Me? Well, I was caught off guard yesterday when I stumbled upon my divorce certificate while hunting for other documents.

Maybe it was because I’d been having such a delicious weekend. On Saturday I’d done a wicked Bodypump class, met up with an old friend and gone window shopping. Sunday morning I’d hung out with Steve drinking coffee, talking shit, and having a laugh. I’d just been saying how happy I was with life right now when it struck.

It wasn’t at all the memory of the divorce itself. At the end of the day that was just a bit of paper that landed through my door one morning without ceremony. No, it was the memory of  the years of empty Sundays that had preceded it.

You may well be thinking that this is not the kind of experience that you’d associate with generally upbeat and positive me? And perhaps that’s all the more reason that I want to share it with you.

See, I’d got married when I was 24, right after my mother died. I’d undoubtedly confused love with needing security, but after the frenzy of organizing the wedding, life began to feel flat. Of course, I was mourning the loss of my mother, but everyone else had moved on, so I imagined I should have too and blamed it on my job at the time. Andrew was also bored, so we hatched a plan to get ourselves “down south” and into more exciting jobs. He ended up getting work near Horsham, where we bought a house: I joined Amex in London and began commuting.

Last week I was writing about stories. The one I’d written for that part of my life was more like a fairy tale. Poor orphan girl is rescued by her knight in shining armor who carries her off to a foreign land where she has a wonderful career, owns a detached house, has two cars on the drive and takes a couple of foreign holidays every year. To the outside that’s probably how it looked. But, as Roxy Music says: “In every dream home, a heartache”.

For a start, Andrew was no prince charming. Far from being my hero, he leached me emotionally and financially. Monday to Friday he was a catering manager. But most weekends, even in the depths of winter – in fact, especially in the depths of winter – he was at some windsuring meet-up in some or other part of the country. I’d tried to join in with that crowd, but it wasn’t my scene. There is nothing more boring than freezing your face off for hours watching small dots on the horizon; or standing in bars all night getting off your head drunk watching men in their twenties and thirties acting like school boys.

So, increasingly I spent my weekends in this odd situation where I was married, but was always alone. From time to time I’d touch my sense of isolation. I’d feel sorry for myself and wonder what I was doing. I’d consider how my reality didn’t fit my fantasy. But for the most part I avoided really looking at it. It was easier to hold things together than to confront things and kick-start a chain of events that might lead to God knew where.

I escaped to work as a way of numbing out

Yesterday as I sat there awash with all those feelings again, and the sadness for myself that I’d had to endure them at all, I asked myself “How? How did I do it? How did I get through these awful days and survive?”

I suppose I’ve known this for some time, but yesterday it came home to me with more felt force. I’d completely numbed myself out on what was happening. And work was the key thing that allowed me to do so. Although it was always a shock to the system when the alarm went off at 6.00 am, Mondays were always a relief. At work I knew who and where I was. I felt confident and capable there. I could throw myself into deep waters with a strong degree of certainty that I’d find my horizons sooner or later. But the same was far from true in my personal life.

It’s ironic that I chose to work in Human Resources. I like to think that I did so from a very caring perspective and that I was a good leader. I certainly had a lovely team of people around me, and some great colleagues; people who felt like family. But there was safety in that too. I could give all of myself Monday to Friday and withdraw on the weekend. At a level, it didn’t have to touch me.

Of course the whole thing fell apart. It was always going to. The first domino went down on discovering that Andrew’s playboy motto – “windsurfers do it standing up” – was now referring to more than just his sailing pursuits. I’ll spare you the detail of the battle for my sanity that went on around all of that for another day. Suffice to say that my corporate career was at its peak as I went through a painful and protracted divorce on grounds of infidelity.

Why am I sharing all of this? What’s its relevance to the blog?

Well, work can play a hugely important role in our lives. When we put who we are to the service of the world the sense of engagement and satisfaction can be enormous. But it’s also possible to use work to vicariously meet needs in us that we’re currently unable to address elsewhere.

