Selling Myself in Bits & Pieces

I’d like to say I haven’t blogged here since November because I’ve been crushing it in the 41^st year.

In some ways, I have. Since January, I’ve added three titles to my resume:

• Project Manager at the McNair Center for Entrepreneurship,
• Adjunct Instructor in Entrepreneurship at the Darla Moore School of Business, and
• Co-Host of the radio program Start Something, Columbia.

We’re waiting to hear this month about funding for a new women’s business center in Columbia for which I would be Co-Director.

I’m still Managing Partner of Clemson Road Consulting (formerly known as President of Clemson Road Creative) and I’ve been the Lead Organizer for 1 Million Cups Columbia for about six months.

What do all these titles do for my 41^st year goals?

Well, I’ve been adding up live events with conferences, summits, and meetings in support of my new titles. I’ve also been writing dozens of blogs for various outlets. Today I’m sitting down to write out two-dozen thank-you notes to all of those people who wrote us letters of support for our women’s business center grant application.

Where I’m killing it: 40 books by female authors.

In 2017 I read 73 books and so far this year I’ve read 25 books; the majority of these books have been women authors. In fact, I might want to try reading some men in 2018. I definitely need to add more non-fiction to the list but that’s the case every year.

Visiting new places and visiting my Papa are goals that have both suffered from my lack of funds. I’ve been so low on cash that a lot of things (pedicures, wine) have fallen off my regular expenses. I know Papa doesn’t begrudge me the visits but I have always equated driving with freedom and to not be able to travel has been a soul-crushing reality.

The purpose of the 41^st year was always to find some measurable things I could do, some ways to spend my time that would equate to impact. I have to say that the work I’m doing these days seems more impactful than anything I was doing before.

I feel like I’m turning a corner. Cresting a wave. Climbing the S curve.

Since last March, I’ve given more workshops, submitted more writing, and applied for more opportunities than I have in the past. I’ve been working my sales plan with three principles: 1) people need to know me, 2) people need to know what I do, and 3) people need to trust I can do it. When we get all three, we earn business.

The business is coming. The future is bright. The 41^st year feels like just the beginning.

Redefining what it means to Lean In

My iPhone makes me crazy. For days now it’s been warning me I’m close to full storage. That means going through and sending to the cloud anything I want to keep and deleting anything I don’t want to keep.

I use the Voice Notes app for my research interviews and so it’s an easy clean-out. I upload all the recordings to the Dropbox folder for research and delete the file from the phone. This usually buys me about 1GB of space.

Today I found a recording I made back in August that talks about Leaning In having consequences. We’re not taking up less space, it says, we’re pushing something else out of the way.

When we Lean In, something has to bend.

In 2014 and 2015, while I traveled about 30% of the time, Charlie had to bend. He also had to accept occupancy by alternate caregivers for Hollie.

Teachable Moments on the Side of a Mountain

There’s a great recurring joke on Modern Family wherein Cam and Mitchell are attempting to respond to Lily’s behavior and they declare the instance a “teachable moment.”

It reminds the rest of us that we can react irrationally to our children or we can help them understand the impact of their behavior.

Over the years, Charlie and I have had multiple teachable moments with Hollie and I’m proud to say we’ve both gained emotional maturity. We very rarely respond irrationally to Hollie’s behavior.

But even the most self-controlled adults can lose their cool on the side of a mountain.

Here are a few universal truths that must be stated before this story can be fully appreciated:

First, skiing is hard. Maneuvering long sticks on one’s feet, the discomfort of the boots tightly locked down, the arbitrary waving of the poles, hurtling down a hill with nothing but a fall or a tree to stop inertia, all of these combine to make the whole thing truly terrifying.

Now Hiring

The correct response when someone says, “I need to lose 30 pounds,” is:

“What? You don’t have 30 pounds to lose!” (my BFFs Tami and Jodie).

Not, “How are you gonna do that?” or, “By when?” or, “Oh, that’s totally doable,” (the trainer).

That’s right, I hired a personal trainer.

This is a big move for me because I’ve been an athlete my whole life. Since leaving competitive sports in 1997, I have often trained with teams, groups, or friends. I swam with the Team Greenville Masters when we lived in the Upstate. I did spin class at the Y, ran with a Couch-to-5K group, finished a 10K and a half marathon.

Waiting

Lately I’ve noticed our lunch-time servers in various corporate restaurants are older. They look to be about 50 or higher. Yesterday’s Red Robin waitress was certainly a grandmother.

I’m sure there are employment trends tracked on sites like Salary.com and LinkedIn to suggest that mid-career workers are more likely to have been laid off in the financial crisis in 2008. Many were probably unable to take early retirement and therefore found alternative employment.

Mid-career workers are the ones whose tenure and experience make them expensive. But the ranks narrow at the top of the company. Ambition is what would keep them in the organization, the desire to achieve leadership heights. And the willingness to put in whatever hours, travel, and sacrifice necessary to achieve those heights.

