Packing Up And Moving

Moving day for the TRAVEL LOG is officially here!

You will find all future TRAVEL LOG articles on my hosted website here.

This blog has been housed on Blogger for nearly two years. Back in June I set up a hosted website for my e-mail newsletter On The Twisting Road, including a sub-address for the TRAVEL LOG. Since then I’ve posted my weekly update on Blogger and on my hosted site.

This is the last new post I will put on Blogger. I will leave the Blogger site up with the archives of the TRAVEL LOG for a while as I move them to my hosted site.

I’ve already managed to move the first three months. It’s slow going, since I have to post them one at a time. I looked at moving the whole blog but the information I found was discouraging.

For anyone starting with a new business idea who is considering a blog, I have a recommendation. Having tried three popular formats, Blogger, WordPress, and TypePad, I have chosen WordPress. This is mainly because I can put the blogging software on my own hosted site.

If I had started with a free WordPress blog, I would be able to migrate the whole thing to my hosted site. If you’re considering starting a free blog and think you might want to host it on your business’ site once you’re up and running, I think that’s a good way to go. TypePad has a great structure and is very easy to use, and the information I read makes it seem fairly easy to migrate a TypePad blog to your own hosted site with WordPress software. But at this time, you can’t put TypePad software on your own site. If you want a TypePad blog, you have to host it on their server.

This week had the theme of packing up and moving, and I’m pretty sure it will be my theme for a while. Not only am I moving the TRAVEL LOG archives to my hosted site, I recently closed down my TypePad account so Anything But Marketing! is only found on my hosted site.

I even have a lot of packing and moving planned for my home office. I rearranged the furniture months ago and set up my workstation in the guest bedroom. I made a list by section of the room for going through books, files, supplies, and binders to sort things out and organize them. But that’s about as far as I got.

It’s sorting and sifting time for me this coming week. I will be clearing out old things and either storing them or tossing them out. I’ll be going through reminders of the successful child care business we sold a few years back, which will be bittersweet. I’ll also be going through reminders of the “business opportunities” I tried, including the ones that collapsed as the parent companies were taken over by the government for fraud. I’ll relive the foolishness, the gullibility, and the desperation that made me susceptible to those scams. And I’ll relive watching thousands and thousands of dollars disappear.

It’s gonna’ be a tough week. And it will probably take more than one week to get it all sorted out. But once I’m done and my office is focused on my coaching and training business, I won’t have to dig through bad memories to find my telephone bill or the stapler. I’ll be focused on the future and on a business I chose after a long process of listening to my gifts, talents, and passions.

That’s the vision I will hold in front of me to keep me going as I clear out the clutter of the past.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

If Money Were No Object, How Big Would It Be?

I signed up to participate in a group through the
Fast Track Your Dream program. We’re going to be reading through a collection of articles and essays titled Finding Your True Calling. I read through this book several months ago and tried some of the exercises, but not all of them. I skimmed over one in particular, but this week I’ve been focusing on it seriously.

The purpose of the exercise is to help people hear what they’re drawn to, what their heart enjoys. It’s a simple enough idea, but it’s deceptively tricky. It goes like this.

If you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do with your time? After taking time off and traveling and relaxing, how would you want to spend your days?

The premise is a person who doesn’t have to work will still want to be productive and will be free to do things that express natural gifts, talents, and passions. The problem with the premise is that it’s really hard to let go of considering money.

I’ve tried different versions of this, but I get distracted by rabbit trails. One version I used was to imagine winning the lottery and having enough money to generate a huge income, say a million dollars a year. When I think about it, I get stuck on how I would set up managing the money, how I would choose people to advise me, and how I would donate big portions of it. That turns into real work, having to learn about more complex investments. I wonder if I would enjoy that part and might discover a passion for investing in commodities or small cap stocks, or if I would really like being a venture capitalist. I completely lose the point of the exercise!

When I think about the giving part, I wonder if it would be better to set up a foundation and support certain organizations, or if it would make more sense to travel to see the work that different organizations are doing and just give directly to them, or if I would find unmet needs and be moved to set up an organization to serve those needs. I take my pretend philanthropy very seriously!

