I just finished the first module of Mary Forleo’s B-School. For the next two months, I will be participating in Marie Forleo’s B-School. B-School is designed to give creative people the necessary tools and wisdom to thrive running an online business. I have been flirting with B-School for years, and decided to jump in to it this year full steam ahead. A new module is released every week for 8 weeks. I will write a reflection after each week.

5 Things I learned during the first week of Marie Forleo’s B-School

1. Focusing on B-School is my next step toward my creating big idea.

I have chosen to focus on b-school for the next two months. I will dedicate 5 hours a week to b-school. I will evaluate my progress toward my goal in daily morning reflection in my journal and weekly appointment with myself Fridays at 10:00 am. I know this is the right goal to focus on because: 1. I turned 46 on October. I started making an informal “by the time I am 50 list” at that time. B school will help me connect the dots, prioritize, clarify, and set me on a path toward implementation of the big idea that has been percolating in my mind for a long time. 2. I finished my dissertation in August 2003. It was entitled Living Wide-awakeness: High School Drama Teachers Encouraging Powerful Encounters With The Arts. (It was a qualitative look at the how high school drama teachers encourage wide-awakeness in their students.) I have been trying to live wide-awake and support education and community-based programs (at the local, state, and federal level) through my work ever since graduation. I hope successful implementation of B-School makes the bigger goal clear, tangible, graspable, possible, and even exceedable. 3. B-School is an investment on which there will be amazing returns.

 2. Organize. Organize. Organize.

I want to fit it all in. (I am not sure why, but I have stopped using a calendar to keep things straight. In recent years, I have devolved in to writing things down in several random notebooks, and I know this is not the way to get things done.) So, I have fired up the calendar on my phone and started to record all my commitments there (including B-School, workouts, new job, social, and house/home stuff). In thinking about my list of things that make my life fuller (and more complicated), it helped to identify what those things are and figure out a solution to work them in to, or out of, my schedule. This week is on my calendar, so I am ready to make it a habit by the end of B-school.

3. Action. Action. Action.

I love the notion of starting before you are ready. I have the courage that takes. I just get stuck in my monkey mind of doubt and fear. As I have been working through B-School thus far, I had a doctors appointment that brought in to focus how critical (and deeply connected) my physical well being is to my B-School goal. (I have been working on physical stuff, but had not connected the dots between physical well being and B-School.) So, my B-School execution plan includes not only scheduling 5 hours of B-School a week (and the weekly accountability sessions planned for Friday afternoons), but also on meeting the physical expectations set forth by my doctor. It all goes together. From the inside out.

4.  The “Why?” of my business.

I want to start this business because I have always applied the knowledge, skills, and abilities I have gained over the years to make the most of each day, support my community, and leave the world better than I found it. My personal motivation stems from knowing I have been happiest, focused, and fulfilled when I have been connecting with and learning from others. I feel passionately about “doing philosophy” (Thank you Maxine Green). My business will be a way to “do philosophy,” to act on my belief in building wide-awakeness in our selves, homes, communities, and world. As Maxine Greene relates, “Imagination makes empathy possible.” My research agenda has focused on wide-awakeness (connecting experience with consciousness, and by extension creativity, imagination, and even gratitude) for many years, now I want my business to bring my theoretical and academic work to the world.

My company should exist because there is a gap between connecting socially aware, civically minded, beautiful work and opportunities (particularly, wth respect to the arts). My company should exist because our stories matter. Knowing our stories awakens us to our world, and our capacity for compassion and love within it. Specifically, there needs to be a way for stories to be shared, for the capacity of the storytellers/artists/seekers/educators/researchers to be strengthened via connection to one another (using resources, information, and technology, for example), for the data about the positive impact of compassionate and loving actions of individuals and organizations to be collected, delivered, and utilized to multiply future impact.

5. The story of my business.

The story behind my business starts with the 5 year-old Katie who loved to read and sing and dance. I very quickly started to write and that made my heart feel pure joy. My high school drama program probably saved my life. Flash forward to being a Theatre and English major, an AmeriCorps member, a high school drama teacher, earning a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, building a career in applied research/program evaluation for large organizations like The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Academy for Educational Development, and the University of Cincinnati. I have advocated for the arts, social services, and education throughout my career. I believe in a common good. I seek peace and justice. I have long sought to connect the dots of my life experience, my professional career, and ethic of service. I believe a business, focused on writing, connecting people and organizations, and building capacity in people and organizations can bring my diverse experience into focus.

6. My Vision

My future vision of the world is pretty huge and positive. It is a vision that knows peace and justice as clearly as it knows death and taxes. It is a vision where we live in the knowledge that all our children are all our children. In wanting to remain positive in the midst of the chaos, hate, and violence that is commonplace in our world, to put something other than that out into the world, and to find ways we can connect with and extend that which unites us to include more people, I have been writing a gratitude newsletter since 2016. (I chose to talk about gratitude because I have had a gratitude practice for years, felt gratitude’s connection to living wide-awake, and wanted to develop a theory of grateful living that could make gratitude deeply accessible to everyone.) I have interviewed more than 30 people about their understanding of gratitude. I have talked with professors, diplomats, Colonels, a Cirque Du Soleil acrobat, yogis, community activists, researchers, thought leaders, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and small business owners with gratitude-focused business models. My conversations have taught me several things: 1. Gratitude multiplies. In talking with others about gratitude and posting our conversations, I live more gratefully and others share they live more gratefully as a result of participating in and reading my work. 2. People are more alike than different. 3. Cruelty, violence, and hate have no place when we are in relationship with one another, and connected through grateful living. Being a conduit for meaningful connection feels really good. At base, my conversations have allowed me to connect with others. Beyond that they allow others to connect with others, and a message of gratitude to connect with people beyond the people who we expect to live gratefully, like yogi’s and thought leaders. My business will establish meaningful connections. My business will create ties between sectors of society that can build each other up. My business will be a conduit for the work of myself and others to reach life’s work, dharma-level significance.