Letting your work find you.

Every now and then I find myself on the wrong side of that quintisentially British question: “what do you do?”

There’s been times in my life where the answers been easy.

From almost as young as I can remember I was glued to a computer. So once I had a part time programming job, ‘computer programmer’ felt obvious.

Apart from that time that me and some friends showed up to a Jimmy Carr gig nonchalantly late. The show had started. But there was no warm up act, and we were seated in the 3rd row from the front.

Jimmy singled me out.

There I am, the only one standing up in an audience of a few thousand. The spot lights literally on me. After asking my name, and taking an easy shot at the fact that he came all the way from London and arrived on time, and old local boy… me… couldn’t manage the same.

Then he threw the big one at me.

“So Neil, what do you do?”

Don’t say computer programmer. Don’t say computer programmer.

“I’m a computer programmer”.

The words just fell out of my mouth. And opened the door to 15 mins of comedy gold for Jimmy.

Maybe I’m traumatised.

Traumatised by Jimmy Carr.

Anywho.

A few years after that when I was running my first company, and the answer got a bit more trixy.

“I run a creative digital agency”.  That’ll do.

But things don’t stay the same do they?

So in a later stage of my business journey.

“I’m co-founder at a marketing tech businesses called StoryStream”.

Trixy right?

Didn’t really matter though.  It was enough to either open or close the door to further enquiry.

Fast forward a decade or so, and as you might know, I stepped back from StoryStream.  Deliberately making myself redundant (yeah I know sounds odd, but stay with me).  After committing to myself that I’d let some space in, and not jump into starting another business, these new ‘things’ found me rather than the other way around.  First it was the podcast.

“Podcaster”.  Definitely didn’t feel right.

Then it was this blend of advising, coaching, mentoring, consulting & cheerleading for founders and business owners.

“Business consultant”. Absolutely not.

“Business coach”. Nope.

“Non-exec advisor”. Ish.

Does it really matter?

Probably not.  I’m 7 years in now and I haven’t stopped doing ‘it’.

I know how important the work is.

I know how valuable it is as well.

I also know that it works when it works.

But it doesn’t fit nicely into a box.

It’s taken me a while, but I’m good with that now.  I’ve never wanted to be in a box anyway.

So how about this:

“I help founders build the businesses they actually want”.

That’s it.

That’s the thing.

That’s what I do.

If that piques your interest then I can probably help you.  If not, let’s move onto snowboarding, dadding, downhill mountain biking, bad golf…or any number of other experiments in living differently, because we’re bound to find some common ground there.

I think I might have found the acid test for really letting your work find you. The answer to the question shifts from an activity to a purpose.  The more you own that purpose, the more aligned you become with who you’re designed to be, and the easier it is for you to find your people and do the work that lights you up.

Now go out there and turn your lights on.

(And avoid ‘Jimmy Carr’s’ along the way).