Cafe with Audrey McClelland - Cafe Conversation

Topic 1: Using your community to be accountable and stay present.  Be bold and tell everyone what you are doing- define it before others define you.


Key strategies from conversation:  CafeConversationwAudrey

  • Making lists as a way to celebrate moving forward.  Look at it as a making progress (rather than a task).  
  • The list  will help you to redirect to what is important.  Attendees embraced this structural process due to Audrey's intense process of research, staying on top of her daily blog posts (now up to 10), and focus to learn and evolve while caring for her growing family.
  • Dealing with guilt that is self-imposed, use your community of supportive women or like-minded folks and family to allow your self to "wear the hat" that you want to at the moment you need to. 
  • And allow OTHERS to help you.  Audrey added that in the bloggersphere there is this "blogging Karma" where we help each other.  Yes there are snarky bloggers and competition, but Audrey’s adds: “there is room for everyone at the top!”


Café Topic 2: How are you redefining work and how are you doing so to lean in y our own terms to pick and choose.  This is about process vs. routine, we are "creating" our lives.

Key strategies from conversation:

  • Remember to turn off (Audrey actually turned her IPhone off for the full 2.5 hour cafe, upon returning to it she found 4 text messages from her husband "But it was so worth it to take the time to focus")
  • Identify when is enough, enough.  Owning your space by being authentic and go ahead and stick with it and tell others who you are.  This goes to the boundaries as being authentic, rather than a "no" Audrey honors who she is by portraying what matters to her online and in person.  She doesn't blog her politics or religious perspectives, because it just isn't what she wants to share on line.  But rather she focuses on who she is and what she cares about.
  • Time Management- is finite so learn to manage tasks.
  • Enjoy structure as a rhythm not a routine
  • Be your boundaries (see above) 
  • Make a decision and commit to it. This is more than saying “yes”, this is honoring commitments to what you want to build.  Yes it takes confidence and it is a process. Go from thinking about it, to preparing about it (where you tell everyone see community), and then take action. It also means saying “no” to those wonderful tasks that will distract you.  Remember, Audrey had a lot of intention, because of the 6 month time-frame and her “I can do that” attitude. 
  • Pick a "date" to stick with or review your commitment- this goes back to Audrey's 6 month time-frame. Your commitment also doesn't have to be "all or nothing" part time is okay, but act with intention and honor your momentum.
  • Embrace uncertainty as growth rather than painful change.  Everything changes and evolves--it is our way of learning more about our soul at work and change is always happening, so look at it as a way to get more conscious about who you are and how you want to live.  We can choose to observe as well as take action.


Café Topic 3: Wildcard: What we need to feel fulfilled!

Key strategies from conversation:

  • Identify and do what you love, so your kid's impression of work is positive, but still need a paycheck- look at it as "in-come" even if you'd work for free because you love it, get the income.  Find the work you want to do. Identify your "happily ever-after" that is where you are and you don't have to build a huge business, or have the high pressure/ power job, okay to be in the zone with your craft and what feeds your soul!  And nurture it, don’t dismiss the direction you want to go.
  • Basics of Blogging and Twitter:
    • Start conversations
    • Get found
    • Be diligent (constant practice everyday- this is a creative process not an end product)
    • Make connections
    • Don't offend


Any thing else to add?  Please comment: