What’s The Story – Morning Glory!

What’s the very first thing you think when you wake up…or at least when you are fully conscious? Is it…oh s**t I’ve got to do xxxxx or Oh NOOOooo its going to be a rubbish day!…

It will come as no surprise to tell you that how you start your day will definitely impact the outcome.  If you have your own business, it’s likely that you are so entangled with the minutia it’s almost impossible not to wake up wondering if you sent off all the invoices or triggered the right social media campaigns. All of this can lead to burnout – I speak from experience!

Take a leaf from the Masters, instead of allowing the negatives to pile in as you wake, make the conscious decision to start with the mindset that it’s going to be a great day, start with gratitude for what you already have and how blessed you are and you will sow the seeds to attract more abundance and blessings into your life. 

An easy way to start is just to think of three things you are grateful for, that gives you the energy and enthusiasm for the day ahead (even if things are not all rosy at the moment).

On waking….

I’m grateful for…

And…

And…

That’s it!!

woman opening curtains in the morning

So after you have ‘given thanks’ how should you use those first few minutes as you lie in bed? One great suggestion is to mentally rehearse how the day will be, visualise what you will do in what order, and exactly how it will look and feel, if you know you have a difficult meeting, see yourself feeling confident and happy as you come out of it, if you’re in the process of trying to lose weight or eat more healthily ‘see’ your radiant colourful avocado salad that you will eat at lunchtime…you get the picture.

This visualisation of the day ahead can be far more powerful than a simple to-do list, there has been some debate recently about writing lists, it’s been suggested that they are a waste of time and only 40 per cent of what we put on our list is ever completed. When the writer of the article Kevin Kruse suggested that successful people such as Richard Branson wouldn’t waste time writing to-do lists, Branson hit back with an excellent blog post saying…

’I can assure him that I do indeed write to-do lists and prioritise items. I live my life by writing lists – there is one next to me right now. Without to-do lists, I would use my time far less effectively, and have a lot less fun. People wonder how I fit in kitesurfing and tennis every day alongside business meetings – the answer is good planning and to-do lists’

You can’t argue with someone as successful as Richard Branson, I don’t intend to ditch my to-do lists completely but I have recognised the power of that mental rehearsal at the beginning of the day, after all, writing out the route of a marathon or even writing…’run for two hours’…isn’t going to help you reach your goal, you need to actually do the run, in the same way writing out the notes for a piano piece won’t turn you into a virtuoso player, you need to actually play!

Interestingly though it’s well documented that both athletes and musicians who visualise their performance in detail achieve a better outcome when they execute it. The message is clear, it is important to write down what needs to be done, preferably with a priority order, (your to-do list) and it’s really important to actually commit to DOING IT, rather than just writing it down, but by far the most productive exercise is to ‘see it’ first – so that you have already ‘lived’ through it…mental rehearsal is everything.

So wake up tomorrow – say to yourself – Morning gorgeous…and go from there…

What’s Does Your Online Personal Brand Say About You?

Over the years working with clients I’ve come to know that the key to achieving success in whatever field you’re in is about having the confidence and skills to differentiate yourself from the crowd and ‘put yourself out there’. That’s why I’m so thrilled to be running my one-day intensive workshop called ‘How to Market Yourself Personally and Professionally’.

Part of the ‘putting yourself out there’ is using social media and I know that some people love it and can use it with ease 24hrs a day, others are terrified of just where to start and what sharing is too much or how personal you have to get the create the right image and ‘brand’. That’s why I’ve chosen as my special guest for my workshop, Social Media Guru Katie Brockhurst and I’ve asked Katie to give an insight on why she can teach you about working Social Media successfully, the importance of authenticity and how to create and schedule your content for Social Media:

Social Media Success

Social media is my souls calling… My dharma. I wrote a geeky and prophetic article in 1996, created a social media platform much like Facebook at University in 7BF (7 years before Facebook), won the first ever Gold “Internet Programme Award” at the Sony Radio Academy Awards in 2007 and have worked almost exclusively in Social Media for nearly 10 years under the guise of my business and alter ego Kdot.

Online is not an easy space to navigate, it can be like getting lost in a country where you don’t speak the language or being stood in a corridor with a hundred doors to choose from. There is this virtual landscape existing alongside us. With smart devices in hand, we spend our lives straddling online and offline, blending the two. There has been such a deep digital integration into our lives, which has happened gradually over the past 30 or so years.

