figure out what you want Archives - Page 6 of 8 - ⚡️Kristen Kalp

Posts in "figure out what you want" Category — Page 6

figure out what you want, get your biz off the ground

How to defy convention and create community.

When I see an online article — ANY online article — with something like 738 comments, I get a little anxious. Okay, a lot anxious.  (And I don’t read a single one.)

Also: I can’t bring myself to read any YouTube comments, EVER, for any reason.  Holy hell the things people say!!!  They’re so MEAN! (I go a little bit righteous 2-year-old when I read ’em, lol…)

Additionally: when I see a few thousand people in an online group, I’m not tempted to participate.  Massive numbers make me want to break out in hives.

I propose a new way of doing community for business.

First community change: forget obligation.

So you’re off having adventures and didn’t check your e-mail today? Or yesterday? AWESOME. No need to feel guilty for not being 100% connected at all times.  No need to know every person in the group.  No need to remember everyone’s birthday.

No need to be anyone but who you are right now, which may or may not be a person who can make space for cultivating new relationships in your life.

Second community change: only real connections matter.

Real connections don’t have a target-number-of-business-cards-handed-out goal attached.  Nor do they have a “What can you do for me!?” approach at the core of the relationship.

Real connections in business look a lot like real connections outside of business: friendship.

Whether you want to connect with a single person deeply, or with 22 people in person, or found the “Extrovert Rampage” Facebook group with 632,389 members — cool.  I’m not judging extroverts, I’m just tired of playing by those rules when it comes to this sort of thing.

Third community change: let go of the “obligations” surrounding community.

So you hate Facebook groups?  Quit ’em all!  Can’t stand forums?  Cool!  Don’t ever want to leave a blog comment again?  Fantastic!  You’re making the rules when it comes to interacting with your business.  So do it up however you’d like.

Let’s defy convention and the ways we do “community” in business.

Here are ten ideas to get you started:

⚡️ Meet in person instead of connecting exclusively online.
⚡️…or meet online if you normally meet in person. Texting and Facetiming count!
⚡️ Found an accountability group and make sure each member does one Brave thing per week.
⚡️ Ditch comments on your blog and offer up an alternative way to connect: Instagram? Snail mail? Meetup? Hangout?
⚡️ Ramp up comments by asking people to chime in about a specific topic by using a call to action.
⚡️ Connect people you know personally via e-mail a few times a week, just for the sake of making introductions. Sarah does this exceptionally well!
⚡️ Introduce a snail mail component to your work. (When you’ve been a member of the Fuck Yah club for six months, I send snail mail! Join here.)
⚡️ Start a living room tour of your state or region (i.e. take your show on the road!).
⚡️ Arrange Skype or Facetime dates with potential customers instead of e-mailing ’em.

We’re wired to connect — so let’s do it.

But let’s do it in a way that feels good, and sustainable, and that builds lasting bonds, okay?

P.S.  Another way to engage with community is to build everyday fundraising into your business.

Photo // Jon Canlas at Brand Camp the camp, group photo

come alive, figure out what you want

How to find the money for what you really want.

You’re watching events, classes, and shiny new offerings roll out, and you’re excited about each one. You’re also…jealous.

Because you can’t afford them and you could never take the time off to attend, so you just can’t get your hands on what you really want. Except…

When you say “I can’t afford that,” it’s absolutely true. Whether you have the money required to pay for an item or not doesn’t matter, because you’ve already stopped yourself from buying.

The same principle applies to items that cost $30 or $3,000 — if you say you can’t afford it, you’ve shut down the possibility of getting it.

If, however, you prioritize what it is you want — less caffeine-deprived Starbucks stops and a little more planning ahead; canceling subscriptions you never use; rallying your airline miles and rewards programs around a single goal — you’ll be surprised at what you can afford.

I recently found that I had accumulated over 60,000 airline miles without ever redeeming a single one. Hello, five-star trips to Pittsburgh and to New York City for free…

You’ll need a plan to pay for what you want. More importantly, you’ll need your own permission to buy it.

When you hear about something amazing and say “I can’t,” it usually has more to do with “How can I ever be away from my babies/my friends/my dogs/my lover for 72 hours!?” than it does with money.

It often has more to do with what you won’t ALLOW yourself to do than it does with any form of cash.

…like how you won’t let yourself take a bath when you’re tired because you have to empty the dishwasher instead, or how you’ve never left your kids alone with your husband because he won’t keep them alive exactly the way you would. (But alive is alive, even it doesn’t involve a perfectly-managed bedtime schedule, right?)

When you give yourself permission to dream — just to dance with the possibilities presented before you — you’ll find that money has less and less to do with the equation. Priorities come into play, as does permission.

But money? Once you’ve decided you’re going — you’re doing it — you’re taking the class or making the trip — the rest is just a detail. You’re freaking smart, and you’ll find a way to make it happen.

P.S.  10 ways to make space for what actually freaking matters.

Photo // my own, from adventures in India, because travel is what I really want. 😉

figure out what you want, read a poem

Simplicity is a form of power.

Simplicity is a form of power.

Yes, you could be selling 3 or 30 or 300 more
products than you’ve currently got on the market.
Yes, you could be adding services to your current
line-up right this second.
Your blog could have 83 more plugins and 72
more ways to entice people to look at you.
Your outfits, your images, your products could
always have more layers.  More stuff piled onto
them.

Simplicity is a form of power.

The curation of 30 images from a lifetime’s work
at a museum exhibit.
A single necklace paired with the perfect summer
dress.
One offer.
One.

Simplicity is a form of power.

You don’t have to have Pinterest boards
dedicated to those DiY projects you feel guilty
about collecting but not making.
You don’t have to participate in any forms of
social media that don’t feel fun.
You don’t have to convince people of anything,
but you do have to show them why you matter.

