talking about you but they didn't know you were behind them. What would you hope they say? She is skilled in this. He has honed or strengthened his skills in that area. (soft tap) So next I want to move around the Venn diagram in this idea of Interests. There may be some crossover, that's why it's a Venn diagram, they overlap one another, but lets use that same prompt. Twelve months from now, what areas of Interests, regarding Strategic thinking, what areas of Interests do you hope you have a little bit of time for? What areas of Interests do you hope you get to take another class in? Earn a new credential in. Be recognized for what you're doing professionally or for those of us who work and life blends, personally and professionally. As here in the studio, you're capturing a few of those bullets points. I'll turn again to the Live audience out in the world. When you think about your Interests, I would start with the books that are on your nightstand or coffee table. Magazines that you wouldn't subscribe without. When you open up your phone and you flip to a Social Network or a News Network, what kinds of articles do you go to first? Back in the old days, I would ask my clients "When you visit a bookstore, what section of the bookstore do you naturally find yourself walking toward?" Hope people in my studio are still going to bookstores by the way. One of those important things. Intellectual grazing, we call it. Now we'll move to the third circle, and the third circle I use the word Income. There's other words that I've seen people use, Salary, Revenue, Earnings. What I want you to do now is to think to yourself, over the next 12 months, where is money being generated? Where is Income coming from? If you've got one or two or three bullet points there, whether it's a side hustle, whether it's an addition to. If you look out over 12 months, I remember as a high school teacher there was always an opportunity to take on a new duty. To teach Summer School. To teach that extra weekend course. For those of you in your professions, you work in a salary position, are there things you can take on at work? For those of you who are a little more creative in what you're working on, are there things you can do outside? The third time, this will be it in Studio, grab a couple of bullet points. For those of you watching online, CreativeLive, I mean you're here. My guess is those of you watching today, this is not the first course that you've taken and if you just went to the Catalog, you'd see a lot of courses around this idea. Twelve months from now, the income I generate will come down to just a few things. A repetition. It'll come down to me making awkward eye contact in my business. My business is always about meeting the next person, getting invited to the next course to speak at a new conference or to write a new article. It'll also come down to advertising or marketing. What it is that I've thought strategically about. Not necessarily planned, remember I'm gonna separate those out. The more the world around me knows, whether you follow me on Twitter, you jumped over to my LinkedIn, whether you go to my Youtube channel. I've started to create what I call my "Known For." "Oh Jason, he's known for that." So now what I'd like to do is I'm gonna ask someone in the audience, for those of you who are watching online, you'll get a neat little experience of what it's like to watch a Coaching Session. What I'd like to do is just have a quick conversation with one maybe two of you, depending on the time, going through your three circle Venn diagram. When we started I did ask if anybody would love to jump on stage. So I think what we do now is we get a microphone and a volunteer. I'm just gonna walk back and someone's gonna make eye contact and she's gonna start walking this way. Can we get a microphone and then step on into my office. So lets do a round of applause for taking a big risk here. (crowd clapping) Hey. Just for the people watching online, a couple of line. Your name, where you're working. How many times you've been to CreativeLive, and then we're gonna dive into your Venn. Awesome. My name is Reeva. I live here in San Francisco just a mile away from here, which is super convenient. It's my second time here. I was here for Social Media week back in March. It's great to be here again. Thank you. I mean (exhales softly) big breath. (Reeva laughs softly) Big breath. So, the three circles, did one of those three I had to go in order cause once I start talking I have to pick one. You know I could've gone in a different order. Did one of those circles jump more out loud to you? I think it was easier to think about the Income 'cause that's obviously, as a solopreneur, gotta make money. So I'm (chuckles) constantly thinking about how to create those Revenue streams. Right and how much of it was past 12 months 'cause I kind of pushed on you a little bit for next 12 months, sometimes it's really easy to come up with a little "Here's why I've made money in the past" and then did anything show up as a I always like to ask, was there a new thought? Was there a new bullet point? Sure, so there's a couple of things on my list that I'm not creating yet but I want to do more speaking engagements, workshops and retreats revolving around Wellness so Right, and for those of you out in the world, what just happened might be the most important thing for this whole session. Giving a voice and telling other people. It's amazing to me how many great ideas people go to sleep with at night. Jody and I joke around, there's so much stuff that sits in my online folders, this concept that if people knew what we could talk about at least they'd have the option. Mm-mm-mm-mm. What was the challenging circle? Was there any one that, not hard but kind of like, Hmm there's something there-there. I definitely struggled a little bit with the Skills and I guess that's part of the struggles like "What am I really good at and focusing on?" I guess. I know I definitely need to improve my Strategy and planning so I would love for people to be like "That Reeva, she's great at creating a process." Not there yet (chuckles lightly) Alright I'm gonna turn to the audience. Lets both watch this. When it came to Skills, did anybody else find themselves a little bit not hesitant but not as much as fast? Here's why, I believe. We are great at looking out the window we deserve a little more mirror. Here's the thing, if I invited a couple of your girlfriends, a couple of your friends out and I bought the first round, whether it's morning or afternoon, whatever your choice is. If I asked your friends to tell me about the skills you have, how quickly would that list show up for how many of us in this room? So that's the moment when I ask myself Who else needs to know what I'm working on? Who else needs to know the mirror that I'm now holding up? You're gonna hear me say this quite a few times today. Look in the mirror and then look out the window. This is one of my first mirror activities. I love that. Interests. The bridge between, by the way you probably got this, the bridge between Skills and Income is Interests. The moment that I get four, five, six free minutes Which by the way that's what we're working with more and more these days. Found some research out of a business school in Boston and the research proves that most leaders sitting at a desk get interrupted every 182 seconds. Every 182 seconds a message comes in, a beep, a noise, a tap on the shoulder. That pales in comparison to how many times you interrupt yourself. For those of you online, watch this one if I can get a show of hands in the audience. I don't know if we can capture this. I've been talking for about 40 minutes. Quick show of hands, who's thought about something besides me as I've been talking? (crowd laughs) So thank you for being honest. For those of you watching online, you see how quickly this goes. SO forget the outside interruptions, which by the way the reason we're interrupted is they are interested in something. They want our feedback, they want our advice, they want to run something by us or they want to talk about the game or last nights TV show. Whatever they're interested in. I'm a huge fan of Marketing, myself, what I'm interested in, what skills I'd like to hone and where I'm open to the Universe compensating me with income. So lets play around, keep pushing on that Venn diagram and I will come back to you in a couple of weeks most likely and say "What did your friends fill in your Skills lines with?" Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. (crowd applauds) So I will give that same question for those of you watching online. If you'll let yourself have what we call The Gift of Your Own Attention. Really taking a look, again I'll repeat this, but look in the mirror. Really study that woman or that man. What is she great at? What is she not even propensity towards. It's not possible for you not to go to that website, not to pick up that magazine, not to continue reading that book. It's not even an option. Then of course since we're talking about Strategic thinking and we're talking about getting momentum at work, I have to bring in the Income prompt. Twelve months from now, my bank account. Twelve months from now, my book case. Twelve months from now, my experience is gonna come down to who will I make awkward eye contact with? Who will I share what it is that I'm working on, the vision that I've set for the future and then what can I get from them that could push me forward?