Made With Empathy™ because now is the time to make more things with empathy

A few years ago, amidst exhaustion, burnout, and a desire to do something meaningful with less energy, I started down the path of creating an online course.  At the time, I thought this course I wanted to create should teach micro business owners to brand their business by going through the same research process large corporations use to create mass brands.  

I have been facilitating brand and product innovation research for over 17 years.  So, I set out to create this course, blind to what I thought I knew about all the things it takes to create something, and naive about what I didn’t - ironic, huh.  I went through a small business program to help develop the idea. I enlisted friends, clients, and other resources to help me “figure it out.”   I took a 1 week trip to Tulum, Mexico by myself to draft the whole course.  I did my own marketing research with my target audience (thanks to Fieldwork- for letting me host my own groups without charge).  I participated in some of the most popular online courses to learn how to do it, including Amy Porterfield’s, Jeff Walker’s,  Marie Forleo’s and a few others.  I looked back on the first online course I purchased to learn about how to create an online course - and that was 4 years ago, y’all!!!  

That journey, along with a painful divorce left me feeling like an imposter with only a speck of the self-confidence I wanted to emulate.  But now, I’m telling you that, not because I’m ashamed or embarrassed (I used to feel shame that I couldn’t do for myself what i can do for others) but because I want to encourage anyone else who is trying to create something and they feel like they are not making progress - that I TOTALLY get it.

And I’m also saying this because I have learned a few things after spending all of this time, energy and money trying to bring something to life:

1. I didn’t need to change who my clients were, I needed to change who i was being and how I was showing up in my relationship with them.  I found out quickly through my own marketing research that my current clients were the people I know, love and understand.  They are my people.  For a minute, I thought “my people” were others like me, small business owners who were stressed out and crazy.  But NO - trying to help other crazy business owners that are the same crazy as me was not my jam!  I like my clients who are a different crazy than me! I love helping them, I just needed to reframe what mattered to me - what matters is my relationships with them, the connection to what they are working hard to do, as much as the output. I needed to blend what I was looking for - more meaningful creations - with what THEY needed more of - help with taking some of the heavy lifting off their plate, more ideas based on empathy, and solutions to help them move things forward, and a sounding board to set them up for success.

2. I also have more respect than ever for my clients who are in the business of bringing an idea through the process of creation.  It’s one thing to facilitate co-creation for large companies, it’s another thing to work through the process and the heavy lifting of bringing an idea to life - managing the emails, meetings, vendor relationships, peer relationships, or manager and employee relationships.

3. The things I do really well for my clients naturally (empathize, act fast, willing to explore new ideas, connecting the dots, facilitate constructive conversations, and deliver results to move things forward) are the same things I really sucked at doing for myself (up until now).  Once I began doing for myself what I do well for others, it became easier for me to create what I want for myself and others.

4. Bringing this idea into the world has forced me to look within, uncover and dance with all my biggest fears.  It has helped me channel my fears and create a new level of faith - that when things seem unachievable, it’s just a new opportunity for me to reframe my thinking.  Hell, I still don’t know if this idea is going anywhere, but I’m at least willing to try it, in hopes that by putting it out there and receiving feedback, I can learn and try again.

So, with great trepidation and also an exhale of relief that it’s totally ok to fail, I am launching my Made With Empathy™ website.  I’m so determined to check the box and say I did it that I decided to do it myself.  It’s not even close to perfect, but that’s ok.

I feel like i’ve failed a million times at bringing my Made With Empathy™ to life - i’ve wrestled with feeling like its “just a stupid idea” and wondered how it’s going to help anyone.  But the one thing I’ve held onto is this crazy belief that somehow, someway, somewhere, it’s going to be helpful - because although a lot about the idea has changed, my goal with it never has: I want to inspire people to step into their lives bravely to create what matters using a proven process based on empathy.

