Sloan Creative

You’ve probably at least heard of Napoleon Hill’s classic, Think and Grow Rich. The basic idea is that by putting real focus into thinking your path to riches can be made shorter and smoother.

But, what if your path to riches has resulted in you feeling that your business owns you more often than you own it.

Have you gained a good income but given up your spatial and temporal freedom? Can you do what you want when and where you want to do it? Can you easily take this afternoon off to enjoy the sun? Can you spend three weeks bicycling on Bali if you choose?

Are you sacrificing:

• Time with your children
• Time with your spouse
• Time with your passions
• Your health
• Your ability to explore the world

For the sake of your business?

The thinking that got you into this situation will not be the thinking that gets you moving into freer more authentic territory.

But how to think differently? How to think better?

Thinking is usually based on:

Information

• Good, solid data clearly analyzed in the spreadsheet
• What assumptions are you building upon? Are they rock or sand?
• What about what your body is telling you?
• What fresh perspective might literature or art provide?

Processes

• Consciously perform deductive and inductive reasoning
• Clear analysis to avoid common logical fallacies
• Using thinking visualization tools to identify areas requiring more clarity

Both information and process can be refined and improved with only a small investment of time. Of course, you can do it yourself. If you’d like a friendly companion along the way to help speed the process and make it more fun, I’d be happy to help.

Call me for a free consultation. (206) 793-4020

Stephen Sloan offers small business consulting from Bainbridge Island, Washington, 98110 (near Seattle, on the Kitsap Peninsula) to small business owners all over the world.

Running a business is fascinating. Running a business is also often difficult, usually more emotionally challenging than taxing to mind and body.

It has always been so…

The fascination of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There’s something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road-metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I’ll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

W. B. Yeats September 1909- working as the director-manager of the Abbey theatre

I used to love the Zen koan,

It is not the way that is difficult,

but the difficult that is the way.

And the great American Horatio Alger questions:

• If not me, who?

• If not now, when?

I consciously pursued what was difficult.

• I thought I read too slowly coming out of high school, so I choose a reading intensive major, History

• I felt shy, so I became a Realtor and forced myself to cold call and hold open houses

• I feared poverty, so I stepped up to managing a business with 35 employees, most older than I, when I was 24

• I feared irrelevance, so I took on the chairmanship of our industry’s leading coop.

• I saw a real need and opportunity, so I left that business to create software to help the entire industry

I burned myself out.

Now, 5 years later, I finally threw the bolt! I signed my last payroll check in December 2006, after 16 years of having employees.

I am free to choose new difficulties that fascinate me.

I’ve found that I still must pursue what’s difficult. I haven’t figured out if it’s just in my nature or in human nature.

I think everyone finds it a bit more natural to walk uphill rather than down. This is especially true with climbing. But, so many folks, in our leisure-based culture, seem to spend most of their time avoiding what is difficult - distracting themselves with work, activities, entertainment and consumption.

Now, as I choose new difficulties, I am more respectful of that koan. I try to choose my difficulties more carefully:

Why am I choosing this?

• Reasons that should prompt a pause and reflection

  • Feeling inadequate

  • Feeling bored

• Reasons that indicate the difficulty might lead someplace interesting

  • It takes me towards a more conscious, integrated life

  • It takes me towards more fully expressing what is uniquely me

  • It serves some higher calling you see working near you

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.
Henry Kissinger

My current projects include:

• Leadership support for small business owners- like coaching, except that I actually do stuff!
• Researching and writing on my family history, the tip of the iceberg here

Enjoy the ride, getting off makes a real mess.