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Defining Your Offering - A Preview

Defining you're offering uh, we we looked for a while together and um craig, the founder of the company, and meg who's, our producer and I were talking about how to approach the idea of what you do for a living. You know, such interesting ideas and other people just even some kids were twelve years old. They think they want to be on broadway. How did they get that idea? You know, it's almost it's almost, uh, mind boggling. And then somebody else ends up being an orthodontist. Did any of you consider that profession? No. And, uh, jeweler, you know, it's almost there's a cz many offerings, as there are people, because then you get into the sort of specific areas of it. Um, so if we're goingto take this workshop personally and actually benefit from it personally, a big part of it is defining um, excuse me and refining our offering. What are what is our? We have our inner life and are in the world, but now we're making a presentation to the rest of the world, you know, what is that? Um, mo...

st of us are tweaking that for our whole lives. Some people just go, you know, um like I don't I don't know if isaac stern, great violinist, had to think about this you know, maybe just playing the violin from me that's what I do you know, I know people like that but most of us are really kind of more hunting and pecking to find our are our spot and our offering so um in order to do it, we have to explore who we are that's that's what's going to come from there's no way around that it's not like we said oh, I see what the world needs you know, I'll just I'll just provide that because it has to come from us so there's a tremendous inner uh, quality to finding what you're offering is and the two parts to it is we need some space and creative exploration to find us right? So we can't just skip over that what I would call you know, entering not knowing you know the space of not knowing it's so important for for exploring if you explore you don't know where you're going the definition of exploring you might have some idea. I mean, what what did they think they were finding here in america? Um I think they were on their way to india is not right. You know, all the great discoveries have come from people not knowing what they're doing so that entering the space of not knowing way may have been trained in our life, you know, to be scared of not knowing you know what I'm gonna do what you're going to be you know who knows where that comes from but in this case were really willing tio enter the space of not knowing which is exploring its very creative when we talk about creativity that's what we're really gonna be talking about we're going to be basically being I'm going to push you out of an airplane without without a power shift this weekend you know? And one description in my tradition will tell you a little bit more about as we go uh is, um the notion of the teacher in the buddhist tradition might my teacher was a man named children trump or in b j from tibet and he said that uh the role of the teachers they take you up in a plane uh sort of give you some instructions how to fly it and then they jump out with the only parachute on there you are up in the air with the jet and you've gotta fly so it's a very different notion of aah you know, the idea of teacher's going to somebody's gonna hold your hand through the whole process and uh uh maybe, uh we move the need for you to experience not knowing, you know, so that's a different tradition um to make an offering though we need to connect with ourselves but we need to connect with other people and that's like a very interesting zone when you take it out of the thank you card out of the driveway and you start connecting with others and you know no no that's not what I meant at all you know you know that's not what I had in mind or um everything gets sort of turned twisted uh you experience all kinds of barriers obstacles opportunities so working with others is really, really key part of your offering you know in fact it's it's um you could almost say it's the spirit of part of spiritually dimension of work is that we have to work with other people so um how how do we see other people how do we experience their needs how do we how did how flexible are we were working with off schools that come up in terms working with others this person's to zippy this prison's too down you know somehow if they'd be drawn out over and over again toe working with others even if we even if we're a novelist you know you're still going toe goto you know tio um uh do a book signing and there's going to people standing there one you sign that book and there's going to be and agent and there's going to be a publisher who's going to tell you that they want to change what's going on so working with others is going to be a huge huge thing for us so I think I want to take a minute with you all, and the way we're going to do this is we always start with the live audience. If you're online now, you could start type sending us in just some notion of what you think you're offering is as it's forming it may be very well defined and maybe, like on the people, uh, cellist in the san francisco symphony orchestra, it could be as ill defined as I have no idea, I'm just looking for a way to find that, but I begin to have a dialogue about it, then we can sort of start to tune it up it's like, um, you know, this is the part where, like, the orchestra's tuning up and they're all doesn't I love that by the way, I don't know if you'll that's one my favorite moments because it's, beautiful chaos, you know, it's, it's, orderly chaos when the orchestras tuning up each