Time Spent in Recce is Seldom Wasted

“Recce” is a military term, short for reconnaissance, and basically means exploring the paths you might take without committing too much energy or investing a lot of money and other resources to help you make an educated guess on how you may choose to achieve your goals.

One of my dreams when starting my business was to deliver training to help people reach their goals. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do this, so I spent a LOT of time in Recce mode. I grew my network, met and collaborated on a variety of projects, all the while building up my business savvy.

Last year, I decided to expand my business by offering online courses. To set the conditions for success to deliver content to a wider audience, I did an in depth Recce. I reached out to people in my network and asked for advice. I started with learning about how to make my content as accessible as possible, because Inclusion Diversity Equity and Accessibility (IDEA) are all very important to me. And quite frankly much of the online content readily available is NOT that accessible, which creates an opportunity for my business!

In 2020, I hired Two Canes Consulting. After doing a website audit, and making the Empowered Path website more accessible, Sarina Cormier and Natalie Minnema taught me how to create more accessible online content. Then, I asked them to research and complete user testing on potential platforms.

In early 2021, I participated in a WE CAN Project at Queens University six-week eCommerce coaching course delivered by Dionne Baker of Shop Boss Secrets. She helped me realize the most effective path to delivering online content was through a host site, also known as a marketplace.

I realized that to do this right, I needed to invest in getting help with the things that I’m neither good at, nor enjoy doing. I reached out to the Friendly Forces in my network again. “Friendly Forces” is a military term, that basically means, the people who are likely to be on your side, that you can count on to help you out in a tough spot.

Penny Olorenshaw, from Build Marketing helped me create an email marketing plan, made more improvements to my website, and helped build the Empowered Path courses site.

In 2020, I took Smartphone Video Formula courses in person and online with Aaron and Angela Bell. They helped me realize I could record lessons on my phone if I wanted to. I asked Aaron for a referral for video editors. Playing around trying to edit videos on my own was fun, but ultimately not my strength.

I love learning, when I invested in the Pro + Growth Thinkific package, I took the training offered to learn how to set up the paid course I’ll be launching this spring. One of the first pieces of advice they shared is to offer a free mini course to let people know who you are and what your training is like.

My immediate reaction was to feel sick to my stomach, because any time I record video with no live audience I do a terrible job! A few days later I woke up at 430 am and thought to myself, you have everything you need to upload a free mini course! A few minutes later I was at my desk outlining my first course.

For fun I’d set up my smartphone next to my laptop moments before I delivered the “Networking: Identifying and Connecting with Friendly Forces” session on April 20, 2021 to a live audience of over 100 serving military members, their spouses and others who support people transitioning to life beyond the military.

I’ll admit that the top of my head is not always onscreen, and I rarely make eye contact with my phone. In spite of that, when I watched the edited videos, I thought to myself “Yes! That’s the energy I bring when speaking with a live audience, even when I can’t see them.”

I reached out to the Friendly Forces team I’ve been connecting with to help me put together the paid courses and said, let’s do a test run with this free mini-course. I’m grateful to Jackie Bell and Taylor Bell from Gorgeous Edits for the fabulous work they did creating the short videos for my first publicly available online course.

I invite you to do a Recce to learn more about the free “Networking: Identifying and Connecting with Friendly Forces” course by clicking here.