The Problem With Intention
This is a story about what happens when the balance between intention and action gets knocked out of equilibrium. I have spoken about the importance of maintaining equal parts intention and action in business on the podcast before, but of course the ideal standard does sometimes slip and need to recalibrate – the scary stuff happens when you don’t notice the slip and end up checking your finances and realise you’re making a loss.
But, let’s start at the beginning of the story.
My word of the year is ‘fulfilment’, and although it’s not always forefront of my consciousness, I have been thinking a lot about what it means in terms of the business and in terms of my life. After a hard winter I’ve been thinking a lot about priorities, and what brings joy to my life (and what even is joy). As the days have got brighter I’ve spent longer on my daily walks and I’ve become more forgiving of myself, accepting that on a bad day I’m not going to do good work and no longer forcing myself to push through it.
As part of this fulfilment drive, regular readers and newsletter subscribers will know that I’m in the midst of a business model change – I’m not going to bang on about it, but essentially I want to tilt my primary income stream from being one-to-one services to one-to-many services. My mind has been full of this for months now – planning, scheming, dreaming of what things will be like and what I could do and how it will be different.
I wonder whether you’ve clocked the common thread in there too? There’s been a lot of thinking. But practically zero doing.
The last couple of months have been a period of ‘putting in place’. I’ve invested financially in the business more than I ever have with the intention to free up more of my time for the fulfilling stuff, for the ‘making big changes’ stuff. I’ve been surprisingly zen about this – it’s felt like natural progression, a commitment to playing big. I’ve held a lot of trust in myself and the business, trusting the necessity, trusting it will all come good. But really, you do need more than trust.
This realisation came a la The Christmas Carol with visitations from three reality checks, all of them ghosts of business future.
The first gut punch came at the beginning of April, where as I idly checked on my invoicing I saw there were only five more invoices that were due to be issued. Five more, for the rest of the year. A couple of quick sums showed that, even with my expected income from The Purpose Kit, I was on course to make a total of £5k for the rest of 2019 – which wouldn’t be enough to live on. In all my scheming and planning, all my focus on fulfilment, I had neglected to look at the numbers – the rookiest of rookie errors. I dug into my budgeting spreadsheet, rejigging planned launches, opening up the possibility of taking on more one-to-one work and lengthening the business model transition. And I felt better, but still the only action I had taken was to plan – nothing else moved.
Ghost number two was a stone house in a bluebell wood. I’d been scrolling the photos on Rightmove for weeks before we went to go and see it, but it was even better in the flesh. We both felt instantly at home there, and as we stood in the gardens the possibility of the next decades of our lives unfurled and neither of us wanted anything else. This was our house. But again, in all my dreaming I’d glossed over the sums trusting that we’d find the extra money, yet here we were suddenly faced with the reality of needing to bridge a gap in our savings.
After viewing the house I began sorting through my finances to get everything ready to apply for a mortgage. And here came the last gut punch – I’d made a loss in April. Not a big one, not an un-rectifiable disaster, but still I’d sent more money out than I’d had coming in for the first time in over a year.
At first I was kind of numb, entrenched as I was in my trusting ‘it will all come’ mindset my first instinct was to continue with that mantra. But then, something else kicked in. It was like the boss version of me had been on holiday and come back to find the office on fire – and now she was kicking off.
I was angry at myself for losing sight of myself. I’d always been so careful, so practical, so on top of things and I’d taken my eye off the ball completely. I’d been so wrapped up in dreams and wishing things to be different that I neglected to nurture the work and the business that would make those dreams a reality. I felt in that moment like I’d been trying to be a person I ‘should’ be, the person I perceived my friends to be, a person unapologetic in the pursuit of personal development.
Which is not to say that I think the pursuit of personal development is wrong, quite the opposite. But rather than pursue it as myself, as a person with a business that I actually take joy from, I felt like I had to neglect that part and focus solely on nothing but personal joy otherwise I was doing it wrong. I lost sight of my true priorities and existed in a very all or nothing space – when really, what is business, what is LIFE, if not compromise?
Sometimes you need a shock to see what’s important, sometimes you need a vision of what you want – I’ve been lucky enough to have both. Visiting the house and confronting my financial reality has clarified my priorities and brought me back to earth. I’ve realised that you can’t click your fingers and zoom forwards to the dream life (I mean, we all know this, but we don’t always believe it). Most of all, and this is what I want you to take away, is that I’ve remembered that a plan is NOTHING without action being taken. Taking the little actions every day is making tiny finger clicks towards the dream.
