126: How We Ran Our 2-Day Strategy Sprint (with Template)

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Good morning everybody. Even if it's not morning for you, I am recording this on Saturday Morning, fresh off the heels of a two day strategy sprint that I just did with my team. My friend Neil would say this fits the Saturday morning test because I did not plan to work today. We had two really intense days. I could hardly sleep, my brain was on fire so much as a result of these strategy sprints that my team and I just did. And yet after my morning reading with the newspaper, my coffee, I just felt energized to come record this episode. So shout out to Neil Pasrica. In fact, if you want to hear that episode where we talk about the Saturday morning test, I will throw it in the show notes. It's called Want Nothing, have Everything the Happiness Equation with Neil Pasrica. He has a book of the same name. I made a promise to myself at the end of the sprint that I would share truth while it's fresh. Whatever's happening behind the scenes, I would not let my inner perfectionist get in the way of just directly sharing it with you. So I kind of threw together some notes that I want to share today and and I want to bring you what we're actually building behind the business in as real time as I can manage. I also want to give a shout out to Amy Porterfield who is my newest friend tour from afar AKA she probably doesn't know that I exist, but I've been completely binging on on her podcast. It's called Online Marketing Made Easy and it's so good. She is a woman after my own systems heart. She has so many clear systems and worksheets and freebies that go with her podcast. It's been really inspiring as I build into JBE 3.0 as I mentioned on my solo episode that I did a few weeks ago, episode number one two three got such a nice ring to it. I am really having a business renaissance. My eight year solopreneuriversary is 07-05-2019. That may have come and gone by the time you listen to this, I'm not sure, but Amy Porterfield has been the most amazing friendor from afar. Seriously, I'm hanging out with her every day. She feels like my new business bestie that doesn't know I exist. And I will tell you that's something I'm often promoting when I give Pivot keynotes or talk about the book that you do not have to connect with your mentors one on one to benefit greatly from their advice and their experience. Especially now with podcasting just continuing to take off at rip roaring clip, you can directly listen and hang out with so many people. It doesn't matter if it's celebrities, politicians, journalists, business owners. And I have to say, if you are building an online business and you want more detailed, practical hands on advice about list building and online course creation, Amy Porterfield is your go to and she certainly has been mine. There was a recent episode she did on her podcast called how to Create youe Total Immersion Weekend Retreat to Clean up youp Messy business. It's episode 222, so if you go to amyporterfield.com 222 you'll find her episode on this. And of course I will link to everything in the show notes as well. So you can also head to pivotmethod.com126 that's the number of this episode or more generally. You can always visit pivotmethod.compodcast to get to all the latest show notes. I often talk about running a business as owning a mansion and it doesn't matter if everything was buttoned up and beautiful a year or two ago, there comes a point where everything starts falling apart. And just like buying a new house or living in one for a long time. If you are a homeowner, you know that there's no there there to having some impeccable home where nothing's wrong with it. In fact, I was very fascinated by an article in the New York Times about how even people buying in brand new condo developments are often immediately hit with $50,000 in repairs of things that the developer just didn't catch or things that start going wrong. No one's really immune from this, myself included. I have been ever since Pivot came out at the end of 2016. I mean, I worked so hard behind the scenes to get ready for that launch and to hire a brand strategist and build the website. And I made a practice of every time somebody asked me a question, particularly a potential speaking or corporate client, I answered by creating a page on my website and sending them the link. So instead of having that service or knowledge captured in an email, I made it a point to build the website that way that I would add up a. Add a page on the website and then send them a link as the response. But what ended up happening is that in the three years almost since Pivot came out, I've been really busy. I've been on the road. I've been doing keynotes. Spring and fall are the busiest time of year. I tend to do about 25 to 30, 35 speaking engagements in any given year. I'm not a road warrior and I don't want to be. I don't think I could handle traveling like two cities every week, but sometimes it's like that in the spring and the fall. I've also been maintaining and delighting in the momentum community, which you're going to hear more about in this episode as well. But then it's really tough to stay consistent with things like the podcast and my newsletter because my systems just need to get taken up a notch. And we also need to clean out all those things that are starting to kind of get out of date or be broken as, as Amy mentioned in this episode that she did about creating a total immersion retreat. So that's what got my ideas flowing. And at the same time, I was also onboarding Stephanie, our newest team member. And I thought, you know, it would be really good to just kickstart the momentum for JB 3.0 by doing our own two day immersion. I kind of pivoted the aim. So