I’ve been helping people, usually women, to recalibrate their businesses for over 20 years now.
They most often get in touch because they’ve been feeling there’s untapped potential within them. That they could be making a more significant impact.
Where does the desire for change come from?
Often, happily, it’s internally driven. A persistent yearning to contribute more within an industry, to a certain group of people, to a cause. These next chapters, as I call them, are frequently built on skinned knees – your own experiences of walking through the fire and coming out the other side inspire you to want to shorten and sweeten similar journeys for others.
The fire doesn’t need to be traumatic, by the way – it simply represents the challenge component of the classic hero’s journey. It’s an experience that has enriched your knowledge and skills and given you insights that will benefit others, from becoming a more effective leader, running a more efficient project, to empowering a neurodivergent individual, and all sorts of other things…
The hero’s journey and your soapbox vision
These businesses, consultancies, and practices are fuelled by your soapbox visions – the difference you want to make, what you stand for, believe in, and want for your clients. They’re built around your personal brand, and when you can stay connected to this origin, be responsive to the market, supported by peers and mentors, anchored in self-belief, when you fully appreciate the value you create and are guided by your own internal authority, you’ll THRIVE.
Your business is not static. It evolves over time as you do, with each chapter deepening your story and impact in a unique blend of contribution, fulfilment, and financial reward. I’m not saying it’s all buttercups and sunshine! You and I know that self-employment is not for the faint-hearted when you think about all its challenges… but I’d still choose it every time.
When a new client dances into my world with this sort of pulled-forward energy, it’s exciting! We roll up our sleeves and start reimagining what the next chapter of their business will encompass as we harvest what has been and collaborate to create what will come next…
The power of see it to be it
The desire for change can also come from a different source.
Sometimes it’s externally driven as you watch the progress of others around you. This can work well if you feel inspired with a “wow, look what’s possible” kind of response that pulls you forward.
You’ve likely heard the expression “you need to see it to be it.” When we see someone who looks like us, with a background or story that resonates, it’s easier to believe that we can also achieve that type of success. It’s why visibility for minorities and historically sidelined groups is so important.
And this concept isn’t limited to race or gender. It extends to every dimension of diversity—age, neurodiversity, socioeconomic background, physical ability, and more. When we see someone like us succeed in new ways, it expands our own sense of what’s possible in business, but also in life.
The Comparison Trap and the Shadow Business
These “Way Showers” have been powerful positive forces in my own life.
I’ve chosen not to hide the fact that I relied on a well-known 12-step program to finally escape addiction 18 years ago. When you’re early in recovery, it’s almost impossible to believe that the kind of future the others openly share is available to you. It seems so far away, so utterly different from the reality you’re in at the time, which is filled with fear, uncertainty, doubt, and shame.
But when you listen to the stories, when you allow yourself to rise just slightly above your current circumstances and really hear them and the promises they hold, rather than staying closed and scared, something begins to happen. You begin to feel hope and that’s the energy that powers change.
You DO have to see it to be it! So if you are vibrating with excitement at the prospect of expansion because of someone you’ve seen who’s inspired new possibilities, hitch yourself to the self-belief wagon and ride it!
But all too often, pressing your nose up against the shopfront of another business can have the opposite effect, either deflating and tossing you casually into the Comparison Trap where you sink under the tsunami of “not good enough”.
Or it can push you into developing a shadow business – one where you adopt other people’s goals and shape your business core around what you think you should do, rather than what only you can do.
The shift that changed things for me
This is where we need a critical self-leadership skill to kick in – discernment. It’s not a skill I was naturally imbued with. I had to develop it the hard way!
Back in 2011, I was running my small business marketing agency, Ideas into Action. I’d built a business that was successful by external measures – I’d bought an office, had a small team of fabulous staff, we had clients across three states, were enjoying increasing brand recognition, and generating that magical multiple six figures per annum in revenue.
I’d ticked so many success boxes, and I didn’t understand why I felt so distressed, exhausted, and utterly, miserably discontented.
At the time, my husband was stepping into his own next chapter. A career of management consulting was giving way to the world of sailing, and he had recently begun a business in the industry. I’d just picked him up from the airport and as he shared the excitement of his first offshore race, I could feel my own tension increasing. My heart was hammering in my chest, my stomach was in knots, and I was finding it hard to breathe through the simmering resentment that was gripping me.
Finally, he turned to me and asked innocently, ‘So, how was your week?’ I promptly burst into tears. Smacking my palms against the steering wheel in frustration, I cried, ‘I just don’t think I can do it anymore.’”
Deep down, I knew I’d grown the business because I could. Because each decision I made seemed like the next logical step at the time, I’d never stopped to question whether this was the kind of business I wanted to grow, or whether it truly aligned with who I’d become.
I was exhausted, juggling all the things, including the guilt of before- and after-school care, as well as holiday care, for my kids.
Hadn’t I started this business for flexibility!?
I was beginning to understand that just because I could, it didn’t mean I should, and that life was too short not to be doing the work in the world I was really drawn to.
I wrestled with these thoughts and emotions alongside a sense of responsibility to my staff and clients for several months. To close or not to close was the topic of conversation with my husband on many evenings. I must have worn out the ears of close friends at that time, too. I was firmly stuck in the deliberation zone, oscillating between discontent and desire, and grappling with doubt.
One afternoon, while reading a Wayne Dyer book I loved, The Shift: Ambition to Meaning, I finally felt my own corresponding shift in understanding. I began to understand that I, too, was deeply mired in sticky thoughts and misbeliefs about what success was, and how a business needed to look and operate to align with the definition I’d accepted, internalised, and lived out.
In 2012 I finally stepped into my own internal authority, made the shift, and pivoted into my next chapter – a smaller, consultancy-style business that is a far better fit for me.
Deepening, not scaling
I’m sharing this story because change in your business is inevitable and natural, and your next chapter doesn’t have to look exactly like anything you’ve seen.
Growth and profitability are absolutely vital components of every business, but that doesn’t have to mean scaling. It can mean going deeper, not just bigger. (And by the way, my profitability is waaaaay better today than it was back then, illustrating the point that you don’t always have to scale to grow).
Facing your fears to unlocking Your Next Chapter
Your vision in practice via your business will differ depending on what stage of life you are at and what else you need to balance. We all have many chapters, and deciding what role you want your business to play in your life in this one is a vital part of recalibration.
Each of my new clients completes a load of prep work before we sit down together to begin the business recalibration program. This work asks them to take a deeper look at themselves and their business past so we can see what we can leverage, harvest, and prune for their next chapter.
One small part of this process involves answering 4 questions:
- What do you see as the 3 key problems/challenges that need addressing that are (or might) preventing you from unlocking the next chapter of your business?
- What are the 3 core feelings associated with these?
- What’s the big outcome you’re seeking and what feelings are associated with this for you?
- And finally, what’s the big fear sitting in the background that might derail you from reaching this outcome and how might you describe/feel if it stopped you?
As you can imagine, the answers are quite varied… apart from a core theme that keeps cropping up again and again and again…
I’m afraid my services aren’t good enough, my ideas aren’t good enough, my business isn’t good enough, I’m not good enough…
And if you add an ADHD diagnosis into the picture (as many of my clients, like me, were late-stage diagnosed)… well let’s just say those misbeliefs are even louder, stronger and debilitating.
Strategy and Self-Leadership: The dynamic duo
Can I assure you, if comparison was NOT a thing these misbeliefs wouldn’t be either!
This is why I blend Strategy and Self-leadership in my work.
It’s why we need to challenge your thinking and self-perception right alongside your brand positioning and marketing strategy.
This is why, when those limiting thoughts start to wrap themselves around your feet and stop you from moving forward, you need to stage an intervention on yourself. Make sure you’re not “goal smuggling”, taking on someone else’s definition of success at the expense of your values, feeling you need to do what they’re doing, or what the world tells you you should want or do in your own damn business!
Ok, I’m getting off my soapbox now.
This is a subject I’m pretty passionate about, as you can likely tell. This is my skinned-knees moment. I don’t want you to stay stuck in a straitjacket that you can choose to take off, because I know what it feels like when you’re in it. And I know what it feels like when you leave it behind.
Is it time to recalibrate?
I want my business to serve me just as much as I serve my clients, and that’s what I keep coming back to as my touchstone.
I’m clear on the sort of work I want to do that makes the most of my strengths and unique skills. I’m clear on who I want to work with and love collaborating with because I understand and appreciate the value I can add to their world.
I’m equally clear on what I mistakenly thought I should do and I’ve tossed those thoughts, services and marketing strategies out the window.
What do you want? Or perhaps you can simply start with what you no longer want.
Take a breath and open a skylight of possibility in your head and heart.
Recalibration often feels like liberation!
If you’d like some help with that, if you’d like a sounding board and thinking partner on your support team for the adventure, let’s chat.
Yes, I have a truckload of experience and some pretty valuable tools and processes we can work through and the prep work I’ll have you complete will give me access to all of your skills, experience, and expertise that we can then leverage.
But perhaps most important is the fact that I don’t have free access to that conditioned voice inside your head that has the audacity to tell you what you can and can’t do…and so it will not limit my thinking about what might be possible for you.
Let’s just say you can borrow my belief in you until you have it for yourself.
