It was a blast.
While, five years ago, I still had a traditional site here supporting a traditional consulting business, it felt like a liberation to go off and create a somewhat more contrarian offering called A Different Kind of Work.
But today, as I unveil the fundamental recreation of my core business here, I’m pulling the curtain down on it.
Look, it was a lot of fun and I got a heck of a lot from it:
I got some clients from it which, after all, was a core reason for creating it.
I made some great connections – either through the blog itself, or from its social media outposts.
It totally forced me to upskill myself in the geek technical skills department.
And the writing I did there, not only allowed me to produce some great pillar posts, it also enabled me to learn a whole lot about myself. As a coach. As a writer. As a person.
Kill your darlings
But here’s the thing…
I think there comes a point for many creations when they’re done.
I could plow on with it. I’ve tried to. ADKoW has been a darling of mine. But as Stephen King and others have said about writing, you have to know when to kill your darlings.
And I’m pretty through with it.
Plus, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about things at a deep level this year. And while so much of what I wrote on ADKoW was rule-breaking in it’s own way, it was all delivered in a kind of “tips and techniques” kind of way. And I no longer believe that the kind of approach cuts it any more.
That’s because I am starting to see that people and their businesses don’t need more tips. They are swamped with tips. Just look at the blog posts on any of the big business or personal development sites. There’s no end of suggestions on how to hack just about anything.
Consider too the way that most coaches and consulting companies work with their clients. There’s just an overwhelming mass of advice, information, tools and solutions out there.
What I’m starting more and more to get is that people come with the ability to solve their own problems. And that my job is increasingly is to help people see beyond the superficial. To dig deep. To understand their own fundamental psychology and indeed how everything actually works.
To take stuff OFF of people’s minds not add to it.
So that they can be more effortlessly themselves in whatever it is they’re doing.
Core business
But there was something about the essence of ADKoW that I don’t want to lose. I loved the freedom I felt it gave me to say what I wanted, without having to imagine that I needed to be careful of offending any corporate clients or bill payers.
I loved its ability to put stuff out there that was a little unorthodox.
There was – is – an audience for what’s different, edgy and contrarian in business. People often gave me the feedback about ADKoW that, in a world of noise and bollocks, it was refreshingly different.
So that’s not going to disappear. But what I have decided to do is channel that whole vibe through everything we do here.
Day to day
What that means is that, day to day we’re helping business people get clear about what they want to achieve and why they want to achieve it.
Then, helping them – basically – get out of their own way as they set about trying to deliver on their goals. With a clear mindset, and a good understanding about the real source of things like creativity, innovation, resourcefulness, and resilience, great performance becomes a lot less like hard work. And the results speak for themselves.
Feel free to read more about the specific service offerings that the business delivers by browsing through some of the pages on the site.
Honestly? It’s kind of what we’ve always done had we not been – for whatever reason – so apologetic about it.
Bigger picture
Underpinning all that we do we have a piece of emergent thinking which we’re calling Keeping It Real. It’s brand new and we imagine that we’ll use this philosophy as the foundation for a variety of forthcoming programs and workshops. You can see more about Keeping It Real here.
Emerging clarity
So, there’s a big creative shift going on here and, frankly, who knows what that will mean for websites or web presence in the future.
For now, however, what I’m clear about is that ADKoW has served its purpose and that we’ve reinvented things back here “mothership”.
And we’d love it if you’d come along with us for the ride as stuff develops.
So, be sure to give us your email address here and we’ll share content and news with you as we go along.