“I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that line. It’s even come out of my mouth on occasion. It’s can’t speak for others but for me it’s not a matter of not knowing what to do, more like, I don’t know which interest I should prioritize. I envy those folks who found that one thing that drives them either through interest or opportunity. Like Neo sees the Matrix, I see opportunity everywhere and I chase them like a dog chases a squirrels. It’s not so much a matter of FOMO as it is interesting to go down the many paths of what could, might, and sometimes, should be.

This thought comes from my own reflection of all of the things I have pursued in roughly the last calendar year. From full-time jobs to new businesses and, ugh, additional hobbies. You might insert a joke about ADHD to which I would laugh and wonder if you’re right, but this year I have refrained from many distractions and tried to hold back only digging into the opportunities that I know from experience would turn into another passing phase. 

Ryan Rumsey recently shared an article about minimum viable products vs. minimum viable tests (MVP vs. MVT). And that sums up exactly what I have done throughout the year—dig into something enough to turn ideas into copy and images. Put it out into the world, talk about it, and gauge the interest. It’s the difference between trying to create a new way to fish vs. using a new, intriguing lure. 

I’ve had a handful of ideas this year that I tried to promote on LinkedIn, met with potential clients, did the road show and nothing has hit. After a year of no hits, a younger me would have started to take it personally but this year it’s not me. There are so many frozen budgets and head counts that I’m starting to wonder if all this freezing might offset global warming by a degree.

Yet I move forward at a casual pace because eventually the world will reconfigure and new opportunities will introduce themselves if you’re out in the crowd looking to meet them. With that in mind, today I announced my next attempt at consulting. It’s called Same Team Partners and, frankly, it’s the business I should have created after my time at InVision. By that time I had observed and experienced a solid set of patterns that are behind the core of problems facing leaders, teams, and organizations. 

This is not to say I don’t have more to learn, but my view of the world has been validated many times over at all size and scale. Now it’s time to go to work and start making everything work better.