Blog
Welcome to
My Blog
Recent
Let’s Get Off This Ride and Get Justice
All of us who are committed culture-makers need to connect the dots on injustice, and undo it in our lives, social media, and businesses.
Me and The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand. The Personal Backstory.
From 2008-2013(ish), I was performing a character and a life as a client attraction strategy because that’s what I learned to do from the online marketers.
Reinventing the Online Summit
Here’s a non-exploitative, successful, feminist model for online summits (while staying in alignment with your social justice principles!)
How To Sell Without Selling Out Your Principles
There once was a radical commercial full of righteous body diversity that seemed to be a fist in the air for equity and inclusion. It wasn’t.
The Language of Activism, Feminism and Revolution is Not For Sale
When entrepreneurs and marketers appropriate the language of activism, we devalue the sacrifice and bloody efforts of true activists and culture-changers.
You are a Person, Not a Court-Room. You Don’t Need Evidence.
If I think something is inappropriate, and I don’t want it in my life, that’s all I need to say to take action.I don’t need evidence. I need boundaries.
confessions about “calling in”
Calling In is a refinement conversation we have with people who have a documented history of doing intersectional justice work — not for people who don’t.
The Body, Stored Stress, and The Politics of Resentment
The politics of resentment isn’t about stored stress, but it is about the body. It’s about which bodies deserve rights and resources.
The Patriarchal Promise, Part 1
The Patriarchal Promise means being in the possession of an abundant livelihood, influence, respect, a beautiful subservient woman and her sexuality (or several), and a family. In your sphere, whether it be public or private, you are the authority and you are owed not only respect but deference. (Indeed, when patriarchs express distress because they don’t…
Getting Naked, Getting Paid, and Empowerment AKA It’s NOT Only About Your Intentions
Just because a woman who has what a lot of us want tells us what she does is empowering doesn’t make it so. Discerning between impact and intentions is key.
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
Apr 24
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.
Apr 23
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
Apr 19
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
Apr 18
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
Apr 18
