How Smart Creatives Are Shifting To New Services In Chaotic Times

When we are dealing with uncertainty, it’s hard to grasp what our next steps should be.

Michael Tranmer knows what it’s like to have his life upended.

It was a crushing blow.

But, by facing the challenge and exploring new opportunities, Michael uncovered exciting ways to thrive and offer real value to his clients and community.

In this talk, Michael will share how he stopped being a victim of circumstance — and found ways to grow both personally and professionally.

Creative freelancers and agency leaders can attend this Talk + Social to discover:

• How to choose new services that are relevant to your expertise—and exciting to your clients.
• How to use “The Expansive Mindset” as a tool when facing fear and uncertainty.
• Michael’s step-by-step framework for creating, testing, and selling new services…without being too “salesy.”

Watch This Talk:

Transcript:

Ami Sanyal (00:00:00):
We are really excited to dive into this because I, over the last few months I’ve heard from a lot from from our creative audience and I think that this topic is one of the key things and on, on people’s minds. How am I going to offer a service that is applicable right now? So we’ve brought Michael tremor in as our guest today. Michael is a coach, a speaker and a writer and his background or his expertise is in helping people add new services to their line of work. And, and, and his background is actually in the corporate world. He, he hit rock bottom, made a shift, and that whole experience has made him a uniquely positioned to help people through the current crisis. And so I’m really excited that he’s taking his time out of his writing schedule to share with the creatives in our community.

Ami Sanyal (00:00:54):
So without further ado, let’s, let’s start the conversation with Michael. Let’s dig in first into what we want to cover here today.

Michael Tranmer (00:01:01):
Yeah. What we’re going to do sort of broken it down into three parts. And the first part we’re going to try to really shake your perspective and shake your mind a bit to, to, to pull in this new perspective perhaps of where you can have new offerings for your services or you can also learn from other folks and really see how your experience that you’ve had that you have built up can really be your superpower. So part one is, is really cracking open your perspective. Then we’re going to lead into a breakout group at the end of part one. All this is going to go pretty quick where you’re going to get to interact with each other and discuss that part two, we’re going to come back in and focus a little bit on mindset and really expansive mindset, what we can do in particular during these pandemic times.

Michael Tranmer (00:01:46):
And lastly, we’re going to talk about a framework to get into, to testing out and launching your idea. And then we’ll end off with one final breakout room. Awesome. Awesome. That’s, that’s great. And so one of the things that makes criticals unique is we’re always looking for kind of actionable takeaways. What is the actionable promise that we’re making to focus on here today? Yeah, that one in at the end, once we get to break out number two, it’s going to be, what is that first step that you can take to, to try a new service to two to test something out. So it’s just, it’s just all start, everything starts with, with one step. Even this idea here tonight started with one thought and one step. Absolutely. Awesome. So we know where we’re going. Let’s start in the beginning. Let’s get a little background.

Ami Sanyal (00:02:31):
I touched on the fact that you had a pretty formative moment in your own you know, personal history recently. Tell us a little bit about that, your background. Get people caught up.

Michael Tranmer (00:02:43):
Yeah, for sure. So who the heck am I? I’m a, I’m an engineer actually, so I really appreciate my way sneaking into this creative world. I really, I really appreciate it. You know, but before all, all my world sort of shook around. I worked for 12 years as an, I specialize in coastal engineering. So that’s anything along the waterfront. And I still exist in that space to an extent today. But I had the, had the job, got the condo down the street in West seventh and I was married and for all intents and purposes, things were, things were good, but they, they were, they weren’t great. It was a real comfortable, safe sort of existence.

Michael Tranmer (00:03:22):
And so getting into all the details that, you know, the, the marriage came to real sudden and hard end about two and a half years ago for me. And it was, it was, and why it’s kind of relevant at this time is, you know, what came after it was that, that fear, that loss, that uncertainty, that blank slate, which, you know, for me it was in my relationship in the end of the marriage. But it’s the same sort of feelings and emotions that a lot of people are experiencing right now. And that could be through a job loss that could be through health, but it’s the same. It’s, it’s the same sort of thing. And for me it was, it took a little bit of realization to get to this, but it was exactly what I needed to, to really crack my shell out of that comfortable world that I, that I was in before.

Ami Sanyal (00:04:11):
Awesome. So we’re seeing right now a time where all industries, but specifically here tonight we’re talking about creatives are experiencing chaos. Now. It’s not obviously the same backstory but a lot of the same emotions. Right? And so are you noticing any trends in the entrepreneur world and the creative world that, you know, certain challenges that people are having that may parallel that story and also what are people doing differently now? To create new opportunities?

Michael Tranmer (00:04:43):
Yeah, for sure. And the, the parallels, I mean, the parallel for me, I’ll just continue on with my story at touch. I mean, it was a, it was a process. There was a lot of crying in the streets going live here in Fairview where we are now. And there was, there was a, it was a process. But through that I also got, I got, you know, I did the, started going inward and then doing the inner work and I got to appreciate more about who I was and what, what really lit my soul on fire.

Michael Tranmer (00:05:10):
And it never really was that the engineering and you know, through the process I started working with the life coach in my own and then also saw how I could, I could do the same thing. And so there became a transition where I eventually started doing the coaching full time and left the safe corporate world behind. And so that, that’s sort of transition number two, which was scary and absolutely uncomfortable. And the parallel that that, that, that leads to is, you know, jumping into that, knew that like that’s a new offering, right? I never knew how to be an entrepreneur before, so had to learn that. So that parallel of stepping into that, that new thing of all who like, who am I to call myself a coach, who am I to to lead and motivate and inspire others. But it’s, it’s all the same feelings and a lot of that is, you know, the fear and the self doubt that people have. But you know, it took me really having my ego cracked and my shell crack to be able to go, go deep and really appreciate that. That’s like, I can do this and it feels good to do this.

Ami Sanyal (00:06:18):
Awesome. I think that a lot of people right now are facing a different type of rock bottom because they’re no longer able to do what they did before. It’s different but it’s the same, where you came to a point where you couldn’t do what you did before either. And so the reasons I’ve seen it, you know, I dug through and, and spoke to and, and saw the questions come in from our ticket holders here, let challenges around, you know, clients canceling or postponing projects left, right? And center challenges around being laid off and just not being able to deliver your services the way that you did before. You know, in this room we’ve got a video producer where you know, that’s a very in-person thing and 99.9% of jobs have changed. So what are you seeing people in this position do now? To address this? Yeah, let’s start there.

Michael Tranmer (00:07:14):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the ways, and, and obviously the way that I’m most familiar with is, is people pivoting to just to position themselves as a mentor, as a, as a leader, as a coach. Where that, that really is, you know, if you have an expertise in videography instead of just doing that, you are teaching other people to do that. And there’s an, and we know that the whole education space is, is, is a hundred percent doable online these days and it’s only going to become more so that way. So that whole, that whole just shift of like, alright, I’m an expert in you know, we talked about the example earlier on the artists that I know and she does this incredible paintings with these little glass pieces on it. And I, and I own a piece of her, her work. And I always ask her, you know, how do you do this? How do, how do you do this? How do you make this painting? Like, I don’t have that skill. I can’t replicate it, but I still want to know how. But she’s always like, Oh, I can’t, I can’t show anyone that they’re gonna steal it and take my, take my business. And I’m like, no. I generally like if I knew more about how you did this, I would be talking about it all over

Ami Sanyal (00:08:30):
And you would generate more business. Right, right. That’s awesome. Okay, so let’s, let’s dig into that a little bit. How would somebody who’s used to offering a service creative service, how would they shift into even recognizing where an opportunity lies right now?

