34. Get Your Team Together

Transcript of Episode: Welcome to "Office Hours with Dr. Lacy". Hi, I'm Dr. Lacy, your Dissertation Strategist, where I help doctoral students finish their qualitative visitations so that they can graduate and successfully become Doctor. Let's get started with this week's episode. Guess what? I am hosting my very first writing retreat in November with Jen and be at home in Chicago and I don't know, guiding a few friends along for a beautiful protective rejuvenating writing retreat right before the holiday. So we are gonna meet meeting in Chicago November 24th, so this one is seven, four days, three nights of writing, scholarly pursuits, whatever that may be. Um, um, fun we are going to be talking about, so like for your scholarly self, we're going to be talking about best ways of organizing yourself, how to make a realistic schedule and a realistic routine. We're going to have some time to get some eyes and you're writing to really help you flesh out those ideas. Have a really solid plan for not only getting a significant writing bed at the retreat cause there was nothing more. I find it annoying that we go to in the bank. You're out, you're all excited and you're motivated, you're like get them to do all the things and you go home and you're like, I don't even know how to take the next step. So we're going to make sure that when you leave, we know what to do. Plus, you know, I don't like, I can't just sit there and just work, you know, that's not my emo. So while we will have 20 hours dedicated to solid writing time, we will also have time to talk about things that are happening outside of writing. Like how do you keep your motivation, how do you stay productive, how do you manage your chair and your committee and keep everybody on schedule and on the same page, how do you manage your own selves that you know you can continue to show up and go after your doubles. Plus so much more. Um, breakfast and lunch is included in the price and we have three different actions for packages available. So please, please, please go over to marvettelacy.com. Then you're going to click the red button at the top right corner and it says work with me. And there you will find all the information about the writing retreat. I'm so excited. I have so many surprises planned. We already have people signed up and so please don't miss out. I would hate for you to miss out. Just gone over to the website or you can DM me on Instagram and we can talk there and I can tell you more about it, but please don't miss out. All right, we're going to get on to today's episode. Welcome to week two of this 90 day challenge. And today's episode is all about getting your team right. Now. Last week we talked about the basics in the foundation of this challenge and beyond this challenge. These are the basics as a scholar, as a person, that she, you should be committed to. Um, if you haven't had a chance to listen to that episode, please go back and listen to that episode. Um, and sign up even for the challenge so you can get the printables and stuff. Um, to make this challenge easy so we can finish the last 90 days shrunk. But today's episode is about your team, your team of people. So if you don't know, um, I am an avid YouTube watcher. I love, love, love YouTube. Like I watch you two more than TV. People are, uh, out here talking about shows and things and I have no idea what they're talking about. But I know YouTube burstow and this is something, wow. I mean, I've been doing this for YouTube has been my thing for 10 years now. Like it's my main source of entertainment. But anyway, um, if you are familiar and when you go to the homepage of YouTube, they're usually recommendations for you, um, to watch and based on like your watch history or things that Google just thinks you may be interested in because Google knows your whole life. At least he knows my whole life, my whole business and life is on Google. Um, and one person popped up, um, Indian, it was a black woman and she had a really, really low haircut, like not even lower than like a fade. And she just looked beautiful. Melania's Papyrus, she was real snatch. She had on his dress and there was a Ted talk Indians. I don't know about you. I mean, I know things are changing, but when I first saw this video, I didn't see many videos with folks of color, especially black women doing Ted talks. And I mean like Ted talks, like with the regular, like Ted talk on the, um, screen. But it was Stacey flowers, um, and her talk, which I think is like how to be happy. Let me get the right title for you because you know, I don't want to be butchering this cause this is a, this is really important. Um, but yeah, she was essentially talking about how to be happy and how she was working towards goals and, um, what she has found to be the most helpful in her achieving her goals and happiness. Um, it's called how to be happy. Ted talk, excuse me, the five key people you need. Um, and I'm going to get it together. This, this word is trying to see, it's taking me out. But anyway, she talks about the five people you need. But before I just want to let you know, um, I watched this video and then I went down a whole rabbit hole because she has a YouTube channel that she puts out videos just documenting her life. So she lives in Chicago, she's a speaker, so she's traveling around and doing that. And she's also starting to branch out in other areas of her business, helping other people with their business, helping people become speakers, um, helping people with debt management, money management, and she's chronicling her life of, uh, focusing on her health, being really dedicated to her health. Um, so getting a personal trainer, eating, changing her diet, going to see a therapist, working with her coach, and you get to see like her, like coaching other clients, things of that nature. Um, she is following the day for him. So you plan to get out of debt. Um, it was about $200,000 in debt and she's been working through it, like killing it and she works part time. She works roughly 25 hours a week. Um, and she has, um, a very, I think he's grown. It's like not grown, but like if 17, 18 year old son, um, I've known C I know all her life because I've been watching the videos. But anyway, I've give you that background so you can have a little bit information about who she is. Um, and share my joy to, um, of like this wonderful woman. So I definitely will link it in the show notes and you should definitely check out her in his Ted talk, um, because it's hops about the people you need on your team. Um, and so I used to get it done framework and my business and essentially to get it done framework says that you need three main things to finish your dissertation. You need systems like our routine, a schedule, like a playing in things that you do consistently on a daily basis that guide you, um, to towards achieving your goals. You need mindset because that's what is really preventing us from getting to our goals and writing. You need a way to like work on that every day to remind yourself why you're doing what you're doing. And the third thing is you need community. And I'm really big on building community because that is really what takes people out in this dissertation game of you started to feel isolated. You don't have people around you. People start to be at different levels, especially if