in Amy's episode, she says, I'll quote her, she says, first things first, this is not a team retreat and it is not a big brainstorming weekend where you come up with new ideas for the future. This is dedicated time to spend looking at the messy parts in your business and cleaning them up. The types of things you'll be looking at, cleaning up, fixing or eliminating, are all areas that will ultimately impact the financial bottom line in your business. For our purposes, I pivoted this a little bit. The fix it idea really appealed to me. That's what got my wheels turning. And oftentimes you'll hear, even in tech circles, a fix it Week is an all hands on deck week where people fix every little thing that's broken. Things that just wouldn't get attended to in your normal day to day. There's also hackathons where you have all hands on deck maybe to create something new or solve one big problem. What we ended up doing and what I ended up really feeling that it was important to build right now was a two day strategy sprint. It was not about creative visioning. That's different. And nor was ours about team building either. Just like Amy had said in her episode, I wanted us to tackle the biggest, most strategic projects and get them to done. I wanted to prepare as much as we needed to in advance to actually get together for two days, knock off real concrete, tangible deliverables that we could get over the hump, that we could get them from zero to one, from nothing to a done one piece of work. And like not ideating, not outlining, done. I'll share more as I get further into this episode about whether we achieved that or not, but that was really what I set the intention for this two day strategy sprint. The strategy Sprint that we ended up doing also borrows ideas from a book called Sprint how to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in just five days. That's written by Jake Knapp and John Zaratsky and and I actually had John on the Pivot podcast. So you might remember that episode. It was episode 116 called Caught in Internet Infinity Pools. Make time by setting a daily highlight and five day sprints. In our case, I wanted to put it right down to two, get down to business. So in this episode I'm going to share how I designed the sprint, how we prepared the exact flow of the two days, what worked and what I do differently. And there's also a template that I shared with the Momentum community around the agenda that I put together and the action item Takeaways document. So if you want to download that, I decided to share it here with the podcast as well and it gives you a little preview of the types of stuff that we do in Momentum. Just visit pivotmethod.com126 and you'll get the two day strategy sprint template that we worked from to build the one that I'm just coming back home from. Also, before we get into the episode, we are building the coolest Momo 3.0. That's our nickname for Momentum. That's one of the biggest focuses that we had for these two days. I am so excited. You can't imagine it's gonna be pretty amazing. So if you are a side hustler or solopreneur looking to build a six figure heart based business with ease and joy, not hustle and sweat and grit, I mean there's gonna be some of that too. But if you're a heart based business owner and solo pluspreneur, maybe it's you and one other person or you're looking to make your first hire. That's really who we're building for. And go to pivotmethod.com Momentum and put your name on the early notification list. Doors are closed now while we totally rebuild and revamp behind the scenes. But I love rewarding people who raise their hand early and say keep me posted, I want to know when you launch because that gives me hope and motivation that I'm not creating in a vacuum. And yes you're interested. And so I always, always make a point to offer an extra special bonus to that early notification list and even a lower price before we go live. So pivotmethod.com momentum super easy quick form. Just get on the waitlist and right now we're planning for a launch on 1010 2019. So let's get into the goals of our two day strategy sprint. As I mentioned, I wanted to tackle the biggest business frogs that we have. That's a term adapted from Brian Tracy's book Eat that Frog where he quotes Mark Twain and says I'm paraphrasing as well. Mark Twain has a quote, if you have to eat a frog or you have to eat two frogs, eat the hairier one first. Well, the way this applies in business and productivity is Brian Tracy's advice is that you should always start your day by eating the frog. Whatever the biggest, hairiest task or project on your to do list that that the thing you want to procrastinate on. But that would actually make the biggest impact if you got it done. Brian Tracy would say do that first. Do that first thing in the morning and you'll feel amazing the rest of the day. So that's what I wanted us to do in these two days is just what are the big frogs that if we could, if we could get these done and go from zero to done by the end of the two days, we would be thrilled. And even more importantly, that would have a significant impact on business revenue down the road. To that end, Amy in her episode on the Immersion day ran great set of five questions that you should ask yourself before yours. So I'll throw these out there too in case you Find them helpful. And if you don't already listen to her show, you'll see why I'm head over heels for her content. Because it's just so practical and helpful. Her five questions are what's your number one pain point in your business right now? What feels messy, broken or painfully slow? What needs to be fixed before you can grow? Where are you losing money? Do you have any current leaks in your funnels or in any system that you're using to make money