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

Stages of Creative Career Change: Did I Get It Right?

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been brainstorming ways to help some friends in the Fast Track Your Dream program move more quickly through the process of discovering their calling and transitioning to a new career. It led me to put together information from different fields – marketing and psychology – to think about the stages of creative career change.

I sketched out my ideas then filled in some details. Then I went back and refined things to make them clearer. I wound up with a pretty good framework for understanding the process in general steps and knowing what people might need at each step.

The stages I came up with go from (1) dissatisfaction with work but not interested in finding a calling, to (2) wondering if work can be meaningful, to (3) beginning to investigate creative alternatives to a job-in-a-box, to (4) getting clear about the idea of a calling and seeing how to make it into a career, to (5) developing a plan to start a creative career, to (6) implementing the plan, then to (7) mastery of the new career.

So of course I took a look at my own career transition to see where I am.

Great news! As of last week I’ve started the move from Plan Development to Plan Implementation. I know, I know, I’ve been implementing along the way. In my framework people are gathering information and learning things while they develop their plan. I was learning by trying things out, and I kept getting away from the focus of getting a clear plan. Good thing I didn’t have me as a client. I would have driven me nuts!

Next for me come the stages where I get competent at the basics, then over time master my career. Fortunately I get to add new plans and pieces to my business along the way so I will have variety and new challenges, and I’ll go through many of the stages for each new component.

This framework of stages lets me think in terms of helping other people focus their questions, their research, and their effort. It gives them a way to figure out where they are in the process and focus on the next steps instead of trying to do a lot of different steps that are probably out of order.

If anyone stumbles across this post and has comments, questions, or feedback on the process of finding your calling and designing your life around it, please post comments here or e-mail me. I would love to develop a program that incorporates all kinds of individual differences and possible challenges but still quickly pinpoints where to focus your time and effort.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Finally – A Niche!

I write a blog about my transition to a career where I can use my gifts, talents, and passions, bring more enjoyment and fulfillment to my life, and be a solo entrepreneur – a solopreneur. That’s this blog, of course.

I write another blog about conversational and comfortable approaches to marketing a personal service business.

I deeply enjoy participating in a creative career change forum through Fast Track Your Dream.

I participate in a Parenting Coaches’ group and find the most energizing and interesting part to be when we discuss marketing and help members come up with ways to get their message to clients, or think about ways to tell more people about the Parenting Coaches’ group blog.

And still I was thinking that working with people who are trying to discover their calling to create work they love was just one of many areas I should be developing as I build my business.

When I named my business Discovery Lookout I followed Barbara Winter’s advice. I chose a name that will encompass related interests, all of them connected through the idea of mentorship on personal growth and development. But I got into the trap of thinking I should take everything that interests me about personal growth and development and pile it into my business right now.

I enjoy working with people who are dedicated to learning better ways to relate to children, but frankly I don’t know that coaching parents will express that. It seems hard to find people who are doing a good job but really want to become masterful as parents. Mostly people seek help in crisis situations so it’s more like therapy and parent consultation on behavior management techniques.
(Y-A-A-A-W-N-N-N) Right now I express those goals through my volunteer work.

I enjoy working with teachers and childcare professionals on better approaches to working with children. It will stay on my list, but it’s not a priority for now.

I get excited about working with people who want to become better leaders by encouraging and supporting the people they lead. I think mentorship is a wonderful model for that. That will be put off for me to develop in the future, probably as training and consultation.

I enjoy working with groups to foster a spirit of community, connection, and cooperation. I can develop training, guided exercises, and follow-up with brief coaching. But it’s not the right place for me to start.

All these things fit into the second tier of my mission. That second part is to spread a vision of mentorship so more people will invest their time and energy into the growth and development of others. My mission starts with me promoting growth and development through mentorship.

I’m starting my business where my mission starts. I will focus on helping people uncover their gifts, talents, and passions, rediscover their dreams, design a life plan that includes joyful and meaningful work, and transition to that life.

I’ll support people as they start small businesses and become solopreneurs, and I’ll help small business owners and solopreneurs move their businesses to the next level. Other stuff I can add later. I’m going to start where my passion is pulling me.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

This CEO’s A Taskmaster!

Who wrote this in my blog last week???

Here’s the strange part. I’m not really doing more work, and I’m not doing things in much more of a focused way. I’m just more aware of the usefulness of what I’m doing at the time. That makes my effort seem more practical and more worthwhile.

I’m gonna’ have to edit myself! That’s hardly believable – and certainly not true!

This was my second week beta-testing the daily meeting system. One thing’s for sure. I’m definitely getting more things done.

In all fairness to me (I need to extend myself some grace sometimes) it’s true that I’m doing the same kinds of things and spending about the same amount of time doing them. But instead of brainstorming while driving then jotting down ideas and tossing the sheet into a folder with a dozen other sheets, I get productive. I pull out all the old brainstorm sheets for the category, summarize them into important concepts, and then have dedicated – planned in my schedule – time to come up with more ideas or extend and develop the ones I have.

Instead of planning to write a blog post or article when I have finished a group of tasks and think I’ll have an unplanned block of time, I actually plan the block of time for writing.

But it’s so efficient I did start planning in another thing here and a couple of things there. At the end of the day, when I have my review meeting, I’m mentally tired and ready to stop thinking.

I know I set myself up with that one. Soft pitch right over the plate.

The system is working. I get my personal errands done, the household to-dos, things for my kids, plus regular progress forward on my business.

I even learned on Thursday that, when a huge snowfall hits Texas in March and my kids get out of school early, I can improvise with my schedule and enjoy playing in the snow for a while and take care of my list later. Since I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish that day that still wasn’t done, it was easy for me to see how to reschedule and choose a couple of small things to bump until Friday or the next week.

I hope you’re making steps forward in finding and starting a career that speaks to your gifts, passions, talents, and values. Let me know how it’s going.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Getting’ Real

Something shifted for me this week but I think it’s going to take a little while for me to understand it in practical terms.

It started out when I was writing February’s “Elephant Burgers” article for my Chasing Wisdom Blog-Zine. I was thinking about ways to offer practical tips for using a daily schedule to move towards your dreams, but I couldn’t figure out how to keep the ideas from sounding boring.

Synchronicity brought me a structure that sparked my creativity. Check out the process I came up with in the article.

I’ve been following this daily planning meeting format all week now. It’s helping me see my forward movement on large goals. It’s helping me treat each goal with respect by scheduling some time each day or a few days a week to work on the goal. And it’s showing me why I feel really busy some days!

Before, I would do the things I thought of as my “to-do” list, like pay bills and write articles and do specific things on my web site or blog. Then, in the unscheduled blocks of time, I would think about what I needed to do and spend some time doing it. Then I would think of something else I needed to do and get sidetracked with that. Sometimes I would look at the more vague things that involve planning or sketching out an idea and leave them until later.

Now I’m looking at an overall plan, seeing the long-term goals and their importance to me, and seeing how each daily step connects with a goal. I actually see myself moving forward more clearly.

Here’s the strange part. I’m not really doing more work, and I’m not doing things in much more of a focused way. I’m just more aware of the usefulness of what I’m doing at the time. That makes my effort seem more practical and more worthwhile. I’m also able to prioritize tasks better using the larger goals.

Here’s why this shift is important to me. Most of what I’m doing is not immediately generating income! I can easily start feeling adrift or uncertain while working on things that don’t give immediate results. But with the daily planning meetings and the goals in front of me every day, I see how my steps are moving me towards an information product, a training session I can offer, or a targeted coaching program.

Things are becoming more real. It’s not “some day, eventually.” It’s “by the end of May.”

There’s something electrifying about this process I’m trying out. I think it could become a signature workshop and teleseminar, a powerful chapter in a book, and a stand-alone e-book with workbook.

I have some decisions to make soon. I attended my first coaching support group as a member and we discussed the differences in newsletters and e-zines. I realized my blog-zine takes a lot more time than a short weekly or semi-weekly newsletter, but I love writing it.

Maybe it’s time to reconsider the format and how I offer it to people. Lots to consider. But I’ll plan time during one of my daily meetings to do just that!

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Moving Forward By Refusing To Go

There was a business expo in town today. In fact, it was called an Entrepreneurs’ Expo. I’ve been getting e-mail notices for a couple of months. The closer it got the more I thought about attending. I even told my wife I might go to it. But I told her I would go “if I figure out a plan.”

I thought about it last night, and I thought about it this morning while driving one of our dogs to a vet appointment. I figured out when I could leave, how long I could be there before I would need to leave to pick up my son from school, and even how to have a good lunch choice on the way.

But I couldn’t ever think of what I was going for.

I thought about having a small notebook and meeting people and striking up conversations about how they became a business owner or became self-employed. I thought about ways to find the people who would be there just to get ideas, because that’s a big part of the crowd. They are intrigued by business ownership or self-employment but aren’t sure how to go about it. Sounds like exactly the people I should be meeting!

The problem is, I knew what to expect. I’ve been to the Expo before. Back when my family and I got conned into buying a fraudulent “business opportunity.” Yes, conned; the people who ran the company were being pursued by the FTC the last I heard for close to a hundred million dollars worth of fraud.

Maybe that really bad association carried over to my thoughts about the Expo. Maybe, added to that, was the fact the person who talked us into going to the Expo was a marketing consultant from the same marketing training group that I blew thousands of dollars on just two years after the first debacle, and just one year after my second, much less expensive, debacle. (As a happy aside, I got notification that the people who ran scam number two were sentenced to several years and placed securely in a federal penitentiary.)

The marketing training wasn’t a scam, but the people I paid money to join a marketing consulting business only stuck with it seven weeks before leaving the formal partnership and keeping all my money. So maybe there was a second-degree carry-over effect of despising the Expo. But that’s not the main reason I decided not to go!

I thought about who would be there. I read the list of exhibitors. Lots of print shops, janitorial supply companies, suppliers to builders, home-based business “opportunities,” and of course multi-level marketing people.

I thought about the people I met when I went there before. They were small business owners looking for business-to-business customers, and they were opportunity-hawking salespeople. The ones looking into starting a business weren’t at all thinking about their personal gifts or passions or interests. They were looking for a low-cost, low-effort way to make money so they could quit their jobs.

They were in debt and looking for a way out, or in low-pay jobs and thinking it would be easier to find a quick moneymaker on the side that it would be to build their careers.

The thing is, if there really were a quick and easy system to make money with little effort and low overhead, what FOOL would be selling it at a business expo? He (or she) would be setting the system up several times over and becoming stupidly rich.

Self-employment and home-based business ideas that are marketed primarily, or exclusively, on the basis of getting rich and being able to “fire your boss” tend to be shallow. And the people drawn to them aren’t looking for a way to have a meaningful life and meaningful work. They’re looking for an easy fix that’s just a little more expensive and takes slightly more effort than playing the lotto.

I realized I probably wouldn’t find “my people” there, or not many of them—the creative types who know how they like to interact with the world and what they want to offer. And I realized I would be dragged down by all the people desperately grasping at clients or trying to hook a few more people on their “business opportunities” so they could make a quick commission.

We’ve been discussing this dilemma on the career change forum at the Fast Track Your Dream forum. A lot of people offer “systems” and “steps” to take to start a business. They sell plans and how-to books. But cookie cutter plans don’t work for creative people trying to develop businesses that reflect their personalities and values.

For people who don’t feel connected to technology, building an online business is not the right path. For people who want to do individual creative work, setting up a free newsletter and building a mailing or e-mail list might not work.

And for a personal development coach and trainer, walking into a gathering place for the moneychangers from the temple isn’t a good way to find people seeking meaningful change.

So I decided not to go! And I moved myself forward by not moving. Instead of just going because it seemed reasonably connected to my business plan, I thought about it carefully. That helped me define my target market more narrowly and get a clearer idea of my future clients. And the Expo didn’t seem like the place to find them.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Time For Discovery

It was a week of questions but not many answers for me.

I like advocating for parenting models and child behavior management models in general based on respect for children and their developmental needs and stages. But people who seek help with parenting either have children with severe behavior problems, so it’s actually a therapy issue, or they are court-ordered to get parent training because they are abusive or at-risk to abuse. I don’t see that translating into parent coaching. One question, then, is How do I incorporate a passion for helping people respect children and mentor them effectively into my business if the target group isn’t interested?

I like individual coaching but realized I don’t want to have a business model where I carve out blocks of my time and have to keep them booked with appointments to maximize my profits. It would keep me from having a business. I distinguish a business from straight self-employment this way: Am I trading my time for money as my only means of earning income, or do I have ways to create and produce something and then sell it again and again? If I’m coaching as much as possible there’s not time to create the products for the business. Another question this week is How much individual coaching do I want to do, and how much can I do and still have time to develop my business?

The biggie, the one I keep coming back to, comes up when I think about marketing. I keep going backwards. I think of ways to get groups of people to hear my message and sign up for a free or low-cost event or product. But that’s supposed to be a step leading towards recurring purchases or a higher-end purchase. I haven’t figured out what that will be yet. I keep stopping myself and reminding myself I need to figure out what I’m trying to market before I come up with a marketing plan. My big question is What are the continuity, or recurring purchase, products and big-ticket products I want to sell?

I looked at taking a group coaching course, a small business coaching course, and an advanced skills course. So far none of them have worked with my schedule. I do realize one of the answers to my questions is to get connected with people building their own coaching and training businesses. Since that’s not working out right now, I will look into joining a coaching support group.

The other answer to my group of questions is to start moving forward. I have to experience and learn and try things out in order to find what will work for me. So action will help me find my way. Lots of experimenting and risk-taking are in my future. It's time for discovery.

Which leads to the biggest question of all. When will I start? I can’t wait to find out!

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Momentum

The checks I write for bills this month will have my new business name. Hurray?

Opening the account meant, of course, that I ordered checks. They came in. Everything on the other business account has cleared, so I can close it down and transfer the balance to the new account.

There’s this strange angel and devil on my shoulder thing going on. Except neither is an angel nor devil. They’re both annoying teenagers, I think, maybe junior high age.

One says, “Big deal. Same business, new name. That’s exciting? Woo hoo….”

The other one says, “Wow! That’s cool! Your brand new business! What are you gonna’ do with it?”

It is exciting, but not transformative. The business name keeps me focused on what I want my work to be about, so having the name in front of me keeps that idea in my mind more often.

Also, no explanations are necessary. I don’t have to say, “That’s a business name from before when I co-owned a child care center, then used the corporation for a couple of ‘business in a box’ ideas that didn’t work, then kind of used it when I was training to be a marketing and small business consultant.”

I just say, “My business is Discovery Lookout. It’s about helping people and businesses get new perspectives and new ideas so they can change and grow and accomplish big goals.”

Confirmation of the importance of the new start came by serendipity. When serendipity speaks, I like to listen. My web guy found a new color scheme based on what I told him and finished formatting my new copy. He sent me an e-mail earlier this week that the site was updated. Check it out.

Last week I noticed things were moving forward without much immediate effort by me because of planning and work I did in the past. This week, things became even more real. I’m not “thinking about” or “planning” or “ready to launch” a new business name or coaching web site. It’s done. I jumped. Actually, I planned the jump and put things in motion weeks ago, and suddenly this week I was flying off that cliff thinking, “Am I sure this is how I wanted to do it?”

Too late! Twisting roads mean you drive on and see what’s around the corner. It’s kind of the theme Michael Masterson keeps referring to when he talks about his upcoming book Ready, Fire, Aim. (I really need to get an affiliate link for that book, once I read it.)

It’s the power and clarity that doing brings to planning and imagining. I feel the power. I'm looking forward to the clarity.

Just after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the press asked then-President George H W Bush, “What are you going to do about this?” It was an impromptu press conference on a golf course, so he didn’t have a lot of time to prepare, and I laughed at his answer. “We’ll just see what I do.”

Now I get it. I have the general ideas and some principles and guidelines, but I don’t know step by step where this will lead me. We’ll just see what I do.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey