Check out recordings of our Monthly Momentum Calls from 2012 – 2015. Click here to go back to the main library and listen to the latest.
December 2015
This call’s main theme was centered around project management. Thanks for your great questions! Here’s what we covered:
- Moving is a project: how to prioritize your “must-do’s” vs. your “let go’s”
- How to prioritize your time, energy, and attention when you don’t have enough for all of your current projects
- What mindset to have about launching and maintaining a website (hint: it’s not perfectionism)
- Defining the three different levels of success, and how to quantify yours
- How to get over displacement frustration and make it your ally
- Charlie’s real-world advice for starting and managing your podcast
Right-click here to download.
November 2015
Thanks to all who joined us for the November call. We had a bit of a tech snafu in the middle of the call, but most of it got recorded. You’ll get to learn about:
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- What it’s like having an editor in the creative process of writing your book
- How to work through challenges with website development
- Strategies for marketing your business in an authentic way
- The beautiful and confusing nature of web writing and what it means to curate vs. create
- How to turn “random stories” into opportunities to display your business values
Right-click here to download.
October 2015
This was a jam-packed call featuring great questions. Thanks to all who joined us! Here’s the ground we covered:
- How to deal with fear of criticism when you want to publish your work
- The definition of “milestone”
- How to let go of sentimental attachments that are overcrowding your life
- Deciding which writing approach suits your content
- Why having five project slots in the planners allows you to gain momentum
- Evaluating your workspace to ensure it fits your needs
Right-click here to download.
Recordings are unavailable for August and September due to technical difficulties.
July 2015
Some great questions were asked on July’s call! Thanks to all who joined us. Here’s what you’ll learn from this call:
- Tricks for setting aside time for unexpected life events
- How to manage projects when traveling is a frequent interruption
- Ways to deal with the urge to “run” from something you don’t want to do
- What to do when you suddenly have free time
- The distinction between overwhelm and overload
- Why making progress is better than talking about completion
Right-click here to download.
June 2015
We had some great questions on the June call…thanks to all who joined us. This month you’ll learn about:
- What to focus on when you’re launching a new small business
- The importance of finding an edge or extreme to play up in your marketing and strategy
- Niche vs. Theme specialization
- Asana as a default tool for project management and how awesome Zapier is
- How to make your business stand out in the marketplace
Right-click here to download.
May 2015
Thanks to everyone who joined us on the May call. In this call, we talk about:
- The three different perspectives of pricing you must consider before setting your price
- The block and bucket method of planning your days
- How to decide between offline networking and online networking
- How to start getting feedback for a business concept before you’ve made a product or service to show people
- The considerations for rolling out a price increase
Right-click here to download.
April 2015
Thanks for another great monthly momentum call. In April’s call, we discuss:
- How to figure out how to prioritize your time to make room for social media
- 4 ways to make sure your goals are translated in your day-to-actions
- Why it’s important to understand the seasonal energetic cycles and plan your work around them
- How living as if life were a white board helps you experiment freely
- What to do when you’re not sure what to do in your business
Right-click here to download.
March 2015
- Site updates and why Charlie decided upon the “New Here” page
- How to change the stories you’re telling yourself about bookkeeping
- Using a psychographic calendar for your marketing approach
- Facebook marketing and leveraging Facebook groups for your business
- Overcoming barriers concerning your personal finances
Right-click here to download.
February 2015
Recording unavailable due to technical difficulties.
January 2015
We had some technical difficulties for the first portion of the call, but there were some great insights about managing projects when your work lies in multiple domains.
Right-click here to download.
December 2014
There were some great questions asked about managing your business during the holidays. The topics we covered include:
- Navigating the different stages of your business when you’re afraid of rejection
- Finding the balance between family and work during the holidays
- Tips for setting deadlines around the holidays
- The cheapest cost-per-lead marketing approaches
November 2014
Thanks to everyone who joined us on the November call. We had lots of new listeners and it was great to get to know some new Creative Giants in the tribe. In this month’s call we talked about:
- Why you’ll be subject to a schedule shift this holiday season even if you don’t celebrate the same holidays
- What to think about in your business for the holiday season
- How to to keep your projects going when people are in and out for the holidays
- The key to making better, more clear deadlines
- How to make smart and strategic decisions about how to grow your business
- How to overcome the inherent loneliness of working independently
- How to know if you’re a creative giant
- The 5 ways we generate value
- How to prevent blind spots in your business
- How to plan appropriately
Right-click here to download.
October 2014
Thanks to everyone who listened in on the October call. Just a reminder that October is last 4-week work week in the year! This month we talked about:
- How to scale fast without imploding and what to ask angel investors
- The key to pivoting successfully
- How to use your local environment to help you build your business
- Why you know what to get done but you can’t get it done
- The best way to create a new business model
- How to determine what business market to aim for first when you have lots of ideas
- How to choose a business coach
Right-click here to download.
September 2014
Thanks to everyone who joined the September call. If you missed it there are lots of great tidbits in this one. You’ll learn more about:
- What you can do to get peak productivity for your own life
- How to categorize your time
- How to stay focused when you work from home and/or on long-deadline projects
- The difference between distractions and interruptions
- Moving through Stage 1 of the Small Business Life Cycle
- An important rule for businesses with websites
- Tips for Rocking your Speaking Engagement
- Book recommendation for business plans
Right-click here to download.
August 2014
Thanks to everyone who attended this month’s call. We had a lot of great questions and got to go deep into a conversation around catalytic moments. Listen in to learn more about catalytic moments and:
- How the cultural system changes your work modes
- How to explore moving from one career to another
- How to restructure your work day into creative blocks of time
- How to schedule catalytic moments and who to schedule them with to improve your odds of success
- The 300-word exercise to get over feeling stuck
- The 4 phases of the creative process
- The difference between being a creative pro and being a leader
- When the best time is to build your website, mission, and vision when you’re just getting started
- Selling from a place of service
- How to find the space in your life for the things that nourish you
Right-click here to download.
July 2014
Thanks to everyone who took some time out of their Mondays in July. In this month’s MMC we dove into the following topics:
- An important tip for avoiding the compare and despair game
- How to balance business development with client work or other big projects
- The simple secret of scheduling
- The 4 phases of creativity
- Re-thinking self-promotion
- How connecting can help you increase your creativity and the likelihood of catalytic moments
- How to know what to schedule when
Right-click here to download.
June 2014
Thanks to everyone who joined us on the call.
Some fun news: Look for the second edition of our book, Small Business Life Cycle, which will be released in about 10 days.
We went a little deeper this month into what’s getting in people’s way:
- How to reach your important goals, given that your energy and capacity, and everyone else’s too, is changing for the summer.
- How to get your important work done AND enjoy the summer.
- June 20th: plan for the drop in sales, readership, and engagement.
- How to get back on track when something big comes along and disrupts the progress you’ve been steadily making towards your goals.
- How to get un-stuck when you have so much to do that you can’t seem to get started on anything. You don’t feel good working, or relaxing, or doing stuff that’s neither (like working in your garden.)
- How to promote your own work in spite of the discomfort of asking people for something and of self-promotion. How to do what needs doing and succeed by embracing the certainty of rejection.
- Quote by Henry Ford: “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”
Right-click here to download.
May 2014
We had lots of new attendees this month, which meant lots of great questions from people with new and interesting businesses and business challenges.
In this month’s call we talked about:
- How to de-bottleneck a process
- Creating simple Micro-Systems
- Why it’s important to focus on the yay-sayers when it comes to promotion
- Social media best practices for your business
- CRM applications for managing contacts and logistics
- Prioritizing strategic anchor points before creating a plan of action
- Heat-mapping your creative energy
Right-click here to download.
April 2014
Thanks to everyone who joined us for the April call. We did a little more teaching on this call then normal, especially around systems and creativity. Don’t forget to join us for the next Creative Giant Coworking Session if you’re ready to take the learning to the action stage and start doing.
In this month’s call we covered:
- The systems we recommend for organizing your business’ processes
- When you need a better system vs. when you need a better process
- Dealing with delegation at an organizational level
- The four stages of the creative process
Right-click here to download.
March 2014
This month’s call was so packed with great information, it seems like it lasted only 15 minutes. Don’t worry, we’ve got a full hour’s worth of useful content in here, though. One of the things I’ve been trying to do more of for years now is share my library – I’m starting to do more of that on these calls, so listen for the book recommendations and have a pen and some paper ready to write them down. Don’t forget to check out some of our newest offers as well!
In this month’s call we covered:
- How to choose the right business model
- The difference between your end customer and your end client and why it matters
- The differences between Joint Ventures, Affiliate partnerships, White Labeling, and Licensing when it comes to intellectual property
- How to get to your why and why you don’t really need a process
- The number one thing you can do to ensure success in early-stage businesses
- How to prioritize your ToDo’s
- How to make it easy for other people to refer you and your business
- How to scale 1-1 coaching/consulting
Right-click here to download.