right now? And the last one, what have you been putting off for way too long? What are the important things you've been wanting to get to but you know, there are just not enough hours in the day. In our case for jbe, that's Jenny Blake Enterprises, which was my joke name for my business back in the days when it was a side hustle in 2007, 8, 9, 10, before I went full time in 2016, 2011. So Jenny Blake Enterprises was my name to sound fancy to myself, by the way, and now it just stuck. And it is actually an LLC under that. Under that name, but I call it JBE for short. So the way that we prepared is for starters we had, I had more than one alignment call with Stephanie and Marisol. Those are the two others included with me in this two day strategy Sprint. And then actually it was very helpful to have Brenna, who's my new she's so much more than a virtual assistant slash project manager. She was not participating, which was super helpful actually to have somebody back home quote home. She works from abroad, kind of keeping an eye on emails and still getting smaller tasks done. But I had a couple alignment calls with each person to start to fill in the big picture what we wanted to get done. And then smaller discrete projects for each Sprint window. We had five or six Sprint windows altogether spread out across the two days and we were looking for those big business wins. What were the big frogs, the most strategic steps that if we could complete them, would have the biggest impact on the business. So in our case this was primarily around momentum. That's the biggest area that I saw, real room for improvement to just give my full focus and energy to making this the best private community that I possibly can. The podcast and then as well preparing for my new LinkedIn learning course which is coming soon at the end of this year on Pivot as a coaching framework, helping managers navigate one on one career conversations with their team. That's something that I do a lot of training on in the corporate world, but I think it will be really helpful to have it as a LinkedIn learning course which is more scalable. So part of the JV 3.0 as I head into year nine of running my own business is continuing to scale my streams of solopreneur income. I was looking just yesterday because I want to do a free workshop on this coming up in the fall. Again, the place to go is get on that momentum interest list if you want to attend that session. I'm going to do one on 10 streams of scalable solopreneur income because I counted right now that's where I'm at. I have 10 different streams of income. I've never been somebody that wants to just solely teach how to make money online, but I do want to teach how to build a heart based business with ease and joy. How can you have 10 streams of income and not lose your mind? And how do you give them enough time and focus and attention? So that's what we're trying to build with momentum is really hone in on what is it, what is this private community and are we talking to all side hustlers and all solopreneurs or only a certain type of. And as well, part of how we prepared for this two day strategy sprint was very clearly defining the pivot, just sort of pivots environment of ideal community members. I got really clear and knowing that this, by the way, knowing that this strategy sprint was coming up had me do a lot of work in advance that I didn't even know I needed to do. But I kept wanting to get clearer and clearer so that I knew we would make the most of our two days together. So one of the things I did was say who's in the JV orbit, who's around, who tends to visit the site and hire me, whether for for momentum, for one on one coaching, for speaking, for consulting, even for licensing. So there's four what I would call ideal community members because at this point the word avatar just feels too businessy to me. So I call it ideal community members. There's four pivot paths when you enter the JBE orbit. They are you're either most likely a career pivoter, somebody who's looking to shift or grow within your role, within your career or the job that you work for. Maybe you have a full time job or you're looking to pivot to another company. So that's Pivoter. Then there's solopreneur. These are people, even if it's a side hustle. Right now you are aspiring to build your own business. And again Whether you keep it on the side or you want to go full time with it someday, you're really looking for practical tips around business building that doesn't feel slimy. Like how to do marketing when you hate marketing, stuff like that. How to build a business when you don't love social media. That's the kind of stuff that, that I teach in Momentum. Then the third type is managers. Again, I do a lot of work now with companies like Google and Chanel on equipping managers to have better one on one career conversations. How do you listen more and talk less? Why is it important to save your advice and not try to solve a career conversation and not jump into problem solving mode? So I teach Pivot as a coaching framework. So there's a manager track of materials and resources, career conversation toolkits, and then the fourth track is hrvp, or somebody working in people operations that wants to build scalable Pivot programs within the company. So if you don't want to, just keep hiring me, because I can't just run around the planet every time that a company needs a Pivot workshop. I mean, I could, but it's ultimately not scalable for organizations that I work with that are the size of Google and Microsoft and others that are growing really quickly. So those are the four types. Pivoter, solopreneur, manager, and hrbp, or people operations. And I realize that right now, my website and the way that any of you would interact with, with