Quiet No More

Why Planning Is the Unsung Hero of Achievement

• Carmen Cauthen

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Have you ever held onto a dream that others couldn't see? That burning vision that persists even when practical obstacles seem insurmountable? 

The journey from dream to reality requires more than wishful thinking—it demands meticulous planning and unwavering belief. I share my recent experience planning an event that started as a vision to honor my mother and Black women, facing skepticism and zero funding, yet ultimately sold out in six weeks and doubled in size. The lesson? "You can't depend on somebody else to make your vision come to life. You just have to go for it with everything you've got."

Planning isn't just about organization—it's about empowerment. Whether creating spreadsheets for large events or writing grocery lists for family dinners, effective planning turns seemingly impossible dreams into achievable goals. I break down my process of list-making, from initial outlines to detailed steps, and how this skill has served me throughout life. The habits I learned from my mother—who planned her own funeral arrangements six months before passing—show how an organization creates a legacy and eases burdens for others.

If you've ever felt your dreams dismissed or struggled to manage competing priorities, this episode offers practical wisdom about maintaining your vision while adapting your approach. Your plans might need revision, but your dreams never need abandonment. Don't drift through life hoping to accomplish your goals—plan deliberately, document carefully, and watch as your vision materializes despite the doubters. 

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More, hi. Today I want to talk about planning. Today I want to talk about planning. I just finished planning an event that I didn't know I'd never done anything like that before. It was an event that, in my mind, I can envision four or five hundred people attending, but I've never planned anything that's that size where I haven't been doing it for somebody else, so somebody else had the responsibility of paying for it, raising the money, although I have done something where, at the last minute, I had to do the fundraising because the organization didn't realize that they were going to have. They needed to be doing that all the time anyway. So, anyway, it takes a lot to plan an event and you're going to run into bumps, and it's no different than anything else in life Whenever you're planning something, because you might be just planning a holiday meal, you might be planning a family member's birthday party but planning means you have to be in charge of the vision.

Speaker 1:

You know what you want it to look like. You know what you want it to feel like. You know what you want it to feel like. You know what you want it to taste like. And so once you make your mind up what you want, then you just have to go after it and do it. So the group of folks that I was working with you know they were worried because we didn't have any money to get started with and I was a little concerned. But you know, I just figured I could do it, we could do it, it could be done. Anything can be done if you set your mind to it. That's something that I have heard all my life from both my parents. You know, if you want to do it, just make it happen, do it.

Speaker 1:

And sometimes that means you have to revise what your plan looks like if you don't have all the funds or if you don't have all the pieces. But that's OK. It doesn't mean that you fail if you don't have the place or if you're not at the place that you wanted to be. So when I first talked to the people that I asked to help me as a steering committee, they didn't see the 300 people because they didn't see any money and it's hard to see something when there's no money. So we agreed that I would cut it back to 150 people and then I would raise some money before we sold the ticket. That was disappointing to me, because I felt like I needed the ticket sales to validate what I was doing.

Speaker 1:

But I'm excited about what I'm doing, and so, as I was talking to people and sharing information, I shared my excitement, and it helped other people to be excited as well. It helped other people to be able to see at least a piece of the vision, even if they didn't see all of it, and that's another thing. It's not their vision, it's your vision. So you can't depend on somebody else to make your vision come to life. You just have to go for it with everything you've got, and if you're walking in that direction, it's going to work. Just believe it's going to work.

Speaker 1:

And so, as I said, my original vision was four to 600 people. I thought we needed the convention center. I wanted a former president to come and speak, knowing full well that that would be three or $400,000. And I didn't know how I was going to raise 10 at that point. And so I was willing to revise my vision, but not to give it up. That's important. You can't give up on your dreams and your visions. You can't give up. This vision has been in my head for two years. I didn't start speaking it until a year ago and literally a year ago, and I told one person first and then I started to tell others, and originally it was a vision to honor one person, and the honor is now up to 400 people and the event sold out in six weeks. The last week, the sales ended up causing the event to double in size from what it was originally planned to be. Fortunately, we had found a venue that could hold double in size, because my vision did not allow me to stop at the small number.

Speaker 1:

So do you hear what I'm saying? What I'm saying is your vision, your plan. Make it work, do what you need to do, even if nobody else is going along with you. Now, if you're talking about doing something wrong like I'm not robbing a bank, so if somebody else's vision doesn't go along with that, that's fine. But my vision was to honor my mother and to honor black women, and that vision has caught fire, even when people said why are you doing this? You can't do this, you don't have time to do this, but that's my heart passion, and so my heart passion is being fulfilled and I really only needed to do this one time, but now people want to do it over, they want to replicate it, they want to do it in other places. There was a hunger for this. It was a hunger on the inside, not just for me, but for other people.

Speaker 1:

So when you create a plan, I'm a list builder. I am a spreadsheet person. Now, I don't know how to really use a spreadsheet, but I know how to use it for what I want to use it for. I haven't had any training in it, but I know how to write a list on a piece of paper and mark off what I've done as I've gone along, and the list can start out as just an outline and then take the outline and add pieces to it. So if I know I want to have a dinner, I know I need a place to have it, and that could be my dining room or my living room. I need chairs, I need food. I need, you know, if I want it to be nice. I need special plates, whether that's my china or my chinette, whether they're decorated for a holiday or whether they're some plain colored ones that I bought when they were on clearance. Because you know I'm going to buy something on sale, I'm not spending the full amount on anything. So if I know I'm serving food, I write out a menu and then I take the menu and if there are recipes that I'm making, I take the recipes and I break the recipes down and then I create a list of how much of each thing in all the recipes I need and I buy it all at the same time, preferably when it's on sale. Sometimes the menu will change because I'll go to the grocery store and something will be on clearance and it's enough to serve however many people I'm planning for. So I'll buy that and cook that.

Speaker 1:

So every detail comes down to planning. So I've taught my children that I had a child who was going to buy a car. She wrote down everything she needed to know, everything she needed to have, every detail and every step for how she needed to go get it, where to research, to look for the car, the kinds of questions she needed to ask when she went to the dealership, what she needed to do ahead of time. There were some things that I had learned and she would come and talk to me and I would share those with her, like if you don't want to go haggle, then there are some terms that you need to say to let them know you mean business and you just want a final price. You don't want to be running, you don't want your salesperson to run back and forth between himself and the sales manager, you just want to know what's the final price going to be, because they don't need to know how much money you've got. They don't need to know all of that. But anyhow, she created list and so that's also how we remember stuff in life anyway, and so that's also how we remember stuff in life anyway.

Speaker 1:

I'm not at a stage in life where I can remember everything I talk to you about. So if it's stuff that needs to be important, I have a notebook in my pocketbook all the time. It doesn't have to be a big notebook, but it has to be something that I can write something down on. Or if you are using everything digital, there's a place to put notes in your phone and then you don't forget the stuff that you need to remember. If there's a date I was talking listening to a friend of mine earlier today and she was talking about adults need reminders. Yes, we do. If we are busy people, if we are not busy people, we need to have it written down that such and such is this day. That way we don't double book. That way we don't overcommit ourselves. Well, we might overcommit ourselves, but at least we're not double booked while we're overcommittee. But I can put something in my phone and tell it to remind me 30 minutes ahead of time, or if it's a birthday, it's in my phone and it reminds me two or three days ahead of time Longer than that if I need to buy a gift for something. But those are important things.

Speaker 1:

Planning is important and it's key for you to get to the place that you want to get to. If you just assume that you will get there, you will drift along and you will not ever accomplish any of the things that you set out to do. Why am I telling you this? Because everybody doesn't have somebody to tell them that.

Speaker 1:

I grew up with a mother who had a notepad all the time and even six months before she died she had been in the hospital. We came home and within a week's time she had scheduled an appointment at the funeral home and she said we're going and pick out everything. And I was like why? And she had started writing her obituary and writing down the plans that she wanted, and my dad was like I'm not doing that, carmen can do that, and he left it all to me to do. Yes, he did, but my mother said after about another month. She said whenever I die, there's an envelope under this little table and it has everything you need in it. It's got the obituary, it's got the plan for the funeral service, it's got the pictures for the program. Everything was in there, except for the one thing that I asked her for, which was what Bible verses do you want read? That part was the only thing I asked for. That was the part she didn't give me, but that's who I learned from, so I'm trying to teach you today.

Speaker 1:

Hear me and hear me well, plan, write it down, keep a list. If you can't keep all the lists on a piece of paper and you've got a computer or a phone with a notes app, write it there, because I realized that I have written down years ago all the books that I wanted to write, all the things that I had in my mind to detail, all the things that I had in my mind to detail. When I'm creating any kind of event, there is a plan to follow, and so I can pull those things together without having to go and recreate the wheel, because I created it the first time. These are things you need to know, not just because I'm old and an elder. These are things I was doing in my 20s and 30s because that was how I remembered to get my projects written in college. That was how I remembered to get work product done when I was working.

Speaker 1:

There was a list, there was a spreadsheet, there was a way also to cover my ass in case something didn't go right. I could say, well, this is what the plan was, and so and so dropped the ball on the plan here, and this is where I wrote it down. And this is something that is important for you to do, regardless of what age you are today. Important for you to do regardless of what age you are today. And so I want you to know how to plan, because I'm not going to be quiet about that anymore. You've been listening to Quiet no More, where I share my journey. So you can be quiet. Let's connect at wwwcarmencawthoncom.