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

They spend years, not to mention thousands of pounds, on the next book, coach or workshop that offers the key to the holy grail.

Meantime they feel pretty miserable doing whatever it is they’re doing – or not – right now. And beat themselves up for being a lesser person because, unlike the zealous peddlars of the vocation myth, they haven’t found what work it is they’re really supposed to be doing.

Experiments

In working with clients having this experience, I encourage them to take all that forward-looking pressure off themselves and live in the present.

What if they could allow themselves to find something meaningful in what they’re doing right now?

What if they saw their current work or lack of it as an experiment, telling them something about themselves, their lives, and what they most enjoy?

What would they discover? How could they use that learning to course-correct their current situation, or future work decisions?

Not one calling but several

In my client work, as in my own life, I see time and time again how what we do shifts and morphs over time. The picture of vocation as a static, certain thing into which we can plough ourselves for endless years is misguided.

Sure, some people know early on that they’re called to be a doctor or singer or lawyer or whatever.

But for others it’s a discovery process of finding one jigsaw puzzle piece of ourselves after another in the different things we do. Without valuing the purpose of the bit we’re doing right now, we’ll never get to understand the full picture.

Implications

If you’re someone searching for your one big calling, I encourage you to sit and think about this today:

How might you be diminishing yourself by constantly yearning after some other thing than what’s right in front of you?

I’m not saying that there’s not something bigger waiting for you.

What I am saying is that, if you put yourself back into the flow of what you’re doing right now, you’re more likely to find it more quickly and more powerfully.

What do you think?

photo credit: alicepopkorn

Related posts:

1. The Birth of a New Work Pioneer
2. Doing Your Real Work
3. Split Work-Life Personality? Join The Club!

Monday morning. How did it feel to get out of bed and anticipate another week?

Much of your answer will depend on how you choose to see the work you do.

Job

If you see your work as a job, you consider it primarily as something you do for money. That’s not to say that, at a level, you don’t enjoy it or don’t get along with some of your colleagues. But the chances are you have little real engagement to it.

What’s important is that you earn the money you need to finance your life.

When this job is done, you’ll hope to get another of the same. You live for the weekend, for holidays and to retire.

Career

Having a career means that somewhere along the way – at school, or university perhaps – you hit on a chosen field within which you wanted to work. A profession maybe like accountancy, or law. Or teaching, or science, or medicine, or business management.

Whatever, study and training have probably been an aspect of your journey to date. Progression is important; there’s a strong sense of the career ladder and you want to get as high up it as you can. In fact, a lot of your motivation is about getting more or better, whether that’s in the shape of salary or benefits or any of the other outward trappings of career success.

When your current position comes to an end, you’ll want a move that signifies progression or at least one that you can position as such on your CV.

Calling

When what you do for a living feels like a calling to you, work is its own reward. You turn up and do what you do because you love it. It means something to you beyond the here and now.

You bring something of yourself to the world, and the world needs it. Whether that’s your entrepreneurialism, or your unique writing voice; whether you’re finding the antidote for a serious disease or are developing the prototype for a new invention. Whatever, how you choose to do it will be pretty unique to you.

Sure, you want to be paid for your work, but that’s an outcome; a consequence. The primary thing is the work itself. In fact, you enjoy what you do so much and it’s such a part of you that the idea of retiring seems a bit strange to you.

So, Monday mornings, like any other mornings are other exciting days to work on your thing.

So, which is yours: Job, Career, or Calling?

No related posts.

Today I’m delighted to introduce you to Marc Winitz, who’s a Vice President of Sales and Business Development for a US based information technology company. His thinking about work, which he captures in this fascinating article, turns some of the accepted wisdom about finding meaning at work on its head. Read and enjoy!

Although economic times have been uncertain over the past few years, there is still a lot of conversation going on around “doing what you love” or “pursuing your passion”. To be sure, I am not against the philosophy, per se, but I do find it a little misguided. We all go through peaks and valleys in life, and for a lot of people, that includes their career and work. It is fair to ask yourself “Do I love what I am doing?” or “Does what I do matter?” But I don’t think you have to have to correlate a specific passion for the work you do. There are a lot of ways to innovate and find meaning for yourself and I don’t believe that has to correspond to the way you make a living.

