Welcome!

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[00:00:25] Sarah Potter: Hello, and welcome to this inaugural episode of La Dolce Vita lounge! I am very happy to have you here. I thought I would start off by just giving a bit of background as to why I do what I do and why I thought this podcast was a good idea. So. I have been a multi passionate, multi creative person for a long time.

I baked since I was a child, I was always pestering my parents to spend time in the kitchen. And they would basically just say to me, [00:01:00] as long as there's not a mess, when you're finished, then do every, like I would just create. I ended up in creative roles in the corporate world. I always had a cake business on the side for quite a long time.

I contracted, I started businesses as I traveled. I've always done different things and had different passions. And I've always been told that I must focus on one thing and I can't do all these different things. And when I grow up, I'll stop doing these different things that actually really activate me..

And for a long time, I questioned the validity in doing different things, running different businesses, starting different projects going on different adventures. But actually they're part of who I am. It's quite reductive to put everybody in the box where we say we have to only do one thing. 

That is absolutely the right thing for some people, and I celebrate and honor that It has [00:02:00] its place and it helps society function that there are some of us that only do one thing, you know, doctors that research cancer and amazing specialists in this world for a reason. But actually we need generalists as well, we need people that can cross barriers, boundaries. 

We are really important, just as much as the specialists that do incredible things, we create bridges. And the reality, even when I wasn't a free range human doing freelance work or working for myself or taking time out to volunteer. My corporate life was always quite portfolio, really in terms of the projects that I got involved in, it was a very entrepreneurial approach that was taken in the businesses that I worked in.

They were generally non traditional marketing organisations. My background is in [00:03:00] marketing, the most creative you can be in corporate. And it wasn't the reality of my life in that world that I was deep in a vertical profession or, or sector or area. So it always played to my gifts that I would be either working on lots of different projects at once or working with different partners in different parts of the business.

That's what kept marketing alive for me was the fact that I could work with the legal team, the finance team, the operations team. We got to talk to everybody. That is a lean to multi-potentiality really is understanding and being able to speak the language and adapt to different environments, different conversations, different needs.

We respond really quickly, we observe and we absorb, this is one of our magic skills! And this is why there [00:04:00] are a lot of us in business. We get shamed by the people that just do one thing. And as I said before, there is no one way both ways are to be celebrated, but I see a lot in the business space and particularly in the self-employed area.

The dialogue around independent business owners is that we must just do one thing. And I think it's quite damaging. Especially when people are first starting out, finding their feet, making the transition from working for someone else to working for yourself is huge. And people throwing stones like. 'you could you just do one thing!" It's actually not even possible when you're in the first few years of your business, because you're doing everything yourself. Most of the time people don't have the resources to be handing things over, even if it's temporary staff .We all [00:05:00] advise to do that as early as possible because it takes things off your plate so that you can be in your brilliance more often.

But this dialogue around the fact that we must all seek to only do this one thing all the time is damaging. And honestly, I think it's a very patriarchal view. I don't even like using the phrase. "The one thing" there's a book that I read two years ago now by Gary Keller called The one thing and I picked it up thinking, this is great! This is going to help me focus because this is what I need to do. And I realised I read it and. Part of his advice is you must focus only one thing and be really, really good at this one thing. And you also must do it for four hours in the morning before you do anything else. I I was thinking, there's no woman I know that can spend four hours a day solid doing one thing [00:06:00] before they do anything else.

Apart from sleeping, we just don't. I mean, I'm a single woman. I don't have children to look after, but even my cat wouldn't let me just chill for four hours before I do anything in the morning, she would have something to say. It is a, a man who has chores done for him that can do that. That is a privilege that we just don't have.

 I can't speak for anybody else. So for myself, there's lots of things that I need to do to sink into my day. And it's damaging. If I don't do them, whether that's movement or meditation or journaling, I do them all in order and be in different orders and they tap into different elements of me and some things get dialed up or dial down depending on what my focus is at that time of the week or season or.

Season of business or life, but generally they're tapping into different things that I need to activate and that's necessary to activate [00:07:00] my flow, my structure in my day. And that is true of all of the successful businesses owners I know that have momentum in their business.

Yes, there is creativity. Yes, we are getting involved in different things, but there is a structure underneath and I think that's really important. So, from the outside to somebody who does just focus on that one area, that one specific mastermind topic, It can feel a bit, you don't understand it, it's a bit threatening somehow. But actually it really works because there's structure underneath and there's purpose and, there is a deep soul led need to do these things. 

So even in my corporate days for example I would get bored, even just looking at some job descriptions. If they only looked at one area of the marketing mix, because I had cut my [00:08:00] teeth in teams where I got involved in everything.

So asking me to just pick one, just didn't feel natural because I had the capacity to have a strategic overview of all of them. It wasn't interesting to me to only be in one area and actually they all talk to each other. My brain just doesn't think in that way, my brain is always trying to problem solve, pull things together.

So i f this is how you work too, there are other people wired, like that. It's my mission to inspire and uplift as many of us as possible. There is a lot of us in the creative fields. There is a lot of us that feel like we don't fit in the traditional, more masculine environments .The very Yang energy of do do, do, do, do we need space to be, we need space to create. Yes, we need structure in order to jump off of, but actually we need to be [00:09:00] in the softness of creativity.

 If that resonates with you, then I'd love to see you in my community. Come join my love letters! Every week I sent out love notes with information about what's going on in my world, inspiration tips and invites to any events and offers that are coming up .But just know that you're not alone, know that it's not wrong to have multi interests, multi passions, multi potentiality. If you've got to the end of this and you're thinking, what is that?

I don't know what that is! Multi potentiality is basically, people that are multitalented, that don't have one, one true soul calling. We have a few that intertwine together and often there is a thread that runs through them. So for me, mine are about creativity, service, and [00:10:00] community, and, they weave through everything that I do. 

So it doesn't matter whether it's cakes or coaching or healing, consulting, even it there, those things are at the heart of what I do. And if something comes up that aligns with those values and I have the skillset for it, then it will pick my ears up because I am trained in all of those disciplines.

I don't just jump around and make things up as I go along, these are the things that I have invested time and money in training in being highly capable in. There are lots of us out there, physicians that are also concert! . There are lots of people out there that are deeply skilled in different areas.

And that doesn't mean that you necessarily have to make it career, it might be a side hustle or it might just be something that you do in the community in a volunteer capacity. But it's a part of you and it's a part of how you show up.

It may be a part of how you [00:11:00] enrich your family or community life and it's to be celebrated as far as I'm concerned, because that is part of how you bring your brilliance to the world. And the connections that you make, the people that you come into contact with, and there are things to be proud of. 

So this is the space to celebrate, explore, be inspired. If anything comes up that you have any questions about or would like to talk to me about, I would love to hear from you. You can come and find me on socials. I am most active on Instagram @Ladolcevitacoach or LinkedIn, Sarah L. Potter, I'd love to connect with you in either of those spaces for chat!

Have a sweet day!