My first step at communicating about my new career was starting this blog as Chasing Wisdom. I did that before I was even clear what my new career would be. I narrowed my focus to personal development coaching and renamed this blog Twisting Road. I started a Blog-Zine at Chasing Wisdom where I wrote about creative career choices, self-employment, getting along with money, mentorship as leadership, and time management.
A few months back I started an e-mail newsletter, On The Twisting Road, to focus on creative careers, self-employment, and entrepreneurship. That led to some important questions, like What’s the difference between Chasing Wisdom and my e-mail newsletter? and Do I still need both of them? I finally sorted out my ideas and make some big decisions. But why in the world did I choose now to put them in place?
This is a short week for me since I will leave on a road trip (yes, another one for soccer) with my sons. I will be gone for several days – and I will be hoping that the road there and back is only twisting in symbolic ways! That means I will have a delay in implementing the changes I planned, but I wanted to go ahead and get started.
I set up a site for creative career and entrepreneurship articles and resources at TwistingRoad.com. I set up a sub-domain to host this blog, which started on Blogger. I will be slowly moving all the old posts there so it contains the complete archive.
I set up a separate sub-domain at TwistingRoad.com for my Anything But Marketing! blog, which I started on TypePad to learn that format. I love it, by the way, but enjoy the freedom of having my site hosted and installing the blogging software. TypePad doesn’t allow me to do that.
The biggest change I have planned is for Chasing Wisdom. During coaching class exercises, I realized my early vision for Chasing Wisdom got clouded as I started adding topics about creative career transition. My broader vision is to use it to write about creativity and authentic living. I want it to be less about “how-to” and more about “why-to.” I hope to be able to include excerpts of creative writing and more stories about artistry. It will be more about psychological and spiritual development and may even dance with philosophy from time to time.
I’m going to decide which sections of Chasing Wisdom to share with the Twisting Road e-zine and start moving them over. I will leave previous issues of Chasing Wisdom in place, but the style and theme will shift going forward. Chasing Wisdom will sit patiently a while longer while I focus on getting Twisting Road set up. I’ll announce its return when a new issue is ready.
Next week I’ll be in North Carolina and I’ll have my old laptop with me. If I have the time and can get to a free or relatively inexpensive internet connection I will post here and send out my On The Twisting Road e-mail newsletter. If I don’t get the chance, I will at least sketch my article and finish it when I get back. Having this record helps me when I need to look back and see what I was thinking before. Hopefully it helps some of you see one man’s journey to a creative career and self-employment, including all the detours and false starts as well as the forward motion.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
Monday, July 21, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
“Duh!” And The Power Of Coaching
Talking with other people is an important part of making a wise decision. We all need the additional information and the new perspective of good counsel. But not all counsel is good! We have to listen carefully to tell which part of the response is wisdom.
It’s kind of like asking someone to recommend a good restaurant. You get some good ideas, but you learn a lot about other people’s preferences and priorities. If you ask a more affluent friend who doesn’t worry so much about cost, she might recommend a place because of the extensive wine list and the exotic types of seafood. Ask a different friend and he might recommend a brewpub with dozens of beer choices, great burgers, and live music on Friday nights. Ask a different friend and she might recommend a new Thai place, while a fourth friend might have an old favorite “hole in the wall” he loves because they serve authentic Mexican food.
You certainly learn a lot doing that – about extensive wine lists, live music, and good Thai and Mexican food. But you don’t necessarily get your answer. Were you looking for a place to take guests from out of town to have a unique local experience? Were you looking for a place to entertain business clients? Were you trying to find a place to celebrate an anniversary? Your question is unique to your experience.
The past several days I’ve had the opportunity to notice some of the different ways people act when talking to someone with a challenge or a question. One of the most common is rambling story telling. Unfortunately for me, I’ve noticed it in myself as much as in other people. It works like this. Someone describes a situation that just happened or one that’s coming up soon. One of the listeners, or even eavesdroppers, jumps in and starts recounting a long tale about something more or less similar. There are rarely any good suggestions and rarely any valuable lessons learns, just a lot of details of the experience.
Another way of responding is similar but actually more annoying. A person pipes in with personal experience plus all the things he or she now knows that everyone else must do in the situation. It sounds something like this. “I had that problem when I was planning a trip for business. I got the run-around until I talked to a supervisor of group sales. That’s the key. It has to be a supervisor of group sales. Trust me, if you don’t do that you’re just wasting your time. That’s the only way I’ll handle it now.”
A third way is less immediately annoying and more insidious. Somebody who has no personal experience, has not read up on the subject, and has not done any research to get good answers, says, “I’ve heard that the most important thing is…” This could be a response to someone trying to decide about starting a blog or an e-mail newsletter, or someone deciding where to focus time and energy in a part-time business, or someone deciding how to define his or her target group for clients. The recommendations are often a paraphrase of some company’s marketing message, the one that’s trying to get you to buy their service. They’re also based on articles with “tips” for small business owners written by people with a corporate perspective and no understanding of solo entrepreneurs.
For example, someone might say, “I’ve heard the most important thing is to be able to post to your blog at least once a day.” Or someone might say, “I’ve heard it’s important to choose a target group that is very specific, like attorneys over fifty who love outdoor activities.” One of the most common is, “I’ve heard it’s really important to put your money into setting up a professional-looking web site so people will think you’re a big operation and not an individual.” That one seems to be rooted in the mistaken belief that it’s necessary to mimic corporations in order to be successful. Little proof is offered, because what “I’ve heard” is usually someone else’s unsubstantiated bias.
I’ve noticed one other action-deferring response lately. It’s the game of “Find the Expert.” A person is thinking about starting to use an autoresponder to build an e-mail list and send out regular information to prospects and clients. Someone says, “A colleague was talking about a class on online marketing and they covered autoresponders. I can find out who is teaching that class and get you the information.” A new business owner comments that it might be time to choose software for bookkeeping. Someone says, “I know a consultant who has a virtual assistant to handle the bookkeeping. I can get you the VA’s information if you want to find out how much it costs.”
A person who has gotten a couple of articles published in online magazines or e-mail newsletters mentions he or she wants to write more articles for marketing. Someone says, “There’s an entire program for using articles for marketing your business. My friend is almost finished with a twelve-week course and is getting some great results. I’ll get you the name of the program.” The action-halting message in these sorts of responses may not be intentional, but it’s powerful: You can’t do that on your own.
The more helpful responses are straightforward and simple. They are responses using coaching skills. For example, when someone mentions getting two articles published and wants to do more, the coaching question might be as simple as, “When can you have your next article finished?” The coaching question to the person trying to decide if it’s time to get an autoresponder and start e-mailing clients might be, “What do you want this to do for your business?” The guy who got in the middle of re-arranging his home office and got overwhelmed by the piles and stacks of clutter might be asked, “What will it take for you to get all of it put away?”
That’s the “Duh!” moment. It’s a powerfully simple question, but most people don’t ask powerfully simple questions. This was my experience last week, while doing a homework exercise with a colleague in advanced coaching skills class. I would look at the mess in my re-arranged office, get stuck on where to start, and then put it out of my mind. So it stayed cluttered for days. That made it a great situation to use in our homework. That question changed the situation from overwhelming to annoying but doable.
The next question, just as simple, was even more powerful. “What’s the first step?” The bookcases are cluttered, tops of furniture are stacked with papers and books, and the closet is disorganized. It’s where I kept getting stuck. To clear off one area I need to put things away in another area, which is also a mess, but can’t be cleared until a different area is organized. Before, I would quit after about three rounds. With the focused question, I found the one section of the room where I can start. And I divided the job into eight unique tasks and posted them by my desk. Now I can tackle the tasks one at a time, once a day or every other day or even once a week.
The coaching question doesn’t pile up story after story with no helpful information. It focuses on the key part of my own story I need to change. The coaching question doesn’t give me someone else’s idea or opinion. It energizes my own. The coaching question doesn’t care what other people have heard is important in the situation. It asks what is important to me. The coaching question doesn’t defer to experts and warn that I can’t take steps without their guidance. It empowers me to do what I need to do in the way that is right for me.
The coaching question is often so easy to answer it seems simplistic, but when I answer it I have such certainty I sometimes get distracted wondering why I didn’t figure it out on my own. It’s because the answer is stuffed away in all the clutter of other people’s stories, advice, and expert opinions. The coaching question helps me dig through all that immediately so I can see the answer.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
It’s kind of like asking someone to recommend a good restaurant. You get some good ideas, but you learn a lot about other people’s preferences and priorities. If you ask a more affluent friend who doesn’t worry so much about cost, she might recommend a place because of the extensive wine list and the exotic types of seafood. Ask a different friend and he might recommend a brewpub with dozens of beer choices, great burgers, and live music on Friday nights. Ask a different friend and she might recommend a new Thai place, while a fourth friend might have an old favorite “hole in the wall” he loves because they serve authentic Mexican food.
You certainly learn a lot doing that – about extensive wine lists, live music, and good Thai and Mexican food. But you don’t necessarily get your answer. Were you looking for a place to take guests from out of town to have a unique local experience? Were you looking for a place to entertain business clients? Were you trying to find a place to celebrate an anniversary? Your question is unique to your experience.
The past several days I’ve had the opportunity to notice some of the different ways people act when talking to someone with a challenge or a question. One of the most common is rambling story telling. Unfortunately for me, I’ve noticed it in myself as much as in other people. It works like this. Someone describes a situation that just happened or one that’s coming up soon. One of the listeners, or even eavesdroppers, jumps in and starts recounting a long tale about something more or less similar. There are rarely any good suggestions and rarely any valuable lessons learns, just a lot of details of the experience.
Another way of responding is similar but actually more annoying. A person pipes in with personal experience plus all the things he or she now knows that everyone else must do in the situation. It sounds something like this. “I had that problem when I was planning a trip for business. I got the run-around until I talked to a supervisor of group sales. That’s the key. It has to be a supervisor of group sales. Trust me, if you don’t do that you’re just wasting your time. That’s the only way I’ll handle it now.”
A third way is less immediately annoying and more insidious. Somebody who has no personal experience, has not read up on the subject, and has not done any research to get good answers, says, “I’ve heard that the most important thing is…” This could be a response to someone trying to decide about starting a blog or an e-mail newsletter, or someone deciding where to focus time and energy in a part-time business, or someone deciding how to define his or her target group for clients. The recommendations are often a paraphrase of some company’s marketing message, the one that’s trying to get you to buy their service. They’re also based on articles with “tips” for small business owners written by people with a corporate perspective and no understanding of solo entrepreneurs.
For example, someone might say, “I’ve heard the most important thing is to be able to post to your blog at least once a day.” Or someone might say, “I’ve heard it’s important to choose a target group that is very specific, like attorneys over fifty who love outdoor activities.” One of the most common is, “I’ve heard it’s really important to put your money into setting up a professional-looking web site so people will think you’re a big operation and not an individual.” That one seems to be rooted in the mistaken belief that it’s necessary to mimic corporations in order to be successful. Little proof is offered, because what “I’ve heard” is usually someone else’s unsubstantiated bias.
I’ve noticed one other action-deferring response lately. It’s the game of “Find the Expert.” A person is thinking about starting to use an autoresponder to build an e-mail list and send out regular information to prospects and clients. Someone says, “A colleague was talking about a class on online marketing and they covered autoresponders. I can find out who is teaching that class and get you the information.” A new business owner comments that it might be time to choose software for bookkeeping. Someone says, “I know a consultant who has a virtual assistant to handle the bookkeeping. I can get you the VA’s information if you want to find out how much it costs.”
A person who has gotten a couple of articles published in online magazines or e-mail newsletters mentions he or she wants to write more articles for marketing. Someone says, “There’s an entire program for using articles for marketing your business. My friend is almost finished with a twelve-week course and is getting some great results. I’ll get you the name of the program.” The action-halting message in these sorts of responses may not be intentional, but it’s powerful: You can’t do that on your own.
The more helpful responses are straightforward and simple. They are responses using coaching skills. For example, when someone mentions getting two articles published and wants to do more, the coaching question might be as simple as, “When can you have your next article finished?” The coaching question to the person trying to decide if it’s time to get an autoresponder and start e-mailing clients might be, “What do you want this to do for your business?” The guy who got in the middle of re-arranging his home office and got overwhelmed by the piles and stacks of clutter might be asked, “What will it take for you to get all of it put away?”
That’s the “Duh!” moment. It’s a powerfully simple question, but most people don’t ask powerfully simple questions. This was my experience last week, while doing a homework exercise with a colleague in advanced coaching skills class. I would look at the mess in my re-arranged office, get stuck on where to start, and then put it out of my mind. So it stayed cluttered for days. That made it a great situation to use in our homework. That question changed the situation from overwhelming to annoying but doable.
