Transcript

0:01

A good question here about when there is a transition in your life or an upcoming transition where you see that there's going to be a possibility for great ChatGPT. Small change, great change. How do you plan your business life, I guess, during this time of transition? It's a great question because, well, transition and unknowns, well, kind of opening of possibility means that it's hard to plan. And so I think the first thing is to allow gentleness for yourself that there might not be the perfect answer or the right structure for you at this time.

0:52

And it's almost certain that whatever structure you create right now is going to change when the change happens or when the change matures. So I think that it's obviously we still need to get up and, you know, feed ourselves and to, you know, check our email or whatever. So let me let me share with you what grounds me in my business planning. Hopefully, this will be helpful. I look forward to seeing your comments below.

1:25

So I created this thing that I you know, it's my framework. My overall framework, the 8 practices of authentic business, you probably have heard about it or if you haven't, you can Google it and find it. And when if and when I'm in those times of great transition and and confusion myself. I go back to those 8 practices and just to run them through quickly because I have I have several videos about this. I blog posts.

1:54

I don't have to then do, like, a 20 minute teaching about that. But just to run them through and why grounds me and what you might want to think about, well, how can I pick something from these practices, whether from all 8 or from just a few of them? Okay? To to ground you as you prepare for the transition because well, the fact that these practices have existed for me for years they've helped me through transitions, and they've helped me even during, obviously, during the both the stable times and the very roller coaster times. The first practice is joyful productivity.

2:29

A lot of you know that stuff well that I talk about. There's a whole suite of practices within geographic productivity. But the essential questions that we begin with are how is your first of all, how is your well-being structure? Now the person who asked a question is a specialist about well-being. So, you know, you you have your own modalities and your own wisdom, but it's just a reminder to first get that in before you have a structure for, you know, beginning your work day, ending your work day.

3:05

So those 2 are also grounding for me for dufry productivity is even though we might be in the transition and want to allow ourselves to create a completely new structure, there still is a beginning and end to each day. Of course, the cycles of the day. And therefore, in my opinion, there needs to be a beginning and an end to each work day as well. So whether you work for 1 hour a day or you work for 10 hours a day, there's a beginning and an end. So the question is how do you begin and how do you end?

3:43

So joyful productivity, there's a whole lot there, but that's that's 2 percent of charge off activity right there. Right? The first 2 percent. Right? And then healthy money is the second practice, which no matter the transition you're probably still gonna be working with money no matter what country you you go to.

4:01

So this that that this it's a question. Is how are you going to ground your money system, give you bookkeeping, your tracking of income expenditures, your planning forward for your business, especially during transition. You might look forward and say, well, I know that after the transition, if I'm gonna be moving to another country like I am right now, what does that mean? How are costs going to change? And what therefore might I want to plan for my business?

4:33

What what's the income requirement that I would have? Or is it going to be higher income requirement or lower? And what are my expenses? Is that your health healthy money is the second 1? Third 1 is authentic content creation.

4:47

And I'm not just saying this because I think everyone should be creating content from the day they were born until the day they die. Which I think is true. No. Maybe maybe babies I can give them a pass for the first 3 or 4 years. But starting at h 5, no.

5:01

So Content creation, I think, is especially important during transition. It's so funny I would say this because when you are looking at the possibility of changing your business, changing the things you talk about in your business, you can you have essentially 2 choices. You can go into the closet, metaphorically speaking, sure and all for a year. And then come out supposedly with a really fully formed thing and presented to the world and everyone will be amazed and they will That's the typical, in my opinion, huge devastating misconception. For the vast majority of heart based and idealistic solopreneurs.

5:53

This idea of let me work in the closet for a year or 5 or 10 or 30 years or 3 months, maybe with a coach, and then we will present a fully formed thing to the world and I'm like, you just wasted a year. Why did you waste a year? Why why do I say you wasted a year? Well, no, I didn't waste a year. I was journaling.

6:13

I was creating my website. I was working with a coach. No, no, you wasted a year. Let me tell you why. You first of all, you wasted a year of audience building.

6:21

Number 1. But number 2, more importantly, you wasted a year of practicing your voice. And exploring what is it you are going through, your transitional thoughts. All of that is All of that becomes much more real, the transition becomes much clearer. When you speak it, when you publicly write about it by publicly, I don't necessarily think you have to do this for the whole world to see.

6:54

That's my preference. I think that's much more efficient because you're building an audience anyway and they care about your journey. They do. They do care about your Midjourney, not not just you fully formed. None of us are fully formed.

7:05

The people who say they're fully formed, they're not really showing their authenticity. Now, so you could do oh, y'all do it the whole world, but at least gather a private Facebook group of your 20 supported friends and colleagues and clients and whoever would be willing to witness your authentic content during this transition period. Simple. 20 people. Right?

