Crafting your ideal working life

Defining the way YOU want to work

I know your time is valuable. These show notes give you the gist of the episode, what is covered, any links or resources talked about in the show, and also gives you a few ways to listen, watch or digest this episode.

This episode’s topic, in a nutshell…

This is quite an important topic to talk about – because the outcome from this discussion will inform how you craft your business model (the mechanism by which you earn your income or revenue).

The reason I thought it was important to have this conversation on this show – is because how you want to work is going to be really integral to what business model you will craft.

To help me in navigating subject, I invited back my lovely, talented friend Alison O’Leary to join me. If you have listened to episode 2, then you will already be familiar with Ali, but if not – Alison is a highly skilled career coach and has to tackle similar conversations with her coaching clients who feel really deflated in their work and can’t work out why. Sometimes its because their working life style, doesn’t match what they value as important.

Highlights 

In this episode we unpack:

• How we can define “ideal” for us
• Reminding ourselves that work doesn’t not have to be ONE specific way (e.g. being at a desk behind a computer, 9am to 5pm).
• Remembering that we have different dimensions to us as humans, and we need to revisit what we value and back that into our ideal working life
• Cracking those limiting beliefs of how things “HAVE” to be (the options are wide – you just need to be curious enough to experiment and fine them)

If you have been feeling really ‘stuck’ in how you work day by day, week by week. This is certainly an episode for you to listen to on your next walk or drive somewhere. Once you’ve listened – share it with another entrepreneurial friend and do this exercise together.

When you are intentional about how you physically want to work, and how you want to be of service to your clients – you can then very easily design the business model and service structure that will bring you what you most desire: an ideal working life. One where you are completely fulfilled as a human yourself, and you are in turn being the best professional and energised subject matter expert for your clients.

Quick ref to resources or links we mention

In this episode we have referred to two other sources in our conversation, and those were:

• Drew Davis (who is one of my favourite marketing and customer service keynote speakers and thought leaders out there). One of his keynotes spoke about Jenny Doan, who basically founded Quit Town USA.
• Duncan Wardle is the former head of innovation and creativity at Disney, and today is an independent speaker, consultant and trainer teaching businesses how to be more innovative and creative inside their organisations. In this episode I talked about his “What if / Imagine If” exercise which Walt Disney would use if someone said no to something (and he wanted to come up with a solution). (Here’s his LinkedIn video applying to Disneyworld, and a YouTube video of it being used for Netflix)

Ways to watch, listen or digest this episode:

Full transcription: Click here for the audio with follow-along transcription.

Listen on the go, on your mobile phone: Click here to find the show on your favourite podcast app.

You can watch the episode in full colour here:

All full episodes are recorded in video as well, and are uploaded to the show’s playlist on my YouTube channel. (Click here to quickly subscribe to my channel to see future episodes).

If you want to watch with auto-generated captions – click the captions icon on the YouTube play bar menu at the bottom of the video.

A bit more about Alison O’Leary

Ali hails from an impressive corporate background working for over 20 years in London in the Communications and Marcoms industries.

Today she runs her own business, working as a certified life and career coach, specialising in career change to facilitate life change. She is an ‘Ideal Life’ advocate and the designer of the Work Wonderland™ process, her own proprietary way of helping people to place their unique strengths, gifts and passions at the heart of their decision-making and planning.

She works, in the main, with individuals looking to shift their working lives on to a new path, yet to be discovered.

Find out more about her on her website at livetrue.co.uk, connect with her on LinkedIn or join her community on Instagram.