Hindsight is always 20/20. I always preach to my coaching clients to be aware of context and hindsight biases whenever they reflect. This article is my humble attempt at eating my dog food. It’s an honest conversation against the mirror.
For some context, I live in Dublin. I’m one of your young professional/techie types who left a comfortable job in Big Tech, and I’m now 2 years into running my own business.
It’s been bumpy, joyous, weird, amazing and scary. I am proud of completed projects, happy customers, and even being able to pay the bills on my merit. I followed my qualification criteria and worked with people who shared the same mental wavelength.
There is plenty of lifestyle porn on all platforms these days, so I shared a breakdown recently to paint a relatable picture regarding earnings.
Things could’ve been much better though.
Here are 5 areas I believe I knowingly & unknowingly sabotaged my own business in its infancy.
Content has been one area in which I notoriously sabotaged my business.
Any startup or new project requires at least two wings to fly:
- An attention bank
- A group of cheerleaders — the tribe
Both of them require content. You need to add meaning, partake in conversation, or even remain on top of the minds of people you know in this super-distracted world.
I knew this all along. I even help people to get their stories out there and produce content. Oh, the irony. It was difficult to be in this walking dissonance for a while, but I also understand two very viable & personal beliefs that made me behave in the way I did:
- Living on a planet where “every interaction is a transaction” is exhausting. I did not want to add to the noise.
- Most businesses (including mine) require fast, eye-catching, scroll-stopping content. This often means character or context limits or a polarizing, clickbaity tone. There are not many things in this world I hate more than contextless or generic content pieces.
Adding insult to injury, I benefited every odd time I created content. Whether a personal post or a meaningful engagement with a customer’s piece, it always yielded interesting conversations and opportunities. Self-sabotage at its finest!
Flash forward to today, and I am in a much better place. I fired the Marketing department early this year and started on a different tact. I now create consistent and slow content in my way. It’s my humble attempt to carve out my slice of the wild world of the internet.
Looking back, I can see a spotlight effect in play. Taking myself less seriously and prioritizing progress over perfection helped me to put those limiting beliefs aside, at least for now.
Content is not optional. You need to invest & save in your attention bank. You also need to keep the tribe warm and interested in your knowledge or perspective. There are no two ways about it.
Relationships are at the core of my business and, if I may say so myself, one of the reasons why I generate great results for people who work with me.
I started my business with an in-built filter. The idea was to rely heavily on referrals and get those introductions one after another. I hoped that every referral would subsequently unlock a meaningful conversation and have high odds in terms of chemistry. Wishful thinking.
Yes, I got a handful of clients through referrals. It is still the biggest source of revenue, but such a rigorous “referral-only” approach was limited at best and naive at worst.
It did not take me long to figure out that if I wanted to survive, I needed exposure to “complete strangers” through marketplaces, productization, and other means.
I now see the benefits of operating through different distribution channels, affiliate programs, and marketplaces such as Upwork. It makes my business less fragile and reduces my reliance on my network.
Why limit your surface area of luck anyway??
The whole world decided to call a time-out right around the time I decided to take a break. What can you do? C’est la vie!
My business was born into a global unknown. And the following years brought their fair share of “No way” developments for myself and my family (I have family in Turkey & Ukraine — you get the picture). Yet, despite or perhaps partially because of all of this, I had difficulties coming to terms with the new me.
I no longer had an office, an immediate circle of colleagues, and a comfortable set of problems. Alluding to the common stereotype, no more free snacks & massages (though there was never one). I was also not a digital nomad per se. I was certainly not traveling and had not even had a sight of a beach in Bangkok. It was just me. Same kitchen, same chairs. Pure and simple.
Looking back, I can see that it took me a while to embrace my new setup as a one-person operator and the way my values manifest themselves in my practice. This probably also underpinned some of my aforementioned struggles.
In hindsight, I’d have benefited from a more pragmatic approach or perhaps a change of scenery. Keeping my psyche out of my way. This does not necessarily suit the way I operate, but hey, I have to acknowledge an act of self-sabotage for my business, even if it comes from a self-righteous place.
Friend: This is so exciting, think of all possibilities!
Me: Yes, I feel like a kid in the candy shop.
Colleague: Dude, this is an awesome step. Fair play.
Me: Yes, I feel like a kid in the candy shop.
Customer: Great that you do so many different things.
Me: Yes, I feel like a kid in the candy shop.
I had this conversation probably 100 times in the early days of setting my practice. To the extent that my wife called me a parrot for the drastic overuse of “the kid in the candy shop”.
Start-up advisory, sales consulting, coaching, podcasting, blogging, e-learning products… There were zillions of things I could do to take off. And you can be sure I got my hands dirty with many of them.
I did not leave my corporate job with a clear aspiration to be a solopreneur success. Hence, there was a much-needed break to figure out what I wanted to do.
This figure-out process brought the point home regarding the abundance of opportunities and ways I can entertain myself. As a generalist, I was happy to entertain all of these different ways of working and hopefully add value to someone in some way. The choice overload is real. It can be a curse as much as a blessing.
Juggling with all these exciting things came with a messaging challenge. I confused myself, my clients, and probably even my close friends. What do I do? In today’s over-specialized world, you must be specific and intentional to build an audience, narrative, or healthy brand perception.
I played with many things. Most of them went well, but how do you narrow it down? How do you prioritize or prune?
There is a reason why we don’t know a top voice across Chinese metaphysics, hip-hop, and fine cooking all at the same time. A level of cohesion & simplification is necessary to make your business more digestible.
Flash forward to today, and I trimmed my activities into 3 categories. I provide sales consulting, performance coaching & professional branding guidance. Each of these has its own Ideal Customer Profiles and flows.
Looking back, I would have probably benefited from a crispier start. Yet, again — hindsight is always 20/20, and certain things are bound to be trial & error.
The biggest challenge of morphing into an entrepreneurial path after a corporate workstyle is the change of the scorecard.
Coming from a sales background, my mind was wired to audit itself every day, week, month & quarter based on attainment. While there are many benefits of reflective self-awareness, it can come to a point of paralyzing progress.
And, I stalled. There have been occasions in the last 2 years where I self-stalled because I was impatient for those good results.
At times, this impatience revealed itself in my disinterest in small-size projects. Other times, it was a “not a good day/week” in the office type of mood. Solopreneurship is a lonely journey.
Luckily, I was able to bring myself back up either through an interesting project making itself available or my support network, a.k.a the parrot bearer.
Solopreneurship is a road less traveled for a reason. In fact, up until the recent lay-offs, I always felt like a bit of an ugly duck. This begs the question of who sets the bar. Why do you do what you do?
My answers to these questions change almost every month but essentially come down to doing fulfilling work with/for enjoyable & inspiring people. Solopreneur, entrepreneur, 9–5… That’s just the scope & orientation. What matters most is the meaning you’re able to generate in each and every one of them.
Recently, I became more of a good scrappy. Some of those nano-gigs are promising and may turn into longer-term engagements.
If you’ve made it this far, I can only thank you for bearing with me. I hope you find some of these ways of self-sabotage relatable and extract your inspiration in dealing with your versions of them.
Remember, no one has all the answers.