I’d love to tell you to stop doing so and to concentrate more on what’s really going on. But I fear that’s coaching bullshit, and that, if you’re pouring yourself unduly into your work, and avoiding your self in the process, it’s because at a level somehow you need to right now. For me, finding my way back to my self was not a decision, but a process that took time. Indeed, it’s one that’s ongoing. Instigating divorce proceedings was only the beginning of me doing my own different kind of work; an inner work that would allow me to resurrect my soul.

And yes, I’ve done a lot to get to the point of having a very rich and happy life. But even now I have days of being drawn down into my feelings and wanting to escape from them. It’s just that, this time I decided to share it.

How about you? How do you use work as a way of escaping from your self? What one small thing can you do today to give your self some space?
photo credit: HikingArtist.com

No related posts.

That stuff that you love doing? The stuff that makes you smile? Can you do more of it and still get paid? This might seem like a really stupid question, especially if the thing you love doing is something like Christine’s eating chocolate cake. How can Christine get paid for eating cake?

My first reaction to El’s challenge was to say, “don’t be ridiculous, eating chocolate cake is my Saturday treat, and what has it got to do with making money?”

But, since I like both chocolate cake and making money, and I’m always up for learning things about myself, even in completely wacky ways, I thought I’d stick with the question and see where it took me.

I don’t actually need much of an excuse to spend time in my local coffee shop but I thought a chocolate cake fieldtrip was called for, so off I headed this morning in search of whatever magic I could find.

Sure enough it came in the form of childhood memories.

It’s probably no surprise to know I loved chocolate anything as a child. My mum was a terrific baker and I ate pretty much everything she produced. Often before it actually made it to the oven.

These were terrific days. When I wasn’t eating, and sometimes even when I was, I was often holed up behind the sofa with pens, papers, crayons, paints, gripped by my creative project of the moment. See, I had the biggest fun as a kid writing stories, and doing all the illustrations for them. Sometimes the stories were serious; sometimes they were satirical and witty. Whatever, I just loved putting stuff together that people would both read and be affected by.

I should have been a writer. That was after all my dream. The child in me had visions of living in a beautiful old cottage, with my dream husband, and a brood of cute kids. When I wasn’t keeping house and feeding my family chocolate cake, I’d be producing block buster books. Stuff that seemed light and frothy on the surface, but captured people’s hearts and so made a difference to their lives.

My father’s death more than took the edge off of things.

But the killer blow was delivered by my guidance teacher who simply sneered as she met with me and my mother to decide what subjects I do for exams.

“Nobody makes money from anything arty in Glasgow, Christine” she said. “You need to focus your efforts on academic subjects and think about a commercial career instead.”

With my dad gone, and us living off my mum’s widow’s pension, what I heard that night, whether it was implied or not, was that I couldn’t do things I loved and make money from them. That I needed to stop thinking like a child and grow up.

I’d always thought that the creative kid had died at that point. But looking back I see that’s not true. What happened was she just got clever and did what she had to do to survive. She took her story in a different direction, and created a new leading role for herself: the business woman. And she played it impeccably. It was what got her through school subjects in which she had no interest; pushed her to do things that felt incongruous; and propelled her to levels she would not otherwise have chosen.

Neither of my parents were around to see me become an HR Director, or to launch my own business. If they had, they’d have been beyond proud. Such achievement was beyond their wildest dreams. So, the career girl certainly did good.

And, make no mistake: it was a part in which I came to feel very at home. It gave me lots of fun challenges, allowed me to meet lots of wonderful people, and enabled me to do lots of international traveling.

But it wasn’t sustainable in the long term.

Curiously when the persona began to crack, and I needed to find out who I was beyond it, how I was going to live and work without it, I intuitively turned to writing as a form of therapy. It allowed me to express myself in ways I may otherwise have not. It was through writing that I could articulate my passion for coaching and counseling, the things I’ve focused on in the last years, that I completely adore and that pay my way in life. But having retrieved the artist in me, I’m not letting her go.

My best writing has always been done in coffee shops, and often with some form of cake or other. Perhaps it’s just the caffeine and sugar buzz. Perhaps too there’s something of the warmth and busyness I find there that invokes happy memories of my family living room and stimulates my creativity.

And, sure, I’m not making money from eating chocolate cake.

But, I am marketing my business almost exclusively through my writing now.

Here’s the big, circle-completing part of the picture, and I only just saw it this way myself. So much of the work I do with clients is about story. When they come to me, although they never use this language, it’s because something of their story doesn’t fit, or is difficult to deal with. They’ve lost their way in the plot. An old script needs to change.  A new storyboard needs creating. Partnering with others as they share their own cliff-hangers, romances and heartaches is privileged creative work indeed. Can you imagine what it feels like to work with someone who becomes truly gripped by your story; who can hold all the sub plots together; who can help you emerge from your own self-created mask and carry your true self forward in life?

Now that I’ve had this massive insight about story, will I do more with it? Will I write more? Will I start producing block busters?

You’ll just have to wait for the next chapter! But meantime I’d love to know in what direction you’d take this story next.

Related posts:

1. Looking At Life Through The Eyes Of A Child
2. Split Work-Life Personality? Join The Club!
3. Deviation From The Norm – My Different Kind Of Work

The main aim of doing this challenge is to create a list post that highlights some of the posts in your archives to new readers (a sneeze page), that links out to another blog and that hopefully is a little fun (and not too much work) to do.

A Different Kind of Work just turned a year old, so what a great time to step back and look at things. I’ve really enjoyed putting this post together and would love your feedback on it.

My First Post

A Different Kind Of Blog

Can’t you just feel the euphoria in this post?! I know I certainly do as I read it back and connect with the part of me that had just cracked the technology involved in getting a WordPress blog set up. Now I smile at myself, of course, because it all feels so easy.

The Post I Enjoyed Writing The Most

How To Make Sure You Never Get Ahead

Michael Martine, who was fabulous in helping me get this blog off the tracks initially, told me that he thought I should use my wicked sense of humor on the blog. And so, I channeled it into this post, which I have to say was a complete blast to write.

A Post Which Had Great Discussion

Split Work-Life Personality? Join The Club

This was a fairly open and contentious post in which I shared some of the different bits of my own identity around work, not all of which are an obvious fit with one another by traditional or even logical standards. Lots of people resonated. Others saw professional compromise. All views were welcome.

A Post On Someone Else’s Blog I Wish I’d Written

Is Spiritual Business A Contradiction In Terms?

Written by the amazing Mark Silver this post appeared on Copyblogger. I’ve had the experience for years that a lot of work can be soulless. But how to get the spirit back into it without resorting to new age woo-woo language and completely disenfranchising the mainstream? Mark cracked that question here.

Your Most Helpful Post

10+1 Steps To Make Coaching Work For You

I think lots of people would like to do coaching, but as a client don’t really know how to navigate themselves through it. This post gave pretty concrete advice about being a powerful coaching consumer.

A Post With A Title You’re Proud Of

Unhappy At Work? A Different Look At This Weeks Job Satisfaction Statistics

I like this title because it summed up the post really well. Also, although it was written this January, it still drives most search traffic to the blog.

The Post I Wish More People Had Read

Work Detox: 5 Coaching Questions That’ll Change Your Life

This was one of my earliest posts and, although I’d sharpen up the style significantly now, I thought the content was better than the response indicated. Still, it’s all about learning!

So, some personal reflections and a bit of reading to get to off to a good start this week. Don’t forget to let me know what you think. And if there’s a topic you’d like to see me writing more about, let me know!

Related posts:

1. A Month of Birthdays

I’ve had a curious experience this week that I wanted to share.

It was all the more surprising as I’d just spent some deeply happy days unplugging and enjoying the successes of the first half of the year.

And back at work, I’d confidently set my second half year targets: run 3 Worklife Makeover workshops; add 5 new coaching spaces; sell and deliver 2 social media strategy pieces.

More details on all of these shortly.

I can’t say that one thing triggered it. Maybe it was reading online about the Emergency Budget and its resultant public spending job losses. Maybe it was the stuff I’d seen on TV about the BP oil spill and its ravages on both the US coast line and on the financial markets. Maybe it was the two old whingers I’d overheard in my local coffee shop, crapping on about everything from England’s disastrous World Cup performance to the impact of recession on their pension funds.

