Jack and Jill Be Nimble - Finding New Opportunities in Times of Distress

Newsletters

Your Fresh Start is a monthly newsletter for conscious, self-aware people who want to new ideas and perspectives on their work/lives for increased self expression, satisfaction and income, essentially, bringing more 'life' into livelihood.

Welcome to Issue Six of Your Fresh Start - January 2009 … And Please Pass It On to Others

The new year is here!  Apologies to my readers for the gap over the last several months when my newsletter was on hiatus.  I've been busy interviewing for my book and writing its content.  I am looking forward to sharing it with you in 2009 - I hope you'll find it inspiring!

As we enter this new year, we have a new opportunity to start fresh.  Even though we're mid-way through the month, we can continue to remind ourselves of this opportunity to look at our careers and our lives with fresh eyes.

Enjoy this newsletter which is designed to offer you a new perspective with some new energy.

Wishing you a meaningful, fun and profitable new year,

Melanie Keveles, MA, CPCC, MCC

Jack and Jill Be Nimble – Finding New Opportunities in Times of Distress

By Melanie Keveles, MA, CPCC, MCC - Master Certified Coach

Jack be nimble
Jack be quick,
Jack jump over the candle stick.
Jill be nimble,
Jump it too,
If Jack can do it, so can you

Updated Version of a Traditional Nursery Rhyme

My clients are smart people.  They teach me many lessons.  The bargain is as coach I help them change their minds, see things differently and take action.  When they land on their feet, they come up with solutions I could not have even imagined for them.  I learn what’s possible from their successes.  Lately, with the economy tanking and situations being turned up-side-down, more and more of my clients have had to find new solutions for their careers and their businesses.  They’re really exercising their creative muscles.  And it’s paying off for them – big time.
One client, who is in the commercial real estate business, came to me because he thought he wanted out of that business – he wanted a career change – or so he thought.  He’d been at his work for 18 years, superseding his father who had been in this business decades before him. 

His complaints were many when we started – he doubted his abilities, didn’t think he had the skills to do this work, disliked his partner, found him needy and unwilling to bend.  He was losing money fast and seeing the commercial real estate business dry up around him.

Following my model of Dream, Courage, Action, I took him through a process to get to know himself better to discover his strengths, values and interests and even get a sense of his partner and the office staff around him – hoping to utilize everyone to their best advantage.  He took to this process like a duck to water – he found it enlightening to discover that he was very much an introvert – even though you’d never know it – he’s a southern gentleman, a man of charm who engages you from the get-go.  Yet being an introvert, he could take just so much people-to-people interaction each day.  He needed to find ways to reconstitute his energy and spend more time alone.

His partner on the other hand was a raving extravert who loved to be around people – couldn’t get enough of it.  When my client, we’ll call him George, entered his office, his partner was right there in his space and stuck to him like glue.  We had to develop some strategies to keep his partner at bay – I taught George the art of creating a conscious alliance with his partner – and doing so began to pay off, even though his partner grumbled a bit about this change of circumstance.

Next up we started looking for new opportunities.  I had him look for the gaps that the change in the economy was creating.  For example, what were the new means to finance properties now that lending was tight?  How could he help banks who were finding themselves with a ton of repossessed real estate?

George found himself a new collaborative alliance with a man from another real estate company in an adjacent larger city.  This person proved to be everything his other partner wasn’t - and the more he hung around with this new person, the more new ideas seemed to develop.  His new ally jumped at the challenge I put to George to come up with five new ideas filling gaps.  They spent a weekend together with their adolescent boys, hunting and fishing.  The ideas flowed like crazy.  Whenever they seemed to be strapped for a new idea, George heard his new buddy say, “Hey, we need to come up with another idea because we don’t want to disappoint your coach!”

George was on fire.  His son commented on this return trip in the car that he hadn’t seen him so excited or so alive in a long time.  And the new thinking paid off.  Last week he signed a new deal for 1.2 million dollars.  When I asked him on our last session whether he still wanted a career change, he resounded, “Absolutely not!”  He’s found new opportunity and new ideas rejuvenating.  He’s started a column on commercial real estate in his local paper, sees this as setting the foundation for a book and is investigating blogging, podcasting and revamping his company’s web site.
Another client, I’ll call her Gloria, came to coaching reluctantly, asking to have someone help her with her procrastination about writing a resume.  She needed a job with health care benefits, but frankly, squeezing herself into the opportunities she saw out on the job boards made her sick to her stomach.  No wonder she was procrastinating.

Together though, we were able to help her see that an organization that she was already doing consulting work for could be the perfect opportunity to put a foundation on herself, give her the health benefits she was looking for as well as afford her the time she wanted to stake a claim for herself as a magnet in her area of expertise.

The hurdle we had to get over was her thinking that what she was proposing to work virtually and at less than 40 hours (more like 25 or 30 hours) was something the company would agree to or even recognize as a good deal for them.  She thought she would be cheating them if she didn’t put in 40-60 hours a week. 

I told her about the concept of ROWE – results only work environment created by a division at Best Buy that found that decoupling people from a 9-5 schedule actually had them more productive.  She had exposure to Google and recognized how workers tied to time schedules was really an invention of 19th Century thinking.  She also read the 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss and she was willing to let go of her old thinking.

Today she’s happily consulting, gets her health care benefits and has the time she wants to develop her additional business ideas.
Both these clients teach us lessons of nimbleness, thinking out of the box and looking past the obvious to new territories.

What do their stories inspire in you?  Where can you be more nimble?  What opportunities are you missing because you’ve gotten used to business as usual?  What new gaps can you close?

Happenings

In addition to my one-on-one coaching offering, I have added group coaching for women through my affiliation as a coach for My Life Compass.  Check out my offering through www.mylifecompass.com/mkeveles and contact me directly at 715.394.4260 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.

Reprint Rights

Please feel free to reprint this article as long as the following bio (and link to my site) is included with the article.

Melanie Keveles helps people make long-forgotten dreams come true. A master certified coach, she's helped her clients find greater career satisfaction, launch entrepreneurial ventures, and get their books published. Do you have a dream that you keep yearning over? Call Melanie today and take the first step to realizing it. You can reach Melanie at , at 715.394.4260, via email at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or www.startingfreshcoaching.com.

You'll also want to read Melanie's upcoming book. Co-author of Fired for Success: How to Turn Losing Your Job into the Opportunity of a Lifetime! (Warner Books), Melanie is under contract with Praeger Books for a forthcoming book on entrepreneurial women, Scrappy Startups: How 15 Ordinary Women Turned their Unique Ideas into Profitable Business.