The next question, just as simple, was even more powerful. “What’s the first step?” The bookcases are cluttered, tops of furniture are stacked with papers and books, and the closet is disorganized. It’s where I kept getting stuck. To clear off one area I need to put things away in another area, which is also a mess, but can’t be cleared until a different area is organized. Before, I would quit after about three rounds. With the focused question, I found the one section of the room where I can start. And I divided the job into eight unique tasks and posted them by my desk. Now I can tackle the tasks one at a time, once a day or every other day or even once a week.
The coaching question doesn’t pile up story after story with no helpful information. It focuses on the key part of my own story I need to change. The coaching question doesn’t give me someone else’s idea or opinion. It energizes my own. The coaching question doesn’t care what other people have heard is important in the situation. It asks what is important to me. The coaching question doesn’t defer to experts and warn that I can’t take steps without their guidance. It empowers me to do what I need to do in the way that is right for me.
The coaching question is often so easy to answer it seems simplistic, but when I answer it I have such certainty I sometimes get distracted wondering why I didn’t figure it out on my own. It’s because the answer is stuffed away in all the clutter of other people’s stories, advice, and expert opinions. The coaching question helps me dig through all that immediately so I can see the answer.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
Monday, July 7, 2008
Playing It Too Safe
The Suburban I own is eight years old. It has over 135,000 miles on it. In 2005, when it had about 110,000 miles on it, we drove it from Texas to Minnesota and back for a soccer tournament. After that, I got concerned about reliability and gas prices. Instead of upgrading to a new Suburban, we bought a Honda Accord and kept the old Suburban. Last December I took the Suburban in for a thorough “check-up” and decided it was sound enough for a road trip to Orlando and back. It did great. At the end of June we had a road trip to the beach and then back to San Antonio to drop my son at soccer camp. I took the Suburban, and it did great, especially driving on the sandy beach.
So why did I decide to drive the Accord when my younger son and I went back to San Antonio to pick up my older son? I’ve put nearly 30,000 miles a year on the Accord, but it’s only three years old. I get the oil changed regularly and have all the necessary services done. I even had the tires rotated and balanced and serviced the air conditioner a couple of weeks before the road trip. I thought taking the Suburban on another road trip might be risky. I thought taking the Accord was a safe bet. I was wrong.
Things were fine on the way down and while we drove around San Antonio. But about twenty miles into the trip on the way back, a minivan came rushing up beside me to honk and wave and tell me the front tire was pretty low. I pulled off at the next exit and looked for a gas station. As I pulled up to a light and spotted a Shell sign, we smelled a musty smell in the car and the air conditioner started blowing hot. The rear view mirror fogged up, too.
The tire was pretty close to flat, and when I put air in it the side started bulging in two different places. Being astute, I realized that was a problem. And up until that moment I would have sworn one of the reasons I chose an Accord over other options was that it had a full-size spare. Turns out it’s just one of those temporary donut tires, which means you can’t drive 260 miles to home on it. The local store from the national chain I use to purchase tires was closed on Saturdays in that town, and the other national chain had a three-hour wait. It seems they were slammed by all the people with flats and tire problems on the day after Independence Day. Sometimes synchronicity sucks.
Fortunately, a local shop was able to sell me a good-enough tire for the drive back. But they didn’t have access to a new condenser for my air conditioner. We drove home with the windows down, which let my sons experience my version of walking to school ten miles in the snow, uphill, both ways. My car in high school didn’t have air conditioning. In Texas, that only really matters six or eight months of the year.
This trip and its misadventures are still fresh on my mind, but part of what I hear the universe screaming at me is you can’t always play it safe, because safe is often out of our control. I made a cautious choice and gave up comfort and space and luxury to keep from worrying about possible problems with the Suburban. I wound up with two annoying setbacks that were nothing but random chance.
I’m not reckless and I never have been. I’m overly cautious in a lot of ways, and I over-think and over-analyze some situations. But there’s safe, and then there’s an unfounded façade of safe. I made my choice of vehicle for the trip partly based on worry, seeking more certainty. But that’s now what I got.
