The Traveling Introvert

I would like to talk about calenders so some people are ruled by their to do list, some people are ruled by their project management and some people are ruled by their calendar. Regardless if you are ruled by any of these, when someone wants to set up time with you, your calendar is kind of important. And so nothing is more frustrating to somebody than having you send your in important information that's needed for a call in an email that isn't a calendar invite, considering so many people are working online these days.   And if you do have even if you do have a simple Gmail account, your Gmail account is attached to a calendar. If you have an outlook account, your outlook is attached to a calendar. If you're on Apple, then it will be attached to Aikau like it goes hand in hand. It's very rare that you have access to like an email situation where you cannot add it to a calendar. If you don't if you send information just in an email, it means the person can lose that email.   It means the person then has t

Introvert today I want to talk about developing compassion as an introvert, something happened to me this week where someone I was working with very last minute, like, had set them a deadline and the deadline came and the message that same day. And I was like, oh, I can't do this, I'll get back to you. And then disappeared for a couple of days now instead of viewing it and being like, OK, well, they missed a deadline.   This is a problem. I tried to view it with compassion and curiosity. And so I message, hey, this isn't like you. I hope everything is OK. Please get back to me when you can. And just by doing that, the person said, Oh, you know what? Actually, I'm sick. I'm not feeling so good. Can we put this off for another couple of days so I can get better? So instead of me saying, oh, hey, you haven't done this thing, why haven't you done this thing?   You're late. And I gave you a deadline a week ago. Why are you leaving it? Last minute I decided to be compassionate. And just by showing that compassi

surprise episode on travel. But this can be related to everyday things. So I was listening to a podcast the other day that made a light bulb go off in my mind. So travel can be especially fatiguing because of the amount of decisions you have to make that you wouldn't normally have to make. So, for example, every day you normally probably get up, go to work, come back from work, eat, brush your teeth, your shower, do all of those things.   Some of it is probably rote and some of it is new things. But we know that we can only make a certain amount of decisions per day before we get decision fatigue. And so this is why people end up crying in airports out of frustration. Part of it can be the system. And part of it is when you are traveling, almost everything you do requires you to make a decision. What time are you going to the airport? When you get to the airport, you go left or right.   Where's the check in desk? Which Check-In desk do you pick? Then you pick that check in desk, you load up all your stuff

, I'm going to talk about this particular topic, which was inspired by a friend of mine, which is when your mind won't get in sync with your planner. So I am one of those people that plans using my calendar every now and then. Your brain doesn't want to do what's on your calendar. For whatever reason, it might be a mental health session. So having a plan for when you got this stuff planned in your calendar and you've got things to do and you want to do this and that, maybe for your clients, for you business for yourself, but your mind's just like you're not having a good day to day.   We don't necessarily want to do that. But even if we did, it would be do it poorly. It would take you three times the amount of time. So maybe you just shouldn't do it. Yes. Sometimes your mind just doesn't want to be in sync with your calendar. So what do you do? Do you have a plan? Do you have a way of do you are you transparent? Do you have a way of letting people know, you know what?   Right now I'm not having a good men

I'd like to talk about a couple of things you should do when you're looking into moving jobs and looking at new opportunities. If there is an organization that has posted a position, that's great, see how long that position has been posted and then do your research on the company.   And most of the time people will kind of look on Glassdoor and that's it. Or look on LinkedIn and that's it. Or go search the company's website and that's it. But really think about where they really should be looking to go to somewhere like trust pilot and see what customers are saying about the company. Are they saying good things? Are they saying bad things? Even if they are saying bad things? How is the company responding to that feedback?   Are they giving the same response time and time again? Are they actively responding or have they not responding at all? That's very interesting. And what departments are people complaining about? Are they complaining about logistics, other complaining about customer service or complain

Today, I want to talk about comfort zones, and the reason this came up is because recently I was speaking at a UK startup event and I was talking about how when you're building your business as an introvert, as a human, you should be building your business around you, your likes, you wants and your needs.   And some of that was talking about time blocking, setting boundaries, using systems and generally making a list of things that ground you and recharge you. And on the other hand, making a list of things that are deal breakers for you, things that you don't like doing are not good at doing, because those are things that should not be the core of your business that you are building for yourself.   And it so happens, as I was giving this talk that there was a comment in the comment section and someone said, but getting out of your comfort zone is where you learn the most. Surely it's better to learn all the things that you don't know so you can become good at them. And so here is my pushback towards that.

today I want to talk about Introvert instinct  something that I I guess for the longest while I don't have and now I'm starting to believe I do have to a certain degree. And I don't know whether it's because I reflect this kind of thing or because stuff has happened. But learning to trust your emotions is really interesting because we are all born with a certain amount of intuition. The problem is from a very young age, we're often told to maybe ignore our feelings or our feelings are not justified or our feelings are just wrong.   Much like force feeding, an infant can cause the child to start ignoring the natural hunger control mechanisms. It's the same with emotions. The more we're taught to push down our feelings, the more likely we are not to trust our emotions. Sometimes you get a gut feeling, a feeling in your gut, a gut feeling that something is wrong. Everyone has a natural ability to know that something's sort of not right in any given situation. The problem is, over time, you may have pushed down

Interview questions or things that might come up that are a red flag, that you probably shouldn't work for that organization or company. And this has come about because of various clients that I've worked with and various people that it's the start of the year. People are looking for new jobs. They want to make sure they have some sort of job security. But at the same time, they don't want to just say yes to anything.   So what could be a red flag when you were in the interview stage or even just reading through the job description stage of a role? So any time a role says, you will be wearing many hats. This is normally a sign that they're going to assign you two or three positions worth of work, rather, for the wage of one. It's one of those things. It's like, what do you do a little bit of this or a little bit of that.   But you also might be going to this team, another really big red flag that the company hasn't thought through. What that role actually is going to do is when they say that you'll be rep

, I kind of want to talk about the bait and switch. This is something that I've experienced a couple times over the years. And just when I think I know when I'm going to be baited and switched on, I kind of have an idea, bam, it happens again. So let me give you an example of what a bait and switch might be. Someone reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, Oh, I heard about you through mental health, remote working.   I love that you work that you're doing and your values love to speak with you further, because I'm currently writing a book on these things and I want to talk to experts about the different views on mental health, remote working and that sort of a thing. Great. I'm like, here's my email address. Set up some time and then I say, OK, here's my calendar. OK, let's set up some time to talk. And the calendar actually says interfere with coaching expert, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.   And they mentioned you be speaking to one of my members of my team because I'm super busy, but they'll be doing th

today I talk about dreams, it's the end of the year. It's that kind of a thing going on. And one of the things that I got asked to do as part of a planning exercise was to write down things that I want to do in the next 12 months. And they wanted me to write down a list of things that might be obtainable or unobtainable just just to put it all out, get it on a piece of paper, all the things that I would like to do that I want to do sometime in the next 12 months.   And so I scribbled away, got about 10 and scribbled away more about 15, scribbled away a little bit more, got to about 17. And then I went to look at the next set of instructions and the next set of instructions was, you should have at least 50, at which point I was like, oh, 50 50 things that I would like to happen in the next 12 months. And they say, well, that's OK, go away.   Sometimes you think about things when you go when you're not thinking about it, this exercise should be done in one day. So you've made a start and I go away and come

today I would like to talk about intentionality, something that I was thinking about, one of those shower thoughts where right now I'm currently starting taking some time off. I'm taking about two weeks of client work. And yesterday I spent the day resting a little and pottering around and doing stuff. And I wasn't on the verge of being bored because I was tired. And so I napped, you know, read a little.   And that's more played some games, a trend. But I realized because I hadn't planned my day, I had to be really intentional in what I was going to do with my time. I was intentionally napping. I was intentionally going to eat now and then eat again in three hours or prepare whatever it was. I was intentionally attending a planning session. Even though the end of your planning session will start of your planning session really was a five hour session.   I was tired, but I was enjoying what I was doing. So I intentionally stayed and focused on that work and the process that I was going through with my coho

I want to talk about sales, doesn't matter how amazing your business or your product is if your sales guy sucks. So I've been looking to work with a company about a project that I've got coming up next year. I've been vetting them out. I loved the mission. I loved the values. I loved what they stood for and I loved the product. And so I was on this page and I needed to get in contact with them.   So they have a contact form and the contact form asked the usual questions. Name company. Why you how did you find us and any other questions that I would like to ask to make the call? You know, better for everybody. And so I put specific questions. I wanted to know about time zones. I wanted to know about opening hours, and I want to know about invoicing and hours. And I put that in the form along with my name, my company.   You are well, that sort of a thing that then led me to a calendar link and like a great perfect. Now I get to look at a calendar link straight away. Wonderful. I go. And I booked time with s

Today, I'm going to talk about why you need to regularly assess your skills. I think something that happens as we go through life and we come across a problem, we deal with it, we move on to the next problem or move on to the next thing. And now's the time of year where people are planning for the next year and not just out and looking back from the previous year.   And we tend to look at what we've done, what we've accomplished. And one thing that really needs to happen is to really assess what skills you have and what you've learned or what you need to change or what isn't useful anymore. And we don't do this enough. Anyone who wants to improve and prosper in your professional or your personal lives, you need to make time to assess your skills. And this can be an every quarter is a good way of doing it.   I mean, when you're an employer, you know, often employers will have a yearly assessment feedback, so on and so forth, to make sure that their employees are learning and growing with the new company. T

I'm actually recording this on Thanksgiving, so actually it's midnight. So Black Friday and what I am doing is unsubscribing from Black Friday. And what I mean by this is Black Friday week and Cyber Monday. Tuesday tends to be the time that any mailing list that you are accidentally or on purpose on will send you an email or 15, because this is the time when people who have these mailing lists that they've left dormant for months or years or whatever will be like, oh, but Black Friday, I need to do a sale.   I need to do this a promotion or whatever it might be. So you're almost guaranteed to get an email from companies, organizations that you haven't heard from in a long time, or also companies that you have been hearing from on a regular basis. So what I've been doing is using this as an opportunity to unsubscribe from organizations, people that I haven't been engaging with, that content is no longer relevant for me. It's a really interesting thing. Now, there are some people who I have been reading the e

Today, I want to talk about learning how learning from criticism, how to take criticism, how hard you try, it's often difficult to hear any type of criticism, especially when it's about your work. And if you are creative, even more so because you are your work and it's very personal, it can cause us to second guess ourselves. And worse, it might even make you stop doing whatever it was that you wanted to do.   It might send you into a tailspin and like wondering and thinking and round and round it doesn't have to. In fact, the most criticism can be turned into like valuable feedback even. It sometimes feels like a very negative experience. One thing we really have to remember is that most of the time when someone is giving you feedback, it's not usually an attack. Most critiques are not about attacking you. The person, even sometimes when it's given negatively, they're often like kernels of truth that you can gather from it.   You just have to let go of the emotion. And even if you pretend it's not an att

today I want to discuss your customer journey. A lot of people, when they're thinking about starting a new business, they get very excited to do the website. They do the logo, they they have the product and they go out there and try and sell it, which is great.   But a lot of the time they don't think about the journey that the customer has to make. Either before or after or during the sale, and that's where you can figure out where there might be some issues. So, for example, OK, your client finds you, happens to find you via a blog post on that blog post page. Is there a way to contact you? Is there a way to grab your freebie? Is there a way to get one on one time with you?   If they own if the only thing they see is that blog post, how can they then get a hold of you? Is that even an option? Does a blog post lead to something that carries on from what the blog post topic was about, or is it something unrelated? Is there a special offer at the end of the blog post is an option to sign up for your newsle

I want to talk about how your money shouldn't come from just one place. If recent events have taught us nothing, it is that nothing is guaranteed. So even if you do have that day job that that 9:00 to 5:00 paycheck, having that as the only way that you earn money is not a great thing, is having all your eggs in that one basket. And the reason why this might not be optimum for a lot of people is when that basket goes, you might be prepared, you want to have savings, and then you are left in this position where things are very dire very quickly.   And so while you're in that panic mode, it's very, very hard to go ahead and think clearly about what steps that you need to do next and how you need to move forward to make your situation better. And so there's a couple things that I'd like to talk about. One is sort of, yes, you can have your nine to five job as do you get money from other things, be it interest on some savings that you have, or do you have stocks where you you get dividends, maybe you rent out a

. Today, I want to talk about why you must treat your business like you would a client so many times when you have a couple clients, you're getting money coming in. You tend to go ahead and forego everything that you were working on with an on your business to have that time to work on your client's business, which is great. You are trying to keep your clients happy doing what you said you were going to do, hitting those targets and maybe exceeding those targets and keeping your clients happy, because keeping clients happy means that you will get paid.   But if these are one of jobs, something you need to think about is where is the next job coming from? And yes, you could think, well, if I do a good job at this client, there will be a referral involved, or maybe they'll have another project for me to do or maybe something else will happen. But you can't always rely on that. And so when you first starting out, you should be spending at least 40 to 50 percent on revenue generating stuff, marketing yourself,

I want to talk about friend rates, something happened recently and. Wanted to talk about how to deal with it when your friends ask you for work and they don't want to pay. So I was part of an online virtual summit and there was a pre-recorded section where I gave advice on finding businesses online. And then there was a free live Q&A segment where people could type in whatever questions they had, which was played directly after my pre-recorded session.   And a lot of people ask questions and some of that I knew from a long time ago. Maybe I hadn't spoken to them in maybe eight years as I go, hi, nice to see you, blah, blah, blah. OK, I didn't ask any questions, but this was a Q&A free for all and it lasted about 30 thirty to forty five minutes. And then after that I was answering specific questions within a Facebook group. This person decided to not ask questions during the Q&A, but go ahead and type in the Facebook group.   Oh hey, long time no see. I'd really like to pick your brain. Can we arrange some

Today, I want to talk about due diligence, and it's not a subject I've talked about before, but something happened recently that made me think this would be a good topic for everyone to think about right now, especially with more people working online and the holidays are coming, a lot more scams are out there. And so recently I got an email saying, hey, I was recently a business manager of successful Game of Thrones podcast.   And while I was there, I was able to bring in a certain amount of sponsorship money in just six weeks of the last season. I mean, it's a Game of Thrones podcast. You're probably going to bring in money regardless because it's jumping on something popular. But anyway, you said I've reached out now because I've launched a podcast network and would love for your podcast to be part of it. We currently have over 20 podcasts on the network and adding more shows weekly and in partnership with the podcasting platform.   And we are able to give all the podcasts in the network to ads. And th