DREAMS: From Dreams to Reality - Your Strategy for Success! I Part 2

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Foreign welcome to the Uphill Community Podcast, your source of inspiration to gain clarity, elevate your standards, and embrace your call to. Together we choose the uphill climb. Pursuing the hard best over the easy good.

And discovering the extraordinary life awaiting for you and me to step into to be lived in community.

I'm so glad that you're here with me today as we step into this is the second of five total episodes around your dreams and putting those dreams to test. There's nothing greater to me, I think, than having a dream and having a vision.

But as Dave Ramsey says, the difference between a dream and a goal is a plan. So if you want to reach your dreams, you gotta have goals. And if you want to meet your goals, guess what? You got to have some plans.

You got to make some plans. So, yeah, so last week I kicked off episode one of this five Parts and. And if you're wanting to know how to follow more, follow more.

Me more, Follow more. Look at that, just stumbling around.

If you want to follow me more and get into more of what I'm doing, you could follow me on Instagram, Tim Pecoraro, and you can also Find me on LinkedIn.

I had a great time with a group in the North Myrtle beach area at a conference center, and I was able to present to them around something that I'm really working on about learning to be distinguished and distinguishing yourself. So bringing that into the professional world is a big deal.

And so I have a whole talk and I'm also building out a whole model of how to take your teammates through that and team members and yourself through just that whole concept and idea which is completely and totally attainable. So again, if you want to follow me, you can follow me at Tim Pecoraro on Instagram, Tim Pecoraro on LinkedIn.

And if you do follow me on Instagram, go to the bio section, click on the bio link or the link in there and you can find all the stuff to come to or to connect with me in all the other things that I'm into doing and what I'm up to right now, you're going to see that I am focused on my newsletter. I'm focused on the community that I'm building, the uphill community.

And if you're interested in learning more about what that is, just go to the uphill.community which is also in that bio link.

And if you're listening right now, whether it's on Spotify, could be Spotify podcasts, you can be listening to Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, Audible, substack right now. YouTube, wherever you are, please follow the show. I promise you I will not just come on here and just make up stuff, create tension, all that.

I'm just gonna, I'm gonna come on here, I'm gonna give you things that hopefully can help you get some clarity, gain clarity in your life, raise your standards in your life and embrace your call to and for more. I wanna give you stuff that is shelf life and worthy to come into your world to put to use. No different than if you're going to.

If you're trying to grow vegetables in your backyard to eat. I'm going to give you the things that you need to know how to build and plant or plant.

You know, build the garden, plant the garden, grow the stuff, harvest the stuff, and then ultimately put that stuff on your plate to be able to eat. Okay? That's what I do. Shelf life stuff, stuff that will last. I won't do trendy. I don't do trendy. I don't chase after trendy.

Because long after all these programs die and all this stuff, guess what? When it comes to people, we come back to just being human and learning to become better at being human.

So last week's message or topic was around the whole idea in the. The episode was around the personal ownership and passion. So there were two questions that I wanted you to spend some time answering.

Those two questions were, is my dream really my dream? And do I clearly see my dream now? I am. What I'm using is this is. Tim didn't come up with all this.

This is comes from my lifelong mentor, John Maxwell, who I am taking these concepts and ideas of putting your dream to a test and I am mixing and merging, doing some different things with them because I love the framework. And so I'm now I'm just taking it and going a little bit further. So I'm giving all credit where credit is due.

John Maxwell, who wrote an incredible book. I encourage you to go read it, put your dreams to the test. But you will see that I am literally just saying, look, you need to be doing this.

This is stuff that I've applied. I'm actually working with folks to try to help them to discover their dreams, find their dreams.

But this is a very well written book that I'm using as well as some other materials that come together as well as the things that I've experienced to curate some things to help people advance.

So for you listening to this podcast, I'm taking my community through their dreams and how to find their dream, how to Find fuel for their dream, the people that are gonna be in their dream, all that good stuff. So last week, though, answering those two questions, is my dream really my dream and do I clearly see my dream? That's a big deal.

You know, you've gotta be able to see your dream. And so the main focus was to clarify your dream, you know, meaning your dreams.

You know, you're gonna pursue dreams based on other people's expectations most of the time, parents and society and friends, and without ever asking yourself, is this really my dream? So what I had you focus on was the personal ownership part of it. How clear is your dream? How do you clarify your dream?

You know, are you sitting down and creating a dream sentence, like in one sentence, without any bull, no fluff in it, no distractions, you know, what's. What's the core of your vision? Asking yourself, does this excite me Once you read it, am I willing to get up out of bed over this thing?

Okay, so I want you to go back and listen to the episode before this one. If you're saying, man, I'd like to know that stuff, because this episode, we're going to be building on it.

And so now what we're going to be looking at from moving from. Is my dream really my dream, and do I clearly see my dream into. Is my dream within reach and do I have a strategy to get to it?

ith a client. Client has over: 1100

Pretty much has been my main focus in what I've been doing, working with this client, because I've been able to use so many of my skills within this organization, and there are so many demands that. That they need for this type of work that they do.

And they are in the people business, and they have a very critical and important role that they play in the things that they do. And there are very high stakes, high value things. Very very. Their assets are valuable, the people assets are valuable. The work that they do.

It's unbelievable what these guys are having to handle and what they're.

The stress, the tension, the pressures that they're under, and I get to work with them as people and improve themselves as people and to be great leaders and be great teammates. So.

at I work for, who built this: 1100

So, like, for me, I am. I consult, I do a lot of this work. He brought me in, and I'm a part of his executive group now, and this is what I do to help him grow this business.

And, man, it is really taking off now. But here's how I want to get when it comes to your dream. So I'm living my dream. I'm doing my dreams, and I'm watching them become more and more.

And I can answer the questions I'm even going to put in front of you. But today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to help you take passion, help you with the strategy part.

Not just having passion, but put the dream within reach and then work on it. Okay, so it'd be like if I was telling you about an entrepreneur who launched a dream without having any plan.

This is kind of where I want to set the stage. This, this. This entrepreneur was just so full of passion, excited to change the world. But the reality hit hard because there was no plan.

There was no strategy. And that's what a lot of people are doing. They're stepping into the world. No plan, no strategy. Great idea.

Well, the idea of something isn't going to produce something. So it was a hard lesson that this entrepreneur learned, and this entrepreneur nearly lost everything.

But when this entrepreneur got serious about creating a path forward, their dream became a reality. So this is me just giving you just a hypothetical setup. Because the truth is, dreams need more than passion.

I'm a very passionate person, but dreams need clear or a clear plan. They need clear steps. They need clear things in front of them, clear pieces for a mission. You might have a big. A big vision, but if you don't have.

Have the. If you don't know how to like to. To build the bridge or how to.

Or bridge the gap actually between where you are and where you want to go, you're just going to be stuck in the dreamer phase forever. Just a dreamer. Dreamer. You're nothing but a dreamer. Okay, anyways, I digress. A little music coming out.

So here's the main thing that I want to get into the main part of this conversation. Passion versus strategy. All right? So I'm going to get practical. Passion ready is your fuel, but the strategy is your map.

So I want you to look at it that way. Passion, fuel, strategy, map. So you wouldn't jump into A car and all of a sudden just drop. Well, some people would. I have some friends. Let me go.

Most people will not jump into a car for a cross country road trip without knowing where they're going. Right?

Well, I think we would agree, but if you just start driving in any direction, hoping you'll get there somehow, you'll probably end up lost, frustrated, and you will definitely eventually just run out of gas. So your dream works in the same way. It needs direction. It's so important that you understand your dream needs direction. My dream needs direction.

You need a clear, actionable strategy that's going to take you from where you are right to where you want to be. Right. Your emerging future, your current condition and your emerging future are not the same. They don't match up. Okay? They never will align.

So hopefully you will, unless you just stay the same. So you want to get to your emerging future and you're in your current condition, you're going to have to have a way to get there.

So how do you do that? I'm. Well, I'm glad you asked because we're going to break that down. All right, so the reality of your dreams. Dreams. You ready?

They need to be realistic. They don't need to just be idealistic. They need to be realistic. Now that doesn't mean you should dream small. I'm a big dreamer, okay?

I dream big, all right? And I have my reasons for that. Maybe one day I'll do an episode on dreaming big. But it means you, it means what I'm talking about.

That it's not saying that you shouldn't dream big or, and you're just supposed to say tiny and small. And when I say to be realistic, what I'm basically saying is you need a foundation. That's it. It's a foundation to make your dream achievable.

And so here's, here's a way that I kind of go into that, that, you know, getting myself set up to check the reality of my dream. The first thing that I like to do is I like to ask a couple of questions. So here's, here are four good questions.

If I were to think about my dream or if I think about trying to get to this dream, what's missing to make this dream real? So whatever I'm dreaming about, I'd say, what's missing to make it real?

If it's to build a business, I mean, you might say, well, to make this real, what's missing? Well, my map. Part of my map is I need money. Part of my map Is I need the technology part of my map is.

I don't know, I need to do a little bit more market research, whatever it is. What's missing? Do I have the right skills? That's another thing. What's missing are the skills. How important are they? And if so, what skills?

Do I have the right ones to do it? Do I have the knowledge or the right connections? Am I connected to people? What. What do I need to find in order to. To get this dream, to really go.

To put my dream out there and to really make it work? And then what's one small, tangible step that I can. I can do right now to start moving in the direction of my dream?

All right, so I'm gonna give you an example. I'm gonna literally say I'm gonna use what I did to build an online leadership academy, which the Uphill Community.

The Uphill community used to be called Network. It's just the uphill community. This podcast is called the Uphill Community Podcast.

But my community, where I work with folks, just last Sunday or a couple of weeks ago, whenever it was, I had 75 people online, and I was walking them through how to work as a team. These are 75 folks that work for an organization. They were able to access it, go in. There was no extra emails, don't have to go to Facebook groups.

All this all within one app or on. I was. I came online. There was a course material that went with it. Everything was real, it was live, it was awesome. They had chat going, everything.

And now they have the replay of it to keep it going. But how did I build that? What? How'd that get in my head? Where was that? Okay, so here's an example. Imagine someone.

We're gonna talk about me, but we're just gonna say someone, because this is really. I am.

This someone is building an online leadership academy to help young professionals who feel stuck in their jobs and want to transition into more fulfilling careers because it's an awesome vision. Or older folks that feel like they're stuck and they've been somewhere and they're not getting anywhere.

So it's all about the professional, younger ones to help them to advance, I believe, into where they want to be new things, and they feel stuck, they can't grow.

And then folks that have been working for a while and they may want to do something different, they may feel like their head and their heart aren't in sync. They're not really loving it. They don't feel like they're making a difference.

So I want to Build something around leading, not only just in the organization that you're in, learning that you can lead even within a team, but also learning to lead yourself, to make different decisions, to go to another level. All right, So I think it's a great vision. I love the vision.

But if I don't have a strategy or I didn't have a strategy to do this, or if you wanted to do it, it's just a vision. That's it. All right? That's all it is.

So instead of, you know, just writing all this down and then just running out the door, I want to be real with it. I wanted to be real. I had to be real with it. So I didn't just start recording videos.

I didn't start just posting content, because without a plan, what's going to happen? So I remember when I tried it that way, I got overwhelmed. I got burnt out. I was even discouraged. You know why?

Because I didn't have a roadmap, so I didn't just do it, but when I kind of got a little like, oh, my gosh, okay, I got to do something, I did. I just kind of threw some things together and I went under the concept that, you know what? I'll. I'll figure it out as I go.

Well, everything's figureoutable, and I understand that. But still, I was in between this, you know, writing it all down and doing nothing and then doing some things really, really fast and quick and then.

But no matter what, I felt overwhelmed, burnout, and discouraged in both of those situations.

So instead of doing nothing and sitting there and instead of tackling everything at once, what I did was I decided to break things into smaller steps and manageable things. Now I'm a passionate person, and I'm ready to go. So for me, this is a little frustrating.

Now, the thing is, I didn't do it perfect, and I didn't want to be perfect. I still needed to get out there. Because part of doing something is you got to make it. You just got to do it. You got to get hands on.

It's like if you're going to be a cook in a kitchen, you're going to have to pull some pots out, you're going to dirty some things, you're going to burn some things. Things are going to happen, but you gotta start cooking. You can't just sit there with a book making recipes all day.

Turn the stove on, put a pot on there, get some food out, start chopping, cutting, mixing, seasoning, doing the stuff that you gotta do. Let's Cook. All right, so creating your strategy, this is what I had to do. This is what I'm encouraging you to do.

If you're trying to build something, I want to help you. If you have a dream, I want to help you. So the key to progress is to stop obsessing over the entire staircase, right?

But instead I just want you to focus on the next step. Don't look at the whole staircase, don't look at the whole thing. The next step, you don't need to build the entire academy overnight.

That's what I tell myself, Tim. You don't need to build this thing overnight. Because me, in my mind, because my vision is big, guess what? I'm making everything.

I'm going to build it all. Why not? Why not just have it all? I overwhelmed people like that, and I've had to learn to chill out.

It's okay for me to have a 50,000 foot view, but I got to come down to 30,000. I got to come down to 15,000, I got to come down to 5,000. And I got to know what it's like on the ground. I just need to take actions.

I got to understand it's a whole staircase, but my next step. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you. Let's see what. I have four things here I'm going to give to you to start with.

Step one is clarify the core thing that you're gonna offer. So in my case, to make the academy, what's the core offering? If it's your business, what's your core offering? Okay, do you see the similarity?

I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence. Hopefully you can draw a line and say this is that whatever you're trying to do, what's the core offering? In your dream, what's the core offering?

What is the thing that you wanna do? So in my case, when it came to building the academy, okay, I wanted to clarify my core offering. So I had to ask, who's this academy for?

What problem does it solve and what transformation will a student experience? And so I said, wow, who's it for? So I knew who it was. I focused around, you know, people that are.

They're in a transition, they're ready to move, they're ready to grow, they want to do more. They're not people that are going to work a certain age and they're dreaming of retirement. They have a different mindset.

They believe in being contributors long beyond some sort of work significance. They want to continue to Contribute.

They want to, they want to gain clarity, they want to raise standards, they want to embrace their call to and for more. Wow. Okay, there, there it is. Step two. Because I wanted to build an online academy.

So in my world I was traveling so much and or I was having to go to meetings and go to this Covid hit, right?

So I was already one that believed that you could go somewhere every quarter but then use online tools as much as possible, try to do any kind of tele thing that you could do, any type of webinar tool or material you could do. And then what you do is you have the in person and then afterwards you're able to step back and you're able to go online and do some touch base.

But then it was like, it's too cumbersome because you've got, you've got an LMS over here learning management system. Then you got emails you're checking, then you got this. Everything was separate and, and segmented and fragmented.

I wanted to pull all that together, so I wanted a community, I wanted to pull people together. So I had to research a platform and so I found my platform. So Kajabi was cool. Kajabi is getting better.

Thinkific some of those, you know, you have Facebook but you gotta still mix and merge. So the one I found has everything that I needed. So I was able to do cohort based learning there. I'm able to stream, I'm able to do everything I want.

It does transcriptions now with AI it already. It's a, it's a system that has AI built into it.

So if I need to say, look, I want to in real time, after I'm finished, there's a transcript that comes out and said, hey, I want to ask some poll questions.

So yeah, I have my mind to do it, but why not let AI take my transcript and generate some poll questions to keep things going or some daily questions for people, for engagement. So why not leverage that? Because I want to focus on seeing the people engage. I want the magic to be in the people.

Okay, so then what I decided to do was to test a small group. So once I knew who my audience was and I chose my platform, I brought in a small group and I took them through a course around leadership.

I did seven weeks with them around leadership and it was awesome. And in that group I had 25 people. And so what I did was I gave them as a resource everything that I was doing to help them to grow and to learn.

So then after that, this is what's really Cool. They were able to give me the feedback that I needed for me to take the next step, to be able to open it up, to do more things to the.

To the general public at large worldwide.

Then also, I learned what to do with my clients, that I have to bring them into the same platform and tool that I'm using that has become extremely beneficial to my clients. They love it. It makes their life so much easier. It. It.

Some of them that, especially those that are my clients that have a national footprint, I don't have to. They don't have to fly me to the west coast all the time or do this and that.

I'm able to go out there one time, a quarter, I'm able to the rest of it, do it just like I am right now, with a microphone, headphones. If I need them, there's a camera right now on me, and they're able to engage with me, and I don't have to have them all in front of me, like, zoom.

It's almost like I'm the one that's presenting. I share my screen, all of that. And I can bring people on and off the stage to communicate with me, to work through some challenges.

Okay, so step one, once again, this is me showing you how I put my dream to test, and I'm. I want you to do the same thing. So the thing that you want to say is, step one, clarify your core offer. Step two, choose a platform.

Step three, you want to build an engaged community first. Okay, so I started connecting with these young professionals through the channels that I had.

I started connecting through these professionals that I knew that were in transition, that were already, once again, through channels I had, through work relationships, business relationships, all these things that I had all around me. I just started making connections. Okay, Then I started offering free things, free workshops, this podcast, free. I would give away seminars, free.

I would do online things, free. Just give it away.

And I did that because it was allowing me to get insights for me to be able to create the fullness of the content that I wanted to ultimately put out there. So I built an engaged community. All right? Then I. Step four was I would take the first actionable steps.

So instead of building out an entire curriculum, I just started with one singular thing, and it was free. And I.

And I did that to validate my idea, but it also attracted the first group of people that I am now doing my community and building community with. And so I had a simple landing page. I invited them in.

I use a little mix of invites from Instagram, some from LinkedIn, some from my personal, My, my personal world, some from the business world that I do with clients. And so I had all these streams and opportunities to be able to bring in, into this one area.

So what's cool is there are people in the community that only knew me online. There are people in the community that only knew me in my personal. There are people in the community who only knew me.

Professionals showing up and doing a keynote or a training session on site with them in their company. That's what's really cool. Okay. Ah. So those are the four simple steps that I did that was for me to create my strategy.

I, number one was I clarified my core offer. Step two is I looked and found my platform. Step three was I built an engaged community. And step four, I took actionable steps.

Okay, so in reflection, this is what I would always, you know, try to do, right? I would sit back and say, so these are reflection questions. So see how I took this big dream, right?

Hopefully you see it and I turned it into a fewer, clear, achievable steps, right? So now what you want to do is you do that. You want to say, hey, if I have this big dream, how could I do the 1, 2, 3, 4.

And I want you to think about your dream and I want you to start asking yourself what skills, knowledge or connections are missing in my world? What do I need to find out? What, what is the smallest next step that I can take today for the dream that I have, for the thing that I want to build?

What is it? You're going to have to sit down and spend time with it. You're going to have to say, not Netflix.

I'm going to sit down and go analog with a notebook and I'm going to think about this. Are you willing to adjust your plan, but not your dream? That's the other part.

So I had a dream, but because I ran into some obstacles, you know, and everything that I plan to do, I was like, you know, I'm not giving up my dream because I'm running into these obstacles.

Instead, I'm going to change my plan because the dream was that important to me because dreams, listen, they don't happen overnight, but progress is going to happen when you take that first step and then the next first step and then the next first step. So this is my encouragement to you is to do what I did, take some time, sit down, like I did to build an online leadership and learning academy.

And it's part of it is tucked into Tuck, which is the uphill community where you can go look@theuphill.community. that's what I did to get there.

What can you do for your dream to clarify what you're offering or what you want to do, to choose the platform or the means by which you're going to do it right, and can you build community around it first, like get some people involved? And then what are the first actionable steps you can do to make it real? Asking yourself real questions like, what are my skills?

What skills do I have? What connections are missing? What's the smallest next step that I can take today? And am I willing to adjust my plan or my dream?

So I challenge you this week to, to break down your dream into smaller, more tangible steps. I want you, instead of feeling overwhelmed by the picture or by the big picture, I want you to zoom in first on your first step. Just your first step.

So what's one small action that you can take today and you can move forward with? So here's my other thing that I'd like you to do. I'd like for you to share your first step with a friend.

Find someone you can be accountable to, accountability partner, and let them in on what you're working toward, and hopefully they can help you stay motivated. But you got to tell them people need to hear it and they need the real. They need to hear it from you. They need to hear and feel the real from you.

All right, so the next episode.

What we're going to do is we're going to talk about who's on your team, who's supporting you on this journey, who's pushing you to be better, and who, if we're being honest, might be holding you back. You don't want to miss it. Remember, your dream is possible. I really believe that. But it's your responsibility to take the first step.

So, hey, you go and make that happen. And until next time, we'll talk soon.