Ooching past blind spots

Last week I talked about “ooching”:

• Running small, low-risk experiments to test a decision before fully committing to it.
• Gathering real-world evidence to support a decision instead of trying to predict how things will work out.

And how I’ve been using it to work towards my solopreneur value and direction.

This week I realized how blind I am to my “non-experiments”: things I naturally gravitate towards and receive complements for without noticing.

That blindness has caused me to miss an obvious direction. And I believe I pursued the wrong dreams.

Hopefully, you’ll learn from my blindness to see new possibilities in your life.

Why it matters

If you can see your blindspots.

• You find what matters to you and live your own life instead of guessing and projecting.
• You find places you're already touching and helping people.
• You've already put in some level of effort to learn and develop some expertise instead of starting from scratch.

The backstory

I’ve focused on copywriting, writing info products, and email delivered courses.

Those goals ignore what I don’t regularly do: write. Writing is a struggle for me. When I do write, it ends up a personal journal, like my newsletter has been. Not valuable information like I see the people I admire create.

This goals also ignore what I do all the time:

• I do data analysis and visualization all day. While I do it well (30+ years experience), I have no desire to pursue it as a solopreneur. I enjoy mentoring, training, and helping coworkers and others to make them better and do it all the time.
• Toastmasters members complimenting me on my presentations: my humor, stage presence, and content. I love to physically entertain while teaching.
• The most enjoyable money I’ve ever made: training public health officials in GIS and teaching statistics at university. I walked away thinking if I could do that, I would love my life.
• I’ve struggled when people ask me to teach them to draw cartoons. But I get excited to teach people to draw cartoons to use in presentations and marketing. That’s where I love to use them. It feels purposeful.

Taken together, I’ve realized I much prefer in-person training and coaching, speaking and presenting.

That’s where my solopreneur journey “ooch” needs to head.

The bottom line

Here’s my reality:

• I’ve taken steps to learn the technical skills of speaking and presenting in Toastmasters. I’ve done a little personal coaching and mentoring. But I’ve never had steady income from these sources.
• I feel like a fraud starting this because I compare myself to great professional speakers and trainers. But if starting comedians compared themselves to Jerry Seinfeld, Nate Bargatze, and others at the top of their game, they’d give up. I’m just getting started.
• I’ve struggled with direction and content. I don’t have a central theme. I’m taking the step to hire a coach who specializes in helping speaker find their core message. I’ll report about that experience after I go through.

I’m going to figure it out, though.

What steps can you take to recognize the joys, the complements, and the most enjoyable moments of your working life to help you create direction, create value, and create your future?

Observe where you gravitate by keeping a journal of what you did that day and enjoyed, what people ask help for and what parts you enjoyed, and what people complement you for.

That can create you next “ooch” direction.

See you next week!

Philip