The Blog
The emotions, actions and thought processes of my creative work.
This is where I share what I’m doing and why, how I’m thrashing out problems and what I’m trying to achieve.
How Reflecting and Realigning Has Shifted My Content Buckets
There are a few things that clients tell me they’re planning to do that always make me cock my head to the side and ask whether that is the most effective use of their time right now. These things are my alarm bells of procrastination. They’re the things that scream of someone fearful of putting their business out there, and therefore busying themselves with Very Important behind the scenes work that no one will ever see and that won’t make any difference. Updating their website is one of these t
Q3 2020 Review
When I scroll back through the blog I see it was only a few posts ago that I published the quarterly review of Q2, and that, in itself, is an apt metaphor for Q3: the summer months were personally tumultuous and, as such, I struggled both with creativity and being visible in my business. Let’s get into my Q3 2020 review, shall we?
The Fetishisation Of Implementation
“It’s all meaningless unless you’re taking action”. That might not be the exact quote, but I have certainly said words to that effect numerous times over the years. To some extent, I do still believe it: if you’re just thinking about doing something, you’re not really doing it. In order to have a business, a new product, a change of direction you need to take action rather than plan it for six years. I do, however, think that it’s possible to put too much emphasis on action and implementation – and that I have definitely been doing so. There is a true difference between the fetishisation of implementation and actually doing something.
Q2 2020 Review
Welcome to this review of Q2, or as it will henceforth doubtless be known: the lockdown quarter. It has been three months where life and society have turned on their heads, and, as if to illustrate this perfectly, I write this on a storm-ravaged July day as I recall an April heatwave. In the last three months, the ground has shifted, forever, beneath our feet. We are here at the beginning of the most significant civil rights movement in history; we see the wilful negligence of governments to protect their people. We understand, more than we did at the end of Q1, that there is no normal to get back to.
The Final, Scary Leap: Saying It Out Loud
There is nothing left to say, but to say it out loud. As I hinted at in last week’s post, this is the point where you make the change. You’ve given yourself permission, you’ve contemplated the bigger problem, you’ve planned, you’ve crafted – but the change doesn’t happen until you give it life. It is all theoretical until you nudge your baby bird out of the nest and let it fly. You have the final, scary leap.
Being Brave and Actually Making a Change
It is one thing to know a change needs to be made, and another to be brave and actually start making the change. The first is an uneasy place to live, but there is a kind of comfort in it. Strangely, the knowing is enough and becomes an excuse – “I know it’s not right, but I’m not ready/too busy/not the right time to do anything about it.” Because taking action and making the change is a fearful place; it risks failure, risks you not knowing what you’re doing, and risks discomfort. Far easier to sit in the knowledge of “something’s not right” than to head out on the quest to rectify it.
The One Question That Is Changing My Business
Who’d have thought it would only take one simple question to unlock the next phase in my business? It’s one of those “yeah yeah, it’s that easy, ok then” kind of claims. I have never been a fan of the “one thing” narrative because it puts us on a quest to find the one thing forsaking all others, instead of experimenting and finding magic in a mixture of ingredients. Also, it’s just too simplistic. There’s never one thing, but a finely balanced system of lots of little things. But really, this one question started the engine that would elevate my ideas and business to the next level. It is the one question that is changing my business.
What You Need To Know When You Feel Stuck
I created a business that gave everyone what they wanted, except for me. This wasn’t an a-ha moment of a realisation, a time I can pinpoint and say, “that’s when I knew.” It was an ongoing unpeeling of beliefs and actions until I came to terms, with hindsight, that that was the truth of it. I had set my business up for martyrdom. So it is quite a change that I now find myself teaching people to start with what they want, and more so that I am tweaking and transitioning every part of my business so that it works for me first.
Your Big Picture Is In Your Every Day
Do you ever write something and think, “huh, that’s good, I should probably take that on board myself”? I like to think of these moments as your soul, while it wrestles with all your conditioning, throwing a line of rope out to you in the hopes you’ll see it and start pulling. When you’re daydreaming and think, “Wow, that was profound” or explaining something to someone and realise “I never actually looked at it like that before.” These are all little nuggets trying to bring your attention to the knowing and truth inside of you.
My Dirty Secret About Reach - And Embracing The Business I Actually Want
Here’s the thing: there is no immunity from worrying about your numbers. There is no point you can reach where you stop, where you think “I have enough now,” and you can just get on with the stuff you enjoy. The number of people in your audience, whether on Instagram, your mailing list, your Facebook group, is always a source of worry. No matter how many benchmarks you reach, you’ll always be certain that everything will be great just once you reach the next one.
6 Month Goal Check In - Let's Do It Together
This week is the summer solstice, the halfway point of the year. Rather than get in a flap about ‘WHERE THE HELL HAS THIS YEAR GONE?!’, I thought it would perhaps be more productive to do a six month check in on the goals I set for my business back in January.