It’s been 18 months since I opened doors “officially” as CEO and Head Career Coach at Thain-Blonk & Associates.

This is the second business I’ve built since starting a family four years ago.

With each business, I’ve gotten more ruthless about how I prioritize my time. What’s my priority in this season? It’s found in the tension between time spent with family and revenue goals.

As I’ve been reflecting on the last 18 months… the client success stories, the services delivered, the revenue earned and lessons learned, I thought I’d take a detour from my normal content and share 5 lessons I’ve learned along the way.

As a prior management consultant and MBA graduate, some of these lessons contradict the analytical approach I’d had ingrained in me when approaching business building.

So what you’re reading is a slice of my own personal transformation.

Ready?

Okay, here we go!

1️⃣ Find the fastest path to revenue and just go for it!

When you’re first starting out, it feels like there are millions of things to do. It’s hard to prioritize because everything feels important and immediate.

What I learned is that having clarity on my #1 priority is the key to being flexible and creative with HOW I achieve my goals.

You already know that my priorities for this business are flexibility to be with family and revenue goals.

With that in mind, my focus became the answer to this question: What is my fastest path to revenue (right now) that gives me flexibility over my time?

This question - and answer - dictated exactly what activities I’ve spent my time on.

For me, it was…

• This email newsletter & LinkedIn content: A place to flesh out my thoughts, add value for free and create a community of people curious about how to find and land a new role they love.
• One-on-one coaching: The container for me to facilitate high-touch personalized career transformation and the place to earn revenue.

That’s it!

I do a few more things now, but these activities are the backbone to what I do. Keeping it simple makes it stress-free and fun so that I have space to innovate and create.

2️⃣ Stay patient and build for the long-term

I see so many influencers talk about how they scaled to X millions of dollars within 90 days (or whatever timeline). It’s intriguing, but personally I find it very demotivating.

I’ve built businesses in the past with a timer behind our activities and it’s not fun. So, this time around, I committed to build slow and build the business to last.

It’s informed key business decisions, it’s helped me celebrate all the little wins along the way and it’s helped me balance both the future vision as well as the immediate season I’m in.

My husband has helped me a lot with this. In the early days, I had this monthly revenue target that I wanted to hit within 3 months of starting (thank you, influencers). He challenged me to let that go and instead make a 10th of that target my goal.

I hated it.

I felt like I was failing. Every month he backed up his challenge by celebrating the revenue I’d earned - even when I didn’t want to because all I saw was the gap.

But, over time I realized that his approach was so much more fun! And as I saw the revenue trend line keep going up, I realized that I was doing the right things, I just needed to stay consistent and let time go by.

3️⃣ Senior titles don't protect people from feeling lost in their career

As I built my coaching practice, my comfort zone was definitely with individuals who were individual contributors to mid-managers, but I knew that my offering would add a lot of value to senior folks.

As I started landing assignments with Directors, VP’s and CEO’s I had to fight the awful voice that kept whispering, “What value can you really add?”

Ugghhh.

I hate that voice.

To combat that doubt (and all the feelings that came along with it), I created a persona who was a combination of several different senior leader’s I’d worked with. I mapped out their challenges and the ways I could best support them. Deep down, I knew all this mentally, but I had to convince myself of it internally.

In the end, my lightbulb moment was “People who hold senior titles can be just as lost about what to do next and I have a proven way to help them figure that out!”

How did this change how I showed up?

I stopped overanalyzing and overplanning. I trusted myself and instead focused intently on the individual instead of getting distracted by my own issues.

It was liberating!

4️⃣ Being trusted with stories is a privilege

“You were made to do this!” a friend observed recently.

I couldn’t agree more.

Coaching was a big shift from my normal business management roles. The best way I can describe it is that it activates a different region of my brain and body… maybe someone with a neuroscience background can help me explain this!

Diving into the messy, painful, triumphant details of someone’s story and holding space for them to explore, process and shift takes a lot of energy.

As I’ve been privileged to hear the private details of my clients’ lives, I’ve come to two conclusions;

• Being trusted with someone’s story is a weighty privilege
• My response is to be a safe landing pad first and guide second

If we’ve had the chance to work together, you’ll know that one of the first things I say when we’re setting up how we’re going to work together is that my role is to be your champion. This gives you the freedom to bring all the fears, doubts, concerns and issues while you know that I hold you as whole and resourceful.

I’m honoured to hold this role.

5️⃣ Investment today = dividends tomorrow

For the last 15 years, I’ve been obsessed with personal and professional development. I’ve read hundreds of books, listened to hours (maybe even years worth) of podcasts, invested in business and personal coaching and experimented with different self-development practices in my own life and profession.

I love talking about this topic.

I love learning about this topic.

I love applying this topic.

(... fun fact, I have a half-written manuscript that I started in my mid 20’s on this topic…)

This personal interest and investment has paid dividends. It’s made me a stronger coach and has benefitted my clients immensely.

When you hire me as a coach, you hire someone who has invested years into their practice and coaches from a place of experience rather than just theory.

So my lesson learned is to never stop investing in myself… I’ll never know who will benefit from it down the road.

If you’ve made it this far… I’m applauding you!

Thank you for joining me as I reflect on what's made the difference in this business.

Whether you’re curious about what it takes to build your own business from the ground up, or are in the midst of it yourself or you just want to know more about me, I hope you’ve taken away a few nuggets from this (extra) long newsletter.

If you find yourself at a crossroads in your career and would like a thought partner to help navigate what could be next, I’d love to connect with you. ​

Let’s find a time to speak, here.

In our call, I’d like to hear more about your goals and challenges. You’ll leave with clarity on what your immediate next steps could look like if we were to partner together. ​

I can’t wait to meet you!

Until next week.

Beckie

When you’re ready, here are some ways I can support you:

​Book FREE 1:1 Intro-To-Coaching call with me Make 2024 YOUR year by setting and achieving your important career goals.

​FREE DOWNLOAD ​The Job Search Playbook Fix the 3 mistakes that are holding you back from finding and landing a new role you love.

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