Knocking Down Some Walls

Home improvement. Love it, hate it, but when you own a home, it has to get done. After ten years of living in our home, we're finally tackling some long overdue projects. In many ways, home improvement is a lot like my One Dream a Month project. They both represent taking ideas and making them into reality.

Take our bathroom, for example. And no, I won't launch into my Rodney Dangerfield impression. I've written about our second bathroom in my other blog and it having been awarded the "Ugliest Bathroom in Boulder County." This is not the bathroom I'd like you to take. The one I'm writing about is the one our family of five uses and one that has a bathtub, but no shower. Three young girls, one mother and no shower. 

But this weekend that all began to change. I came home from yoga Sunday morning to be greeted by my husband who was covered head to foot in dust and carrying out large pieces of plaster. I ran inside and threw open the bathroom door. 

Eureka. The walls had come tumbling down. 

As with our dreams, home improvement carries so much expectation and can fall in one of two categories. Domestic bliss or disaster. Money well spent and value added to your home, or dollars flushed down the toilet with no way to recoup the loss. It's the same thing with taking the leap into turning dreams into action. What happens if I spend this entire month, or the next year, on my current dream, only to find out that it isn't as solid as I thought? But what happens if I plan it out just right and that feeling that's been with me all month long only gets stronger? 

I stood in the bathroom and looked at the bare walls. And I thought, what the heck took us so long? Fear. Fear of the unknown had both of us imagining all sorts of horrors living behind the plastic tile and plaster. Spiders, rodents, mold, mummies, unsolved murders. 

What did I see? Clean, dry walls that were well made. I got to see where one of the septic pipes lived, as well as just how little space exists between the bathtub and the hallway. My husband and I laughed at how beautiful the bare walls looked and how maybe we'd just cover them with Plexiglass so we can continue to enjoy what we'd been so afraid of. 

I've a rough plan for our bathroom, which materials to use and how much time it might take. We're entering into new territory with this one - plumbing and I'm going to learn how to sweat some pipes and install the large  head water conserving shower we've been waiting so long for. I'm going to learn how to install hardy back drywall and brush up my nail gun skills for the bead board. 

The dream of this bathroom is a simple one, but it is one that has been waiting under the surface for a long time. 

The dream of my March One Dream a Month is not so simple, and it has also been waiting under the surface. 

The last 16 days have been about breathing the first sparks of life into the dream, but I've still been standing in front of the walls, more than slightly afraid of what I'd find behind this particular dream's walls. 

I might find mold, mummies or other creepy and crawly things. I might find the same dry and waiting surface, ready for me to transform. 

I won't know until I start. Tomorrow, I'm buying a hard hat and new work gloves. Time to knock down some walls.

Easing up the Acceleration so I Can Finally Slow Down

Everywhere I turn it seems I keep coming upon versions of the same phrase and here are some of them:

Accelerate your success

Accelerate your sales

Accelerate your solutions

Accelerate your __________ (Fill in the blank)

Quite honestly, all this emphasis on acceleration makes me dizzy, especially when it relates to business. We are in such as constant state of acceleration, from the ways we communicate with one another, to how quickly we expect ideas to come to full fruition. When I read the word, I can't help but think of my beloved late father who was quite practical, specific and to the point in his advice for just about everything, but in particular, about the human tendency to go about our lives in an overly fast and sometimes not so efficient manner. 

Slow down. Take your time.

This has always been the hardest advice for me to follow. I'm kind of wired to think and do things quickly and as the youngest in our family, I was always fast to prove I could do things as well as my older siblings and sometimes moving quickly was a matter of survival. Meals, for instance. If I wasn't fast at the table, the food was quickly inhaled by two older and larger brothers. Walking slowly down a NYC city street could literally have you end up with your face on the sidewalk. 

Problem is, I've retained the habit of moving quickly through things long after the need to do so has disappeared. I haven't lived with my brothers since I was 17 years old, but I still eat my meals as if someone is about to take it off my fork. I walk quickly down the sidewalks of our sleepy little town, even though I haven't lived in NYC for 16 years. 

As well, my need to prove myself by doing things quickly is part of the same luggage I no longer need to carry around. And I'm not the only person to think this way. I recently read a terrific article on the subject entitled "Hurry Up and Wait: 6 Futurists Explain Why Slowness Might be as Important as Speed," by Jennifer Leonard of Good. She begins her article with the following statement:

"According to some of the world’s most prominent futurists, slowness might be as important to the future as speed." 

The article was very compelling, but the phrase that reached out and grabbed me and which has stayed with me as I have begun this process, is the following by John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design:

“How do we slow down what matters the most and speed up what benefits change and progress? We don’t want to impede progress, but we are seeking reconnection to ourselves, to each other, and with the world.”

