Seeking Traveling Companions

Want to come along with me on a six-week journey? You don’t have to make a reservation, pay a deposit, or provide your credit card information. Heck, you don’t even have to physically travel anywhere to join this journey.However, I do hope you make some movement, perhaps, even significant movement from being a part of this journey.There’s no fancy travel brochure or slide show touting what you will see or where you will go. What I am inviting you to is part journey, part experiment, and part discovery.Let me explain and share with you what has motivated me to launch this particular journey right now.What Sparked the IdeaLast week, I spent a few days in the Florida panhandle by the Gulf of Mexico. My wife, Gwen, and her sister, Connie take an annual sisters’ trip. This year, they decided to invite the husbands along. I was grateful for the invitation. If you're like me, you can always find inspiration by the sea. Thanks to Gwen and Connie for allowing me and Tommy to tag along and get inspired.I worked a little each day. And I wrote every day.You see, I am wrapping up my first 66-day Time Blocking Mastery challenge. Today is Day 65, and the finish line is in sight.Much more about that in the next post. For now, let me give shoutouts to Jay Papasan, Geoffrey Woods, and the Founding Members of Time Blocking Mastery for their support over these past 10 weeks and for helping inspire me to continue this journey.For the past 65 days, I have spent time writing every day. Some of what I wrote made its way to blog posts that you can explore here. Some may find its way into books  or future blog posts and hopefully, some of it will remain tucked safely away in the vault. After all, the 66-day program was Time Blocking Mastery, not writing mastery. The goal was to invest time every single day pursuing a high priority goal. My goal just happened to be writing.Enter my next influencer, Jeff Goins. Perhaps more than any other single person, Jeff has inspired me to own my identity as a writer. One of the first books I read by Jeff was You Are A Writer (So Start Acting Like One). I don’t think this requires a spoiler alert, but the key point of the book is writers write. If you feel you must write, then start writing.Are you still with me? The beach provided inspiration. Time Blocking Mastery provided the daily discipline to write. Jeff Goins helped me silence the inner critic and perfectionistic tendencies and to write.Ah yes, but who prompted me to share what I write? For that, I've gotta thank Austin Kleon for Show Your Work. And to give credit where credit is due, let me also thank my friend and mentor, Hildy Gottlieb for introducing me to Austin. In Show Your Work, Austin encourages artists to show your work as you are making it. Don’t wait for the finished product. Invite people into the process of making your art, whatever medium you use.Add Austin’s influence to those already listed and a few days at the beach and I decided that I would conduct a six-week experiment. Starting today, I am sharing three blog posts a week. That’s right, 18 blog posts over the next six weeks.Where are we heading?If I knew, I would tell you. As Ralph Waldo Emerson aptly expressed it, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” These next six weeks are a journey.As of this moment, I’m not exactly sure where it will lead or who I will meet. But it will be fun and I’m sure we will meet some great people along the way. That’s what happens on journeys.Lao Tzu may have been the first to observe that,[Tweet "A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step."]This blog post is already step four or five on the journey.It started with the idea. I took action on the idea and developed a six-week schedule and outlined the first couple of weeks. Then I wrote this post. Now I’m sharing it. The journey has begun. Please come along and let’s see where we go and what we learn along the way.What’s the experiment?Well, there are actually several aspects to this experiment. If you already know me, hopefully, you know that authenticity and transparency are important to me. And, I’m a wee bit contrarian. I like to try things that are out-of-the-box.Actually, I’m feeling pretty crazy as I post this. And that’s okay. I committed to this journey and I am going to continue it. Let me share a few parts of this experiment with you and see how you respond.

1. Find my audience. If you’ve ever taken any kind of business or list building course, you probably conducted an exercise to identify your target audience or avatar. I have a good idea of who is in my target audience, but this is a great way to really find out.
2. Get to know my audience. I want to connect with the readers who, for whatever reason, resonate with me and what I write. In recent months, I’ve forged meaningful connections with Hope, Curtis, and Cheryl. All of whom resonated with something I had written and to which they responded. Their responding opened a door to a relationship and the relationship involves ongoing conversation and connection.
3. Grow my audience. There are a lot of list building programs — many of which involve gimmicks and aggressive promotion — not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I wonder, "Can I be more effective building a list by showing up as my authentic self and connecting and serving? It's part of the experiment.
4. Serve my audience. That’s right. I’m an advocate of Servant Leadership and believe that serving others is always the right thing to do. Sharing my best content is one way to do that. Inviting people to join me for a weekly online forum — Blab or Facebook Live to explore the topics I’m writing about on a deeper level. And even scheduling one-on-one connection calls.
5. Expand my network. You see, I want to grow my network of influencers. The best way I know to do that is to ask people I know to introduce me to people they know that they think I should know and who might like getting to know me.

[Tweet "You don't know everybody you need to know, but everybody you know knows someone you need to know."]And the best way to expand your network is simply to ask the people you know, “Who do you know that I should know?” and invite them to make an introduction.What’s in it for You?First off, you will have my gratitude for joining me on this journey. Hopefully, like Hope, Curtis, or Cheryl something from my journey parallels yours and inspires you or helps you connect dots you have yet to connect. Plus, you will get to meet some awesome people along the way and enjoy networking and interaction.There you have it. Are you in? Do you want to come along for the ride? I certainly hope so and I look forward to connecting with you.Here are three ways to join in:

1. Subscribe to the email list to get details on the first online forum and updates on posts as they are published.
2. Like, Tweet, or share this blog post to someone you think would enjoy it. The icons are at the top and bottom of the post to make it easy.
3. You can schedule a quick connect call with me. These are 15-minute calls and I am making myself available for 3 calls a day as my schedule permits. I hope you'll take me up on it.

Join the journey:Looking forward to it!