Business Tips for Culture Makers
FREE:
Business Tools
for Culture Makers
NOT interested in doing business as usual?
Good. Me neither.
The Status Quo business formulas we’re taught everywhere (see also: The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand) produce inequity and injustice…
…and we do NOT have to do it that way.
And…if we scrap the old, unjust business practices, what do we replace them with?
For the last several years, I’ve been developing alternative, justice-informed*, culture-making marketing strategies and tactics. I try them out in my own platform and with clients and then we iterate.
Here are some of the transformative, equitable #BusinessToolsForCultureMakers we’ve had success with that might be useful for you. They can help you want to grow your platform, revenue and reach…while also creating a positive social impact.
* I first heard the term “justice-informed” from Lauren Elizabeth and it’s so wildly useful.
Click for different topics below
I’m looking around at our empowerment spaces at the payment plans being offered and I’m seeing some arguably predatory practices.
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In this Business Tip for Culture Makers, you’ll learn that building consent into your email marketing is a culture making power move that is also good for business.
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See also:
Culture-making Marketing is about our business practices. We can invest in our own communities by selecting apps founded by people with non-dominant identities.
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Women with other dominant identities – white, cis, straight, able-bodied, thin – can leverage their privilege, power, and platforms to make new norms.
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White women entrepreneurs can resist and dismantle white supremacy in their own businesses and marketing by auditing the images they use.
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Our challenge is to develop that well of images while avoiding conventional, performative beauty-signalling that props up existing oppressive narratives.
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Images are an essential business resource and they have culture-making power. For a long time, I knew that but I didn’t know how to herd that set of kittens. So I avoided images altogether. I knew what I didn’t want to do — perpetuate the mandatory pretty that’s a form of internalized misogyny AND perpetuate…
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In this Business tip for Culture Makers, you’ll learn that building consent into your email marketing is a culture making power move that is also good for business.
Read More
What if something we do all the time in online marketing actually reinforces rape culture? I’m talking about opt-ins. Cookies. Not refreshing email consent.
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See also:
I know there’s a lot of hullabaloo about GDPR and that it’s going to be bad for business, but I think it’s something culture-making entrepreneurs can champion.
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In conventional online marketing, we’re taught to “manufacture” authority with a makeover story. Why? So that people will obey our authority and buy.
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Income flow or lack thereof doesn’t tell me how evolved or talented someone is. We need to hire our emerging artists, activists and entrepreneurs.
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When I was first starting out online, I witnessed an influential woman using her platform to boost the signals of others and invest in her community.
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Using your resources and reputation to lift people starting out is a culture making tool. When we use culture-making business practices, everyone can flourish.
Read MoreSee also:
Our attention, efforts and social media comments can and do boost people into the mainstream, so we must avoid boosting the platforms of our opponents.
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Inventing culture-making business ecosystems for yourself means reading way outside your niche and asking “what if…” rather than “how?”
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To get seriously in your marketing groove and feel a sense of deep commitment to putting your work out there, journal. It connects your vision and ambition.
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When I hear someone say "I’m not ready for a relationship" or "I’m not ready to be a good partner", for example, I think, being in a relationship is how you learn to be a partner and how you learn to love.
Relationships and marriage are people-growing machines. In relationship is always life-altering. You can’t learn to swim on land.
So of course you’re not ready for the thing you`re scared of and the thing that needs doing. Nobody is.
Even when you think you’re ready, you’re probably wrong.
When I decided to have children and got pregnant with my first child -- the magnificent Sophie Umaringa, teenage leader of rallies -- I thought I was ready.
And then, when she arrived as a cosmic privilege and burden, an eternal marvel and responsibility, a whole person with a buffet of needs and demands, and an instant and continuous attenuation of my own selfishness, I knew – and I know every day – that I was not ready.
I was and am wrenchingly unprepared.
I am not an instinctual saint equipped with The Answers but a desperately loving and flawed person who is striving to rise. Striving to be the mama this young culture-maker needs. Striving to become the kind of person and leader and learner our new world needs.
Ready is always, always, ALWAYS the wrong litmus test.
The real question is:
Are you willing to do whatever it takes to get ready?
Because we get ready by *doing* it.
not ready but willing,
Kelly Diels
#LevelUpYourLife #MotivationalSpeaker #Mindset #Creative #BuildingYourLegacy #WeAreTheCultureMakers #SlowProductivity #MeaningfulWork #SustainableBusiness #Speaker #Writer #UseYourLife #SelfDevelopment #LeadershipDevelopment
Apr 24
An epiphany from late 2018: I was scrambling to find time for a new collaboration.
Witnessing this in live action, my collaborator, PK Mutch (Petra), said to me, with been-there-done-that sympathy, "That`s what women do -- we scale horizontally."
I immediately recognized that this was why my business wasn`t working the way I wanted it to -- but I didn`t know how to fix it.
A few days later, I went out with a colleague I`d worked with a long time ago at a huge telecom. She started talking about the new `vertical` she was managing.
Suddenly it all clicked.
The telecomm as a whole had lots of services, lots of clients and lots of offers, sure; but each vertical HAD ITS OWN TEAM and its own content. It was a unit unto itself.
