Making Your Own Sunshine

I have a lot to say to my clients and potential clients about how I know they want better reasons to get out of bed every morning and how I can help them with exactly that.  I know that many of us can easily feel like there's nothing exciting to wake up for in the morning.  It's just another day at work.  Another day to drive in traffic, another day to do the stack of work that someone else puts on your desk.  Even if you brought the work in to the firm, another day to bill, bill, bill so you can make partner or get a bigger piece of the pie.  

What I have helped my clients to discover and what I have discovered myself by walking my talk, is that when you develop your own talents and passion and wrap it up in your personal brand, you can't help but be attractive to those who you want to serve.  When that happens, you begin to pull in perfect work, meaning, work that is lined up with who you are and what you want to be doing.  The neat thing about that is that when you have a desk or inbox full of work that you created from passion and alignment with who you are, you find that you can't wait to wake up in the morning.  You find yourself leaping out of bed excited to start the day.  

Not only that, you also find it easier to look your best and feel your best so that when you connect with others you are putting your best foot forward, so to speak, and drawing in more of the work you love.  

Sometimes this transformation doesn't rid you of billable hours or working all day long.  Instead, the transformation is in how you feel about billing and working.  It's as if you could do what you're doing all day long and not be paid for it, and still love doing it.  I know, that sounds crazy, doesn't it?  I'm not saying you won't be paid for it, I'm just saying you enjoy doing it so much because it lines up with you so well that you get lost in doing it and you take satisfaction from the work itself and the interaction with the types of clients it draws in.  It may take you to places you never imagined. 

In my own personal life, I went from being an associate at a mid-sized firm to being unemployed, to being an entrepreneur.  I knew when I was at the firm that I wanted to be a business owner.  I was meant to work for myself.  I could always feel that at my core.  However, the space I was given during my unemployment presented me with a series of perfect opportunities to learn, grow and discover what it is that makes all the tools I have in my toolbox and the uniqueness of me a unique selling proposition that can serve a perfect target market in a perfect way.  What unfolded is nowhere near what I could have ever thought up by sitting down and trying hard to come up with business ideas.  Instead, I let myself emerge.  I let the self that had been stuffed into a box by "life" come out to play.  What has sprung forth is beyond my dreams, and I've only just begun.

It is no different for you.  Not only do you have a completely fingerprinted set of tools and skills in your toolbox that don't quite match anyone else's, you also have a unique perspective and way of doing things and being you that puts a brand stamp on everything you do, or could if you allowed it to.  In my work with clients, this is what I aim to call forth.  I want my clients to see that who they are is far more valuable than they can imagine and than they ever get credit for or give themselves credit for.  

Most of us are just going to work every day and doing the job we were hired to do according to the company's or boss's rules and expectations.  If we could explore and experiment with ourselves a little and take some time to remember who we are, what we would have to offer an employer or a business of our own would astonish us.  When you find that sweet spot, I promise you that you will want to get up in the morning or you may work into the late hours, but it won't feel like work at all.  Instead, it will feel like play, and you will be the sun shining in the center of it all.