I've spent much of this week, when I've not been changing planes, writing my March One Dream a Month project sentence. Actually, I've started with a bunch of adjectives, to help me describe the purpose of the project and the way I want kids, parents, educators and tech-folks to engage with it, as well a page or so of sentences, which will be narrowed down to one or two. 

The challenge for someone like me, who is so used to moving quickly from one thing to another, is to recognize that while I can do things quickly, I don't have to. 

Acceleration is thrilling, like the fantastic thrill of going fast down a roller coaster, or those early days of truly falling in love. But it's not a pace that can be sustained for very long without blowing out all the circuits or burning out. 

I'm in this for the long haul, as long as I'm able to haul it. I've never wanted my 15 minutes of fame. After all, I'm a Capricorn with a tortoise rising and am slowly making my way up my One Dream a Month hill. 

Okay, Dad, I'm finally listening. I get it. 

Slow down. Take your time. 

Changing Planes and My Personal Employment Quilt

I figured out something today about life and this realization is helping me with the limited time (and energy) I have this week to work on my March One Dream a Month project.


Like many people I know and even mI figured out something today about life and this realization is helping me with the limited time (and energy) I have this week to work on my March One Dream a Month project.

Like many people I know and even more I don't know, full time employment is just not part of the picture right now and hasn't been for over a year, despite a pretty active search for it and a damn impressive resume. That's okay. I'm good at piecing it together and have done off and on for many year, when I've needed a break from the 9-5 grind.

But for some reason, and maybe it's because my brainwaves seem to be gathered around making one idea into a reality, I'm experiencing an interesting response to my personal employment quilt and to this overall transition with One Dream a Month.

I call it my personal employment quilt because it is literally made of many pieces which include, but may not be limited to the following:

·        Two 20 hour a week jobs

·        Two freelance consulting projects

·        Three kids who need and deserve my full attention

·        A long-term relationship that also needs and deserves my full attention

·        30 day yoga challenge

·        Starting a new business

·        One Dream a Month blog

The truth is, I've never been comfortable with transitions. The real truth is, they cause me quite a bit of anxiety. On a BC (Before Children) trip to Europe, the transitions from one train to another, from one city to another, were very difficult. So difficult that I even thought about creating an entire trip made up of just transitions, as some kind of shock therapy approach to this issue.

In my yoga practice, my teachers talk quite a bit about being comfortable with the discomfort – an easy thing to say from a podium while the rest of us are in one of 26 seemingly impossible positions. Once in while, thought, it makes total sense and I manage to sneak in a bit more breath while curled up like a ball. And recently, this idea is sneaking into some other parts of my life, including the March One Dream a Month project.

I’m beginning to feel less uncomfortable with the discomfort. Not comfortable, mind you, but less uncomfortable. And the reason why this is happening is that I’ve come to realize my life right now is like constantly changing planes. Sometimes changing planes is easy, with plenty of time to get from one gate to another, pick up a local newspaper, a fresh bottle of water, even go to the bathroom. Other times, there’s three minutes to sprint from one end of the terminal to the other and most likely, the plane will be gone by the time we get there.

Today I changed planes six times between two jobs, home, self-education, health and One Dream a Month. And all in the same time zone. And I didn't miss a flight.

How is this idea of changing planes as the metaphor for my life helping me with turning a dream into action? Because it involves taking myself from one place to the next, hopefully as safely as possible, and because it involves a destination. Right now that destination is a bit fuzzy, but at least I’ve bought my ticket.

In the meantime, I need to pack. Tomorrow, I’ve got some planes to catch.

The Stuff of Dreams is Being Here Now

I just got through watching the Oscars and somewhere in the midst of the clothes and the egos, a not so small thing became evident. The reason we are mesmerized by this display is because it represents the stuff of dreams, the stuff meaning dreams turned into ACTION. Almost every single person on that stage accepting their award had a dream, got the training they needed and took the steps to make it happen.

For some it happens early in their career. For others, like Jeff Bridges, it comes after a lifetime of pursuit, or Kathryn Bigelow, who not only has spent a lifetime pursuing her dream, but broke ground tonight for women director's everywhere. And for those who never get that level of acknowledgment or acclaim? My bet is that those folks would still say the pursuit is worth it.

As I'm in the beginning stages of this process and project, with just a week under my belt of daily action toward making this particular dream real, it's so easy to imagine the end result. One of the hardest aspects is to stay focused on the present and to not get ahead of myself. And as I ready myself for week two, I'm going to take a step back to see what I actually did get done:

1. Creative Concept Plan. This is the outline, the spill, the post-brain dump that will serve as the overall road map for the project. It was a relief to finally translate all the yellow pad scribblings into one document.
2. Knowledge Map. I defined what I think I know and what I know I don't know and had a great time doing it.
3. Segmented Customer Profiles: I sketched out some rough ideas of who might actually be interested in purchasing my product. I tried to go beyond the regular mom and dad and to bring in some character building to this aspect, which seems to engage both my fiction writer and fortune teller sensibilities. I'll be returning to this to really flesh them out, so to speak and to bring in my "What I do Know" knowledge base.

As for this week? I have some bill paying work to attend to which will bring a few more balls into the juggling act. It would be easy to lapse into self-pity mode and bemoan the fact that I don't have endless amounts of time to accelerate this process. But what would be the point? And what is the way to handle the time crunch that is my life?

Simple. Do one thing at a time. One Dream a Month. One goal a day, or in the case of this week - one goal for the week.

So this week will be focused on writing my sentence, which is the next critical step in defining the purpose of the project. That's my action, to focus on one thing for the week and devote whatever free time I have after work, kids, marriage, yoga and sleep...

Off to sleep. The rest will come after that.

Writing My Sentence

I love definitions. In fact, the basis of my March 2010 One Dream a Month is based on that love, but that's all I say right now about it. Other than this - the reason I love definitions is because it condenses the meaning of a term, word or phrase in a remarkably succinct fashion. Flash fiction in a sentence. 


Like most people, I receive quite a few email newsletters in my inbox every week. Some of them I scan, but there's one I read and re-read over the course of a week - the Harvard Business Review - and in particular, the one that showed up on day two of this month's project. One section stood out to me and especially one phrase, which is attributed to Clare Booth Luce, the playwright and journalist, who said in regards to American Presidents and in particular in a challenge to the young JFK's presidency: "A great man is one sentence." She posed the following challenge: "What was to be his sentence?"


All right, so a little gender-specific in the language, but the essence of it made me stop and in particular, as HBR's blog contributor, Bill Taylor, applies it to business. 


"What a powerful question — not just for great presidents, but for great companies, too."


Taylor continues through his posting to reference a number of highly successful organizations who have been successful because they've been able to craft, and make real, a highly specific and well-crafted sentence. 


"Time and again, as I've gotten to know companies that are winning big in tough industries, I've been struck by the clarity and simplicity of the one idea that drives them — their version of Luce's sentence."


As someone who taught composition and creative writing at Front Range Community College, and as a person who wrestles with language every single day, I have great respect for a well-crafted sentence. As the founder of a new business venture that is was just three days ago an undercover dream, the idea of distilling and defining this dream turned into action is both daunting and very appealing. The refinement that happens in the act of writing and the very necessary revisions and editing, can absolutely be applied to my next step in the project: 

The mission and the vision.

SCREECH....Stop! Oh, no, not those words...I just can't bring myself to use those words. 


It's not that I don't believe in the concepts of mission and vision, I do, but I've crossed them out because they've come to represent the watered-down business-ese that has is just another part of way too much non-defined jargon. I get physically uncomfortable when I hear or read them. 


Instead and because I've spent so much time staring a blank white page and screen, I'm shifting gears away from those two words and will move toward this:

WRITING MY SENTENCE

I like this. Writing my sentence definitely fits into my "What I Already Know" knowledge map that I began to define on day 2. 


I know that this process won't be not easy, nor will it be fast. Boiling down the entire purpose of a company into a strong, thoughtful and originally-minded sentence will take much discipline. But the benefits are obvious: the result will be a business that is focused on a single idea in the same way a good sentence jumps out on the page and makes me get the highlighter out to return to over and over again.  


Will my sentence be short and pithy? Or filled with semi-colons and run-ons? I won't know until I do it, but I do know what I will be moving my fingers across the keyboard to create - a well-crafted sentence that contains, in language, a well thought out and energized sense of purpose and action. 


In other words, I need to write my sentence as if my life, and this project, depends on it. 


Because it does. 

Too Much or Just Enough?

In addition to beginning One Dream a Month, I'm also doing a 30 day Bikram Yoga challenge, which I'm writing about at length (and with some humor and lots of humility) on my other blog, Mamazblogging. Part of me thinks that I'm crazy to be taking all this on at the same time, and I do have a tendency to pile things on to the point of implosion and I'm very aware of that as I've stepped into this project. I'm also aware that I can take much of what I'm bound to learn through the 30 day Bikram challenge and apply to my One Dream a Month project. 