me or even the podcast, it's kind of a jumble. It's all just thrown in there. And if you're here and you stick around, it's, it's like, it's wonderful. I'm so thankful. But I don't think I've been as specific being able to give advice and resources and templates for each of those four ideal community members, because I've just been sort of talking to everybody all at once. And it also makes me less confident sometimes to record even a solo episode like this one, because I think, oh, what if you're not in the solopreneur path? Then you're not going to like this. In some cases, that held me back and I just didn't release it at all. So it was incredibly freeing for me to realize that, okay, the Pivot podcast is still going to be a crock pot. It is still this intersection of my passions around business and spirituality and systems. And it's. The podcast will always evolve to just be what I'm geeking out on, where my heart is calling me. Towards. I do want it to remain somewhat undefinable, but I got super clear on who momentum is for and with that clarity, it's allowed me to be so specific about what to build and how to write anything, invitations to join, how I want to talk about it and what I want to create for everyone who's in there. And same goes for the manager and the company tracks. So getting that squared away before the two day Strategy Sprint was huge. So by the time we sat down to actually create things, we really were not starting from scratch. The alignment call really helped. Like I said, I created a two day Strategy Sprint agenda document and template that again, you can get as a resource for this episode. Just go to pivotmethod.com126 but I made sure that that was pretty tightened up before we got there and I even printed copies for everybody when we showed up so we'd have it on paper and we wouldn't have to keep flipping around in our computer. All right, so now let's get into the flow of the two days and how we actually structured it. The two days. One day one went from 9:30 to 5:30 and that was just me and Stephanie which ended up being great because she's new to the team. So it was really good bonding time and just getting her acclimated and up to speed. We ended up going until 6:30 so it ended up being a nine hour day. But we looked up at each other at 6:30 and we're like, where did the time go? It just flew by. So my, my intention was not to like crack the whip and get us to stay there all day and we're exhausted and we can't even think anymore. We just ended up spending nine hours because we were having so much fun. And then day two we did nine to 4:30 with an hour long INFJ surprise at the end of day two. So I'll tell you more what that is. I didn't realize going into this two day strategy sprint that Marisol and Stephanie are both INFJs. And I am definitely an NFJ. Sometimes I test as E, but I'm mostly introverted. So let's call me right on the cusp. So it's hilarious that the surprise activity that I built into the end of day two was perfect for a team of INFJs. Oh man. Okay, so the day two had three of us. Here's how the flow of the days went. So we started with breakfast and vision resetting, just letting everybody arrive. I think it's important to connect as people before just diving into the work, have breakfast, light bites, reset the vision. What do we want to accomplish today? What is our goal? What's your each of your goals personally? And then we spent some time also confirming the game plan, really looking at the specific done deliverables. And I answered any questions about what would you need to know. So to be done it with a piece of work by the end of this first sprint block. Do you need anything from me? Sprint number one of the day was from 11am to 1pm and I set a 45 minute timer in between. That kind of helps everybody realize because time does fly when you get in the zone like this. 45 minutes, we would pop up like little meerkats, come up for air. Do you need anything? Do you have any questions for me? FYI, we're almost halfway through. And then we would go into the second half of the sprint. We took a break for lunch from 1 to 2. And then sprint number two was from 2:30 to 4. So a little shorter than the morning sprint. 90 minutes also with a timer halfway through. And then there was an afternoon coffee break. Same thing. 4:30 to 4 to 4:30. About just how are you doing? How's it going? Are you getting to done? And questions about anything where the team needed my input. Then there was one more mini sprint. So mini sprint meaning 30 minutes, 45 minutes like any other thing you need to finish up or that you can quickly knock off. And then we wrapped up from 5 to 5:30 and identified action items for day two. We also did an end of day debrief. So at the end of each day I asked the team to go around and say four things. What do you want to celebrate? What worked? What would be even better if and what's next? So on day one, what do you want to celebrate? What worked well? What would be even better if. What did we learn that we would do differently the following day? And what's next? As in what do you want to tee up for day two? And then we did this at the end of day two. We actually did it over a nice cocktail which I should have written into the agenda from the start. Although I don't care if anyone, I don't care if it's a mocktail, it doesn't have to involve alcohol, but just it was fun to change the environment. So day two we talked about if we did this again. It wasn't just about what got done that day. And one thing that really worked well. So I'll take you through some of those questions, my impressions of the two days I did these at the Soho House where I'm a member. I have an every house membership, which means three locations in New York and others around the world. It's really