"when i was young, it seemed that life was so logical..."
ten years into my career at havill, we discontinued our crm partnership to focus on our proprietary multi-tenant internet based crm for the petroleum marketers. i wanted to focus on the crm, not the industry, so i took on that partnership independently and transitioned away from havill over the next year. crm was the thing, moving from resellers to partners, and a great means to an end for the projects i was used to doing at havill.
known as goldmine joe, gm joe, and joe the goldmine guy, my business became defined by the relationship with the product, the projects i won were not about the software, but about what i was doing with it behind the scenes and all the projects it touched with many of those clients. and, i was known for my service. once.
don't get me wrong. that product brought benefits that allowed me to win those deals. and, i was indeed a product expert. i would not be here today without that history.
things change. and, boy, did they change. and, here is where i will say i should have started taking the advice i dish out today.
as business people, we can point to legitimate outside influences to our businesses. what defines us, is our response. i can tell you today, i failed. on the surface, 2014 was my best year. underneath, it was the worst.
while my two largest customers sold their businesses and no longer needed my services and a few others transitioned to other products, i began focusing on my product expertise, not my skills, not my business.
it all went to hell.
i woke up on feb 24, 2019 with, quite literally, almost nothing. and, decided to start to live my life differently, establishing a personal mantra for my actions: no bad karma.
the next 8 days were hell, trying to secure the bare essentials needed to survive and generate income.
the following 6 days were also hell, trying to establish order in the chaos of simply trying to get caught up on my client and church responsibilities, where i was vice-president and a magnet for problems and complaints i decided i would take on, head-on, once and for all.
i remembered a lesson my daughter learned in sunday school: live your live for joy... jesus, others, yourself. i used this mantra to guide my time. now, it is: humanity, others, yourself.
at lunch with my business mentor, i first ask him to validate a self-critique full of expletives. he shares a bit of wisdom he learned once: every business fails or is sold. that got me thinking about fundamental flaws. i realized my self-critique was a low-key professional opinion of myself as i would give a client asking me an impression of a project. so, i made me the project.
now, it has been 2 years of 10 months of consulting sabbatical. not really, but kinda. i simply had a unique opportunity to devote the last 2 years of that time to a project that was, in essence, every individual project i have ever done put into one; but, more importantly, an opportunity to bring together my skills, top-to-bottom, for a single project, using and validating my approach.
since every business fails or is sold, and plateau marketing is me, i guess it dies with me. meanwhile, back at the ranch...
in 2022, i will be rebranding my consulting offerings under a new brand and entity, furthering the presence and approach here and introducing some templated offerings.
this change is to reflect the templates and data management platform i have built to organize my deliverables. i have built a platform to manage data the way i know it needs to be managed and visualized the way it needs to be visualized. before i apply it commercially, i decided to use it first to serve humanity. visit jc'network to check out the idea of how i solve problems and watch my work in real-time as we close out 2021 and enter 2022.
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