PP 003: In the Words of Walt Disney, “Keep Moving Forward”

As a mom of five children, I can’t tell you how many movies I’ve watched in the past 14 years. I CAN tell you, however, that it never ceases to amaze me how many life lessons even I can learn from these movies.

Cars taught me lessons about relationship building and valuing your tribe… Monsters, Inc. reminded me that laughter is a powerful source of energy (for the soul!)… And Meet the Robinsons taught me a favorite quote of Walt Disney’s which I am going to discuss in today’s episode…

Keep Moving Forward.

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In today’s episode I’m going to reference a Disney movie that I’ve watched quite a few times with my kids, Meet the Robinsons, because I love the quote in there…

“Keep moving forward.”

So as we’re building our business, many times there are little stumbling blocks that we run into.

Sometimes they feel like speed bumps. Sometimes they are more like brick walls and we just don’t know how we’re going to get around them.

But it’s our responsibility as an entrepreneur, and as a small business owner, to keep a positive outlook and keep moving forward.

I want to give you one of my favorite examples, and also one of the most embarrassing examples, from my own business, on how I kept moving forward despite a little glitch.

In the fall of 2012. I rediscovered Elance. I had found it a couple of years prior, and I started submitting proposals to just about every virtual assistant position I could find. Within a couple days, I had a response from a gentleman in Canada who wanted to have a Skype interview with me.

I have to admit that, even though it was 2012 I really wasn’t familiar with Skype. I didn’t realize you could do an audio-only call. I thought you always had to have video.

And at that time we were living in a townhouse apartment and my office was on one wall in the living room. Now there weren’t a lot of rooms in here so the living room was our primary living space. So, Dave, my husband, and I made sure that everything within sight of the camera was out of view and just right for when I got on my call.

The call started, and as it turned out he wasn’t expecting to have a video call but was happy to have a face-to-face conversation. The gentleman that I was interviewing was one that seemed to like monologues. He was a very nice gentleman but what I mean by that is that he’d liked to talk… and talk and talk and talk… and he didn’t really ask me for much input. He just wanted to state what his project was about. I would have to say the whole conversation, primarily one-sided, lasted for an hour to an hour and a half.

The call was going well and was about halfway through, when I saw, in the little window that showed me my picture, my two cats – one male and one female – walk into the living room and plop down in the middle of the living room floor.  As I said there was one male and one female, and in my recollection, I believe one was fixed and one was not. I can’t tell you which was which, but we didn’t worry about having kittens.

But let me just tell you, that there, right above my shoulder in clear view of the Skype call, these two cats went at it right in the middle of the living room floor. And when I say went at it, I do not mean fighting.

I don’t know if you’re listening in the car with kids so I’m not going to give too many details, but I think you get what I’m saying.

Dave was sitting right next to me out of view and I tapped his leg. He looked over and I pointed at the screen, and we looked at each other just mortified like, “What do we do?!”

You know? We can’t stop. I couldn’t stop the interview and say, “Hold on. I need to stop my cats. I know you can see ’em if you look at the camera. But… thank goodness you’re not looking at the camera.”

So Dave just very gently pushed my leg down and basically just gave me the cue with a nod of the head of, “Stay here. Don’t bring any attention to it, and keep on going.”

Well, it worked out. The cats… did their business… and left the screen.

The gentleman kept on talking, asked a few questions and I gave my responses, and wouldn’t you know it, that was the first project I ever won a contract for in the business.

Keep Moving Forward, the show must go on, and all that jazz

This isn’t going to be a terribly long episode today but I just wanted to share this story with you because it’s such an important reminder that no matter how big or how small the obstacle or the humiliation, the embarrassing moment, the flop of your launch… However big or small that little downfall is, you can always keep moving forward.

Don’t worry about any e-mails that went out with typos. Don’t worry if you use cut and paste to send the same message to numerous people and forgot to change the names.

Yes, I’ve done that a few times.

It’s OK we’re not perfect.

The name of the game is positive productivity – or at least that’s my game anyway – and I invite you to join it with me.

Let’s play the best game that we can, keep our chins high and keep moving forward.

If you know somebody who could use a laugh and would appreciate the story of the cats going at it during the middle of an interview, please share this podcast. I’d love your ratings and reviews, and if you want, head over to thekimsutton.com/podcast and leave a comment.

Your feedback and your questions are always appreciated.

This podcast is as much for you as it is for me.

And with that, please go out and have the most positively productive day possible.

Resources

Meet the Robinsons