Episode 197. Sustainable Business Tip Inspired by Nicki Minaj
In this episode, let’s break down a business lesson in repurposing, inspired by Nicki Minaj's new album. Through a few of my personal life examples, you’ll get a wider perspective on the value of repurposing and refurbishing.
I’ll explain the concept of "sampling" in the business world, show you parallels between how artists sample music and how entrepreneurs can sample ideas and concepts. To be clear, by sampling, I don’t mean copycatting without giving credit. Rather, sampling done right involves learning from others, embodying that knowledge, and applying it in a personal and meaningful way.
Using examples from my own experiences, such as shopping my closet for an upcoming event or rediscovering old recipes, you’ll see the importance of repurposing and refurbishing existing assets in both personal life and business. Then of course, I’ll bring you back to your role as an entrepreneur, drawing a connection to digital assets in the business realm, encouraging you to revisit and repurpose your own content. In doing this for myself recently, I was inspired by my own past work, appreciating the value of these "energetic time capsules" that can be revisited and shared over time.
If creating sustainability in your businesses is on your dream list, you can start by avoiding the constant need to recreate the wheel. My advice: find someone, whether that’s me or another, to guide you in creating your own sustainable business.
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Transcript:
Can we talk about Nicki Minaj's new album more specifically a little business lesson that I've extracted as I'm listening to her album and what that has to do with your business. So first know that you don't have to be a Nicki Minaj fan to appreciate the message that I'm going to share in this episode, because Many artists sample other artists music
beyonce, one of my favorites, gets a lot of heat for the amount of stuff that she samples. And I personally don't have an issue with artists sampling other people's music if they are appropriately crediting, , the original artist.
Back to this new album, . . I caught a couple of tracks that she samples. One is an old will come song. Another one is a Nina Sky song from like the maybe early 2000s.
My stance on sampling, I don't know about you, but my stance is. Everybody's sampling. We're all sampling, right? If you have a business, or brand or company, or you're considering doing it, there's a good chance that you've either already sampled somebody else's work or you will at some point.
And by sampling, I don't mean [00:01:00] copycatting. And yes, that happens and not giving credit where credit is due. I mean, If you're listening to somebody's work , or you're listening to an audio book and there's something really profound that you learn and then you embody it, you take that information and you apply it to your own life and you find an example from your own life and then you come and share with your people or you go and teach if you're a teacher and you share from personal experience, something that you had to learn from somewhere.
That's what I think of as sampling when it comes to running an online business brand company.
And if you've been paying attention to the last couple episodes, I've talked a lot about this year end process. And really, as we move into spring, it's something that happens during the spring as well of cleaning out and releasing things to create space for the things that we desire for something new to come in.
I want to add a layer to that and tie it into this conversation about sampling. It's not always going to be something brand, brand new that comes in. , , sometimes you're recycling or refurbishing or repurposing something that was already there.
A couple of real life examples. Several days [00:02:00] ago, I'm prepping for this birth worker retreat, right? And several days ago, we were having this conversation, me and some of the other hosts about what are we all wearing? And I hadn't thought about it yet. And one of the hosts said, well, I might need to go shopping.
And I thought, well, maybe I need to go shopping. And. I'm still on that clean out purge of wrapping up a calendar year, moving into a new calendar year. , one area that I really haven't gone into is my closet. So when it's my closet, I bagged up about a trash bag worth of items to donate.
And what happened when I was doing that is I found all of these things that are really amazing and I ended up shopping my own closet for things to wear at the retreat. Caveat, there is a new pair of jeans in there that I just bought , , within the last month, so there's that. But I didn't intentionally go out and buy them for the retreat.
And then earlier this week, I found myself in this recipe rut , I'm kind of over all the things that I've been cooking in heavy rotation over and over again, and generally what I've been doing lately is going to Pinterest or going to Google and searching for new recipes, . Instead this week, I went back to an old [00:03:00] Pinterest board that I already had.
It's a secret boards. If you go to my Pinterest, you probably won't see it, but I went back to this. I went back to this old board of my favorite recipes and I scrolled through and I found something that I happened to have all of the ingredients sitting in my fridge and it was an old favorite. I brought it back.
I cooked it and it was chef's kiss.
Now, what this has to do with your business is if you have been creating digital programs for any amount of time, if you've been hanging out in my space and you've taken my course creation program, , or you've created workshops, webinars, classes, courses, downloads, any of the above, there's a pretty good chance that at some point, whether that's now, or you start building now down the road, you will have accumulated enough of these digital assets that you can start.
Shopping your own folders.
A few months ago, when I was on this year end clean out kick, part of that for me was the digital clean out. And I went into my , Google folders, and I was sorting through finding the larger files, really old files, duplicates, things that I could [00:04:00] delete to clear up some space on my drive.
And I found tons of amazing content, courses, modules, classes, , some of which were in very small private containers
from last year. I started watching my old work. . And let me tell you, I was wildly inspired by my own work.
I thought about how helpful it would be for me to refurbish
some of this content.
So one of the things that I've been doing behind the scenes over the last, really, it's been a few months now is in the little pockets of time that I have that I'm working behind the scenes in my office, or I'm in bed in the morning with my coffee is Editing this content so that I can package it up and share it with you
so that you can also experience it.
, and there were moments where I thought, okay, this is really great, but why not just create new? Why go through the process of editing old videos? And what I keep coming back to is.
For many of these videos, it would be impossible to recreate the experience. The videos are like an energetic time capsule, and we can tune back into the energy that I was in at the moment of creating them every single time you press [00:05:00] play.
And if I have more to contribute to the conversation on any particular topic, I can create new modules to add to existing courses, which if you're in any of my courses, you know, Any of the courses that you've bought lifetime access to, there's a good chance that there's additional modules that have come out since you originally bought it, because I will continue to add to the course over time, as I have more things to say.
And so when we talk about sustainability in business, I want to tie this all in full circle to what sustainability looks like in your life. You know, I am not the most sustainable person in my life. Yes. I buy new things. Yes. I use some plastic. But to the extent possible,, I do like to create sustainability in my life. . So shopping my closet for this upcoming retreat. Or finding an old recipe and falling in love with it all over again.
And in creating a sustainable business, This is the beauty of having these tools, that we can access to create digital assets in our business that we can use and repurpose and refurbish over and over and over again.
So taking a little [00:06:00] page out of Nicki Minaj's book, out of Beyonce's book, out of many current artists that sample older artists work, you don't always have to recreate the wheel. Having said all of that, if creating and building a sustainable business is something that's really important to you starting this year, I highly, highly encourage you to find somebody, whether it's me or somebody else who can guide you on how to do that in your life, in your business, so that your business can fit into your life.
Your business is only part an important part, but only part of your full expression. You're not meant to be out here living, breathing, eating, sleeping, all things eyes open to eyes closed. Working on your business. I know you want to, I know you love your business. I know it's close to you and it's your baby, but I highly, encourage you to find and create sustainability whenever and wherever possible
so that you can experience your full expression outside of your business as well.
Have a great week.