“Years ago, I became an accidental entrepreneur..."

...having started a small business without knowing anything about business and feeling wholly inadequate. In the end, I fell in love with building a business. Over the years, I developed friendships with lots of small business owners, discussing our challenges and opportunities and comparing notes about key issues. I found myself getting so much out of these conversations, which would inevitably involve a mix of tactical business and broader life concerns. Our discussions naturally evolved to include the deeper dynamics of personality issues, insecurities and blind spots.

After selling my business, I thought I’d start up a coaching practice to allow myself to continue to have these life-giving dialogues. I had recently done some volunteer business coaching in Africa and found those experiences to be equally life-giving. So, I hung out a shingle as a business coach, and took on my first paying clients in the US. What I discovered, however, was that this wasn’t fun for me at all. Now what?

Looking for guidance from God, I processed through the situation using the Key Relationships Lens, and I gained all sorts of insights into why some interactions had been so fulfilling while others had been the opposite.  In the prayerful pause, I saw the image of a chunk of dry ice being dropped into a bucket of water sitting on the counter top.  Fog billowed out and poured over the edges of the bucket, then began to fall in curtains onto the floor.  More and more of the fog continued to billow and flow out of the bucket. It was an image of the expansive nature of God’s wisdom and Kingdom.  His wisdom in and through me is boundless, and I had been looking through the much more narrow lens of “how can I make money having business conversations with people.” 

I realized that maybe I had been too quick to give myself a title for what I was doing in the US. I didn’t have a good vocabulary for what I wanted to offer to clients, and this was leading to clients who were asking me to offer something very different from what brings me life. Since that insight, I’ve officially stopped calling myself a ”business coach.”  I am okay with being less defined for the time being. I am praying about how God may want to develop and exercise my spiritual gifts.  Even though the future is unclear and uncertain, I am excited for it. I am grateful for the exercise."