helpful actually. That was something that I signed up for last year, Year seven of self employment. And I always held myself from doing it. I never thought I could afford it. It's 3,500 a year and I just remember thinking, oh, it'd be so great to have a place to work and have meetings. But what? It's too frivolous. It's. I can't, I don't want to pay for that. And then I reached a point where I realized I actually need this. It is helpful to have somewhere to go and not feel pressure that you're going to get kicked out. Like a coffee shop to know there's not going to be blaring music, there's going to be outlets, nobody cares how long you stay. It's good for having meetings. In my case, I work from home day, so I'm not paying for office space. It is good to get out every now and then. And the Soho Houses were perfect for this two day sprint because I find them delightful. Not always. Sometimes it's a little sceney or a little bougie, but for the most part, really nice environment. Light bright. The first day we did Dumbo House, which overlooks all of Manhattan, my fave. And then on day two, we did the original New York Soho House which has a pool on the roof. And so when we did our end of day debrief on day two, we did it up on the roof outside looking at the view of all of lower Manhattan. And it just created a nice, nice touch. And at Sohos they let you leave a tab open all day. So I was also able to just cover all of our meals and coffees and everything. And again, no one cares. That's the purpose. So they're not kicking you out. So even if you don't have access to exactly that, I would say find a soul stirring, that's a Tim Gunn term, a soul stirring environment or something delightful, something that lifts your spirits just to be in that setting. And in our case, yes, there were other people around. We're not working on like the, you know, total classified secrets. It's okay if people can hear. Ideally, you know, no one else is having loud conversations nearby.

But Soho House doesn't even allow you to talk on the phone when you're in there. So thankfully there's not that distraction If I didn't, if I wasn't a member there, I would look to rent some kind of space most likely. All right, so what worked? I have to say this far exceeded my expectations of what we could get done and how productive we would be. I was nervous going into it, I'm not gonna lie. I in ramping up my business and ramping up the team even though no one's full time and on a salary. I myself converted to an S Corp this year and have to put myself on salary which is already kind of weird. And and I have to like make sure I meet my own salary paycheck every month. It's weird. And I'm bringing on another person. Now I have three people and me. So it really puts the plus in solo plus preneur. There is something nerve wracking about even the cost of okay, it's now three people's time for two days pl meals plus a surprise. I'd say all in all I spent. I mean if you include people's time and again meals and the surprise at the end it was like almost three grand probably. So it's not nothing. But again, if you're working on the biggest business priorities and revenue generating activities, then we're making a bet and we're betting on ourselves. And the bet is if we invest this time then it will pay off and we will get ROI and it won't just be trading time for money, it's actually accelerating the business if we really step up our systems. During this window, I'm also taking a page out of the founders of Basecamp. I just read and loved their book. It doesn't have to be crazy at work. Highly, highly recommend it. Do not pass go. If you are a business owner, go read this book. And you don't want to build an insane business. You want to actually build a calm company. As they talk about they do a team bonus. So the the entire team gets a bonus if they meet their year over year year sales goal. And that's what I've set up with our team as well. Even if Marisol for example is now moving on to special projects, aka client work and things like LinkedIn learning. But still her doing that is what allows me and Stephanie to go all in on momentum or allows, you know, Brenna's help back on the home front or in our email inboxes and getting smaller things done. And project managing allows all of us to do what we do. So I loved that idea of a 25% kind of any anything that exceeds the year over year growth revenue, 25% of that gets evenly distributed to the team. And that's what I'm trying to set up for us too. So I want to motivate. I was telling Stephanie and Marisol, let's earn you both Soho House memberships with. With your bonus. Like, let's just build toward it. I don't mind being transparent about it. It's. It's not a secret. Like we're all in this together. And so anyway, that's what I was a little nervous about. But I feel so good about what we did. I. My brain was on fire. By the end of day one, I could not sleep. I normally go to bed at like 9pm or 10 and it was 11 and I felt like I had just had three cups of coffee. I felt it was Christmas Eve. I already wanted the morning to be here. I mean, I don't know if I've ever been that friggin alive and excited at the end of a work day. Like, that blew my mind. Just that brain on fire, all cylinders. Like, it was unbelievable how energetic I felt by the time I was going to bed on day one, even sitting there with Stephanie. So I ended up rewriting the whole Momentum. I'm going to call it an invitation, not a sales page. It is an invitation. And I wanted to be really clear. I first wrote the last one. Momentum's been going now four and a half years. First wrote the last one at the end of 2013 or maybe the end of 2014. It was a long time ago. I was a different person. My business was in such a different place when I wrote that first