EP48_Mapping Your Mind

Juliana Khalil 00:00

When you think about something and always believe in positive energy, and whatever you visualize, you will be able to materialize.

Evan Le Clus 00:07

Hello, you were listening to the debt scale show with me, Evan

Warsha Joshi 00:12

And me, Warsha. This show is about all things scaling, scaling your business, your journey and you.

Evan Le Clus 00:21

You are here because you dare to dream, dead to dream big. So, sit back and enjoy the conversation, or perhaps even join in. Welcome to another episode of the Dare to Scale show today is an absolute treat. Why is it a treat? I use a little bit of mind mapping. So that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. I don’t use it a lot. But when I do, I do find it obviously very, very useful. Now. We have a longtime friend of Dare to Scale on the show today. And she is the leading regional expert and trainer in mind mapping. She is a Tony BuzaZn licensed instructor. She’s amazing in the sense that she’s got Arabic and English and worked with mind mapping all over the shop. Today it is my absolute pleasure to welcome Juliana Khalil on to the show. Welcome, Juliana.

Juliana Khalil 01:17

Thank you so much for this great introduction, Evan, I’m so grateful to be on the show with you today.

Evan Le Clus 01:23

Of course, I can show off a little bit of my Arabic. So it’s actually wonderful to have you here Juliana. You’ve been doing mind mapping for some time, if I remember rightly. How long have you sort of been doing that? And what got you into that line?

Juliana Khalil 01:40

Yes, exactly. In April 2017, I became Tony Buzan licensed instructor in mind mapping. So, what got me there, I decided to jump into entrepreneurship and I was looking for something that makes things unique. And when you think about something and always believe in positive energy, and to whatever you visualize, you will be able to materialize because I was thinking about mind mapping. And I used to listen to a lot about Tony Buzan and I attended a few workshops here in Dubai about mind mapping, I was looking how to become a Tony Buzan licensed instructor. And this is what I said I was able to materialize what I wanted to do. And 2017, I had the chance to become a Tony Buzan instructor here in Dubai. And since then I kept on renewing my license till date. And I took this license into action. So I developed many product by using mind mapping. And I started to train people, and it affected my life in a very, very positive way.

Evan Le Clus 02:43

Okay, that’s amazing. I know. Four weeks ago, I think it was the episode I did, the Dare to Scale episode I did by myself. I remember I was sort of doodling and thought, oh, there’s an idea. And there’s another one. And I actually sort of made a mini mind map. And I thought, well, that there you go. There’s a nice flow. So how does it work like between languages? It doesn’t matter that the Mind Map Works perfectly well.

Juliana Khalil 03:06

Yes, of course, it works perfectly well with languages. Can you elaborate me more? Yeah.

Evan Le Clus 03:14

You’ve definitely done something for I think it was conversational Arabic, I think you were saying Yeah, exactly.

Juliana Khalil 03:18

This is what I keep telling my customers. And because this product is becoming very famous product. I am native Arabic speaker, I’m from Lebanon, I speak Arabic. And with the idea of mind mapping, I decided to create a combination between mind mapping and the language because at the end of the day, the brain likes Association. And because my mapping can help you to associate the information easily. So this is where I was able to connect this information from the Arabic language versus the mind mapping and came up with the solution. I keep telling my customers language is a like puzzle, you have to put all the elements together to be able to form a sentence. I am not here to help people memorizing things, but I help them to understand the structure of the language by putting all the elements together to be able to form a sentence. So the structure is typically similar to any language. If you take this structure, and you apply it in any language, if tomorrow you decide to you will decide to learn Spanish or Chinese or Hindi or whatever, you need structure. So this is how my mapping helps. It helps with the structure. And trust me with the time I learned a lot from my customer. They kept telling me Juliana, you made it very easy. I told them, I didn’t do anything. I put the information of Arabic with mind mapping and I came up with solution. I’m not the one who created Arabic. I am not the one who created how our brain function but I put them together and came up with this solution.

Evan Le Clus 04:52

Love it. I love it. And you mentioned something quite important. So in terms of sort of what what mind maps are it’s a matter of getting the end information out of your head and onto paper. Exactly. So I think you the wonderful expression you use before it’s decluttering your mind. So how does that sort of work?

