How You Get the Puttylike Snowball Effect

I’ve been hit by snowballs that felt like a ten ton truck.

I’ve also found that getting hit with the right snowball can be one of the best things in the world.

The difference is in how far and fast it travels, the trajectory, and whether or not it’s expected.

Growing up, snowballs chucked by your friends, brother, or sister probably hurt. But the most recent snowball to smack me in the face created one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.

And it hit me in the dead of summer.

Are you itching to get what I call “The Puttylike Snowball Effect?”

Read on and learn which snowballs you should dodge and which ones you should run into.

It started so innocently

It was a day like any other.

I was reading blogs and clicking the occasional link that seemed interesting. As I clicked one link in particular, I thought to myself, “What’s a Puttylike?”

In a matter of minutes, I understood a Puttylike wasn’t a thing, but rather a state of being.

So I did what I sometimes do when I stumble across someone amazing giving their best stuff away for free. I subscribed to Emilie’s RSS feed and, starting from her first post, read two years of content in two days.

I kept reading every new post until a comment contest was announced to win a lifetime membership to The Puttytribe. And with a concise and apparently well-worded comment, I was chosen among many deserving people as a winner of the contest.

I knew little of what to expect as the gates of The Puttytribe swung open for me. Then I gazed inside and…

Ta-Dow!

I’m pretty sure I verbally exclaimed “Boo-yah!” after my first few minutes exploring The Puttytribe. There were so many interesting people whose profiles I wanted to view, blogs I wanted to read, and huddles I wanted to attend. And everyone’s shockingly high level of engagement was contagious as I threw myself fully into the beautiful mix.

Don’t ask me how or why (ask Shanna Mann and Ethan Waldman), but inside the tribe, I caught the attention of some folks who thought I’d be a good fit for a blog commenting “cartel.” When Shanna asked me to join in May, I happily accepted.

Little did I know that what was once a tiny snowball—starting with a link on a blog—was growing big enough to make a snowman.

The plot thickens

In June, the inspiring Denise Urena posted a message in our cartel forums. She wondered if we could expand the cartel’s scope to periodically chat as a group, offer feedback, discuss goals, and exchange insight.

Everyone seemed on board until I came along to muddy the waters. I told them I was all about collaboration, but some guidelines around the who, what, when, where, and why might make our periodic video chats better.

What can I say. Defining guidelines is a character flaw of mine.

I wanted to know if this was going to be part mastermind, part Puttytribe huddle, or something else I could wrap my noggin around. After much expectation setting, the “Inaugural Cartel Mastermind” was scheduled over Google Hangouts at the end of July.

I moderated the two hour call (because that’s what former corporate project managers do) and even took meeting minutes so we could agree on what just emerged.

And what emerged?

A handful of members of The Puttytribe—originally inspired to join by the content and community at Puttylike—came together to form an amazing lifeline group (it’s a Keith Ferrazzi thing).

Ever since then, five of us gather online for two hours every other week to embody the spirit of The Puttytribe:

Support and Inspiration for Serious Multipotentialites.

And the generosity, candor, freedom to be vulnerable, and accountability to each other continues to snowball.

This is the power of The Puttylike Snowball Effect.

It has given me a gift I couldn’t imagine receiving so soon after leaving my corporate gig. And that would be an intense feeling of belonging.

It’s not just belonging to a lifeline group that helps me achieve personal and professional goals that would otherwise be pipe dreams.

It’s also belonging to a community of scanners on Puttylike and The Puttytribe who “get me” and my crazy pursuits. Without The Puttylike Snowball Effect from the past six months, my personal renaissance might have slowed down.

But the opposite has happened. My confidence toolbox gets a new toy all the time. And I shift from beginner mode into “Hey, I actually know what the hell I’m doing” mode much faster as a result.

Stepping back

Your chances of getting hit with your own multipotentialite snowball increases as you become more collaborative with this community. That means leaving comments on posts like this. Or hitting the reply button on the emails Emilie sends to her Puttylike newsletter community.

Your snowball will look different than mine and may still be too small to notice. But if you see someone throwing a ball of white multipotentialite awesomeness your way, don’t duck.

Engage and branch out. Because you never know when something can snowball into a life changing sequence of beautiful and unexpected events.

Your Turn

Have you been hit by the Puttylike snowball? How has interacting with other multipotentialites changed your life?