August Meeting Recap
Hello team!
It was a great meeting on Wednesday night! After spending many meetings learning all about what we need to do to grow a strong business, we are getting busy actually DOING it. The meetings are a valuable chance to step off the treadmill of busy-ness, and focus some energy on working on the business instead of just working on the products we make.
This week we looked again at the reality of running a successful business in design. We talked about our tendency to create a thin veneer and scramble towards growth prematurely instead of building that solid prototype of a business that the EMyth talks about. Done right, there are hundreds of skills at play in many areas of a balanced business. As examples, these areas include: sourcing materials, communicating, promoting the brand, hiring, sales, a financial strategy and so on. Identifying all these areas and building a business that makes sure they are all done right and thoroughly is the key to profit and success.
Several people presented their brand boards, which gave us all a chance to understand their brands better. It was a truly great project and very inspiring for all! Working on this project proved to be a great learning experience and helped designers understand and communicate their brand better. We have a follow-up exercise to put the ideas into action to make sure that the ideas actually come out into the world in your product and branding. I strongly encourage anyone who hasn’t done the brand board to do both the board and the follow up exercise to help with their branding. If anyone is interested in presenting a board, please let us know and we’ll make a second presentation session.
In the meeting, we divided into groups to do a Position Contract Exercise. Writing my own position contract over the years has helped me stay on track, understand my responsibilities and face challenges. It has also helped me hone my career skills, making me better able to run my business. I wanted the group to have a chance to benefit from writing their own position contract, so I created a template to help draw out a description of your job in your business. Many people commented that it was a very useful process and they were excited to finish the position contract and refer to it to keep themselves on track.
I also shared my experience with coaching with Serena, a family member of mine who is about to finish her training as a professional coach (some people call it “life coach”). I went to her with a very simple issue to try out the coaching process, and I found the experience much more profound than I expected. I found this simple issue to fit into the big ideas that are in my life’s mission, and saw it as a stumbling block in my path to my dreams. The process helped me discover more of the magic within myself (you’ll be hearing a lot more about discovering our magic in future sessions because I’m jazzed about helping people find more of it!) and left me inspired and ready to act.
After the meeting, one of our designers approached me asking more about coaching and saying she had so many ideas and problems she couldn’t even figure out what to start with. This is the EXACT kind of problem you can take to a coach. The process will help draw out the answers.
I also often hear people saying, “I’m just unmotivated lately.” or “I just don’t feel inspired by my business these days.“ All great starts to a coaching session. How about: “I’m just stuck!”, “I feel like I’m in over my head!”, “I’m so overwhelmed”, or my all time favourite, “Is this ever going to really work?“ All great reasons to get yourself to a coach. *It will blow your mind.*
For next month, we have 2 take-home assignments:
- “Ideas into Action” is about making sure that the ideas in the brand board exercise come out in your product and brand.
- For the Position Contract Assignment, please complete the position contract and use it. We’ll ask some people to share their position contract with the group, and present their experience in creating it and using it in their business.
Thanks for a great meeting! I’m looking forward to the next one- the last Wednesday in September. Please do all you can to keep these last Wednesdays of each month free. Your business will thank you for it ;)
