The Power of Masterminds

Do any of these sound familiar to you?

You’ve been running your business for a while and have a steady(ish) stream of clients but you can’t seem to break through to the next level in your business.

You want to make time for planning and goals but you’re always so busy with the day-to-day that you never quite get around to it.

You you have a secret big dream for your business, such as speaking on stage, writing a book, or building a solid waitlist of clients but you can’t imagine when you’re going to find the time to do it and now when anyone asks you about it you say “maybe next year…”

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.

I know exactly how you feel, because I’ve been there too. Running a busy not-for-profit alongside growing my own consultancy, being a mama and a wife and a friend I constantly felt that there was never enough time in my day. I felt so frustrated, because I had big dreams and big goals that weren’t getting realised because they seemed impossible to find time for.

One day, I found that I had simply had enough of letting everything else in my life dictate how I spent my time. Something had to change and I knew that I was the only person who could change it. I decided it was time to take back control, laser in on my goals and start creating the business and the life I truly wanted to lead.

I learnt that I had exactly enough time in every day as long as I was willing to focus on the things which moved me closer to my goals.

I learnt that saying no to the wrong things, battling through fear of missing out and shiny object syndrome, allowed me to say HELL YES! to all the right things that came along to fill their place.

I learnt that by choosing the right small actions I could leverage big outcomes which moved me exponentially closer to my goals in less time with less effort.

And now I help people just like you do the same thing.

One is the loneliest number

But I didn’t do it alone. As I levelled up to the life I wanted to lead, I made sure that I surrounded myself with people who were also working for their big goals.

For me, the difference between achieving my goals and planning to achieve my goals was making sure that I had the support of other people. Masterminds, groups of people who come together to inspire each other and hold each other accountable, have always played a powerful part in my business. I have been in several different mastermind groups over the years and all of them have helped to push me out of my comfort zone towards the place I need, and wanted, to be.

As I worked with other entrepreneurs, I noticed that a common thread amongst all of them was that they felt alone in their business. They were successful, they were working so hard for their clients, they had such amazing dreams for the future, but they felt isolated.

More and more frequently I found that I was asking my clients “where does your support come from?” and often recommending to them that in addition to the work we were doing that they might also want to join a mastermind group. But it wasn’t that easy for them.  Either they didn’t know the right people or they had tried masterminds before and found themselves in groups that didn’t help them for one reason or another. Some had joined groups with less experienced business owners and found that they were then in the role of coach or guide at every session without anyone who could provide guidance on their challenges. Some had joined groups with friends and meet-ups turned into fun chats rather than powerful accountability sessions. Others had tried paid masterminds only to find that the facilitator was barely present and provided little input on what the group was doing.

I realised that the structure and format which had been so beneficial to me, simply was not available to others. And I also knew that I could change that.

Making the change

By combining the most powerful elements of the masterminds I had been in, together with my strategic knowledge of how to structure your business to achieve your goals I knew that I could create a group experience which would measurably increase people’s results. With my background in community building, I would also be able to bring together the right business owners in each round to ensure that they every group was as matched as possible in terms of experience and goals. I also instinctively knew that it was essential to keep the groups small so that everybody felt heard, everybody got individual focus on their business and nobody got left behind.

I called this new hybrid of masterminding and mentoring The Change Maker Collective because I wanted to establish from the outset that this is a place in which we come together to work as a team. No more isolation, no more loneliness, no more figuring it out by yourself. From the moment you joined The Collective, you would know that you were part of a shared, collaborative experience.

How The Collective creates the change you want to see

Each round of The Collective begins with an in-depth planning session, where we find your focus (spoiler alert: it’s not always what you think it is!) and map out the actions you will take to achieve your goal in the next 12-weeks.

Every month we have a group mentoring call with planned hot seats to bring individual attention to your wins and challenges. We draw on the knowledge and wisdom of all the members in the group to work on your business and leave you ready to tackle the next steps.

In between, we stay connected through our online group and pop-up Power Hour coworking sessions where we come together for one hour to cross an item off our to-do lists before saying goodbye and getting on with the rest of our day.

Combining focus, planning and accountability along with peer support and mentoring makes The Collective a powerful place for you as a business owner to be.

Everyone is rooting for you to succeed, and if you’re having a bad day, everyone is there to gently guide you back on track. As the facilitator of The Collective, I make sure that I am fully present with guidance, advice and cheerleading. You are no longer on your own. You are part of something bigger.

Is The Collective right for you?

My goal for The Collective is to fill it with the most interesting, goal getting, supportive business owners.

You will know if it is the right place for you if:

• You are fed up of building your business alone and thrive in the company of others
• You are ready to make more impact, more income and more influence
• You know that you do better when you say your goals out loud and have others around you to help keep you accountable.

If this sounds like you then we should talk. Participation in The Collective is by application only to ensure that the right business owners are matched to the right groups. I want to talk to you about the goals and dreams you have. To apply for a place in the next round, fill out an intake form and we will schedule a time to talk about your goals and your dreams for your business and how that fits with the life you want to lead. If the Collective is the right place for you to be then you will be matched into the next round and we will start working towards your goals, together. Are you ready?

P.S. If you are in your first couple of years of business and are still working out the structure, systems and strategy for your business then The Collective will not be the right place for you right now. I would encourage you to look at The Change Maker Programme which is more focused on the early stages of business and the core skills you need to have in place during that phase.

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NOTES FOR THE CURIOUS

If you want more systems and strategies to help you work on your business instead of in your business, then you'll love my Notes for the Curious. It's published every two-weeks and delivered straight to your inbox. Notes for the Curious is a curated digest of everything I am learning and loving about running a business and living a life on purpose. From time management, to goal setting, community building to confidence boosting as well as systems and tools to make your life easier, we will cover it all.

Fill out your details below to receive the next edition. 

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Do You Want to be a Tugboat or a Lighthouse?

I was sitting having coffee with another business owner when she said “and then I realised, I don’t want to be the tugboat in my business, I want to be the lighthouse. Do you know what I mean?”

I made a vague “mmhmm” noise and stirred my coffee quietly as she continued talking.

I did know what she meant.

But I didn’t know what it meant for me.

Later that day I found myself Googling “lighthouse vs. tugboat” and coming up with various variations of a self-help parable doing the rounds on the internet.

The parable asks the reader to visualise a tugboat, Its role is to lead other boats safely to shore. It pulls them, it drags them, and eventually, hopefully, it gets them there. Now imagine a lighthouse. Its role is also to guide boats safely to shore but it does so in a dramatically different way. The lighthouse doesn’t pull or drag, it stands tall on the shore beaming out light to guide the ships home. How the captains of those ships choose to follow that light remains their choice and responsibility. The lighthouse cannot change that, it can only stand firm beaming out its guidance like a beacon.

Are you a tugboat or a lighthouse?

All too often we show up for our clients and our businesses as their tugboats rather than their lighthouses.

We do the work, we pull and we drag them to where they want to be, often irrespective of where we think that they should be going. We forget that we have the expertise, that we have been hired by our clients for that expertise, that part of being able to charge rates which accurately reflect our expertise is in our skill as an experienced guide for our clients.

Think of your last business branding experience. When you brand your business there are lots of options and routes available to you to go from where you currently are - no brand or old brand - to where you want to be - the new brand. One option is to hop on over to Fiverr or Upwork or 99Designs and get someone to give you a logo. If you are disciplined and the odds are in your favour then you are going to end up with a new logo that you like, maybe even love. You won’t have paid very much for it, it probably took a lot more of your input to get it right but it does the job you want. Congratulations, you have reached the shore.

Now consider what happens when you hire a branding expert to (re)brand your business. A branding expert knows that branding is more than a logo, they will take the time to understand your business, to get to know you as the leader of your business and understand your vision for the future, they will present you with options and a wider range of implementations, they will work with you until your whole business reflects your vision. They cost a lot more than getting someone to design you a logo on Fiverr. It is a different way to reach the shore but congratulations, you’ve still reached the shore.

Becoming the Lighthouse

If, after reading the story above, your first thought was “That’s me! I’m the tugboat!” then your second thought was probably “but how do I become the lighthouse?”

There are some professions where this is easy. Take coaching as an example, coaches should always be the lighthouse, it is what they are trained to do, to offer guidance to their clients without imposing a prescribed direction on them. It’s what their clients expect of them.

