Lyle Foxman

Not in a marketing sense, but strategically, to yourself, your partners, your coaches, your investors:

What is it for? When someone hires your product or service, what are they hiring it to do?

To help anyone to become a better self-directed learner and prepare them for life in today's rapid changing world.

Who (or what) are you trying to change by doing this work? From what to what?

Help people become individual learners who are looking to learn a new skill, develop a new talent, change careers and develop 21st-century skills. Also, the corporate client who is looking to develop a corporate learning plan that teaches staff how to be life-long learners and develop personal learning plans that helps individual employees address their specific job needs. From industrial economy learner to 21st-century learner.

How will you know if it's working?

Engaged students who are taking active responsibility in their learning by creating projects, learning from others and helping others reach their goals. They will pay  for it and get a quality learning experience.

What does it remind me of? Are there parallels, similar projects, things like this that have come before?

Reminds me of Seth Godin's Altmba meets 20time.

What's the difficult part?

Fighting myself and doing the work to market the workshops, creating a community and keeping that community together and engaged.

How much of your time and focus are you spending on the difficult part?

5% of my time is spent on this. How can I add 1% a day until i'm 100%?

What part isn't under your control has to happen for this to work? (Do you need to be lucky?)

It's all under my control, the only part not under my control is the outcome.

How much (time and money) is it going to take to find out if you've got a shot at this working out?

No money, all time. Time to create curriculum, marketing, community management and coaching.

From which people will you need help? Do they have a track record of helping people like you?

Community builders, influencers, friends

Is it worth it?

Momentum is waking up every day with a positive start at a slow steady pace...working out, reading, cooking, walking or whatever you need to get your body and mind active.

Momentum is taking the next step immediately after, no stopping, sitting, looking at your watch and waiting for down time.

Momentum is making the next second count, the next minute, the next hour and think of today only. 

Momentum is moving gracefully forward into the next task like a daily sprinter who moves fast at a strong steady pace. 

Momentum is a positive spirit with no negative outbreaks or bursts of self-deprivation.

Don’t be afraid to get muddy, break shit, wreck it, take it apart and put it back together. 

Go and snap it, scratch it, scrape it and break it. This becomes some of our best work. 

It’s how we learn.

Sometimes we are uninspired, sitting and waiting for that magic moment to happen. There is no magic moment, magic is an illusion.

In the end work has to happen, I'm not talking about the dull work we do daily, but the creative work, the work we love to hate when we are uninspired.

Inspiration doesn’t come when you are idle. It comes when you have steeped yourself in work. 

I took a break from the computer last night and watched this inspiring film. This is an inspiration for anyone who is not following the dreams and needs to choose yourself. Here is what I learned: 

Don’t get comfortable - At the beginning of the movie, Chef spends 10 years cooking for someone else, eventually becoming too comfortable to care. But deep down inside he his angry and resentful because he is not living his dream. 

Don’t just play the old hits, be true to your creative self. Experiment, play and create your vision, not someone else’s. - Chef was asked by his boss to cook the same old bland classics for a food blogger who comes to review the restaurant. He eventually gets a bad review because he wasn’t true to his own creative heart. When he cooks for himself and his friends you see the best of his work come out.

Have a supportive spouse or significant other who believes in you even when you don’t believe in yourself - Even when Chef is down and doesn’t believe in himself, his ex-wife comes to the rescue and helps push him forward in following his dreams. 

Go back to basics and find your passion again -  After being fired and not knowing what to do next, Chef goes to Miami to visit where he started and clears his head. 

Find a wingman who’s got your back -  After chef is fired his old lineworker flies down to be by his side and goes along on the journey to be the best number 2 around. 

Your trending bro. Don’t plan your social media. Be organic and show your authentic self and your work, people will respond.

Hands-on projects with others can build stronger lifelong relationships - Chef is given the gift of an old food truck, which becomes the blank canvas of his dreams. With his son helping, he pulls it apart, cleans it, buys the best equipment and builds the truck back-up as he builds himself back-up and his relationship with his son.  

You don’t need to be original, just great - Throughout the film we see chef cook other people's crap and his own creations. He really doesn’t find his niche until he visits Little Cuba in Miami and gets inspired by some classic Cuban cuisine. This becomes the main focus of his food truck and while it is not his original creations, he believes in quality and cooks the hell out of it. 

Don’t worry about reviews and haters, learn from them and do you - In the beginning we see how worried Chef is about a food bloggers ego killing critique. He eventually goes on the defense puts the critic in his place and proves him wrong.

Have an intense amount of pride in your profession no matter how small your audience is; play as if the whole world is watching - Chef gave away some free food to some workers for helping him. While showing his son the ropes of how to cook a mean Cuban sandwich. His son burns a sandwich and wants to serve it anyway because they didn’t pay. This doesn’t sit right with Chef because everyone individual deserves quality food served from his kitchen. Watch clip here

Include family in your dreams and the passion of the work you love. Throughout the movie, his son wants to know more and to be part of his work life. Chef tries to separate family and work thinking his son would be a distraction. Eventually, he opens up and lets his son in. This becomes my favorite part of the movie because his son becomes a bigger part of his life and Chef realizes that he can pass on his passion, work ethic & pride to his son. He also is surprised that he also has a lot to learn from his son as well. 

