what am I passionate about?

Nearly one year ago I joined with a former colleague and founded a consulting company. It made complete sense. We both intended to work independently for the foreseeable future and at the very least we would be sharing the operational overhead and costs. We formed our corporation, hired a talented accountant and collections specialist, and selected a law & tax firm. Our 2007 tax year turned out to be a good one, we posted a profit.

In summary, year 1 (2007) was all about building the business and operational infrastructure to do something more.

Now I sit and review the 2008 plan and have been talking to a lot of colleagues and contacts about where opportunities exist in the marketplace. Some interesting and compelling things have surfaced, but they ultimately force an important question that was posed to me indirectly over lunch the other day:

What do I want out of this? What am I passionate about?

My immediate response over my spicy grilled chicken sandwitch was that I am passionate about product strategy and helping early stage companies establish an understanding of their market and the build the plans to address it. My lunchmate was perfectly happy with that answer and so was I. Now, however, I wonder.

Thinking more about it that day, I am most passionate about the freedom of working for myself; building a business that ultimately enables me to acheive my life goals. The most specific life goal is better life-work balance but without the financial sacrifice.

The Product Manager in me is starting to see the roadmap:
- BETA: My departure from Jobster. I was so eager to launch beta that I left without plans of what I might do next. That took some guts and passion.
- v1.0: Sub-contract consulting
- v1.5: Co-founding Prosys Inc. and finding my own work.

Each of these stages have taught me something more about myself and what I want.

The clarity reached just after lunch the other day was that while I am passionate about consulting, I am actually not as passionate about consulting as I am about building a business to reach those life goals I spoke of. Consulting is the answer for now and I am good at it.

What is in store for v2.0 you might ask? Good question.

Turning your talents into a consulting business

As Prosys continues to grow, I have found myself talking with a lot of consultants (and would-be consultants) about how they position themselves in the marketplace. I have always been a generalist with a broad range of skills that I can bring to the table, but I have learned recently that I need to settle in on a few key ones. At first this felt like pigeon-holing myself and potentially limiting my project opportunities. In fact, it has done the opposite. When your name comes up in conversations, I think people are better able to quickly define your value proposition as a consultant. If you have heard much about Prosys, you'll know that word-of-mouth is our primary growth strategy, so making sure that the message is crisp and easy to grasp is absolutely important.

All of that being said, I have not completely settled on those key things for myself yet. I am getting close though. Product prototyping for upstarts in the area is probably going to be one of them...