When I hear someone say "I’m not ready for a relationship" or "I’m not ready to be a good partner", for example, I think, being in a relationship is how you learn to be a partner and how you learn to love. Relationships and marriage are people-growing machines. In relationship is always life-altering. You can’t learn to swim on land. So of course you’re not ready for the thing you`re scared of and the thing that needs doing. Nobody is. Even when you think you’re ready, you’re probably wrong. When I decided to have children and got pregnant with my first child -- the magnificent Sophie Umaringa, teenage leader of rallies -- I thought I was ready. And then, when she arrived as a cosmic privilege and burden, an eternal marvel and responsibility, a whole person with a buffet of needs and demands, and an instant and continuous attenuation of my own selfishness, I knew – and I know every day – that I was not ready. I was and am wrenchingly unprepared. I am not an instinctual saint equipped with The Answers but a desperately loving and flawed person who is striving to rise. Striving to be the mama this young culture-maker needs. Striving to become the kind of person and leader and learner our new world needs. Ready is always, always, ALWAYS the wrong litmus test. The real question is: Are you willing to do whatever it takes to get ready? Because we get ready by *doing* it. not ready but willing, Kelly Diels #LevelUpYourLife #MotivationalSpeaker #Mindset #Creative #BuildingYourLegacy #WeAreTheCultureMakers #SlowProductivity #MeaningfulWork #SustainableBusiness #Speaker #Writer #UseYourLife #SelfDevelopment #LeadershipDevelopment
An epiphany from late 2018: I was scrambling to find time for a new collaboration. Witnessing this in live action, my collaborator, PK Mutch (Petra), said to me, with been-there-done-that sympathy, "That`s what women do -- we scale horizontally." I immediately recognized that this was why my business wasn`t working the way I wanted it to -- but I didn`t know how to fix it. A few days later, I went out with a colleague I`d worked with a long time ago at a huge telecom. She started talking about the new `vertical` she was managing. Suddenly it all clicked. The telecomm as a whole had lots of services, lots of clients and lots of offers, sure; but each vertical HAD ITS OWN TEAM and its own content. It was a unit unto itself. That`s how they got traction in each of those verticals and how the company as a whole did well. By focusing on one client and one offer. What I had done, in my own business, was the opposite of that. I had one team (me) but many verticals. Several different client profiles, several different offers. For years, my biz strategy was to constantly invent new programs and offers --and create all new launch material to go with them. ⠀ ⠀ I was always inventing and overworking. ⠀ As a result, I never quite got traction on ANY of my offerings, so I was always scrambling for cash AND constantly on the verge of burn out.⠀ That`s why my business wasn`t getting the momentum I was hoping for, and why I was personally exhausted. I wasn`t concentrated in ONE vertical; instead, I`d scaled horizontally across many. And I was only one person! So how do you stop scaling horizontally? You create a signature piece of intellectual property that becomes the centre of your business. A signature program is a way to do less while making more. _____________ I`m Kelly Diels, an expert on Culture Making, Thought Leadership and IP. I teach culture-making entrepreneurs & creators how to develop a substantial body of work that changes EVERYTHING – your life, your industry, our world.
Marketing, social media and deliberate self-promotion aren’t a distraction. They’re activities that add up to a winning and significant body of work. They`re not a distraction from ideation. They ARE your ideas. Here are 3 counterintuitive but KEY activities for Thought Leaders to commit to for putting their ideas out into the world, developing their body of work and moving forward in their business: 1. SOCIAL MEDIA. It`s not *just* about getting attention. Social media can be a lab for cultivating your ideas, so put snippets of ideas out on social, every day. 2. NETWORKING. Having conversations with interesting people -- even preaching to boring ones -- provides creative stimulus and opportunities to forge creative connections and embroider your ideas. 3. WILD IDLING. True thought leadership & meaningful bodies of work require unstructured leisure time and “wild idling.” (h/t @LianneRaymond) ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING: Self-promotion is not a distraction from your body of work. It’s part of how you create meaningful work that matters. It`s an idea-growing practice. _____________ I`m Kelly Diels, an expert on Culture Making, Thought Leadership and IP. I teach culture-making entrepreneurs & creators how to develop a substantial body of work that changes EVERYTHING – your life, your industry, our world. #BodyOfWork #MakingAnImpact #ThoughtLeader #ContentStrategy #LevelUpYourBusiness #CreativeEntrepreneur #CreativeEntrepreneurship #IntentionalBusiness #BrandingIdentity #SocialMediaForBusiness #SocialEntrepreneur #IntellectualProperty
Are you wrestling with Imposter Complex? This might help. #impostersyndrome #impostercomplex #thoughtleadership #creativeentrepreneur #intellectualproperty #bodyofwork #WeAreTheCultureMakers #deepwork #slowproductivity #visibility #edwardsaid #orientalism #culturalexile #yourdifferenceisyourstrength www.kellydiels.com
Dear Multi-Passionate Maker,⠀ ⠀ Maybe you don`t have Shiny Object Syndrome.⠀ ⠀ Maybe you`ve been studying & practicing all of these modalities because you`re developing a rich body of work, across time.⠀ ⠀ (No maybe about it.)⠀ ⠀ Multi-passionate professionals often get told that they`re "scattered" & need to focus.⠀ ⠀ They then internalize negative messages insisting that their orientation towards lifelong learning, curiosity & creativity is a barrier to success.⠀ ⠀ IT`S NOT.⠀ ⠀ It`s how we build the deep work & creative solutions needed for these urgent times.⠀ ⠀ Often, when I work with multi-passionate professionals, it`s wildly obvious to me that they`re collecting tools, synthesizing across traditions -- and making a whole new thing! -- in order to solve complex social problems.⠀ ⠀ They`ve been gathering all.the.tools.⠀ ⠀ You know what all those tools add up to? ⠀ ⠀ A practice. A way of doing things. A framework. Your unique process.⠀ ⠀ ***You have a methodology.*** ⠀ ⠀ So let`s build language for it and NAME IT, specifically.⠀ Naming your method makes it tangible AND SALEABLE.⠀ ⠀ Now it now gets a lot easier to explain it to other people...⠀ ⠀ ...and becomes more obvious why they might want to work with you :)⠀ ⠀ Once you name it, you substantiate it. ⠀ ⠀ ****Including to yourself.****⠀ ⠀ Now YOU can see how everything you`ve trained in has led up to this, has prepared you for this work.⠀ ⠀ Because, dear Multi-passionate Maker, you`re NOT spinning your wheels or getting distracted by shiny things.⠀ ⠀ You`re growing the solutions & institutions of the future.⠀ ⠀ Let`s make sure you`ve got the language to describe them. ⠀ ⠀ love + justice,⠀⠀ Kelly⠀ #SurfaceYourMethodology #IntellectualProperty #DeepWork #BodyOfWork #SlowProductivity #ThoughtLeadership #ThoughtLeader #MeaningfulWork #WeAreTheCultureMakers