Simplicity is a form of power.

State your truth.
Curate what you offer.
Stand for something.

Simplicity is a form of power.

P.S.  My fondest wishes for you.  Alll my poems live here.

Photo // my on-the-fly portraits from working with Flying Kites, Kenya

figure out what you want, make meaning

Adventures in single-tasking (and other sanity shortcuts)

It’s just after 8 on a Sunday morning. I’ve stumbled into the kitchen, groggy-eyed, and been given a freshly-made cup of tea. I accept the chai and immediately ask, “What can I do? How can I help?”

Auntie Rebecca looks at me knowingly. She eyes my very-American self and says, “There is an African saying: you cannot blow mucus and laugh at the same time. Sit, relax, enjoy. Then we will worry about work.”

Okay then! Mucus-blowing aside, Kenyans are master single-taskers. I’ve found them to be mindful at a level that we have long since left behind in the States. When they drink chai, they drink chai. When they sit by the fire, wash clothes, chop vegetables, talk with one another…they are simply sitting by the fire, washing clothes, chopping vegetables, or talking with one another. No matter the task, they are doing only that one task.

While this means things don’t get done at the Wonder-Woman-level speeds I’m used to, I’m consciously taking on my own adventures in single-tasking. In the past few days, I’ve planted potatoes, read chapters of Twelve by Twelve, napped, edited photos, pulled up overgrown kale to make room for more, held kids tightly, answered e-mail, extracted a hefty Tickle Tax from kids on the bus, and eaten meals with singular focus.

This moment: never before, never again. Then this one, and then this one.

You don’t have to sink into a multi-month-long Kenyan adventure to experience single-tasking, so here are quick ways to single-task in your day-to-day life. I promise you’ll feel clearer and less stressed after giving even one of these suggestions a try!

Forget browser tabs.

Remember 1998, when we were so fascinated by all the things the internet could do — and it could do only one thing at a time? Remember when browser tabs didn’t exist?

I didn’t. Then I landed here. The internet in Kenya is so slow that browser tabs are entirely useless (dividing teeny bandwidth into tabs = even teenier bandwidth) so forced internet single-tasking happens. Focusing on just one thing at a time means I check e-mail faster, catch up on Facebook goings-on more easily, and blog more quickly than when I’m bouncing between five to ten browsers.

Put your phone in airplane mode.

If you need an hour to write, to work on projects, to edit photos, or to catch up on a meeting with a vendor, this is the quickest shortcut to sanity I know. Just put your phone in airplane mode and voila! You are no longer available.

When you find that this practice makes you feel lighter and lets you breathe more deeply, feel free to create “office hours” in which you are unavailable at regular times each week.

👉🏻If screen usage is your arch nemesis, Space will help you cut your phone time by 50% or more.  (That’s an average of 14 hours regained PER WEEK.)

Take a true break for meals.

A true break, meaning you take twenty minutes to sit down and eat. Not eat and watch TV, or eat and check e-mail, or eat and play Angry Birds, or eat and get caught up on homework…just eat.

I’m famous for scarfing down food while going about my day at home, but the choice to fill my plate and then chat with the kids when they get home from school has slowed me down considerably on this front.

Shower consciously.

Instead of using the shower as a time to process your eight-thousand to-do’s, consciously use the shower as a time to simply be. This doesn’t take any more time than stressing yourself out whilst bathing, but it does end with you feeling more refreshed.

As I’ve recently learned, showering consciously is effortless if you’ve gone for five days without one — the pure joy of water and soap is enough to keep you focused on the present moment. 😉

Turn your computer off when you’re done with it.

Adding a conscious close to your day by turning your computer off will increase your single-tasking power tremendously. Work done, you’re free to turn to the next task at hand. (Talked about this issue a bit more in how to work from home without losing your mind if you’re curious…)

I’ve resisted each of these practices over the past few weeks. But. The more I sink into them and allow myself to take on just one task at a time, the happier I’ve felt here in my home away from home.

P.S. Want to take these practices even further? Reclaim your energy, become a quitter.

figure out what you want, rebel!

When you give an alpaca an ice cream cone: a story for grown-ups

When you give an alpaca an ice cream cone, you’re breaking the rules.

When you find you enjoy breaking the posted rules, you go on to feed a llama a lemon drop.

And when that llama eats the lemon drop, you find he can talk.

That lemon-drop eating llama tells you he loves you, but thinks you need to break more rules.

So you feed another llama another lemon drop. You tell this llama you ARE breaking the rules.

THAT lemon-drop eating llama tells you that blog posting once every eight weeks is not breaking the rules. It’s procrastinating.

He also suggests breaking your own rules, not someone else’s.

He says you should talk to the goat next door.

When you give a goat a lemon drop, he spits it out and waves his tail at you.

Same goes for ice cream cones. And candies. And chocolates.

When you break your own rules and do a little dance that makes you feel so silly you could DIE, he winks.

The goat who is fed by silly dances wants to know which rules are holding you back.

(When you give a goat a silly dance, he gets philosophical.)

You say you’re afraid people will think you’re silly. He says there’s nothing sillier than a talking goat, so get over it.

(Philosophical goats are a bit harsh.)

You say you’re afraid people will run screaming from you and your business. He says they’re not your people.

(Dammit.)

You say you’re afraid that everyone will say you’re silly, run screaming, and then you’ll be a big fat failure.

(Ah, there’s the deep-down truth.)

He asks why you would want to succeed at something that’s not entirely the truth. In particular, your truth.

You sigh, nodding at his wisdom, and ask how to break your own rules.

He says you already know. But if you’d like, you can give that alpaca an ice cream cone…

P.S.  How to claim freedom from all kinds of bullshit.