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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.⁠
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Relationships and marriage are people-growing machines. In relationship is always life-altering. You can’t learn to swim on land.⁠
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So of course you’re not ready for the thing you're scared of and the thing that needs doing. Nobody is.⁠
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Even when you think you’re ready, you’re probably wrong.⁠
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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.⁠
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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.⁠
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I was and am wrenchingly unprepared.⁠
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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.⁠
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Ready is always, always, ALWAYS the wrong litmus test.⁠
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The real question is:⁠
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Are you willing to do whatever it takes to get ready?⁠
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Because we get ready by *doing* it.⁠
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not ready but willing,⁠
Kelly Diels⁠
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#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.⁠
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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."⁠
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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.⁠
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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.⁠
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Suddenly it all clicked.⁠
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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.⁠
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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.⁠
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What I had done, in my own business, was the opposite of that.⁠
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I had one team (me) but many verticals. Several different client profiles, several different offers.⁠
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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.⁠⠀⁠
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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.⁠
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And I was only one person!⁠
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So how do you stop scaling horizontally?⁠
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You create a signature piece of intellectual property that becomes the centre of your business.⁠
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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.⁠
Marketing, social media and deliberate self-promotion aren’t a distraction.⁠
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They’re activities that add up to a winning and significant body of work.⁠
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They're not a distraction from ideation. They ARE your ideas.⁠
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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:⁠
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1. SOCIAL MEDIA.⁠
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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.⁠
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2. NETWORKING.⁠
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Having conversations with interesting people -- even preaching to boring ones -- provides creative stimulus and opportunities to forge creative connections and embroider your ideas.⁠
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3. WILD IDLING.⁠
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True thought leadership & meaningful bodies of work require unstructured leisure time and “wild idling.” (h/t @LianneRaymond)⁠
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ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING:⁠
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Self-promotion is not a distraction from your body of work.⁠
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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.⁠
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#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,⁠⠀⁠
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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.⁠⠀⁠
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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⠀⁠
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#SurfaceYourMethodology #IntellectualProperty #DeepWork #BodyOfWork #SlowProductivity #ThoughtLeadership #ThoughtLeader #MeaningfulWork #WeAreTheCultureMakers⁠