I tried this exercise from another point of view. I imagined I had a wonderful inspiration and wrote a best-selling novel and would be getting big royalty checks and just stick them in some kind of trust fund and have a big flow of income. What would I do then? I started imagining how I might write a second book and make even more money!

A couple of times when I’ve set aside time for entering into this thought exercise I wind up thinking of the things I would do with a huge income, like screen in the front porch and build an outdoor kitchen in the back yard. I start daydreaming about new cars and travel destinations. Again, I miss the point.

When I think about plans I have for building a coaching practice and adding training and information products around career choice and entrepreneurship, I find another obstacle. I realize that for the exercise to be effective I need to add, You don’t have to worry about marketing your service or product, because your reasonable efforts will definitely be effective. I needs this because I start out imagining setting up training workshops and not having to worry about the income, but I get pretty disappointed thinking about nobody showing up!

I am learning much about myself, and I’ve only written a small portion of it here because some of it is still pretty personal and a lot of it isn’t totally clear yet. I know that the more I stay with this exercise the more I’m discovering my limiting thoughts, false preconceptions, and fears. I realize I need to bring my thoughts about risk into awareness so I can evaluate them and make them more realistic. I see more and more where I automatically filter my own gifts, talents, and passions through the “practical” lens, which takes a way a lot of their power.

I recommend trying different variations of this exercise. They can guide you in your own journey to discover your authentic work. And they can point to your thoughts and beliefs about money, scarcity, abundance, and security, which are important to uncover when you’re trying to embrace liberty and live with intention.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

What A Time To Make Big Changes!

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

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

Mid-Year Review For The Daily Meeting System

It’s the end of the month. It’s the end of the quarter. And it also happens to be halfway through the year. The calendar is practically screaming at me that it’s time to review my progress on this year’s goals and adjust them if I need to.

I introduced the idea of the Daily Meeting System in an article called “This Sounds Nuts! But I Think You’ll Like It” in the Chasing Wisdom Blog-Zine. I’ve been using the system since then to move towards my goals. I’ve also been using it to see how it works and find ways to improve it.

Some of the things I’ve learned have been kind of funny. I’ve written steps on my weekly sheet that I had to move to the following week because I didn’t do them. At the end of the second week I’ve gotten frustrated with myself for not doing them still. But when I backed up and thought about it, I realized they weren’t helpful and they weren’t interesting. I was pretty smart not to do them, but I was too dumb to realize it!

For example, I had a step that said something like “Sketch guidelines for time-limited groups that combine training and coaching.” I still haven’t done it. I’ve thought about it and changed my mind a few times but never really got much on paper. I realized I’m not likely to come up with the guidelines, such as length of individual calls and number of people in the group and how much written material to use, until I’m actually planning a group. Having groups is on my list for down the road. Of course it would be helpful if I had it all planned once I get ready to run a group, but really, I won’t know what I need to include until I’m getting ready for the group. So it was a silly step that I finally set aside.

Mid-year is a great time to look at your annual goals to see how they’re doing. Notice I didn’t say to see how you’re doing. Look at the goals first. Were they reasonable? Were they in order? Have they been moving you towards your long-term vision? You’re halfway through this leg of your journey. It’s a great time to assess your progress and decide which route you’ll enjoy for the rest of the way.

I have a long-term goal of having ten to twelve coaching clients, but I’ve kept my number of clients very low while I work on other things. I adjusted my annual goal for clients recently after I decided I’m only ready to add up to three new clients, one every couple of weeks at the most. It will probably be a year or so before I’m ready for the higher number. Adjusting the number meant I have adjusted the steps I plan for getting the word out about my coaching practice. It’s been much more low-key and at a slower pace.

I realized in the past month that I want to focus a lot of my time on writing information products, and I want to include some creative writing in my schedule every day if possible. That time is available to me because I’m not spending a lot of time redesigning and developing web sites. Looking at the order of projects and stages, it became obvious I won’t have clear direction for changing my web sites until I have finished writing some information products and maybe developed a recorded product.

Reviews like this are obviously a great opportunity for self-criticism and despair, but I’ve learned some things to keep me from falling down that hill. I look at the unfinished steps and the avoided goals and wonder, What can I learn from this?

Sometimes I learn that I expected something to be enjoyable and it just wasn’t. Sometimes I learn that when I brainstormed things I needed to do I included some “shoulds” that weren’t really necessary. And sometimes I learn there are things I have to do for now, until I make enough money to pay someone else to do them, that are important even though they’re boring.

Those are just about the only things on my list of unfinished steps that I wind up keeping. The things that turned out to be less enjoyable and the things that turned out to be unnecessary get tossed aside. Then I have a fairly short list of things I have to do that I would prefer not to.

If you haven’t put any goals down on paper or on a mind map or a project board, it’s a perfect time to start. You can plan projects, or at least stages of projects, for the rest of summer (it just started) and for the fall. You can even decide to take a break from Thanksgiving until after the New Year. That leaves plenty of time to make progress. And trust me, even finding out the goals you set aren’t really goals you want, or are for the distant future and not for this year, is enormous progress.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

…And The Livin’ Is Easy

Maybe it’s the heat, which showed up at least three weeks before summer officially arrived. Maybe it’s the culmination of conversations with other people training to be coaches and online forum chats with other people trying to make a creative career change. Maybe it’s writing down the story of my very expensive and foolish misadventures pursuing different “business opportunities” in the past. Something has sapped the urgency and pressure from my schedule for building my business.

It could be something as simple as the fact we’re adding some vacation days to the front end and back end of a trip to drive my older son to soccer camp. There’s nothing like the thought of vacation to send motivation running!

I know times like these come during any large project. There is an ebb and flow to focus and motivation. The accountability and focus of a coaching group (I’m in one) or accountability buddies (I have those in the creative career forum if I just ask) usually help people stay on track, even when it feels like slow plodding through mud. But we’re all being affected in a similar way and not accomplishing much.

I’ve decided just to give in. I’m planning to go with the flow. I’ll kick back and take it easy. Just as soon as it gets easy.

So far, summer has been busy. We had soccer camp and then a soccer tournament. We’re getting a new bed and mattress for the master bedroom so the old ones are going into the guest bedroom/home office. That means it’s in the middle of being rearranged and looks like a storage shed. This all started when I thought about how to rearrange the guest bedroom and talked with my wife about having a real bed for guests should we ever have any. That became the push we needed to go ahead and get the new larger bed for our bedroom and move our old bed into the guest bedroom. In coaching we call things like this “forwarding the action!”

The new bed comes tomorrow so I’ll be moving one and setting the other up. Wednesday the technician comes to fix the phone line on the wall where I relocated the desk in my home office. Thursday we leave for a couple of days of fun before dropping my older son at a university soccer camp for the week.

I thought I had been sweating a lot because of the heat. I’m realizing it’s a combination of rushing around and worrying about getting everything done!

I’ve decided to accept additional coaching clients. I believe I can handle up to three more if I add them slowly. I’ll start contacting my friends and colleagues to let them know later this week and the week I get back from the first trip. I look forward to having some more clients, but I won’t mind if I don’t get any more until August. That will be after the trip to soccer camp, and the trip back to pick up my son from soccer camp, and then our long road trip to North Carolina for – you guessed it – another soccer tournament.

The old laptop’s going with me on all the trips. I’ll be working on my book for people who are deciding if self-employment and entrepreneurship are right for them. With all these other things going on, I’m keeping my work schedule this summer narrowed down to coaching, writing the book, and writing my weekly articles. There’s nothing like the stress of a crowded schedule to bring clarity and purpose to work!

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Getting More Portable

This past week my younger son had a soccer camp every morning and it was about a half hour drive from our home. I packed up my zippered binder, laptop, and three-ring notebook each day to be able to use some of the camp time for work.

What I didn’t discover was consistently good coffee nearby. I don’t enjoy coffee first thing in the morning and usually have a couple of cups mid-morning during my work. I can’t brew it in my car –yet – so I tried three different places during the week with mediocre results. What I did discover is which parts of my work routine I can pack up and take with me.

My daily planner is in my zippered binder with my monthly targets and weekly steps, so I was able to plan my day while eating breakfast and drinking mediocre coffee. Anything that was planning or list-making, like choosing groups of people to contact as part of my referral seeking program, could be done in the binder. Reading for professional development was obviously portable, also.

