I've had a long and successful career as an Information Technology consultant. I've been working entirely from home for the last 5 years, and I currently have a full-time project for the CDC which I am supporting. However, my consulting business model is "one on one at a time". I.e. the nature of my IT skillset (Project Manager, Scrum Master, Database Architect, Solution Architect, AWS Cloud Architect) means that I will have only one client at a time. And usually I am subcontracting thru a larger consulting company, which means I have to deal with the often annoying and sometimes incompetent senior management of that company. They are also marking me up, which means they are raking a percentage of my potential revenues off the top. And this model puts a hard cap on my annual income. No matter how skilled and experienced you are, there is a limit on the hourly rate you can charge. (My best year ever was 250K, but the average over the years has been between 150K and 200K).
So I wanted to "pivot" my business model, but I was having a hard time nailing down what the new business model should be. While I have lots of experience as a business person, very strong technical skills, excellent project management/time management skills, and excellent people management and communication skills, my "new" business was blue sky. I had LOTS of ideas, and I'd started various things, but I wasn't really getting any traction. The fact that I still have a full-time "day job" means that I only have 10 - 15 hours a week to spend on developing my new business, and I was experiencing Shiny Object Syndrom (SOS). "Squirrel!"
I really enjoy Tech (which is good since I've been working in the industry for 42 years), but that means that there are a large number of directions I COULD go with a new business. "Squirrel!". (I currently own 10 different domain names, for example).
I'm still working on the content of my product, and starting to stand it up in Experiencify. I have a strong sense of humor, so I'm planning on including very short snippets from iconic movies to surprise the students as well as make a point. For example, one of my modules is "Get Your Mind Right", and I have a couple of snippets from "Cool Hand Luke" that I'm going to work into one of the training within that module.
What is your biggest takeaway from EPM?
There are several important takeaways, but the biggest is probably the understanding and "feeling" that "marketing" my business is a service to potential customers/clients, it's no big thing, I'm actually pretty good at it, and I'm going to get even better at it over time.
How has EPM and your success impacted your life?
I'm satisfied with the progress I've made and gratified to make my first money with my new business. (I'm not overwhelmed with my performance, i.e. I "feel" like I should have made more progress during the last 3 months, but that won't stop me from continuing to take each "next step", and show up to do the work. ) I'm also pleased to have a clear path forward to stair-stepping my new business up over time.