My day to post this entry will be Labor Day. That’s a day set aside to celebrate the labor movement and workers’ rights. It’s also a day many people see as the official end of summer – at least the more relaxed vacation season. For many it’s the start of the year, since school is back in. It’s back to work time! What a rich irony for those of us who are creating work around our lives instead of fitting our lives in around work.
Our older son has gotten an after-school job at the local grocery store. He has soccer practice and games (I think I’ve mentioned that a time or twenty) that limit his availability so he’s tried to be very clear about when he’s available to work. His one certainty was that he wouldn’t work on Sunday. It’s a family day and it’s very often a soccer game day so it was off the table.
When he checked his schedule for the week on Saturday it was the same as the previous week. He saw it while working that evening. When he came home he said he would have to go up after his soccer game Sunday to change it because of soccer practice conflicts. When he got home from his game on Sunday around 5:00, he had a voice mail on his phone saying he was scheduled to work from 3:00 to 11:00. He quickly showered and rushed off to work without any food – he hadn’t eaten since around noon on the way to the game – and without the chance to have water or a sport drink with him at work.
I don’t want my son hating his job. I want him to be treated with some basic respect and decency and I want him to connect earning money with his goal of having his own car. I even want him to see the value of increasing his earnings through education and specialization and entrepreneurship. But I don’t want him to hate this job!
We told him that, if they don’t get the schedule worked out where he won’t be working right after he’s been playing soccer, he’s going to have to quit the job. The scheduler said what she was told about his availability and what he told the manager during his interview were different, but it’s straightened out now. In one week of a part-time job he’s experienced the essence of the drudgery of corporate America. Poor communication, insincere commitments, and passing the buck so the lowest guy on the ladder carries the responsibility of other people’s mistakes. Eureka!
My wife told me many people she’s talked to in the past few months who have high school and college age kids working report similar stories. Their sons and daughters are given schedules that don’t match what they’ve said they’re available to do, and they’re expected to work or they’ll risk losing the job. A friend of mine has been hearing similar stories, as well.
I’m getting feisty! The labor movement brought significant improvements to the workplace, but it’s still a workplace. The sense of an adversarial relationship between employees and supervisors lives on in too many places. Even a high paying job with great benefits is still “a gilded cage,” as my friend Henry says.
I have a renewed passion for spreading the American revolution by helping people find their calling, discover how they bring value to other people, and make their living doing something they love. Whether that’s a creative job with a lot of freedom, self-employment, a small business, or multiple profit centers, it’s freedom from being treated like a number. It’s the freedom to respect what we do, and to work with honor and dignity. It’s the freedom to own our own work and take charge of our lives. The ultimate labor movement is entrepreneurship!
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
Showing posts with label entrepreneurship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label entrepreneurship. Show all posts
Monday, September 1, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
I’ve Got To Stop Reading!
I set aside the three (or so) books I’ve been reading consecutively after I spent a little time at Barnes & Noble evaluating another book. I’ve heard about it for years, even picked it up a couple of times, but never read more than the flaps and maybe a chapter introduction. But once I committed to looking closely and started reading, I was mesmerized. Two days later I was deflated and, well – forlorn.
The seemingly innocuous book is The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
by Michael Gerber. I first heard about this book a few years back. I was told it was groundbreaking, even revolutionary, for people who wanted to run their own business (this might even have been before it was “Revisited”). The problem is, the people telling me it was revolutionary misrepresented it.
They described it as a book that smashed the belief that people have to have an entrepreneurial nature to be successful at business. They told me it showed that most successful business owners aren’t really entrepreneurial. It doesn’t take special vision or a knack, they said, just good planning and management.
When I skimmed the book back then, I couldn’t make much sense of it. Turns out that’s because the people who were excitedly describing this book didn’t have a clear idea of its theme. The “myth” is easily misunderstood.
