Articles
Want to innovate but can't create?
Ever had what you thought was a brilliant idea? Ever spent a whole lot of time talking about it but not actually DOING anything about it? Ever spent so much time waiting for some sort of divine intervention that someone else bypassed you with the same idea because it was too good NOT to do? No? Well, I have. I called it a “Coffee Cuff”, which was an unclaimed name at the time. Aaaahhhh, the coffee cuff. So simple…so smart.
My husband actually came up with the idea back in 2001 on a long drive to the family cottage. “Why are coffee sleeves only intended for a single use and why can’t there be a non-disposable version?” This begat a cloth version in my mind which begat a beaded funky version (also in my mind) that people could wear as accessories. Distribution channels, market research, packaging, logos, pricing, marketing all became quite clear and crystallized (again, in my mind).
One problem…I know not thing one about sewing or beading. We bought a $300 sewing machine. I threw a piece of hemp at the machine, but low and behold, it simply wouldn’t make itself.
In the interim, I talked about the idea with anyone who would listen: Who knew what about patents? What were the market trends for coffee? How much would you be willing to pay for a coffee cuff? How would you distribute this? Who do we know at Starbucks HQ?
And still, no prototype. And then I got bored of talking about it…and the idea just kind of died away.
SHOULD you find yourself in the position of having a great idea that you want to get off the ground, you now have the luxury of living in the age of “micromanufacturing”. Create your design, upload it to a site like Ponoko, tell them what material you’d like it created in and they’ll produce it (to 1,000th-of-an-inch precision). You can then set up a store and sell it with Ponoko even taking care of credit-card billing and shipping.
Go ahead…check out “Coffee Coat”. I’m not bitter, really!
No need to cry in your latte for me. I’m wise enough to know that if I'm not moved to fight for something, there is an excellent chance it wasn’t really worth fighting for…likely because it wasn’t in sync with my values. My life purpose is less about innovative creations and more about helping people make powerful and transformative changes in their lives.
I’m right where I need to be right now.
But…if YOU are moved to innovate but lack the means to create…strike that off the list of why it can’t be done. It may not be divine intervention, but it is a kick in the butt.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
When support becomes a crutch
I am a huge proponent of hiring those who are simply “better” at certain tasks than me...and often encourage my clients to do the same. Case in point? I could run 100% of my business on my own. But not very well. As it stands, I have a bookkeeper, a business advisor, an accountability partner, a designer, a coach, a lawyer, and I’ll confess, my husband is my Chief Marketing Officer (the pay’s lousy but the executive retreats are lovely). I will be hiring a PR consultant, a web integrator, and a couple of other pros to help me continue to build my business and support my marketing efforts. Why in the world does a Coach and Program Facilitator need all of those people? Because I’m very good at what I do but NOT at what I don’t do. Nothing ground-breaking there.
Don’t get me wrong, I WISH I was more capable in the realms of social marketing, IP and accounting (ok, not really accounting). I was heartened when a colleague reminded me that the only reason I get hundreds of tweets a day by genius social marketers selling their “how-to reach your customers through twitter” tutorials is due to that fact that few really get how it all works (or so I keep telling myself). Cross that one off my list of things to feel badly about.
Here’s the challenge. While I have the muscles to do many of the tasks described above, they’re undeveloped and weak. So I lean on those who are strong in those areas. But by leaning on them too heavily, I’m not only NOT developing those muscles, but I’m actually sensing that they’re turning into flab. This means that I’m not as limber as I’d like…even in the areas where I feel most competent. When I have a brainwave these days, I feel a need to run it through my team…eliminating much of the spontaneity that has served me so well.
Ultimately, this smacks of an organizational challenge that I was bound to face any given day now. The balance is getting out of whack…and I don’t care for it one bit.