I took my laptop along and was able to write drafts of articles and spend time doing creative writing. When the places with coffee were too crowded and noisy for me to write, I learned it was easiest to sit in the back seat of my car, windows down, with a little bit of shade. This worked as long as I had a nice breeze because it’s getting darned hot in north Texas.

I started looking mid-week for places with Wi-Fi to see how it would work to access my web site and autoresponder control panels. I didn’t find anywhere with free Wi-Fi so I didn’t try it out. I left my e-mail time and web site and blog management for the afternoons when I was back in my office. With a little more information and experience I’ll be able to find internet access while I’m out, and with a little bit of effort I’ll be able to learn how to access my business e-mail through the web. Then I’ll be ready to turn any mediocre coffee joint with a shaded parking lot into my office.

This is a boost for me because I was talking about what I want and need in my home office with a coaching colleague this week. We are taking an advanced coaching skills class and were doing some practice to apply the skills when I looked around and realized my home office just happened by default nearly five years ago and I haven’t improved it since. As we talked and she practiced coaching skills, I realized I don’t need an office as much as I need comfortable space and user-friendly materials and equipment. I can write on the computer wherever I can set up my laptop. I can write in a three-ring notebook wherever I can find quiet space and not too much wind. I can brainstorm and arrange ideas wherever I can spread out a few sheets of paper. I can talk to coaching clients wherever I have a good phone connection and no distractions.

Realizing I don’t have to be in my office to work, and that I can plan to work in different areas of my home or at a park or a coffee joint even when my office is available to me, freed me up to design the office I need. I’ve made the cluttered guest-bedroom-turned-home-office into a chaotic mix of boxes, papers, equipment, and frequently moved pieces of furniture. It’s a total mess, especially since I have to wait almost two weeks until the technician can come and hook up the recently disconnected phone line opposite of where I have the phone and fax now. But when that’s set I’ll have a corner of the room for the computer, resources, and bookkeeping, plus a filing cabinet for paperwork. The rest of the room will become a comfortable guest room for when we need that, and I’ll use it as an office for only a few tasks. For me, having much of my work be portable is liberating.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

What Have I Learned This Week?

I’ve gotten in the habit of writing what I’ve learned each week along my own journey as a solo entrepreneur. Sometimes I get a “big picture” view of things that helps me move forward. Sometimes I learn one small thing and another little piece falls into place. Sometimes I re-learn something I already figured out but then forgot. Okay, maybe it’s more than sometimes.

As I sit here thinking about what I learned this week, I can’t come up with anything about being a solo entrepreneur or about my business in particular. But I can come up with important things I haven’t learned!

On Wednesday night I had the great pleasure of facilitating a resource group conference call for students in training through MentorCoach. We struggled with many questions about the line between coaching and consulting or training. In its pure form, coaching helps a client find answers and does not present the coach as an expert on any subject. Providing information or suggestions crosses into consultation or training.

I know I enjoy brainstorming and am able to share specific information when I work with clients, and I don’t want to limit my way of helping to a small box. I want to use coaching skills but not be primarily a coach. What I didn’t learn is what to call that role and the kind of service I want to provide.

I want to find information on personal growth, especially around the idea of living authentically in a way that honors a person’s gifts and passions and values. I want to find exercises and techniques for helping people reconnect to creativity and go through self-discovery. What I didn’t learn is what format to use for sharing information in a way that works best with my own gifts, passions, and values.

I want to encourage creative career choices and help people find the way to work in unique ways that they love. I want to encourage people who can’t find a way to make a living doing what they love to make sure they find work that allows them to do what they love and keeps it at the center of their lives. What I didn’t learn is how to bring something fresh and new to the field, or how to present myself in order to do that.

I want to write on different topics. Most are related to personal discovery and personal growth and stretching oneself to take on new challenges. But I want to write on other topics, too. I want to travel sometimes to see a place and meet interesting people and tell their story. What I didn’t learn is how to do that in a way that leads to income.

That’s the biggest thing I didn’t learn this week. I didn’t learn all the steps to fill in between a free e-mail newsletter and a free blog-zine on one end and paid services on the other. That’s due in large part to the fact that I didn’t learn what it is I really want to be doing to earn money! I want to write, and I want to work directly with people, individually and in groups. But I didn’t learn what that’s going to look like.

