Category Archives: Find the Great Good

Why are you building a nation?

It’s Nation-Building Tuesday!

Time to don your tricorne and get out your quill pen…

propaganda-v3-5-squareA few weeks ago, I finalized my chapter outline for the book I’m writing about nation-building. I sent it off to my publisher. VICTORY!

He responded with enthusiasm. Then he asked me to do a simple exercise — to take out the metaphor and see if it still felt strong. No problem, I thought. I’m confident…this book is going to be awesome.

I got out my pen, ready to make the changes. But after the first chapter, I realized…this is not easy. After the second chapter, I felt like I was slogging through a tunnel of muck. By the time I got to the third chapter, I started to despair when I realized, This is not the book I want to write.

So I emailed my publisher:

The big problem that nation-building solves is this — nobody cares. You work night and day over something, and it’s met with half-hearted congratulations. They say the opposite of love is indifference…that’s what most small business owners are faced with every single day. They pour their blood and sweat and LOVE into something, and it’s met with utter indifference.

Nation-building is a framework for creating something that the people will pour their hearts and sweat into, right alongside you. THAT’S what this book needs to be.

I had been thinking about it all wrong because I hadn’t articulated why nation-building matters to me. I don’t care about getting businesses better conversion through a community-based business model (though that happens). I care about making work that changes people and overcomes the threat of their indifference.

propaganda-v3-5-sm
Designed by Julianne Carson for A Small Nation

This week’s nation-building directive: Why do you really care about building your nation? Forget what other people think and what sounds good on paper. Why are you doing this? Why does this matter? If it helps to have a sounding board, you can send me your response on Facebook or Twitter, or just leave a comment below.

Updates and happenings:

  • The effervescent Bernardo Mendez at Your Great Life TV interviewed me! I love this guy’s positive spirit…watch us talk here if you’re looking for a boost of optimism in your day.
  • The upcoming Tour de Bliss is now eight weeks instead of four. (For those who don’t know, the Tour de Bliss is an online business retreat I’ve been running over the last year…now focused on nation-builders.) I had originally planned on embarking on April 24th, but I realized I needed to add more weeks to teach this material effectively. If there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s to cram too much information into too little time…and it was getting to that point. I’m now hoping to embark in May or June with a free 3-day excursion that leads into our eight weeks together.
  • I’ll be at the World Domination Summit July 5-7th in Portland. Are you going? Let me know…I’m really looking forward to meeting fellow nation-builders there!
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Nation-Building Tuesday: Forget the trees

It’s Nation-Building Tuesday…

…and this Tuesday is a tough one as we question ourselves in the face of the tragedies happening in our country and all over the world. Though we know in our hearts that it’s important to keep building what we believe in, tragedy gives us a different frame of reference for what’s important.

For me personally, I’ve been asking: Is building a nation around building nations important? Why am I choosing this path rather than another? Is this the right way to do it? (It’s certainly not the easiest.) Am I being true to me…is this my nation?

forget-the-trees

I may not be able to answer my doubts to my own satisfaction…ever. But I can’t make decisions on how to move forward based on my immediate circumstances. I have to remember why I’m in it. Ultimately, I build nations because I want people to care more. I want the things we make to see the light of day and be met with genuine enthusiasm rather than dogged indifference.

This week’s nation-building directive: What is your forest? What are the trees that are making you doubt your path? Write about it or think about it in the shower. If you like, you can even leave me a comment about your discoveries (or talk to me on facebook or twitter).

Updates and happenings:

  • I’m experimenting with making Nation-Building Tuesdays focused on the week’s directive and answering questions from you guys separately. That way I can give them both justice.
  • I’m dreaming up a new way to document the nation-building experience live. That was my original intention when we first started this whole adventure, but it was harder than we thought it would be. Still, I believe that following along as we build an actual nation is more interesting (and educational) than hearing about how to do it second-hand. Still processing how to actually do this in a sustainable way, but I’ll share more as it unfolds.
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L is for Legacy: Discover yours and make it happen

I’ve always had an independent streak. The second phrase I uttered on this earth was “I’ll do it myself” (right after “I want a cracker”). Maybe that’s why I’ve always interpreted the word “legacy” as it relates to my personal actions. What am I going to be remembered for?

