Last weekend, I was trading emails back and forth with a friend from high school who is looking to start her own consulting firm in a rather obscure academic field. She was writing to ask if I would be willing to advise and mentor her during the process. I said I’d help where I could, but one thing she said kinda bothered me from the outset.
I have the idea to start a consulting firm within the next five years.
Why wait five years? My first piece of advice to her was to start building her consulting practice now, not later. Five years from now, someone else may have cornered the market for that very obscure thing you want to do. Five years from now, you could find yourself in a job that pays well, yet sucks the entrepreneurial life out of you. Five years from now, you could have three more kids and considerably less flexibility to juggle a day job and a side hustle.
Even if you don’t feel like you’re “ready” to announce your big consulting plans to the world, there are still some things you can do right now to move them forward.
Ideally, your first clients should come to you before you even hang your shingle. That’s the only way you know if you have a viable service, anyway. Yes, things will be messy in the beginning, but when you actually get ready to do a full “launch” of your full-time business, you will have already worked out many of the kinks.
But whatever you do, don’t let time be an arbitrary excuse for not rolling up your sleeves today. What does five years represent anyway? It’s just a moment in time that is not now. Don’t be one of those people who say now it’s not the right time. You don’t have enough time. Maybe next time. The timing is off. You’re too young. You’re too old. You missed your time.
Or maybe you don’t have enough information. You can’t afford the seminars or the books that will give you the information. You have too much information. You need better information. The person with the information won’t get back to you.
There will always be an excuse not to do the thing you’ve always wanted to do. It’s so much easier to sit around talking about that Big Awesome Idea we never seem to be able get off the ground. But at some point you need to either jump off the damn cliff or just stop talking about that thing you know you’re never gonna do. We all have good ideas, but they’re pretty much useless if we don’t implement them.
Because when you do make the jump? Well, it’s like Sarah Susanka said in her fantastic book, The Not So Big Life: Making Room for What Really Matters
“Once you make the unequivocal internal commitment to do something – when you absolutely know this is the time and the place to act – the world around you will shift in all sorts of apparently miraculous ways to make it happen.”
The commitment comes first. But please, do it now, not five years from now.
Young nonprofit professionals are always looking for a few good mentors. Other, more experienced leaders that can show them the ropes and help them along in their leadership journey. While I have a number of great mentors that I can call on and/or meet with in person, my virtual coaches are just as important to me.
In a recent interview with Inc. Magazine, solopreneur Mike Koenigs was asked if he’d ever had a mentor or a coach. He replied:
“I have had a lot of virtual coaches; Napoleon Hill being one of the greatest. Also Dale Carnegie and Tony Robbins have had the greatest influence on me.”
I define a virtual coach is someone who you’ve never met in person (or have met only a few times), but who continually inspires you to do better and reach higher in your life and career.
Some examples of virtual coaches for young nonprofit professionals might be authors, bloggers, longtime nonprofit leaders or even celebrities. The idea is that we don’t necessarily have to have a mentor right there live in living color for them to be able to teach us valuable lessons.
Here are some of my virtual coaches:
Oprah
Many of Oprah’s philosophies and beliefs resonate deeply with me. Not only is she at a level of success that I would love to attain one day, but the way she lives her life is a testament to the abundance of the universe. Like me, she didn’t grow up with a perfect home life, but she overcame every obstacle that was put in front of her and ultimately reached her goals. I read her daily newsletter from Oprah.com religiously, as it always gives me that needed boost of confidence in my work and life.
Seth Godin
I just finished Seth’s latest book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
Beth Kanter
Beth is a model for transparency in her life and nonprofit work. She is a ruthless innovator and generously documents her learning to share with our huge network of social change agents. Her influence is felt across sectors and I strive to model much of how I work after Beth.
Do you have a virtual coach? Tell us who! And how do they help you in your leadership journey?
The men in the blogosphere have been quite brilliant lately. Here’s some really great stuff I’ve read in the past week.
Tim Ferriss outlines seven ways to deal with hateration in your career. I like this one the best:
“Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.” (Colin Powell)
“If you treat everyone the same and respond to everyone by apologizing or agreeing, you’re not going to be recognizing the best performers, and you’re not going to be improving the worst performers,” Ferriss says. “That guarantees you’ll get more behavior you don’t want and less you do.” That doesn’t mean never respond, Ferriss goes on to say, but be “tactical and strategic” when you do.
Jonathan Fields describes what can happen when you get to the point where you’ve established a really good reputation: personal branding hell. Yeah, that’s about where I’m at right now. Good thing Jonathan gives some great insight on how to deal with it.
Building a strong personal brand—being known as the go-to person in a specific niche—has it’s ups. Everyone turns to you for information, for ideas, for thought leadership, for advice, for strategy, for connections, for presentations, for favors, for opportunities, for jobs, for partnerships, for salvation.
But, if the way to choose to leverage your personal brand is to trade time for money…
You may well have just built a personal brand that feels more like a cage than a stage.
Because, there are only so many hours you can bill for, so many planes you can get on, so many individual conversations you can have before you…and your life…implode. Especially if you’ve also got a family you actually want to see, friends you love to be around, other activities, passions and hobbies you love to engage in and a commitment to taking care of your body and your mind.
David Turnbull tells us how to design your perfect day. One tip? Be insanely specific.
You can’t be too specific when designing your perfect average day. It’s impossible. Once you’ve rushed through the exercise go back and add details to each element.
For example, say you’ve written that you want to “wake up at 6am” and then “have breakfast” ask yourself these questions, and then write the answers down:
- Is anyone beside you when you wake up? What is your bed like? Are you doused with sunlight?
- What do you want for breakfast? Who do you eat it with? Or do you eat it by yourself?
Reverse engineer all the elements of your day in the same way. With this extreme specificity you’re able to clearly visualize what it is you exactly what, and in turn you’re motivated by this burning desire to transform this possibility into a reality.
Cozality on 
bsaunders on 