The Echo Chamber of “Passion”

It seems that an echo chamber has emerged and that you can’t read anything these days about a successful business or career without some reference to “pursuing your passion”. Entering that phrase as a Google search term provides over 1 million hits. There are legs to this and with good reason. We are going through historic change in the world in regards to global issues ranging from the interconnected financial system to the environment to our evolving views of race and religion. The world has gotten a lot smaller. And all this change makes people question their lives, and their livelihood. And that is very healthy in my opinion. But I think you can find innovation and meaning in what you do, without having to pursue a specific passion as your way of supporting yourself.

Career Ruts Are Normal

I work as a Vice President for US based information technology company helping large government and private sector agencies solve complex business process problems through the use of technology. I like what I do. It makes a difference in people’s lives. However, even that isn’t enough for me to be fully satisfied with my work environment. For most of us, myself included, it is easy to get in a rut regarding our day to day routine and I think that generally holds true no matter what type of work you do.

Career Fulfillment Can Come From Many Places

I’ve read many stories and know several people that felt they were stuck in their career and decided to make a radical change in their life. In some cases it has worked, but in others it hasn’t. Just by writing this I know there will be strong statements (I hope) in the comments section about a specific person making a radical change, quitting their job to pursue something they loved, and that it turned out to be the best thing they ever did for their career. I respect that. But it represents a small group of people from a success perspective. I am not saying that if you are in a bad work situation you should stay in it. Nor am I suggesting you shouldn’t try something completely different from a career perspective. However, if your work is tolerable, or good, or even great you can still have a fulfilling career – regardless of the ruts you hit or a lack of passion you feel for what you do. You just have to look for the opportunities to invest in yourself to keep your “passion” alive and channel them into your work life.

Extend Personal Interests

So the concept of “career” to me has become something much wider than my day job, or my passions, or anything else for that matter. I look at ways to improve myself and my skillset outside of my career by investing in myself. But I try to do it in way that provides me ways to integrate those interests back into my day job. About 5 months ago I started a personal development blog called Black Belt Guide. I have trained in Karate and also taught it for over 25 years. I always wanted to share the principles of martial arts but in a way that could be useful to anyone. I also enjoy writing. So the blog has provided a creative outlet for me which is something I was seeking.

Build Professional Skillsets Through Outside Activities

But I didn’t just start the blog for that reason alone. I wanted to learn about web 2.0 technology and the social web. Even though I work in technology neither of those areas are part of my day to day job: but they are going to be. So rather than trying to just “read about it” I used the blog as a way to learn simply by participating and working with technology like WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, etc…

Create Options for Yourself

In addition, I wanted to create a “brand” for myself. It was obvious that I could create such a brand in my day job, or that it would be memorable. But by tying the blog back to something that was both a little unusual and important to me, I have started to realize a return on that investment in a very personal way. This now gives me options. The involvement in blogging has served multiple needs personally and professionally. And I can leverage this experience, which I very much enjoy, directly into my work life through multiple areas.

Personal Investments Pay Professional Dividends

I was recently on a business trip and had a meeting with a potential customer. When I arrived my host said “Your blog is terrific, I feel like I already know you. I trained in martial arts as a kid.” I was a bit stunned, my blog is hardly popular (he later told me it is his policy to “google” all his vendors). The meeting went well as the “rapport” already existed even though I had never met this person face to face. We talked for 30 minutes about martial arts, blogging and personal development before we got to the business at hand. It’s not very common in a sales and business development situation where the buyer wants to talk about you as an authority figure.

Find Different Kinds of Work Outside of Work

I hope my approach offers some clues as to how you can innovate in yourself, grow professionally and find career meaning regardless of the work you do. Here are some thoughts to help you start view work and growth a little differently.

1. Don’t view your work as the sole definition of how your life is defined or how you are perceived.
2. Your career is more than just your day job. Find ways to expand outside your comfort zone to learn and grow.
3. Passion is important so find outlets for it. Just don’t misplace its importance for having a fulfilling career.
4. Look for opportunities to inject the things that interest you into your current work situation, even if they don’t apply right away or are obvious to you.

