🐳 #4 Just a Splash | The Shallow End | My Swimlane
New website, a successful pie chart, elusive smoothies, and I’m a Lion, what are you?
The fresh surge of energy and curiosity that whooshes in with September always takes me by surprise. Do you feel it too? Is this a cultural, biological, ecological or spiritual phenomenon? I really don’t know, but I do I know I like it.
I’ve been thinking more strategically, finding clarity and resolve about what I want to create in work and life, and drawing dorky pie charts about it all (see below).
A quick note: for this month’s 🍹Poolside Chat🍹, I’m particularly interested in a question about TEAMS. If you’ve got a challenge or conundrum related to working on a team…hit me up. Submit your question here.
Just a Splash etc. is a monthly helping of work-life doodads – links, recommendations, and other amusements. Enjoy perusing, and if you like what you read, share with a friend!
Let’s get into it.
🥁 🥁 🥁 After a months-long “drumroll, please….”, I’VE GOT A NEW WEBSITE!
Building these digital pages involved more than a simple glow-up, though I do love the fresh aesthetics. This website represents a seismic shift in my brand story as I highlight writing and speaking alongside my offerings in coaching, team coaching, and leadership development.
Figuring out how to weave all my professional services into a cohesive site that says “let’s partner!” to everyone from readers to conference planners to team leaders and CHROs was no easy task. To my website dream team, Rachel Walker, Nei Huyhn, Zaar Taha, and Jill Vosberg – thank you for your brilliance and generosity. (Check out this post to learn more about these fine folks and their services!)
🥧 📊 Time for that pie chart I referenced above. A couple of reads that have been inspiring my September strategic-thinking boost are The Multi-Hyphen Life by Emma Gannon and How to Grow Your Small Business by Donald Miller. I’m loving Miller’s airplane metaphor for understanding the different elements of a small business and how they need to work together proportionately for the plane to soar.
In The Multi-Hyphen Life, Gannon invites readers to draw a pie chart of all the things that contribute to our unique sense of success, assigning the proper weight to each slice. This article describes the activity, and here’s my own personal Success Pie:
I didn’t realize until I made this chart just how important the absence of overwhelm is to my own recipe for success. 😅
Go on, make your own Success Pie! And tell us in the comments what makes up your ideal picture of success.
🌞 Product recommendation time! If you don’t wear makeup, feel free to skip on ahead. If you do wear makeup, but don’t wear ILIA’s Super Serum Skin Tint1, I recommend changing that. This foundation wows me. I went to Sephora, they scanned my face with a futuristic complexi-tron thing, then handed me the shade made for me. Every time I put it on, I feel at least 67% more radiant.
💵 Managing money – business or personal – is truly one of my most hated activities. I think it’s probably an anxiety thing for me. When I look at the numbers, I realize how finite they are and how fragile I am. Deep breath. We’ve been using YNAB as a family these last few months, and while I’ve been (ahem) slow to adapt…I am finding it really annoying empowering to know exactly what I can spend at any given moment and to have to get to make informed choices based on that knowledge. So I guess I recommend it? What are your favorite money management tips?
🦁 🐻 🐬 🐺 Do you know your chronotype? Your chronotype – either Lion, Bear, Dolphin, or Wolf – is your genetically-based hormone schedule that determines when you prefer to sleep and when you have the most energy. I just learned I am a Lion, which explains why I am obnoxiously peppy at 6am and hopelessly DONE at 8pm. I’m getting all kinds of ideas about how to structure my day and manage my energy based on this. You can take the quiz here.
🥰 Earlier this year, I shared about our dear friends from 14 years ago, when Rob and I lived in beautiful Boone, North Carolina. In August, we finally made it back to Boone for a visit, our kids in tow. My friends’ babies whose diapers I changed in my 20’s are now (amazingly mature) teenagers who took my own kids under their wings so sweetly. Six of us adults from our old friend group – Kerry, Aaron, Chuck, Meghann, Rob, and me – and our many kids hiked, stargazed, reminisced, and basically picked right up where we left off a decade and a half ago. My heart is still brimming. Have you been considering a trip to see old friends? You should probably just do it already.
🌄 I also stuck around in the gorgeous NC mountains for a couple of extra days to gather with Chuck and a team of all-star coaches who partner with his leadership development company Epic Rivers Leadership. We’re all technically solopreneurs, so the time we spent in casual yet rich community talking business development, idea-swapping, and exploring “how might we” scenarios was a rare gift.
P.S. I’ve had a recurring dream for many years that I am trying to get back to Boone to order the “Peaches and Dream” smoothie from Stick Boy Bread Co, but in my dream something always thwarts me from actually securing the smoothie. (Interpretations welcome.)
Well, good news. I got the damn smoothie. Thwarted no more.
May your September be full of vim and vigor, if you so desire.
Thank you for reading The Diving Board!
As always, there are no affiliate links in this post, just me geeking out about stuff I genuinely like.