Marty McFly and Doc travelled across time to change
the course and direction of Marty’s family and Doc found love.
The choices they made shaped the course of their lives and the complexities that arose featured in subsequent films. Happily, everything worked out in the end for Marty, Doc and the heroes! The villains didn’t win, leaving us with a heartfelt trilogy about how time counts.
Over this last month, even though I don’t own a Delorean, time has played a huge part in my life too. Not only did the clocks go back but I had to deal with moving through different time zones as I worked to reach an even wider audience.
We have worked in Bristol, London and Cardiff with national brands and multiple UK locations, but now we really pleased to see our global reach growing steadily to include South Africa, Italy, Hungary, Dubai and the shores of the USA, both East and West Coast.
What was a dream is slowly becoming reality and, at the same time, life is becoming more uncomfortable. I’m trying to be more reflective (which is hard for me as I like to look forward) and think about the early days when Cre8ion started to emerge.
At the very beginning, I headed to IKEA and purchased 5 clocks and mounted them on the wall of our first office. Then I printed off tags for London, Paris, New York, Dubai and Sydney. The exact cities didn’t matter really, I just wanted an even split across the time zones to highlight my point, which was that Cre8ion’s goal was to make a global impact.
This was the mid-2000’s, and back then we had no idea what the internet and the social media scene were going to become. Video calls were still science fiction! Our heart’s desire when we started was to turn the media on its head and it remains the same today. We have always intended to make our impact global, and as the years have gone by, the business ventures that will make this happen have grown in number and size.
What I’m trying to say was that in our organisation’s infancy and in the DNA of what I had started to build was a desire to reach into multiple time zones and countries.
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Managing energy, making the most of time and being the best for family, relationships and making the right decisions are things I’ve had to learn throughout the process.
You’ll find energy for the right things. The wrong things steal your energy because you know you shouldn’t be doing them, but rather delegating or outsourcing them. Knowing what to do and what you’re best at provides you with the longevity you need.
If time is everything, energy provides momentum. How we manage time and energy enables us to push beyond the limitations set by culture, climate and comfort.
CLIMATE:
You don’t have to be BIG to go global!
I think that there is a misconception that you can only go BIG once you’ve conquered your own nation.
I recently stayed outside the ‘tourist zone’ in California, and spent some time with some people just like you and me, trying to build their businesses. As I talked to people on the ground I started to realise how much potential there was for me to help them.
The prevailing business conditions can force us into fear, making us triple guess our every move! Some people will question your motives or even suggest you can’t be a success, but guess what? If you are doing it for the right reasons, time will tell.
Overcoming the fear of failure or even the fear of success means you have to keep pioneering, even at the expense of other people’s opinions. Fear of what others think will keep you from your dreams. The more you give fear permission to rule your thoughts, the more your life will resemble a nightmare.
You don’t ignore the rain, you learn to dance in it, or fear the wind, you learn to use it. The prevailing conditions should change us, not for the worse but actually shape us to become better!
CULTURE:
Sometimes you have the right business but not the right audience.
Ask yourself the question, ‘Can you see it working in another country?’ If the answer is yes, then the only barrier to making that happen is discomfort. Are you prepared to embrace it?
Accelerated change means new people, new processes and new things to learn and the process is uncomfortable. What helps is having like-hearted people who are willing to pioneer with you and carry a cause, with faith aligned.
Part of the courage I am finding to make the right leaps is coming from people with whom I share more than just a desire to do business. And it is making all the difference.
COMFORT:
When people cannot see as far as you they will want to build what is comfortable.
It is hard to take everyone with you and you probably won’t.
Since I got boots on the ground in the US, the clients are knocking and the need formore talent in the team is emerging.
Some of my team will be thankful that they are not having to work all hours and others are excited about travel. For us, the future is on the other side of discomfort!
One thing that I realised was that I had been maximising my local time, but not my global time. It was time to find more hours in the day!
I recall a story about an entrepreneur who scaled their web-building agency by having one office in the UK and the other in Australia. They scaled because they could deliver sites more quickly than anyone else because they worked round the clock with different teams! This gives new meaning to watching the clock!
I’m not a seasoned global guru, but I am uncomfortable! I also feel inspired right now and I wanted to share that with you and hopefully inspire you to dream bigger dreams! I understand the power of going back to my origin story and it has shown me that we often forget our DNA. I feel reconnected with mine.
It’s time for you to go back to the future and delve into your origin story to find the way forward!!