So I end this week with lots of questions and not many answers. Which, oddly enough, is the beginning of an answer. I like the fact that coaching moves people forward and helps them accomplish goals. But I also want to work with people who have no easy answers, and need to marinate in their questions for a while, because the discovery is slow and may run very deep.

I wonder what that’s going to look like!

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

How Safe Is A Rut?

A few years back we lived in a different city, another nearby suburb in the area between Dallas and Fort Worth. When we moved into our little (actually tiny) house, we were surrounded by open fields. Our house and the neighbors’ house were the only ones there – former model homes in a development that was stalled for years because of a court case over ownership of the land.

Over time, the Farm to Market road that passed by old farmhouses and lots of open land was widened to two lanes plus a turn lane. Traffic lights went in, and so did convenience stores, strip malls, and housing additions. The other Farm to Market road that intersected it a few miles north, the one that took me to the lake by passing through a couple of old country towns, eventually got widened, too. Now it’s the main street of an upscale suburb with Starbucks, a gourmet grocery store, and a huge shopping, dining, and entertainment center. The drive from the old house to the lake used to take less then twenty minutes. That same drive would be almost twice as long now, with all the traffic and those darned traffic lights.

Since we didn’t move far, I still drive in the area close to the old house, sometimes several times per week. A friend was talking to me the other day about a new strip mall in that area and said it was just down from the new funeral home. I was totally confused and couldn’t figure out where she was describing because there were no funeral homes in the area. She told me the intersection again, so the next time I went that way I looked closely. There was a new funeral home, next to the new architect’s office, down from the new church.

This reminded me of a day when we had lived in our old house for a few years when an elderly lady at the corner gas station was completely lost. She was explaining she was looking for the old main street that had the feed store on it. The feed store had moved into a big new building on the Farm to Market road and the old building was being renovated. With all the new construction in the area she couldn’t find her familiar landmarks. She didn’t get out to drive very often, but it was a month or less since she last drove and things had changed that quickly. I let her follow me up the road about a quarter of a mile, and then I turned to drive her by the old feed store. From there she said she would be fine.

Things change around us constantly, even if we want to live in a rut. Sometimes people choose ruts because they’re predictable and comfortable. But the rut you start following today will not be the rut you follow in ten years, even if you try. The business I co-owned was very different the day we sold it compared to the day I joined it. The year I spent returning to a therapy practice after selling the business was a distant experience to the seven years I spent as a therapist before the business.

Last summer while on a road trip I took a slight detour to show my sons the house my family lived in for many years of my childhood. The rural area outside the small town now has a car dealership on one corner and small shops and offices on the road to it. There were so many new houses I drove by my old house and had to turn around to find it. Once again, I felt like that elderly lady, in a familiar place but with so much new information the familiar was hidden.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to me to pursue a creative career and be a solo entrepreneur. It doesn’t mean safety or predictability. It doesn’t mean the comfort of the known. It means adventure, and challenges, and the freedom to fall. It means I step into new territory every day, even if it’s just figuring out how to position something on my web page by learning one piece of HTML code. It means I can look at people who are successful at similar things and learn from them, but I don’t just follow their path. I figure out where those skills and accomplishments will be important on the trail I’m blazing for myself.

Life’s going to change around me whether I want it to or not. If I don’t keep up it’s going to leave me behind. I’d rather be out there exploring and learning and trying new things. This way I’ll be more comfortable with changes and can take them in stride. And I’ll be in charge of more of the changes, making them happen to improve my life.

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

Connections, Links, & Binders

Well I think I pulled it off!

I visited the coaches’ support group on Wednesday and tried to be very good. That’s kind of hard for me.

I listened carefully and said very little. I commented only when I was asked and I tried to make sure I shut up just before I started rambling. I flew in under the radar.

So I’ll be joining the group! They meet by phone every other week for an hour to support each other building their coaching businesses. One very good thing I discovered—coaching businesses look very different for different people.

For some it’s a small secondary part-time practice for a full-time professional. For some it’s having enough individual clients to make it the sole source of income. For others it includes group coaching and training and live events. For others it includes books and internet radio shows and a long-term plan to become a nationally known expert doing little or no individual coaching other than in demonstrations.

I did a little more connecting in other ways this week. I was on a teleseminar about using Facebook and LinkedIn. I searched pretty thoroughly to find people I know on the sites. Then I sent some invites to people I know who weren’t on the sites yet.

Using these sites correctly requires putting up plenty of information on my profile, the teleseminar told me. Plus I need to have a good picture taken and post it. Know any good face doubles?

I moved forward in another way when I brought together ideas from different places and came up with a plan. Barbara Sher recommends having a “Leonardo DaVinci” styled book or binder for keeping lots of creative ideas. She especially recommends this for people who have several ideas going at once and get worried they’ll forget an idea or forget to work on it.

In a strangely related concept, I’ve been discussing with colleagues what sort of business plan a solopreneur needs, especially if no loans or investments are being sought. My third source of inspiration was a collection of interviews, articles, and books that extol the benefits of making visualization boards or keeping long-term goals on computer screen savers so you’re constantly reminded of them.

I put these ideas together and bought a three-ring binder to start collecting all my written ideas and mind maps for areas of my business. (I also got one for any creative ideas that show up.) It’s my visual reminder of all the things that need my attention, a place to gather new ideas and flesh out old ones. Going through it will also help me see where I’ve made progress and accomplished some things.

Could this become the blueprint for a great info product for people wanting to start a small business as a self-employed service provider? I’m not sure, but there’s going to be a page in my binder for that idea.

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

Vocation, Vocation, Vocation

My birthday was this past Wednesday so I gave myself a gift.

Actually, I accepted and moved forward the gift someone else gave me. Gayle Scroggs let me know that a colleague in the Coaching world is accepting new members to a support group for those of us building Coaching businesses.

I contacted the Coach and then she and I had our first conversation Wednesday. I will be “visiting” the virtual group the next time they meet, and if we all agree I’m a good fit I’ll join them.

It will be an important step. Just planning that first phone call got me to move a little bit on thinking about how I want to structure my services and products. Getting a lot of individual Coaching clients doesn’t interest me right now. In fact, it sounds like I would be building my own cage. But planning ways to offer time-limited training groups and time-limited support groups, along with a couple of open-ended support groups, has me excited.

I was reading through 48 Days To The Work You Love by Dan Miller today and was reminded of something important. He discusses the difference between vocation (a calling), career (a path of related work within a field), and a job (one particular instance). I knew for quite a while that I want to honor my vocation, my calling, which I believe is hard-wired into my DNA and into my spirit. But I thought of a vocation as a special level of career, like a more meaningful career. It’s not just his career—it’s his vocation.

But Dan Miller’s view is that career is a subset that can fit under vocation, just as job is a subset that can fit under career. Once you find your vocation, that life calling, you can choose a career that fits with it. Discovering your vocation is not the same as discovering your career. It just helps narrow the choices and points you to the right aisle.

Now I already understood that a person could have a career and not satisfy his or her vocation, and that recreational activities and creative pursuits can help fulfill a vocation. But I had this black and white thinking going on: either your career is your calling or you have a calling that can’t be a lucrative career so you have a career that supports you and you fulfill your calling in other ways.

His notion that a person can discover a vocation and then change careers while staying in the same vocation is transformational for me. My business doesn’t have to be everything in my vocation. It doesn’t have to align carefully and perfectly with every aspect of my calling. It just has to integrate with it.

I know my vocation. I love watching people grow and develop, gain new skills and new confidence, and find out what they’re capable of doing. I love seeing one person extend himself or herself to help another person get the vision and confidence to grow—that’s Mentorship. I love stories because they’re all about personal growth and development in their archetypal forms.

I have to be sure I honor and represent my calling in all my choices. I have to bring it into every aspect of my life. It will shape and help define my business over the years. It will also guide my personal growth and lead me to discover new things about myself that I can share with other people.

This takes some of the stress off of “getting my business right,” but it puts it more firmly on “getting my life right.”

Whew! Clarity and excitement and fear all at once. I must be on the right path again.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Out Of Synch

Any of you who are sci-fi fans will understand the idea of a phase shift in the time-space continuum. To catch the rest of you up, the idea is that there is something akin to frequency that synchronizes all the “stuff” within a dimension. Change your frequency and you’re in a different dimension or maybe at a different point in time.

Phase shift story lines are really cool because then the people or the aliens can be present but not fully visible, kind of like a ghost. But you can’t interact fully with something that’s out of phase with you, so it quits being fun when you decide you want to talk to someone or eat food.

For the past few days, since a little before we left for Orlando on Christmas Day for the soccer trip, I’m having these experiences of being out of phase. I first noticed it a few days before Christmas when I rushed around to get kids’ activities done and send them on their way to spend the night with their grandparents, then sat on the couch eating an orange and feeling pretty tired.

I totally forgot about a telecourse that night I had signed up for, and had been very excited to hear. When I remembered it later, the memory was like something in the distant past.

More to the point, it was like those dreams where suddenly you realize there’s a test you didn’t take for high school or college, and right now you have to go take it and you’re not prepared. The more frequent version for me is being told I have a final in a class I totally forgot about. I think back and remember I went two or three times and thought it was going to be pretty tough so I’d decided to drop it but I never filled out the paperwork. So I’m heading for the final of a very difficult class having no preparation.

I’ve been feeling like I’m forgetting important things and I’ve been feeling like I’m behind on a lot of things. I’ll think there’s a stack of bills I forgot to pay and run anxiously to the study and go through them. Once my heart gave a somersault because I thought I was two weeks past due sending one off until I noticed the due date was in February.

I fell out of phase again this week. I had an invitation to listen to an interview about personal service marketing for coaches on a conference call. I was happy. It sounded like great information and there was going to be discussion with other coaches.

Then one little thing changed in my schedule. It actually freed me up to pay attention to the call fully instead of squeezing it in, but I had some article writing I started doing. About fifteen minutes after the call ended, when I was telling my sons we could go get some dinner, I remembered the missed call. I felt like I was living parallel lives. It was like I had forgotten my “other self.”

I told a friend yesterday and she said it’s because my birthday is coming up. She said it can dissociate people and give us a disrupted sense of time. I don’t remember experiencing this before with birthdays but it’s a pretty cool explanation. She has studied a lot about shamanism, native spiritual beliefs, and ancient religions so her perspective is always mind-expanding!

Yesterday I picked up some paperwork to finish bookkeeping for a non-profit agency project grant. Ugh! Today I finished my on-line course in ethics and my on-line rules exam to renew my counseling license and then submitted my license renewal. With one task completed and the other set to finish, I’m filling much more in phase. I think I need to do one more thing before everything synchronizes again—but I can’t figure out what it is.

Maybe it is my birthday. Not sure. But I’m moving forward in little steps here and there, getting my writing done, and finding out how much I love the structure of biographies and documentaries.

More on that later when I understand it more fully and can explain it better.

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

Forward In Spite Of Myself

On Christmas Eve Day I put the paperwork and filing fee in the mail to rename my corporation “Discovery Lookout, Inc.”

I left Christmas morning with my sons for Orlando. My older son’s soccer team was in a soccer tournament between Christmas and New Year’s. We came back on New Year’s Day in the early evening.

The next day I had the confirmation from the State of Texas that my corporation has officially been renamed.

Yesterday I went to the bank to change my business account to the new name. New checks are ordered and I should be paying bills later this month with checks that carry the new name.

I had a whirlwind holiday season since we were out of town for over a week. I posted the final three articles for my Blog-Zine on Christmas Eve Day and programmed my autoresponder to notify my list a couple of days after Christmas.

Beyond that, I did absolutely nothing to move my business forward from about a week before Christmas until I went to the bank yesterday. My sons were out of school the week before Christmas and we had a lot of things to do to prepare for Christmas and the trip.

And yet, in spite of my limited time, big things happened. My corporation is officially renamed. My bank account has been changed and my checks will have the new business name. My Blog-Zine is complete for December and I’m on track beginning to write articles for this month’s issue.

It’s good for me to realize that my momentum is actually carrying me forward. I was starting to think, while walking around Universal Studios with my younger son, that I had completely stalled working on my business. Then at night in the hotel room, after the soccer game, trying to fall asleep, I was feeling aimless about the business overall.

But by following simple steps I planned long ago, and meeting a couple of deadlines I scheduled, even with a lower stress schedule I was moving forward.

Write it down and get it down. Plan it, schedule it, and keep yourself accountable. Man! These Coaching ideas actually work sometimes! Most importantly, they carry us through the times when our motivation, our vision, and our passion are taking a sabbatical. A very important lesson for me.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

The Fog of Possibility

Wednesday night I had the very special honor of guest moderating the Resource Group call for students in the Foundations Coaching class through MentorCoach. Kevyn Malloy, the very warm and gracious woman who taught my Foundations class, was the special guest that night. Kevyn shared the story of her path to Coaching and things she learned along the way.

It was especially important for me because Kevyn told us not to get too fixed on a path or a goal, but to stay open to opportunities that appear. She talked a lot about serendipity, the idea of purposeful chance intervening to bring things into our lives when we need them.

Kevyn discovered Coaching during a time when she was taking a break from being a therapist and trying to restore balance to her life. Sounds kind of like my twisting road. She started the training and began Coaching part-time, not sure what role Coaching would ultimately play in her life. I’m feeling pretty comfortable hearing about her twisting road.

As she worked longer in Coaching, she found areas of specialty where she enjoyed her clients and offered her most inspired Coaching. These areas weren’t the ones she would ever have guessed before she got there. She discovered them because she was willing to try new areas and see how it went. She was willing to accept opportunities that colleagues presented to her.

It was an important time in my life for that message. I’ve been sketching my “ideal client” and trying to decide how much of my business I will dedicate to individual coaching and how much will be group coaching, training, writing, and producing information products. Any answers I come up with are completely guessing and I don’t have a clear direction. But that can be okay—or so I’ve been told.

A friend I knew many years ago told me, when I was early in my therapy career and trying to figure out some long-term goals, that sometimes we don’t see that far ahead. Sometimes we just see the next step. Actually, he was finishing a divinity degree, so he was talking about God revealing only the next step and not the whole path. I’ve never fully embraced that message, even though I keep hearing it when I’m trying to see farther down the road.

This week I moved forward in little steps, writing more articles for my Blog-Zine and sketching out some ideas for topics next year. I’ve spent some creative planning time looking more closely at what characteristics in clients will bring out my best work and what ways of interacting and serving I’ll do best. I’ve started planning ways to keep creative ideas flowing and try out new things.

Little steps are all I can see right now because the distant path is too cloudy. I still don’t like not knowing! But not-knowing is the path to discovering, so I have to embrace not-knowing and look forward to the discoveries.

Clear direction is the end of possibility. When you choose something, you choose not to do something else, at least for a time. I think I’m so enthralled with possibility that choosing feels limiting.

In this coming year, I will choose to try new ideas and explore new directions, always staying open to new opportunities. Man! I sound like a Coach!

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Twisting Or Roundabouts?

This week I spent a little bit of time writing for my Blog-Zine, more time planning the rest of this month’s and next month’s Blog-Zine articles, a lot of time reading and watching training DVDs, and a whole lot more time doing things that have nothing to do with my business.

In the “Design your life first, then design your career” model, you start with the kind of life you want to have and the priorities you should honor. From there you find interesting and creative work that complements your life. High up on my list right now is time for my sons’ activities, since my wife is gone from dawn to dusk or later four or five days a week. This week, even though I don’t have my new business up and running at full speed, I was still able to make their activities my priority.

It’s a blessing to know I can give them the extra time once in a while. But I still get anxious when I realize that nothing I did specifically generated new money this week, and my “productive” hours were spent planning, learning, and contemplating.

I still haven’t figured out how to get paid for that. I need to focus on helping other people plan, learn, and contemplate. That’s a paid service!

It didn’t feel like much forward progress. It felt like a lot of waiting. I’m waiting for my web site to be updated when my web master has time. I’m waiting to have more content developed and written so I can offer something—anything—to entice people to sign up to my list and maybe buy a workbook from me.

One of my ideas, which involves packaging training and time-limited Coaching around specific goals and life areas, got me a little excited. When I have been thinking about ways to market Coaching and training to some target groups, it’s felt unclear and I have lacked direction. Having a specific, focused approach for a set amount of time helps me see how to present it. Training and Coaching packages may not produce any more results than offering open-ended Coaching, but it sure helps me “get” the way to start telling the story about what I do!

So maybe it just looked like I was going in circles. Maybe I was seeing a similar view from a slightly different perspective. Maybe there’s a little progress on this journey in there somewhere.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey