In this episode of Cowgirl Artist of America's podcast, we interview Meagan Beltekoglu owner of new leaf digital to discuss, staying organized and keeping your priorities aligned with your mission, vision, and values.

Cowgirl Artists of America

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Hi, welcome to Cowgirl artists of America's podcast, a

podcast dedicated to Cowgirl artists.

I'm your host, Megan Wimberley.

Today, I talked to Meagan Beltekoglu owner of new leaf digital to discuss,

staying organized and keeping your priorities in alignment with

your mission, vision, and values.

It was a really great thought provoking conversation that I think you'll enjoy.

By the way, don't forget that you can apply to show your work at the Cowgirl

gathering through October 16th on our website, Cowgirl artists of america.org

.This event is going to be a lot of fun.

We've teamed up with the Cowgirl gathering to bring the art show to the event in

the heart of the fort worth stockyards.

The event is november 10th through 13th.

We hope you join us.

Meagan Beltekoglu helps women owned businesses simplify their tech and

systems so that they can free up brain space for innovation and greater impact.

A certified director of operations and vetted click up consultant.

She thinks creating standard operating procedures is fun and loves breaking

big visions down into focused, manageable projects and tasks using her

favorite productivity tool, click up.

A Click up expert.

She applies her love for strategy, planning and project management

to every aspect of her life.

From her children's homework to her basement remodeling to her client work.

She's a New Jersey born obsessive researcher, MFA four

bird watcher and homeschooling mother of three in Pennsylvania.

You can find out more about her and her business at New Leaf Digital.

But you won't find her all over social media.

So Meagan and I met because of a women's business group, and CGA had just

grown so fast and I was so overwhelmed with all the things, and I reached

out for advice from other women.

And Meagan, you were so generous and kind, and I just know that you really

love helping women and you offered to give me some advice and I just, I know

that people are really gonna get a lot from our interview today, so can you

tell us a little about your business?

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

I'm excited to be here today.

My business is I do a lot of tech and system strategy, so I help women figure

out like what kind of tech they need, how it fits into their business model,

and then I help them learn how to use it.

The main part of that is the project management tool, click up.

But I also help with other things like automations, integrations

business strategy tech strategy, and really just all that backend

of the business stuff that isn't so much fun for a lot of people, but

is something that I really enjoy.

How did you get started with your business?

It was just in a few years ago.

We just needed some extra income and I was like, I can do something online.

Cuz I had worked online before as an editor and a translator.

But then after my second daughter was born, I stopped doing that cuz it was,

hard to manage all the things at that point, after my third daughter was born.

And got a little older than I felt like, Oh yeah, I can get back into things,

but I didn't wanna do the same thing.

So somehow I just stumbled on the world of virtual assistance and

kind of started out that way and quickly realized that was not for me.

It was a little bit dull for me.

And I like the challenge and the strategy and the problem solving.

So somebody asked me to help them with clickup and I was

like, sure I can do that.

And then I just fell in love with it and have been helping

women with clickup ever since.

And when did you start using click up?

About three years ago.

Okay.

And for people listening, they probably don't know what click up is.

I just discovered it really recently and I am totally sold.

It's the most robust way of organizing a lot of things that I have seen

in whatever way your brain works.

Can you describe for people what click up is?

Yeah, so Click Up sells themselves as one app to replace them all.

I think that is a little bit ambitious because Click Up doesn't do all the

things, but it does do a lot of things.

So click up has a way to create lists of tasks and organize them into folders and

then organize those folders into spaces.

It also lets you add custom data about your task so you can keep track of really

anything that you want to keep track of.

What, how many of a certain size painting you've.

You could keep track of that and click up if you wanted to.

It also has forms, it has docs, it has internal automations, it has

ways to communicate with your team.

It has dashboards and probably a few other things that I'm forgetting because

there's so much that you can do in click up and it's endlessly customizable,

which is, both really great and really nice and a little bit intimidating.

Yeah, at some point I'm gonna hire you to help me get mine better . But

the thing that I find really helpful and so many artists are so visual is

that you can change the appearance of your, what you're working on.

So you can look at it in like your calendar or you can look at it and I still

don't even know how to use all the things.

But that was one of the things that really sold me because sometimes I

need a list, but sometimes I need to like look at the big picture to get

everything like there's just too much to remember, and so I really appreciate

that aspect of click up as well.

Yeah, that's one of the big features that sells a lot of

people on click up because unlike some alternatives like Trello for

example, you don't just have that one way of looking at your information.

You being a more visual person, you can make use of the board

view or showing images in different parts of your click up.

I wanna list and I don't wanna see any extra stuff so I can then use the list

view or the table view and hide the things that I don't need to see right away.

But they're still in there and people on my team can look at the

information in any way that they want to, which is really great for

people who think differently or learn differently or just function differently

than other people on their team.

Yeah, and I didn't even think about that aspect in that way

with teams because, I think as a society we're realizing people don't

all think the same way and they don't get information the same way.

And so when we like create this one system, it may work well for you, but half

of your team might really be struggling.

And if we meet them where they are, then they're able to be more productive

and help you for sure in a better way.

Yeah, I actually, I have a post on my blog.

I can share the link with you that's exactly about this.

Which is how click up is great for neurodiverse teams.

Oh, that's fantastic.

So for people who think differently, they can

really benefit from a lot of the different features in click up.

That's awesome.

Yeah, and artists, I think a lot of artists really do think in a

nontraditional way, So I think that could be super beneficial to them.

So when I first reached out to you about doing this podcast, we, talked about can

we talk about kind of productivity and you suggested how about we talk about

using your mission, vision, and values to prioritize and be more productive.

And I just, I love that so much because sometimes we don't have the right

starting point and when we don't have the right starting point for what we're

trying to do, it gets so confusing.

So what is using your mission, vision, and values to prioritize

and be more productive, what does that mean, at a glance for you?

Yeah.

So that means really like checking in with yourself periodically.

And I try to do this quarterly and I help my clients do this as

well, to go back to the basics.

Why are you doing what you're doing?

And What's the purpose of your business?

What is your mission?

Writing it out actually for a while I was Oh, I don't need to do that.

But I was in a program where we had to do that, and it was actually

a really rewarding experience for me to write it out, especially the

part where we wrote out our values that was really important to me.

And values are not just important because they define you and your

business, but they also help you attract people who wanna work with

somebody like you and also repel people who you don't want to work with.

So that was also like a really fabulous experience.

I put my values on my website.

I've had people reach out to me and be like, I wanna work with

you because I like your values.

And I was like, that's so awesome.

And then the vision.

It's hard for me to think that far out in the future because I have three young

kids and I've like just, day to day here.

But when I combine these things all together, it really helps me in my

business know what I need to focus on and cut through the noise that's out there.

Like TikTok, right?

It's like noise right now.

Like you have to be on TikTok, you gotta do all the Tiktoks or reels, right?

A while back, that was the thing.

Or YouTube shorts, right?

Are these really in line with your mission, vision, and values?

When you can take a step back and consider your mission and vision values as the

kind of like a screen to decide what you want to focus on, then it really helps

you say, actually, for visibility for me, I wanna focus on building referral

partnerships, and I don't care at all about making short form content videos.

So then you can say, All right, that's, not something I'm at

all going to be focusing on.

Free up that time from doing that and even thinking about it and

focus on what is your priority that's in line with your business.

Yeah, that makes so much sense.

I have imagine like one of those little marble games where you have to

get the marble through the different holes, and so like your vision is

like directing you where you know this is a good place to put my time.

And that can be really hard because as a business owner, and artists

are business owners, finding we don't have unlimited supply of time.

It is a limited amount.

And deciding okay.

Maybe like Instagram is a good fit for me, but Facebook and TikTok aren't, or

whatever, it is because they do have their different strengths and weaknesses,

but making sure that they align.

And then you talk about having your kiddos and part of your vision and

values for your business, does any of that include vision and values

for your personal life as well?

Yeah.

So I try to combine them when I did that because there are some things that

are just like non-negotiables for me.

If you don't have this, these certain values, like I don't wanna work with you.

I don't even really care to know you.

To be blunt.

So for certain things like that, it's not only like a foundation for How I

want to raise my children, but also for how I want to run my business.

So I try to make efforts to make that clear, that certain things

are really important for me.

Like I like anti-racism.

That's something that's really important for me.

And if you're not down with that, then you know you can

find somebody else to work with.

And it's, it works really well because it attracts like-minded people and it repels

people who aren't of the same mindset.

I'm not really sure if I wanna share these things.

But once you get it out there You see the benefit and that the people,

that you're attracting your people, which is really why you're out

there in the first place, right?

You don't, you wanna work with people who value the same things as you.

So it is important, both as a business owner and as a parent

and as a human, to do this, even if you're not a business owner.

Yeah.

And it's, a lot of times I think people, especially, I think probably any business,

but I know artists really struggle this.

It's like they're trying to be all things to all people.

And so they're like, Oh, like I'm really like a realistic artist, but I of wanna

make some more modern looking stuff.

So it'll appeal to this and I really wanna do my originals, but also maybe

I should make prints for these people.

And it's like they're focused.

on like everybody, and really if they can narrow it down to who their niche market

is, those are the people that you really wanna get invested in your business and

that they're gonna be the super fans.

It's just not everybody wants to go to.

I don't know.

The only the first person coming to my head is like George Strait.

He's like a famous country musician.

But not, maybe not everybody wants to go to George Strait cuz they

don't like country music, but that's fine cuz you know what?

He's crazy successful in where he is working and so if he'd tried

to do all the different things, he wouldn't be as successful.

So not being so afraid of, and it's not like you have to be mean.

, it's not like you have to create enemies.

It's just like there are certain people that are gonna love what you do that

are gonna resonate with your work and your values, and those people are going

to find you if you're clear about that.

And it's a lot easier.

For sure.

And I think especially for artists having that niche is really important

because, I'm not an artist by any means, I've seen your work, Megan.

And now I know Megan, she's the one who does these colorful cowboy kind of

animal paintings that are beautiful.

And if I know someone who's looking for that, then I know who to refer.

I know who to refer them to.

And it's so easy that way to get referrals, to find new customers, new

clients, and to build your community because you focused in on this area

that lines up with your mission and your vision and values, but it

can take some time to get there.

For sure.

Especially as you're developing your craft or your business too.

That can be really scary cuz you're like, Oh, I'm cutting out all these people.

That's okay because at the end it's like you're saying with my work,

like people can look at my work and they know that is Megan's work.

And there's artists that have really honed in and you look at it and

before you even see that signature.

And that's gonna be so much more powerful.

It sounds like what you're saying is when we define our lives this

way and just lean into that, that it actually gives us confidence

to like just fully be who we are.

It definitely does, and it also carries over to a lot of

different areas of your life because then it's easier for you to say no to

things that aren't in line with that.

So if somebody asks you to sell your artwork at a local craft fair or

something, and it's just like you know that the people aren't your people, right?

Before you define this, you might have felt like, yeah, I should

go, somebody might buy something.

But once you know like those aren't your people, then you can turn it

down and you won't feel bad about it.

Yeah.

And.

That's been something really important for me to learn because when I first

started my business, I was trying to be like, the virtual assistant who did all

the things, and it's just exhausting.

You never become that expert in one area where people know Oh, she does that.

Once I focused on doing, click up and like systems and tech work.

It became very easy for people to refer me because they're like, Oh, I know her.

She does click up.

Like I had a call with somebody yesterday and I asked her,

How did you find out about me?

And she was like, a freelancer we had last year told me that you do click up.

And I was like, I don't even know who the person was, but people are referring me.

Even last year.

Because they know this is what I do.

So it just all ties together and it becomes like a holistic part of your life.

Yeah.

It carries over from your business into your personal life

and that I think is really special.

Yeah, you've recommended several people to me too, and

the people that you recommend are always really focused on that and

any on whatever their skill is.

And anyone else who has recommended somebody.

It's been, cuz they've been focused in on something people

don't generally recommend.

Oh, you should hire house cleaning and art.

And also she babysits like they don't do that.

They're like, Hey, you need a house cleaner.

I have the person for you.

And that's why they're successful cuz they're doing that thing.

And it's the same with artists.

When you really get down to your style, you define not only your style,

but also your business approach.

There are some artists that are selling things on certain platforms that are

maybe more mass produced and maybe they're super successful and good for

them That's their business approach.

And then there's some artists who are like, I'm only gonna

sell in high end galleries.

And they're successful at that and good for them.

That's their business approach.

But deciding what you're gonna do, you can't do both of those things together.

You can't be in a high end gallery and sell your art, at a craft fair.

It's not going to work.

I think we're often afraid to say no to things, but we have to remember that

every time we say yes to something that we are saying no to something else.

And so if you are constantly saying yes, because you feel obligated and you go

to that craft fair if that's not in your business model, that is saying no to

maybe the direction you're wanting to go.

And so having that clarity will help you with what you should say yes and no to.

Yeah.

And it's also really important for your systems in your business.

And that may not be something you've really thought about, but, taking the

high end gallery and the craft fair example, like you're gonna have different

supplies that you need as an artist if you're selling in a craft fair or if

you're selling at a high end gallery.

You're gonna have to have materials.

If you're shipping, if you're doing mass production, everything

is gonna be very different with your systems in your business

based on, how you're doing things.

So if you narrow your focus into one area, That allows you to scale

that faster if that's your goal, because then you could say, Okay,

I'm gonna be shipping out my art.

I'm gonna buy, the packing tubes in bulk and I'm gonna

invest in this kind of printer.

And you really know like what you need to do and you're less all over the place.

But it is like a big jump to go all in.

And then like you said, feel like, oh, I'm saying no to those things, but the

opportunities come and once people know that, you are the person who does this,

and that's what you're awesome at.

People really, they're, they are knocking on your door because people

value this kind of expertise and focus in a world that's really full

of so many generalists right now.

. Megan CGA: Yeah.

That's true.

I'm always super impressed, Megan, with your ability, it seems like you see things

very clearly and like I could talk to, have you worked with artists before?

Not really.

Because the advice that you just gave is so spot on for artists

and most people who haven't worked with artists wouldn't know that.

Like the art industry is weird.

And to know Hey, if you're like mass producing, you're

gonna need all these things.

And if like a lot of people don't recognize those things, do you feel

like organizing and just like being able to see those big pictures is something

that you were innately born with, or is it something you've developed?

I think that's something that I was innately born with, but

I only recently recognized that I was working with a coach a while

back and we were trying to figure out like what's my special sauce

or something she called it, right?

And I was like I don't know.

And she was like, You're such a systems thinker.

And honestly I just thought like everybody thought like that.

And she was like, You're crazy.

No, people don't think like that.

And I was like, That's just really like how I see.

Everything is in terms of like strategy and systems and preparing

and making sure things are organized.

I'm not, if you came to my house it's not like a totally like perfect organized

like Pinterest style house, but my mind is pretty organized, I think.

And the way that I think about things is like really sequential.

Like I know I have to do this, to be able to do that, and it's pretty easy for me to

focus on cutting out the noise because I know there are certain things that I don't

like or I don't care to be involved with.

But it's taken me about 40 years to get to this place.

. Megan CGA: So say you've developed a good

off, like your kid gets sick or you have to leave, whatever it is, do you feel like

that you have a hard time redoing that system for that moment, or are you just

okay, this are how I switched the things.

Like everybody else, we had covid a while back and after that

the first few days I was like trying to work from my phone and stuff and

then I was just like, No, I can't.

And once I started feeling better, It was a little like trying to get back

into things slowly, but because I have like systems for so many things,

then I can just easily pop myself back into where I was at before.

And I know, I can look in my click up and see like, all right, you've

got 30 overdue task waiting for you.

Like awesome.

And try to go through that as I, had more energy.

But I think as a parent you really learn to be flexible even

when you really don't want to.

So it's, it's always a learning process and I try to have a growth mindset where

I see this, everything is a learning opportunity and I always wanna know

like, how can I do better next time?

How can I use what I've learned to.

Not have to deal with this next time, being down with Covid, then how can I

take that experience and make things in my business maybe more on autopilot so

that things can happen without me if I do get sick again or, my kids get sick

or, we're traveling next week overseas, so I've set up some things so that I

can, hopefully be selling things while I'm on the plane, or while I'm away

from internet service for a few days.

Yeah.

I think having that solution based like thought pattern is so

much more healthy cuz it's so easy to be like, Oh, I failed at that.

I really stunk at doing this thing or whatever, and we beat ourselves up and

we're just wasting our energy on that.

How do we, Okay, that didn't go the way that I wanted.

I acknowledged that, but what can I do to make it better the next time is

so much more of a productive way to use our thoughts and our energy, brain

power than to just beat ourselves up.