As he develops his ideas, Gerber proposes that people start businesses when they have a burst of entrepreneurial inspiration, but they quickly fall into an employee mindset. He doesn’t use that phrase, which I picked up from Barbara Winter. I prefer her way of explaining it. Because they think like employees, they get an idea to start a business and wind up building an overwhelming collection of jobs.
As the ideas in the book develop and solutions are offered, it seems that the myth is that entrepreneurial innovation makes businesses work while the truth is that mundane activities make businesses work. There is a section where the solution to business development difficulties is…. (drum roll)… to be like McDonald’s!
That’s when I became forlorn. To have a successful business, the books seems to say, I have to develop carefully crafted, routinized operations that can be taught to any willing person. Creativity and variation must be supplanted by regimentation. This is shockingly close to my view of hell, so I wanted to shred the book.
But that doesn’t actually capture the myth. To be successful developing a business, Gerber says a person has to balance entrepreneurial innovation with a mundane, orderly management mindset and the technical skill of the worker. Successful business developers are entrepreneurial, but they are not only entrepreneurs. Thank goodness I kept reading!
In fact the stages where the business is designed on paper, where each step is planned and then implemented and experimented to get it right, is a creative process. Once every detail is defined and specified, ongoing innovation is used to test better and better ways to provide a more satisfying experience to customers and more clearly express the business owner and developer’s underlying mission.
And there, finally, is the myth explained. The myth is the belief that most businesses are started by entrepreneurs who risk money in order to make a profit. The truth is most businesses are started by people with an entrepreneurial, innovative spirit who are trying to express something about their view of the world and how it can be. They just don’t know it! So they unconsciously try to put their signature on every aspect of the business by doing everything themselves because they don’t believe anyone else can do it their way. They burn themselves out.
The solution, it seems, is to make the unconscious expression into an intentional purpose, put the attention to detail in designing and planning how the purpose is expressed in each function of the business, and then share the vision with others and train them in the system.
Once the theme got back to self-expression and creativity, I was greatly relieved. I just never thought of the perfect crispiness of McDonald’s French fries as creative self-expression before!
Now I understand the myth and the solution. This process of business development makes perfect sense for someone who wants to create a business that other people will run. The developer expresses himself or herself through the system developed with such specificity and detail that his or her vision can be implemented by other people in a consistent way.
But I can’t get it to connect to the idea of solo entrepreneurs, those of us who are self-employed and work directly with our clients. When you personally work with clients you don’t really have a business you can sell. You have a practice, into which you can bring a partner or from which you can make referrals or to which you can add associates. But that is not something you can sell outright. It is something you may be able to transition slowly and carefully from one primary provider to another.
In coaching circles, new coaches are told often that we have to remember we have a coaching business, especially those of us who have had therapy practices. The distinction is meant to increase a focus on marketing and customer service. However, since I work with people who are self-employed and people who own small businesses, and with people considering becoming one of them, I have to make a finer distinction.
Coaching is a practice. Selling information products is a business. I can pour my vision into the details of operating a business that develops information products, finds products created by other people, offers them in carefully targeted marketing, and makes the experience of buying and receiving the products consistently pleasing to customers. And that is something I could sell, because it would be a system other people could run.
But a coach is the product. Once I have enough history to have dozens of former clients who have completed coaching and have a full schedule of ongoing clients, I can’t sell that to someone else. This helps me evaluate marketing and business development ideas and sort out what applies to a coaching practice and what doesn’t. I’ve been frustrated with some of the ideas because they just don’t fit, but I hadn’t understood why. Now I do. It’s just a little more light on the twisting road ahead.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
The seemingly innocuous book is The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
by Michael Gerber. I first heard about this book a few years back. I was told it was groundbreaking, even revolutionary, for people who wanted to run their own business (this might even have been before it was “Revisited”). The problem is, the people telling me it was revolutionary misrepresented it. They described it as a book that smashed the belief that people have to have an entrepreneurial nature to be successful at business. They told me it showed that most successful business owners aren’t really entrepreneurial. It doesn’t take special vision or a knack, they said, just good planning and management.
