Blog – Page 2

The more I seek information, the worse it gets.

The more I read what the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has put out in information for the public in Michigan, Vermont, New York, and in Alabama, the more it is clear that we must be vigilant to call, email, write, and show up as citizens. They are telling us in print in the reports that our own fields have been sludge and leech contamination sources for decades. No one is going to voluntarily take responsibility for the contamination…and multiple agencies FAILED to protect our land, our river and our citizens.

How to’s and Why’s

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Isn’t learning a powerful thing? I work with entrepreneurs weekly who are actively seeking to learn new skills. The remarkable thing I’ve come to notice the last few years is there are multiple components of the successful learner. The first component has to do with desiring to learn. The individual or team has an open mind, an inquisitive spirit that says “what can I do to change the outcome?” It’s a simple thing but that “I” in the middle of the question has a significant impact on the next actions that happen. You see we are each responsible for the actions that matter in our own lives.

Learning can happen, skills can be learned, but if one does not understand the scope and sequence of the skills involved, there can be much effort without outcome. Scope and sequence understanding allows the individual or team to construct and deconstruct areas of their training, business offerings or product processes. When you know what value each part of a business or skill sequence is, it’s much easier to identify what is working and not working in your business. Many entrepreneurs I work with have spent years on building things: websites, papers, products, programs, but they did not understand the value of audience share, pre-marketing communications, sales scripts, or easy user interface, and such so the products simply didn’t have anywhere to go. A restaurant can have the best recipes and service in town but it will not be found if no one knows what it serves or where it is located. Components of success often involve communication both internally and externally.

In sales trainings, we often are told we must know our “why’s”. I think this is true on many levels in business. We thrive when we have a solid set of foundational understandings or “whys” of the reasons we choose to be in business. Our decisions are more easily made when we have a clearly communicated knowledge of “why” we do the steps we do in business. Our trainings and service procedures are more often followed when the user or employee understands the value or the “why” of what is required of them or the service to achieve success. When we identify and affirm the “whys” of our daily life actions, it is easier to accommodate the need for them in our own daily actions. When we know the “how to’s” and “whys” of our actions, we build a strong alliance in our daily lives.

Decluttering is a popular topic on all fronts of living. Successful learners have a great need for decluttering as well. To learn effectively, we each must identify and remove all that clutters the process of attention or actions. Recently I had to make difficult decisions about my life in business. There were many emotional clusters of clutter around a set of a specific organization and decisions. When I put on paper the outcomes I needed to achieve and deconstructed the known process to achieve the goals at hand, I recognized many unproductive items and relationships that were “cluttering” the process of daily life and business. Whether it is unnecessary time disruptors or too many activities that prevent ease in action, decluttering our business and personal lives to reflect what we truly value matters.

For too long I had carried some activities that were neither business nor friendship, those activities were often emotionally draining, physically taxing for time, and financially expensive to support, but I had allowed emotional clutter to keep the activities in my processes of weekly work and schedule. However when I looked at the operation activities for business, that which was producing enjoyment and success in my life and the life of my business, I found that too often the desire to avoid emotional push backs had overridden good business decisions.

Once I decluttered the emotional concerns of releasing the non productive parts of relationships, and in some cases, the relationships themselves, to the requirements of a client to be “good for business” and “supporting positive interactions” changes were easy to enact. Our “whys” provide an easy to compare value when decisions must be made. “Does this align with my personal and professional values?” “Am I committing to something that is a win for our client, for our team, for our community?” These types of questions certainly helps my business engage and release opportunities that may or may not be a fit for our business. Like a shoe that is the wrong size, a client or potential project that isn’t a fit for your business or values is better left on the shelf than removed after pain is suffered.

As we learn we grow. As we gain experience we have the opportunity to revisit what is working and not working in our lives. The joy of learning is that we can choose to take time to improve, relearn, or release wrong learning from our lives. I highly prize the gift of learning, for it brings almost unlimited possibilities if I am willing to engage its gifts.

How many hats do you wear in your life roles?

Notes for the Journey with Sweetie Berry

How many roles are you performing in your life? I don’t know about you, but in mine, it’s like one woman play some days and I’m the starring performer, the understudy, the crew and at times it seems the ticket box staff, too. I think I am the comic relief as well. 🙂 Can you relate? As an entrepreneur trainer, one of the most important conversations I encourage my staff and my clients to have is this one:

What matters to you?

What roles bring you the experience of joy?

What are the unexpected happies that happen in your world when you do what you do?

Personally, if I am with creatives who are focused on their gifts, their intentional actions to build whatever they are building and there’s great fellowship while we do the work, I’m a happy camper. What does that for you?

Folks like to talk about defining your role as in “I’m a plumber”. That is a one word answer that spans hundreds of different skills. That may be an identifiable term for many folks, but really, do you KNOW what a plumber does? Is a plumber who works in your home different from one who works for the city? What about a corporate plumber versus a rural one? Nothing is as easy as defining a life with a word. Perhaps the better mode is to identify what it is you seek to be or become. The answers may change as you go, for once I was simply a teacher, later I could say a training professional, and later still I could say a hybrid strategist for authors, speakers, and creatives.

At fifty-one there are many more hats that I could wear, and most times the goal is simply to recognize which ones still fit and which ones need to be retired. Isn’t it important to choose carefully how we spend our time? It’s such a precious resource and as I focus more on my own well-lived life, there are many hats I am beginning to retire. Hats such as the one who is willing to work harder for other’s success than my own. Hats that are for skills or talents that are not my personal ones and are better served by those who flourish for that gifting. Hats that are too small now, like limited perspectives and narrow views that I previously didn’t know better than to believe Experience is a wonderful teacher if you’ll allow wisdom her space in your life.

How Many Hats

In my world I cultivate projects that empower people. It is tremendously happy work for me, though taxing it times. Often it is speaking into life and then following through with actions that matter consistently tough things to do. It is a wide definition, but so are my skills and projects.. If you want to narrow the focus, I will tell you that I work with well-able thinkers who are creatives and desire to enact their ideas. Even narrower still is I am a ghost writer, a wordsmith, a copy and content creator, an educator who works with well-able creatives and entrepreneurs, and an adept platform and curriculum builder who enjoys identifying and actuating strategic alignments for experiential and product sales success. Whew, that’s a mouthful, maybe I should look at the book for one word answers again. That still doesn’t cover all the roles I do, but it gives on the concept of where it all comes from.

What hats do you wear? Daily I’m a bride to my husband, a mom and stepmom to our four original children and about eight other chosen ones who have come through our doors in life as young adults, I’m a business owner of two businesses, a writer, and success strategist. …and I like to throw in and a full time avoider of laundry. I’m a friend, a lover to my husband, a community member and a singer and lover of music. The hats just go on and on. I bet you have many hats to wear in the roles of your life too.

However the most important hat I wear? The one that says I’m me, the one that knows I am uniquely human, flawed, and learning as I go to live this life obediently to the God I worship and so adore. That hat fits no matter what size I am, no matter where I go or what I do.

What hats are you wearing these days? Which ones bring you joy?

Are you considering the needs?

Focusing Success, Notes for the Journey with Sweetie Berry

How many times have you thought “I know there are people looking for my services or this type of class” but you’re challenged to find them through the conversations, web pages and methods you are using.

My introduction to achieving an audience was more like shooting fish in a barrel. My first audiences were engaged because the activities I was offering were based in engagement of fun at camps. Campers had a choice to fish, learn archery, swim, learn a craft, or to do a project. I was in charge of archery. (someone obviously didn’t know my skill level at archery, which is akin to sending a mouse to do a lion’s work) But by day two my audience of attendees had become the second largest group at the camp, and you might be surprised why. I was obviously the worst bowyer in the universe, I didn’t know how to shoot an arrow within 50 yards of a target, and my vision made it unlikely that would change, but each day more and more campers came. It’s not much different now that I’m an strategist for authors, speakers, and small businesses.