you're in like a cohort or something. Um, and I know the power of community and people how that helped me to finish my dissertation in four minutes. And so I'm always telling people that you need to get you some people. Um, I, that's why I have my writing group right away. That's why I have Facebook groups. Cause I know the power of people also want to make a side note y'all. So this new place where I live is very, very loud. And so you may hear cars and things on being picked up out of microphone. But I literally hear this all over my apartment and there's nowhere for me to go. And so we're just going to enjoy the silence of this city. And this pack has from now on until I find another solution. Okay. And up side note. But yes, back to Stacy. So she has this Ted talk and she talks about five people that you need. Um, you know, the chief for it goes with being happy. The first person is the cheerleader. So they cheer you on when you cannot cheer yourself on. They are your, they're your pep squad or your people in the corner. Like they don't quite understand what it is that you do or why you doing this or like why you still in school, but they love you and they went and see you when, cause while they don't quite understand what it is, they know that it's big. They know that it's important for you to do this goal to become a doctor. They also know and can see probably more than you that this is this, you getting this PhD or you achieving this goal. Sure it has something to do with you. But at the same time has nothing to do with you. Like you're doing it for your family, for your friends you're doing for all the people who are watching you that you'll never realize are watching you. And they know that their job and their role is to just cheer you on and keep you going. They don't have to understand it and I'll have to get the nitty gritty details. They just have to cheer you on. And that's what they do. They give you encouragement, they tell you you can do it. They may listen to you and again, they may not get it, but they're still like, but you can do it like they know without a doubt that you can do it. This is the person that you want to talk to or call or text when you're like [inaudible] you know this degree they can have it. Cause I have other ones. I don't mean this one. That's who you call when you, when you need some sense of like motivation. Um, and I think about this, like when I was trying to figure out who was going to be on my dissertation committee, I was, I, it is important that I have somebody who is really supportive and encouraging and that they don't have to get my methodology or my research. They just gotta be encouraging. It's gotta be happy. Um, and the person I had was name is Dr. Dunn and if you know her, you, I mean, you, people instantly melt when you hear her name. Like you just, you just feel like safe and like everything's gonna be OK. sure. It as a fire all around me, but she said it's gonna be okay, so it's going to be okay. And, um, she's, she's been doing this for years. Yeah. Like it's not like she's brand new or anything. Like she gets it, she knows the process. She's helped tons and tons of doc students finish. But her main thing for me that I was, I just, I just need to know that if I look at her and I'm about to freak out or I'm just not, I'm not doing well. I know she's my cheerleader. So who are your committee or in your circle or then this process is going to be your cheerleader. I had other cheerleaders as well. I wanted to share that example because a lot of times we think that your committee has to be this rigid idea and that you can't be more intentional about how you select committee members. Now I get that like politics are real and some programs have some very strict rules, but if you can, if there is some room for you to have a cheerleader on your committee, I'm telling you, it makes a huge difference. A huge difference. Okay. The second person is a mentor. They point you in the right direction. I like to think of this person as your advisor or your chair. Now I'm gonna get to the wrestling and be like, shouldn't my chair be all these things? No, no. Your chair cannot be all things for you. They cannot, they cannot do all the things they have other people they have other other tasks they got, they got lives, they got busy schedule. You my friend are very, very, very small part of their life or what's on their plate and they can't be all things for you nor did you ever expect anyone to be all things for you. That's a lot of pressure and very unrealistic. You can't even be all things to one person. And if you are, I'm sure the way your life has looking, we need to talk, Hey girl, the ones who come in the middle of this episode and tell you about my 90 day challenge. Yes, the last 90 days. How do we finish this year strong. So if you're familiar with Rachel Hollis, she does the last 90 days challenge. And I decided to do my own version of that. And so I'm here to help all of my scholar friends make the last 90 days the best 90 days of 2019 all you had to do is come on over to the website, my vet, Lacey's dot com. Scroll all the way down to the bottom. You will see a button there for you to sign up. There should also be a button at the top of the page, but just in case you don't see it, it's there. Um, and you're, you're on a sign up and you're going to get emails. And what I'm doing is singing folks an email every week full of motivation and a challenge for them to do every week in this challenge takes no time. Like it's asking you to take an hour for yourself in listen, if you don't have it, how every day for yourself, like Rachel says, do you even have a life? So yes, that's where we, we're going to be delivered at 90 days. It's not too late to sign up. It's never too late to start going towards your dream. So please come on over to the website, sign up and let's get back to the episodes. Okay, back. So your mentor or your advisor there pointing in your right direction, you tell them like here's look, I'm a finish this dissertation and may here's my plan to do this. This is what I came up with on my on like what feedback that you have from me. And they're there to give you like advisement. Like they're there to like listen to you and very like overall big picture, here's what you need to do, here's the direction you should be going into. But they are not the ones there to like give you step by step instruction of how to get there. And this is probably one of the biggest mistakes or I don't know, misconceptions that I see with doc students with clients that they think that their chair, their advisors as opposed to sit down with them and walk them through step to step. Again, nobody has the time to do that and it's not that they don't care. Maybe I don't care, but like it's not about you personally. It's if they don't have the time to do that at tops, you should have 15 to 30 minutes with them just to tell them what it is that you're doing and them to give you the advice that you need to move forward. Again, they are not there to get into the weeds with you step by step. And if they are doing that with you, that is so much care for you and so much time and labor on their part that they don't have to. I'm going on a tangent. A lot of people think, um, they feel entitled to that their chair has to do this. Their chair needs to sit down and, and as their c