When I skimmed the book back then, I couldn’t make much sense of it. Turns out that’s because the people who were excitedly describing this book didn’t have a clear idea of its theme. The “myth” is easily misunderstood.
As he develops his ideas, Gerber proposes that people start businesses when they have a burst of entrepreneurial inspiration, but they quickly fall into an employee mindset. He doesn’t use that phrase, which I picked up from Barbara Winter. I prefer her way of explaining it. Because they think like employees, they get an idea to start a business and wind up building an overwhelming collection of jobs.
As the ideas in the book develop and solutions are offered, it seems that the myth is that entrepreneurial innovation makes businesses work while the truth is that mundane activities make businesses work. There is a section where the solution to business development difficulties is…. (drum roll)… to be like McDonald’s!
That’s when I became forlorn. To have a successful business, the books seems to say, I have to develop carefully crafted, routinized operations that can be taught to any willing person. Creativity and variation must be supplanted by regimentation. This is shockingly close to my view of hell, so I wanted to shred the book.
But that doesn’t actually capture the myth. To be successful developing a business, Gerber says a person has to balance entrepreneurial innovation with a mundane, orderly management mindset and the technical skill of the worker. Successful business developers are entrepreneurial, but they are not only entrepreneurs. Thank goodness I kept reading!
In fact the stages where the business is designed on paper, where each step is planned and then implemented and experimented to get it right, is a creative process. Once every detail is defined and specified, ongoing innovation is used to test better and better ways to provide a more satisfying experience to customers and more clearly express the business owner and developer’s underlying mission.
And there, finally, is the myth explained. The myth is the belief that most businesses are started by entrepreneurs who risk money in order to make a profit. The truth is most businesses are started by people with an entrepreneurial, innovative spirit who are trying to express something about their view of the world and how it can be. They just don’t know it! So they unconsciously try to put their signature on every aspect of the business by doing everything themselves because they don’t believe anyone else can do it their way. They burn themselves out.
The solution, it seems, is to make the unconscious expression into an intentional purpose, put the attention to detail in designing and planning how the purpose is expressed in each function of the business, and then share the vision with others and train them in the system.
Once the theme got back to self-expression and creativity, I was greatly relieved. I just never thought of the perfect crispiness of McDonald’s French fries as creative self-expression before!
Now I understand the myth and the solution. This process of business development makes perfect sense for someone who wants to create a business that other people will run. The developer expresses himself or herself through the system developed with such specificity and detail that his or her vision can be implemented by other people in a consistent way.
But I can’t get it to connect to the idea of solo entrepreneurs, those of us who are self-employed and work directly with our clients. When you personally work with clients you don’t really have a business you can sell. You have a practice, into which you can bring a partner or from which you can make referrals or to which you can add associates. But that is not something you can sell outright. It is something you may be able to transition slowly and carefully from one primary provider to another.
In coaching circles, new coaches are told often that we have to remember we have a coaching business, especially those of us who have had therapy practices. The distinction is meant to increase a focus on marketing and customer service. However, since I work with people who are self-employed and people who own small businesses, and with people considering becoming one of them, I have to make a finer distinction.
Coaching is a practice. Selling information products is a business. I can pour my vision into the details of operating a business that develops information products, finds products created by other people, offers them in carefully targeted marketing, and makes the experience of buying and receiving the products consistently pleasing to customers. And that is something I could sell, because it would be a system other people could run.