Folks who are ready to learn/engage/experience new experiences need to know 3 basic things:

a) What the learning is and how the learning occur (it helps to know also that no one will be humiliated or made fun of…regardless of the age or level of engagement, safe environments matter and you’d be surprised how much that is true)

b) What will they receive if they do the work (outcomes objectives matter, it’s all about the language, the need and the understanding of the goal)

c) If they desire to go forward, engagement with the class/offering/opportunity will be doable and enjoyable. (notice I didn’t say pain free or without effort, stretching, learning, re-learning can be an effort, but a worthwhile one)

At the archery area, I had to admit that I was simply not an expert in archery (that might have been painfully obvious by the first arrow I shot) , but I shared I would be well versed on the actions that mattered, learn with them and help them figure out which bow and arrow they needed to succeed, how to gain the ability to pull the bow string, how to choose an arrow and then to aim it, and laugh alot along the way. My technique is not far different regardless of what I teach.

While I was not an archery expert, I was a skillful identifier of base understanding and vocabulary, of procedures and directions for success with a bow and arrow, and with daily effort by the second week of camp I was quite good at what didn’t work and gaining ground on how to shoot accurately, which made me a better instructor. I did the work, I did the learning myself, and by summer’s end I was an exceptional bowyer despite my poor vision.

My mistakes, openly made with dialogue, allowed others to see their own. I demonstrated (and often by accident) what didn’t work, campers saw what did work first hand, and they respected the effort as well as we cheered each other own. Group interaction while engaging is another great way to build your business. Masterminds are not always for paid experiences, sometimes the group interactions are wonderful try before you buy experiences to see that folks gathered are a benefit when carefully grouped. The reason I am paid well as a consultant is my experiences allow for the mistakes and potential for mistakes in processes to be identified more quickly and my successes support identifying what matters in building products, creating curriculums and gaining audience share of purchasers.

In business I have a specific set of skills and services that I teach. When a newcomer hears of me or searches for me, they need to know what I do, they need to be able to assess if the level of the skills and services I offer is a “fit” for their level of business, and then they need to know that they can count on me to make sure that the learning/services fits their needs and/or the target of the instruction/consulting is appropriate for their level of skill understanding. They need opportunities to engage me at the level they can, sometimes that is pre-recorded processes, which are my ease to access price point. Others need to have a directed plan, so they may buy a conversation/consult and then work with videos and resources the rest of the way. Still others want a one to one or one to some experience, and that’s great for the folks who want guidance through a new process or improvement on an old one that isn’t as successful as it could be.

Very few folks engage if any of those areas are not answered before they begin. Even fewer remain if the goals are not introduced, addressed, and followed through.

Not every person is a fit for your skills, your services, or your personality. Can I hear an “amen” on that? I’m a high analytic, high creative personality. You’re not going to be comfortable with me if you’re looking for linear conversation or thinking that is slow paced or repetitive. It’s simply not who I am. I voice or teach through a single perspective, but on the whole, I’m going to speak from both sides of the street analytically and creatively. It’s not enough to know the how in most businesses, but the why and the how for most parts of your business. When value is placed on knowing when, how, and why you do what you do in business, enrollees learn!

Do you know how many folks offer an online or offline experience and never take the time to converse with their client except to upsell them again? They leave the most valuable part of the engagement with the client to chance. The relationship.

Critical mistake.

Your clients, your engaged listeners, audience, or purchasers are an important source of your success. Their movement through your offerings, their feedback is precious stuff. When we take time to listen, real time conversations and emailed ones, we can learn what is truly the market need for our services and perhaps even the next products you need to develop.

But how do you begin? How do you get that first group together? You invite them in, you may ask folks to simply let you help them. You may offer to teach at a community gathering, college, or college class. You may choose to go to a networking group or ask your social channel peeps to come taste of what you’re offering for free with the the intention of being of service to your attendees and then engaging them again to learn even more before you try to offer for a price that which they need more specifically.

Building your audience begins with building your experience and that means simply beginning. Begin to explore practicing your process. Begin to explore recording and listening to your process. Seek ways to be of service to others and then pay attention to that which is needed. Audiences are simple to find when you have engaged an understanding of actions that matter, the scope of who it matters to, and the knowledge of why and how to do it.

Are you ready to develop your audience? Develop the value that your potentials need in their outcomes and you’ll develop your audience when the two intersect.

Is your business broken?

Focusing Success

Isn’t your definition of success a very personal choice? There are lovely speeches about what success is, one particular one, from a navy commander starts with encouraging each of us to make our bed. You see, by willfully beginning something with a completion in the morning, we’re told you set the stage for success. I agree. Sometimes the only way forward is to shatter your vision of what you’re seeing and reconstruct the pieces into a new picture.

The mind is a funny thing. It can create stories that we tell ourselves and they may have nothing to do with what the spreadsheet says about success. Our minds may also throw up information that has nothing to do with our lack of success. Success is about actions that matter. However I also believe that most of the success that matters is only affirmed by the presence of outcomes on a spreadsheet, but I believe most of the work that matters doesn’t show up in numbers.

Money success in business is but one part of what makes business work. It begins with clarity of focus:

What do I do for whom doing what, with the intention of the outcome being what?

The business clients I work with in sales strategy or online development strategy often cannot answer the above question. I encourage clients to explore the words and take time to write 8 to 10 responses to it until they find what they truly seek to do in 3 areas. I find most creatives and well able business folks have three core offerings when they are focused on success. Too often we do too much, I know I have to consistently realign my core offerings and/or branch off another business for when I spread my team and myself too thin, we begin to make perhaps income, but we do not make much life.

Is your business broken when it comes to supporting your life? Are you doing too much for too many? Are you worrying too often for too many areas of life? Is clarity lacking in your understanding of what your business is?

I know this place. Last year I had my best income year professionally, and my near the worst year personally in the business. Family life flourished as we learned new skills, but oh the cost of the learning. Successful was not the word I would use for what that felt like. While it was true that we had a wonderful stretching of what we can do as a business, we also had an even better experience of learning what we no longer wanted to do in business.

Maybe your business is broken because you’re doing too much?

Maybe your business is broken because you do not know what to do.

Maybe your business is broken because you are not doing a business that is in alignment with your desires and gifts.

Maybe your business is broken because your heart and mind survived, but hasn’t thrived past a story you are telling yourself.

Sometimes we simply need to look through the lens of someone else’s eyes, or ears, to hear what is broken with our choices. It all comes down to choices in the end, will you choose to continue to do what you’ve already done, or will you continue to ignore what you’re doing? So often we are telling ourselves that the schedule, the actions, the intention is engaged, but are they? My Grandfather Geddie said the richest men were those who knew what they did, what they didn’t do, and how to live in harmony with their values, their neighbors and their wives. I agree. My own version is this:

Choosing is a choice. Am I choosing to be the person I desire to be? Am I enacting a life plan for today that brings peace to my heart, unity with my desired outcomes and harmony with my family and intended life goals? Am I taking time to be gain learning, perspective, and reflective distance to navigate my life? Will I rest this night because I lived a well-lived life based in the values I have chosen to enact in my life? Will my life actions reflect good stewardship of the gift of existing?

Perhaps if you perceive your business is broken, it’s time to stop what you’re doing for just a day or 3. To write down, talk through, and remember why you are choosing what you are choosing. Perhaps it’s time to realign where you are putting your emphasis, engagement, and energy. I find that when I do this, my broken parts of my business are very evident and actions that matter can be taken. Are you ready to own your life and make it your own? It begins with asking the question.

Time Awareness: A Recipe for Success

Notes for the Journey with Sweetie Berry, Recipe for Success

When it comes to leveling the playing field of life, there is one factor which is essential to each person’s success: Time Management Awareness. I spent years setting goals for the future, making sure that the “future’ was protected but there wasn’t much value in how each day was lived. It was an expensive lesson in how continually reaching goals doesn’t mean winning in life.

