After seven years, four months and nineteen days as an apparently successful management consultant, Vanessa changed forever.
She flew home from the concluding meeting with her client, sat down in her study, and finally left her job.
She didn’t leave the consultancy. She didn’t gain a new job title. She didn’t obtain different projects.
She simply started doing her old job in a new way.
Vanessa turned Pro. Uber-Pro.
It happened in an instant. Although several years in gestation, it took a nano-second to actually occur. The moment it did, everything changed for good.
It changed. She changed. The World around her changed.
Of course, for all intents-and-purposes, Vanessa was already a good professional. After all, she had an MBA from Columbia Business School. Had worked five years for Booz Allen, out of their Houston office, before creating a co-owned consultancy with two other partners.
Her consultancy could point to a string of happy clients. Although the number of customer engagements went through a famine-and-feast cycle they had a reasonable income, for most of the time.
Even so, it felt much more like surviving than thriving.
In the delivery of her consultancy specialism, Vanessa was a high quality professional. But when it came to gaining new clients, Vanessa was amateur.
What did she change? What did she start? What did she stop?
Vanessa stopped hiding her personality behind the company name. Stopped doing just enough to attract just enough clients.
Stopped depending on existing clients to keep her in work. Stopped accepting that a feast-then-famine income cycle was the best that could be achieved. Stopped accepting the status quo.
Instead she started herself.
Now, she was inspired. Started leading herself in a new way. Started actively hunting far bigger opportunities. Started seriously searching for exactly the right clients. Started risking. Started putting herself out there, on the line.
Most of all, she started taking a big, bold, personal stand for what she truly believed she could uniquely offer. She started making new things happen.
Vanessa now held the market afresh. The market could now distinguish her clearly, for the first time.
As a result, she found more.
More interest. More enquiries. More invitations. More opportunities. More listening. More questions. More dialogue. More clients. More income. More satisfaction.
More influence on issues she truly cared about. With clients she really wanted to work with.
The truth is, new opportunities came after she was inspired to turn Pro. She didn’t turn Pro because of the inspiration of new opportunities.
Fortunately, inspiring the Self like this does not require a ninety page executive report highlighting all the strategic issues involved.
It doesn’t need sixty rows on a spreadsheet matrix with all the costs and benefits detailed, down to the bottom line.
It doesn’t demand the construction of a twenty five page powerpoint presentation, complete with thirty-eight branch decision-tree in order to arrive at the right answer.
It ‘only’ requires change to the Self. Spontaneously. Instantaneously.
Miraculously, as every one of us knows deep down, somehow the synaptic electro-chemical signals firing off in our head can achieve this, in a flash.
We just pretend it can’t.
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