Now that the challenge has been identified here are some solutions for me to consider:
Remember why I’ve surrounded myself with my team of excellence;
Let them do what they do best, freeing me up to do my very best;
Continue to make decisions based on trusting my instincts and information provided by the experts;
Pick areas in my business that I’d like to understand better and build those muscles by asking the experts to tutor me and relinquish all areas that do not interest me (poor accounting); and,
Make mistakes frequently and learn from them.
I’m feeling stronger already.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Betty or Veronica?
After 67 years of playing the field in good ol’ Riverdale USA, Archie finally made his choice: that raven-haired vixen Veronica Lodge. Yup...he's asked her to marry him.
Are you surprised?
According to today’s Globe and Mail, 78% of their readers thought he should have picked Betty. 22% thought he made the right choice.
Why did the overwhelming majority vote in favour of Betty Cooper? I mean….she’s just the same drawing as VL but with blonde hair, right?
I think she represents some of the values that we cherish as a society: loyalty, kindness, generosity, wholesomeness. Veronica, on the other hand is rich, spoiled, unfeeling, uncaring and doesn’t use her manners. Boo hiss.
By picking Veronica, Archie is thumbing his nose at those tenets that we SAY we hold dear and embracing those that we find repugnant…but strangely compelling. He’s validating what we want to repress…good girls finish last…even hot ones.
As a good girl who does use her manners, is kind to the elderly and loves to cook, I of course sided with Betty…and if she really wanted to be with Archie, then so be it. Who am I to judge?
This is just “my stuff” but while I did hope that Veronica would end up with that lousy Reggie, I also secretly hoped Betty would run off and find someone far better than that dopey, fickle, tic-tac-toe-headed, jalopy-driving cheapskate. And while I would have loved for her to do so on her own terms, it’s not what life (or the fine people of Archie Comics Inc) had in store for her. But now she can do just that…find her own way without ever looking back and wondering “what if?”
I do so love happy endings.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Gardening for values
I celebrated the return of neck function by getting busy in my garden with my husband and daughter yesterday. Other than the “champagne problem” of getting sunblock in the eyes, it was a painless, productive and rewarding day. And fun! This morning as I enjoyed my coffee on the back deck and reveled in the rewards of several jobs done well, I realized why it was so satisfying to me. Pretty much every task spoke to my values.
Planting a Wisteria vine - Small, but beautiful. It will take four years for it to bloom, but I like putting down my roots and investing in the future.
Dividing hostas - Yeah yeah…I know we’re late to be doing this. In any case, by dividing hearty plants, it’s giving them room to breathe and thrive. And by proliferating, beauty is spread.
Planting annuals – This is not a good investment (see #1) but I like pretty, bright things…and am impatient for my perennials to flower (as are the bees).
Turfing unwanted plants – I know that the difference between a wildflower and a weed is mere desirability. I also know that I’ve spent the last six years since we’ve bought the house feeling duty-bound to see the beauty in some of these ghastly creatures. It was time to give myself permission…and boy howdy did it feel good. Every plant in the garden is now officially there because we want it to be. We will apply the same liberating logic to the invitation list of our next social gathering.
Planting vegetables I know will never yield a bite – I have never succeeded in serving a single tomato from my garden. Oh, I’ve grown them…but the moment they turn a pinkish hue, the animals of the ravine behind our house establish a war room to draft and execute a coordinated offensive attack on our backyard. I’m pretty sure they flip us the bird as they retreat. In spite of that, at my daughter’s insistence, we planted a bean and carrot patch. And a tomato plant. My husband is plotting some futile defensive measures (likely involving a broom handle and a helmet fashioned from our large colander) but the ravine beasties will nonetheless enjoy a satisfying reprieve from ransacking our garbage.
Seeding the lawn – this is my husband’s thing. He revels in lying on a patch of relatively lush green in our backyard on a sunny summer afternoon. It’s his way of celebrating the little patch of the world we can call our very own. Honouring his values honours mine. (However, our sandy soil is his perpetual white whale—he's giving it one more year before we completely naturalize.)