invitation page. And it's been long overdue for me to rewrite it. So yeah, it was the end of 2014, so that was my first frog. I did it in the first sprint window because of all the prep work we had done on, you know, who I am, who I'm not, who we're serving, who we're not. And because Stephanie was sitting across from me and I knew I would be accountable to her at the end of the sprint, I actually sat there imagining that I was writing to her because she's been a founding member of Momentum since it started four years ago and now she's working with me on the team. So it's been a cool journey for her as well. And I just sat there and I wrote the whole thing. I got in the zone. I'm telling you, I'm the last person that's going to look forward to like writing a sales page. But when I thought of it of writing Stephanie a letter for where she's at in this stage of her business. I got so excited and I got it done. I got it done in the first sprint window and there, boom, big frog, big thing I needed to do. Done. It felt so good. Another thing that really worked. Our timing was super solid. I have to say. I'm going to give myself a little pat on the back. I've been in facilitation and training design for almost 15 years because that's what I did when I first got to Google. I was on the training team. So it was all about designing a day or an experience or a week and how do you fit in material, how do you meet your learning goals. So the template that you can get if you go to pivotmethod.com 126 has a schedule that you can just fill in with what your sprints are going to be. It really worked. We were on it to the minute. We didn't really go over. We didn't even need more time. Perfect location worked super well. I loved being at the two Soho houses. They have great food. The setup was easy. We only needed one power outlet. We just rotated who was charging. Another thing that worked really well were those midpoint check ins that I mentioned and the end of day reflection. I learned a lot from doing those. So that was really good and it allowed us to modify and be agile. That's what being agile is, is. At the end of day one, you say, what do we want to do differently tomorrow? And I actually ended up going home and revising the Day 2 agenda and what we were going to tackle. And I reprinted it and I brought a fresh copy of the agenda for day two because we made some adjustments, the printing. So on that note, printing the roadmap and having the action item capture sheets was really helpful. That's what you get in the template that goes with this episode. It's not just the agenda and what we're working on. I also had pretty much a blank sheet of paper that said action items. And I'm going to grab it right now. See, listen to my paper shuffling. It said strategy, Sprint, follow up action items. And there were four columns for each of us. Jenny, Stephanie, Marisol and Brenn. Even though Brenna wasn't there, what might we want to delegate to Brenna and have her help with? And then each of us had this action items chart out as we were working. So anytime an action item came up, it had a home and so we didn't have to worry about getting into. Into asana just yet. We just captured it on the piece of paper. And that way, also, there's not the temptation to jump over to do things during the sprint. The sprint is about the big business, strategic projects, and then any small things. But often when you're working on a big project like that, you need to note what are the dependencies, what tasks are going to have to happen to help make this possible. So capturing that along the way worked really well. And then, of course, I mentioned the INFJ friendly surprise at the end. I was joking. I was asking Stephanie on day one. I said, do you want to know what the surprise is tomorrow? And she said, no, no, it's okay. And I said, well, don't wor. Don't worry. It's INFJ friendly. You're gonna laugh when you find out what it is. So instead of doing some kind of team building, like, yeah, great, let's, like, go. I don't even know, network somewhere. Let's not team building, but, like, ride a bull at this restaurant down in Tribeca. No. The INFJ Friendly surprise was a page taken out of Amy Porterfield's episode book where I just booked a massage and a facial, and they got to pick which one. So not only were we not together, they didn't even have to speak. Like, each person got to retreat, recharge, and relax just in their own mind or not in their body. So that felt. It was really fun. It was such a fun gift to be able to say, like, I get you and I get. What we need after two really intense days is no more talking, just relaxing and feeling pampered. Even when I do VIP days with clients here in New York, it's. You can go to pivotmethod.com VIP if you're curious. If somebody wants to spend a day with me, I love a little bit of luxury. I think it's the libra in me. I can't help it. I just love. I love a little pampering. I really do. So even though at Soho House, they could only handle two appointments at a time, I then booked the next set of appointments for me, and I invited Michael to come down and join us because I thought, you know what? Treat yourself. I'll deserve a little facial as well. And it was such a nice cap to the two days, and it felt really good for all of us to celebrate where we are in our personal careers that allowed us to be there, what we achieved together. It just felt really nice. Moving on to what I would do differently next time or what we would do differently that we came up with. One thing I would say is reduce ambiguity even further if possible so that what happens on the day of is fully creation related, not ideation. So I'll say that again, reduce ambiguity even further so that what happens day of is creation, not ideation. Despite