Hey there!
We hope you're enjoying the beginnings of spring and feeling a bit of newness, hope, and excitement for the quarter. We've packed quite a bit into this newsletter - keep reading for more on our mindset of the month, a few "trail tips," insights from Abby's time at the Florida Creativity Conference, a sport psychology symposium coming up in Sedona, and more!
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Living the E Life
Let's continue unpacking the 10 E Mindsets. These mindsets give us a framework to move through the inevitable challenges and experiences that come with being an entrepreneur. We've found each mindset to be incredibly helpful, though you might focus on different ones at different times to help you create a fulfilling and sustainable entrepreneurial journey.
Here's mindset #7:
Keep learning. Keep iterating.
To be effective as an entrepreneur, it's important to not only leverage all that you learned in graduate school, but to continue growing, developing, and evolving. Where some people might thrive off of having a syllabus and deadlines, we invite you to look at learning as a professional as an opportunity for freedom. Sure, there isn't as much accountability or feedback, and yet, you get to determine what you are learning and how you'll go about that process.
The key thing is that you keep learning - even if your pace, your strategy, your motivation, or the content feels different.
We recommend intentionally investing part of each week, month, or quarter on learning more about, and therefore leveling up your:
client skills, business skills, and/or niche interests.
Client skills are those skills involved in working directly with clients - in individual, group/team, or organizational settings. This might mean learning more about problems your clients are facing (e.g., stress, performance anxiety, injury), assessment, mental skills or interventions, structuring sessions, facilitation and debriefing, evaluation strategies, ethics, or your philosophy of practice. By continually learning how to best serve and support your clients, you're also facilitating the first mindset: do good work, first and always. Not to mention, you're making it more likely that your current clients will succeed and then rave about you to other people, therefore driving word-of-mouth marketing.
Business skills are those skills that help you run your business and support yourself as an entrepreneur. In line with your business goals, you might consider what skills feel most important to you, what you're interested in learning more about, or where you currently have a gap. This includes skills such as:
technical - website development, using technology, incorporating AI financial - payment processing, bookkeeping, retirement planning administrative - user experience, paperwork, processes marketing - networking, search engine optimization (SEO), email campaigns self-care - balancing life and business, personalized strategies for well-being
Niche interests are what you find yourself gravitating toward over time, and therefore something you want to specialize in within your work that requires a reinvestment in the learning process. You might consider specific sports you want to support (or another performance domain, such as performing artists or business professionals), ages or genders you want to work with, unique services you'll offer, or an issue you want to become really good at "solving." Consider reading these articles if you haven't already to get your wheels turning: Taylor, 2008; Blann et al., 2011; Tod et al., 2020.
Whether you learn by reading, writing, attending webinars, engaging in courses or groups, receiving mentorship, listening to podcasts, reflecting, creating, or a little bit of all of the above - keep learning. Then use what you learn to iterate how you do your work, how you run your business, and how you support yourself as an entrepreneur. Refining your practice and your processes is a natural part of evolving in business - once you know better, do better.
Key Takeaway: Part of being an entrepreneur is ongoing learning. It is important to continue developing your client skills, business skills, and niche interests, and then use what you learn to refine your practice and processes.
Psst: in the Establish course we help you explore this mindset further and guide you through exercises to develop your all of your entrepreneurial skills.
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Want to keep this mindset in mind? Download your copy of the 10 E Mindsets! |
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In our experience, entrepreneurship and hiking have so much in common – the challenges, the joys, the camaraderie, and the views. Here are a few hiking terms that are on our mind this month as we think about our own entrepreneurial journeys.
Big Three – Your backpack, shelter, and sleep system. These are typically the heaviest, most expensive, and most critical categories of items carried. It's important to be intentional in what you choose and how you invest your resources on these, as they make a huge difference. Lindsey has a habit of identifying her Big Three each month to help her stay on track in spending her time, energy, and attention on the three most critical items for that month. Often, these include a mix of business, life, and personal categories.
Flyer – A box of supplies you mail to yourself, to a location farther up the trail. This much needed support that you planned ahead for is always a joy to receive. Abby is currently thinking ahead to five years down the road in her business, what she might want to "open" at that time, and therefore what she can "pack" now. How might you support your future self in your entrepreneurial journey? Maybe it's learning something now to make it easier for yourself in the future, creating a new service or product offering for a pivot in your business, or developing a habit that will pay off in the long run.
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Abby presented a session on living your values at the Florida Creativity Conference a few weeks ago and had a blast attending with some of her favorite people in the youth development world. In reflecting on her experience, here are a few key points she took away:
We can all be more creative by using Ruth Noller's Creativity Formula Curious listening is an untapped superpower - and what often gets in the way is distraction, validation, and protection We might improve session design through Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction Session attendees generally care about three things: Why are we here? Will we end on time? Will there be snacks? :) Getting stuck is a vital part of the creative process, and is worth exploring We can use the 1-2-3-4 system for time management to build momentum It's helpful to revisit stories that you've turned from fiction to fact that are no longer serving you, to change the narrative Make the complex understandable by making it visible (e.g., through drawings, symbols, icons) - and really, those are all just lines and squiggles 10 out of 10 recommend a day at Disney with your friends post-conference (self-care, am I right?)
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Mindstroke Endurance Sport Symposium
Speaking of leveling up your client skills and niche interests...
Open to all sport psychology practitioners and researchers + endurance sport coaches, athletes, and enthusiasts, this event is coming up in Sedona, AZ from April 25-27, with CEUs available. The session topics are all relevant and important to endurance sports - and will involve facilitated small group exercises and discussions, case examples, and panels, helping us to bring conversations that are typically "in the hallway" into dedicated sessions.
Abby is looking forward to being a panelist for sessions on psychological preparation and psychological aspects of aging, alongside esteemed colleagues and endurance coaches and athletes, and to have the opportunity to learn how to support swimmers, runners, and triathletes even better!
Organized and wonderfully envisioned by Drs. Britton Brewer and Judy Van Raalte, we'd love to see you there. Register now.
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Happy trails.
Abby & Lindsey
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P.s. if someone forwarded this email to you, you can sign up for our monthly newsletters here. |
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