February 2014
On this month’s call, we started out with a reminder to the guys about Valentine’s Day and then talked a little more about Creative Giants before diving into the questions. Some really great, deep questions got asked. In fact, we had the participants saying during the call they couldn’t wait to listen to it again! We also talked a good deal about new stuff coming up, including our new podcast, The Creative Giant Show, our new printed planners, and our new products we’re developing. But beyond the sneak peeks and behind the scenes insider info, the learning was top notch this month and we appreciate everyone who shows up willing to do the work, be transparent, and answer tough questions.
On this month’s call you’ll learn:
- A streamlined process you can build to find out if your potential clients are a good fit
- What makes a customer a qualified lead
- How to get over asking one of the most awkward questions in business
- The danger of confusing your product with your brand (hint: they are not the same!)
- A sneak preview of the printed planners and upcoming PF courses
- How to figure out when it’s the right time to start building a team and get over your fears of not being able to afford the help
- The 3 questions you need to ask at all times in your small business
- How to identify Scope Creep and determine which new projects to move forward with
Right-click here to download.
January 2014
Our January Monthly Momentum Call was a little different yesterday.
I highly recommend you take the opportunity to listen in on this one – it’s a mini planning workshop that takes you through some goal setting in a different way then you might be used to. Even if you’ve already done some planning for your business or your personal life, go through this process and see if things change.
On this month’s call, we:
- Defined our goals
- Specified those goals
- Dreamed bigger
- Learned how to commit to goals
- Asked ourselves the most important question in determining whether we are setting ourselves up for success or failure
- And shared a strategy that may surprise you for becoming a “good enough” expert
- Plus, we started the process of creating a plan to take action on the goals.
Right-click here to download.
December 2013
Thanks to everyone who joined this month’s call and any call in 2013. Our last conversation of the year was action-packed with specific solutions to your business and planning problems. Be sure to join us again next year on the second Tuesday of every month at 2pm Pacific for our Monthly Momentum Calls! We’d appreciate if you invite your business friends too. Happy Holidays!
On this month’s call, we talked about:
- How to manage your time during the holidays
- The middle ground between work and play
- How to decide what to focus on
- How to bootstrap your new business and still find success
- How to take consistent action
- How to build your email list the right way
We also referenced the following PF articles. Always a good idea to refresh your memory on some of our core concepts:
Right-click here to download.
November 2013
Thanks for everyone who joined us for the call. The theme this month was all about displacement. Listen in to learn more!
Some of the things we talked about:
- How to plan and set expectations for the holidays
- How to choose core satellite tasks for the Founder and hire someone else to do the rest
- System tools for sharing content virutally, collaborating in teams larger than four people, and managing information and data as a creative knowledgeworker
- When to go virtual and when to go local
- How mom’s can work productively during their chief creative times, even when they have distractions
- How to flourish productively so your business can productively flourish.
Right-click here to download.
October 2013
Thanks for tuning in to the October Monthly Momentum Call. This month, we talked a lot about project planning and time management. Check out the recording below to listen to the entire call. Some other things you’ll learn include:
- How to refocus a team when fatigue sets in
- When, and when not to, collaborate when making big decisions
- How to break down projects into tasks
- How to figure out how long a project is going to take
- How to plan for massive projects alongside other normal business operations
- How to know how much time you need to spend on big projects vs. your normal work
- The breadcrumbs concept and the two-hour rule
- Why you don’t need to worry about someone stealing your idea
- The mindset role in planning
- The 5 levels of success
Right-click here to download.
September 2013
This month’s call was all about the practice of life and business. Some specific things you’ll learn from listening to this call include:
- The importance of giving yourself recycle time after transformative events
- What to do before leaping across The Penny Gap
- How you really should be calculating your hourly rate
- How to resell a product or service that maybe didn’t do so well the last time you offered it
- What the Red Shift is and why it matters in business and life
- Tips and advice on the best productivity/organization apps, systems and products on the market today
- The three questions you need to ask to strategically plan for the rest of 2013
- The three basic things you must do in all small businesses
- How to introduce yourself at the beginning of a speaking gig without sounding like a pre-recorded robot
- How to successfully deal with stress and overwhelm at the end of each day
Right-click here to download.
August 2013
Thanks to everyone who joined in on the call and asked a question. A piece of wisdom from this month’s call: “Action expresses priority.” ~Ghandi
Here’s what we talked about this month:
- A new motto for sales
- How to make a decision on the best learning opportunities for you and your business
- What it takes to determine when it’s the right time to hire a VA and how to delegate tasks
- The difference between core tasks and satellite tasks
- Ways to create a daily schedule to ensure you’re spending your time on the stuff that matters most
Right-click here to download.
July 2013
Thanks to everyone who joined in on the call and asked a question. Here’s what we talked about this month:
- What goes into auditing your own brand
- How much time you should spend strategizing before you create an offer
- How to encourage engagement on your blog
- How and why you need to do keyword research
- The best way to define your avatars
- The million dollar question all coaches and consultants should ask
Right-click here to download.
June 2013
Thanks so much to everyone who joined us on the call. The conversation was really great and I know you’ll get a lot out of listening to this one a couple times through. A few things we talked about:
- How to be authentically you and still be effective in the world in life and business
- Why everyone must read “Your Brain at Work”
- How to place energy & effort on things that are best for you and the value of selling yourself
- Managing cash-flow in a growing company
- A drill-down on customer avatars
- Marketing Messaging 101
- Converging audiences to build your network
Right-click here to download.
May 2013
- How to build a virtual community when your community doesn’t understand computers and the Internet
- What advertisers are really paying for and how to segment your advertising categories
- How to sequence your educational content to have the best results
- How planning for success is simpler than preventing failure
- Tips and strategies for becoming more proactive in your business
Right-click here to download.
April 2013
- Assumption parity and deciding between different courses of action with equal weight on being right or wrong
- Content marketing strategies and how to manage the free bar
- Product development and how to take existing content and charge for it
- Stage 1 of the Small Business Lifecycle and how to decide what to do when you feel like you have to and want to do everything
- The emotions of launching and creating win-win vs. no-win scenarios when planning
- How to manage your time with time blocks and high value activities
And more!
Right-click here to download.
March 2013
Here are a few things we talked about:
- How reality changes and it’s best to change your plans to match reality than try to make reality fit your plans
- How to work on different offerings at the same time
- How to use the Maven-Connector-Salesperson [link to post on PF] framework to structure your work and relationships
- How to tell your CEO no when it’s hard to do so
- How to handle perfectionism – and how it might be feeding you [insert link to “How is your Perfectionism feeding You]
And more!
Right-click here to download.
February 2013
- Structure, creativity, and guacamole. (Really.)
- What to do with blocks of creative time that get squirrely – and why you may not need to do anything different
- How we often have to firewall our creative time and not confuse the urgent with the important
- Why automating your time tracking may not serve your goals
- How Customer Relationship Management software can support your work – and some ways to solve the problem with the care and feeding of CRM systems
Right-click here to download.
January 2013
We covered a lot of ground on this call! Here are some of the topics we covered:
- What to do when your plan involves unforeseen steps, and not get overwhelmed (interdependencies within projects)
- How to manage an ever-growing task list
- Determining whether hiring an employee is right for your business needs and financial parameters
- Your options for someone keeping you accountable in your business
Right-click here to download.
December 2012
Here are a few topics we discussed:
- How to decide whether an outside office is right for you
- How to do top-down planning and why it can be so challenging
- How to develop and maintain productive habits
Right-click here to download.
November 2012
There was a discussion in this call about getting clarity in your plans that you’ll want to hear. I believe it was spurred by Linda’s question, but the gist is this: if you’re looking for more clarity on why you’re doing something, zoom down a level of perspective. If you need more clarity on what action to take, zoom down a level of perspective.
Right-click here to download.
October 2012
This month’s call was actually a webinar of Charlie’s presentation at SOBCon NorthWest, called “5 Overlooked Principles of Execution.”
Since this is a large-ish video file, we recommend downloading it to your computer and watching it from there. (It’s 115mb so it might take a few minutes.)
Right-click here to download.
September 2012
This was a really jam-packed call–thanks to those who helped shape it! Here’s what you’ll learn about:
- Where to invest your time and money when your service-based business is in the hole
- What three questions to ask when considering rebranding, and how to rebrand without losing momentum
- Rebranding vs. brand tilting
- How to hone in on your client base by asking the right questions
- Managing a business while being a fulltime student
- Why it’s okay for things you embark on to not work
Right-click here to download.