Unsurprisingly, I’ve never been motivated to spend much time plotting my legacy. After all, I’ll be dead by the time people start to say, “Remember Sarah J. Bray? Remember how much she liked toast, and how she built all of these nations? Remember how she loved people, and how she would serenade her family members in the kitchen? Remember how she read a billion books, and just could not stop learning and having new ideas?” I don’t need to plan my legacy for people to remember the strange and wonderful parts that make me me.

Still, there’s something about the idea of leaving a legacy that I can’t get away from. It used to be an important part of people’s lives. Families would accumulate knowledge and wealth and land and titles and connections, and they would pass it down to their children. The children would continue to grow that legacy, building onto the legacy of their parents.

That’s a beautiful thing. I want that. It makes so much sense to build on the knowledge of the people who came before us, rather than trying to start over in an effort of independence and individualism.

So now when I think of the legacy I want to leave, I don’t think about how (and how many) people will remember me. I think about the parts of my life that can continue to be built on after I’m gone. The parts that I can pass down to people that I love dearly, as well as people I’ve never met.

Discover the legacy you want to leave

We all know that nobody lays on their deathbed wishing that they’d acquired more possessions or spent more time at the office. So what matters? What is truly meaningful?

Julianne, Jeff, and I have spent a lot of time talking about this “meaningful work” that we build nations around. Meaning is a very personal thing. It’s not something you can discover by consensus. You have to discover what means the most to you, and then build your life and your work around those things.

For me, it’s helpful to limit myself to three things. Those things are:

  • My relationships. My family is an amazing organism…I can’t believe I get to go through life with them. This is one of the reasons I agreed to build The Light Room with Treacy Mize. Because I believe that life is about relationships. I believe it starts with my relationship with myself, and then goes out from there. If we can fix relationships, then we can fix everything.

    But I’m not only concerned about family relationships. I’m concerned about my relationship with people I’ve never even met. I’m concerned about my relationship with people who believe very differently than I do, who have had a completely different background than I have. I want to use my natural empathy to be able to connect with people who will share a very different view of the world with me.

  • My faith. I only put this after my relationships, because I believe people are where the heart of God lives. I believe faith has the power to heal our lives, but it’s not about convincing people that their faith is “good” or “bad” for believing or not believing in what I’ve found to be true. As C.S. Lewis said, “What is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously…a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad.” An important part of my legacy is exploring my own faith, shedding light on the evidence I’ve found, and giving room and a context for other people to explore theirs.
  • My passions. My passions are things that have changed the quality of my life because of their presence in it. Reading is one. I’ve said that if heaven is not one giant library, I’m going to be severely disappointed. Art is another. I am amazed at how even the smallest effort at making something ordinary into art changes the direction of my day. And when that art is directed as a gift to someone else, that change is magnified. Enthusiasm. Nature. Learning. Writing. These are all things that get me excited about being alive.

What three things are important enough to you to leave a legacy that others can build on?

Create your legacy today, not sometime in the future

Legacy doesn’t happen by accident. You have to understand the things that are truly important so you can change your daily routine to match the kind of legacy you want to leave.

One of the exercises we do on the Tour de Bliss is to ask ourselves, “Would I want to be doing this every day for the rest of my life?” If the answer is “yes”, we do it with gusto. If the answer is “no”, we find a way to stop doing it.

Life is a series of patterns. Your legacy is a result of those patterns repeated over time. If you don’t want to be doing something for the rest of your life, don’t do it today.

Legacy is not something you can plan out, step by step. Trying to “get there” is a futile exercise. You can no more plan your legacy than you can know what the state of your bank account will be on October 18th, 2027.

But you can live your legacy today. You can choose to stop acting in ways you wouldn’t want to act tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And you can choose to replace them with things you can imagine yourself doing when you’ve reached the summit of your life experience. (Which, hopefully, will include lots of toast and kitchen dance-a-thons.)

Build your nation

Want to discover your national identity and learn how to communicate it through design, photography and video? We would love to have you as a student. Read more and register here.

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H is for High Commission: How to experience your nation’s dilemma

(Don’t watch this movie yet, unless you just want to — it’s about two hours long. Later on, we’re going to point you to a few short clips in Amazing Grace to demonstrate what we mean by experiencing a nation’s dilemma.) Sidenote: Next time you find yourself faltering in your belief in your ability to make lasting change, watch this movie. It’s amazing.

Every nation needs to go through their own High Commission process — it’s what allows you to experience the beauty and the dilemma of this new nation so that you can develop its identity and design solutions that serve its Great Good using your natural resources.

There’s a whole lot involved in this phase of nation-building (for us, it’s a process that takes at least 6 weeks). But the first part happens before we ever commit ourselves to a project. You MUST have experienced the nation’s dilemma for yourself. And then you must be able to help us experience it so we know exactly why this is a nation we’d be willing to shed blood for (not because we’re so entirely selfish, but because great work happens when everyone who is helping build your nation believes in it just as much as you do).

Step one: Discover the dilemma of this nation for yourself

Before you’re ready to commit yourself to building your nation (and before you can get other people on board to help you), you must clearly know why you’re doing it. Part of that is being able to experience the dilemma for yourself.

When you experience a problem, you’re going to get frustrated about it. That’s a good indication that you might be able to build a nation around it, but it’s not the only one. Lots of things make me throw my hands up and say, “Why, God?!?!”. But some things frustrate me because I think to myself, “If only somebody would [fill in the blank], then this wouldn’t keep happening”. When I can imagine the solution, or I know I can find it, I know it’s a dilemma I can confidently fight for.

For a dramatic example of someone discovering the dilemma of their future nation for the first time, watch “Amazing Grace”, starting at 25:08 and ending at 27:30.

Your nation doesn’t have to involve a life or death situation, but you must believe in it. It must compel you to clearly say, “I will not stand for the alternative.”

Step two: Help other people experience the dilemma for themselves

We are inundated with other people’s agendas every day of our lives. It is overwhelming. For a nation to thrive, the people of that nation must have a common goal. They must have experienced the dilemma for themselves and decided not to walk away, but to stay and do something about it.

As the founder of your nation, getting other people to experience its dilemma is your responsibility. When someone is getting ready to build a nation and they come to us, they must be able to communicate that nation’s dilemma in a way that makes it impossible for us to walk away from it. We have to be compelled to make that nation’s Great Good our own; so much so that we will stay and fight for it, rather than continue on the same path we were on before we encountered it.

Watch the way William Wilberforce interrupted the influencers of his day while they were at the height of their comfortable lives. (The clip starts at 52:20 and ends at 54:15.)

Step three: Persevere in the face of ambivalence, and you will be victorious

Middle-class people are wealthier now than at any other point in human history. And yet, our response to the nearly unlimited options that wealth brings is often detached indifference (not to mention that we don’t fully understand how wealthy we actually are, but that’s a dilemma in itself).

Your nation must persevere against indifference. It must serve and keep serving in a way that pulls people in from right where they are (rather than from where you want them to be). Eventually, you will overcome. Because perseverance is the surest road to victory.

[Spoiler alert! Don't watch this next clip if you don't want to know how it ends. If you do, watch the video starting from 1:44:30 and ending at 1:45:56.]

What do you think?

What dilemma have you experienced? What are the specific experiences that made you stop in your tracks and commit yourself to fighting with everything you’ve got? We’ll be actively responding to everyone who joins in for the next 24 hours, until Wednesday at 5pEST. (And we really love this part…so bring us your questions, your comments, and whatever else is bursting out of your founderly passion.)

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G is for Great Good

Happy Friday everyone!

I think this graphic Jules made says it all. Taking a break from obsessively responding to comments today, but we’ll be checking in randomly if you have any questions or celebrations (or declarations of your Great Good). Happy Friday, everyone!

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B is for belief: Stating it is harder than you think

We’re always asking people what they believe about what they do. It’s a sickness we have. The part where they squirm around in incoherence? That’s just a bonus.

Whether you’re writing a book, creating a film, or making a product that’s going to solve the world’s problems, knowing what you believe about it makes everything clearer. You know what to write about on your blog. You know how to talk about your work the next time someone asks you, “What do you do?” You can make decisions with a quickness, because you know exactly what’s going to take you in the right direction.

For this film, the original idea was to ask people what they believed, and then cut them off after 10 seconds. Then five. Then two. But we thought that might turn into a bad version of MTV’s “Boiling Points” (never heard of it? Lucky you.). We decided we’re not into getting punched in the face.

So instead, we turned the camera on ourselves. And this is what we found.

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As per usual, we’ll be actively responding to comments all day today. Ask questions, charge us with blasphemy (nicely), or send us virtual toast. But what I’d really like to know is, what does your nation believe and stand for?

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We’ve signed the declaration!

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Love Clarity is all you need

Writing a declaration for a nation requires extreme clarity. Not just vague ideas about “We want to help people. We want to make people’s lives better.” But clearly, what problem are you solving? And is that a problem that people are aware of? And how are you going to talk about that problem so that people can understand it, see their place in it, and be motivated to want to get involved?

We’re still in the process of writing and refining Treacy’s declaration. We hit yet another roadblock this week when we realized that we didn’t have a way to explain what we were doing without resorting to overused language.

So I might as well share the background with where our thought process has been going, so that this all makes sense. Here is the progression of how we’ve understood the problem, from the beginning of the month to now:

Treacy is…

  • 01/02/12: a family lifestyle photographer who wants to make a difference beyond her backyard
  • 01/04/12: a photographer who is gifted at bringing out the best in family relationships and capturing real moments on film
  • 01/09/12: a photographer who is concerned about self-image and how that affects relationships
  • 01/18/12: a photographer who wants to fix disconnected family relationships (“family” meaning anyone that we have loyal, intimate relationships with)
  • 01/20/12: a photographer who believes that disconnected family relationships are caused by people keeping an internal “record of wrong” for themselves and for the members of their family
  • 01/27/12: a photographer who believes that the only way to change the disconnectedness of these family relationships is by keeping a record of right; replacing old assumptions about who we are and who other people are with the truth

And so we arrived at the problem. A big, giant, change-the-world problem. A problem worth solving.

Our first idea around this was that people could submit to voluntary brainwashing. Because Julianne and I are a bit rebellious, we loved this idea and really pushed for it. I mean sure, brainwashing has a negative connotation…but if it’s voluntary? I would totally sign up.

But it wasn’t Treacy’s thing. She couldn’t grab a hold of it, because it seemed a little on the negative side. Totally un-Treacy-like.

So then we started thinking about keeping a Record of Right. (And hey…recordofright.com is available! But oh wait…it looks like record o’ fright. Which is an entirely different thing.) But it felt very clinical, and it was hard to get excited about, without the context of “keeping a record of wrong”. Even in that context, it just wasn’t hitting it.

So you can see the challenge. We’ve known what the Great Good essentially is for a few weeks now, but explaining it in a way that isn’t trite or benign has been the struggle. So on Tuesday, Jules, Cali, Treacy, and I were having another brainstorming session.

We put it out there on Twitter…

And then later…

Always count on Kenneth to provide the best responses:

A few of the other, more normal responses:

We almost gave up and decided to go the route of the 50s housewife:

Obviously, we weren’t there yet. But yesterday, it clicked. We had the epiphany we were looking for. (Which reminds me of a joke I need to make up…how many epiphanies does it take to build a nation? I just need a punchline.) And so at this very moment, Treacy’s diligently working on her declaration, and then we’ll all refine it and sign it. And share it with you. Hooray!

(Oh yes, for more about why we’ve structure nation-building the way we have, check this out.)

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Declaring what your nation stands for

For four intensive weeks, Julianne, Treacy, and I been pouring ourselves into figuring out what Treacy’s nation is going to stand for. And when I say intensive, I mean it. At one part, I’m pretty sure I heard Treacy say, “Can we do something fun now?” She was laughing, though. I think.

It’s taking much longer than I thought. Figuring out her natural resources was comparably easy. Making a decision on what Treacy wants to do with her career, her life — that’s been a process filled with more than a little angst. But it’s also brought the three of us together fiercely. That’s gratifying for me — it’s exactly what I’d hoped would happen as part of this process when we were developing the concept of nation-building. If nothing else, I know we’re willing to shed blood for this.

Every day, we’ve been asking questions and brainstorming and pitching new ideas. Every day, we think we’re going home with the winner, and then something comes up that makes us circle back to our original intentions and consider new possibilities. It makes it a challenge to document the process — I want to share what we’re doing, but I feel like if I do, it’s going to change tomorrow, and I’ll look like an idiot. I guess that’s part of documenting the truth, though — you have to be willing to look like an idiot.

