[00:00:00] Valorize is the name I'm giving to a methodology that enables visionaries, artists, change makers and culture workers to realize the unprecedented. Hi, I'm Louisa, and I know too well the inner conflict of knowing you have something. But not being sure that people will recognize the value of it and the ways it has you mixing agendas in your work.

Splitting your energy, your integrity, and your impact. My intention with this podcast is to codify this Valorize approach so you can use it in your self-led business or practice to get tuned back into your own wisdom and vision. Show up boldly. And have your unique point of view, tangibly recognized, sought after, and highly valued AKA Valorized.[00:01:00]

In this episode, I wanna invite you on a journey with me to zoom right out and have a look at your work from a wider perspective, a bird's eye view. Maybe an Artemis two level view on how does your work exist. And the reason I want to do this is because there are often questions that we don't realize we're asking and answering in a way that reduces the power, the rarity, the transformative potency of.

What is unprecedented in your work and in reducing that, you're reducing people's ability to see the value of it. So we want to zoom out and recognize that the way that your work exists to other people is something that you want to take ownership of. And. Making what is unprecedented, [00:02:00] making what is rare and unusual and changemaking about it the most visible, the most palpable as something that is number one, essential and number two.

Sometimes hard, sometimes challenging, and so I wanna give you some tools and some thinking that I'm sharing with those I'm working with to help you in, in having thoughts about your own work and how it exists and the value of it. That is going to help you convey that and articulate it and communicate it to other people and give them an experience.

That means that they can more easily say yes to it. They can more easily trust that, okay, this is something I want, this makes sense to me. I want it, I like it, I want more of it. So that's what we're doing. And the reason I want to do this is because there are some undercurrent. [00:03:00] Seismic, like tectonic plate shifts happening societally in, or, you know, in the societal context that I'm exposed in, in the global north, in the English speaking world, uh, in the media that I am consuming and in what's happening on a global scale.

Right? There is a groundswell of exhaustion and grief and uncertainty. That is part of, I think, the conditions that we're operating and, and making work in that feels important to name and to bring into this conversation. And I want to do it in a way that also gives you something to work with. So before we look at.

That zoomed out view. I want to give some context of how I want to approach this. We're talking about thinking about your work and why does that matter [00:04:00] when you are someone who is charging a path, right? Leading a way, doing work that is changing culture in some way that is challenging people's assumptions or norms, that is inviting people on a journey in which they will change.

Or having an experience that moves them, your own relationship to that work really matters. Why? Because they engage with your work often through who you are and how you are showing up and who you are being. And you being the example of the journey that you're then inviting them into being someone who just lives it, right?

So your own relationship to your work, your own thinking about it really matters because you are setting the tone, you are [00:05:00] offering thinking to them that helps contextualize your work in their own life, in their own journey. And so. If you are thinking in a way that devalues that, that suppresses and blunts hides the transformative value of what you're doing, then you prevent other people from seeing the value of it.

So your own thinking really matters much more than if you are offering a physical product, say, right. So in Flare House, which I am renaming Valorized, and I'll talk about that later of. The logic of why change the name, um, the work that we're doing, some of that work is focused on this thinking. And how do you think about your work is part of Valorizing it, it's part of inviting other people to value it.

Some of the work we [00:06:00] do in one of the skill sets I call power up is this ritual that I invite people to make a habit, like a daily irregular thing called power pose and no, it's not what you think. It's not boardroom corporate making superhero poses with your body power pose is. Asking yourself questions that presuppose a particular reality as true.

The reason for this is when you presuppose that something is true and then ask your mind questions as if it's true, it will go off. It's like prompting, right? It will go off and find all the evidence it already has that you already believe in to support that perspective. And this is an intentional way to direct your thinking and to direct which reality, which perspective you are habitually [00:07:00] reinforcing with your own attention, your own focus, and your own thoughts when you are running your own work, your own business, your own practice.

There are a lot of unknowns and risk, and we can easily relate to that risk. With the protective patterns of asking what could go wrong and asking is it worth it? And how do we protect ourselves from the risk? But running your own thing is choosing to take on those unknowns, choosing to take on challenge, but in relationship to that risk.

Where your body mind will want to go is what could go wrong, what might not work, and any self-doubt, any doubts that are habitual places that you go to. Like, am I good enough? Do I get to do this? Uh, will people accept it? Will I [00:08:00] be judged? Et cetera, et cetera. Questions that help are designed to help avoid.

Risk, avoid unknowns. And so power poses a practice to redirect your focus, redirect your thinking to what actually helps you keep moving forward and keep taking the challenge on as a positive, as a good thing, as a thing that makes your work actually work. So the questions you ask yourself, matter. And when you take up your power to direct your focus, to ask yourself questions, to prompt yourself, then you are finding so much more agency and so much more of your own choice in what you believing, what you invite other people into.

So it's a really powerful tool to know what you are. Unconsciously asking and therefore answering. And there are two questions that this tends to be some version of [00:09:00] what's in it for me. Like what's, like, what's going to, what's the good that can come from this? What's the benefit? And then the other one, what could go wrong or what's the cost and.

These are also the same questions that your people are gonna be asking about your work. What's in it for me and what could go wrong? But first I wanna focus on you and a version of this question, these questions that might be present for you without you even realizing it when you are thinking about your work and where and how does it exist in the world.

And the question of where does my work fit? And this. Question exists. I think because we are trained to look at what already exists, what is already valued, how things already work, who is the authority, and to assess what we are doing in [00:10:00] relationship to that, what is already valued, what will people think, what will people see the value?

As a measure of, is this worth putting my time and energy into? Is this gonna work? And so it operates, it creates this unconscious value system that is filtering your decisions through, right? It's like filtering your decisions about what you're doing and how, through the lens of where does it sit in relationship to what already exists.

And so this is very similar to thinking about positioning. People talk about positioning when you're thinking about starting your own business, uh, when you're thinking about attracting people to it. When you're thinking about what makes your work different. The logic on positioning is seeing products on a shelf, for example, shampoo, and what packaging and what name, and what colors, et cetera, would speak to [00:11:00] the segment of an existing market that is looking for shampoo already.

That would know it's for them or that would attract them to buy that, that shampoo, right? So that's positioning has come from that logic. It's like how does your product relate to other things that are also on the shelf? And I think of this as actually, I. Very narrow when what you're doing is not making a product to sit on a shelf that is in a category that's already very well known and that people are already looking for and there's already an existing market for it.

And instead actually what you're doing is transforming systems, offering change, offering a creative point of view, offering a unique, like lived. Experiential perspective on something that is about creating meaning and connecting with other people. Then this logic of positioning is actually unhelpful because what it does and what this question does, where does my work [00:12:00] fit, is it puts you straight away in compare and contrast.

In measure up against what already is. Take and absorb the signals and the signifiers of value as something you need to replicate or you need to consider. So that your work can fit in relationship to those things now, to translate it into what might be going on for you, and that goes on for me, goes on for people I work with.

This is the place your mind will want to go is what already exists in terms of the industry, the people, the big players, the people whose opinions are respected, whose work is successful. What are they doing that I might need to replicate in order for me to have the same result as them? Or what do, what are my peers doing?

The things that people just do? It seems to be the normal state of affairs. Like, this is just how you do it [00:13:00] and okay, how does my work fit into that? And so this positioning and this question of where does my work fit is, has a narrowing effect. It downplays the transformative power of what your work is.

That is different. That is a different paradigm, that is a different perspective, and it's inviting people to take on that different perspective because of what it does for them in their lives or what it does in culture, what it does in a sense of connection and meaning. And so. How I want to invite you to think about positioning before we go back to that question is to also consider that people are not encountering your work on a shelf in a shop they've already walked into with the intention to look for it, because sometimes what you're doing.