Juliana Khalil 05:09

Yeah, I just want to tell you something, how many times you haven’t as an entrepreneur, say to yourself, Oh, my God, I have so many things in my mind. And I don’t know from where to start, right? When you say something like this, and you don’t know from where to start, and I apply my mapping to my daily life. Yes, this is what I say my map helps to declutter your mind. So you can see everything on one paper. So if you have many tasks to do on a day to day basis as entrepreneur, you can declutter your mind and can start seeing bigger picture and you can start seeing which one is more important at this time. What is more important now, for me today? Is it as entrepreneur to generate more sales? Or is it to develop more content, or to talk to my lead? What is more important for me today to help my company growing, because at the end of the day, you have to grow your business, the company, you have to grow the business SME or solo entrepreneur for whatever you have to grow. So the moment you start seeing, where is your where is the focus, where you have to focus more today, on a day to day basis, you put your energy and as I told you, in the beginning, I believe a lot in energy and where your focus is your energy will flow. If I am focusing today on generating more leads, I will start focusing on how can I generate more leads, and my brain will start helping me old visionary lead, I need to focus on social media, I need to do this, I need to do that.

Evan Le Clus 06:48

I get it, I get it. So tell me the sort of the structure of a mind map? I know it sort of starts with an idea or something in the middle, right? And then how to, because there’s branches. So how does that work?

Juliana Khalil 06:57

Yes, yes, it just starts with idea you can put the idea in the middle and you can start branching out what branching out one idea by idea for example, I will give you example, if I want to do for example, a business plan about my company, I will start the name of my company in the middle. And I will start to say the title of the mindmap will be business plan and in the middle is my company. Okay, so what is business plan? I will start asking myself, what is business plan? Okay, business plan, I have to start thinking about the first branch, which is, for example, my vision, okay, efficient of my company. Okay, what is the vision of my company, so I will branch out another subdivision about the vision of my company, which has to be in one word, not more than one word will explain in during the show about the power of words. So the second branch that say, it has to be the mission of my company. So I will put the mission of my company. The third branch will be products, what are the product what I’m selling? product?

Evan Le Clus 08:08

So then you just branch out the ideas in like a spiderweb, if you will, your following train of thought, branching down as you need. Yeah, that’s amazing. Because I know, we were working. When we wrote the data scale book, it essentially was a mind map, if I think about it now. So we had the book. And then there were essentially the the chapters. And then there were the sort of sub titles or the sub branches of each chapter, and then a few more ideas. So now I see exactly what that is so amazing, right? So it’s decluttering your mind getting it all onto paper question for you. Which is better, in your opinion, using pen and paper or software.

Juliana Khalil 08:48

Both of them are important. And they’re on a day to day basis. If I don’t have access to my software, I write on the paper. And I always use the stand with four colors. You know, this pen, I always carry one, the pen is four colors. So I can quickly do my mind map. This is one but if you want to take in a professional way, you have a presentation, you’re going for a meeting, you want to do your proposal, of course you need the software. So I use both on a personal level on a day to day basis. Now I don’t go to the to the software and I draw the mindmap No, I do it on by hand. But for my content for my proposals for my profile, everything is already mindmap software because you know the look and it will show it’s very professionally

Evan Le Clus 09:37

done. And of course, of course, I mean, I like the because I know I prefer working with pen and paper, despite all the modern convenience of a computer and the power of the mobile phone in our hand. To me there’s more of a connection when you’re actually writing and it just helps to clarify in my mind anyway, it helps to clarify the thoughts. I can see that the power of the mind map to actually do that. Absolutely amazing. So there are many applications, sort of getting your thoughts on paper and going to putting a strategy together, whatever it is that I said, any number of ways you can you can actually use a mind map. I bet you over the years, you’ve actually come up with some absolutely amazing tips for entrepreneurs. Can you maybe give us a few of the most powerful tips that entrepreneurs can take away today? People listening to the show, take away today and actually apply it immediately?

Juliana Khalil 10:27

Yes. So as I said, first, the entrepreneur everyday has to declutter his mind or her mind. So using mind mapping will help to declutter, okay, to declutter to see things on paper, for entrepreneur for day to day tasks, they can put day to day tasks, and they can see the bigger picture what I have to do, where I have to focus, how can I manage my day to day life, my day to day business life or business life or daily life daily tasks. So as I said, decluttering business at a personal tasks on a day to day basis, not, it can be taken in a mind mapping way, because instead of taking them linear, you can take them in a mind mapping Bay, because it will store in the long term memory. For example, it can be used for taking information from outside to inside what I mean, for example, you as an entrepreneur, if you read a book, for example, one of the book, let’s say Think and Grow Rich, okay, this information can be mapped. So the information can be mind map to have a bigger picture. And this might map can be used for speech, for engaging with audience or for engaging with employees if you want to engage with employees regarding this content. Fifth is the opposite side, if I am an entrepreneur, I want to create idea like you just mentioned. So mind mapping can help you to start up with an idea. This idea can be for example, opening up a new business, growing the business creating new products, whatever. So as I said, the Mind Map Works on two areas in and out. So in from information to mind map out from Mind Map to information. So those are the five tips that I can, at a personal level, I haven’t I use them on a day to day basis.

Evan Le Clus 12:28

That’s amazing. And I mean, in terms of that, going back to I think is your fourth tip. So the outside in something like a book and a book summary, that definitely makes a lot of sense. And with the branching, I suppose it’s possible, you can then link ideas like across the page kind of thing. So you can see where the linkages work. And you can see it more.

Juliana Khalil 12:49

Exactly. Yeah. Amazing. So as you can create the first page, and each branch can be segregated into other pages, you know what I mean? So the first domain

Evan Le Clus 13:00

comm sort of,

Juliana Khalil 13:02

yeah, because each branch can be another mind map itself by itself. Like you read a book, you made the summary, full summary of the book in one page, but you want to go deep in each branch, okay, so each branch can be divided into another full mindmap. So simply because mindmap 11 is a picture typically similar to the brain cell, and our brain likes to take information into, in picture, the brain doesn’t like the information to be linear. And remember, linear will limited the way of thinking. But when you start putting branching out, trust me, I believe in such a small brain that can help us create magic. So the brain will start asking you questions, or how can I do this? What can I do? Who will do that? You start thinking out of the box by using mind mapping. It’s fantastic. Yeah, of course,

Evan Le Clus 14:00

I love that. What I’m hearing and again, the more I think about this, it really makes sense. It’s a very good, strong way of actually connecting the dots. Because with ideas on paper and having it visual, makes the world of difference. When I know I’m a slightly unusual sort of finance person, because I think in terms of pictures, people look at me funny. It’s like we’re just supposed to be numbers, and numbers I can do, but I prefer pictures. And the idea of a mind map and as you’ve been alluding to, connecting the dots is so much easier with the picture.

Juliana Khalil 14:32

Yeah, Evan, you reminded me something because you said you’re a finance person and you like numbers. Okay, but you know, that divided into two parts, the left side of the brain versus the right side of the left side of the brain is responsible of everything related to numbers. So you know, when you are doing all your calculations, using the left side of the right side of the brain is responsible of everything graphics and colors and music, but you know that By using mind mapping, you are putting your brain in something called metacognition, which means you are using both sides of the brain, because you are using the left side versus the right side a little bit from the left side a little bit from the right side, which puts the brain in something called metacognition, which means the brain cells are active in both sides, versus keeping them in one side. And you as a finance person, you know, numbers are very difficult to so many people to be absorbed. Right? You agree with me, it can be it, yeah. But once you will start putting them in a big picture in a mind mapping with a lot of colors. So everyone will understand your language. Because sometimes as an entrepreneur, we think that everyone can understand if I am a finance director, or I am a accountant, I expect that people will understand what I’m talking but this is not the case.

Evan Le Clus 15:53

I’ve learned that one when in my corporate life. It’s very interesting. And look, I mean, I remember, wow, this goes back a long way. I remember somebody saying one time, and it was a speaker, and they said, you know, most people think in terms of pictures, that’s fine. And he said, If I were to say, spelled the letters t A p, I said most people would picture a tap or faucet. And he said, like 3% of people would actually see the letters T AP, right, those are very hardcore, left brain sort of people. And I thought that’s interesting. So I’m definitely not sort of hardcore like that, I definitely see a picture of a tap. But the funniest thing this person said was, some of you will actually see a tap and some of your beverages a little bit bent out of shape. So maybe you’ll see a dripping tap, you know, kind of thing, but it was it was sort of funny. But that’s really interesting. So connecting the dots with a picture getting the left and the right brain to work together. And in terms of that, what next Where does mindmapping go from there?

Juliana Khalil 16:50

Go from there. As a person is if you are using my bank, you will become more creative, more creative, and you come up with ideas now, tell me Evan, who’s the assets of a company, the people know exactly. If the person is very creative person, you think he will not be productive person and coming with ideas, and coming up with new new things to be implemented in the company versus a person who will follow what is the company is providing.

Evan Le Clus 17:23

So mind maps have applications everywhere. And in fact, there’s more than five tips that we’ve talked about. And the left right brain and the fact that more creativity, I think that’s amazing.

Juliana Khalil 17:32

That’s what if I will talk about my mapping, I will take me hours and hours. Especially if I want to share how my mapping affected my life at the person level at a business level, I will not stop. But when I do my training, workshops for my mapping, I always share with my the attendees about how my mapping are used on the day to day basis. Trust me from small thing to be missing from going to the grocery shop, I might map versus creating products and coming up with idea I might map because I don’t believe as a person with something called lastminute.com. I don’t believe not to be prepared with anything. I don’t also believe in wasting my time and energy. So even if I want to do the grocery, I might not what I want what is missing. It will take with me 1520 minutes I finish I come back, because I know I declutter everything on paper, versus creating my product. Which one of my products as I said is becoming very famous products spoken Arabic. Now I have the level 10 I keep on enhancing I keep on creating source for income, first of income for me. So versus this from something small to something very, I don’t call it big, very professional.

Evan Le Clus 18:57

But complex and you know what I’m loving about this conversation is you’re really passionate about the mind map.

Juliana Khalil 19:03

Yeah, people feel it. Feel it. Yes, exactly. It’s passionate, yes. I told you if I want to talk I will not stop before two, three hours.

Evan Le Clus 19:17

Now that I mean, this is absolutely incredible. So Yuliana when people are listening, the guests are listening to the show. There’s a lot of benefits and a lot of great things that obviously are available and it will become presents for people when they look at mind mapping. Whereabouts can people find you because I know they will want to reach out to you.

Juliana Khalil 19:36

Yes. Thank you again for highlighting this. Evan My company is my name. It’s Juliana Helene so people can find me on my website. Yes. Simple as simple as Giuliana helene.com.

Evan Le Clus 19:49

Okay, fantastic. And, of course on LinkedIn, you’ve got a profile on

Juliana Khalil 19:53

LinkedIn. It’s the same thing Giuliana Helene people can find me on LinkedIn. Juliana Helene is my profile my company And my name are the same.

Evan Le Clus 20:02

Absolutely wonderful. And obviously, we will put that in the show notes. And so the LinkedIn profile and the websites that people can definitely find you. You know, this has been such a fun discussion. Juliana, absolutely wonderful to have you on the show.

Juliana Khalil 20:17

Thank you so much. It’s same to me. And I always like to talk to people like you. I always inspire this with whatever you did now. So I always look after you. So to learn the how to grow, how to overcome challenges, how to make it happen, how to be mindful, and making things happening in your life in our life.

Evan Le Clus 20:38

Absolutely. And I just love the fact that we’re just connecting all of these dots everywhere. So that this is absolutely wonderful. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you everybody, for listening for for staying tuned into the end. And we will see you next time. Do take care. Cheerio. Thank you.

Warsha Joshi 20:54

Thank you for joining us and for listening all the way through to get the show notes, the transcription and of course to subscribe, visit dare to scale.fm the success of

Evan Le Clus 21:06

the show is thanks to you. So please keep the five star reviews coming. Remember to share this with your network and keep the community expanding. We’ll catch you at our next episode and in the meantime, keep daring and keep growing