A Moment to Celebrate
Earlier this month I reached a pretty significant business milestone. To be specific, on January 15th I celebrated 20 YEARS of my company, Stellar Coaching & Consulting, being in business. 20 YEARS!! Honestly, my head spins a bit when I think about it.
When I first decided that I was going to jump into the business of coaching – to legitimize the prospect of coaching and consulting being my livelihood – I was as nervous as could be. I knew in my heart of hearts that this is what I was meant to do (and yes, I realize how cliché it sounds). But knowing that it was what I was meant to do didn’t always translate into knowing HOW to do it. I mean, I absolutely knew how to coach; I knew how to train in areas related to the coaching I did and still do – team building, communication, navigating conflict – you get the idea. But running a business? That’s a whole different animal!
Despite the trepidation, however, I dove in whole-heartedly. The journey to this point has been a circuitous one. There have been highs and lows. There have been moments of incredible joy and moments of despair – truly, there have been. And now, 20 years later, I am aware that I have found my stride.
If I’m honest, my business today doesn’t look exactly as I imagined it would back in 2003. If you had asked me back then what I was envisioning for myself, I’m sure I would have painted a picture of a full roster of clients balanced with periodic workshops that I would run for the general public, on my own. In my head a full roster was about 40 clients and I was running 4-6 workshops a year. Oh, how naïve I was.
Today’s reality is definitely different; and more importantly, it’s exactly right FOR ME. I balance my roster of individual coaching clients (which is currently full at 10 with a waiting list) with programs that I’m co-facilitating with trusted colleagues. That constitutes the work of my company, which I then balance in turn with my work for the CoActive Training Institute as a Senior Program Lead on their faculty development team. As I said, this picture is definitely different! And it’s more than perfect ☺.
As I reflect on the lessons of the last 20 years, if I could offer a piece of advice to anyone wanting to venture out on their own – or even just advice for life in general – it would be to find what works for you and do that.
Odds are that you won’t find what’s exactly right immediately out of the gate. As you grow and evolve and shift, as the world around you changes, as you try on different things, what works in one moment may or may not work in another. Let that be okay. Keep tweaking until you find that magical combination of tasks and routines and companions that lights you up more often than not, and then stick with that. And every time it shifts – if it shifts – let that be okay.
Bottom-line: whether you’re venturing into the land of entrepreneurship, or going to school, or starting a family, or entering the traditional workforce, or whatever – find what works for you and do that. Stop comparing your journey to that of others. This is not new advice, but I do believe it is timeless and savvy advice. The truth is you can’t be anyone else and therefore you can’t follow anyone else’s path, no matter how good it looks. As the modern cliché goes, “you do you” – and in doing so my experience is that your overall experience will be exactly what you need it to be, whether it’s what you imagine or not.