It is challenging what already exists. It's offering an alternative, and in offering a paradigmatic [00:14:00] change, it often, uh, doesn't have a, a, a slot, a preexisting category, a preexisting place on a shelf, but also in people's lives. We are now very familiar and acquainted with messages that have an agenda. In a feed, there is a whole mish, like a social media feed.

There is a whole m mishmash of different things, vying for attention to a degree that people in their life are attuned now to filter out, filter, filter, filter, filter. This isn't relevant, this isn't relevant. This is, move on, move on, move on. And not even take in the messages, right? So the. Thinking I wanna offer you that is different from considering positioning and how you might package and, uh, speak about and explain your [00:15:00] work is instead to consider the position it might have in someone's life.

And how might you understand your work in terms of the relevance it has? Two, the people for whom your work is for in their existing life. So positioning in their life, not on a shelf. So this question of where does my work fit? Has you deferring responsibility for how to think about your work along with it?

Probably some thoughts that they're not going to see it, they don't understand it, they won't get it. I need to convince them I need to be what they want, or I need to change what I'm doing so that they will get it. And so we hand over the responsibility of valuing our work and the value of it and the relationship to have to the work, the, the [00:16:00] thinking about your work to those imagined perspectives, imagined voices, and has you in comparison, has you trying to.

Contour and change what you're doing in order to make sense within the value systems that are already established, already operating, already known, right, already built, and therefore reducing the impact, reducing the power, reducing the differentiated like rarity of what you're doing, and therefore reducing its visibility.

So I want to offer you a different question to consciously choose to ask yourself and invite answers that come to you in order to redirect your thinking and build the type of thinking that is going to honor the value that is gonna direct your. Attention, your own energy and attention into [00:17:00] that value and therefore grow it, build it, and invite other people to see it in that way.

And that question I wanna invite you to ask instead is, how does my work meet my people in the now times? How does my work meet my people? The people who would value it? Who I'm choosing to make this for, who I would want to come into it. How does my work meet my people in the now times? So this is a way to direct your thinking, to relevance in their life, in their experience now.

Not the people who are peers who or who are big players in an industry, but rather the people for whom your work is for how do you actually put your attention in your energy, in their direction? And how do you think about your work and its meaning [00:18:00] and how it might exist as something that they want and desire in their lives in now times.

So I wanna give some food for thought in this direction because. As well as thinking about the intimate and the personal. I think we also need to think the conditions that we're in, the conditions that you are in, your work is inside of, and your people are inside of, because those conditions are. Not the same as looking at a market and looking at what already exists.

Looking at a field of work, looking at an industry and trying to work out where you fit, but rather understanding the industry's existence is something that is also temporary and that is often. A set of conditions that is beyond our control and being able to observe the, the changes in those conditions, number one, so that we can ride those changes, but also so that we can take up as much power as possible to direct [00:19:00] how we respond to those conditions in a way that is life-giving, in a way that is resisting of harmful agendas.

So if you look at the history of colonization, if you look at the history of industrialization. If you look at the geopolitical forces, all of those histories are also histories of livelihoods are histories of people and peoples whose existence their means of existence. Was dictated and controlled by people who were making decisions above their heads about their livelihoods that were designed to extract, designed to take and extract from here and take over there.

So being able to, being cognizant of that, being something that can happen that does happen, that is embedded. It's so easy to just accept this as the wallpaper and the furniture that we are in and not look at and pay attention to and pay mine [00:20:00] to the, the bigger picture and the bigger picture is worth paying attention to because it is finding where do you have choice?

Where do you have agency? And I want to draw on the work of Jasmine Bina, who speaks about what she calls the S-curve of new markets. And if you think about the letter S, if you start at the bottom, think of that as the beginning. And we dunno what we are dealing with in the beginning. It's uncertain. And things are emergent and forming.

And then as we come up, the S, it turns into the top of that curve. And that curve is, we do know things are established. Knowledge and systems are developing based on that shared reality and Jasmine's perspective is that we've spent the last two decades at the top of an S-curve, which makes so much sense to me.