But suddenly I found myself asking:

“Who am I…?”

Who am I to be this confident about business in the midst of such upheaval and uncertainty? To be so successful? To have this lifestyle? To feel so loved?

Fear and doubt crept in.

I noticed my attention shift from what I wanted to do in the next months, to what I feared I may not be able to do.

What if I can’t pay my mortgage?

I felt my power sap, and my horizons narrow.

Maybe I should get A Job.

Then, shit, there are no jobs, and, in any case, who’d hire me eleven years out?

Those of you who know me well enough may find this surprising, even funny, but I spent a few unhappy hours, just swimming around in this self-destructive soup.

Whoa!

Unhappy. It was realising that this was how I was feeling that pulled me back from a shockingly downward spiral. I’ve done a lot of unhappy in the past, and I’ve vowed not to do it for long any more.

Life’s too short. Who can afford unhappy?

It was as I was coming back to myself that I got to wondering about all the negativity that’s out there and whether it has some sinister purpose that I’d momentarily got caught up in.

Maybe, I thought, doom and gloom is society’s way of keeping us in line and reminding us who’s boss. It sends an insidious fear message that talks right at the level of our most limiting beliefs.

Sure, it’s all dressed up in fancy, logical language.

The black hole in the economy. Budget deficits. Necessary measures.

Blah, blah.

But it shifts our focus from what we want to do because it’s naturally us, to what we have to do in order to stay valid society members. And it robs our vitality, so that we have energy only for achieving those needs.

Not buying into this.

I heard the words as I regained my own perspective. Yes, I want much of what society would deem as acceptable. But I also want to it on my terms.

And I realised that this was the choice doom and gloom gives us. We can either allow it to knock us out and surrender to its spell; or we can choose not to accept its handcuffs.

And I wonder what choices you’re making in its midst?

Don’t miss more detailed news of upcoming events and product launches! Subscribe to the blog here. And, for priority notification of offers and downloads, sign up for the newsletter.

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Believe it or not, this blog is a year old this month. And it was my birthday yesterday. As you read this, I’m easing back for a few days, basking in my gratitude for this last amazing year.

Join me in a slice of virtual birthday cake and indulge me as I share with you some of the highlights.

Creating

I started blogging because, simplistically, I thought it would bring together two passions of mine: my love for writing, and my thing about the role work plays in creating meaning in people’s lives.

In tandem I was ready to build more of a practice of clients who came privately to me, as opposed to having been referred and paid for by corporations, with all of the strings that tended to be attached. That meant building brand new networks.

In the beginning I had only an intuitive sense of what I could do with the blog. But the energy and enthusiasm I unleashed in myself just by starting it was reason enough to keep going.

I was a novice to the technical side of things. Still, I hungrily taught myself the basics of WordPress, as challenging in the beginning as that was. I also threw myself into learning about the wider social media world. As someone who’d done business in a traditional way for years, I felt like I’d stepped off my safe planet onto some fourth dimension, of immense potential.

Suddenly social media was opening doors I could never have imagined. If only, to begin with, in my own head.

Search for meaning

Offline it used to be pretty easy. My networks knew that I was the “go to” coach for the kind of stuff I do. Offline you don’t have to be so sharp: people know what you do and your experience speaks for itself.

But how on earth do you articulate that online to people who don’t know you from Adam?

Attempting to get clarity, I searched around in my niche and found a few terrific blogs and bloggers. Pam Slim’s Escape From Cubicle Nation is great for those wanting to set out in a entrepreneurial direction. Scot Herrick’s Cube Rules has terrific advice for people dedicated to sticking with their office jobs. In the beginning I put out some thought pieces, both for those who were thinking of quitting their jobs, and those in employment alike. I knew I wasn’t really hitting the nail on the head or being totally, authentically myself. But I had to search for my own voice and my own angle post by post.

Meantime, I was so convinced that social media was going to take my work in a new direction – and one that would allow me to work more from home – that my other half and I decided to move out of London. He doesn’t need to be in town, and I was concerned that having The City on my doorstep would tempt me to default of more of the same. So in October we took our courage in both hands and took up home in a 300-year old converted cottage in the Chilterns. Big change, but ultimately such a joy.

Focusing down

Moving house really did mean that I had to up the ante on the blog. By Christmas, I understood the whole blogging and social media thing so much better and so could begin to set targets for my business based on using it.

By then too, I was able to articulate for myself that my offering is about coaching and inspiring professional people to work and live on their own terms. I was starting to really get that my difference was in supporting people’s own process, rather than telling people what to do. Correction, I was starting to be brave enough to say that.

Additionally, I could see that there was a wave of people at work who tended to be more my kind of client than any other. They were those who were consciously directing their own lives and questioning the role of work within it. And in February, I put some of these thoughts out in my post on The Silent Rise of The New Work Pioneer.

I also started to get braver about putting my personality across, and wrote a real piss-taker in my How To Make Sure You Never Get Aheadpost. Now that was fun!

The clearer and more focused I got, and the more confident about putting it out, the more the comments and retweets came. More than that, the better I got to know and connect with people in and around social media, the stronger these networks and connections have become.

Whilst in the beginning an intuition drove me, I’m now motivated by the clarity of my vision and sense of direction.

Leveraging

So, things are now at a point where coaching prospects and clients are starting to come through the blog, both directly and indirectly. In addition, I’ve just run my first workshop, was very happy with the outcome, and am ready to start adding that as a product, which I’ll be running from September.

Of course, there’s more development to come yet. The New Work Pioneer Manifesto needs PDFing and sending out. There’s a book to be written from some of the material for The Worklife Makeover. There’s another, longer workshop in development, and next year I plan to add an Interactive Learning Environment to the site.

It’ll all get done. But the point is that I could not be building these things, and seeing them generate results without the foundation work that’s been done.

An interesting, but unexpected, twist has come this week when in just one day I had several requests for consultancy support for social media for coaching businesses. My own personal development coach has been telling me for months that I need to package an offering. I didn’t see myself adding this to my business portfolio. If I can help people light up their businesses in the way I have, and enrich their experience of work in a similar way, why wouldn’t I?

Well, I’m off to eat more cake and drink more champagne now, but as I chomp and slurp, I want to thank you guys for being around these last weeks and months. It’s been fabulous and I’m only looking forward to more.

Cheers!

Related posts:

1. How am I doing?
2. Upping the ante in 2010
3. A Different Kind of Blog Review: March 2010

I had the realisation this week that I’d started to see reliable high speed broadband as a basic human need. It came in the midst of a 72 hour period during which I had none.

I didn’t vote for Mr Cameron, but I was pretty happy to see on Channel 4 news that his government is pledging to plough £300m into enhancing the UK’s broadband networks.

After my days of feeling that a key pivot of my business had been entirely disabled, I can concur that the UK needs it to support its endeavours for new entrepreneurial growth.

So, you might expect that I’d be having a rant today about lost productivity, but you’d be wrong. As it turns out, there was some unexpected magic in my broadband blackout.

The Power of Surrendering

After hours of battling with my ISP to get the problem resolved, it became apparent that the whole thing was out of my control.

It crossed my mind that I could do offline stuff on my Mac: draft emails, blog posts and whatever else was on my To Do list.

It also crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, I was being directed to attend to other things. I’ve worked my butt off recently and have a busy summer, ahead of a break in August. Perhaps the right thing to do was nothing?

And that’s what I chose. So I put my frustrations aside and paid attention to what was present for me.

My brother and nephew have been around this week and so I was able to be with them in a way I may otherwise have not. We had some special moments of fun, warmth and connection. I finished reading The Tao of Pooh and got back into reading Ian Rankin’s Rebus. I hung out in a local (wifi-less) coffee shop. I watched TV and slept longer hours than usual.

It was like a thaw set in. All I can tell you is that I felt myself relax to a different level of being.

Trusting to People and Relationships

Fuelling my desire to fix whatever technical problems, was a feeling of responsibility; a wanting to be present for people I work and connect with remotely, and for actions that were in progress. Among them key things like my newsletter development, and artwork for my offline marketing materials.

Facing the reality that, without internet, I was unable to follow up in the ways I’d have logically wanted, I found myself knowing that people would understand. I decided to trust that the relationships I have with people are bigger than temporary communication problems.