Michael Tranmer (00:08:45):
Yeah. It starts with, if you ever have someone asking you these same questions, how do you do that? How do you, how did you create that website? How did you create that landing page? How did you shoot that video? How did you, like, you guys should see what’s going on in this room. It’s, it’s, it’s Epic. Like how do you do this if you have people asking you how you do something? And, and so for me it was, you know, how did you, how did you in the beginning was, you know, how did you recover from your, your breakup and then it was how did you become a coach? Cause that’s how I shifted. I started coaching more coaches and helping them get started in their business. But if you have that, if people are asking you that question, even one person, like how do you do what you’re doing? So the shift is okay, there’s people interested in, in, in what I do, how can I now see myself as a, as a teacher, as a coach. Yeah. That, that makes a lot of sense.

Ami Sanyal (00:09:37):
I think that one of the challenges people face when they’re thinking about shifting their offerings and it, and right now it feels quite drastic, drastic cause you might not even be able to do what you did before at all. Is that resistance of like doing something completely unrelated? Right. So starting from the, how did you standpoint will, should allow them to connect the dots on their experience a little bit better. Yeah, that makes sense.

Michael Tranmer (00:10:02):
Cool. Okay. So what a good step from here. Is this a good time for our breakout? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve sort of planted the seed. It’s the two. Yeah. It’s sort of like, what, what, what, what do I do? What’s my expertise? And has anyone asked me recently how I do what I do and could I teach other people how I do what I do? Don’t worry about the how or the water, any of that stuff, but the possibilities, what’s possible, what’s possible. Right.

Ami Sanyal (00:10:34):
So we’re taking, taking on a little bit of a journey here, guys, on just digging into you are, you’re, you are starting with a certain level of expertise that’s, that’s required for you to do what you do. What kind of advice could you give if, if somebody was to ask what could be valuable for someone and let’s have a short conversation

Audience (00:10:55):
For us. Mostly everybody’s kind of dealing with the chaos. But at least in my group, we were fortunate enough that we’re all kind of pursuing personal projects or exploring other skills. For me it’s, I’ve got a, a three D printer I purchased recently and I’m just teaching myself, you know, 3D modeling in new software so I can start bringing a lot more of these ideas to life tangibly. I also pointed out that today I got my, my Arduino starter kit cause basic circuitry is also something that I’ve always been familiar with on the periphery. But I really wanted to get into just to, again, just start freeing up some of some of those ideas, not necessarily for like to actually sell something and turn it into a business idea, but at least to continue exploring and then taking advantage of that.

Ami Sanyal (00:11:53):
And Steven, I’d love to hear from, from you. Were there any ideas around potential services that you guys talked about?

Audience (00:12:02):
Yeah, no, we had some really, really great conversations and potential services came up. We had a group, most of which in a note that does the design space or whether it be art directors or someone who owns their design business. And I think they’ve been facilitating conversations within their client bases about, okay, how can we help our clients to actually create new ideas. So for instance, one that I heard was, you know, I have a friend who is an art therapy director at a different agency and he went up to a local coffee shop and actually created their first website where they can sell coffee online. So, you know, some really great conversation was going around. So I think people are, are taking advantage of the situation. That’s awesome.

Ami Sanyal (00:12:41):
Taking advantage of the situation, not the freezing and the people are looking for, but it’s still true. Okay. So I bet that you guys had some interesting questions come up through that. Maybe some that we’d like to address later on if you want to share those questions in the chat. Chris and Steven are doing a great job of just curating those and that will be able to talk about those in the Q and a section.

Ami Sanyal (00:13:03):
But with that, let’s continue with this conversation. And let’s dig into a little bit more about the fears that people are dealing with. Because it’s nice to say like, Hey, you can do something completely different. It’s all within your power. And Hey, you’re an expert. People will want this, but there are still so many roadblocks that happen before people can execute on that.

Ami Sanyal (00:13:23):
And most of them are internals things like, I’m not senior enough. Nobody would, you know, want advice from somebody like me. Things like, I don’t know, pricing, like that’s just too complicated. I’m not sure what I would, you know, whatever, even be able to make this work. And then there’s the, the, the obstacle. It’s not really a fear but of I didn’t sign up for this, right? Like, I want to be a designer. I don’t want to advise people on how to design. I don’t want to show people how to take videos that are going to work for them. I want to do it. That’s, that’s what I got in this for. So how would you, how would you reply to those, those or you can take one or whatever you want.

Michael Tranmer (00:14:01):
Yeah. Well let’s hit all three. I’ll forget the third one by the time we get to it though. But I think, and just with the example with the three D printer from it was Chris. Yeah, totally awesome. You only have to be, so when Chris was showing the three D printer and he’s like, Oh, I’m like, I’m, I’m X. He didn’t say I’m excited, but I could sense that he was perhaps hopefully a little bit excited. Like I’m going to learn about the three D printer. I’m going to learn about this motherboard thing that me. Like, I don’t want to learn about that. I guarantee you that. But if you’re going to learn about something, all you have to be is one step ahead of someone else to be able to teach them about it. And if I was going to go learn about how to do three D printing and I was going to put all that effort into learning, the best way to cement that into your brain is to it back to someone else almost in real time, almost in real time.

Michael Tranmer (00:14:57):
So if you like if you have, if you have a 3D printer on just going to keep beating this example pretty hard. It was like I’m going to commit the next two weeks still learning this thing inside out and how I’m going to do that is every night at 7:00 PM I’m going to go live on on on Instagram and Facebook and I’m going to teach what I learned that day to probably the one person that shows up and my mom or my sister, whoever it is, and then maybe more people will start showing up. But it’s like, like for me, and I’ve done this and we talked about my book and I did these live readings over the last few weeks and that was necessary because I was really holding off and procrastinating, doing that level of edit. But when I put myself out there and, and, and made that commitment to show up every night and I did that work and then showed up and, and had to, I wasn’t really learning in that same sense, but it’s that commitment to get it done.

Ami Sanyal (00:15:53):
Right. So I heard two answers within that, right? The first is if you’re feeling too junior right now, there is somebody more junior than me. And so take the pressure off yourself. You’re not trying to advise your role models, you’re trying to help somebody else out. So that’s the first thing I heard. And the second thing was accountability. Putting something in place that’s going to allow you to get started, which is two, two really great answers. So, so that’s, that’s one of the key elements. You know, the other element I mentioned was around fears around pricing and getting really far ahead with, you know, the complexity of, of an idea before you’ve even started. How, how do people deal with that? Yeah. I mean, there is no pricing. When you’re teaching someone something you just learned that day and you’re teaching to an audience of one, you’re, you’re doing it for free.

Michael Tranmer (00:16:45):
You’re doing a beta group. A lot of, a lot of people that I helped become a wellness coaches, I say, you know, in the beginning they’re like, well, I have no experience, so you need to get experience. So, you know, get a, get a beta group of people to commit to working with you for one month and you speak to them every one hour every week. So you speak to them four times and maybe you get five people. So you have 20 conversations over the course of a month all for free. And the only thing you get at the end is a, is a testimonial because you have impacted their life for sure. But, but yeah, things like pricing and websites and all that other stuff, you know, learn, learn as we go and we’re going to minor problems later problems. Those are later problems.

Ami Sanyal (00:17:30):
Yeah. That’s great. I love that. And then the last piece I, I’d love to address is the, the feeling of like, I just don’t want to, I don’t want to change what I do. I like what I do, but right now I can’t. So how, you know, how are you responding to that person?

Michael Tranmer (00:17:46):
Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great one. And that’s a lot of people that I hear when they say, you know, I hate my job and a lot of people I work with, like they hate their job, they want to start to be an entrepreneur, they want to be a coach in the, in, in some fashion and work for themselves. But no, you really need to do whatever you can to, to, to, to reframe it as an opportunity. Like if you are a creative and you don’t want to mentor someone but you’re, you’re open to doing it for the next couple of months while this shakes out, how can you frame that to it?