person's just trying to find their little thing, and then then we're going to start to play together, uh, altogether. So, um, if you could write and just say briefly lets you know, we don't have a lot of time in the world what you're offering is or what you're working with in terms of presenting that either formulating it for yourself. The internal part or offering it out to the rest of the world what is your offering what is your offering or is it changing or you know what are your issues with it so anybody want to volunteer to start okay okay please uh well I'm going to find uh uh what's your name again julia julia yeah uh so I've been doing that since university and um yeah I went for a start up in australia and yeah that's what I do I mean that's what I've always done I feel like I sort of fell into it a little bit by default yeah yeah so I went into like a kind of liberal lhotse program and just that's what I ended up being my strong too I guess um and then I did proscribed and visual odd but I never really found a way to integrate visual out in a way that's like stuck because it's not something I have to do it so I don't do it wait a minute visual art is your passion yeah like exactly what painting or yeah painting and I mean even just digital it's stuff is interesting to me too but because if you do you feel right there there's a little sort of rumbling yeah, something you have passion for but it's sort of on the side table totally yeah I came like coming up with all these ideas and thank you I'll do that I don't know what point you know I just keep putting off that I think that's pretty comment and not act on your inspiration but meanwhile you go along with your artwork integrated into your design work yeah yeah I mean it's somewhat creative but it's not the same so are you satisfied too satisfied satisfied yeah pretty much which one status is good you see how great that is yeah yeah we ordinarily think of that is a problem but that's actually not a problem that's an engine for further and uh you know evolution actually um that's great thank you very much yeah and now you live here now uh yeah pretty much for now pretty much for now eyes the visa issues so there's not not even the livelihood has even translated into a location you know where am I where is the work still being done with the australian company yeah that's right so it's up in the aristo whether they'll move here or not in the next couple of months right who needs to move anywhere these days so you folks are not moving anywhere all right yeah that's a that's an interesting dimension of being creative in this time you don't have to be anywhere yeah for a lot of it so thank you very much it's good juicy huh yeah anybody else want to jump in so I'm david or d c b um I'm hearing based in san francisco on the I direct here um directing is the thing for me for sure um I guess I haven't thinking about it a lot in terms of what specifically as a director and I'm able to do on what is unique about what I want to do and I came up with the term that might be a little bit obscure but it's I see myself as a primordial director which is kind of connected to like both like the stoic idea and the taoist idea of the primordial which is to say connected to like the material beneath the common like the rules that operate beneath thie the obvious so mike it's concern is always trying to find what the rule is underneath. So whether it's here here I see it as kind of like a I do see like this studio is kind of like a zen garden a little bit it's all about like refining it like some of the crew will no like I'm kind of obsessed with this cotton site curtain I mose like I love steaming it and kind of working as well as I can on it's never good enough for me, but but but I also love narrative filmmaking and so while I'm obsessed with the work here, my narrative filmmaking is kind of in my dreams it's not in my reality right now so that's that's where my kind of designer is my kind of my hunger is still yearning towards the narrative as an adjective as in fiction like a story you know, fictional as opposed to documentary or, you know, live event. So what film that came out this year do you wish you had directed uh her okay for sure. So that puts a couple things together that's just thinking yes, I want to actually give d c b a shoutout here because he works with the hosts here created by this well, very, very closely and his vision of how he directs and how he describes things has helped us enormously understanding our role. He describes it is the form of japanese theater my cool but it's cool, no drama, no trauma, no, no h bo was a wonderfully creative human being. I can go. Thanks, guys. And I promised when I hope I can fulfill that promise that I'm not gonna get you in trouble. This do this. I'll get myself okay, because once you open these things, you know it's out of our control on a certain level. But, um, who else wanted toa wanted to wear really well just to help you to know who's who's joining us today? Ms riza says her favorite quote, smile it's contagious and she also went back, teo folding the offering and heaven and versus earth request you made earlier she says my heaven is crafting from home and making enough to support myself but my earth is just starting my etsy store so they're just starting to align even taking taking awhile perfect that's wonderful what research? Miss teresa? Miss reece? Yeah like uh truck driver handles four good buddy and it goes everything from sort of that very defined offering that described to gabby nineteen twenty seven says I'm working on becoming a shit talking mushroom producer and portugal now I love that before you finish that sentence I'm