People would get my real intentions, or they wouldn’t. I’d prefer that they did. But if they didn’t that was going to have to be too bad.

Allowing my own fallibility, and trusting to the goodness of people, assisted my process of letting go.

Realising Results Don’t Always Come From Pushing

When I was writing about the opportunities in the silence the other week, I hadn’t anticipated this silence of my own.

But during those broadband-free days, where a concern had been the impact on existing and new clients, something interesting happened. I had some good old-fashioned phone calls from new people looking for coaching support.

It did make me chuckle. I’d obviously freed up some energy in myself and people had found their way to me despite my internet problems. It was very affirming of something Nick Williams often says:

“There are greater forces at work than market forces.”

I end this week back online and on excellent form. Besides anything else, the time and space has amplified in me something I already knew:

Work is not just the action that happens out there in the world, the activity and the striving, it’s something that happens in here too. It’s a process that’s afoot at a soul level, in ways that we don’t always understand or even need to.

The synchronicity of the timing for me of all this doesn’t escape me either. Next Friday I’m running the first workshop I’ve marketed through this blog. I have the most awesome group of people coming and I’m very excited about being with them.

Of course, the topic of the workshop is worklife, central to which, I believe, is our being. Isn’t it interesting that, as I take my work to a new place, something shifts deeply in mine?

As I said, something magical happened this week.

Related posts:

1. How am I doing?
2. A Month of Birthdays

I‘d hoped this week to be able to share with you The Manifesto for New Work Pioneers as a PDF download. And I do have a document sitting here on my Mac with that title.

But, I ain’t going to be putting it up here today. First, I haven’t figured out the technology required to actually put it on my blog. Second, I haven’t had the time to tart the thing so that it looks as smart as I want.

However, these are just superficial symptoms masking the real issue:

I’m not happy with what I’ve written. The thing hasn’t flowed as I’ve been working on it and it’s felt more of a chore than a joy. Which is a bit of a red flag, if ever I saw one.

I sat at the weekend with these realities and with the inescapable consequence that I was going to fail on one of my own deliverables. My frustration was immense. To begin with, what kind of thought leader doesn’t honour her commitments? Also, I felt that I had something important to discuss, but that it wasn’t coming across in a way that did it or you justice.

I wanted to keep moving and to make progress, but I had to confront my own limitations. I considered spending the weekend sweating it out, pushing through myself. There’s no doubt that in previous lives I’d have done just that. But I value myself and other people and things in life too much now to sacrifice them to my inherent need for perfection. Also, I intuited  that something other than force was needed to get beyond my stuckness. And so I took the opposite path, deciding to take the pressure off myself and to wait for the way ahead to show itself.

This morning I have more clarity. Reading back through what I’ve written I can see that I’ve put together what I imagined a manifesto to be. Structured as I imagined it should be structured. Saying what I thought it should say. I’d been looking at manifestos by people like Chris Guillebeau and attempting to be “me too”. In the process, I’d psyched myself into a “less than” place. I’d lost my own creativity, and my own voice.

Responding yesterday to the rich and engaging comments I’d had from last Friday’s post, I realised also how much I enjoy connection, conversation and challenge. And yet how doing a big piece of writing achieved the opposite for me, leading me to try to create something in a vacuum.

Instead of muddling through with what I have I decided to throw the thing in the air and let it reinvent itself. My current thought is to do it as a series of posts, each around a particular theme, each created in the moment and put out there for your immediate involvement and commentary. Not only could this be collaborative and fun, but it’d buy me the time to reach out more to figure out the practical stuff.

What do you think? Are you up for it? Assuming so, my plan is to begin on Friday 9th April. I’d love to have you along for the journey!

Photo credit: Just Hanging by Steven Durbin Photography

No related posts.

Remember, as well as helping others create their different kinds of work, I’m currently in the process of revolutionising my own. And if there’s anything you can take from my experience, be my guest.

This months headlines:

1. All my statistics are heading in the right direction
2. Notably, I’ve had 93% more traffic to my blog this month versus last; 55% of that was from new visitors
3. I achieved my ambition of writing and posting two posts per week, except for the week I was ill.
4. The number of comments being left on my posts is rising. There’s a good lived-in, community feel that’s building, which I’m enjoying.
5. And, I’ve had one more client begin working with me during the month and two further people currently interested.

What’s helping?

Traffic spikes

Since my first post on The Silent Rise of The New Work Pioneer, most of the other posts that have spoken about New Work Pioneers have prompted big readership spikes when they’ve gone live. This was particularly true of the post I wrote about how New Work Pioneers use times of crisis as opportunities for profound change.

To my delight, it seems that people are resonating with this topic. So, I’m encouraged to write more. (In fact, my Manifesto for New Work Pioneers ebook is almost written and will shortly be available for free download.)

Guest posts

I did two guest posts for some good friends of mine during the month. The first was for Jen Smith at Reach Our Dreams. The second for Ben at 6Aliens. The conversations that happened through the comments on these posts was awesome.

Naturally, some of their traffic checked out my blog in the process of reading the posts, so not only did I have some fun, but gained some new visitors.

Growing up to working online

The blog really appears to have turned a corner this year. Having developed a better picture of where I am heading and turned this into some solid goals, as I wrote about in Upping the ante in 2010 in January, has allowed me more confidence and focus. I feel I’ve “got” the point of social media and its relevance to business in a way I previously had not. This is undoubtedly helping. Interestingly, the more I see the power of focusing, the more I understand how focusing further can really help again. That’s very exciting.

What’s curious?

Your assumption – or wish! – about my new clients might be that they’re coming from the blog. This month, they’re not. All of them have come from being referred by existing or previous clients. I did, off the back of this, wonder whether I should be packing up the blog and concentrating on getting new business solely from referrals?!

I hope you’re relieved to know that I decided not.

First, as much as referral from existing clients is a brilliant form of marketing and not one I’ll ever stop valuing, the blog is serving a different purpose. It reaches more people than I’ll ever reach from doing my current one-to-one and small group work. It allows me to share my thoughts on all kinds of things in a way I couldn’t achieve without it. And it’s giving me a much wanted global and international connectivity, that I don’t at present have.

Second, I do want to develop my business beyond its current scope to include webinars, bootcamps and possibly a membership-based interactive learning environment, that I’ll run in due course.

So, after a moment of questioning, I am comfortable that it’s really not an either/or for me.

What’s still not right?

I’m disappointed to have let another month slip without switching to my new website design and to the Headway theme. Yes, I’ve added Commentluv, I’ve switched things around on my layout, I’ve put a Twitter counter on and a Twitterlink, but the design hasn’t fundamentally changed.

I asked myself whether this has taken so long because I’ve had something to learn. After all, I commissioned design work as far back as last September and it still hasn’t manifest. In the interim it has sometimes felt a little awkward and even naked to still be running on the plain vanilla Thesis theme.

On reflection, however, the benefit of being “brandless” is that I have had more time and space to evolve my own brand. I wonder if, with a glossy cover, I’d have felt compelled to live up to it, rather than to be who I am. Powerfully, what I’m understanding is that I am my own brand and that, whatever you begin to see design- or content-wise around this blog will be an expression of that, rather than the other way about. That feels good.

Future growth directions

As I said earlier, I’m delighted with the community feel here, and loving that lots of people who are dropping by the blog are sharing in the conversation. And, as I talked about in my Virtual Office of Self-Selected Colleagues post, I’m wondering whether seeing more results again is indeed going to come from me continuing to drive numbers to my site. Or whether it’s going to be more about creating and building the kind of relationships that will either directly or indirectly lead to business opportunities. I’m starting to err on the side of the latter because I think it aligns better to me and my business than the pile them high approach. I’m fighting it a little because, as you can tell even from reading this post, there’s something really motivating about getting lots of traffic and interaction. You can track numbers. Relationships are a lot less tangible. It needs much more thought and attention from me, but I suspect that this is now the route I’ll take. Of course, I’ll keep you posted!

So, how does all of this sound to you? Are you seeing echoes of any of it in your own work right now? What goes through your mind as you read.

