The Freefall

There’s nothing like a free fall. I’ve been in a few free falls during my lifetime and as scary as it can be (I imagine falling down a deep Valley as I’m trying to grab onto a branch so I don’t hit rock bottom), it’s also the most exciting time of your life.

Why?

Because in a free fall, anything is possible!

Not to sound cheesy or cliché about it, but when you’re forced off a ledge, your mind goes into overdrive to survive. Well, at least, mine does.

And as I’m falling down this deep Valley feeling completely out of control, I’m exhausting all my resources to elevate my mind into a higher existence and figure shit out.

I’ve found that every time I’ve done something epic in my life, it’s been because of the free fall.

So … here comes something epic! I don’t quite know what it is yet, but I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel as I’m pushing myself to extremes on this “pivot” journey.

If you ever find yourself in a similar situation as me; pivoting, building, attempting something new, etc, here are the steps I would suggest you take:

• Make a list of everyone that’s smarter than you in your life and create an action plan around getting a meeting with them. As soon as Erin told me he’s out of the company, I had an excel sheet with names of people I needed to talk to. I didn’t have any agenda for these meetings except to tell them my current situation and get their feedback. This is brainstorming. This is what will “stabilize” you, give you some perspective, hope, understanding and the ability to move forward. Because when you are an entrepreneur, the only direction you can ever keep moving in is forward. Anything other than forward is death to your soul.I’ll tell you … I did the same thing when I was launching NetworkingPhoenix and it was a lot harder to get meetings with people than it was this time around. This time, around all I did was send an email and said I. NEED. YOU. NOW. … or something along those lines and everyone, without hesitation was happy to meet with me. I’m a fortunate girl, but I worked my ass off to get to this point.However, as difficult as it was to meet with people in the beginning days pre-NetworkingPhoenix, I still got all the meetings I wanted. I hustled. I made it happen.My point to this long rant is that if you want to meet with someone because you think they can offer some valuable piece of advice. Figure out how to make it happen. Flatter them, stalk them, come to them, bring them coffee, a bottle of cognac … whatever it takes.

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• Once I made my list and started meeting with people, I started the discovery journey. You don’t know what you don’t know and one of the best ways to figure out what you want, need, desire, DON’T want, etc … is to have conversations. This is why networking is so important. It’s not just to exchange business cards and hope to do business together. It’s important because you’re building a large network of like-minded individuals. Think about it, as much as my mom loves me and would give anything to help me with anything … there’s no way she could understand my situation. Right? My point is not to knock my awesome mom, but to express how important it is to surround yourself with people who get it. It was through these conversations that I discovered that I desperately wanted to launch the “Gelie” brand as opposed to focusing on  rebuilding NetworkingPhoenix (which is what I thought I’d be doing right now).

• Each conversation led me to the next. Each person recommended that I talk to someone else, read a book, gave me a resource to look at, etc. It was eye-opening. You know what the most shocking thing was? That I have AMAZING people in my network that I’m friends with, who are well aware of what I’ve created and how disruptive I am … and I didn’t even realize they were there. But that’s just how it is. Sometimes we don’t realize who is in our network and it takes someone else to point it out. That’s ok, that’s part of the journey and discovery process. Again, this is why networking is so important. How easy was it for me to reach out to these people? We’re talking a Facebook message, text or email. That easy. Still think networking isn’t valuable? 🙂

• I mentioned this earlier, but the most important piece of the free fall and discovery journey is to listen to yourself talk. The more I talked, and the more I heard myself, the more I realized that I need to re-shift my focus. If you read any of my previous entries, you read me talk about how I feel that I lost a lot of myself with NetworkingPhoenx. Well, no better time to find myself and take back all my power than in a free fall. It was during these conversations that I stated I was going to work on the “Gelie” brand and not work on rebuilding NetworkingPhoenix for the moment (I still plan on doing that, just not right now). I needed to get back to Gelie and get back in touch with my creative side. I needed to feel like I’ve been able to retrieve all the things that I lost. I needed to feel free.

And if you haven’t seen my TEDx talk yet … I’m all about freedom.

My last piece of advice to you is get into action and go start talking to people.

Enjoy your journey!

Love,
Gelie