our best intentions and our seriously, Stephanie had only been with me three weeks at the point of this strategy sprint. Marisol has been with me for five years, but she also is a partner in another business, a design strategy firm. So in all cases we all put the best prep we could. But still there were things that weren't totally clear where we had to kind of brainstorm. And in a way it's good. It's so, so fun to brainstorm side by side. I'm not used to doing that. I, Marisol and I never really did sit by each other's side co working. Even though she lives in Brooklyn and I'm now in Harlem, we just hadn't done it. Talk about introverted working styles. We don't. We just didn't think to get together in the same room in five years. I know, it's weird. Maybe we did it one time. So on some level the brainstorming together is really productive. But we probably could have gotten even clearer so that even more if the goal of this strategy sprint was getting to done, I would also say simplifying even further. So I'm really happy with what we achieved across momentum. The podcast client projects LinkedIn learning, but it would be interesting to do a two day strategy sprint where it really was all hands on deck to just one part of the business or even one part within that. So like an example, we could have all worked on momentum for two days or even more specifically, we could have all worked on the Momentum launch on 1010. What do we need to do? Let's build it all right now. That would be even more specific. I also didn't quite think to do a post strategy session. I'm calling it a simmer meeting the following week. So we did do a little scheduling at the very end before we all parted ways. I would have just had that on the books. I think so much happens in those two days and it's good to let it simmer, especially over a weekend where I'm recording this to you now. We just finished yesterday night and then have a team check in early the following week because it's a little soon to know exactly what you want to do next next and how to prioritize things and most likely we'll have our Simmer Team Sync meeting and then design some kind of six week sprint taking after the base camp guys or maybe even a three week sprint. But something to say, okay, now that we had that intense kickstart with the strategy sprint, what can we do now? What are what's our next kind of deliverables? I would add the debrief questions that I suggested that I just told you about. I would add them to a sheet of paper, maybe even have people reflect first and then share because everyone kept forgetting what they were. So again it was what do you want to celebrate? What worked? What would be even better if and what's next? They're in the handout for this episode so don't feel like you have to write it down, just go to pivotmethod.com126 and I do think it would be fun to do both the Amy P. Style immersion day where it's kind of a fix it two days. That'd be awesome. And then I also think this really helped me see the value of a two day ideating sprint where maybe we're we are getting more creative instead of just being like what can you get done? That the tone of the two days is like let's dream. What can we create? In my case, I feel we gotta get our current ducks in a row aligned before we start really creating too much new steps. There's already so much out there. I feel I can do a much better job of making things clear from what we already have, but I do think that'd be fun in the future. Also, despite my best of intentions, I was more tired by the end of day two. I think it was that hyper focus and bliss state from day one I didn't sleep as well. I got up at 5am the next day already raring to go and by the afternoon of day two I was getting a little fried. So I'm happy that we ended early that day. But I would make sure to design the two day sprint in descending order of importance or difficulty. So like tackle the biggest, hardest, most procrastinating frog on day one in the morning and then by the afternoon sprint of day two maybe it's like I don't know something that I don't. In fact I wanted to templatize the immersion docs that you're going to get for this episode. I wanted to do that something like that that I would just enjoy doing and could be kind of a quick win. I also forgot to put up an autoresponder. I should have done that because I was a little self conscious. I had actually every single one of my biggest corporate clients emailed on the same day, like six of them. And so when I woke up at 5am on day two, I actually spent an hour pre sprint responding to important emails. And so having an autoresponder would be good and even suggesting to my team that they do the same. And I cheated a little bit over the two days I would have a browser window open. I might like peek at Slack or Asana. We PS we do not use Slack religiously. I cannot stand the like focus distraction of just in the moment pings. But I am using Slack while Brenna gets up to speed for quick questions. So it's good when she's trying to answer some emails. She could just ping me really quickly. So we're not a team that is all in on Slack. But I was kind of, I was kind of like jumping around a little bit. I caught myself doing that. So I would even turn off text messages, which I mostly did. But close the browser windows. No temptations. As we start to wrap up here, one thing I want to share out with you is that some new values came through during this two day strategy session. Which is kind of why I'm here now, recording this on a Saturday morning. One of our new values, and certainly mine, but for the whole team. Truth while it's fresh. What that means to me is I want to share what's really happening and going on doesn't always have to be like deepest, darkest truth, but I mean truth, just what's happening while it's fresh. So it would have been easy for me to say, okay, we just finished the immersion. Let me let it simmer. Maybe in a month I'll record an episode. No, true to form, I want to push past my perfectionism of like bringing it at the perfect time in the perfect way and just tell the truth while it's fresh or, you know, share what's going on while it's fresh. Let it be agile in the moment and easy. So just like this, it's probably not perfect. I'm hearing a siren right now. Don't know if you are, but I even encouraged Stephanie and Marisol in Momentum to share their experience. What's it like shifting their role within jbe in Marisol's case, or for Stephanie? She's been a Momentum member four years. What's it like now joining the team? What is she learning and encouraging her to just be radically transparent and share it in the moment, in, in light ways. It doesn't have to be a huge dossier report. So radical Transparency is another one. I am so inspired by Amy, who I've mentioned many times on this podcast, my friend Tour from Afar again, who it's a one sided friend worship. At least right now. I can't wait till the day I get to interview her on this show and you can all laugh at me at how much I was like geeking out. Or maybe someone will spread the word. Maybe you know Amy personally and you can tell her that I'm her biggest fan, new fan. But radical transparency. She does a great job of this, of just exactly what she's doing, what she's thinking about, what she's learning. You know, she's going to be naturally one or two steps ahead in certain ways and I love that. I really respect it. And when I look back, it's always what's worked well and worked best for me as well to kind of be genuine and share what I'm doing along the way. So I'm recommitting to radical transparency with delightful specificity. Sometimes I forget to share the details or I think they're not going to be interesting or relevant. Maybe there are certain details in this episode that you think are tmi, but I actually tried to be specific as much as I could in this in this episode. So delightful specificity. And finally, last but not least, crazy good systems. I want you to know that I first of all, I love systems. I think why I'm so energized by this two day strategy Sprint was that I friggin love business building. It's so creative for me. I love systems and automation and tightening things up and then creating templates and making it easier for somebody else to do the same thing. I love it. Part of the reason I'm designing that 10 streams of Solopreneur Income Workshop for when we get ready to launch momentum again is like I've been doing this eight years now and I've messed up and I've missed opportunities and I'm honestly kind of embarrassed about the state of my things. Like my email autoresponder when you join the pivot list. I was mortified when I logged in. I hadn't looked at them in three years. Those messages were so out of date it's embarrassing. But if I can share what I've learned in these eight years and how to just stay afloat and like stay in business, I think half the game of entrepreneurship is just persevere. Just keep going you know, there's that common saying, like, how do you, what's the best advice for staying married? Don't get divorced. Well, what's the best advice for staying in business? Just don't give up. Even when you're, even when you're at zero. There are ways to side hustle and rebuild your Pivot Runway. So I want to share crazy good systems that have worked for me that will shortcut the process for you. That makes me feel that it's worth taking the slow or winding route that I've taken. I feel redeemed if I can just share it with you and shortcut whatever you have to do or learn. So I hope to that end, I hope that you enjoyed this solo episode. I am going to try to bring you more of them. Maybe for some of you, this has nothing to do with anything in your life and you're going to skip this one and I'm going to learn to be okay with that, that I'm going to bring you other amazing content on the podcast. And I, I also want to know, I really, really another value is two way street. Like, I want to know what you love so I can do more of it. I mean, there's my inner people pleaser, but not in a codependent way, just in a way of like, I'm so curious. A lot of this stuff is guessing. So you can go to pivotmethod.com survey and actually I'm very excited and was geeking out that Typeform allows you to now create a chatbot survey. So if you want to take the it's seven questions, it's really short five minutes, go to pivotmethod.com survey and you could, you could answer via Chatbot. I don't know why. I find that just delightfully fun. I'm going to put all the templates that I mentioned, all the links, all the podcast episodes and the books that I mentioned are all going to go into the show. Notes pivotmethod.com 126 and again, I want to encourage you to get on that momentum interest list early because I can't wait to spoil you before we launch officially. Like, I won't be probably releasing too much on that list before we launch, but I will make sure that I offer something special as a thank you for raising your hand and saying, yes, I'm interested in what you're up to. So that's pivotmethod.com momentum. All right. Love to hear your thoughts and most of all, would love to hear if you do a two day strategy sprint with your team or if you do more of an amy P. Style 2 day immersion, fix it one way or another. I wish you just super fun business building days of your own or side hustle sprinting and can't wait for the next solo episode. Thanks so much for listening everybody. Bye.

Foreign.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotless get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.