In the Bikram Yoga beginner class I take at the wonderfully welcoming and low-key Bikram Colorado studio in Longmont, we do 26 postures over a 90 minute period in a 106+ degree classroom which form a fluid, logical and intensely healing system. The key to getting through the series? Working hard and being relaxed. For someone like me, that is a mind-blowing combination, but after 14 months of practicing, I'm finally beginning to get what it means to try my best and to do with a sense of ease.

As I began to hatch the notion of One Dream a Month, I knew I'd be forming the beginning of a new business venture, one that would push my knowledge and experience boundaries to areas still largely unknown, at the same time I'd be starting a very demanding month of physical training.

It's only day three of both processes, but I'm beginning to see some good synergies. The first one is that the amount of energy I have going into this business is over the top. The yoga practice helps to temper that energy and to get me breathing, as well as a way to move my body after sitting in front of a computer all day, as well as using my brain pretty much non-stop.

My One Dream a Month project is also starting to have an impact on my yoga practice in that because I'm engaging a dream into action, my mind is much less chatty, which is nothing short of a minor miracle.

Yes, it is a lot to be doing a daily and demanding yoga practice at the same time I'm launching a business. But sometimes too much is just the right amount. And in this case, it is the just the right amount.

***

I'm also one to celebrate the everyday successes that get us through our days, so I'd like to share a link to an interview I'm featured in, written by Anastasia George and published in ProgramBusiness.com, a networking publication for the insurance biz:


Social Media: Changing the Way We Live, the Way We Communicate
Featuring Lisa Trank, Owner, One Purpose PR & Communications 

Knowing What I Don't Know

March 2, 2010

Today's goal for March's One Dream a Month seemed like a simple one - find out what I know and what I don't know.

I completed my initial Creative Concept Plan and moved onto trying to figure out which of my skills and experience I can bring to my new venture and where the gaps exist. I even created an organizational chart to map out my knowledge base and broke it into two categories:

WHAT I ALREADY KNOW

WHAT I DON'T ALREADY KNOW

Now, I'm sure there's some fancy marketing terminology that I could have thrown in there, but I decided to cut to the chase and get down to it. How does it break down?

WHAT I ALREADY KNOW:

• Business concept and mission
• Product creative details and development
• Storyline and characters
• Desired sponsors/partners
• Desired Board of Advisors
• Segmented audience demographics
• Brand development
• Marketing
• Social Media
• Grassroots Word-of-mouth
• Public and community relations

WHAT I DON'T ALREADY KNOW

• Back end technology
• Programming
• User Interface
• Pretty much anything related to the behind the curtains technology
• Manufacturing
• Licensing
• Intellectual property protection
• International business standards
• Language translation
• Educational landmark trends
• Retail placement
• Partnership and sponsorship development
• Sales force
• Business structure and systems
• Revenue stream model 
• Investors/funding

Whew! I'm pleased to see that I have a really good grasp on certain aspects of starting a business, coming from years of helping others launch their dreams with strategic marketing and publicity consulting. I suppose the good news is that I've defined these two fields and now can go about the task of identifying the kind-hearted folks who can provide me with their knowledge base to help me fill in the gaps. 

What I find interesting and would probably fit really well into some psychological employee profile is that my "What I Already Know" list is all about creativity and connection, a skill set which I think bodes well for someone leading a company, even a company of one. 

My "What I Don't Already Know" list runs the gamut from areas that I've never had exposure to, such as manufacturing and creating a sales force, to those that are related to areas I've avoided, mostly a financially-minded business plan. 

Both lists overwhelm me, so I need to go back and put them in some sort of order that allows for some prioritizing. It all can't get done at once, so it's time to create a plan for the plan and to identify which of the things I don't know I need to know first. Great question. 

In my writing, I often jump in and begin writing after a period of mulling things around in my head. I carry a mental outline that I then am able to put onto the page in a pretty clean fashion. Or a character slips into my life and I walk around with him or her until we're both ready to commit to the page.

Seems like a good thing to do wit this process, to allow a spill to happen on the page and give the dream some room to stretch, especially after being under the surface for some time. By allowing the creative stretching phase, I can work on articulating the mission and the vision, which will lead the rest and will also let me know what knowledge I need to seek out initially. I know from writing that you can come up with the strongest outline in the world, but when it comes down to it, the words take over, as do the characters and the place and in a certain way you just have to let go and allow it to happen. 

And unlike in life, where there is no replay button, if the initial spill doesn't come out like I expect, which is usually the case in all things, then I get to engage in a small miracle. I get to revise the thing until it does resemble the initial burst and dream. 

So here's to the messiness of beginning new projects and the joy in discovering what we do and what we don't know. And to continue cleaning up the mess and committing to making new ones.