If you consider what was valued in the last two [00:21:00] decades. It's expertise, it's people who could climb the system, people who developed measurable knowledge, right? The value was in optimizing for the system, performing what the system wants, being an expert in it. So if you consider our education, our workplace systems have been designed.

For that trajectory of success, right? Being valued and recognized by how well you build upon pre-established ideas, perspectives, knowledge and systems, and fit within that. So if you are someone who is offering work that challenges any kind of norm, any kind of system, any kind of received thinking, it's probably because your experience of those systems and that top of the S-curve and what's been established.

Has been negative in some way, right? Or you have felt at odds with it not fit within it, [00:22:00] or have felt an ethical stress in participating in it because of the ways that you recognize what doesn't work. And so your experience will have been one of challenge, finding that hard, not feeling valued, having things to bring to the table that didn't have a place.

Right. So that may explain some of why, this question of where does my work fit? How do I make success when I can't do it that way or don't want to? Creates self-doubt in you, creates the sense. Okay. There's something you want to realize. There are things that you value creating, and yet you're also holding back with the assumption, the learned assumption from how things have felt.

That it won't be valued. It won't be seen. It won't be recognized. And what Jasmine is saying is that because of what is collapsing [00:23:00] in those systems, in shared meaning in knowledge. And ideas that we are entering what she calls an age of potency. In other words, the beginning of a new S-curve, age of potency, if you think potent, like concentrated potential, and her thinking is that we are newly in a type of cultural vacuum that appears when sources of meaning shared meaning disappear.

And this is when I got excited about her work. She talks about vacuums being generative spaces, which was the focus of my work as an artist for so long. I've spent a lot of time thinking about dark matter absence, abjected bodies as these projecting spaces that we fill up with imagination, either fear or D desire or unmet needs.

And so likewise, Jasmine says, A vacuum invites new meaning to emerge, and she speaks about three big vacuums right now. Three [00:24:00] pillars that society, and I think this is really a global north perspective, but the, the society in the global north rests on that have given way, like sinkholes, number one is work.

And the idea that labor no longer equals reward. You think about AI and the reshuffling and complete reorganization that is happening in our relationship to labor, especially labor that can be delegated to an artificial intelligence system or an LLM. If you think about labor does not any more equal reward.

There is a different relationship that we have too. Working another vacuum being trust, the degree of distrust we have in governments, corporations, institutions, but also the degree of disconnection that we have. We're all operating in these bubbles and these separate realities because we're, we are consuming different information.

And then the third one being time. Jasmine talks about this [00:25:00] eternal now, the disconnection from seasons and rhythms and cycles. And the feeling of the world always being on, on, on, on, on, on. And so her conclusion is, yeah, we're in the beginning of a new S-curve. How I would put it is there's no longer a solid shared reality to rest on and trust and believe in, and therefore people are looking for things to believe in.

People are looking for spaces to play with and generate new meaning. Places that offer permission and parameters in which we can experience trust or intimacy or connection. And that we can feel deep emotion. And so what work you might be creating that has come out of your own interaction with the last couple of decades of, of how we think about the value of work and knowledge and meaning.

So if your lived reality was that the way things [00:26:00] have been and the systems that we've been in don't really work, oh, I haven't worked for you, then. What Jasmine is describing is a new market for what's coming. You've already been operating from that knowing from that place, you already knew it in your body.

And in fact, if you've chosen to create alternatives to offer something different, to challenge existing norms, to invite people on a journey where they're undoing and unpacking, and unlearning, then you are already ahead of that curve and you have already begun a livelihood. That is ahead of the curve and Jasmine's work for me points to the way in which the desire for alternatives to our existing systems is becoming very mainstream and about to get very mainstream over the next decade.

So for example, if your work helps people feel, if it facilitates people's changing attitudes, changing relationships [00:27:00] change in any way, if your work is modeling. New social norms, if it's giving space for grief, voice to anger. If it is sharing perspectives that haven't had a voice in the mainstream previously, if your work builds bridges or is is coming from a hybrid perspective between.