But a coach is the product. Once I have enough history to have dozens of former clients who have completed coaching and have a full schedule of ongoing clients, I can’t sell that to someone else. This helps me evaluate marketing and business development ideas and sort out what applies to a coaching practice and what doesn’t. I’ve been frustrated with some of the ideas because they just don’t fit, but I hadn’t understood why. Now I do. It’s just a little more light on the twisting road ahead.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
Monday, June 9, 2008
Ruts With Ornate Wood and Polished Brass Handrails
We got back from the desert Wednesday and I spent the next four days thinking about Spongebob. My kids love the show so I’ve seen a few episodes. From time to time the little guy starts shriveling up because he’s out of the water. That’s how my brain felt. I think it was the slowest to dry out and the last to rehydrate.
My slowly drying brain may be part of the reason I felt so out of it when I thought about my business during the trip. Another reason was the setting. We were in Scottsdale most of the time, staying in a resort hotel. It’s hard to relate to authenticity and people striving to improve themselves mentally, interpersonally, and spiritually in that setting. I realized my drive for authenticity and self-expression was nearly drowned out by the power of the communal rut – of affluence.
Driving past the Mercedes dealership, then the Jaguar dealership, then the BMW dealership and the Range Rover dealership, it’s easy to develop the mistaken belief that fine living is a motivation for people to become solo entrepreneurs. In reality, many of the people enjoying that affluent lifestyle have high-paying jobs and spend a lot of time worrying about keeping them so they can protect their income.
On another level, affluent living not only pushes people to live in ruts to pursue and keep high-paying jobs, it also dictates the rut for enjoying the affluence. The stores, the restaurants, and the resorts all tell us This is how affluent people enjoy their money. Fit in by liking golf, spas, high-end shopping, expensive restaurants, and deserts artificially turned into tropical oases. It’s what all the “cool kids” are doing! Then fit in by getting into the high-paying job rut, and fight like crazy to stay there because it’s tough competition.
This rut thing gets even worse. Over Sunday dinner with my wife’s family we were talking about a news report that Joanna Rowling, Harry Potter creator and billionairess, gave a commencement address at Harvard and there were protests. It seems the ivory tower snobs consider her a second-rate talent and would have preferred someone more literary.
Joanna Rowling is one of my heroes. She had a story to tell and she committed herself to writing it and getting it published. It is, by most accounts, the best-selling book series of all time. At a time when people were giving up on getting kids to read, thinking we had to “dumb down” books and shorten them, kids started reading novels again. As new books came out, longer than before, the kids kept up. Some learned the joy of marathon reading, staying up for hours reading through hundreds of pages.
What a failure! That poor woman will never make it.
I doubt Jo Rowling set out to be a huge financial success with her writing. She probably dreamed of making a million dollars, but could she have conceived of making a billion? She followed her calling and expressed her gifts and talents. She did what she was born to do, and people appreciated it so she was rewarded.
Some trailblazers are making a living, just getting by, but having a great time being rewarded in many other ways. Some have surprising episodes where they make a lot of money and then see the lean times. Some slowly learn more about generating money and increase their pay over time. And some have spectacular financial success and enjoy it so much they do it over and over.
The key difference is the purpose. If they are chasing ways to make money, they are in a rut and they will stay in a rut. They will make money in a rut, they will spend it in a rut, they will be flashy in the rut, they will go into debt in the rut, and they will be afraid of leaving the rut to find themselves.
The trailblazers are discovering and expressing themselves. When they succeed, it’s out of the rut. They spend or save their money as they wish, and they don’t fear losing status and a rut lifestyle so they don’t have to hold back and give up their dreams. They’re free to pursue their dreams and create their own success, by whatever standard they want to measure it.
They know that a rut with beautifully accented handrails is still a rut, and they just won’t settle for that.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
Updated 06/10/08 with the Rowling address video links:
My slowly drying brain may be part of the reason I felt so out of it when I thought about my business during the trip. Another reason was the setting. We were in Scottsdale most of the time, staying in a resort hotel. It’s hard to relate to authenticity and people striving to improve themselves mentally, interpersonally, and spiritually in that setting. I realized my drive for authenticity and self-expression was nearly drowned out by the power of the communal rut – of affluence.