working on becoming a shit taki mushroom that would be very, very unusual right? But she wants to become a talking mushroom. What do you say producer in portugal? Wow. Yeah. Wow there's no obstacle whatsoever that's a completely open field as far as I can see and there's a lot of exploration, teo a lot of trying t find trying to define narrow everything from photography digital. You know, designers we have people who are ending up as budget financial analysts on dh there trying to branch out into being a yoga teacher and forensic accounting but nothing seems to sick lately. The only thing that sticks is a photographer and playing around with light room and photoshopped how about a forensic yoga teacher you know chivas and a corpse pose you could go around and investigate everybody so well that's great and I think the idea of sort of taking the visionary aspect and then begin to connect it to your earth is really I think people are sort of picking up on that um listen anybody else whose life I want to take it in for a shock so sierra correct some our vision is to have a media literacy centre for you want a media literacy centre media literature yes and I will love to teach kids how to use creativity and technology to build businesses fantastic. Wow just let it wash over me how good that is you know, because there's so many dimension to that it's very cutting edge in a way it's very compassionate you know, it's got a lot of good elements to that. Yeah. So what obstacles are you experiencing any getting started? Absolutely okay, we're going to talk about that I think let's use that as a sort of a mirror fulcrum for some of the conversation that's a really um it has the ring of vision but it also has the ring of something could really do it's really, really possible. You know, um as long as you include the shit talking mushrooms in there so maybe one more and then we'll kind of move along yes and right yeah, I feel like I'm on a warrior path right now I really want to eliminate the starving artist mythology and replace that with helping artists realize that they can claim their creative freedom through business savvy and I really feel like I'm on a it's just a revolution I want to lead on dso you personally went through that journey yourself yes tonight so you're a starving artist at one point uh no, I was never starving I was on but I had a fine arts degree and I had to learn about business right? Beautiful. So that's very similar I know you're doing a workshop coming up here, right? So, uh maybe you could, uh, ask you to help with framing this conversation because that's really kind of ah very much in alignment with what we're talking about so that's it and it's part is your own journey has taken you to the one two transmitted to others. So uh one of things that I wanted to say you know, it's like I wrote these principles down I realized what I'm really summing up is about forty years of mistakes that I made and the idea of china like, you know, maybe it's misguided I don't know but because everybody has to make their own mistakes but of saving some of you time, energy and money just uh uh, you know, good teaching sometimes is the summary you know, in our buddhist lineage is sometimes a summary of hundreds and thousands of years of people making mistakes and then just leaving a trail like this trail leads nowhere what is that? The bridge to nowhere was that in alaska was there some bridge to nowhere or something like that with sarah palin yeah, they built the bridge it doesn't go anywhere so if there's a sign there says this bridge doesn't go anywhere hopefully people come along they don't start driving out on it so there's ah lot of, uh, notion of passing through uh what the time was painful learning curve and there's no way to complete the rescue somebody from painful learning curve but why would why we study while we practice what we do? This kind of thing is two to learn from the pain of others which is a big time saver in the way you think about it you know, like for example somebody goes over to david's favorite wall and starts pounding their head against the wall. I will not let seo would flip out let's say they did and then they after in about an hour they said, gee, that really doesn't feel that good, you know? Well, everyone else in the room would have would be able to skip that step so that's part of our whole overall uh, concept here is to share experiences not just me but all of us and and see if we can't learn from each other that way so thank you all for contributing and that there'll be a lot more room for that as we go um the next slide is saying creating a strategy to market you're offering how to create a prosperous and sustainable business strategy is your large scale big picture planning tactics are smaller scale everyday details that are subset of your larger strategic vision strategy is heaven and tactics are earth so I wish I hadn't you know, talk about making a buck I wish I had a buck for every meeting I've ever been in in every company and even spiritual tradition I've ever worked with where they didn't know the difference between strategy and tactics and what should have been a strategic meeting was a tactical got pulled into tactical conversation oh yeah we could get the table and uh you know, we only have five cups and we need six and then twenty people are sitting around having that conversation so I understand the difference between these is a very, very big deal actually confusing them we'll create confusion and inefficiency that's how you know things were just not kind of streamlined and moving moving along um many entrepreneurs are not strategic half on dh death everybody's looking to them like if you look at a company that's growing you know, this strategic capacity of the leadership is a really key element because it's it's like basically the general in the army you know, everybody's willing to fight, ready to go, it's amazing how good people are when they're led. Well, you know how much they'll produce, but if there's confusion about the strategic or the visionary aspect of what's going on, then you can see it. You sense that in kind of a kind of on its worst case, everybody's disgruntled, you'll hear a lot of grumbling in the cafeteria. Yeah that's basically what you're here um, so if you even if you're a tiny company, you know, one person seemingly you still need to have a strategic vision for you, but you're doing so it's been interesting because I part of my life my life is talking about a little before stop this morning has these different elements to it, and one of them is counseling people at this point no one to one and it's interesting that the premise might be the meditation practice, right, but it really begins to talk about the whole life, how's the whole life going and uh, there is very good idea if we spend some of our time uh, withdrawn like to have retreat, strategic retreats for companies is very smart and ourselves maybe we do some kind of retreat practice or something where we can really tune in to what our vision is and therefore what our strategic situation is so for example, a rebecca I bet you're out there I can tell you're listening in, uh, young friend and student who's mounting her own yoga studio, so I'm asking, what do you think this is gonna look like in five years? Right now? What will this will look like? You have a vision of what this will be in five years on dh kind of my theory on business is that you visualized five, ten years out, then work backwards from the future. That's what that's ah, you know, and when you're visualizing, your mind should be very open, very clear, uh, very free, because you don't want to put boundaries on it at that point, you won't have a very open kind of approach to that. What could it be? You know, um and then the that's so that's there's really three dimensions there's your vision, your strategic plan, and then you're operating plan. So, um, thie vision is is crazy and like, just look at the six people here, you'll have a completely different vision of what you want to do. You look sort of similar, similar physical, you know, legs, arms, head, eyes, and yet somewhere in there there's a completely distinct, unique vision, so once we have that, though, and we can project it out I recommend projecting it out five to ten years what are you doing five to ten years from now what is all that you're talking about look like and periodically to do that once you have that you have to commit to it you know we can't just be bouncing around like a ball on a ping pong ball in the air for the rest of our lives because it's frustrating you know so once you commit at least temporarily to a vision then you come up with your strategy how do I implement that um then coming down we figure out the tactical dimension of it so in that way heaven on earth heaven is is hierarchically above you know it's connected with the real leadership principle so we have to have a very open kind of sense of what's possible then we create some kind of vision out of that for us and then we say ok let's think of it almost like militarily good business has a lot in common with military operation there's a sense for example using the military analogy um if she want to conquer russia I'm thinking more world war two and germany but you know you're gonna need serious supply lines that's a really big issue that's what defeated hitler the weather and the supply lines otherwise otherwise we wouldn't be having this argument with russian right now we'd be having it with david nick turns crazy history right um so, um the idea of creating, uh arc and and then okay, maybe two years before you start the military campaign you've been building roads and and uh you know, creating um your weapon systems you know, whatever whatever it is I'm just using this is analogy I hope you understand that we're not talking about literally doing anything like that um and, um any kind of training that went to take is gonna have a longer arc to it uh, you know, if you're going to be a professional tennis player, you might spend the winter just doing weights and uh um burning and they were touching racket so, um the big picture of strategic development then comes down into okay, what? How many pens? Where are the pencils? Brian? Where are the pencils that I asked for? No, I'm just kidding, but that would be like we don't have any pencils, you know, that's tactics and that's really important because all of a sudden everything starts to fritz if you don't if you don't have that level of detail together. So in general we're talking about sort of three strata the vision which is the biggest mind, the strategy which is beginning to implement over a long arc and tactics which is day today and we need to have all three so this is pretty simple this one go ahead and create a vision statement a strategic overview in an operating plan that's how you do business, ladies and gentlemen, that is business aphorism a one o one if especially if you're going to try to raise money, you better have that you're going to try to get cell your vision to somebody else, which is you know we'll talk about it that's going to an inevitable thing when you reach a certain size you're getting need capital so there are people with money by the way all over the place it's just kind of think, you know, when I hear somebody saying I don't have any money to do that I go one