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Clear The Way! (A Culture-Making Tool.)
Clearing the way means looking for the daily road-blocks and friction and clearing internalized limits and biases that block personal power.
on “lying to ourselves”. (I’m not so sure we do.)
“Lying to ourselves” is a lie. When we build our analysis about money and power, we can see through the lies — and that’s how we get free.
Are You On Your Own Team?
Likeability is a trap is weaponized against women and girls, to prevent us from being on our own team, taking care of ourselves, and pursuing our dreams.
Dear Culture Maker: Do you want power?
Power can be generative and beneficial for everyone involved, rather than destructive and coercive. Here’s how to grow and steward your right use of power.
nope, ‘Queen’ is not a feminist business model
We need to aspire to be feminist entrepreneurs and leaders and CULTURE MAKERS who take care of each other rather than exploit and prey on each other.
How To Get Free
Getting free and healing is never one-and-done. Especially when the source of injury in an oppressive culture that wants you to disappear — remains.
On Culture Breaking and Culture Making. For when you’re frustrated with other change-makers.
Culture change needs many things, we don’t need to be frustrated with someone for not doing the thing we think is important. WE can do that one thing.
teeth. time. zooming out. POWER.
We internalize messages about individual defects but when we zoom out and look at the bigger picture of social structures, we see things differently.
The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, Mental Triggers, and Weaponized Imperfection
How privilege gets displayed AND LEVERAGED in our social media feeds — in pictures of our hair, kids, counter-tops, vacations, dinners and everyday life.
For Me, Copywriting Equals Livelihood and Power (And I Trust You With Power and Resources)
Writing is a form of power. It gives us the ability to create new norms & realities. Copywriting, in particular, can change the trajectory of your business.
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. ⠀
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I was always inventing and overworking.
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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.
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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.
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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,⠀
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Maybe you don`t have Shiny Object Syndrome.⠀
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Maybe you`ve been studying & practicing all of these modalities because you`re developing a rich body of work, across time.⠀
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(No maybe about it.)⠀
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Multi-passionate professionals often get told that they`re "scattered" & need to focus.⠀
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They then internalize negative messages insisting that their orientation towards lifelong learning, curiosity & creativity is a barrier to success.⠀
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IT`S NOT.⠀
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It`s how we build the deep work & creative solutions needed for these urgent times.⠀
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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.⠀
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They`ve been gathering all.the.tools.⠀
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You know what all those tools add up to? ⠀
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A practice. A way of doing things. A framework. Your unique process.⠀
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***You have a methodology.*** ⠀
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So let`s build language for it and NAME IT, specifically.⠀
Naming your method makes it tangible AND SALEABLE.⠀
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Now it now gets a lot easier to explain it to other people...⠀
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...and becomes more obvious why they might want to work with you :)⠀
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Once you name it, you substantiate it. ⠀
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****Including to yourself.****⠀
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Now YOU can see how everything you`ve trained in has led up to this, has prepared you for this work.⠀
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Because, dear Multi-passionate Maker, you`re NOT spinning your wheels or getting distracted by shiny things.⠀
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You`re growing the solutions & institutions of the future.⠀
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Let`s make sure you`ve got the language to describe them. ⠀
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love + justice,⠀⠀
Kelly⠀
#SurfaceYourMethodology #IntellectualProperty #DeepWork #BodyOfWork #SlowProductivity #ThoughtLeadership #ThoughtLeader #MeaningfulWork #WeAreTheCultureMakers
Apr 18