Driving past the Mercedes dealership, then the Jaguar dealership, then the BMW dealership and the Range Rover dealership, it’s easy to develop the mistaken belief that fine living is a motivation for people to become solo entrepreneurs. In reality, many of the people enjoying that affluent lifestyle have high-paying jobs and spend a lot of time worrying about keeping them so they can protect their income.
On another level, affluent living not only pushes people to live in ruts to pursue and keep high-paying jobs, it also dictates the rut for enjoying the affluence. The stores, the restaurants, and the resorts all tell us This is how affluent people enjoy their money. Fit in by liking golf, spas, high-end shopping, expensive restaurants, and deserts artificially turned into tropical oases. It’s what all the “cool kids” are doing! Then fit in by getting into the high-paying job rut, and fight like crazy to stay there because it’s tough competition.
This rut thing gets even worse. Over Sunday dinner with my wife’s family we were talking about a news report that Joanna Rowling, Harry Potter creator and billionairess, gave a commencement address at Harvard and there were protests. It seems the ivory tower snobs consider her a second-rate talent and would have preferred someone more literary.
Joanna Rowling is one of my heroes. She had a story to tell and she committed herself to writing it and getting it published. It is, by most accounts, the best-selling book series of all time. At a time when people were giving up on getting kids to read, thinking we had to “dumb down” books and shorten them, kids started reading novels again. As new books came out, longer than before, the kids kept up. Some learned the joy of marathon reading, staying up for hours reading through hundreds of pages.
What a failure! That poor woman will never make it.
I doubt Jo Rowling set out to be a huge financial success with her writing. She probably dreamed of making a million dollars, but could she have conceived of making a billion? She followed her calling and expressed her gifts and talents. She did what she was born to do, and people appreciated it so she was rewarded.
Some trailblazers are making a living, just getting by, but having a great time being rewarded in many other ways. Some have surprising episodes where they make a lot of money and then see the lean times. Some slowly learn more about generating money and increase their pay over time. And some have spectacular financial success and enjoy it so much they do it over and over.
The key difference is the purpose. If they are chasing ways to make money, they are in a rut and they will stay in a rut. They will make money in a rut, they will spend it in a rut, they will be flashy in the rut, they will go into debt in the rut, and they will be afraid of leaving the rut to find themselves.
The trailblazers are discovering and expressing themselves. When they succeed, it’s out of the rut. They spend or save their money as they wish, and they don’t fear losing status and a rut lifestyle so they don’t have to hold back and give up their dreams. They’re free to pursue their dreams and create their own success, by whatever standard they want to measure it.
They know that a rut with beautifully accented handrails is still a rut, and they just won’t settle for that.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
Updated 06/10/08 with the Rowling address video links:
Friday, May 2, 2008
Finding Fuel For The Journey
This morning I came across this quote in the Early To Rise e-mail newsletter:
“Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts”
~ Jean Vanier
Scroll down to “The Most Stupid of Vices” by Alexander Green and read his take on envy.
I have printed the quote and taped it to the side of my printer right next to my computer. I am not drawn to it so much for its focus on the folly of envy, but the emphasis on each person’s ability to have the life we think is restricted to only a select few, when we rely on ourselves.
The road to creative solo entrepreneurship is about finding our unique gifts, talents, passions, and values and designing work that aligns with them. But more than that it is about finding the strength and ability to do things we never thought we could, or would have to.
Earlier this week my younger son was saying he wished that we would find a pirate ship filled with sunken treasure, or win a jackpot, so we could be rich. I asked what he would do with the money. He said he would build a huge house with a video game room and a movie room. I tried to point out the extra work and extra expense of a huge house, but he wasn’t really paying attention. The best I could come up with was to give him a blessing.
I told him that, rather than have a lot of money to buy things that would bore him quickly, my wish and hope for him is that he learn how to find work that he loves and start his own business so he can take charge of his future. That way he will have the power in himself to generate money when he wants something. He won’t have to sit around waiting for an unlikely act of fate. Instead, it will be up to him, and that will be much more enjoyable and rewarding.
He got a little down, saying he had no idea what kind of business a nine-year-old could start. As we talked about it he thought maybe he could design things out of LEGOs and sell them. The idea was laid aside and he hasn’t brought it back up, but I’m glad he’s beginning to think about this at nine.
The conversation with my son happened earlier this week. The quote from Vanier showed up in my world today. They point to the same place. When we don’t see our own gifts and our own power, we resent and envy others and blame them for holding us back. When we look at what we want and think, How am I going to do that? we feel abundant, capable, and generous.
There is a next level to this thought, but it’s a little more vague. Some people who want to change their lives, especially related to work, say they want to be self-employed but seem to be waiting for someone else to design them a j-o-b and hand it to them. I think part of that comes from the mentality of not seeing our own gifts and our own power. Some, however, won’t take the steps for other reasons.
I think a lot of people see the effort and work involved in starting even a part-time small business and get overwhelmed. They see it as a drain on resources. The best analogies I can come up with are driving a gas-guzzling car with high gas prices, or camping for a few days away from civilization. You wind up thinking and planning from the point of limitation and scarcity. You think, If I do that, will I have the gas to go do this? or maybe, If I use up all my water on this hike, I’ll just barely have enough to get by until the day I leave.
If you do something that is aligned with your gifts, talents, and passions, energy will flow into you. It will be emotional and spiritual energy. Sure, you’ll still get physically tired if there are physical things to do, but you won’t wind up drained. If you spend a lot of time and effort on something that doesn’t connect with your soul, your emotional and spiritual energy can get tapped out pretty quickly.
I think this is the point of view that keeps a lot of people from trying something out. They think it has to be the exact right thing before they put in the time and energy because they’ve only got this one shot. They don’t realize that working towards an authentic life will restore them and recharge them.
I also think, based on this powerful quote, that they don’t realize how much they can actually do. They don’t see that, if something is important in a way that touches their core, they will find the way to make it happen. They don’t realize they have enormous reserves when it comes to resources for deciding, acting, and making things happen.
Obviously, part of “they” is “me.” I feel a lot of resistance with some ideas, thinking I might wind up putting in too much time and effort only to see it flop, or only to find out I don’t really want to be doing that kind of work long-term. I come from the mindset that I have to get it right, or pretty close to right, because I will run out of gas if I go too long without quick results. I forget that trying out new things is pretty fun a lot of the time, and I forget that I won’t really know if some things are a good choice for me until I try them. To quote my nine-year-old son (in his optimistic version of the saying), “You can’t like it ‘til you try it.”
I’m still learning I don’t have to be sure I’ll be hugely successful at something in order to try it out. I’m re-learning that I’m going to struggle with things and be pretty crummy at a few while I’m learning them. But that’s the joy of mastery. If it’s easy at first, there’s no elation when you conquer it. If it’s a quick and open road, there’s no challenge.
I’ll leave the idea of the quick and open road to the “Make 6 Figures In 7 Days!” crowd. I prefer the reality of the struggle, because it’s the way of the journey, and the journey is the only reason to go anywhere.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
“Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts”
~ Jean Vanier
Scroll down to “The Most Stupid of Vices” by Alexander Green and read his take on envy.
I have printed the quote and taped it to the side of my printer right next to my computer. I am not drawn to it so much for its focus on the folly of envy, but the emphasis on each person’s ability to have the life we think is restricted to only a select few, when we rely on ourselves.
The road to creative solo entrepreneurship is about finding our unique gifts, talents, passions, and values and designing work that aligns with them. But more than that it is about finding the strength and ability to do things we never thought we could, or would have to.