Cultures between different realities. If you are weaving new ways of being together, if people immerse in something new or something that is a space of intimacy. If you're doing something that is about redesigning about different responsibilities, about collective agency, if you are re narrating and building new stories, if you are using mythic poetics, meaning making sense, making world making.

If your work foregrounds what the body knows, somatics embodied knowledge is, if you're using play experimentation, [00:28:00] improvisation, this is work that is meeting people in this meaning collapse, that is meeting people in this vacuum and offering them what they are needing is offering an answer to. What people are feeling right now, which isn't a desire for polished and professional and like fixed reality.

It's highly creative. It's highly responsive. It's felt, it's connective, it's internally directed because those external coordinates aren't there. So all of this for me is pointing to the emergence and formation of. New systems of how people organize together, how people live, how work exists, how resources flow.

And I feel like there have been pockets of people who've been talking about emergence for a long time. People who've been talking about PL reversal ways of being for a long time of world making, but now the iron is hot. We get to shape [00:29:00] it now. This is the moment in which your work has a degree of market compatibility for what's coming that I want to invite you to consider that you could make the most of that.

This is an opportunity, this is your moment, and so don't mistake it. This is your time. I don't mean just to profit, to actually be part of. Creating the new systems that are going to underpin what people are valuing and why. So just like trying to work out where you fit in a market reduces your thinking, your understanding of the value of what you do.

If you let the market decide, it will always devalue what is life giving. So I want to invite you to take up a position in the way that things are being reshaped, in the fact that. New systems are being organized [00:30:00] from the ground up and to take up your space in that, to shape it for people and what is life giving over and above profit.

So that's the zoomed out picture. Thank you Jasmine, whose work I've heavily borrowed there to talk it through. Now I want to bring it down into how do you actually apply this? When you know that the space is opening up for people to really understand and want what you are doing, how do you create the conditions and the context for them to make sense of it so that they can trust going forward with you?

And this is why, again, the way that you think about your work is part of. People recognizing the value of it because you are going to have to offer them thinking. That gives context that you are [00:31:00] literally going to have to offer. Thinking that builds the shelf, builds a new shelf, builds a new category, like it's not shampoo.

It's something that didn't exist before. So that thinking, it's not something that you do by yourself, it's something to be done in relationship to the people that your work is for. Why? Because two things. Number one, you need to know what context they need to be able to place and position. Your work in their life, how is it relevant?

What does it mean to me? What is it offering me? Why might I want it? That means you are going to have to spend more time honing the skill to be able to offer that thinking and that context to locate them in the journey that in, in their own lives, but also the journey that you are inviting them. [00:32:00] Into and why it matters now, why it's relevant now, but also to offer people an experience of it ahead of them saying yes ahead of them.

Um, really understanding, right? Because explaining is only gonna get you so far. If I explain shampoo, I can tell you what hair type it's for, whether it's to create volume or shine. I can tell you what type of ingredients it has. I can tell you whether it's got argon oil or macadamia. I can explain it and then people will get it With what you're doing.

There is a different way that to. Create an understanding in people and, uh, a way for them to trust it, which is giving them an experience, but then also creating the thinking. Think of it like an architecture, like a thought architecture, a structure that you offer that locates that experience and the meaning in a particular [00:33:00] way that is relevant to them in their own lives.

And so. How you come up with that thinking is through your own connection to those people. You need to in yourself, be experiencing connection to them. And one way to think about that is you are building a unique universe, a body of work, a world that people can enter into a world of thinking a, a perspective that is fleshed out, that people can experience, that they can try on.

So that it's like trying on your perspective, trying on your point of view and experiencing how that feels. Experiencing what changes for them when they look at the world or themselves through that lens. What is that like? And the more you build that world, the more that you are realizing your point of view tangibly, the more it becomes easy and obvious for people to say yes.

So there's a bigger part of your work in building that world. And [00:34:00] so that can look like having a place where your thoughts go and people can go down rabbit holes and be inside of that thinking and really spend time with. And then that they themselves are building a relationship with that work and are also building upon your work.

And so then the impact that your work is having starts to have all of these ripple effects where your perspective is then taken on by people as a reality that they trust as something that they want to live inside of and be with. Like when I record this podcast, it's just me sitting in a room, but how I do it is by imagining you and connecting to you in my body, in my heart, in my mind.

Thinking about where you are, thinking about what you're focused on, how I can help contextualize your journey in a way that is [00:35:00] useful, and that also helps you understand why you might want to engage with my work, what my work might offer you in that journey. Whether you decide to say yes to it or not, my connection to you.

Enables me to reveal to you what it is, why it might be useful, what the value might be, and it also enables you to then make a decision. And what am I doing? I'm offering you an experience ahead of time. I'm offering you an immersive experience of my work, of my thinking. Through this podcast to help you understand what that might be like.

Right. What might it be like to work with me? Obviously it's not the same because we're not on a call together right now, you and me, but in hearing my voice, you hear some of the body-based contextual stuff that helps you know if I'm your person, right? So. The [00:36:00] relevance, the meaning that your work has in the lives of your people is something to generate through your own connection to them as well as, and at the same time as your connection to your own desires for what you want to create in the world.

Like, why are you doing this? Why does it matter for you? And so the thinking that you develop, the focus of your mind, the questions that you are answering for yourself, and therefore the questions that you are answering for your people are where so much of this work takes place. And so this is why there is a high degree of self-leadership involved because.

You need to know what do you actually value creating and for who and why, and why does it matter to you and why now? So that you know who you are connecting to and who you're speaking to, and who you're inviting in and [00:37:00] spending your time. There is much, much, much more valuable and generative of you building value in what you're doing.

Then looking at what already exists and trying to figure out what will work and what do people already value, and where does my work fit? And comparing your work to other people's. I hope you see the difference. And so the first person that you're serving with your work is you, and then the second person is specifically who it's for.

The temptation will be that your past experiences of work education systems that were in social norms will direct your focus to trying to be what's expected, what's already been valued, what was rewarded, and I want to invite you to. Put in the driving seat of your work. The desire that you have for what you are wanting to do, that actually gives you the most meaning [00:38:00] and therefore the most energy, and therefore the ingredients that will invite other people to value it too.

If your focus is on where might your work fit in what already exists, it will have you holding back from offering the thing that is really the, the core value of your work. It will have you second guessing and not going full tilt. It will have you trying to make it look like what is supposed to be what is expected, and it ultimately will have you devaluing the thing.

That people need. People need right now. People are flailing, people are scared, people are grieving and people are lost. And when you meet them there and you show them away with your work, you get to be a lighthouse for them in the dark. You get to offer them something that could reconnect them to parts of themselves that could change the trajectory of the rest of their life, and there is no way to quantify that.

So [00:39:00] measuring it against what someone else is doing is not useful. You know what you do has meaning. If you know it's working, if you know it changes people's sense of who they are and what's possible, then you know enough to get it out into the world and have it seen if you know that you're holding back.

This is a lot of the work that we do. Inside what I'm calling Valorized Flare House was a name that came out of the law, the mythology I'd built around solar systems. It's the name of my business and the idea of being a solar flare, even if you're systemically eclipsed the. Beams of disruptive frequencies could still arrive on earth and change things, and that mythology still stands, pulling things out of the dark.

The [00:40:00] generative nature of absence of what is hidden, what is concealed and what is opaque is still very useful. But what I've found in. The last few months is when people email me to ask me about Flair House. They call it Valorized. And so here is evidence of giving you of the conversation and being with your people can illuminate what helps them to.

Make sense of where they are and the the position that your work has in their lives. And so Valorized is clearer, it's simpler, it describes where we are going, and so Flare House is going to be called Valorized. And so yeah, this is a lot of the work that we do inside Valorized. Developing that thinking, developing that belief, and developing that connection to the people who will value your work and can see it and get it and don't [00:41:00] need convincing.

They just need to experience it a little bit ahead of time. If you know someone who could benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with them, and I'll talk to you on the next one.