Sometimes a rose is just a rose. And sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s even more.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Collapsed distinctions
After an amazingly powerful and invigorating final CTI coach training session over the weekend, I came home on Sunday night, collapsed on my couch with an exquisite glass of champagne proffered by my championing husband. We toasted the end of my in-class training and the new chapter of my life as a Life Coach. It was very very lovely to sink into it all. And then, the pain crept into my shoulder. Acute, severe and debilitating. I realize how dramatic that sounds, but it was so. Typing, writing, reading, walking, even talking all gave me, well, a pain in the neck. The pain started in my neck and radiated to my fingertips.
After two days of an ineffective treatment course of Jacuzzis, muscle relaxants, ice packs, more champagne, heating pads and complaining, I finally suspended my life-long disbelief and went to see a chiropractor highly recommended by a friend (Victoria Dixon…makeup artist to and the stars…and me). The diagnosis? Vertebral subluxation. In layman’s terms… a pinched nerve.
The skeletal model of the spinal cord that the chiropractor showed me reminded me of a concept that our course leaders Deborah and David introduced us to: collapsed distinctions. We all have them…and like two vertebrae bearing in on a nerve, they can restrict movement….and cause a great deal of pain.
The chiropractor adjusted me this morning (hence my ability to type this…alas, yoga is still a ways away yet) and relieved some of the pain. This will be a process of adjustment, absorption and repeat.
I can’t help but think that this is what happened to me on Sunday night: “training’s over now you’ve got to DO IT!!!!!!!”. Uh oh. Sounds to me like “new” and “scary” are two distinctions that I need to pull apart so I can move forward. Maybe LEAP forward might be a better description.
Here are some distinctions that may be familiar to you:
• Work = hard
• Sex = love
• Generous = wimpy
• Independent = alone
• Nice = insincere
• Tough = mean
• Easy = not valuable
• Leader = aggressive
• Kind = weak
• Collaborative = simpering
Consider what distinctions you yourself have collapsed. What movement would it give you to pull them apart and adjust accordingly?
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Jumping the shark
It really didn’t take that long. Five short years in fact. Well, maybe more like two. When our daughter turned three, she started to get the notion of “cool”. And we were IT. Yesterday morning we (well, ok, my husband first) officially “jumped the shark”. In suggesting that our daughter put on a hat because it was “funky” (his words) our daughter rolled her eyes suggesting that he was way, way, WAY off the mark. In jest, I asked if Daddy was cool. She looked conflicted (not my intention) and then said truthfully: “no…not really”. OUCH.
We’d had a conversation a couple of nights ago whether we thought we were ever “hip” or not (we agreed that we never were), but to not be cool in the eyes of our five-year-old…harsh stuff! We figured we had at least until she was 10 to revel in some modicum of coolness.
So…onward. Now that we don’t need to worry about being “cool” anymore as we’ve been granted a certain liberation. We don’t need to worry about WHETHER we’re going to embarrass her or not…because it is now a qualified, bona fide certainty that we WILL. It is the legacy of parenthood that very few can evade. We can now focus on making sure our daughter’s tended to, well-fed, well-slept and not running with scissors.
I did a wholly (read: not at all) scientific survey of Facebook Friends. Seventy-three per cent thought that being cool was less important than the other “un-fun” aspects of parenting. Our dear friend Raahool wrote: “This is a recipe for disaster because at some point your kids will be forced to think that you are not [cool] and then you will be forced to over-extend your coolness, which in and of itself is not cool and will lead to scenarios like showing your kids’ friends how you can dance which will seal your uncoolness.”
This is additional relief for Greg and me..again, we’re not really cool (and we dance like no one’s watching…which they are). When it came to being cool, we were faking it (badly).
We’ll not be hiking our pants up to the armpits any time soon, but this does give us room to not bother worrying about sweating the cool stuff. Bottom line: be who you are. Be authentic. Because, let’s face it, trying too hard is simply too hard. And sweating just isn't cool. Just ask the Fonz...pre-shark jump, that is.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.