Earlier this week my younger son was saying he wished that we would find a pirate ship filled with sunken treasure, or win a jackpot, so we could be rich. I asked what he would do with the money. He said he would build a huge house with a video game room and a movie room. I tried to point out the extra work and extra expense of a huge house, but he wasn’t really paying attention. The best I could come up with was to give him a blessing.
I told him that, rather than have a lot of money to buy things that would bore him quickly, my wish and hope for him is that he learn how to find work that he loves and start his own business so he can take charge of his future. That way he will have the power in himself to generate money when he wants something. He won’t have to sit around waiting for an unlikely act of fate. Instead, it will be up to him, and that will be much more enjoyable and rewarding.
He got a little down, saying he had no idea what kind of business a nine-year-old could start. As we talked about it he thought maybe he could design things out of LEGOs and sell them. The idea was laid aside and he hasn’t brought it back up, but I’m glad he’s beginning to think about this at nine.
The conversation with my son happened earlier this week. The quote from Vanier showed up in my world today. They point to the same place. When we don’t see our own gifts and our own power, we resent and envy others and blame them for holding us back. When we look at what we want and think, How am I going to do that? we feel abundant, capable, and generous.
There is a next level to this thought, but it’s a little more vague. Some people who want to change their lives, especially related to work, say they want to be self-employed but seem to be waiting for someone else to design them a j-o-b and hand it to them. I think part of that comes from the mentality of not seeing our own gifts and our own power. Some, however, won’t take the steps for other reasons.
I think a lot of people see the effort and work involved in starting even a part-time small business and get overwhelmed. They see it as a drain on resources. The best analogies I can come up with are driving a gas-guzzling car with high gas prices, or camping for a few days away from civilization. You wind up thinking and planning from the point of limitation and scarcity. You think, If I do that, will I have the gas to go do this? or maybe, If I use up all my water on this hike, I’ll just barely have enough to get by until the day I leave.
If you do something that is aligned with your gifts, talents, and passions, energy will flow into you. It will be emotional and spiritual energy. Sure, you’ll still get physically tired if there are physical things to do, but you won’t wind up drained. If you spend a lot of time and effort on something that doesn’t connect with your soul, your emotional and spiritual energy can get tapped out pretty quickly.
I think this is the point of view that keeps a lot of people from trying something out. They think it has to be the exact right thing before they put in the time and energy because they’ve only got this one shot. They don’t realize that working towards an authentic life will restore them and recharge them.
I also think, based on this powerful quote, that they don’t realize how much they can actually do. They don’t see that, if something is important in a way that touches their core, they will find the way to make it happen. They don’t realize they have enormous reserves when it comes to resources for deciding, acting, and making things happen.
Obviously, part of “they” is “me.” I feel a lot of resistance with some ideas, thinking I might wind up putting in too much time and effort only to see it flop, or only to find out I don’t really want to be doing that kind of work long-term. I come from the mindset that I have to get it right, or pretty close to right, because I will run out of gas if I go too long without quick results. I forget that trying out new things is pretty fun a lot of the time, and I forget that I won’t really know if some things are a good choice for me until I try them. To quote my nine-year-old son (in his optimistic version of the saying), “You can’t like it ‘til you try it.”
I’m still learning I don’t have to be sure I’ll be hugely successful at something in order to try it out. I’m re-learning that I’m going to struggle with things and be pretty crummy at a few while I’m learning them. But that’s the joy of mastery. If it’s easy at first, there’s no elation when you conquer it. If it’s a quick and open road, there’s no challenge.
I’ll leave the idea of the quick and open road to the “Make 6 Figures In 7 Days!” crowd. I prefer the reality of the struggle, because it’s the way of the journey, and the journey is the only reason to go anywhere.
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
Thursday, April 24, 2008
You Can Work From Anywhere In The World!
Does that idea of “working from anywhere in the world” grab your attention? It always gets mine. With the right kind of work, all you need is a laptop computer and a hot spot plus a cell phone. Maybe you only need access to a computer once in a while. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
I think that somebody needs to offer remedial classes on “How To Work From Anywhere In The World!” I’m not very good at it yet.
