It can be lonely, being a solopreneur. You learn how to do everything yourself, and often make the mistake of doing things that you can easily outsource. It seems quicker, easier or more efficient in the moment to keep doing it yourself.
It becomes hard to imagine what it would be like to work with other people. I read and was told a lot about the need to have a team, but however logical it seemed, I couldn’t see how I could get there.
And then I did a program called altMBA, created by Seth Godin, a brilliant marketer and original thinker. I found myself in different groups of 5 people, 3 times a week for a month, with a challenging project to complete and publish the same day. We had to work together, otherwise we would never get it done.
I decided to give it my all. For the first time in my life I shared my deeper thoughts and feelings with many people I didn’t know, who were neither clients nor colleagues. I published blogs which pushed me to explore more openly than ever before what I really care about. And I listened to others doing the same.
It was one of the most affirming experiences I’ve had in a long time. I had often been afraid that I was too different to fit in with group work. Or that I would overwhelm others by talking too much or having too many ideas – both of which come easily to me. Or that I needed to keep my deeper (and to me more interesting) thoughts to myself. It sounds a bit silly now, and I was not very aware of it at the time, but it meant I always held back unless I was teaching or coaching.
It was such a relief to show up fully in a group of people who had all signed up for a deeper experience and who were willing to listen. We often talked for 3 hours before getting to work on our project, which would seem like a terrible waste of time to most business people. But the quality of work we produced as a result was so much greater than if we had been efficient and kept to the point.
We allowed ourselves to bring our entire selves to every conversation and therefore to every project and we surprised ourselves by producing a phenomenal amount of work in a very short period.
In the weeks and months since the end of the program it seems that many people have missed the aliveness that comes from this quality of connection. I’ve been one of the lucky ones. One of my fellow participants, Douglas Tsoi, approached me very soon after the end of the course and asked if it’s possible to teach wisdom. I immediately said “Yes”.
He’d done some research into education for the 21st century, and come to the conclusion that wisdom is the most important subject of all, and one that everyone needs to learn.
We decided to put together a course on how to lead with wisdom, purpose and integrity. A month later another altMBA graduate joined us to market the course, Alexa Rohn. I discovered I was part of a team. It had just happened almost without me noticing.
This is rapidly becoming one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done. The course is called Gamechangers GO and it links into that deep desire so many of us have somewhere in our hearts to change the game – to shift the way we live and work at a deep level and create a world we’d be happy to leave to our children and grandchildren.
We know it’s needed and we’ve felt the call to do something. And yet when we try to do it alone it feels as if everything moves so slowly and the lizard brain can have a field day whenever it wants.
And so in coming together to work with other people we’re creating a course that will bring gamechangers together in profoundly connected conversation combined with purposeful action. Not only will they learn, but they will work together and above all support and challenge each other in the long-term to commit to the game they want to change.
This is team work. We have no need for lonely heroes today. It’s far more powerful to find your inner wisdom, align with your purpose, live with integrity and share it.
But it’s not for the fainthearted. It requires a level of self honesty and personal mastery that really could change the game.
