(click the pics, to big the pics)
April’s MKE Creatives at Anodyne Coffee was a pretty interesting one. We had in attendance: a CPA for small businesses and wealth management, a voice-over actor/audio engineer/board member of Optimist Theatre, an activist graphic-novelist/artist, a travel writer, a storyteller/actor/Ren Faire performer, a photographer, and a visual/video artist.
Our presenter was Mark Bradford. He’s been a longtime-attendee of MKE Creatives, and is a gent of many passions. While he mainly works in web development and IT support for small businesses, he’s also created an online dating website, a puzzle site, has started writing fiction, makes YouTube videos, and oh yeah, created a Theoretical Bank in order to reverse-engineer how banks work (and it was so convincing, the fake-bank was attacked by foreign hackers who thought it was a real online bank). His latest effort is a coaching program, to help people find better balance in life.
Living as a single parent and working as a self-employed creative, Mark has given a LOT of thought to the whole life/work balance concept. In this thinking, he concluded that we all have three things to work with, to accomplish what we want. Those three things are Time, Energy, and Resources.
(by the way, Mark’s presentation included lots of great visual aids that included Yoda, Gandhi, and the “Creep-o-Meter”)
So, once Mark decided what we use to attain goals in life, he broke our activities into five “aspects” that he felt they could all fall into. Activities were either for purposes of Spirituality, Rejuvenation, Health, Learn, Productivity/Obligation. He also concluded that, while many of us >want< to manage our lives better, we aren’t that good at doing it on our own, which is why he included a coaching aspect in his program. Combining Time/Energy/Resources with his Five Aspects, Mark came up with the website, AlchemyFor.Life
Alchemy For Life combines self-determined goals with a video-coaching interface. This way, people can keep track of themselves and their goals, and what they’re doing to achieve them! Mark doesn’t see his coaching as “telling people what they should do”, as much as just being a “spotter” for someone working to advance themselves.
To find out more about Mark’s coaching, check out his site HERE. And, if your business needs some IT support, check that out HERE. And, if you want to try a new idea in online dating, click HERE.