We finally have it solid enough, though, to where we’re starting work on developing Treacy’s declaration — that bedrock of beliefs that will serve as a foundation for everything we’re building together. Our mission yesterday was to free-write about those beliefs and what we’re going to do about them. We’re putting all of that into a living document that we can then pull apart to find the gold and craft it into something we can all sign, committing ourselves and everything we’ve got to these beliefs and the building of this nation.

Which brings me to this whole process of building nations, and why we’re choosing the projects we work on so carefully. I’ve gotten more than a few baffled stares when I’ve shared about the vision-casting that we do with potential nations. “You mean, I have to pitch my vision to you? Aren’t I the one making the financial investment? Shouldn’t I be sending you an RFP so you can send me a proposal? That’s how it works.”

Well, that’s how it works if that’s the game you’re playing. But we want more; that’s why we created a new process. Building a nation takes whole-hearted commitment on behalf of every person involved. We can’t just take someone’s money and go build a nation for them. We have to believe in it. We have to desperately want it to exist.

Even once we’ve decided to build something, that means we can’t ever compromise along the way. Nobody gets bulldozed over; nobody gets left behind. If someone’s got reason to think that what we’re doing isn’t going to work toward our goals, then we’ve got to hash that out. It feels amazing to be so deeply and collectively committed to something, but it can be intense. And it takes as long as it takes.

If you’re building your own nation and you’re stuck in figuring out what your nation stands for, I’ve created a worksheet for you. Unfortunately, my laptop is in intensive care, and it’s being held hostage on my hard drive (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said that this week. Grrrr.). In the meantime, make sure you know your natural resources, and then ask yourself:

  • Who are the people of this nation?
  • What problems do these people have that this nation is addressing?
  • Are the people currently aware of these problems? (They need to be, or you’re going to have to do a lot of educating in addition to problem-solving.)
  • What does this nation believe about these problems?
  • How does this nation solve them?
  • Is this something me/my team is willing to shed blood for?
  • Is this something the people of my nation are willing to shed blood for?
  • Why is this nation necessary? How are its intentions not being served by organizations currently in existence?

(And by the way, when we talk about shedding blood, it doesn’t have to be so heavy as all that. The point is, do you really believe in this? With everything you’ve got? Do you believe in it enough to lay everything on the line?)

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Discovering the Great Good

After spending the first week getting to know Treacy and where she’s at with her business and her life, we spent the second week figuring out her natural resources and generating ideas of what we could accomplish with them. (Read about taking inventory of your natural resources and download the worksheet.)

For years, Treacy has made her living as a lifestyle family and baby photographer. She’s good at it. It was the most obvious direction for her work. But she’s willing to change the position photography takes in her new nation if it will allow her to reach more people and accomplish her Great Good. But first, we have to discover what that Great Good is.

We’ve explored turning Treacy’s natural ability with her clients into a systematic approach that she could teach business professionals in other fields. We’ve talked about offering her services as a mentor to other photographers. We’ve jotted down all kinds of variations of serving her fellow business owners and becoming a B2B (business to business) rather than a B2C (business to consumer) operation – simply because it’s an easier model to scale for a small business. These were all good, profitable ideas.

But there’s this one thing. Treacy doesn’t think about business all day long (and her business has grown despite that). Her heart is not invested in strategy and product development and marketing. She didn’t tell us that in so many words (I don’t think she ever really thought about it), but in the many hours we’ve spent talking with her these past two weeks, I don’t think she’s uttered more than two business or strategy-related sentences.

Julianne was the first person to realize this. After a brief period of denial (I am, after all, VERY business and strategy-minded), I admitted it too. When we mentioned it to Treacy, she immediately saw what we had seen. Her Great Good is going to have to go in a different direction.

The great thing is, the business-strategy side of my brain has already gotten to work on how we can accomplish the financial aspect of the work without compromising the other goals. And that’s important, because what sustainable good can a starving nation do?

We’re still fleshing out the direction (and I can’t wait to share it when it’s more solid), but until then, watch what has been inspiring us. (You might want to get out your hanky.)

If you were moved by that, you might want to watch Parts Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six as well.

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"You can choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know."
– William Wilberforce