Legacy

2019: Year In Review

January 3, 2020• Leadership, Legacy, Life

Goals For 2019 + Reflection

1) Regular yoga practice

One word: FINALLY. After literal years ¡ of ¡ attempts, I was able to re-build this habit into my life. A special thanks to my friend and neighbor Ashil for being my mid-week yoga buddy and to Noelle @ the amazing Kindness Yoga for leading the best class I’ve found in Denver.

2) Build and release a mobile app that revolutionizes how we help transform leaders and organizations

You haven’t heard much about this yet, but this DID happen… and I’m ecstatic about it. The Helios team did a soft launch of our new app with a small group of already-certified consultants/coaches here in Denver in October, and the app is already being used with a few select clients! We’ll be doing a more public launch sometime in Q1 2020… stay tuned.

3) Create a lot of virtual content to help people love work and to help organizations work more effectively

I’ll put a checkmark by this one, too. I started publishing regularly in March on the Helios blog, and ended up posting 19 brand new articles over the rest of the year, including a few in Culturati Magazine, Inc., and Forbes.

Here are the three I’m most fond of:

In addition to the above pieces, I also produced a veritable buttload of content for our new app.

I thought I’d have written my second book by now, and while that technically hasn’t happened, I realized a couple months ago that I actually HAVE written it — and it’s the mobile app I mentioned in #2.

I knew I wanted my next book to be the “how” of an ebOS. The app actually goes a step further, as it doesn’t just “tell” you how but TEACHES you how. We’ve come to think of it like a “coach in your pocket” that gamifies the process of loving work… it’s really damn cool, and I’m incredibly proud of it.

I can’t wait for us to publicly release this thing; look for the official announcement coming sometime in Q1 2020!

4) Spread the TEDx far and wide

This one gradually got de-prioritized as building the app attracted more and more of my time/energy/attention throughout the year. I’m still immensely proud of the talk, and I’m still intending to help it find its audience over the next couple years.

If you haven’t watched it, or want a refresher, go HERE — and here’s a great link to share if you so desire: joshallan.com/tedx ⬅️ contains great downloads and next steps

Accomplishments & Fun In 2019

  • Rebuilt the Helios Launch experience from the ground up (this is how we certify people — it’s our core product offering)
  • Debuted the new Launch experience with an amazing client in Paris in Q1, then went back to Paris for another one in Q3!
  • Took kiddos to Estes Park, Great Wolf Lodge, Ella Enchanted @ Arvada Center, Disney On Ice @ Denver Coliseum, Goodnight Moon @ DCPA, Boo At The Zoo, Gaylord Rockies holiday extravaganza, and Zoo Lights
  • Hosted a book launch of Josh Levine’s new book via CULTURELABx
  • Saw some great shows at DCPA: A Bronx Tale, The Play That Goes Wrong, Hello Dolly, & Miss Saigon
  • Watched my oldest daughter graduate from kindergarten AND perform her first piano recital (all the feels)
  • Went to the Unicorn Festival (yeah, it’s a real thing — and kiddos love it)
  • Enjoyed our yearly visit to Anderson Farms’ Fall Festival
  • Upgraded from an ooooold queen bed to a king-size with Casper mattress (life-changing, I tell you!)
  • Started working out at Orangetheory, an amazing and intense blend of cardio + weight training — exactly what I was looking for!
  • Watched both my little ladies do ballet in their performance of Nutcracker
  • Had a fabulous trip to Disney World with my kiddos and in-laws
  • Spoke at events for the OD Network, Global Healing Collective, Boulder Startup Week, HOBY Colorado Leadership Seminar, and 3to5 Club

Priorities/Intentions/Goals For 2020

  1. Physical/mental/emotional wellness
  2. Build more great friendships in Denver
  3. Publicly release the new app
  4. Write and publish three new articles every month
  5. Zero biz travel that isn’t my highest & best contribution
  6. Reboot Work Revolution

2020 is promising to be a year of great transformation… let’s go!

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2017: Year In Review

January 1, 2018• Leadership, Legacy, Life

So… 2017.

You were a doozy of a year, in so many ways.

Overall, I can’t say I’m necessarily sad to see you go, though I will also recognize with gratitude all the wonderful things you delivered.

First, a look back on the goals I set nearly 525,600 minutes ago…

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My goals for 2017, and a reflection on each:

1) Re-start yoga practice—average at least 1x/week

Weeeelll, turns out 1x/week was overly audacious. Across the year, I did a little better than 1x/month on average, sadly—though I will suggest that Yoga On The Rocks should count for at least double, right? *Photo I took below* (Quite an experience.)

That said, if I choose to live according to the “There are no excuses or reasons—there are only priorities” quote from last year’s reflection, I do believe I prioritized the most important things throughout the year (more to come on that).

And that said, I am also completely aware that the pace I kept this year without a sustainable exercise practice is deeply unsustainable and does not create the kind of healthy life I want to live, so adjustments truly need to be made.

2) Get take-home pay to pre-merger level by end of year

I’ve learned so much in the last three years of being a 50% co-owner in a pair of companies. One of those things is just how much commitment and energy it takes to maintain consistency salary levels for a whole group of people instead of just one person.

If you haven’t ever made this transition in your business (from solo-preneur to business owner), I realize what I’m saying probably seems like a completely boneheaded notion—of course that would be a big deal, duh!—stated by Captain Obvious (me). But for whatever reason, I didn’t truly comprehend the total impact of this shift until this last year. As a solo-preneur, I got quite used to the roller coaster of that life with its big paydays and long famines, and when you’re only covering your own livelihood, once you develop good habits around saving money in good times, the waves are reasonably easy to ride. But the moment you take on other people’s’ livelihoods (and I’m not talking about 1099 contractors, but people who primarily depend on the company you own to do things like eat and pay their rent), the game really does change. Again, I probably should have figured this out much faster, but I get it now, deep in my bones.

All that to say, I didn’t strive to raise my salary this year but chose to prioritize other things, including investing in building what I believe will be my business for the foreseeable future: Strengthscope here in the U.S.

3) Continue to grow network in Denver (24 new kick-ass connections by end of year)

I do believe I accomplished this (even with a concrete number, this one is still a bit hard to track/measure). I met SO many wonderful Colorado folks this last year. I continue to be blown away by the kindness, authenticity, and down-to-earth-ness of the people I meet here!

The whole Strengthscope team is SO excited to continue building our network in, influence on, and service to this amazing city in 2018.

4) Average 1 airplane/month, only traveling for things ONLY I can do

I definitely need to re-write this goal. For the most part I believe I accomplished this, but I don’t say that with any kind of satisfaction, as my travel in the second half of 2017 quite nearly did me in, physically/mentally/emotionally.

It turns out the statement “Things ONLY I can do” is slippery in a deeply sinister way, as it’s far too easy to rationalize as “true” in order to justify doing the activity at hand.

5) 25k Twitter followers by end of year

I didn’t quite make this goal, but I did make a respectable leap to ~20,500 followers. http://twitter.com/joshallan

6) Post a new original article on a blog or other media outlet 1x/week

I averaged about 1x/month for almost the first six months and then… well, the last half of 2017 just totally kicked my arse.

7) Release audiobook of Igniting the Invisible Tribe

Yes! Finally got this out—a huge thank you to my friend Jim Seybert for absolutely killing it on the narration (so good!). Here’s a link if you’d like to check it out: http://bit.ly/invisible-tribe-audible

8) Have Dynamizer™ in production and for sale publicly

After multiple years of side-hustle on this project, my partners and I finally released Dynamizer™ into the world! I’m immensely proud of it, and hope it will get out into the world in a big way in 2018, so it can start helping kids everywhere understand what makes them energized and amazing. http://thedynamizer.com

Accomplishments & fun things from 2017:

  • My wife and I continued our DCPA membership for Broadway-themed musical productions, and saw the following shows: Fun Home, An American In Paris, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Frozen, Something Rotten, and Waitress
  • For our anniversary, the wife and I also took a trip to NYC (first trip sans-kids!) and saw 1984, Dear Evan Hanson, and Come From Away on Broadway (it was a pretty good year for theater)
  • We saw the fabulously-funky Amos Lee with the Colorado Symphony at Red Rocks—and yes, everything about that is exactly as magical as it sounds
  • Got a last-minute summer vacation to Michigan, which I always love; if you haven’t been there in the summer, please go
  • Did a karaoke date night in a private room in RiNo with some new Denver friends (SO FUN!)
  • Went to Anderson Farm and a local apple orchard with the kiddos (these may not sound dramatic, but this stuff is like freaking Disneyland for tiny humans)
  • Women’s March —I’m terribly sad I didn’t get to actually be out on the streets, but I do consider myself to have been a part of it as I “took one for the team” to be home with the kiddos so my wife could join, and I am SO glad she did… the power of that experience still resonates with me, and I was just following it via social media!
  • Had a chance to work with my wife — we were able to hire her company to work with us on our branding/messaging/story, and not only were they an enormous help, but I think it gave her a chance to experience what I do in a new way, which was really special for me
  • Hosted the first inaugural Rework CEO Summit in Boulder — the first gathering that exists solely to create a community for leaders of self-managed companies
  • Spoke at: 3to5 Leadership Forum, USC, ICF-LA, ATD, Startup Iceland, Vanguard’s Creating Healthy Organizations Conference, OD Network, Denver Startup Week, Insights Conference, APWA’s Imagination To Innovation Conference, the Global Strengthscope Practitioner Conference, and the OC Expanded Learning Summit (where we officially launched Dynamizer™)
  • Traveled to Los Angeles (a couple times), Atlanta, Iceland, Orange County (a couple times), NYC (a couple times), San Diego, Michigan, Eastern Washington state, London, Vermont, Tokyo, and Kansas City… and the vast majority of this happened in the second half of the year
  • Helped reboot CULTURE LABx in Denver — if you happen to be in Denver please join us; we have some REALLY cool things planned for 2018
  • Potty-trained the littlest kiddo
  • Celebrated Thanksgiving with our adopted family (dear friends) here in Colorado
  • Hosted both sets of grandparents in our home over the holidays (so wonderful!)
  • Added 37 revolutionary Practitioners to the Strengthscope tribe (woo!)
  • Made HUGE updates to the Strengthscope business plan here in the U.S. — much more to come on this throughout 2018!
  • Despite my barren blog, I did manage to publish a few things that I felt were pretty important to write:

Goals For 2018:

  1. Regular yoga practice—average at least 2x/month
  2. Travel half as much as I did last year
  3. Write majority of Book #2 (goal of publishing release = 2019)
  4. Post a new original article on a blog or other media outlet 2x/month
  5. Host another Rework CEO Summit
  6. Book 3 paid keynote talks at my full speaking fee
  7. Add 100 certified StrengthscopeÂŽ partners to the tribe

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The Story Of Dynamizer

July 10, 2017• Legacy, Life

Around three or four years ago, we started shopping the idea around.

But nobody wanted it.

Now, everyone loved the idea — in a nutshell: to create a product that would help kids discover and develop their strengths — but they didn’t have the bandwidth to do it, or they had other priorities, or any number of other completely legitimate reasons.

So, after spending a number of months trying to get someone else to do it, we eventually realized that the creators were looking back at us in the mirror.

But none of us had the bandwidth, either.

So, we did what any other crazy entrepreneurs would do (maybe?): we put a weekly 30-minute check-in call on our calendars and made a commitment to each other to keep the ball rolling.

A year went by and we had narrowed the strengths down to sixteen items to try out. We bucketed them into four categories, and sent them to the fabulous Camp Rise Above for testing.

With the Camp’s help, we knew we had something special after the very first round. The offer was simple: a “card game” (we now know to call it a “learning activity”) that allowed ill campers to self-select activities that made them feel strong and alive. So uncomplicated, but it provided lasting and profound effects — for many campers, learning to focus on what’s RIGHT about them (in a world obsessed with everything wrong with them) was one of the most memorable parts of camp.

So we kept going.

We kept refining the language to make it easier for young people to understand.

We started working on different designs for the cards and released a new iteration.

Another year had gone by.

We added in Exaggerators™ — what happens when your strength goes too far and starts frustrating the people around you.

We updated the design again, and built some very cool single-pack prototypes.

We found ourselves navigating a few detours along the way — at one point, we were convinced the product needed a mascot, so that lead us down a rather time-consuming trail. (Though I will say I’m not sure we’ve totally let that one go; we may yet see Dinah the Dynamizer one day…)

And another year had gone by.

Then we shifted from individually-wrapped decks to a 15-deck box to make it easier for teachers, youth group leaders, and camp counselors to help lead conversations with many kids at once.

That required completely NEW prototypes.

And a completely redesigned instruction booklet.

(And another year.)

But, finally, at long last, we found our way to the product you see at the top of this post.

Click here to see the photo!

Now, 15 decks of Dynamizer are all contained in a little blue box. But it’s still exactly what it’s always been — a simple set of cards that contains a world of positive possibilities for young people everywhere.

Isn’t it time we helped our young people focus more on what’s RIGHT with them, instead of obsessing over their deficiencies and gaps? As a society we tend to fix what’s wrong instead of building on strengths — but this strategy never helps our kids truly thrive.

And sure, this product is designed to help kids eventually end up in a career they love. But kids do quite a lot of living before they end up in a job, and long before they’re in a workplace, knowing their strengths helps young people interact better with others, build better relationships, stand up to peer pressure, and can even help prevent bullying.

Are you ready for this?

(We are… it’s been a few years.)

I hope you’ll join the Dynamizer tribe. We need your assistance to make it happen — there are no investors with deep pockets bankrolling this thing. So far, it’s been entirely bootstrapped by us three creators, and we’re hoping an Indiegogo campaign will help us pay for our first production run and build momentum around this movement.

It’s our goal to bring the power of strengths to young people all over the world — will you help us?

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Visit our Indiegogo Page to Donate or Purchase!

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