This is the back story of how I started working for myself and my path these past 10 years… If you want to jump right to the 10 Lessons I’ve learned, click here!

 

In the spring of 2008, my life was starting over. Again.

Like you, I’ve had many life chapters with beginnings and endings – in relationships, homes, jobs. But 2007 was a particularly rough year, an intersection of painful endings in all those areas of my life including a layoff from an organization that I’d given blood, sweat, and tears to for nearly ten years.

As March of 2008 arrived and I was wrapping up my work at that organization, I searched for the next step in my career life. With a lot of nonprofit experience under my belt, I sent out one resume after another, thinking it wouldn’t take long to find something with so many opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I got no responses. Crickets.

As the weeks went by and my very modest financial safety net began to fray, I felt more and more nervous. I was discovering the cruel truth that middle-aged women, no matter how much depth we have in our life and work experience, are not in great demand in the workforce (this article from the Harvard Business Review does a good job of exploring that issue).

Earlier in my life I’d flirted with self-employment as a freelance editor and writer but couldn’t sustain it for very long. As I faced the reality that no employers were responding to my resume, I started to think it was time to get more serious about working for myself.

I reflected on my work history up to that point and realized what a wealth of experiences I had…

• I’d been the executive director of a nonprofit that was near-death and helped to bring it back to life and give it new energy for the future. In the process I learned a great deal about marketing and fundraising, as well as program development and leadership.
• I had graduate level training in anthropology, which gave me an orientation toward seeing culture that is always with me even if I don’t have a job title as an anthropologist.
• At that point I’d worked in nonprofits for nearly two decades, and with on the ground experience that helped me understand why the best-planned initiatives could fall apart when they met the realities of organizational culture (there it is again) and other limitations.
• Perhaps most important, I had a meditation practice that was continuing to deepen as I gave it more attention and sat regularly at San Francisco Zen Center. Even in the midst of that scary time when no job opportunities were arising and my bank account was dwindling, I was learning to touch into a place of resilience and trust in myself, thanks to this practice.

So I felt ready to try starting a business again. More to the point, I didn’t have a whole lot of choices! It was definitely a sink or swim moment.

I still vividly remember sitting in my bed late one night and wondering what I could call this new venture. The phrase Five Directions Consulting came to me, seemingly out of the blue. I wasn’t sure why, but I liked the feel of it.

When I did a bit of research, I understood why this name resonated so deeply for me. I learned that many cultures orient around five directions, not the four we usually think of, with the fifth being the center, or ‘here.’ That perfectly reflected my approach to work (and life) – I knew the importance of slowing down to get a deeper understanding of where we are now before launching into a new direction.

I pulled an all-nighter and set up a very rudimentary website. It was pretty ugly but it got things going and made it real that I was doing this thing. Here’s what that first Five Directions website looked like (now defunct, found this thanks to the Wayback Machine internet archive!):

 

 

“Hustle” became the key word in getting my business off the ground that first year. I wrote what I now call a ‘treasure seeking letter’ to a number of people who knew me well and told them about this new venture and what I had to offer.

Not long after, I got my first two clients – the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and Upaya Zen Center. Mirabai Bush invited me to help the Center run an interview process to identify a new executive director, and Roshi Joan Halifax invited me to help her launch a new Buddhist chaplaincy training program at Upaya.

I could not have predicted that these two projects would be in my wheel house… but in retrospect they made perfect sense. That anthropology training gave me a unique perspective on ways that potential job candidates might or might not fit in with the Center’s organization culture. And thanks to Roshi Joan’s mentoring, I discovered that I had a knack for creating a container for transformative learning. I loved what we created together with the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program (now entering its tenth year as well!).

This was my first taste of the serendipity that so often marks the life of a solopreneur. You learn that the more you clarify what you offer, and the more you reach out to people who have a need related to that offer, something is bound to happen — and it will often completely surprise you!

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As the years have gone by, my business has evolved and my direction has shifted (I’ll probably be up to five soon!). The focus at the start was consulting services related to communications and fundraising. As my skills as a meditation teacher and facilitator have become more honed, I’ve felt drawn to create programs and retreats that focus on mindfulness in the workplace. I’ve been honored to offer workshops on everyday mindfulness for places like the Environmental Defense Fund, University of Washington’s Empowering Blind Students in Science and Engineering program, and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

In 2010, I started a blog called the Liberated Life Project… a place where I could explore my interests beyond marketing and fundraising, and give my creative side a place to play. That lead to experimenting with creating my first online course – Fall in Love with Your Work. And eventually that lead to my first book, Work That Matters.

Of course there have been other twists and turns over this past decade, more than I could possibly write about in this article. But what hasn’t changed during all these years is my intuition that mindful awareness can offer new perspectives and enhance the impact and effectiveness of almost everything we do… and that it could be incredibly fulfilling to organize my work around this possibility.

Have there been days when I wanted to give it up and go back to the relative security and predictability of a full-time job? Oh yes….  For a few of those 10 years, my income was lower than it was at any point in my working life and I honestly didn’t know how I would get by from month to month. And I can’t count the number of times I felt I had no idea what I was doing and had to humble myself to ask for help in various ways.

But the very best part about having my own business is how much I’ve grown, personally and spiritually. I’ve learned how to be more creative, more outgoing in a genuine way, more resilient.

Every day is a new chance to create something that comes from deep inside me, to decide how I will use my time, and to reach out to people who I admire and respect. The rewards have been boundless. Truly there is never a dull moment and I wouldn’t trade it for all the ‘stability’ in the world.

It’s good to take some time to harvest the wisdom of these years and take it into my next decade — and to offer it to those of you who are starting or relatively new on this path of self-employment. Check out my article “10 Lessons from 10 Years of Creative Self-Employment” on Medium.com.

Finally, I want to thank all the clients I’ve had these past 10 years who have been part of this wonderful story of opening my mind and heart ever more, each day! None of this would be possible without you…

 

• Academy for Love of Learning
• Adrienne Rosenberg
• CA 4-H Foundation / Annette Leeland
• Callisto Media
• Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
• Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
• Copper Canyon Consulting / Sarah Ghiorse
• Derek Penfield
• Diapraxis / Rosa Zubizarreta
• Eileen Pardini
• Environmental Defense Fund
• Erica Rayner-Horn
• First Nations Development Institute
• Ganas Consulting LLC / Pamela Slim
• Garrison Institute
• High Meadow Farm / Holly Haynes and Charlie Watts
• Hiromi Sieradski
• Jeannie Wells
• Joelle Thompson
• Joyful Mind Project / Chelsea True
• Karen Weber
• Ken Kraft
• Kristie Zamrazil
• Laura HItt
• Laura Jolly
• Lee Lipp
• Liddy Martin Holland
• Luisa Kolker
• Michele Rudy
• Nancy Rumbel
• Niamh Barrett
• Out Front Music / Jami Sieber
• Oxford University Press
• Patty Lee
• Sam Snidal
• SEO Essential Solutions
• Stefanie Harvey
• Stephanie Thomas
• Tewa Women United
• Tracy McBride
• University of California San Francisco
• University of Washington
• Upaya Zen Center