7:31

So authentic content practice number 3. Especially important during transition. Do not waste the time. Practice number 4 is a little bit more you might wanna wait until you're done with the transition, but practice number 4 is content distribution. So it's okay that you don't do it during your transition, but essentially, you know, getting the getting your best content out there either through ads, like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or through collaborations and you know.

7:59

And speaking of collaborations, that's the the next practice practice number 5. Again, something you can postpone until you're until you feel a bit more settled, which is to connect with colleagues to interview each other or at least to share notes about what you're learning, what they're learning. That could be the transitional collaboration. You don't have to be public about this stuff. If you don't want to be, you can be talking with others about your transition and hearing about theirs.

8:28

Everyone's in transition and to some degree, especially solar printers. Like we're always like, oh, you know, that didn't work. That didn't work. Maybe I wanna go there. Okay?

8:36

That's practice number 5 is collaborations. Practice number 6 is market research or audience research. And I think that this is something to do during a transition period as well. I mean, maybe especially during a transition because, again, the temptation or the misconceived assumption during a transition is let me go into my closet and figure everything out, and then I'll share with everybody. Now, let me figure it out in community because our business is in community your business is not you being in your closet, journaling, or even working with a coach, or even working with a program.

9:22

Unless the program has a community like mine and you're doing it with others, that's fine. You're getting feedback immediately. So practice number 6 is market research, meaning just having the conversation with your clients, past clients, potential clients, fans, colleagues about what you are considering creating and what they're wanting and needing at this time? How do they relate? That's practice 6, practice 7, is gentle launches or authentic outreach.

9:47

And that can also wait until after the transition because you do want to have clarity about what you want to at least experiment with offering, and you might be bold enough during the transition to do some authentic outreach or gentle launches to try out some offers. So that's up to you. In practice number 8, is the mastery of your craft. And that is essentially paying attention to how you are developing your framework, your skill set within your framework, and also how are you developing your systems of client support, you know, customer service, making sure that's more and more excellent, the experience you're giving to your your your clients and you're paying customers and things like that. So the 8 practices again, the the I should say the the eighth practice.

10:35

Yeah. You can you can more or less postpone that until after the transition, but just to keep that in mind that the better your essentially customer support, your customer delight experience, the the better the word and mouth is, and the entire system works better. So I hope this is helpful as a way to think about how to ground oneself through a transitional period of a promise of possibility. And if you ground yourself in in in some of these practices, you're going to emerge from the transition way more clear and strong and connected than most solo printers, I it breaks my heart. I I hear this all the time.

11:21

People come to me and George and says GeorgeKao, I've had a difficult year in my life. Now, understandably, close family member passed. They had an illness. They were caretaking. Many good reasons why people take a year off or 5 years off or 3 months off.

11:40

I understand. And I and I and I breaks my heart because for and that's for the soul of their business, they just wasted a year. Or 5 years or 3 months or whatever. They really they wasted that time. Because they believed is this hard for me to say?

12:00

They believed too much in their negative thoughts. They believed too much in their limitations. They're there. Of course, we all have limitations, but they believed too much in it. We can't believe everything we think.

12:15

It's detrimental to believe everything we think. We need to believe in our possibility, and we need to believe in community, we need to believe in connection, and to never let that go especially when you need help, especially during times of difficulty or transition, you need to lean even more into your community for creating content, for creating grounding, for creating understanding, collaborations, and testing offers and things like that. Your business will not your business is waiting for you. And it's like you don't need to ever, ever, ever, ever, let it go, you know, go, let me take some time off to do no. No.

12:55

No. No. No. You could take time off. Of course, like I said, You could just work 1 you could okay.

12:60

1 hour a week is too little. Even if you have a full time job and your full time care taking for for 3 people, I think 1 week, 1 hour a week is still too little, too if you respect your business at all. If you respect the soul of your authentic business at all, it needs more than 1 1 hour a week just like a relationship. Needs more than 1 hour a week. Come on.

13:24

Okay. Minimum. Minimum to me is 10 hours a week. If you if you are serious about the future of your business, if you're spending less than 10 hours a week, I don't know how to help you. I don't.

13:35

I mean, nobody can help you if you're spending less than 10 hours a week now. Okay. You are literally caretaking for 3 babies and an elderly parent and you have a full time job, okay, fine. 3 hours a week is the barest there is and you have a you have a chronic illness. You add it all up, I still want you to do 3 hours a week on some of these practices.

13:58

A half hour here 15 minutes there, another half hour there, bare minimum. But really most of us, I mean, I just gave you a very extreme situation of, you know, half a percent of the world. Most of us are in the 9 9.5 percent we can take the 10 hours a week. So I hope this is helpful I I know this is a strong message, but I feel you need to hear it especially during a transitional period. And I look forward to seeing if if you have any questions or comments below.

14:29

Thanks.