exercise: weeding & seeding
sensemaking the overgrowth (in a snazzy new format!)
before I begin: if you are able, I encourage you to support Connecting Humanity’s ongoing work to provide e-sims to Palestinians in Gaza. Learn how to donate e-sims here. I feel grateful for the ability to give directly to those enduring the genocide that I unwillingly help fund as a US taxpayer. Thanks for your consideration!
Weeding is humbling. Weeding can be tedious. Weeding can evoke feelings of inadequacy: “this should have been done already,” “how did I let this get so overgrown?” It’s easy to be motivated by what’s new than sifting through what is.
But if we want our seeds — our visions and intentions — to grow in fertile soil, we owe it to ourselves not only to do the diligence that allows space for growth, but to dignify that work as just as important and essential as “The Work.”
Hey y’all,
I’m excited to share a new approach to What Only You Can Do: exercises that are downloadable / print-able for you to use.
I have been working on the exercise and post I’m sharing here for almost a month, but felt resistance in pressing send. I realized it was feeling a lot like free online recipes: hella exposition and storytelling before getting to how to actually make the dish. Sometimes I’m in the headspace of leisure and curiosity to learn more about the chef and the development of the recipe, and sometimes I’m hungry and just wanna start chopping to get a meal on my plate. For those who love the story, it’s below! But for those who wanna get busy in their proverbial kitchen, you can download the Weeding & Seeding exercise sans scroll.
I developed this exercise upon reflection of how this summer has felt for my business development of my creative production company hww.work, in an effort to offer myself grace, tools, and points of reflection while sifting through to-dos of so many shapes and sizes. My realization? Before ya seed, ya gotta weed.
Whether you’re looking to make sense of a creative project, an entrepreneurial venture, or a practice in your personal life, I hope you’ll find this exercise useful, and this PDF format easier to focus and to tune in to what’s within.
How the “Weeding & Seeding” exercise came to be:
After an ultra-busy May and June, I had big, big plans for July. My creative production company, hww.work, had just come off a few projects that had raised the bar for us. We had released our first short documentary on a major streaming service: VISION, our profile of my dear friend and inspiring leader Sahra Nguyen of Nguyen Coffee Supply, featured on Amazon Prime. We produced our first premium educational series with France’s version of MasterClass in partnership with a Parisian production company.
And we had produced three videos and curated programming for the Alliance for Gun Responsibility’s Annual Luncheon, including a video featuring Washington State Governor Jay Inslee. We’ve been working with the Alliance for four years now to support their vital and effective gun violence prevention advocacy, and were thrilled when they reached their goal of $1M raised.
With all those projects out the door, July was looking quieter, and I was ready to do The Work. Ready to design and begin to implement a business development strategy in hopes of an influx of projects. Ready to hire my first W2 employee to support on admin while I focused on sales and client management. Ready to blueprint ambitious, actionable growth.
I started hww.work because as someone who has been a working artist and freelance-hella-things my whole career, I wanted to build a business that embodied my philosophy and creative approach without necessitating my literal body. When people hire me, whether as a singer or a facilitator, they rightfully expect me, Hollis in physical form, to show up and perform. I wanted to shape a type of product that I enjoyed making and felt valuable to clients, but that was scalable beyond myself. In our case at hww.work, it’s film, video, photo and creative content that amplifies the work of nonprofits, foundations, and purpose-driven brands.
Although I have always been allergic to sales, deploring the self-promotion needed when I release music, I know that strategically peddling one’s wares are at the heart of a sustainable business. I’m lucky to have grown hww.work through word of mouth and referrals, but with my intrinsic desire to pay more creatives and make more impactful work, I know that outreach and sales is where I need to focus my efforts. So that was the energy I came with when I set out to make July a month of visionary scaffolding.
Sure, I did some things in July. I carefully shaped the job description for the admin associate. I restructured my business banking for better delineation between my production work and my work as an artist & consultant, and categorized five months of all of my business expenses in partnership with the Hell Yeah Group, the bookkeeping agency I work with that specializes in creative enterprise. And I did a fair amount of research to update my client contracts to better protect myself from delayed or negligent payments.
But by the time August rolled around, I felt disappointed in myself. I had this perfect lull where all my best intentions had the breathing space to blossom. But the database of warm leads I had told myself I would curate and outreach to? The detailed build-out of my Asana and Slack to encompass current and future projects and streamline comms between my collaborators? The snappy one-sheet with the greatest hits in our portfolio and infographics detailing our creative approach? The boxes remained unchecked. I didn’t even post the job description for the admin associate, ironically fretting that I didn’t have capacity to field an influx of applications in the midst of the consulting work I had to manage.
I felt that old familiar self-defeating self-talk creeping back: who let you run a business? You actually don’t know shit about business development. You’re fraudulent, undisciplined, ineffective. If you were for real about this, you would have done it by now.
Untangling myself from the threads of inadequacies, I first wanted to offer myself grace. It was summer. It was hot. Lots of people were on PTO or slow to respond. As a self-employed person, it’s so hard to justify taking a break; nobody is paying me to be OOO. But I indeed allowed myself some languid afternoons at my local park to read in the sun. I let myself have evenings of wine and pizza with friends or sunset strolls with my partner, even if a voice in my head told me if you were for real, you’d be doing The Work.
I reflected on this delineation - the difference between work and The Work - embedded in my mind. Undercase work was the regular, day to day diligence; The Work was the architecture, the executive strategy in action, what made me a legitimate principal of my company. And as I processed, I came upon an articulation that helped me embrace where I was at.
Before you seed, ya gotta weed. My biggest challenge in business has always been financial anxiety and an aversion to decoding my bank account. I was downplaying my work in bookkeeping and bank organization, but I had literally categorized hundreds of transactions, something that would have struck terror into my heart not even a year ago. How could I hire someone, and even do outreach to dozens of potential clients, if I hadn’t done the super unsexy internal work to make my business financially intelligible? Same went with the contract research and fine-tuning the job description — these tasks were unglamorous, and often annoying, but ultimately essential to move forward with clarity.
Weeding is humbling. Weeding can be tedious. Weeding can evoke feelings of inadequacy - this should have been done already, how did I let this get so overgrown? It’s easier to be motivated by what’s new than sifting through what is. But if we want our seeds, our visions and intentions, to grow in fertile soil, we owe it to ourselves not only to do the diligence that allows space for growth, but to dignify that work as just as important and essential as The Work.
I developed the “Weeding and Seeding” exercise to apply not just to business but any domain of life where growth is desired. It could be the desire to plug in and better support community organizing or activism. It could be your own arts practice and creative self-expression. It could be your mental health, physical movement, and self-regulating practices. It could be showing up as a more present friend, family member, partner, or even to be more present in your dating life.
However it flows, I hope that you find the exercise and what it evokes helpful. And as always, would love to hear from you in reply or in Substack comments.
Til soon,
<3 hollis