However, if you are in a profession where you provide a service for your clients it may seem harder to break free of being the tugboat. For example, if you are a copywriter you may feel that you are doomed to live a tugboat life, pulling and dragging your client’s visions into words that engage other people. How could you possibly be a lighthouse when you actually have to do the work if you want to get paid? After all, you can’t just stand there and tell your client how to do it themselves, that’s not what they hired you for.

Take a moment though to consider what your client needs. Did they hire you just to churn out words or did they hire you to guide them so that you can write the best, most impactful, most engaging copy for their business? How often do you value (and charge for) your expertise at that level? How do you communicate the fact that in this, your zone of genius, you know more than your client about how to get their project to shore? There is a huge difference as a client between hiring someone to polish up your words (tugboat) and hiring someone to craft your vision (lighthouse).

Which one do you want to be?

Which one does your business need you to be?

If you are operating your business in tugboat mode then I am confident that this is part of the reason that you feel drained. It takes a lot of energy to pull and drag things to a successful conclusion. Maybe you have also been attracting the wrong clients to you because you are showing up as the tugboat and that’s all they want (or think they want). It is almost certainly keeping you trapped in the day-to-day of your business and not allowing you to create and implement long-term strategies for growth.

If you’ve accidentally become the tugboat in your business when what your business really needs you to be is the lighthouse, then it's time to make a change. Here’s what you need to do.

• Clear a couple of hours, preferably half a day in your schedule to focus on your business.
• Identify all the areas where you are behaving like a tugboat instead of a lighthouse.
• For each area which you identify as a tugboat area, write out what that area would look like if you were the lighthouse. What would change in how you run that part of your business, how would clients interact with it, would your pricing need to change, do you need to outsource or hire someone in to take over, do you need to communicate these changes, if so how will you do that?
• Now, take a planner and start to schedule in everything you need to do, or hire others to do,  in order to change your course. Remember, you’re still heading for shore, you’re just changing the way you get there. It’s time to chart your own course instead of letting the demands of your business lead you there.

Successful business growth requires strong leadership. Be a lighthouse, not a tugboat.

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NOTES FOR THE CURIOUS

If you want more systems and strategies to help you work on your business instead of in your business, then you'll love my Notes for the Curious. It's published every two-weeks and delivered straight to your inbox. Notes for the Curious is a curated digest of everything I am learning and loving about running a business and living a life on purpose. From time management, to goal setting, community building to confidence boosting as well as systems and tools to make your life easier, we will cover it all.

Fill out your details below to receive the next edition. 

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How to Recover from Social Media Fatigue

Do you remember when social media felt like a magical place to spend time? It at once felt like the biggest and most intimate conversations could all happen in one place.

And then the marketers came.

This, people, this is why we can’t have nice things.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a business owner, I’m not blaming the marketers for the state of social media today. We all contributed to the noise that is our current social media world. Instead of using it as a way to connect, we started using it as a “look at me” magnifier where we had to get louder and louder to be heard.

And we got tired. We got tired of the noise, we got tired of competing for attention, we got tired of wondering why social was “working” for everyone else and not for us.

We forgot, that actually, we are in charge of how we use social media and if we want it to be a valuable place to spend time then it is up to us to take back control.

It’s not going to be easy, social media is designed to capture and hold your attention but I believe that by making small adjustments to our approach in using social media, by breaking the bad habits we’ve built up and by making smart use of the tools and systems which are available to us we can really make social somewhere we enjoy spending time again. Where we can connect with people who we may never have had the opportunity to connect with any other way and create valuable interactions.

I think it’s time. Are you with me? Let’s go...

Change Your Mindset

Work out Why Social Media is Important to You

First of all, before you do anything else I want you to ask yourself this question,

“Why is social media important in your life?”

And don’t tell me that you need to be on it for your business, you don’t. If you were born before 1997 then social media didn’t even exist in your world. MySpace didn’t start until 2003 with Facebook launching a year later in 2004. While social media may seem all consuming these days it’s not been around that long. People grew and ran successful businesses way before social media and they will continue to do so after we have evolved onto whatever is coming next. Social media can be useful for your business but don’t try to tell yourself it is necessary. It stops you looking for opportunities in other places if you do that.

For me, social media is an important way to stay connected. I have a busy life, I’m an expat living away from most of my family. Social media is a great way to stay in touch with the day to day of people’s lives. It is a fantastic way to interact with other business owners, not so I can sell to them but so we can make actual connections which are benefit to both of us.

Take Action: Make social, social again. Stay away from the like button. Leave a comment so that people know that you actually took the time to engage with them. Have a conversation, even better, make time to have a real-life conversation with them.

Be Authentic

Aaargh! Marketing jargon! A buzzword! Wait… Do you remember what being authentic meant before the online marketing world took the word over?

The dictionary says “Genuine, based on fact. Accurate or reliable” Hmm, that doesn’t sound like a lot of social media I see these days.

I like Seth Godin’s definition better when we are talking about being authentic in our businesses. He defines it as:  "consistent emotional labor."

Godin says:

“We call a brand or a person authentic when they’re consistent, when they act the same way whether or not someone is looking. Someone is authentic when their actions are in alignment with what they promise.”

— Seth Godin

Take Action: Show up consistently as yourself. Consistent doesn’t mean keeping to a strict schedule. Only do that if it helps you stay on track. It means making sure that every time you post something on social media do it as you, not as the version of you that you think other people want to see.

You Are Not On Social Media To Make Yourself Feel Bad

Steph Panther of My Mindset Coach had a great recommendation on her Instagram to unfollow anyone that makes you feel like you need to be someone else. If you feel bad or not good enough when you see posts from someone else in particular, unfollow them.

For me that means that I hide any sponsored content that tells me that I need to diet, or be a certain body shape or that makes me feel less than in my business or personal life.

Does that mean you should unfollow people you who are ahead of the curve from where you are now?

Yes, and no.

I believe in models of possibility, so if someone is a model of possibility to you then that's great but if you constantly feel less than when you see their posts appear on social media then set them free from your feed. If you find seeing Oprah’s post inspirational, keep following her. If every time a post from Oprah appearing in your feed it is just a crushing reminder that you are not yet Oprah, unfollow her. I promise she won’t mind.

I've also unfollowed anyone who is using Instagram to sell to me. If the feed is curated, only uses stock photos, puts a quote in every third image etc then unless they are a client I won't follow them. I'd rather spend my time there making authentic connections (see point #1 to remind yourself what is authentic).

Take Action: Unfollow everyone and everything that doesn’t feel good when you see it. You are not a captive audience, you have the power to control what you see.

Kill The FOMO

Fear of Missing Out, FOMO, it’s real. There’s no point denying it. But if you really think about the things that you have consumed recently on social media, how much of it was truly essential? How much of it helped you get closer to where you want to be in that moment? How much of it would you truly have missed if you hadn’t seen it?

Take Action: Ask yourself, "Does (doing/consuming/sharing) this move me closer to or further away from my goal?" Then worry less about what you might be missing out on if you spend your time elsewhere.

Break Your Bad Habits

Reclaim Your Time

Get your phone out of the bedroom. This is a big one for me. I’ve gone through periods when I don’t have my phone in the bedroom and I've gone to sleep earlier, I’ve slept better, most importantly I’ve missed out on absolutely nothing. But somehow, over time the phone crept back into the bedroom and the bad habit of looking at social media before I go to sleep and when I wake up was back. We all know that our phones are not the first thing we should look at in the morning or the last thing we should look at, at night. Yet many of us do.

Take Action: Time to ban the phone from the bedroom (again). And while we’re at it, no tablets or laptops or tv’s either. Make your bedroom a place you sleep.

Turn Off the Notifications

Turn off sound and banner notifications for everything but the essentials on your phone and tablet. I did this about 5 years ago, maybe more and the only things that have a sound notification are texts, WhatsaApps, an app which tracks the flights of loved ones arriving at Schiphol and the rain alarm app (essential in Amsterdam, otherwise you’re going to get wet, a lot).

I don't have any visual notifications telling me how many unread emails I have. I also don't have unread emails very often, I inbox zero as often as I can. I don’t have any social media notifications turned on, I don't need to know when people post or comment, I'll find out when I open the app. These apps are designed to get our attention and if our attention shifts away from them, they are designed to get it back. Don’t be a slave to notifications. You choose when you want to check things, when you have time to do so.

Take Action: Turn off all notifications on your phone/tablet/laptop. Get into the habit of setting aside dedicated time for social media so that you are in control of the time that you spend there.

Systems and Tools

Unfollow everything… and start again

Which sounds drastic, but doesn’t have to be. You could try something radical like deleting your accounts and opening new ones. But it’s much easier to use tools which clean things up for you. It’s like starting from scratch but not quite.

Take Action: Use the Chrome extension Nudge to unfollow everything on your Facebook account in two clicks (note: it doesn't unsubscribe you from anything but it automatically turns off all notifications for *everything* including friends, groups, pages). It sounds scarier than it is but by zeroing all your notifications you can then go back in and switch on the notifications of people you really want to hear from. It's made Facebook a much nicer place for me to spend time these days.

Eradicate Your Newsfeed

For most of us it is the newsfeed that is the problem. So much stuff to scroll through before we see something we want to engage with. Facebook has promised to do their best to change this but until then, turning off your newsfeed on your desktop might be a good solution.

Take Action: I have had NewsFeed Eradicator installed for around 2 years now. If I want to read my newsfeed I open the Facebook app on my phone, which means that any time I spend in the app is intentionally set aside for scrolling my newsfeed. Now that I only have things I want to see in there (thanks to Nudge) I don't worry too much because there isn't much to scroll through. It takes no time at all.

Get Your List On

Most people have forgotten about lists but you can use Facebook or Twitter Lists to organise who you want to see updates from so you only see what you want to see from people and causes you care about.

Take Action: Make a list of the type of people you are connected with, this could be friend, family, colleagues. Create a list for each category and then sort people into the relevant category. That way, when you want to see updates from your friends you can just check the list instead of relying on the algorithm to show you their updates.

Remember RSS?

Go old school and add the news/blogs etc. that you want updates from to an RSS feed reader like Feedly. Or use something that makes reading a more pleasurable, visual experience such as Flipboard. Then you can safely unlike all of those pages on Facebook and updates on Twitter. Social Media isn't a news service (although it likes to pretend to be sometimes). You need to control your own media consumption with publications you trust and enjoy.

Take Action: Install an RSS reader or Flipboard and add your favourite publications to it. Make a date to regularly review what you are reading and unsubscribe from anything that doesn’t make you want to pay attention on a regular basis.

Give up Control

If you have an iPhone, remember that Safari has built-in settings you can use to block websites. If you are the sum of the people you spend the most time with then you are definitely the sum of the media you consume. Stop with the trashy reading and make your reading more intentional.

Take Action: Install blockers on your phone to help you use your time on social media more wisely. Try apps such as Rescue Time or Freedom to help you.

Digest it

If you have a habit of checking news sites all the time, just in case something has happened in the world. Lose the habit by subscribing to daily update briefings. I have one from the Guardian (for the European perspective) and one from Vox (for the US perspective) that keep me mostly on track. News media is terrible for social media because they have to pound dozens of updates in every day onto your feed to get your attention. The algorithm will learn what you click on and then only serve up similar content, meaning you miss the important stories anyway.

Take Action: Make a list of the publications you want to hear from. Check their website for a daily digest and subscribe if they have one, then unsubscribe from them on social media. Try services such as The Weekly (UK based news) The Daily Skimm (US based news) Popbitch (UK gossip and culture) Politico ( US and EU based political updates) The Pool (UK based female lifestyle).

Now it's your turn

What about you? How will you recover from social media fatigue and make it somewhere you want to spend time again? I truly believe that the best way forward is to make it a place where humans connect with humans. I'll let you know how it goes.

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NOTES FOR THE CURIOUS

If you want more systems and strategies to work smarter, not harder, then you'll love my Notes for the Curious. It's published every two-weeks and delivered straight to your inbox. Notes for the Curious is a curated digest of everything I am learning and loving about running a business and living a life on purpose. From time management to goal setting, community building to confidence boosting as well as systems and tools to make your life easier, we will cover it all.

Fill out your details below to receive the next edition. 

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