Telling it Like it Is

Happy New Year to you! May it be a year of fun, productivity and juicy challenges – you know, the challenges that have you be better than you were, that are stimulating, enjoyable and fruitful.

Not like the challenges I think many people faced in 2011 – whether it was direct or indirect – it just felt like it was a crappy year. For those of us in Brisbane the year started with the floods … and many are *still* recovering from that, of course there was the awful Tsunami in Japan, the earthquakes in New Zealand and a very sluggish economy. For many, 2011 was just hard work. And I know many people were quite happy to see the end of 2011 … and I must admit, I am one of them.

But I had a good year – when I wrote out my wins and losses for 2011 the quantum of the wins far outweighed the losses …. but the losses felt much heavier than the wins seemed light. And the losses were experienced as the clock ran down on 2011 … and therefore set the tone on the Christmas break and end of the year.

So what were the losses?

• Well I didn’t meet my financial targets for the year. Not by a long-shot. Apart from being disappointing personally it has knock-on effects for my family, for my marriage. Money stress is not something I enjoy. At all.

• I had many ‘learnings’ about how to run my online group coaching program, CATapult. In hindsight, I should say, I can see them as ‘learnings’ … a couple of weeks ago though they were failures – not enough registrations, not a great promotional campaign and in my eyes a complete failure. I have perspective on that now … but gees, I beat-myself up good on that one!

• Not capitalising on some awesome opportunities that were presented to me. Lack of follow-up on my part – enter another round of ‘beat-up’ on my part.

But what were the wins?

Well, there were plenty I can happily report.

• My first-ever overseas trip to the States for SxSW was a game-changer for me – I discovered just how much I knew, and how much more there is to discover about interactive media. Just backing myself to take the trip was a game-changer for me to be honest.

• Chairing the panel discussions at Networx continues to be a highlight – give me a stage, a microphone and interesting people to talk to – O.M.G. I’m in heaven!!! Oh, and an excuse to dress-up and network with Brisbane’s finest marketing minds … ooh la la.

• Closely related – being invited to MC the iXmas party. Oh. My.

• Co-hosting the Social Media for Small Business podcast with Suzi Dafnis … really, it’s an extension of what I love about Networx – extracting the goodness from the minds of smart, interesting people. *sigh*

• Some juicy new business and personal relationships who have given me a different perspective of myself. Special thanks in particular to Peter Shallard, Alycia Edgar, Simon Dell & Suzi Dafnis. They are guru’s in their field. No doubt.

• Launching the Ignition videos & CATapult – productising some of my ‘stuff’ and taking it online has been something I’ve ‘not made happen’ for a few years now. To have finally shipped – that is the win I am very proud of.

• and some really juicy client engagements that stretched my paradigm about what I do really well.

Which brings me to the essence of this post, what I do really well is telling it like it is. I have never proposed silver bullet solutions and one of the things that totally p***es me off about some in the business coaching industry is this notion of ‘if you just do this all will be fixed’. I also get shitted off when I see ‘gurus’ propose notions of business ownership being the path to riches and happiness.

Running a business is hard-work. And there are VERY few successful models of sitting on the beach watching the money roll in. Not none. But very few. Most of us running a business are happy if we make enough money to support our lifestyle … and our endeavours afford us the time to enjoy that lifestyle.

So one of the new things I’ll be doing here in this blog is telling more of my story – telling it like it is for me as I do this thing called my business. And I’ll be calling the BS when I see it. Because I think it’s time that you, as a Business Owner has access to real business advice, real business stories and practical, really practical (as in, “yes, I could do that too”) business education. And because I think we learn lots from the stories of others.

So Happy New Year to you … to all of us in fact. May it be an incredible year of fulfillment, fun and juicy, juicy opportunities. And may we all enjoy our businesses a bit more, make them a bit more profitable and enjoy the process of running our own show.