oh one there's money all over the place there's people dying to invest in things but they want to see this they want to see a vision statement, a strategic overview and operating plan and that's what they're going to pit by and that's what's what's going tell you step by step how you're going to get where you're going. So if any of you here and any of you there, maybe the outcome of this course could be that you actually take two days whatever and write it down see that's on tiny letters there, write them down um if if your business does not make sense on paper, I can almost guarantee it won't make sense in real life there's some entrepreneurs who are very good on their feet and they're really charismatic and they just fly by the seat of their pants but they'll grow to a certain size where you can't do that anymore that happens that inevitably so it's good practice right now even if it's just a small entrepreneurial venture or you would like to have big company your own um what's your vision statement develop a strategic overview five, ten years out how you gonna get there and then very specifically tell yourself first and then you can say it to other people even if you only use this wood clarifying your own state of mind you get halfway through it you know you know this isn't what I wanted to do it all you know um had another another young friend who's a manager of ah yoga studio and he was talking to me about shifting you know and in the entrepreneur pra nouriel vision three years later he was making the same amount of money he was making now with his job so we're why why take the risk I do that because for those three years is going to be all wrap up time so we have to look on paper paper is such a great mirror for for giving us feedback in terms of like you start to see the numbers don't add up they don't add up so I'll give you an example um I I have worked in many many areas of the music business that's been my profession somehow lately I'm a buddhist teacher I don't know exactly how that happened um I look at that maura's like synchronicity delivering that but by intent I'm musician I've had fortunately my whole livelihood for decades has been I've been able to do pull that off and honestly some of it is going to as well as we talked with some of some of this stuff was by the seat of my pants and good just good luck and good timing and that under the creativity part we're going to see you're dealing with a different animal there when talking about creativity so um you know, I had the brilliant idea about uh twelve years ago maybe fifteen years ago to start my own record company and I should have I had an interesting experience which was this japanese friend of mine you have any kind of language barriers on the show not like this but it's like being english right? No, I understand that but I mean in other words uh I'm not gonna get bleeped him I know okay, so what depends? Okay, okay go for it well believe me off it's not that bad but will you meet me after you took it so mai my japanese friend who was a band a bluegrass banjo player? Of course in the modern world japanese bluegrass banjo players par for the course uh I said you know I'm thinking of starting my own label and he had had his own label and it says so how's the record business and he just looked at me went sucks one word comes it okay leaving and you know he said he lost two million dollars basically over a period of years and you would think you know I go okay maybe this is like a message I'm getting here for from the phenomenal world way you shouldn't do this but my creative juices just too strong on it you know? And I had had a lot of successes in the record business and part of my motivation was people have helped me out at critical times you know, I came up uh you know, at a time when the record business was at its peak um you know, um and, uh highly energized people were getting making lots of money uh having a lot of fun talk about creativity and making a buck. So and I had mentors in the record business that were very, very supportive of my young creativity and, you know, it's a big part of my life for meaningful and then, um I thought I could pass that along, you know, there's a lot of young artists these days singer songwriter something you're really good some of you have what it takes so um the idea of uh passing through but I didn't write it down and if I'd done the the on paper I would have seen I had it in my head pretty pretty good and actually did write some the planet sound but I had two labels and one was sort of ah new age kind of label associate with the yoga world which is a growing booming thing kind of world music and that had a commercial more indeed commercial label and the miscalculation I made was that a new age record right before I started with cell twenty thousand units you know nothing not even a big yanni or something I'm not even a big successful one like that but because of digital technology you know, everybody knows the story here all of a sudden people not buying records and they're getting them for free and so a really good one is selling two thousand workers now that was your math pretty far off and you cannot afford in business uh just go uh you know the duh factor will kill you so the kind of christmas of that information did not come through to me. I didn't really want to hear that I wanted it to be like it wass because it was so much fun and actually would have been so workable so it's interesting and my plan was to have a sustainable business based on twenty thousand units per per outing and then have some really really successful outing and those those a cz you know, those are like a cash cow situation so but writing it down I think and showing it I'm going to encourage each one of you to think of two or three personal adviser's over the course start thinking about it now who will everybody out there two to three personal advisers who are savvy uh experienced love you get you get what you're trying to do and you write this down you showed to them and get some feedback and you know, maybe even an expert consultant although you better make sure the consultant knows more than you do other than how to make money consulting which actually might be more than you know we have our inner life and are in the world but now we're making a presentation to the rest of the world you know what is that, um most of us are tweaking that for our whole lives some people just go you know, um like I don't I don't know if isaac stern great violinist had to think about this, you know, maybe just playing the violin from me that's what I do you know, I know people like that, but most of us are really kind of more hunting and pecking to find our are our spot and our offering so um in order to do it, we have to explore who we are that's that's what's going to come from there's no way around that it's not like we said oh I see what the world needs you know, I'll just I'll just provide that because it has to come from us so there's a tremendous inner uh, quality to finding what you're offering is and the two parts to it is we need some space and creative exploration to find us right? So we can't just skip over that what I would call you know, entering not knowing you know the space of not knowing it's so important for for exploring if you explore you don't know where you're going the definition of exploring you might have some idea I mean, what what did they think they were finding here in america? Um I think they were on their way to india, isn't it right? You know, all the great discoveries have come from people not knowing what they're doing so that entering the space of not knowing way may have been trained in our life, you know, to be scared of not knowing, you know what I'm gonna do, what you're going to be, you know, who knows where that comes from but in this case were really willing tio enter the space of not knowing which is exploring its very creative when we talk about creativity that's what we're really gonna be talking about we're going to be basically being I'm going to push you out of an airplane without without a power shit thiss we can you know and one description in my tradition will tell you a little bit more about as we go uh is, um the notion of the teacher in the buddhist tradition might my teacher was a man named children trump or in b j from tibet and he said that uh the role of the teachers they take you up in a plane uh sort of give you some instructions how to fly it and then they jump out with the only parachute aunt there you are up in the air with the jet and you gotta fly so it's a very different notion of aah you know the idea of teacher's going to somebody's gonna hold your hand through the whole process and uh uh maybe we move the need for you to experience not knowing you know so that's a different tradition um to make an offering though we need to connect with ourselves but we need to connect with other people and that's like a very interesting zone when you take it out of your car out of the driveway and you start connecting with others and you know no no that's not what I meant at all, you know you know that's not what I had in mind or um everything gets sort of turned twisted uh you experience all kinds of barriers obstacles, opportunities so working with others is really, really key part of your offering you know, in fact it's it's um you could almost say it's the spirit that part of spiritually dimension of work is that we have to work with other people. So um how how do we see other people? How do we experience their needs? How do we how did how flexible are we were working with off schools that come up in terms working with others this person's to zippy this person's too down, you know, somehow it could be drawn out over and over again to working with others even if we even if we're a novelist, you know you're still going toe goto you know, tio um uh do a book signing and there's going to people standing there one you sign that book and there's going to be an agent and there's going to be a publisher who's going to tell you that they want to change what's going on so working with others is going to be a huge, huge thing for us. So I think I want to take a minute with you all and the way we're going to do this is we always start with the live audience if you're online now, you could start sending us in just some notion of what you think you're offering is as it's forming it may be very well defined and maybe, like on the people, uh, cellist in the san francisco symphony orchestra, it could be as ill defined as I have no idea. I'm just looking for a way to find that, but I begin to have a dialogue about it, then we can sort of start to tune it up it's like, um, you know, this is the part where, like, the orchestra's tuning up there all it doesn't I love that, by the way, I don't know if you all that's one my favorite moments because it's beautiful chaos, you know, it's it's, orderly chaos when the orchestras tuning up each person's just trying to find their little thing, and then then we're going to start to play together, uh, altogether. So, um, if you could write and just say briefly lets you know, we don't have a lot of time in the world what you're offering is or what you're working with in terms of presenting that either formulating it for yourself, the internal part or offering it out to the rest of the world. What is your offering?