Recently, I announced a weekly series of posts with 5 tips, tools and resources to help us entrepreneurs*...Keep.Moving.Forward.
Here's Week 11 and its theme:
Build Your Fort
Preface: I was out for a run this weekend. Generously, optimistically maybe, I call it a run. Factor in the walking, then the pace becomes more of a shuffle. But...I got 'er done.
Through the riffs of Dickie Betts and Greg Allman's voice and their show in Fillmore I started thinking about this week's post.
The first thought was...Build Your Fort.
I acknowledge this symbol** may have a basis in fear. Put up the walls. Add the little guard towers and walkways...very feudal, very colonialist with all its implications.
But that's not the fort I'm thinking about.
Your Fort is where you plant your flag and say....
By God, this is where I make my stand. Right here. Right now. This is me. These are my values. These are my talents and strengths, my foundation. This is my community. This is where I start. From here, I'll keep.moving.forward.
That's Your Fort. Note that it starts with you and extends to the community and you keep.moving.forward.
I've built my fort a few times. Like all things in this temporal world, each of those forts faded away. Either I left the fort or the fort left me. But with each version...in its building and inevitable collapse I found clarity, a positive ROI for my investment in my strengths, others who I could help and who could help me. I kept.moving.forward.
These steps were not articulated at that time. But, by moving forward and by finding those who I can help, they can help, I can articulate them.
Discover Your Strengths
Brian Brim, co-author of Strengths-Based Selling, discussed with me recently this process and the Clifton's StrengthsFinder. He talked about how understanding our strengths helps us:
talk about how to be stronger in our approach to engagement...Stronger in our approach by having conversations...by understanding the elements of engagement and how you can manage those things.
The whole point was being able to answer:
How do I create a long-term sustainable career ... and avoid that burn-out factor?
Translation for this post: How do we keep.moving.forward on a sustainable basis?
Because at the end of the day:
Strengths-based selling is about accelerating the best of who you are.
This is key to finding the resources to invest more in our talents and further develop those strengths. And it's key in being able to sustain our movement forward. AND...it is key in building a community of others whose strengths as members we can compliment.
This is key. Do not go pass go until you take this step.
Build Your Castle on a Hill
Erica Anderson in her book Being Strategic, describes the 4 steps of envisioning and designing our castle on the hill. I encourage you to buy her book, read it, use it. The 4 steps are basically questions starting with:
- What is?
- What's the hope?
- What's in the way?
- What's the path?
Answer those questions and well, you're off to a good start moving in the right direction.
I do a grave injustice here as I breeze through her book. So...get the book.
Build and Man the Gates.
As Brian Brim discussed during his radio show, once we have defined our strengths then we can view through through our strengths-filter. That filter serves as the gate through which we now filter our world. What we share and express and where and how with whom we share it.
Big strengths, big filter, big gates. Not so strong...well, we have to be cautious.
Let in and embrace those who embrace and support our strengths. Keep out those that don't.
That's easy with digital content. There are so many tools and rules and filters and options to block, unfollow, not follow, not subscribe.
I've found it's really a matter of focus and commitment. Each week I adjust these filters.
Why? Because I keep.moving.forward in an ongoing discovery process. Less about them or me. It's more about what we might be able to do together. Once they're in your fort, they make the me become the we. Regardless.
Grow Your Garden
That's the garden of your mind, your heart, your soul. Who adds nutritious elements to your garden for you to consume?
Through the lens of your strengths-based filter, you know what you need to consume to stay healthy, grow healthier and keep.moving.forward.
Today's abundance of media and content and content-providers and content-curators and each of us serving as our own personal routers...makes this easy. Lists on Twitter. Twitter aps like Hootsuite, Google Readers, podcast subscription choices...On and on.
Frankly, I see more willingness among people to help each other....grow.
Keep.Moving.Forward
Seen through the filter of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, the departure here is a tossup. Does the fort leave us or do we leave the fort?
Maybe, both happen simultaneously.
But, as my friend Eric (call me) advised us with a chuckle, back in the day...Time and tide wait for no man. I never knew I'd be writing about that wisdom 10-15 years later.
We love our forts. I've loved mine and those I invited to join me. But all good things come to an end. And a bigger, better, fort awaits. Keep.Moving.Forward.
That is possible with these tools.
**********
* Just a reminder: we're all entrepreneurs.
Our whole life is a series "of hurdles, challenges, setbacks, disappointments, screaming euphoria, comparable levels of despair, a thrilling ride....” And like business entrepreneurs we’re pushed and pulled to invent and re-invent ourselves each and every day...or suffer the same fate as businesses who refuse to change: close our eyes to the world.
And like entrepreneurs in the business world, sometimes we get stuck. Sometimes, we need a tip, a reminder, a flashlight, a life buoy...And in this economy, we all need all the help we can get.
I hope this helps.
Feel free to share your tips, resources or means you have found help you keep.moving.forward.
Disclaimer: I'm a work in process with each of these steps, especially that last one. I'm getting better at the 2nd one. I overlook them all at different times, I handle them or have handled them poorly at others....But I Keep.Moving.Forward. I think you can too, if you take one of them today.
** The next image .after that feudal/colonialist image, that came to mind was the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle.
First seen in the 1981 movie Stripes, but now...slightly out-of-date. Luckily, for this post and you my readers, my run came to an end and here's those 5 steps to Build Your Fort and keep.moving.forward.
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