Three years ago, I was struggling to make a living. I had the mindset of a technician, looking for that next job, hoping for the phone to ring. I had been focused on learning the craft of coaching. After finishing my formal coaching training, there were no more goals on the horizon. I had no strategy for who I wanted to attract or which business to go after. 

I was doing one-day and half-day workshops that didn’t lead to deeper business relationships or further work. To make matters worse, each workshop had to be customized and was done with a partner. Even if I was booked solid, which I wasn’t, it wasn’t enough for a family of four to live on.

I identified myself first as an organization development consultant, and then as a coach. Business owner was not even in the picture.

This was appropriate, as I had no business. Yes, I had a website, a business card, and clients.  I had even done a business plan 18 months prior. The problem was that the business plan was frozen in time. I had not measured my results, set new financial goals, or changed my strategy based on what I was learning about the landscape that I was playing in. I was taking any organization development client that came my way, no matter what the client needed. I was not able to describe my ideal coaching client other than "enlightened and self-aware." 

And yet, my days were busy. Hard work, unfocused and put in the wrong places, rarely yields anything substantial.

Three years ago, I had a phone call with a mentor, a savvy woman with 20 years experience running a thriving consultancy. Upon hearing my situation, she asked some pointed questions–ones that I should have been able to answer if I had been thinking like a business owner. Questions around financial goals and target market. 

I still hadn’t woken up. I told her quite smugly that I could last another 2-3 years, living on savings. Being comfortable, financially-speaking, was working against me.

And then, she said something that stirred the deepest parts of me:

"When you go back into the corporate world 2 years from now, because you couldn’t make it as an entrepreneur, will you be able to say that you gave it your best?"

Holy cow. Seeing that image of working for someone else, in a cubicle, doing work that didn’t interest me, was enough to move me into action. That brief glimpse of the future compelled me to change my trajectory, while I still had time.

Today, I have monthly and annual financial targets. I review my financial results with a mentor, twice a year. He is the CEO of a 70-person firm and has a penchant for seeing patterns in the data and being curious about cause and effect.

I know who my ideal coaching client is. I market and network in specific places, based on that ideal client. I know what makes me distinct in the marketplace, what my brand is. I have turned down clients who are not a fit, so that better clients can come my way.

My coach provides me a reality check of whether my actions are congruent with my goals and whether my goals are aligned with who I am. My theme for this year is "Strategic Action."

On the organization development side, client engagements are longer, with bigger impact and sustainable transformation. I have found a partner who markets as well as I do, sells better than I do, and has a vision for what our niche together can be. We are both conservative and wildly optimistic on what our business together can look like. Conservative in knowing what it takes to build the pipeline and in estimating what it takes to serve our clients well, optimistic in what’s possible when we hone in on the right market that fits our strengths.

The result of all this is that I am making a living at the work I love, with more ease and less effort. My family is no longer living on savings.

There’s still more to do. I am figuring out the transition from technician to true entrepreneur, where the business can run without me.  My role is to invent a system that transforms the world in some meaningful way. Three years down the road, there will be another story about changing trajectory to work on a bigger dream. 

Changing trajectory always leads to a re-invention of my life and my work. Perhaps the only thing harder than changing trajectory is waking up–to the conditions that are calling for a change in the first place. When you find that painfully alive place of awareness, know that starting now is the only place to start from.

Wake up and start now.