The most dangerous thing to say is,
“I already know that!”
Naketa Ren Thigpen
Monday’s guest speaker, Naketa Thigpen, spoke facts to us all who were lucky enough to attend class that night. I wasn’t prepared to have such an influential and pro self love advocate, entrepreneur and absolute amazing speaker grace our screens! But better believe after about 1 minute of hearing her speak my pen was scribbling away. One of the first phrases I scribbled was #feelthefeels. And entrepreneurship STRONGLY correlates to being comfortable feeling all the feels. Because you will feel all the feels… but more on that to come when I talk about understanding business research, empathy and alignment.
I loved that everyone had their attention on her and when she spoke her facts, I could see all the head nods in agreement. That’s energy right there. Her lecture was the BEST way we could have led into our week ahead of team zoom meetings, class and ALSO our change leadership project.
Because of her words, my team and I especially, felt much more empowered and driven to be vulnerable with eachother by speaking our personal goals, our why’s behind choosing this minor and ultimately gaining deeper connections. Having her speak to us was the highlight of my week and I’m sure the same goes for my peers!
Side note! I reached out to her on IG and she graciously responded with three book recommendations. HOW COOL IS THAT?!
Why would I even half ass this class? These experiences benefit me moving forward.
AJ Barrett, TEAM 4
AJ’s quote above really sums up our general teams consensus on how much we value this class and the tools we are gaining throughout this course already. Sharing our personal goals for this class and beyond brought us closer as a team and really narrowed in on what we hope to achieve by the end of VP2.
This is experienced based learning. I want to own my own buisness. I want that freedom.
Bruno Dornelas, TEAM 4
Understanding Buisness Research:
Buisness research has been a HUGE learning curve for all of us this week. We have experienced what it means to come across research that makes us as a team pause and ask is this the right path for us? We have came up with multiple different avenues to go down as far as our product is concerned but we have also came across sizeable competition where we have to ask deeper questions like how can we stand out? What will make our product more likely to solve our customers pain?
#feelthefeels #bigtime
Empathy
During this week we created our own Team 4 traction journal. The format helps lead us through productive meetings and helps us to focus in on what matters as far as VP2 and what needs to get done. My favorite area of this template has been introductions. We set 10 minutes aside for each of us to answer a preset question which is intended to bring us closer as individuals, students and entrepreneurs. It truly sets the tone for the rest of the meeting. It’s been an incredible asset to our work and creativity.
Alignment
When I went to Google the technical definition of alignment Google gave me this example, “the act of aligning parts on a machine.” When I think of a machine I think of the word powerful. A machine is powerful because of it’s parts and how they work together to produce a desired outcome.
Each week Team 4 becomes more and more of a powerful machine. We work through the glitches that come up, we move forward strongly always knowing and reminding each other that everything is figureoutable and our course work that we learn from is our direction manual. Our coaches give us valuable tools and resources to soar.
We are all working towards the same desired outcome, dedicated to the individual parts and compassionate when the glitches arise.
Yes, alignment. That’s a powerful word and us the powerful creators of our own machines.
This coming week:
Change Leadership Part 1
3 Team 4 Zoom Meeting
Prototypes
AND… lots of room for growth and knowledge.
This is super inspiring. I also adored our speaker this week. She really did come at the exactly right time. Everything she was saying resonated with me and made me feel like I was in her shoes and a part of her journey, as she was a part of mine. I am so excited to hear that you and your team are doing well. These journals make me so happy to read through and get to know your team. I am beyond thankful to get to connect with you this way.
I love the feels about pivoting. It means that your group is communicating well and you all know what you need to be doing. That is incredible. Not to mention the type of meetings and connection that your team is using at the beginning and throughout meetings. I am so impressed with the effort you all are putting into the project, class, and each other.
Keep up the incredible work, and I’ll see you soon!
Wow! I appreciate how openly you have shared in your traction journal:) also love the addition of pictures to give clarity. I love the idea of creating a team traction journal with your vp2 team members, that is a great way to build empathy. Im excited to hear more about your project for vp2 and see how it shapes and comes into fruition!
I agree with your opinion on Naketa’s speech, her position on making time for yourself is so important.
Fantastic use of IG to poll people, you can actually know quite about bit about who answered the questions, and perhaps why.
And if I may build on your use of the word “alignment” as a mechanic and engineer, any misalignments can cause vibrations in a machine that will slowly and steady wreck havoc across the whole machine.