In the deepest part of me, I knew that every time I walked into a focus group room or created space for a team to ideate, or had a call with a client where I asked the right questions to get to the core of the problem to solve, that this way of being - empathetic being - could be taught to create even more of what matters.

 As I look out across a heavy, saddened enraged world, I can hear my Made With Empathy™ idea saying - “yes, this is what you’ve been creating me for - you created me because you saw a need”.  The need is there.  There’s a need to take the tools, skills, and processes used to innovate products and services and teach leaders, innovators - my clients - how to approach anything they want to create from a place of empathy.

It’s time.  It’s time to make more of what matters with empathy.  I need a problem to solve, and now I can hear the problem screaming so loudly, it’s deafening.

While I don’t know how to solve what’s going on with the current racial climate, i do know this - when my clients don’t know how to solve something and they need to create something new, we come together, design a method to learn what we need to learn through empathetic listening and from that, we begin to innovate and create, then test, and finesse and eventually, we have something new that solves a problem.  

My hope is that MWE can be used to help those smarter than me create solutions efficiently with joy and grace for racial injustice, for corporate “new norms” due to COVID, and for all the new innovations that will be needed to cross the chasm of destruction we are all in to safer ground.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Empathy Co-Creation process, click here.

If you’re interested in a free consultation, you can click here to contact me.

Until we meet up, I am hopeful you are staying well. And breathing deeply.  

And here are a couple of books I am reading now in case it’s a good resource for you:  

1. How to Be an Antiracist

2. Dying of Whitness

As well as this and other articles being published by Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley links to resources I’m finding helpful that correlate with what Made With Empathy™ is about.

What to Think about When the Perfect Storm Hits

When the perfect storm hits, you have two choices - smile and jump into it, praying for something bigger than you to take you to shore.  Or resist it, fight it. Either way, you may die. 

You may not live, but I am learning to believe, to have faith that things will turn out.  I believe when you believe that an island and a margarita await you when you get to shore, perhaps there’s a better chance of being lifted out of the wind and the water and learn to breathe underwater.  I’m learning to believe in focusing on what it will be like when I reach my goal, to help me manage through my fears.

I’m not saying I will make it out “alive and well”, I am saying I want to.  I want to stay here, and I want to do big things in this world.  I want to change myself so I can change some of the world.  Why? Because I don’t like everything the world has been offering lately but more importantly, I believe there is more beauty available here on earth than what our species has created thus far.  

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate so much of what we have created.  And yet, there’s more…. There’s more love, there’s more sharing, caring, compassion…there’s more empathy available than what I’ve been seeing. 

I believe we can all learn how to connect in a way that is not “power over” others.  I want to see a system where those in need are getting fed with the waste of those who need to “dump” their excess.  I want to see a system where regardless of skin color or opinion, we can trust and live in peace with our beautiful differences.

There has to be a better way.  Can I be a bridge builder?  God, let me build a bridge between those who need it most and those who are seeing their surplus create waste in the world.  Let there be no more waste.  Let the waste feed the hungry.  God give me the funds, yes, the money to help me make a difference.  Give me the ability to let go of my ego every day so that I can show up not for myself but for a greater good.  Let me be a bridge between marginalized communities, no matter their skin color and the powers that be who can help create better for everyone.

Let the resources I create be a blessing to millions.  And let me create an abundance of resources to bless millions  more.  

Yes, I want to collaborate and co-create - for the purpose of creating what matters and to give in a greater way.

This is what I’m living into - but it’s not where I was last Friday. Last Friday, I sat in a dark confused, dismal place.  I allowed my current reality give way to my predisposed place of worry when a storm hits.  

You see I grew up on a West Texas farm, where at least once a season I took in the anxiety, worry and loss of hope that sometimes gripped both my dad and my grandfather.  I remember sitting by the window watching the storm with the family, knowing that “this could be the storm” that takes us out.  I actually remember feeling like if the storm hit just right, we would likely die.  A tornado could rip through the house.  A thunderstorm could take out the crop and then dad couldn’t pay “his note” to the bank, and then, and then, and then….  I felt all of those things deeply.  They were programmed in.