Michael Tranmer (00:18:19):
So it’s going to help and explode your business down the road. And something we spoke about earlier is, you know, if you, if you teach it online course as you make it up, as you go along for a group of four or five or seven people and they really get to know your expertise like these, this is your fan base that’s growing, that’s going to really fuel your other work down the road. So if you can, if you can keep in mind like if you know your, your, your end game, your long goal is to fuel your, your main business, how can you, how can you, how can you switch your perspective on this, this detour to see how, you know these people are going to become your, your word of mouth, your fans, your supporters for, for your other work. That’s awesome. The changing your perspective.

Ami Sanyal (00:19:05):
I feel like you speak a lot about the expansive mindset. I’d love if you could dig into that a little bit.

Michael Tranmer (00:19:12):
Yeah, it’s huge right now. And this, maybe we’ll take a step back to the pandemic world right here. And we’ve been in it for almost two months now. And in the, in the beginning, me and all my spiritual folks were, were kind of excited, right? We were like, this is the awakening that, that the earth needs and humanity and all this stuff going on and the shift that we all need. And there was a lot of excitement because a lot of people have been through that on a, on a personal level. I know I felt like that and I also know I’ve felt pretty crappy. Well a lot of times over the last couple of weeks, especially last week hit quite a few low points.

Michael Tranmer (00:19:50):
But you know, getting back to the beginning, it’s, it was, it was all about being expansive and being open to opportunity and keeping your energy up and, and being healthy. And if you’re working at home, please don’t go from your bed to your desk, from your desk to your couch to your bed. Like do we got, we got, we got, we got guilty over here. Do whatever you do, whatever your, whatever, whatever shakes your bones to keep your energy up, to keep your blood moving to, to stay expansive. Cause when you’re in this, in this space of, of expansion and opportunity, you, you become more attuned to what is working out there and you, you, you see opportunities. Cause if you just start to crumble and you’re checking Twitter and you see death counts and you see death counts and then you see Trump and then all this stuff, if you do that for, if you’ve been doing that for seven weeks, you probably don’t feel great right now. But if you’ve been focusing on, you know, recovery, you know, seven o’clock cheer and all these beautiful things going on and that’s when you really open yourself up and you can look people in the eyes and see opportunities come in.

Ami Sanyal (00:20:56):
Right. Okay. Okay. So we’ve touched on a lot in a little time here. We’ve talked a lot about the challenges people are feeling. And I’m sure there are more that will come up during the question and answer, but let’s move into execution, right? So everything we’ve shared so far is to about about brainstorming. It’s about, you know, what’s possible and how, how to shift our perspective. But if we were to do this, if we were to say, okay, I’m going to leave this talk and I’m just going to like learn something new, but I actually want to, you know, try this out. How could I go on a journey here and start something new within my current business or as a side hustle, whatever that looks like for them. What, what would, what would you advise for that person?

Michael Tranmer (00:21:40):
Check the notes as we go along here, but let’s, let’s use the 3D printer cause that’s the one that came up. So I’m going to learn about three D printing. I have another main business or may, maybe a couple other ones, but I’m going to learn about three D printing over the next, the month of may. Starting tomorrow. May 1st now. Okay. So if I’m going to learn about it, maybe I can be a mentor to other people. Okay. So that’s cool for question one is like, like why, why do I, why am I learning about three D printing or, and also like what is, what is the end game if I put effort into learning about this and teaching others, will it support my other business that I have? So question number one is like why, why, why are you doing that? And for this example that makes sense. Part number two in this, this framework that we’re, that we’re walking through is

Michael Tranmer (00:22:30):
It’s own, own your story and then that’s, that may or may not fit in in this example, but in terms of, you know, if you are starting a new branch of business, we’ll say the 3D printer, you have to have some sort of emotional connection to the people that are also on the other side of the screen to, to help. And that’s why we started talking about my story. Like you guys are on the screen going, who’s this dude? Like, what’s, what’s his, why is he sitting here? Who is he? You have to and you don’t have, it doesn’t have to be a life altering trauma that you’ve been through, but you have 3D own your story about how you got into the work that you’re in, why you’re learning by three D printing. Maybe you’re learning about that to solve another problem, but you have to be it to be open about this.

Michael Tranmer (00:23:14):
Number three, we talk after that about narrowing your niche and and market market research. Really, you know, if you’re going to put a lot of effort into to pivoting and being a mentor of sorts, you first need to have people that are interested in this and that’s where we came back in the beginning about are people asking you how do you do this? Right?

Ami Sanyal (00:23:33):
Can you dig into that a little bit deeper? What you know, beyond just looking at, you know, who’s asking me questions and, and how does that relate to my expertise? It’s there more than you would say for somebody who’s, you know, the 3D printing example of somebody, what would market research look like for that person?

Michael Tranmer (00:23:48):
Yeah, for sure. I mean just for the same reasons that you are getting into it. Are you aware of other people that are getting into it for the same reason? Or is there a need around town? Is there a need in your industry? Are you plugged into to chat groups or whatever it is? Like is this a popular subject or is this, or is this a hobby? Is this a hobby that you’re interested in? And it fuels your, your creativity? You know, you have to make that differentiation before you, it’s all about where you’re gonna plug all your energy. So if, if there’s no audience, then, then there’s no point.

Ami Sanyal (00:24:26):
That’s something that I’ve struggled with a lot during those time. Not the market research element, but what you just said about energy is like, I’ve got all the ideas in the world, but my energy now is way smaller than it was before. And so being really selective about what it is I’m going to execute on is really important so that that piece addresses one of the challenges, I think.

Michael Tranmer (00:24:46):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we could, I could talk about energy all night. For me, it’s I, you know, unsubscribed from an email list every day and say no to a zoom call every day. If you can do those two things, you’re going to save a lot of energy for yourself. So after those first three steps we talked about, get clear on your why on your story, market research number for you. You can create your content and grow your audience. And so if you’re doing the 3D printer, it’s totally cool to create it as you go. It’ll, if you’re going to learn something during the day and teach it again at night, your, your audience is aware of that. Like you’re, you’re giving them something for free. There’s going to be a little bit of leniency, but it’s going to hold you accountable. And you know, one of the simplest ways if a lot of people are into creating online courses when I hear someone getting really excited about that, I’m like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, dog.

Michael Tranmer (00:25:38):
Good, slow. That’s good. But online courses, unless you have a huge funnel of audience coming in, people think they just make the course and then the money happens. It doesn’t doesn’t work that way. But the easiest way to make a course is to, if you were going to do a four calls every week, if you’re going to record content throughout the month of may, just hit record, hit record, and then by the end you have four videos that are, you can clean them up and do as you wish, but there’s a chorus right there and you do it by teaching it live.

Ami Sanyal (00:26:11):
That’s an, that’s an interesting point. I feel like from what I know of our audience that almost nobody is thinking to themselves on a normal day. Like I’ve been wanting to be a coach all my life. Maybe secretly they’re not telling me, but I think that they are thinking, I wish I had a mentor. Right. And in fact, people come up to me and talk about how do you get mentors, how do you get these great people to speak? Like all these, these questions around mentorship. And what you just said is, is kind of amazing when you shift the perspective there, right? If your mentors were putting their hand up and saying, listen, I’ll help you. And B, I have material already. It’s not just kind of passive mentorship where it’s just like, Hey, what do you want? I’m just like, no, I know what you want here. People have asked these questions of me before I’ve recorded them. Go through it and ask me some more questions. Right. So I mean, flipping that upside down in for people might make it a little bit more approachable I think. Yeah. Awesome. That’s great. Let’s, let’s dig through. I love what you did with the three D printing. I wonder if we could do that again with another professional. Let’s, let’s take video as an example. So somebody who is, you know, a video producer, videographer going out live sets having to deal with the new reality that we’re in right now. Let’s walk through that framework one more time.

Michael Tranmer (00:27:30):
Yeah. And can we use it? Can we, can we do this? Like where we’re sitting right here.

Michael Tranmer (00:27:36):
So like we’ve mentioned many times, like your, the folks online are seeing this and look at that tree or that, that’s the orange building behind it looks incredible like this. This is not how most of us have been looking at like on our zoom screens the last couple of weeks. Can, can everyone online, I can see a copy of the talk. Can you guys agree? Can we get a hand? Yeah. Can we get a little, yeah. Yeah. It’s all, I see a few folks there like, so this is impressive. This is, this is next level.

Michael Tranmer (00:28:10):
So I know there, if I were to show folks that I know what is possible and not, this didn’t come together easily or cheaply by the look of these, these cameras. But this is, this is a pivot. This is a shift to be able to offer this quality of, sir, I know people that would pay a lot of money to have their zoom meetings looking like this. So it’s, it’s, that’s sort of number one. That’s the idea. And so this is, this is different. Like you could also teach someone how to do this. If you had someone filming you as you set up, like that’d be the easiest way. So you could teach someone how to create this. But also this is a whole new service. This is, this is, this looks good.

Ami Sanyal (00:28:53):
Cool.

Ami Sanyal (00:28:54):
So we have got our why, right? You’ve got a situation where you can’t do what you did before. You’ve got an idea that you wanna build your business with it. And it’s, it’s, it’s financially possible. You can see that story’s a little bit hard to kind of make up. So we won’t make that up right now, but we can, we can imagine that there’s a story element there and it probably comes to the transition that just happened.

Michael Tranmer (00:29:12):
Oh yeah. I mean this story is pandemic. That’s the story. So what’s the third step for us? Third step is market research, market research. So like just having this quality of video, you’re going to be able to shoot out to people and like you could make a video about, you know, week one we were on zoom and it looked kind of crappy. We pivoted, we did this. Isn’t that incredible? Look at that. Are there, send it out to your network, put that content online. Who else is interested in this service? Right? So

Ami Sanyal (00:29:41):
In this case, we’re talking about Nathan Skillen behind the scenes here. By the way, guys, he’s, he’s who set this up for us and we’re very thankful. And so in this case, a market research initiative could look like comparing last month’s event, which was still pretty bad ass, but was your kind of standard zoom set up a little better? To something like this where where we’re putting pretty slick in terms of visuals and comparing that and saying, you know, would you want something like this? Is this something you’d be interested in?

Michael Tranmer (00:30:09):
Yeah. So just, and then it’s talking about it, it’s creating content. It’s posting online, it’s sending out to your, your email lists and tasks. Like who knows? Like you probably have an idea, I know people would, would love this service, but, but show them and ask them and create content and ask people, would you like something like this?

Michael Tranmer (00:30:28):
Like don’t, I guess the point is don’t be afraid to not have it perfect. Like we saw it took a little longer to get going, but the, the, the outcome is, is really impressive.

Ami Sanyal (00:30:38):
Yeah. Perfection. Paralysis. Yeah, that’s, that’s awesome. Okay. So we have a fun breakout session plan. Is there any other nuggets that we want to give to folks before we jump into the breakout?

Michael Tranmer (00:30:49):
We were going to talk about sales.

Ami Sanyal (00:30:52):
Oh yeah, yeah. Let’s dig into that a little bit. So I feel like when, when you speak to people at any length about starting something new, eventually they come to the point where they realize that they’re just too scared to sell it. Like they don’t want to be too salesy, especially right now. They don’t want to come across as tone deaf. There’s so many reasons why somebody could convince himself that selling is not a good idea right now. What’s your response?

Michael Tranmer (00:31:21):
Yeah, and I was on a call with with a client of mine actually earlier this week, and they were developing this thing and I kind of knew he wanted to sell me on it. And there was, it was not something I was interested in, but it was really painful to, to, to just go through this conversation and not have them actually, that’s the nightmare situation. Ask like, would you like this? Is this something you’d be interested in? But it’s so many things and, but what it all really comes down to is your, you’re solving a problem. Like it’s, and you can’t take things personally. You can’t, it’s not you. Someone would be, people are afraid of having been said no to projection, right? It all comes. But if you don’t take that personally, and this goes into the dating world too, but I think that’s a, that’s a different show for later when you, when you don’t take it personally and you realize it’s all about just solving someone’s problem, you create that, you create that disconnect.

Michael Tranmer (00:32:17):
And it’s not, you know, it’s, it’s, you’re not selling yourself. You’re enrolling them to, to solve their problem and, and take them on the journey. And in the beginning, if someone’s starting something new, like we spoke about earlier, if, if there’s no money involved, it’s hard to keep them accountable. So that’s why you want to keep something to a short duration. But once you get on and you start building it, the money becomes important to have people stay accountable to show up and, and learn from you. Because if there’s not, if it’s free, people will disappear.

Ami Sanyal (00:32:47):
Yeah. So my background is in marketing and so I’m getting a lot of these questions to you. Everyone would be like, Oh, I don’t want to sell something right now. And the way that we’re addressing it isn’t that relevancy factor, right? So I feel like a lot of people, most people have five to seven fires I’ve been trying to put out either personally or professionally right now.

Ami Sanyal (00:33:06):
And part of that market research is going to uncover whether or not the thing that you’re trying to sell is connecting to one of those five to seven fires. Right? And so what I love about the framework you’ve kind of laid up is that it sort of solves itself. If you get to the end of that, that series then like being too salesy would be hard, right?

Michael Tranmer (00:33:26):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean you’re, you’re solving a problem. Me, I was just, I was just looking for someone to design the cover for my book. So if I, you know, I looked at a couple of people. If, if I don’t go with one of them, I still have the problem. I still don’t have a book cover. I still can’t get my book out in a couple and a couple of weeks without a cover. So it’s, it’s, you know, they’re really by them making an offer to me and I eventually went with someone super professional and super excited about it.

Michael Tranmer (00:33:55):
It’s, it’s helping me and I, I had money to spend, you know, just because there’s a pandemic and that, that aspect, I have money that I put aside to spend on that. So there are people out there that still have money. There are people that are looking to spend money and still have their problems solved. These folks with the new website at the coffee shop, they need to spend money to make money.

Ami Sanyal (00:34:15):
Right. Awesome. Cool. Anything else before we jump to break out? No, let’s do it. Let’s do it. So breakout number two folks. Let’s go to the slide there. And we’ll review the questions at hand. This is our like recurring theme. If you’ve ever been to a creative pulse event before, we want to know how you’re going to take action and let’s, let’s have a conversation around that. So want to walk us through the prompt here?

Michael Tranmer (00:34:38):
Yeah, for sure. So the prompt is what is the first step that you’re going to do? I will take action by, so whoever goes first, they start with that line. I will take action by, I am going to explore this. I had this idea, you know, you could bounce it, bounce it off. The other folks a little bit. And by the other folks in the, in the group, if the, if the person presents the idea, you know, I’m going to take action by keep supporting them going, all right, what are you going to do next? Have you ever thought about this? Oh, I know this person who is into this, Oh, I know this potential client who, who could be and just just throw stuff at them. Just spit ball. Some of it will go somewhere, some of it won’t. But one of these things in this, in these breakout rooms, it’s going to be, it’s going to be big. It’s going to be juicy.

Ami Sanyal (00:35:19):
Yeah. And I’m going to guess that there’s going to be a certain number of people who are going to say, I don’t know. I don’t know yet what the services and so maybe that your time can be devoted to a little bit of a deeper dive into what service you might provide. So you’ve got a few options for that, that, but it’s really action oriented.

Ami Sanyal (00:35:35):
Right. Awesome. Everyone’s back. Welcome back everybody. So I’d like to do that again, just kind of recap our learnings and, and any key questions that came up during the breakout session. I’d love to start with Steven. This time. What were, what were some of the things highlights from that breakout session?

Audience (00:35:52):
No. Yeah, we had some really great conversations. I think some of the highlights were definitely, you know, a lot of the people again were in that design working working as designers or they’re doing something on their own freelancing or looking to freelance or looking to become or to find a new agency role. And really it was just breaking out and how can they develop their skills. But also, you know, is, you know, how can they find new things to do during this time. You know, for instance, one person is taking up painting or has restarted to paint, which is really cool. So maybe you can see a new site launch for her new painting site next week.

Ami Sanyal (00:36:28):
You had some time to, to, to really mull this over amongst yourselves. Chris and Steven are gonna help help us navigate the questions. I think that you guys have been putting questions in in the side chat here. Who’s first Chris,

Audience (00:36:45):
One of the learnings that came out of ours and it was actually shared amongst our team. I’ve now shared a link in the chat to let’s make lemonade and this is an initiative by again, one of our community members and about Kim. Yeah. And about to how do we kind of repackage the services or that skillset that we do offer into something more adaptable for these times. And I think it’s a really great demonstration of the type of innovation that we can be doing around our creative services in this time. So I kind of set that as a is a really high bar, like a is a benchmark of what can be done.

Ami Sanyal (00:37:28):
I was thinking of you Anabel during this talk when, when Michael mentioned you got to own your story. Annabel’s company name is, I Like Storytelling. So I think you’re perfectly perfectly positioned for that, for, to, to do this and I love the initiative. Great. So I thank you for sharing that. And for the link there who, who should, who are we hearing from first on Q and a

Audience (00:37:52):
Getting both of your opinions on when you are starting to say some sort of coaching business or online business like that. Is making your hobby, your business a bad thing or should your profession be your business or what is your take on making a hobby into your profession?

Michael Tranmer (00:38:13):
Cool question. Did you get it? Yeah, multiple facets. I think there’s gotta be some, some boundaries there. I, I’ll, I’ll, I can speak, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer for that one, but I, I know sports are my hobbies, like, like surfing and biking and skiing. So those are my babies. I and I,

Michael Tranmer (00:38:36):
I’m not saying I’m the best at them, but I don’t want to spend my time teaching those to other people. Like when I go away on a trip, I’m going away surfing. The last thing I want to do is, I mean, to an extent I’ll teach friends and family a little bit, but, but that’s, that’s just where I draw the boundaries. So like sports and my hobbies are my things.

Ami Sanyal (00:38:55):
I guess an interesting way to think about that with is, is would you be excited by it? That’s the question. That’s the right question for anything. Yeah. I mean, I have certain certain things, right? So I’m obsessed with learning sourdough. I started before the pandemic. Thank you very much. But I, I’m not at the stage where I’d be interested in like making a course. That’s a little unusual for me. I like monetizing things.

Ami Sanyal (00:39:19):
I mean, I used to teach guitar when I was 14 years old and had no, I had no business doing that. But that was an interesting idea for me. Right. So there’s, I think it kind of is a little bit, it’ll uncover itself. Would you feel like you’re just doing it for the money if you taught this skill or would you be honored and excited by the opportunity to help somebody out that you didn’t know or maybe that you didn’t know? Right.

Michael Tranmer (00:39:45):
So I think that that’s probably the real, the real beauty with coaching and mentoring is, is to, to really help people get, get over their fears or whatever their setbacks are, or to, to build that tight emotional connection. It’s, it’s often for coaches and coachees. It’s, it’s, it’s that meaningful interpersonal connection. And a lot of us spend a lot of time behind the screens and behind the scenes, but, and we don’t sometimes appreciate why we aren’t fully fulfilled in life, but so coaching can be that, that gap to, to, to link those two up. But I think I love how you said can I be excited about that? I asked myself that question about many things per day and that’s why we started with meditation. So we can clean, clear out all the crap and we can really get present with ourselves and we have to do some things we aren’t fully excited about all the time. But I love that question. Yeah. Well that’s interesting. That’s cool. Chris, do you have a question for us?

Audience (00:40:45):
So how might someone access like informal or formal mentorship network or the insights that come from that type of relationship outside of, you know, hiring a coach? Cause I again, I, I’m sure they’re, you know, if Michael is, you’re selling your services, you know, if the people here in the audience aren’t necessarily the people that like are your potential customers or are they like what’s, what’s the level of like service that you provide? I’m assuming that like for someone where I am, I wouldn’t be able to, I don’t know, leverage your services in the most effective way, but how might I still benefit from that? Like if I couldn’t afford your services or the services of coach.

Ami Sanyal (00:41:40):
Yeah, I think we, we talked about this a couple days ago, but how can people get mentors? How can people get coaches and

Michael Tranmer (00:41:49):
Mmm,

Michael Tranmer (00:41:51):
I know a bunch of them. So if it’s not me, I can, I can connect to anyone who’s interested with, with another coach. But the other way that we talked about was, you know, really just creating your own network, your own mastermind of a mastermind really is a couple of guys or a couple of girls getting together on a, on a regular basis to having a focus conversation. And please, please, please feel free to reach out to me if you want. I’ll copy and paste what I use for my free mastermind that I’ve done with people because I don’t like wasting time. And so, but you have to have this focus conversation and focus prompts to, to make it worth people’s time to show up at. That can be free, that can be, you know, people in this group can, can reach out to some other people that they want to connect with and meet on a weekly or biweekly basis and just exchange ideas and just have someone just have you talked just like, just like Chris was talking there, cause you just like, really most of the time all we need to do is talk out our own crap and find our own answers and to have someone be a, be a mirror for what you’re saying and to get that different perspective.

Michael Tranmer (00:43:01):
It does become challenging though with, if there is no, it doesn’t have to be money, but if there’s no, if there’s no skin in the game, people will start falling off left and right. But that’s an option.

Ami Sanyal (00:43:12):
Yeah. I mean I think there’s, there’s a few. So mastermind is one. Informal mentorship is a thing, right? Like it’s probably the more common thing really. Right? So I in my career have had several informal mentors. When I say in foremost means I am not paying them, but they’re helping me out. I’ve had you know, coaches who have paid tens of thousands of dollars to, and I’ve started three or four different masterminds with different entrepreneurs. And so there’s, there’s different ways you can engage in. And sometimes there’s informal masterminds. Maybe it’s just a group of entrepreneurs that you call when you know, it’s your bat phone, you know, whatever. So I think that if I understand your question correctly, Chris, is that, you know, if before you go and offer a service to somebody else, you might want more experience on the other side of the seat, right?

Ami Sanyal (00:43:58):
And so that’s a great idea. And I think that people should take advantage of all the different options available to them so that they can better understand what their future clients are going to be experiencing and provide a higher level of services. So when I launched my own coaching services a little over a year ago, I went through all of the different experiences and I said, I really liked this. I hated this thing when it happened. How am I going to deal with, drop off all of these elements uncover themselves only because I’ve experienced it in the past. And I think so. I think that’s pretty valuable

Ami Sanyal (00:44:32):
Thing to address as you go on and think about offering consulting and coaching and mentoring in your own Rolodex of services. Very cool. Is there any questions from the audience then we can get our audience members to actually ask here today

Audience (00:44:48):
While we wait for someone else to submit a question. I do want to kind of hone in on the transition. Okay. So non-expansion of microservices, but let’s say that transition to a new industry. So Michael, like you having gone through that or like the substantial shift, right, in terms of, you know, career direction and, and, and what’s bringing you fulfillment day to day? Like what do you wish you had known before? Making that transition that might’ve made that easier? Cause my, my situation is one more similar to that where I’m looking to change industries more than repackage my services from that industry in a way that the industry can use during lockdown.

Michael Tranmer (00:45:33):
Can I ask? Can I swear on here? It’s fucking scary, man. So scary. So if you’re feeling scared and frightened and unsure and like you want to puke and you don’t know what’s going on, you’re going in the right direction. Like that’s, that’s how we move towards our, our, our, our soul’s ambition. Like the thing that’s really calling for us, like, listen, this has been the most terrifying last two and a half years of my life with the relationship and then, you know, leaving a very stable engineering job to start my own thing. Like really over the last year and a bit that has been even even harder. So what do I wish I had known nothing and I don’t, I don’t, you can’t even know what you don’t know. And that’s what’s so beautiful about it. I don’t regret any of it. And now I’m even pivoting again to sorta like angle back into the engineering world a little bit and serve them in a different way with a new perspective.

Michael Tranmer (00:46:30):
But I, I had to and I really appreciate all the entrepreneurs that are here and creatives and, and you yourself, I me to entrepreneurs are crazy. I just appreciate them so much more. Just like, I appreciate authors so much more my, my word. What a journey to, to put together a, a book. But so if you’re about to make a huge switch, so what can you do? Just be easy on yourself. Don’t, don’t quit your day job. Don’t quit your day job. Don’t quit the thing that’s providing you that as much as you hate, hate it. Try and reframe why you hate it so much. But hang on to that income as long as possible while you, while you build the other thing on the side, there will come a point, and this happened for me where you have to like go all in and cut it off and say, I can’t put any more energy into the day job. And then things get a whole new level of scary and that’ll be normal when that happens. But go like, go easy on yourself. Just be prepared to pivot when things don’t work out. Don’t quit the day job quite yet, but keep having this whatever the support network is for, for you to be able to talk through, cause you don’t want to go go through it alone. That’s the worst thing.

Ami Sanyal (00:47:45):
That’s awesome. There’s an interesting thing that, that you must’ve experienced, which is going from being an engineer in a corporate environment to shifting to being an entrepreneur, to looking for clients. And I think that’s an experience that a lot of people are having in this audience where they may have been laid off, right. And sure they’d be willing to explore offering a new service or going out on their own. As, as a, as a freelancer or entrepreneur, they have no audience or they feel like they have no audience. And so how would you address that fear, that challenge? She’s a pretty, pretty real one for people who are looking at the framework and the idea and realizing that, Hmm, what’s it for if you can’t get it in front of somebody.

Michael Tranmer (00:48:29):
Yeah. Yeah. The fear and the audience. And let me just tell you, doing that transition, but to becoming an entrepreneur, like I’ve always dabbled with wanting to do an MBA, but I really feel like I’ve done a real world one over the last couple of years where you learn about sales, you learn about marketing, you learn about putting yourself out there, you learn about running your own business. And it was great, it was fun. But there like there is a lot there. And the fear, the fear is real. But in terms of, in terms of building the, the audience like yeah, maybe you don’t, well you don’t have an audience because you haven’t been putting yourself out there and talking about your, your expertise and really owning what you have. And so that’s where, and I know we talked about in the, in the break about building, building relationships and building your, your tribe really.

Ami Sanyal (00:49:15):
And I have something to, to gift away to everyone at the end that’ll absolutely help with that. But that’s such a great, great thing to be doing right now is to build your audience. And you do that by, by creating content, by using social media and, and again, if, if you’re going to learn a new skill and you’re going to explore something new over the next month or two, just talk about it and post about it. And you’ll always be a couple steps ahead of someone and you’ll, you’re, you’re, you’re not where you want to be or where you see yourself going, but you’ll always be a couple steps ahead. So you just, you don’t have an audience until you start doing something.

Ami Sanyal (00:49:52):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. I’ve had a lot of conversations about this topic in the last little while and you know, for people being laid off, it’s particularly difficult, but you know, your past boss might need this service. The past clients that you worked with with them. If it’s not directly competitive, you can speak to those people. You have existing relationships. If you own a business and you’re finding it’s hard, you know, the current clients are obvious, but what about your past clients? What about the clients? You didn’t win, right? You’ll never get a better opportunity to pick up the phone and be like, Hey, you know, I’m, you know, me

Ami Sanyal (00:50:28):
As this guy, but right now I know that you’re having this problem and I can help. Do you want that help? Right. And so, you know, whatever that looks like, I think that there are hidden audiences within everybody’s reach just takes a little bit of energy and creativity to, to, it’s such an easy entry point right now to, to have that compassionate conversation just touch base with, with your past clients and just like, how are you doing? Like this is, this has been some shit for a lot of people and you know, different people in different ways, but that just, just, just to establish that personal connection and who knows where it goes. Maybe they have a problem you can solve, but just lead in like, like be real, be a human. Like how are you doing? Awesome. Steven, I believe has a question for us now. Yeah, great. We actually have a good question from Annabel, so I’m going to unmute her and let her go on spotlight video quickly.

Audience (00:51:27):
Okay.

Audience (00:51:28):
Oh, working there. So like are there any kind of daily habits that you can suggest that can help? I suppose just like open your mind to new potential new opportunities, like seeing value you can add in different ways. Cause one of the things that I find is just trying to shed the old identity of that’s what I did and it looked like that, you know what I mean? I just like, you know, if there’s things I can do that can just help me see, see opportunities, I think that would be helpful. Like kind of like daily habits or something. I don’t know.

Michael Tranmer (00:52:08):
Oh I just got goosebumps. I just lit up. This is my most, my most so, and this I talked cause I’m trying like once you guys get to know me a little better, I hope we can build relationships through online and then the real world, like, like yeah, I moved from engineering to coaching and starting a book. But like my bigger picture is to, to like the book had to be this catapult in this whole new world that I’m creating and this is really, really uncomfortable to go from, from what I knew and what I’m familiar with to, to this, this vision that I have. And I don’t know exactly how that’s going to happen, but I know, and to answer your question in a bell, you have to go into the unknown to find your new potentials.

Ami Sanyal (00:52:57):
You have to go into the unknown to find your new potentials. Okay, well what does that mean? Like what does that, what does that even look like? So like on the simplest level, you have to start what you ultimately have to start thinking differently and to, and thinking and operating and being differently. So you have to switch up your, your familiar routines and habits in some certain way. You can’t get up, eat the same cereal, go to the same, well, we don’t really go anywhere anymore. So in essence, this is a little bit what has happened. We’ve had to go into the unknown a little bit. But if you, if you see yourself in a new way, in a new role and as a, as a new business leader, you have to, you have to have new experiences, you have to go to physical, new places, new parks.

Michael Tranmer (00:53:45):
You have to walk a different way to the grocery store. You have to, you have to, you have to be around different people. You can keep your friends and family that you love but they aren’t going to help you get to where you want to go. That I have met, I’ve met more people in last two and a half years and I’ve met in the last 15 years for sure because I need so much help with what I’m creating and that is, that is, that is hard to meet new people and new people in new worlds. So there’s, there’s that piece which is really exploring the unknown, but then you also like to generate your new ideas and this is why I’m so passionate about about no meditation. That’s why we started with meditation because you really need to, you need to quiet down the mind, quiet down all the stuff going on and, and really sit and be silent with yourself because you ultimately already know what to do.

Michael Tranmer (00:54:46):
In a lot of instances you had this feeling and this urge to do and try and create something. But then you start talking yourself out of it or society starts talking yourself out of it. Or your mom says, Oh Michael, why would you do that? Right? Just that people want to keep us safe. Our friends and family want to keep us safe. You do you have any like morning routines or anything that you you do yourself or recommend for people that on the daily, on daily habits? Yeah. Yeah. I love morning love talking about morning routine because it’s all, it’s all, you know, and for me, for this whole progression through hitting my rock bottom and having to dig myself up out of that, I’ve really had to like get happy again. That’s why the book’s called Satoria Nanda, awakened to happiness. Cause that’s literally what I had to do.

Michael Tranmer (00:55:41):
And get excited about doing so. For me, it’s always get my head in the right state in the morning and, and now I haven’t been as good at this lately cause things are weird and I’m never as a hundred percent at this, but it’s, it’s, it’s gratitude in the morning. So I have a, I have a gratitude journal, I write out 20 things. I’m grateful for side one things that I’m grateful for in the present. This is a, this is a good tip, my friends, I’m glad you’ve taught this. So I write out 20 things I’m grateful for. I am grateful for down the left. And then the, the other, the next 10 things are, are 10 things that I’m grateful for in the future that I’m creating. So powerful to

Michael Tranmer (00:56:23):
Do that. So I write every morning, I’m a bestselling author, I’m traveling the world on a book tour. I’m impacting millions of people. We’re thinking it and we’re feeling it and getting excited like it’s already happened. And from there I go on and, and do meditation and then I go do exercise and then I need to do these things and get out of the house. Cause I’m coming back home to work at home. But if I just go from the bed to Twitter to the desk, there’s no meat. There’s no me time. There’s no time for the ideas. That’s super interesting. I feel like a deciding what you want. So I was reading a million posts on, on, on mental health right now, and one of the tips was, you know, dress and act according to the life that you want, not the one that we have right now.

Ami Sanyal (00:57:11):
Right. And so there’s an element of that in, in being selective about your routine as well. And then the power of repetition and writing things out that you’re intentional about. Right. when I’ve been able to start several businesses up and I’ve dealt with what you’re talking about at about every single time, right? Like I’m not actually a photographer. I’m not actually an agency owner. Whatever it is, it doesn’t, it feels like you’re a fake for a really long time. And the thing that I realized is by saying it to people and seeing it to myself, but that was writing it down really, really helps because you start to realize your brain doesn’t have to pause and think about the words so much anymore. So your advice on getting started by doing a daily livestream as an example, it allows you to say, listen, I’m, I’m, I’m working with this printer right now.

Ami Sanyal (00:58:07):
And you figure out how you like to say that and you suddenly will find a title in there that you, that you read that resonates with you. And I think those repetition pieces along with that morning ritual are really, really powerful. I am statement.

Michael Tranmer (00:58:20):
Yeah. I act as if and soon you will become. And once you appreciate the power of your thoughts and something I’ve been learning, leaning into more now is the power of words. Like, so when I go around saying, you know I’m writing this book and becoming a bestseller author and I’m traveling the world that feels and sounds good, as opposed to, I said, well, I put together this book and it’s no good just contraction.

Ami Sanyal (00:58:46):
Let’s talk about the fail fast idea because once you get going the thing that usually ends the project is the fact that you, you realize that you’ll never, it’s never good enough. Right? So can you walk us through how we can execute quickly, how we can do this? Cause it feels like maybe it isn’t actually a huge opportunity in front of a lot of us, but time keeps ticking and that opportunity is waning. So like how did you deal with this?

Michael Tranmer (00:59:16):
The balance between perfectionism and learning by doing and getting in the ring, getting

Michael Tranmer (00:59:22):
In the, getting in the field of getting in the field of play. And it is a balance that we want to put together. Quality content and quality work. But depending on what that is, like if you’re going live on Instagram, like, like who cares? Like have four talking points. And talk about them. You don’t need your never and most, most people already know what they know enough of the knowledge about their, what their expertise at your, you don’t need to learn any more about that. What you need to do is get over your fear of putting yourself out there and getting on camera and getting them, whatever that, if that’s something you need to explore, get over that fear and, and, and realize where you want to improve. Maybe it’s in public speaking, maybe it’s in whatever it is, but we learn by, by doing the question I have is going to be around how specific it’s needs to be.

Ami Sanyal (01:00:15):
Right? I think a lot of people are going to struggle. They’re going to walk away and be like, Hmm, that was nice. But like I don’t, again, I don’t want to be a coach. Like what does this look like for me? What do you think the options are for delivery for people? How do we take the elements of what you’re saying and apply it in different ways?

Michael Tranmer (01:00:30):
I think it’s just staying accountable. And if, if there were, if you were in a group with folks today, no message each other and then check in with each other in a week and the things that you said you were going to do, did you do them? There’s so many fears are gonna come up over the next in between now and tomorrow. And it’s just like all of these are just thoughts and ideas and if right now they are exciting, so many and they are exciting and they’re pulling us in new directions and, and something that we really love and want to pursue.

Michael Tranmer (01:01:00):
All these, our ego is going to jump up and try and pull us back and keep our safe. Are our parents are going to go, Oh no, you’re not that. You should just keep doing this. But if we commit, just, just, just do it. Just try it and just be okay with failing but have it build in the accountability any way that you need to.

Ami Sanyal (01:01:19):
Yeah, I love that. I mean we’ve done sprints and use the fail fast model a lot. Even as creative pulse. And what I love about it is if you are focused on executing a minimum viable version of whatever you’re doing as quickly as you can, then you don’t have enough time to get attached to it. Which, you know, the ego element is, is pretty powerful. Right. And so I’ve done the opposite where I’ve spent months close to a year on a project, launched it and it sucked. It didn’t sell a single thing or just a handful and that’s crushing. You know what I mean? So that speed aspect is, is, is such a gift for, for people trying new things. Steven’s got a, got somebody who’s going to say here.

Audience (01:02:05):
Yeah. On that note of accountability there’s a really great question talking about how to define your Workday. And especially for someone who’s switching industries or going into something new coaching. How do you manage to cut an end to your day? Or do you have any tips and tricks on them? Again, having a Workday versus, you know, you say you start your day one thing, when do you, how do you stop your day?

Speaker 8 (01:02:34):
Okay.

Michael Tranmer (01:02:34):
Who knows? Who knows, who knows, who knows. I mean so many. I mean

Michael Tranmer (01:02:41):
People are, I mean I, I did something super creative and,

Michael Tranmer (01:02:46):
And one hour last night that I’ve been procrastinating on for two weeks. So I don’t know if I’m the best person to answer that question, but I mean above, above anything.

Michael Tranmer (01:02:58):
I think this is a really interesting time to really tune in with yourselves and see where you are most productive and most

Michael Tranmer (01:03:05):
Efficient. I just, I just, the only thing I can really lean into is, is, is

Michael Tranmer (01:03:13):
Get outside and go for a walk around the block and, and, and just that visual of like I go for runs in the morning and here in Fairview and Kitsilano and there’s not many other people outside. So I assume people are going from the bed to the, to the desk and I, there is no element of creativity. There’s no element of knowing what day it is. There’s no element of connecting with nature. There’s no element of going outside and getting great ideas.

Michael Tranmer (01:03:38):
So I would

Michael Tranmer (01:03:40):
Encourage people to explore doing that. And then when you find yourself throughout the day, losing productivity, stop, go outside, get a take, whatever your drink is, go for it. Even if it’s a five minute walk around the block, I’ll do that two or three times a day.

Michael Tranmer (01:03:55):
And then, yeah, at the end of the day it’s just, just, just

Michael Tranmer (01:03:59):
Do, I’ll do whatever a hard stop is for you. Close your laptop, throw it in the so you can’t see it. Whatever it is.

Ami Sanyal (01:04:06):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s, those are all good tips. I was thinking of two resources while you’re speaking there. Those one which is called the power of habit a book by Charles Duhigg fantastic small book. And it’s a great one if you’re trying to establish new habits, which I think is a gift of available to most of us right now because share, we’ve been thrown into a routine we don’t like, but chances are those elements of your routine you didn’t like before as well. So you get to choose what this one looks like. And so that book’s really helpful for understanding how habits get constructed in your brain. And one of the, my favorite parts of that book as a marketer I guess is that crisises and trauma are times when people are more likely to change their habits. So if somebody who goes through a divorce is more likely to change their toothpaste or their cereal for some reason, right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
So so that’s pretty powerful cause we’re all in that together right now. And so you get to choose which ones you want effected. Do you want to change your cereal or do you want to change something more important to you? You can do it by mistake or you could do it on purpose. The second resource maybe we can find a link for you is a video by a submarine captain. I don’t know if anybody saw this, was going around on Facebook and he was talking about being at sea under the water, not seeing the sky for 250 days in a row. And how important routine is on a, on a tube full of men. Right. and so you know, he, he begins with setting that routine very intentionally dressing up properly, like personal hygiene being really important. There’s, there’s a few elements there that I found really interesting that that was, and he created the video because of the isolation that people are faced with right now. So I think the answer about where the work day begins and ends is actually more about a bigger question of, you know, what do you want your day to look like life to look like right now. And I think it’s, it can’t be broken apart. It’s not,

Michael Tranmer (01:06:18):
I think know, I think it’s really also uncomfortable for people now. Like a lot of people do have more time because there maybe the, perhaps not doing a commute so they’re trying to fill it with more Netflix or more drinking or more work, but to explore kind of being okay with doing nothing for an hour a day. Maybe the meditation maybe. I’ve been doing a lot of going into parks and sitting under trees. That’s where you, I get ideas just exploring the, really the, the being of, and not the doing where human beings, not human doings, but that in its own is really uncomfortable for people. But the message is that’s where we can really have quantum leaps in our businesses and our lives. Cause we, we can get clear on ourselves and we can think about what path we want to do and we can create those good thoughts and we can motivate and inspire ourselves as opposed to just doing and doing and, and

Michael Tranmer (01:07:14):
Going down the rat wheel. Yeah. I mean that’s an interesting point. People are saying they have a lot more time on the opposite end with two young kids. I know there’s a few people with kids in the room here. But it’s just as uncomfortable. You guys, it’s a different thing, right? Well we’ll do some trees in our lives but a lot of all-nighters. So, but it’s the same thing. A different, different, same problem. Different boat. Right. So I think that’s all really interesting. I feel like we could go on for ages here, but we’ve already run away over time. So let’s, let’s, let’s wrap things up. You know, ordinarily we would hang out and have pizza and drink beer at this stage of the evening. Unfortunately, we’re not doing that today, but there are some opportunities for hanging out and, and I want to talk to you a little bit about that.

Ami Sanyal (01:08:00):
I want to touch on this 0.1 more time. How will you take action? So we’ve, we’ve actually had a conversation about that today, but take a moment and write that down. Don’t let that just be a thing you did on an online event, right? What are you going to do tomorrow? It can be big, it can be small, but it should be an action. And, and if you can go a little bit further and maybe private message, somebody in your group and saying, listen, can you keep me accountable? Right? How, how can you go the next level or posted online? Do it, do a, put it on social media, tag. All of us. We’ll we’ll hold it. I do that all the time. I, like I say on going live on Instagram or Facebook tomorrow at seven and I don’t even have anything prepared, but, and even if one person sees that, like I’m going to show up, I’m going to do it.

Ami Sanyal (01:08:50):
Awesome. So I started creative pulse because I had this idea that creatives are better together in a community that pushes them to do better work and have more fun and also just support one another. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve found that to be true through the work that the creative pulse volunteers have done together. And so I want to say thank you. Usually it would be a big applause right now. Maybe we can do that. I want to see some hands clapping. Big pause to our wonderful team of volunteers who are going above and beyond right now. To give a moment of somebody’s time right now, right now is such a big deal. So I really appreciate that. Can we go to the next slide please? I want to highlight one. Volunteering in particular very hard working volunteers. Serena ho is a visual and UX and UI designer.

Ami Sanyal (01:09:35):
She’s currently out East. She’s not in Vancouver, but she’s been one of our first volunteers to say, listen, I’m moving away but I want to keep on going. And so she actually all of the registration copy and all the writing that you see creative pulse produce starts with her pen. So really a huge thank you to Serena. Let’s go to the next slide please. Nathan. you can see Serena’s work at world RBC Canada where she works. You can follow that link down there if you’re interested in seeing some more of her projects or you can email her directly. She’s left her email there. She doesn’t mind hearing from you. So another really great place. Actually, yeah, another really great place to connect with Serena and the other members of our team and with one another is through the new Facebook group we’ve launched or at the top of this pandemic.

Ami Sanyal (01:10:23):
We wanted to find a way to support you and help each other and also find ways to hold each other more accountable. And this Facebook group is the place that we do that. So we launched this last month. Members get exclusive access to different events and different conversations that aren’t happening through our email list. You can join right now, facebook.com/groups/cpy VR. And I can email this link to you guys so that you, you can join that. I would love for that accountability conversation to happen within that, that Facebook group, that’d be a place we can share that’s a little bit more private with people who understand what you’re going through. The gift that Michael has provided to you guys. Let’s get you tell him a little bit about this. Yeah, for sure. I have a free online course. And so this would be really interesting if anyone is interested in seeing

Michael Tranmer (01:11:14):
How relatively simple it is to put together a course. The best way to do that is to watch someone else’s course and you’ll see all it. All it is is a series of videos and a couple of worksheets, and I think, I’m thinking back now, it was, it was a year ago that I created this course because some people in the community that I am in were not, I’d been good at growing my brand on Instagram and they haven’t. So they’re always asking me questions and I’m like, alright, commit to commit to coming online with me every, every once a week. For six weeks I put together a curriculum and so we filmed it live and then after that I kind of cleaned it up and, and reshot these videos. So this, it’s, it’s not that complicated, but when you see how it’s put together, it’s really helpful.

Michael Tranmer (01:12:02):
So what it is, it’s a, it’s a marketing course that really helps you appreciate how you can grow your brand and actually connect with your target audience on Instagram and what works and what doesn’t work. Instagram is kind of a zoo these days, but so there’s, there’s a lot of things that I see people doing that don’t work. And ultimately it helps you take that and connect with, with prospects on, on Instagram. And the biggest thing that you’re going to be challenged to do on there is, is to do video because it’s so, it’s so important and imperative to, to build that connection through video. And it’s a real fear that this course will, will help people overcome. That’s awesome. And it addresses one of the main challenges, which is audience, right? How do you actually get this thing out to somebody? So that’s a great gift.

Michael Tranmer (01:12:47):
And how do people get it? Yeah, just message me on one of the I’m easy to find on Instagram or Facebook or my email address is up there and all I’m going to do is give you the website and give you the password. And, but also I just, I like to like, see who’s on the other end of this screen, so it’ll be cool to interact that way.

Ami Sanyal (01:13:09):
That’s brilliant. Well, thank you so much for giving of your time. Thank you everybody for staying with us. It’s amazing that we can do this. Even right now. And I’m honored to be able to facilitate this and, and be your voice right now and, and, and have somebody like Michael share with us. So thank you so much. There’s more to come. We’re going to try to keep on supporting the creatives in our community. If there’s something I can do for you directly you can get in touch and through, through social media or email. And with that, I will say good night. Thank you so much.

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