In addition to his challenging business schedule, Marc is a 4th degree black belt in Japanese karate, and blogs about personal development at www.blackbeltguide.com. You can follow Marc on Twitter @marcwinitz, or subscribe to his RSS Feed.

Related posts:

1. Paving Your Own Path
2. Deviation From The Norm – My Different Kind Of Work
3. Doing Your Real Work

On the 18th of June in Central London I’m doing a pilot of The Worklife Makeover, ahead of it running a series of seminars in the autumn.

Its purpose is to get you thinking about what you really want from work and from life, and to give you some of the tools and inspiration to go after it.

In the course of the day I’ll be revealing the success secrets of the most fulfilled, most successful business people and working with you to help you incorporate them into your own life.

Not only will you be getting more and richer content than I could ever share with you on the blog, but also you’ll be getting the value of my coaching in a small group content over the course of the day.

The deal is you get the pleasure and value of working with me for a day. In return, I’d love your feedback on the content and the process to help further shape what will become a top end of the market event.

Interested?

Read more about it here.

I am limiting places and they’ll be given strictly on a first come first serve basis.

For a place, email me on christine@adifferentkindofwork.com, and tell me why this workshop is right for you.

Looking forward to working with you!

Related posts:

1. The Worklife Makeover Review
2. Workshops: The Most Powerful Form Of Coaching?
3. The Birth of a New Work Pioneer

Many of us will have heard of Emotional Intelligence over the course of the last few years. It was popularized after the publication of Daniel Goleman‘s best seller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ in 1996.

Daniel Goleman’s research into Emotional Intelligence (EQ), where EQ designates emotional intelligence and IQ represents academic, intellectual or technological knowledge, quantified the importance of developing EQ. He found that EQ was between 2 and 5 times a better predictor of success (see chart below).

It doesn’t matter which field you’re in whether it’s medicine, law, engineering, journalism, the arts, one of the trades or any other career as the most successful individuals in each area are not necessarily the ones who are the smartest people or those who are the most technically gifted. Instead, the top stars in each field are the ones with the highest EQ or best ‘people skills’.

More recent work on EQ and its relationship to success in leadership roles by Martyn Newman and described in his book Emotional Capitalists described 10 different traits of high-performers. Their highest scores were on:

1. Self-reliance – the ability to take responsibility and back one’s own decisions when things get tough;
2. Self-confidence – the ability to maintain self-respect and personal confidence;
3. Relationship skills – the ability to develop relationships with a wide variety of people;
4. Empathy – the ability to understand the view point of all parties and develop resonant connections with others;
5. Self-awareness – awareness of how feelings and emotions impact on personal opinions, attitudes and judgments;
6. Self-actualisation – the ability to effectively manage their work/life balance;
7. Assertiveness – how to express feelings, thoughts and beliefs openly in a straightforward way, while respecting the fact that others may hold a different opinion or expectation;
8. Flexibility – adaptable and open to new ideas in the face of change;
9. Self-control – the ability to stay calm in stressful situations and maintain productivity without losing control. And, finally;
10. Optimism – the ability to look on the brighter side of life and sense opportunities in all situations.

Now, some people find the final trait (Optimism) quite challenging as they would say that you are either an optimist or a pessimist or a realist or whatever and that’s they way you are. It’s an age-old debate but research has shown that optimistic people are happier, more effective and more successful than pessimists. And, Martin Seligman in his book Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life argues that optimism can be learned as a skill and that we can train ourselves to become more optimistic. Check out Dr Seligman and his definition of optimism here:

Why Learning to be More Optimistic is Important

Think about it this way: If something bad or negative happens, optimists tend to view it as temporary whereas pessimists tend to do the opposite. Obviously, its not as black and white as this and people will be more optimistic or pessimistic in different areas of their lives depending on their experiences. However, developing a sense of optimism in all areas of ones life will not guarantee but will contribute positively to better outcomes.

Why is this? Because, like Henry Ford once said:

“Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you’re right”

So, optimism or pessimism tend to be self-fulfilling prophecies. It’s as simple as that.

If you want to have less negative stuff happen to you and want to generate more positive outcomes then learn to be more optimistic and you will be taking a more active role in defining your future and happiness. Monty Python captured the essence of all of this in their song: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

I hope that made you hum and smile

Finally, now that we’ve established that optimism is important to your future success and happiness. What things do you do to stay optimistic in the face of challenges?

Adrian Swinscoe is a consultant and coach from the UK who writes about customer-focused business growth at Ideas for Business Growth. He has a strong belief that optimism is an essential part of any culture, whether business or personal, and that if more people were more optimistic that the world would be a better place. Why not connect with him on Twitter @adrianswinscoe, LinkedIn or if you liked this article then why not subscribe to his RSS Feed?

No related posts.

Not long after I quit my corporate job, a book sitting on a shelf in Waterstones Piccadilly, grabbed my attention. Its title, The Work We Were Born To Do; its author, Nick Williams. I was so captured by the content that I emailed Nick and thus began a connection that over the years has morphed from coach and guide to friend and colleague.

10 years later I got the chance last week to talk to him about his own journey from uninspired IT guy to inspired entrepreneur. We captured the conversation on video so you could eavesdrop!

You can follow Nick Williams on Twitter and download his free nine part Discover the Work You Were Born To Do and Become an Inspired Entrepreneur at www.inspired-entrepreneur.com.

What do you think, guys? Isn’t Nick a real inspiration?

Related posts:

1. The Silent Rise of the New Work Pioneer

photo credit: thekmochs

Today I’m delighted to share this guest post by Ben Lumley. Ben is a Motivational Speaker and Trainer from the UK who writes about personal development at 6aliens.com. Why not connect with him on Twitter @6aliens or if you liked this article then why not subscribe to his RSS Feed?

It’s not easy doing what you love. In the beginning there are challenges that you don’t always expect and some can really knock you off your feet. But these are things you have to face because by dealing with them you’ll move closer to making your dream become reality.

The challenges below are all ones that I face today as work to create a future full of what I love to do.

Family and friends

One of the biggest and sometimes hardest challenges comes from your family and friends. Sometimes we expect those around us to fully support our dreams and ambitions but this isn’t always the case. Those close to us can in fact disagree with our choices and are happy to make that clear.

This can come from many things. Sometimes it can be because they fear that they will lose you while you’re out changing your future. Other times it can be through jealously because they don’t have the confidence to chase their dreams or have failed in the past and never gotten back on the horse.

I don’t think there are right or wrong ways to overcome this challenge. The solutions will be unique to each of us. All I can do is share the philosophy that I have. It’s simple really. I just keep pushing on towards my goals and keep trying to make my vision for the future come alive. True friends will stick out the ride whether they agree with you now or not. Family ultimately want what they perceive is best for you. When they can see that you’re doing what you love and it makes you happy, then they will come around.

Time

Another big challenge in doing what you love is the time it takes. Unless we chase our dreams from an early age, we usually have to manage work and life at the same time as trying to make a change. This can not only take a lot of time but also requires us to use the time we have to better effect.

If you’re coming home from work and then putting some time into what you love that’s time you could be spending with loved ones. I could quite easily spend every evening with my wife but then I wouldn’t have time to work on my goals for the future. It’s really about finding a balance while also helping those who are missing out on your time to see the potential benefits and opportunities your success will bring.

Sometimes when we’re doing what we love we have to make sacrifices in other areas of our lives in order to provide time to make the challenge. This is what we need to manage well to get the best of every opportunity.

Making the Jump

A common challenge faced by people who do what they love is making that jump from their old life to begin that new one. Taking the leap of faith that allows you to completely change your life can be a challenge in itself. It’s a massive step outside your comfort zone that many of us are terrified to make.

But this is the kicker. If you want to chase your dreams in life you need to bite the bullet and go for it. You need to stand up and be counted if you want them to come true. There is sadly no getting around it. You just need to be brave and go for it.

Sometimes the things we love to do bring their own challenges. They are challenges we all have to face however and do in fact make us stronger, just as all situations in life ultimately do.

Related posts:

1. Doing Your Real Work

“The schism, the disconnect, that the traditional model of work represents seems neither physically, emotionally nor spiritually healthy. Also, not sustainable. Behavior has to line up with values.”

Chrysula Winegar, who wrote the above words, has recently been publishing a beautiful series of posts. In them she takes the often glibly used “Work Life Balance” concept, and brings it alive by relating real people’s journeys, warts and all.

This week, she has been sharing Erik Orton’s struggle to reconcile his rich and diverse needs and interests. His capabilities as a business administrator; his artistry as a playwright and producer; his relationship and caring needs as a partner, and as a parent to five children. And how he has, at least for now, found integration, at nights doing a job with an investment bank that pays his way, allowing his days to be focused on both his creativity and on schooling his children.

Erik’s story spoke to me of the work life “schizophrenia” that I, and other people I come across, experience and I wanted to put some thoughts out there to open up the conversation and get your perspective on it.

The thing I particularly wanted to wrestle with is society’s need to put us firmly into one box or another and keep us there. So, we can be, to use Erik’s example, a business executive, OR a playwright, OR a home-loving father. The world as we now know it has little appreciation of the possibility that we can and indeed need to be a variety of things. It is not set up, either in its operating paradigms, or in its attitudes, to deal with our richness. In essence, it doesn’t want our soul at the table.

And I wonder who that picture serves?

I suspect that, because it has been part of my own journey, I attract people to me either as friends or clients for whom this issue is core. To the point that I am now unfazed when I’m sitting in a corporate office and a marketing director confides that he’s also a spiritual healer; or a banker shares her evening and weekend love of all things New Age; or a lawyer admits that he does creative writing on the side. So much so that I began to call them my “healers in suits”. On the one hand I cannot tell you of the honour I feel in having been let in on the picture, and therefore becoming an agent in allowing them to heal the splits in themselves. On the other, however, I feel such sadness that people have to hide parts of themselves in the closet.

In my own case, I’ve been a self-employed coach and consultant for over a decade now. Having been an HR Director, and Managing Consultant for well respected, global firms, I have no problem putting myself across as such. And people have no problem “getting” this about me. Also, I’m warm, friendly and have a pzazz about me that commercial people relate to. Suffice to say, this is the bit of “me” I’ve been most comfortable to project. And, indeed, it paid my way for many years.

What I’m less comfortable about sharing openly is that I’m also a trained psychotherapist. The psychotherapist in me has intuition and depth. I see things other people miss. It’s fair to say that I have struggled for years to reconcile this aspect of me with the one I’ve just described. Like I’d really rather I could just be that person and avoid this other bit.

And it hasn’t all been about my paranoia. Before I launched my blogging career, for example, and was doing more corporate work, I used to have a separate psychotherapy website. That was, until a corporate client, doing due diligence on me, found my alternative persona and then backed out of our contract. They could not understand how I could possibly have the ability to create outcome oriented relationships and be a “shrink”, to use their exact word. I felt such shame at the judgement, even if it was a reflection of the doubts I myself held.

Perhaps more profound and pervasive were the attitudes I lived with from professional colleagues on either side of my divide. I was constantly challenged by either my therapy supervisor for being too “coachy” in my work, moving people forward when I needed to keep them in their pain; and by my coaching and organisational supervisor for confusing therapeutic with coaching interventions. And while my therapy world colleagues gave me grief about “selling out” to the – in their eyes – more lucrative, yet more easily accessed field of coaching, my coaching world colleagues gave me its baggage about therapy being only for those who were suffering some major personality issue.

Just complete professional bollocks.

Luckily three years ago I found a top coaching supervisor, who himself was also a therapist and could supervise all aspects of my work. Finally I could begin to make it okay for myself to get past my own divisions and learn to put Christine out into the world, and let the world struggle with its incomprehension of Christine’s diversity.

I’ve dealt with only two aspects of my life here and haven’t even begun to touch on my love of writing, or my need for family, close friends and relationships, but I think you get the picture.

I won’t pretend I’ve wholly cracked things, but it’s definitely work in progress. What I can tell you is that the person you get here is pretty much the same person you’d meet in the coffee shop, or indeed in a coaching session or workshop. More and more I’m just trying to give the world who and what I am without being dumbed-down by its need to limit me or marginalise me. I wish I could pretend to you that it was easy, but I’d be selling myself and indeed you short.

What I’d love to hear is how all of this sits with you, what struggles you yourself confront, and how you deal with them.

Related posts:

1. Work life change: event or journey?
2. 10+1 steps to make coaching work for you
3. Here’s How New Work Pioneers Navigate Their Journey

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?