Word of 2023 - Planting

Planting

I have had a vision of the future for a while now. It was my 10-year plan a couple of years ago, but I am currently shooting for it to be a 3-5 year plan, pending I can get my family on board in the execution of this vision.?

The seeds for this vision have long been gathering. It’s time to do the work.?

Because my plan involves actual planting, building, and animal caretaking, there are some skill gaps I need to fill.?

I will not abandon my current mission in order to make this vision a reality, so I must complete it.?

My current professional mission is to make work better for more people. This will continue to be a part of my future vision, but the venue and methodologies will change. I plan to ensure that between technology and training, my proven approaches to career management and executive branding will remain available and maintain high-quality standards. In the next five years, I intend to identify a new steward and set them up for automated success. I hope to continue as an advisor/board member. You will still be able to come to me when you are planning your next career move, and I may remain a primary strategist. I may not be the individual doing your branding consultation and writing your résumé and LinkedIn profile, but I will oversee it, at least for a while. This may strike you as a huge change. I have received so much feedback on my intuitive abilities to develop authentic messaging and my knowledge of the employment market. To not expect to be the one doing this is going to take years for me to adjust.?

I am earning my certificate in human rights consulting, currently. I will continue to advocate for workforce rights and corporate transformation. This may look more like advising on policies and collective advocacy, rather than providing one-on-one support to individuals in advocating for themselves. However, the tools, technologies, and trainings that I have developed and will develop during this time will be available in my stead.?

My current personal mission is to eliminate our debts and achieve positive net worth, which will be leveraged to create this vision. As I’ve shared before, the illness I barely survived in 2018 really threw our financial lives out of whack. We were like a battered ship in a harbor getting continually beaten by rough waves. It has required healing, repairing, and upgrading, and continues to be a process to become sea-worthy. There are skills gaps I will be filling in this area, as well.?

Back to the planting analogy, because the vision really is an earthbound one, and requires land - an abundance of it.?

The seeds began with my kids, unsurprisingly. Daisy at 4 years old made a blueprint for a treehouse village. She made each construction-paper page a different feature, accommodation, or amenity. For nearly three years she continually added to her blueprint. We have kept the scroll, and, when stretched out, goes a good 35 feet.?

She loved the Treehouse Master, Pete Nelson, and Insane Pools with Lucas Congdon. She modeled her drawings after theirs, but with a young person’s flare, like a milkshake shop treehouse, and an animal treehouse. Thinking that she might be an architect or builder someday led me to some research on sustainable building and some videos on primitive building. Bamboo construction really intrigued me. Daisy has since shifted her interest to design, but researching future applications for her interests led me to dream about building furniture, bushcraft, and treehouses with bamboo.

Tim has planted seeds, as well. He is very handy. He can figure out how to fix or build almost anything. He is a fireplace installer by trade, but he won’t be able to lift these heavy units and work mostly on his knees forever. He dreams of having a big warehouse where all of his parts and salvaged items can be organized and he can repurpose them.?

My vision is an EcoVillage. I’m not looking to live off the grid, but I am moving toward not only living a more sustainable life, but also teaching how to live a more sustainable life. In the new vision, the context is physical materials and provisions - textiles, food, and construction. It is still sustainability in my current context, though.

When I think about what I offer now, it’s a way for my clients to pursue work that gives energy rather than just taking it, and to advocate for conditions that enable them to restore and perform at high levels. Then, of course, there are the financial resources I advise them to negotiate so that they can sustain a good standard of living in the present and the future. People are the renewable resource I have been focused on helping to sustain. The future vision includes the planet, as well.

So, my business in 2023 will be planting the seeds that will help me create my vision, both literally and figuratively.?

I have already started to propagate vegetables, have experimented with pickling, and began building small-scale Bamboo models. I know enough now to know what I still need to learn. I have joined an EcoVillage community to learn about the ways EcoVillages are funded, operated, and marketed.?

I have created technical prototypes and MVPs (minimal viable products) for half of my service offerings and transitioned some of my coaching and branding to B2B. I will be augmenting everything with gamification and crafting user experiences that best ensure people cross the finish line.?

I will need to master or outsource mass marketing. Quantity to scale has eluded me. I am highly successful with relationship-based and referral-based lead generation and sales, but reaching and converting a large audience is not my forte.?

Additionally, I will be assessing business entity options. I expect the EcoVillage itself will be a non-profit. It will include the sustainable production of organic raw materials such as hemp, bamboo, flowers, herbs, vegetables, and grains, and byproducts, such as sunflower oil, essential oils, hydrosol, alpaca yarn, etc. As much as possible, it will be operated by renewable energy sources, likely a combination such as hydro, geothermal, wind, and solar.?

There will also be a continuation of my business related to conscious transformation, and I expect that this will be primarily events-based (retreats, dinners, team-building). This will remain for-profit. I would love to host weddings, family reunions, and community events, as well. This will have a coaching/training component, a hospitality component, and a place where they meet. I foresee being a home base for the C3 community, hosting live events like salons and think tanks.?

My personal inspirations for this vision, my seeds, are to get back to the earth, learn how to live in a self-sustaining way, engage others in this way of living, and have a more active lifestyle; my work over the last 20 years has been relatively sedentary. I’m not a doomsdayer, by any means, but I’m also not under the illusion that life will go on infinitely as it is. Should something collapse global financial systems, take down the electrical grid, or decimate the global food supply, I will have been not only helping to secure my own family’s survival, but also teaching other communities to do the same, and, in doing so, helping to produce cleaner air and minimize my own personal carbon footprint.?

I have spoken this grand vision to very few people since some of the seeds have started to germinate. Making it public feels a bit scary. I know from the past that declaring it to the world, stimulates my sense of integrity and accountability. Now that I have shared this vision with you, I am even more motivated to do thing things that get me closer to making this vision a reality.?

My word in 2020 was Co-creation. My phrase for 2021 was Diversify and Expand. Fulfilling on these themes has helped me grow into the person who will now plant the seeds for a more healthful lifestyle, an even greater impact, and a more sustainable future.?

I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Do you have a word or theme for 2023??