Yeah, I like to have a little kind of retrospective

with myself after those things.

Like I had a client call yesterday morning that didn't really go as I expected for

a few reasons, and I took some time after it to just think like, How can I prevent

the same thing from happening next time?

How could I make sure that I'm better prepared for what my client might say and

how can I make my client better prepared for what to expect in the first meeting?

. And then just, jotting some things down to think about and then maybe

coming back to them in a few weeks and saying are these things that I wanna

add into my systems for how I work with people, will that make a difference?

Is that gonna help, both sides?

Yeah.

So I try to always have a kind of reflection period when I have something

that kind of doesn't sit so well with me.

And it helps for sure.

Yeah.

And that's for everything, for artists like to just maybe you go

to a show and something doesn't go wrong, go the way you wanted it.

But yeah, it's so important to just have that moment of reflection,

acknowledge it, and then figure out like what to make it better.

And let go of all the judgment of yourself and other people,

if we can get nobody's perfect.

No, we're not gonna agree with everybody about anything.

We're not always gonna like communicate in the best way or see eye to eye or

whatever it is, but bringing compassion into those spaces and Hey, like

that didn't go quite the way I want.

Here's the way I can fix it in the future or like whatever it is.

Yeah, I love that.

Especially in the online business world, there are so many like haters and

trolls out there, and if they haven't come for you yet, , they will, but

they'll show up and they're not nice and just ignoring them and realizing

that you can do things your way.

That's why you're doing this in the first place, right?

You're not working in some corporate job in a office.

I mean maybe you do full time and you do your art part-time or whatever, but you

still have these things that you're doing because you want to get this out into the

world and it's okay to do things your way.

And I've had so many people tell me like, I don't share any photos

online and I haven't done this for.

I don't know, 12 years or so.

And this is just a personal choice and I don't share photos

with my kids or anything.

I've had so many people tell me like, nobody will work with you because they'll

think you're like a bot or like they don't think you're real or like you

don't have your picture on your website.

But I haven't had any problem.

So really you can do things your way, invent a new way,

be different, be creative.

There are so many opportunities out there and we certainly don't need like

more cookie cutter anything out there.

Yeah.

That's why I love to work with people who are really interested in

innovation because there are so many copies of, like business coaches for

example, they're like a dime a doesn't.

And I really love when I see people doing things differently.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So on the tech side of things, how can the tech we use, help us or hinder us?

Yeah, that's a fabulous question.

I think tech can really help you streamline things.

Just taking, like scheduling a phone call with somebody, there are tools

that you can use to schedule your calls that don't involve that back and forth.

Oh, are you free Monday at nine?

What time zone are you in?

No, I have a meeting.

Then can we do Tuesday at 12?

Where, you just click on their link.

You book the time that works for you.

And you know get an email with the Zoom call link and that's it.

It saves so much time for people.

So that is a way that tech can really help you.

The ways that it can hurt you, I think is like when at least for

me as a techy person, I can get wrapped up in Ooh, there's so many

like nice shiny objects out there.

I wanna try that one and that one.

And that's it's part of my business, so I have to do that.

And to some extent, but if you're not, you don't have a tech focused

business, it can be really hard to make those decisions for yourself.

Should I use honey book?

Should I use dubs shadow?

What should I do?

And that's where it may be helpful to chat with somebody about it who?

Is more knowledgeable in this area because they could really help

you narrow down and figure out what is the best option for you.

And the nice thing with tech these days is that there's so many ways to

personalize things that you can still have that personal touch come through

when you're using technology to run your business so that it still seems

like people are getting that personal connection and they are getting

that personal connection with you.

Because you're creating the copy for the emails you're sending out, for

example you are creating the design for the website or influencing that.

So it really is showing your personality and your business and who you are, but

it's making things so much easier for you at the same time by eliminating all that

manual work having things happen while you're sleeping or while you're vacuuming.

And that's just fabulous.

When I think back to like how people ran businesses like 30 years

ago, I just can't, I can't even imagine how hard it must have been.

Yeah.

So much human power for sure.

, I remember when I contacted you, that was one of the things.

I was like I think my post said I have so much to do that I

don't even know where to start.

And the tech side, I was like, I know there's gotta be tech that

will help me automate some of this.

Cuz I had 146 members to enter into our site.

That in and of itself is a huge task.

And then you start looking at the tech and you're like, Oh my gosh I

don't wanna get the wrong one and then I have to start it all over again.

It was so helpful talking to you and just about the tech.

And honestly, I was so busy at that time.

I don't even remember our conversation, but I know that I like

went after it and did some things.

But it was so helpful.

Yeah.

Talking to a tech person who could just.

Do use this system, like use this app and to be able to offload that brain power.

If you can outsource choosing your tech from a knowledgeable expert,

like what a quick way to make a huge impact on your business.

Just let , for sure.

Do the thought,

. Meagan NLD: Yeah, and I think this

information overload that we live in right now, we have the resources

out there so we could go and make that decision ourselves, right?

You could go and look at every website and try to figure out

what's best for yourself, but do you really want to do that?

Do you really wanna spend your time doing that?

A few months ago, I wanted to buy a painting for my sister who just

finished her doctoral program.

And I'm really clueless about most things, art.

And so I asked two of my friends who are a bit more knowledgeable

What size painting should I get?

I didn't even know, what size made sense, and they were like, you want this

size, whatever, 10 by 14 or something.

I don't even remember.

It's probably wrong.

Having somebody to ask that question to and not spending all my time like Googling

and like falling into these rabbit holes.

It really it saved me hours.

I would've been there googling, like for hours looking on Pinterest and I would've

driven myself crazy and it was just so helpful just to ask a friend what size?

And they were like, they told me and I ordered it in the end.

Yeah.

And I think, One thing about the Western culture is it's very do it yourself.

You get out there, you do the work, and it can be really hard to switch

that mindset to say, You know what?

I don't have to do that work.

I don't have to be thrifty on this because ultimately the thriftier thing

is to like, let someone else do that.

Do that work for me.

And so yeah, that can have such a huge impact.

What about briefly tech for goal tracking?

And not just tracking what you need to do, but I think also keeping some

sort of list that you can go back to Oh, I accomplished all these things.

So when you're feeling like you haven't done anything and you're stinking at

life, you can go back and you can look at it list and be like, Oh wow.

Like I've actually done a lot.

I have so many of those days where I'm just like

did I even do anything today?

And the really nice thing about click up is there's the home section and

click up where you can go to your home and then there's a section where

you can see your done tasks and it just shows them right there for you.

So you can be like, Okay, yeah, like I did actually do something.

So I like to have look at that from time to time.

And then I also have my strategic planning and click up.

And this is something I help my clients with, but I also do it for myself.

I actually did it with a few of my friends.

We got together on Zoom and we just took some time and we

did our planning ourselves.

And I have that in my click up and then I have that favorited,

so I can just go and look.

Okay, those are my priorities.

I just checked in yesterday to see, how am I coming with my Q3 priorities, as we

approach Q4 and it looked pretty good.

I got to see I completed a bunch of stuff.

Some probably won't get done, but that's okay.

And it's really nice to be able to just have that live

somewhere that's not in my head.

Yeah.

That's the biggest thing tech can help with.

I think it's just getting it out of our head because we have limited capacity.

Oh yeah, for sure.

I took a fabulous course about this called Building a Second Brain, and it's all

about getting things out of your head.

So as just a person existing in this you know 2022, we're

bombarded with information all day.

And how do we sift through that in a meaningful way?

How do we store what we want to reference again maybe in the future?

How do we create these filters for ourselves to ignore things that

really aren't that important to us?

What kind of content do we want to consume?

Yeah.

And how then can we use that content in the future for

projects that are important to us?

Yeah, man, I think if you're interested, we might have to

do a part two about cutting out the noise , because I've heard you a lot.

And the other day I'm usually pretty good about keeping my open browser

tabs on my phone down pretty low.

But I looked at it the other day and I had 96 tabs saved in my browser, and I

was like I looked at Pete, watch this.

All of them delete.

I'm, I just deleted all of them because I was like, That is unfinished work to me.

That's stuff I know need to look at, and I can't keep carrying that

stress around knowing that I have 96 unfinished things that I wanna look at.

and like focusing back in on Okay, whatever.

I'm fine right now.

If those are that are important, they're gonna come back to me.

But yeah, just, let me know later if you wanna do.

Yeah no, that would be fabulous.

I have just checked on my phone, I have 50 open tabs which is a little

bit high for me, but I am traveling overseas next week and so I have been

like researching a lot of things.

I think I have an excuse.

. Megan CGA: We did a fun game with ours.

I think I might make this into like a real, that people can interact

with or something, but it's look at what is the very first tab you have

saved or whatever, and see what it is cuz it's interesting to go back.

Yeah, in some ways, like what you did is really like the

best approach to just declare like bankruptcy and like just delete them

all and then move forward starting with a new approach to dealing with it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Just two more questions if you're still good.

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

So I think this idea of defining our mission and vision and values can be a

little challenging and it's easy for us to get way too broad with it, and that

does not help us narrow our focus down.

Could you walk us through like how you would define that?

Yeah.

So for your mission, it's really important to be specific, so when I read

your mission, I shouldn't be able to look at it and say Oh so and so other

artists could have that same mission.

Like what about it is really unique?

If you go and read the missions of Nike or Apple or Target or these big

companies that we see all the time their missions are always something unique.

So that, you know that it's specific to them.

It's a process for a lot of people where you're gonna wanna write it

and think on it and come back to it and revise it and share it with

people, share it with your followers and see what do they think about it?

Don't be afraid to put it out there and get feedback on it.

It took me a really long time to realize what my mission actually is, and it's

not helping people with click up, that's just the means by which I do it, but it's

really to help women free up brain space so that they can be more innovative.

Because as women, we are just tasked with all this mental overload.

There are like some funny memes and cartoons about it.

And it's just so much who remembers all the doctor's appointments?

Who schedules the cleaners?

Who does the grocery shopping, the gifts, everything.

It's usually the woman, right?

And so how can we leverage technology?

To actually help our brains function as they're intended to brain.

The human brain can't hold more than four to five thoughts at once, but

we are so guilty of shoving all this stuff in there, so we're not able

to be innovative because we're just focused on these day to day things.

Once we get that out, that's when we become innovative.

Long story short, it took me a I'll say, two years to realize that was my mission.

And I went through whole bunch of iterations of writing it out

and saying, No, that's not it.

Writing out, No, that's not it.

And just slowly kind of step by step, piece by piece, I figured out what it was.

So for values, I find it to be a little bit easier to list, five things that

you stand for, five things that you're opposed to and not just write like, one

of my most important values is honesty, but write really what that means to me.

At my business we value honesty because blah, blah, blah.

Oh.

Really writing that out, that the act of writing it out, I think

is really the most valuable.

And for your vision to just think like, where do you wanna be in a year?

Where do you wanna be in three years?

Where do you wanna be in five years?

Where do you wanna be in 10 years?

And keep coming back to those and they can change.

And also thinking, your business vision and about your personal life, your family

what's your vision for that future?

What do you want that to look like?

Yeah, for Cowgirl Arts of America, we have an advisory board

and we've recently been talking about making sure that our messaging is

really clear . And so we really have talked a lot about approaching things

from what we stand for and what we do.

I think there was like a phrase that said, and I still need to

update it, but it said, we believe in collaboration, not conflict.

And it, they're like, why even mention conflict?

Because if that's not what we believe in, we just need to know

that we believe in collaboration.

And so that guides every aspect of what we do.

Okay, so last question is talking about our mission, vision, and values.

If it seems like we're pretty broad and we've like tried to narrow it

down with what you've just told us to do, but we're having a hard time, are

there any tips you have about like just narrowing it down a little bit more?

Yeah, so what I remember doing for myself, Thinking about

two other people who have similar businesses to mine, and looking at

everything that I wrote and asking myself, Could one of these people

have written the same exact thing?

And when I said yes, then I knew.

I still had a little bit of a ways to go.

Once I was able to read it and say No, they wouldn't be able to

do that's when I knew that I was heading in the right direction.

It still took a little bit of more refinement after that, but really not

being afraid to be different and to.

Share those things about yourself that make your business unique, that

make you unique, and having that be part of what your business is.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Megan, I won't take any more of your time, but thank you so much for being on.

I think that this is just so much valuable information for anybody really,

but especially for our artists, that we're helping in their businesses.

So thank you for being on here and sharing all your wisdom.

Thank you so much for having me.

It was really fun.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Have a good day and safe travels.

Thank you.

All right.