We are all on some level living digital lives, using it to run businesses, communicate and connect, in a multitude of different ways. We connect with the many as well as the few – and everything in between! 

Email. Whatsapp, Webinars, FaceTime, Skype, G+hangouts, Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, Blab, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr…

There are so many… I could go on and on and on…

These channels are connection points, tools, platforms, spaces for us to gather together across time and space in order to share, collaborate, teach, sell or whatever you want to use it for. We should stop thinking of it as something that is separate that we have to “DO” and welcome it – and honour the integration by finding a way that works for us to “BE” online – that is right for us and our businesses.  For each and every one of us it will be different based as it is based on a multitude of things – so we should stop the comparison and focus on the right strategy for us.

 Now is the time for Authenticity…

“Anything inauthentic can no longer survive” Rebecca Campbell

Your audience can feel you and your content / conversations / broadcasts / comments / posts on an energetic level through social media. Think about the posts and emails that you see every day – how do they make you feel?  Can you sense the energy from the post and the person?

It is beaming out of the screen at you – this is why people don’t engage with sales posts and emails in the same way on social media anymore, because they are generally too generic, formulaic – so they don’t resonate with people – and we switch off quickly due to so many things vying for our attention.

Quality not quantity.

I recently wrote a post about this and the responses on social media to it were very interesting even though I was a bit nervous about posting it.

http://www.katiebrockhurst.com/blog/why-i-dont-agree-with-brendon-burchard-and-bschool-2016

If you can get into a good space to create authentic content that shares your message, gifts and expertise on social media, doing it from a place of love and service then you won’t need to try hard or have to create manipulative sales posts – because your authenticity will do the selling for you.

If you are good at what you do people will want to work with you online and offline!

I have a formula I go to when I start working with any clients… which is… LOVE, SERVICE, JOY and EASE.

And in order to make things easy, I use a simple weekly content planner to map out: https://socialmediaangel.leadpages.co/sma-weekly-planner-download/ to create and schedule content for social media.

You can download an example with an explanation of how to best use it, alongside an empty one you can fill in yourself. I use this with all my clients and they love its simplicity. I hope you do too!

Katie Brockhurst

 

 

howtomarket22

I want to invite you to create success for your life, career or business and learn the secrets for getting SEEN HEARD and SOLD, Join me and my special guest Social Media Guru Katie Brockhurst on this one-day inspirational intensive workshop – Janey Lee Grace

 Book now to reserve your place! (please note that there are limited places available).

 Early Bird price £147 (save £100)

 Buy your early bird ticket here NOW

Jack of All Trades or Renaissance Woman? (Or Man)

I remember many years ago doing my English Literature and Art A levels, feeling utterly absorbed in the Renaissance period, it was first time I came across the expression ‘Renaissance woman’ with the connotations it has today.

I was exhibiting my art in a local library, performing in a professional dance company and singing with my band, I was also running the Christian Union, volunteering for a local charity and playing the lead in the sixth from college musical.  My English teacher looked up from the Shakespeare text, (Hamlet) peered over the rim of her specs and said…’Janey is – I think a modern day renaissance woman’.

I didn’t take it as a compliment, I think she was probably trying to tell me I was spreading myself too thinly, and might have been better to concentrate on one thing and one thing only.  My art teacher was also unimpressed by my flightiness, I had a natural talent and he was keen for me to apply for Oxford to do a foundation art degree but of course that would have meant focusing on one thing – I chose to go and do my degree in Performance Arts and I must say I never regretted it but even then I couldn’t settle to one discipline, and after two terms of majoring in dance I switched to music.

The truth is I am and have always been a ‘Jack of all trades’…you know the end of the sentence…’and master of none’. It took me years before I was finally able to eschew that statement and reframe it to say; I am multi-faceted, and I’m definitely passionate about more than one thing – and that’s OK.

The dictionary says…

The definition of a Renaissance man or woman is a person who is well educated and sophisticated and who has talent and knowledge in many different fields of study. An example of a Renaissance man was Leonardo da Vinci.

Being unsure about the ‘sophistication’ how about the definition in Urban Dictionary …

Someone who is active in many fields.

Normal Girl 1#: Dayum, that girl is such a renaissance woman  Normal Girl 2#: Yeah, she’s in like the band, environmental club, politics club, history club, debating team, athletics team, school pride team, choir, European art appreciation society….  Normal Girl 1#: Wish I was renaissance:

The truth is I could never have just stuck to one subject, the whole concept of sticking to one thing feels exhausting for me, and it’s so interesting that clients who are often drawn to me have the same zest for life and so much going on they need clarity on the ‘one thing’ they are going to do. Because we are all told it must be ‘one thing’ – ‘What will you do when you leave school?’ we’re asked. ‘Have a completely varied portfolio of careers from the arts to medicine,’ probably wouldn’t cut it as an answer and yet that’s more realistic today than the concept of a job for life.

When I work with people I usually get them to get in touch with what’s unique about them, their skills and talents, their values, hopes and dreams. After the initial list of ‘professional’ qualities that they usually give me…I’m a good team leader, good at helping others, I ask them to dig a little deeper and look to the real authentic person. You’ll be amazed how many people can’t think of a single thing about themselves that might be unique, special, worthy of making a song and dance about, and yet when we dig a little deeper we find that they have run marathons, crocheted 100 blankets for a charitable cause, been a champion bodybuilder (the tiniest woman you can imagine!) won awards… the list goes on.

The truth is we all have masses of interests, gifts, talents, values and its critical not to suppress parts of our core selves just because we think it doesn’t fit with our brand, or because we think that without a niche – without doing only the one thing – we can’t succeed.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating that you open up your business selling both high end expensive jewellery and plastic bracelets along with some battered baked bean cans, you will have no clarity on your ideal client or USP and will most likely attract no-one, but what I am saying is that once you have really nailed what’s unique about you, got clarity on your purpose, you may well have more than one dream, more than one goal. It’s likely that if you like me are indeed a ‘Renaissance woman’ (or man) you love to be eclectic, you love variety, and change.

You may not be earning a living from every one of your many interests but hopefully some or much of what you love will be incorporated in your life, so that you are really living your purpose, doing the work you are born to do, perhaps with multiple different income streams.

 still7777

Many years on, I have been a successful singer, TV and radio presenter (still am) number one best-selling author and brand ambassador and speaker on holistic health and wellbeing.

When I was offered the opportunity to help someone by offering them some media training and confidence coaching it seemed like an obvious thing to do, and I found I loved it, but could I incorporate that into my work on holistic health and wellbeing? Well on paper probably not, but I have, alongside promoting and being a champion for all things natural and organic, run media skills workshops and teach people how to recognise that they are the brand, and their own best PR. It ‘shouldn’t work to combine both businesses, but it does because I am the brand and at the centre of it all and it’s my authenticity that holds it together – I hope.

Steve Jobs said. ‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.’

Trust in what you love, find that thing (or several things) that make your heart sing.

It may be that you aren’t clear on your purpose yet, I love the line in the Baz Luhrmann song; ‘Everybody’s Free (to wear sunscreen)’; where he says…

‘Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives…Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t’

Having said that…don’t trust what he says about sunscreen…we need the vitamin D! It’s perfectly ok to dabble, to have several areas of work, multiple streams of income. It’s likely there will some thread that creatively holds them together but it’s not essential. The one big challenge for us ‘renaissance’ types is keeping focused, I’ve been known to be two thirds of a way through a great project only to up sticks and start another, these are the times we need lots of grounding in our lives.

Balance becomes important, some form of exercise, meditation or relaxation to keep on track before you literally become engulfed in your own cacophony of brilliance (and if you are anything like me…a tendency towards chaos!).  So acknowledge the ‘jack of all trades’ in you and embrace all your interests, gifts and talents, decide upon some kind of grounding that works for you and make sure you get it. I now schedule in a few hours to walk by the sea once a month at least – it recharges my batteries so that I am raring to go….on whatever project is top of the list….for now!

I want to invite you to create success for your life, career or business and learn the secrets for getting SEEN HEARD and SOLD, Join me and my special guest Social Media Guru Katie Brockhurst on this one day inspirational intensive workshop – Janey Lee Grace

Book now to reserve your place! (please note that there are limited places available).

Early Bird price £147 (save £100)

Buy your early bird ticket here NOW