My sons and I are traveling to Cincinnati for a soccer tournament. The work I need to do while I’m gone is writing and posting articles and having one coaching session. Already I’m over my head!
When I planned to have my coaching call by cell phone, I forgot about the time change. I’ll be driving to a soccer field at the normally scheduled time, so I had to reschedule the session. My wonderful client was understanding so we changed the session to a different day. But come on! How hard should it be to plan one coaching session?
I have a laptop that’s eight or nine years old and I want to bring it along. But I realized that many of my login sites and passwords are automatically stored in my desktop computer so I might not be able to send out my newsletter or work on my blog-zine.
So I’m writing this during a break in packing early Thursday afternoon. We fly out this evening. I know! What was I thinking?
For all of you struggling with time management problems, take heart. We usually manage the day-to-day stuff because we get into habits and a rhythm. It’s the occasional big event with hard-to-predict time requirements that throws us.
It’s okay, though, because I’m learning. I’m learning that “work from anywhere in the world” is a great marketing argument but a big challenge to pull off. I’m learning that, while it’s fun and exciting to take care of all the little details when your business is small and starting to grow, it can leave you jammed when other things come up. I’m guessing the “work from anywhere in the world” crowd have some excellent employees or virtual assistants keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes while they’re hopping the globe.
Some day I’ll be very good at this. I’ll have everything I need on a new, fast laptop. I’ll have figured out what I need by going places, doing some work while I’m there, and learning each time. If I need to publish something while I’m gone, I’ll know when, where, and how I can do it. If there are things that need to get done that I can’t manage while out of town, I’ll have a virtual assistant to handle them for me.
But this weekend I’m hopping on a plane with my old laptop so I can test run this idea. If I get to work on upcoming articles, I’ll come back to a comfortable schedule. If not, boy am I gonna’ be rushed!
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
I think that somebody needs to offer remedial classes on “How To Work From Anywhere In The World!” I’m not very good at it yet.
My sons and I are traveling to Cincinnati for a soccer tournament. The work I need to do while I’m gone is writing and posting articles and having one coaching session. Already I’m over my head!
When I planned to have my coaching call by cell phone, I forgot about the time change. I’ll be driving to a soccer field at the normally scheduled time, so I had to reschedule the session. My wonderful client was understanding so we changed the session to a different day. But come on! How hard should it be to plan one coaching session?
I have a laptop that’s eight or nine years old and I want to bring it along. But I realized that many of my login sites and passwords are automatically stored in my desktop computer so I might not be able to send out my newsletter or work on my blog-zine.
So I’m writing this during a break in packing early Thursday afternoon. We fly out this evening. I know! What was I thinking?
For all of you struggling with time management problems, take heart. We usually manage the day-to-day stuff because we get into habits and a rhythm. It’s the occasional big event with hard-to-predict time requirements that throws us.
It’s okay, though, because I’m learning. I’m learning that “work from anywhere in the world” is a great marketing argument but a big challenge to pull off. I’m learning that, while it’s fun and exciting to take care of all the little details when your business is small and starting to grow, it can leave you jammed when other things come up. I’m guessing the “work from anywhere in the world” crowd have some excellent employees or virtual assistants keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes while they’re hopping the globe.
Some day I’ll be very good at this. I’ll have everything I need on a new, fast laptop. I’ll have figured out what I need by going places, doing some work while I’m there, and learning each time. If I need to publish something while I’m gone, I’ll know when, where, and how I can do it. If there are things that need to get done that I can’t manage while out of town, I’ll have a virtual assistant to handle them for me.
But this weekend I’m hopping on a plane with my old laptop so I can test run this idea. If I get to work on upcoming articles, I’ll come back to a comfortable schedule. If not, boy am I gonna’ be rushed!
May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,
Steve Coxsey
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