If I had had a flat tire in the Suburban I would have driven home on the full-size spare with just a few minutes delay. A replacement part for the air conditioner would have been easy to find, because it’s an older American vehicle. I forgot about the flip side of trying hard to avoid problems – the fact that you need to plan to handle them, because they’re definitely going to come.
Things turned out pretty well, considering the tire could have blown. A blowout on the highway would have been dangerous. I was able to drive easily to a gas station, change to the donut spare, and get to a repair shop pretty quickly. Avoiding problems is good when you can do it, but handling the problems once they happen is more important in the long run.
For me this reinforces the “ready, fire, aim,” approach to business, which isn’t reckless, but is willing to take calculated risks, fail quickly falling forward, learn and improve, and get going again. I realized I sit on the fence for too long with some decisions where there is no perfect, or significantly better, choice. I need to choose with an awareness of the possible challenges and pitfalls of whichever path I take and be ready to handle them.
I keep “learning” this in my head, but I don’t consistently live it in my actions. It’s a great reminder at a time when I’ve been feeling stuck in the middle of some of those decisions without any perfect or clearly better options.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
So why did I decide to drive the Accord when my younger son and I went back to San Antonio to pick up my older son? I’ve put nearly 30,000 miles a year on the Accord, but it’s only three years old. I get the oil changed regularly and have all the necessary services done. I even had the tires rotated and balanced and serviced the air conditioner a couple of weeks before the road trip. I thought taking the Suburban on another road trip might be risky. I thought taking the Accord was a safe bet. I was wrong.
Things were fine on the way down and while we drove around San Antonio. But about twenty miles into the trip on the way back, a minivan came rushing up beside me to honk and wave and tell me the front tire was pretty low. I pulled off at the next exit and looked for a gas station. As I pulled up to a light and spotted a Shell sign, we smelled a musty smell in the car and the air conditioner started blowing hot. The rear view mirror fogged up, too.
The tire was pretty close to flat, and when I put air in it the side started bulging in two different places. Being astute, I realized that was a problem. And up until that moment I would have sworn one of the reasons I chose an Accord over other options was that it had a full-size spare. Turns out it’s just one of those temporary donut tires, which means you can’t drive 260 miles to home on it. The local store from the national chain I use to purchase tires was closed on Saturdays in that town, and the other national chain had a three-hour wait. It seems they were slammed by all the people with flats and tire problems on the day after Independence Day. Sometimes synchronicity sucks.
Fortunately, a local shop was able to sell me a good-enough tire for the drive back. But they didn’t have access to a new condenser for my air conditioner. We drove home with the windows down, which let my sons experience my version of walking to school ten miles in the snow, uphill, both ways. My car in high school didn’t have air conditioning. In Texas, that only really matters six or eight months of the year.
This trip and its misadventures are still fresh on my mind, but part of what I hear the universe screaming at me is you can’t always play it safe, because safe is often out of our control. I made a cautious choice and gave up comfort and space and luxury to keep from worrying about possible problems with the Suburban. I wound up with two annoying setbacks that were nothing but random chance.
I’m not reckless and I never have been. I’m overly cautious in a lot of ways, and I over-think and over-analyze some situations. But there’s safe, and then there’s an unfounded façade of safe. I made my choice of vehicle for the trip partly based on worry, seeking more certainty. But that’s now what I got.
If I had had a flat tire in the Suburban I would have driven home on the full-size spare with just a few minutes delay. A replacement part for the air conditioner would have been easy to find, because it’s an older American vehicle. I forgot about the flip side of trying hard to avoid problems – the fact that you need to plan to handle them, because they’re definitely going to come.
Things turned out pretty well, considering the tire could have blown. A blowout on the highway would have been dangerous. I was able to drive easily to a gas station, change to the donut spare, and get to a repair shop pretty quickly. Avoiding problems is good when you can do it, but handling the problems once they happen is more important in the long run.
For me this reinforces the “ready, fire, aim,” approach to business, which isn’t reckless, but is willing to take calculated risks, fail quickly falling forward, learn and improve, and get going again. I realized I sit on the fence for too long with some decisions where there is no perfect, or significantly better, choice. I need to choose with an awareness of the possible challenges and pitfalls of whichever path I take and be ready to handle them.
I keep “learning” this in my head, but I don’t consistently live it in my actions. It’s a great reminder at a time when I’ve been feeling stuck in the middle of some of those decisions without any perfect or clearly better options.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
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