Here I am, self-employed, working in a few different ways, and if you’ve come across me for the first time you might think I’ve got it all figured out. You might think I’m one of those people who magically just knew what they could help with and who their ideal clients would be. (Nobody magically knows, by the way, it’s just you don’t always hear about the figuring out part, which can take years.)

But it’s taken a long time for me to get from the little inklings of ideas on what I could do to this point where it makes sense to me – and even now I’m still questioning things and tweaking things.

So how did I get to a relative sense of clarity?

A chance conversation

I have done variety of online courses over the years, and some of those have included end of course meet-ups, which are always great for meeting the other participants. I went to one in London for Marianne Cantwell’s Free Range Humans Festival in 2013, and it was lovely to meet some people I already knew from our online conversations.

We all chatted to each other about projects we were working on, what we enjoyed and challenges we were having. I was talking to someone who was doing some interior design projects, and she said “I just hate the planning part, figuring out how to do everything”. I looked at her as if she was an alien from another planet and said “but I love planning, that’s the bit I enjoy!” And that thought stuck with me.

Some coaching

At some point in my explorations I was having a conversation with my coach at the time, and I was frustrated with not feeling like I knew what I wanted to do. I said “but all I want to do is plan things. I love working out how to do things and writing plans. Surely nobody would pay me to do just that?”

(I was right and I was wrong. Nobody pays me JUST to write plans. Because plans by themselves aren’t that useful. But in order to make things happen, you need plans. So people do pay me for that. But they also pay me for other stuff too. More on that in a later post…)

I have always found coaching to be helpful – whether it’s to talk through new ideas or to progress ones that I’m trying unsuccessfully to work on. It’s just so nice to have someone on your side who knows how to help you figure things out and get rid of the blocks in your head that are stopping you doing something. I’ve worked with a few coaches at different points in my journey, and all of them helped me in some way.

Offering my planning services to people I already knew

I mentioned in my last post how taking action gets you further than thinking does. And this also worked for me in this case. After these conversations I’d had, I wondered whether there was a need for someone who enjoyed planning things.

I asked in the Facebook group we’d set up after the Free Range Humans Festival, and a couple of people said they’d love help with planning. So I created a 1:1 service.

After that I worked with a few clients and as well as helping them plan their projects, I talked to them a lot. I asked them how they described their problem that I helped them with. I asked them what it was that made them seek help to figure it out.

And I realised that even when I had no idea how I would be able to help someone, I had a strange talent for being able to figure out how to plan something while on a call with them. Back then I called it ‘interpreting’ ideas, these days I call it ‘untangling’ ideas.

And I learned about my ideal clients and what they needed to know from me before asking for my help.

Talking my services through with a copywriter

I asked someone I knew to help me write some copy for my website I was creating. And because she herself had the profile of my ideal client, the copy she wrote was spot on. So much so that I still use some of it in the descriptions I use now.

As well as giving me some useful copy, this worked because in talking through what I was offering, and being asked questions about my ideal client, I was able to refine my services and really understand why and how they would be useful.

So how did all of that help?

This part of my story was very much shaped by my interactions with the people I spoke to.

From a small inkling of an idea – to a service that I could explain and that people had paid me to deliver – that couldn’t have happened without all those conversations. With people who had a problem I could solve, so I could delve into understanding that problem and the words they used to describe it. And people I could talk the idea through with to make more sense of what it was and how to explain it.

No journey of personal development, especially into self-employment, can be taken without involving other people in some way.

(But of course the story didn’t stop there – keep checking in to see my latest blog posts as I unpack the story further!)

Who do you have around you that you could talk your ideas through with? Or do you need a coach, mentor or guide to help you move forwards?