And guess what, it didn’t happen.  Yes, there were a lot of storms.  There were a lot of hard years, there may have even been some years “the bank note” couldn’t be paid.  I don’t know because the details of money weren’t really discussed - just the promise of what it meant for a “good crop” (we could pay off our debt - yeah!) or the consequence of what it meant to have a “bad crop” - (we could not pay off our debt….and then what??  Too much to think about).  

So, I have spent most of my life “preparing for a storm” - I started in college by receiving a full ride to college through multiple scholarships (no, the costs were NOT what it is now) plus a job then a second job - plus a full load of classes (with a broken wrist on my writing hand - before keyboards were heard of).  

And since then, most of the choices I’ve made in life have been for enough of a “financial net” to be “safe from the storm”.  

So WILD that my growing awareness (pre and post divorce, loads of therapy, coaching, self-help masters, etc.) has taken me a place to begin visioning my life in a new way.  One where I began to let go of my hold on “fear of losing money.”  Fear’s hold on me.  As I began this year, January 2020, living into the vision of getting my daughter to a fully supportive school for her individual learning needs, it brought me to a place where I simultaneously had to breathe through being “extra leveraged” financially for the first time, maybe ever as an adult.  

We found a beautiful school in North Richland Hills and a home in Colleyville, TX, which happens to be a little magical oasis in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  Beautiful, spacious, and not only that, I found a home on a couple of acres with a horse stable, and the ability to have horses.

Moving here during COVID into this early 80’s style ranch-house, with minimal trees, pasture, barn, and even the horses being stabled on our property has taken me back to my West Texas roots.  We feel at home.  And as we finalized the close of the house, the “perfect storm” I had been avoiding my entire life, hit. 

While I was able to lock in an amazing interest rate for the loan, the money I had saved for a down payment had been put in “very secure” dividend stocks (instead of a savings account)….which came tumbling down before I pulled it out.  At the same time, my business pipeline came to a screeching halt as “stay at home” policies were put into place across the globe.  When this perfect storm hits, there is almost freedom in it hitting.  It’s like a balloon you’ve been protecting just pops, and then you can breathe.  And then once you start breathing again, you realize how hard it is to learn how to breathe again.  

Because you’ve been holding so much worry and stress around this whole time that you’re not even aware your lack of breathing.  So, the breathing helps.  It gives you permission to feel everything you’ve been worried about to a greater level.

And once you feel it and let it pass through you, then your mind can kick in again and say again - “what do I want?  What is important to me?”  I was able to remember what I want.  And once I remembered what I wanted, I could take action without knowing all the details on how – it was as if the drowning caused a necessary intuitive reaction to survive, to pull me out of the deep water.  And I navigated out of it.

What I’m recognizing is that there are times in life to ask the “how” question and there are times to ask the “what” question.

It’s easy for me to get into all the “how’s” right now - that is my fear kicking in. (How am I going to survive, keep the business alive, keep my daughter and I fed, keep my people who count on me to bring in business fed?) 

However, I know from the way we design research questioning techniques that the “what" questions are the most important ones as you begin any major undertaking - the “what” creates a mechanism for your brain to imagine.  The “how” begins to form as you move through the “what” - it guides you forward.  

What I want is to protect my baby, to show her bravery in the storm, I want to protect the people who depend on me for supportive income, and I want to continue doing the amazing work I love.  I want to help my clients weather the storm.  

But maybe most importantly, I want to be a ripple at the surface of the earth.  One that says to everyone I know who also struggles with fear - don’t quit, it’s ok to fear, we all do, but you must move through it.  You must stand up and think about what you want.  For when you can imagine a future you want, your life can change, not only your life, but those you impact.  

I didn’t come to this place of acceptance, of strength, of understanding who I am, to give up now.  I intend to co-create a world that is better because I am here.  I intend to co-create what matters.  More on the how soon…