That`s how they got traction in each of those verticals and how the company as a whole did well. By focusing on one client and one offer.
What I had done, in my own business, was the opposite of that.
I had one team (me) but many verticals. Several different client profiles, several different offers.
For years, my biz strategy was to constantly invent new programs and offers --and create all new launch material to go with them. ⠀
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I was always inventing and overworking.
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As a result, I never quite got traction on ANY of my offerings, so I was always scrambling for cash AND constantly on the verge of burn out.⠀
That`s why my business wasn`t getting the momentum I was hoping for, and why I was personally exhausted. I wasn`t concentrated in ONE vertical; instead, I`d scaled horizontally across many.
And I was only one person!
So how do you stop scaling horizontally?
You create a signature piece of intellectual property that becomes the centre of your business.
A signature program is a way to do less while making more.
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I`m Kelly Diels, an expert on Culture Making, Thought Leadership and IP. I teach culture-making entrepreneurs & creators how to develop a substantial body of work that changes EVERYTHING – your life, your industry, our world.
Apr 23
Marketing, social media and deliberate self-promotion aren’t a distraction.
They’re activities that add up to a winning and significant body of work.
They`re not a distraction from ideation. They ARE your ideas.
Here are 3 counterintuitive but KEY activities for Thought Leaders to commit to for putting their ideas out into the world, developing their body of work and moving forward in their business:
1. SOCIAL MEDIA.
It`s not *just* about getting attention. Social media can be a lab for cultivating your ideas, so put snippets of ideas out on social, every day.
2. NETWORKING.
Having conversations with interesting people -- even preaching to boring ones -- provides creative stimulus and opportunities to forge creative connections and embroider your ideas.
3. WILD IDLING.
True thought leadership & meaningful bodies of work require unstructured leisure time and “wild idling.” (h/t @LianneRaymond)
ONE MORE TIME, WITH FEELING:
Self-promotion is not a distraction from your body of work.
It’s part of how you create meaningful work that matters. It`s an idea-growing practice.
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I`m Kelly Diels, an expert on Culture Making, Thought Leadership and IP. I teach culture-making entrepreneurs & creators how to develop a substantial body of work that changes EVERYTHING – your life, your industry, our world.
#BodyOfWork #MakingAnImpact #ThoughtLeader #ContentStrategy #LevelUpYourBusiness #CreativeEntrepreneur #CreativeEntrepreneurship #IntentionalBusiness #BrandingIdentity #SocialMediaForBusiness #SocialEntrepreneur #IntellectualProperty
Apr 19
Are you wrestling with Imposter Complex? This might help. #impostersyndrome #impostercomplex #thoughtleadership #creativeentrepreneur #intellectualproperty #bodyofwork #WeAreTheCultureMakers #deepwork #slowproductivity #visibility #edwardsaid #orientalism #culturalexile #yourdifferenceisyourstrength www.kellydiels.com
Apr 18
Dear Multi-Passionate Maker,⠀
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Maybe you don`t have Shiny Object Syndrome.⠀
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Maybe you`ve been studying & practicing all of these modalities because you`re developing a rich body of work, across time.⠀
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(No maybe about it.)⠀
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Multi-passionate professionals often get told that they`re "scattered" & need to focus.⠀
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They then internalize negative messages insisting that their orientation towards lifelong learning, curiosity & creativity is a barrier to success.⠀
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IT`S NOT.⠀
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It`s how we build the deep work & creative solutions needed for these urgent times.⠀
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Often, when I work with multi-passionate professionals, it`s wildly obvious to me that they`re collecting tools, synthesizing across traditions -- and making a whole new thing! -- in order to solve complex social problems.⠀
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They`ve been gathering all.the.tools.⠀
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You know what all those tools add up to? ⠀
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A practice. A way of doing things. A framework. Your unique process.⠀
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***You have a methodology.*** ⠀
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So let`s build language for it and NAME IT, specifically.⠀
Naming your method makes it tangible AND SALEABLE.⠀
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Now it now gets a lot easier to explain it to other people...⠀
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...and becomes more obvious why they might want to work with you :)⠀
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Once you name it, you substantiate it. ⠀
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****Including to yourself.****⠀
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Now YOU can see how everything you`ve trained in has led up to this, has prepared you for this work.⠀
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Because, dear Multi-passionate Maker, you`re NOT spinning your wheels or getting distracted by shiny things.⠀
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You`re growing the solutions & institutions of the future.⠀
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Let`s make sure you`ve got the language to describe them. ⠀
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love + justice,⠀⠀
Kelly⠀
#SurfaceYourMethodology #IntellectualProperty #DeepWork #BodyOfWork #SlowProductivity #ThoughtLeadership #ThoughtLeader #MeaningfulWork #WeAreTheCultureMakers
Apr 18
Business Tip for Culture Makers #301: Use Social Media Posts To Refine Your Ideas
What if social media isn’t a time suck, after all? What if, rather than distracting you from your work, creating short social media posts can be a deliberate refinement practice that helps further develop and concisely articulate your ideas?
Read MoreSee also:
Social Media for Culture Makers: The Certification Program