Related posts:

1. Building A Blog Or Building A Business?
2. A Month of Birthdays
3. What do you do when your life doesn’t go according to plan?

One of the surprising takeaways from this experience is the insight I’ve had into the nature of the relationships I’m building online. I was blown away by the good wishes I received both on Twitter and by email when I tweeted that I was going to be out of action. And then, when I started back yesterday, the welcome was incredible. It really was like walking into an office of people I love working with; people who are not just my colleagues, but are good friends too. I don’t know if you’ve ever known anything like this in a real office? I certainly hadn’t done so in years, and to have co-created it online is simply amazing.

This in turn caused me to reflect further on a conversation I’d had with Julie Walraven a couple of weeks ago about Twitter. Accepted  social media wisdom for small businesses is that you strive to build massive networks in order to leverage their viral power. But being ill made me realise that there are individuals in my network whose unique lights shine out for me more greatly than others: whose blogs I particularly enjoy reading and contributing to; whose tweets I especially look out for because they’re normally interesting or engaging; whose comments I love reading here. It was these people I both heard from when I was ill and/or missed because I wasn’t around to see them. Big numbers are important for many, but relationships, I’m realising, are important for me. How you turn that into profitable online business, I haven’t yet cracked, and if anyone has any golden nuggets on this, I’d love to hear them.

Meantime, during one of my more active hours this week, I installed the commentluv plug-in. I’d decided that, even though my site is currently being redesigned, I wanted to add it now. Enabling all of you who hang out here to promote your own excellent content is the tiniest thing I can do to show you how much I value my connection with you. Use and enjoy!

Related posts:

1. 3 lessons on work and life from walking 10 miles in the snow

As you might remember from my Upping the ante in 2010 post, I’ve set myself some pretty ambitious targets and I thought I’d share with you how things are going.

Posts

One of my key ambitions this year was to increase the amount of stuff I was posting, so I set myself what felt like an achievable goal of writing 2 posts per week; 100 posts during the year. Although I haven’t published two posts a week on this site, I have achieved my target by doing some guest posting. This was quite tough at first to fit into my schedule, but with a review of my productivity and better time planning, it has started to become a whole lot easier.

In terms of the content, I decided to experiment with being a bit more daring with what I was writing. I even gave myself permission to share my sense of humour with my How to make sure you never get ahead post, which led to the most comments I’ve ever had, so clearly struck a nerve somewhere. The same was true of posts that said something a little more controversial. For example, I saw real traffic spikes with Lost heart with your current job? Don’t rush to escape, and with Unhappy at work? An alternative look at this week’s job satisfaction statistics. So I’ve definitely got some food for thought from all of that.

Analytics

My numbers for the end of January were significantly up on the previous month, which was when I started really tracking things. Perhaps driven by the increased number of posts, I doubled my number of visitors, and page views; my bounce rate dropped by more than 10%, and my RSS subscribers increased by 50%. I was pretty pleased with all of that.

Critical milestones

I’ve also now been able to tick off some of the first critical milestones I’d set myself as indicating my blog was moving in the right direction. They are:

• Getting links from other bloggers: I had 6 at the point of the review
• Writing a guest post: I wrote 7 things (and 3 questions) professional coaches must know before starting to blog for Remarkablogger that appeared last week. I also have posts pending with Jen Smith at Reach Our Dreams, and Ben Lumley at 6 Aliens.
• Have the blog make money: I’ve now attracted one paying coaching client via the blog. Whilst I’ve always had my traditional sources of referral and hopefully they’ll continue, it was important for me in this venture that I not rely on them and that over time the blog start to become more of an income stream for me. It has now indeed broken into the realms of being a business in it’s own right, which I’m delighted about.

So, what’s next?

Well, that’s where you come in.

I want to make this a place where smart, professional people who want to shake up the old rules of work in some way, come for inspiration, information, conversation – and maybe some entertainment too.

As I move forward I’d love to know what you think is or isn’t working. What you’d like to see more or less of.

Meanwhile, thank YOU for helping me get the thing to this point in its development.

Related posts:

1. Upping the ante in 2010
2. A Month of Birthdays
3. What I Learned From My Broadband Blackout