No Longer Virgin

Two weeks ago I ran a 13.1 mile race delightfully called a Diva Half Marathon. It was not my first time. My first half was in Greenville, SC in 2011.

After having Hollie in 2008, I went back to running in an attempt to lose the baby weight. When the first 30 pounds came off but nothing else did, I thought adding mileage was the way to shed more weight.

What’s amazing to me is not that I was able to log the training hours or that I completed the race, but that the motivation for taking on such a thing was so ridiculously naïve.

Running to lose weight will not take you 13.1 miles.

There must be some other motivation. Some other voice in your head daring you to see if you can actually achieve such a thing. The miles are just too long and the effort just too hard to rely on the calorie burn as motivation.

What's Up, Doc?

I watched my Facebook feed like election results last Thursday night. The Likes and Comments kept rolling in. My status read:

Life on Clemson Road is about life in transition and this is one of the biggest for me. It’s the achievement of a life-long goal. It’s the completion of a seven year process. It’s the terminal degree for anyone who studies business. There isn’t anything higher. 

During my defense call which happened last Thursday night, one of my committee members said, “What will you do now?”

That’s easy: build my business. Be the very best at everything I do. Continue to work hard. 
 
Show my daughter what it looks like to Lean In.

My father-in-law might call it “Fudd” but it’s the furthest thing from a pudgy 1940’s cartoon character. I made a promise to Charlie and I fulfilled it. I promised myself and I met it. I am truly accomplished.

And a little surprised by the sound of it said aloud. Like when I got married and changed my name.

Kasie Whitener, PhD.

Forever now I’ll have that Fudd. That demarcation that says, “She’s not afraid of hard work.”

In Six Tires, No Plan, his biography and the story of Discount Tire Company, Bruce Halle, author of The Dream as we are living it, says,

“Once you get your education and get your degree, that’s yours. No one can take that from you. Some things in life in the future might go bad and you could lose a lot, or most, or all of your worldy possessions, but no one is ever going to take that college degree from you, that education. It’s there. It’s yours forever,” (p.52).

Charlie read me that passage on Friday night, after we’d spent the day sort of thinking about what does the PhD completion really mean for us? For our family?

Really, it means we’re not afraid of hard work. We’re not afraid of working together to achieve anything we set out to achieve. It’s a significant milestone not just for me, but for Charlie who has been supporting this effort for the better part of our 12 year marriage.

It’s more than a piece of paper or letters behind my name. It’s the outward and visible sign of a certain character, knowledge, and ability. And even though it’s only on my business card, like our wedding bands, it’s a commitment to one another, a tie that binds us.

When I wrote about milestones I meant this was one. I graduated high school 18 years ago and have spent 13 of those 18 years in higher education. Four in undergrad at Clemson University. Two and a half at Winthrop University for a master’s degree. Seven at Capella University for this PhD. 

And now I get to work for roughly 30 more years at this, the terminal degree rate. I haven’t won the lottery. In fact, I’ll be picking up student loan payments in about 6 months. I don’t get to stop working. 

I have to work even harder. I have higher expectations than ever.

These days, though, I’m not going to feel crushed under the weight of them. I’m going to remind myself what fulfillment feels like. I’m going to ask myself what Daniel Pink calls interrogative preparation, “Is this the right thing for me to be doing?” I’m going to decide to live up to my own expectations and surpass others’ expectations of me.

Okay. Enough about all that. Time to get back to work.

Thanks to those of you who supported me all this time. You know who you are but you could leave a comment, if you’d like the internet to know it, too!

In Which She Used a Snake, a Blogger, an iPhone, and Finally Rain

Yesterday after reading this great piece by Ollin Morales on the Courage to Create blog I did what a dutiful blog reader does: I shared it. (hint hint)

 

I shared it because it talks about technology and how our addiction to it has dehumanized us in many ways. He said technology may make things easier and more accessible, it may fill our lives with information and data but it does not provide knowledge.

 

Daisy @ Reedy River photo by KDW

I agreed with Ollin so much that I shared his post (another hint) and really tried to take his message to heart. Deep, spiritual, fulfilling knowledge like the origin of the soul and the irreplaceability of true friendship cannot be found through technology.

I agreed.

Then I pulled up the Map My Run app on my iPhone, stuck my earbuds in, chose a podcast from the HBR library and set out for a run.

Under Armored and plugged in, I let my high tech running shoes strike pavement and I ran.

The first podcast was about motivation and the guests had written an article about two distinct types of motivation. They called the types promotional and preventional.

Pep Talk

I’m built for something different.

When you know that about yourself, said Coach Curtis Frye, You are able to compete because you know you have something to offer. 

It’s not a direct quote, it’s translated from my notes; the notes that deliver this kick-ass message:

I am not afraid of hard work.

So why am I not WORKING?