Last week I shared some of the questions that I personally asked and continue to ask myself. What would make today better? How do I want to engage my life today? What matters to me? A Southerner, I have long had concepts of the roles I sought to be in life. Family is important to me, not just having one, but liking and loving the one we are. Having time to create, for as a creative when I do not, I am less of a joy to be around. Gatherings matter to me, whether its gathering cohorts in service to others, or in gathering friends around the table. However, “winning” “striving” “completing” were heavy values growing up and too often I created rules for myself that left out the “why’s” of why the values might be of value to my life.

Have you heard the story of the ham? How the daughter carefully cut the ham in half each holiday and put it into two pans? Many years passed and her husband asked why, “because mom did it that way and she made the BEST hams” Only to find out later that Mom did it only because her pan was too small.

Time can be that way. We split our time because our life can become too small if we choose to say “yes” to too many things. Our life becomes small when we repetitively choose to do actions that do not matter with the time we have.

When’s the last time you relaxed and had fun with those you love?

When’s the last time you remember taking a day just for your own needs?

How is your time management affecting the order and calm in your life?

Where are you burning up time doing things you really prefer not to do?

What are the rules about time that you’re lying to yourself about?

This year our family made some mighty changes in the way we identified and then organized our time. We are both pretty traditional thinkers, from a world that worked 8 to 5 daily. Part of the new awareness, after burying count them nine family members in 18 months, is if we don’t choose to live a well-lived life existence TODAY, tomorrow is sometimes not an option.

If the only evaluation of your life was build on THIS 24 hours, how would you fare? What would change about where you spent your time? Who would you wish to spend time with? How would you spend your day? I kept asking that question over and over again in 2015 and it caused a good bit of reconsideration of how each day was spent.

Considering and thinking about it is not changing. Only actions create change. Are you doing the actions that matter in your life where spending your time wisely is concerned?

Time management is a deep subject. It’s so much more than how much can you fit into a day or period in business. Are you ready to really have a moment of “wow”? I know I did when I used a planner to track every.living.moment last year. I committed to writing down for first 5 days, every task, every part of my waking hours. I wanted to see what I thought my life was filled with versus what it actually was filled with. You see we fool ourselves often thinking we are taking care of ourselves, working productively, and believing that we “have to” deal with this or that or that something isn’t really taking very long…or takes forever. (personally I think cleaning the kitchen takes 77 years, but it turns out only about 12 minutes if I sweep the floor too…ouch.) I lived in a world where the kitchen disappointed me daily for years for the lack of dealing with 12 minutes every night? I probably spent more than that feeling ashamed that I was not an organized home keeper daily.

What are your concepts of time costing you? Literally?

One of my friends is a brilliant trainer, she has the gift of teaching, or reaching smart women and sharing in such a way that they are able to begin changing their mindset. That time with others energizes her, brings joy to her heart, yet she only allows it to happen about 4 times a year? Why? Because she feels personally taking care of the chores she sometimes even abhors is more important in her time management than scheduling more events that would PAY for someone to do what she abhors and that they LOVE to do.

Time management has something to do with that scenarios too. How are you spending your time? How are you defining time spent as “necessary” or “required”? We live with the rules between our ears. Often without rhythm or rhyme to “today’s” need or situation. What rules in your head may be creating a time drain in your daily life? What are you tolerating instead of tackling to change what you want to happen to identifying what NEEDS to happen? Isn’t it important to let go of those items in your day that aren’t productive for your life or your living?

Personally, that’s part of the quest I’m on this year, to find “enough” in each day, to create a well-lived life EVERY day. How’s it going? Well I can share with you this…we’ve had more joy, more gatherings, more laughter, and more quiet time by the fire each week so far. It’s hard to let go of striving, of spending time in ways I assumed I was supposed to, but as I gather the courage to ask “is this the well-lived life I wish to spend my 24 hours on?” I find that the answers are changing, and the joy in my heart is too.

How is time management affecting what you choose to spend your well-lived life?