If you havent watched this, do it tonight and leave a comment below on something you learned.

Education is something that is done to you. Learning is something you do for yourself. 

Learning for the 21st century has to be about creating projects that matter, being a practitioner and learning by doing and maybe building something great. 

I am always inspired by Gary Vaynerchuk's videos and posts. Recently, something that stood out to me in his videos was that of him finding success because he is a practitioner, not a student. 

By being a practitioner, we are sparking creativity and innovation and learning along the way.

Are you taking action or taking notes? Leave a comment below. 

http://netlabnyc.com

When I was in Elementary and High School, I would get yelled at, not because I was a bad kid, just a distracted one who just didn’t care about school.

In fact I hated learning, it was boring and I was lost.

Funny that I eventually became a teacher and now I am moving forward spreading the word of the future of education, technology and creativity.

Sometimes I would draw caricatures of classmates but mostly draw caricatures of teachers. I would get a laugh from classmates and a call home from my teacher.

I was a constant doodler, most other kids notebooks were filled with notes, mine were filled with drawings.

I find myself still doodling today, mostly at meetings, but this time I am doodling my notes.

I have been doing this for years not knowing that this is actually a real thing called sketch notes.

If these are unfamiliar with sketch notes, check out some of the examples below:

Description and Links | Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Sketchnoting in the Classroom

Images and Ideas | Sketchnote Army

Article | Sketchnoting 101

Video | Mind Mapping

Article | Using Mind Maps to Unleash Your Brain’s Creativity and Potential

Images | Mind Maps Created by Art Students

Maybe you have been doing sketch notes and have not even known it or maybe you think that it was just time wasted. Whatever you call it….doodling, sketching, drawing, I believe that there is tremendous value in thoughtful sketch note taking as a real learning tool.

I want you to take the time this week and do some thoughtful sketch note taking and invite you to come back and share your experience.

I have had a tendency to over analyze and never ship because of it. I started thinking of things as mini projects that work on the 70/20/10 rule .

Part of my new learning rule is planning/researching quickly and taking immediate action. I find that simple outlines of actionable formulas to be super effective. 

I posted the other day another question that I asked James Altucher about creating communities online.

I got a great answer but needed more detail. Check out James answer to my next question below. Then do it and let me know what happens. 

Do you use simple one-page formula’s for success? Post an answer below.

This week on #aja Ask James Altucher, I asked James about creating community. 

This question has been on my mind all week. In one of the many Facebook groups that I belong to, someone asked about building marketing funnels and email lists. 

Marketing funnels and email list building are the big marketing topics over the past few years when the first thing everyone should be focusing on is building community. 

No community =  no email list and a massive amount of time spent on building a funnel, that brings no value. 

Check out James answer to my question. 

Leave a comment. How are you building a community? What has been working for you?

Fear has to meanings (Forget Everything and Run) or (Face Everything and Rise)

It is easy to forget and run, but the problem is you will never conquer that fear. Fear that gives you a knot in your stomach, makes you not think straight and gives you anxiety that makes it hard to breath.

I don't know about you, but I would rather Face Everything and Rise...get better, lose the anxiety and move forward.

Taking action is the only step to overcoming fear. Fear paralyzes and keeps us from our goals and reaching our fullest potential. 

We all try to escape it in some way, for me it is overplanning and over analyzing. Thinking that the plan has to be perfect, but in reality it is just an excuse from not doing something. By not doing it I can't fail...my biggest fear.

So, how can I overcome this, only one thing....TAKE ACTION. Spend 10% of my time planning and the rest working on action-based projects that force me to create a habit, learn from failure, accept failure and enabling me to let go.

By taking action, you have the ability to move forward. You might be missing something great. 

We all want to have BIG goals...the biggest business, the biggest and best clients, the biggest bank account, the biggest house. 

We get wrapped up so much in the big that we forget the benefits of small. 

Small is easier to manage, better quality, less stress, more focus and more time. 

Big goals will kill you. Big goals become all about ego, not passion or purpose. 

If you truly want to do something remarkable, focus on the small. 

I will never retire, at first it was because my current finances will never let me, but today I saw why I do not ever want to retire even if I did hit the big money. 

Daily I get to see bitter angry retirees who think the rules do not apply to them and that the world owes them something. 

I look at them and think... Why so angry? No work, get to relax, take classes, do art and music, play games. What’s the problem?

It made me think of a quote “If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life.”

Did they love what they did and now it is gone, taking away their passion and purpose? 

Did they work a job for 30 years to get a pension and now they are reflecting back on the chances they never took and realize that this whole retirement thing was a scam?

I can sit here guessing all day. But in the end I know I do not want to be them. I realized that I don’t have to be them and neither do you. 

I reflect and look at the seniors that I know who are happy, they are the ones that are still working. Like my uncle who goes into the city 3 days a week and still helps run his family business or the multiple teachers that I have had that teach classes weekly in their 70′s and 80′s. 

They don’t do it because they have too, the do it because they love too. 

When you love what you do, you have passion and when there is meaning behind what you do, you have a purpose. 

Make sure to love what you do and that you never work another day in your life and you will never have to retire.