All The Things & Mastermind Intensive 2018!

I was on a call with a friend today (Denise Albright, to be exact—more on her later), and she started the conversation with something like, WOMAN: give me the 60-second run-down on your life!

It is funny that even my dearest friends feel like they can’t wrap their head around/keep up with my zig-zagging in my busiest seasons. This used to make me feel very guilty, like I was doing something wrong. A good brand isn’t confusing, right? All my navigating through business opportunities and different ventures, well—that would be really confusing, and bad for a brand, right?

Only if it was trying to hide behind a cloud of shame. So, this blog post is me yanking back that curtain of guilt and shame and saying to heck with it! This is a battle fought only in my mind—my assumption that people will be confused, or won’t care, or will disconnect with “my brand”, is just that—an ASSUMPTION. It isn’t fact. And by allowing my mind to use this assumption as an operating principle, I’m practically turning it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

NO MORE.

(I could go off on a tangent about how women entrepreneurs I know feel guilty about this, but male entrepreneurs are off running ten times the number of ventures we are, and don’t feel an inkling of remorse about it, but I’ll save that for another blog post. Or not.)

At any rate! Here’s what’s been going on!

First, not foremost, but probably most surprising is this: my husband and I co-own a coffee shop/bed and breakfast in Carlton Landing, Oklahoma.

Say, what?

I know. It’s as shocking to us, too. It wasn’t a big dream, it wasn’t something we ventured out to do, it wasn’t something we even put a lot of thought into. (Heart, yes—but the decision to commit to the project was a no-brainer, from the start.) The opportunity presented itself, we prayed about it, and it just seemed like it was something we were supposed to do. That we had been called to this place, in such a time as this, and this was what we were SUPPOSED to be doing.

It’s crazy, really. If you had asked us 12 months ago what we’d be doing today, we could not have even GUESSED it would be running a coffee shop and bed & breakfast. I’m letting God write this story, though—and it’s a fun one. I have a hunch He’s got some pretty good ideas up His sleeve, and I hope I’m staying “palms up” enough to let Him work.

If you want to know more about The Meeting House, I built us a nifty little website over at http://themeetinghousecl.com. Our hours are limited, 8-2 most days, and if you want to book a room, shoot us an email. (We are working on fine-tuning our VRBO listing as I write this.)

OK, next up in the roster of Whitney’s ventures: Gingham Home. As you may or may not know, Gingham Home is my passion project.

I started Gingham Home over a year ago, after I’d sold Day Designer, as a way to dip my toe into interior design, chase those dreams, and see where it would end up. If I’m honest, there are parts of the project that have not/are not going the way I planned, and I find myself vacillating between frustrated and disappointed on this. But that’s life, and entrepreneurship, right? I know that nothing in business is “if you build it, they will come”, but I know there is a way to build things—the right combination of ideas, trends, engagement, authenticity, branding, all that—that produces a desired result. It’s an art, not a science, though. So in many ways, I feel like Gingham Home is this “in progress” masterpiece I’m working on. The current iteration is that I’m researching deeper into bedding lines, and thinking about starting a wholesale bedding line. It’s a big dream. I’m just putting that out there. If you’re reading this and have ideas, reach out and let me know!

Last, definitely not least—and actually probably most, in this moment—I’m excited about all the consulting work I’m doing.

I picked up three new clients in July, and have room for two more calls still in August. If you’re interested, details over at https://whitneyenglish.com/about. I’ve been doing consulting consistently since I sold Day Designer, and as I’m investing in new clients I’m finding myself more and more inspired and motivated to continue on in this vein. (Come on, life—give me a little of that momentum over on my Gingham Home dream, will ya?)

So the biggest announcement I have to make in this blog post, and the one I’m most excited about is this one: I’m hosting a Mastermind Intensive in Carlton Landing, at the Meeting House, on September 12-14, 2018.

I have lots more to tell you about this, many more thoughts, especially after picking up a few new clients this past month, so I’ve organized those thoughts around a series of blog posts I hope to release over the next week. Tickets will go on sale next Wednesday, and there are only 8 spots, so sign up for updates at the bottom of this post, and make sure to follow me on Instagram @whitneyenglish for more details!

There is so much more I want to tell you. I want to tell you about Denise, the dear friend I mentioned in the first paragraph. I want to show you the design boards I did for The Meeting House. I want to tell you how gorgeous the Mastermind Intensive is going to be. I want to share all these thoughts about entrepreneurship I’ve been picking up lately–and I will. But for now, I’m going to sign off with this thought: life isn’t going to slow down, to give me time to write more blog posts or better blog posts, or post more updates, so if I (or you) want to get in the game, here’s the order of the day: speed up. Write more, be ok with the fact that a poor draft is better than no post, go ugly early, adopt a bias for action, take progress over perfection.

And stay tuned. 😉