Finding Your Way As a Solo Professional Service Provider in a Recession

Which Way Is Up? You Already Know.

It’s easy to get turned around in an economy like this. Especially as a business owner. Owning your own business is always an uncertain proposition, in the best of circumstances. Will the cash flow in time to pay your own bills? Where’s the next client coming from?

Turn to the internet and you’ll find a boatload of helpful advice. Lots of blogs and websites offer up copious quantities of suggestions, plans, exercises, case studies — some of it is helpful, some of it is genius, and some of it is borderline dangerous. It’s generally fairly self-evident what’s completely bogus, but that still leaves a whole lot of stuff to wade through.

Add to this the compounded confusion of being a business owner in a tumultuous atmosphere. What do you do? Is it time to be more aggressive or less? Should you take out ads in the local paper? Would radio be more effective? Should you cut your prices? Raise them?

So, how do you chart your own course as a solo? Simple. Listen to the smartest person you know: you.

Talk To Yourself: The Wisdom of Your Own Intuition

I’m about to out myself: I believe we all have a sixth sense — intuition — that generally gives us the correct answer. (I’m not willing to say “always” quite yet, but I’m comfortable with “generally.”) The trick lies in knowing how to listen to it and interpret it.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly weird, “new age”-y, or supernatural about this ability. In my opinion, it’s simply a function of three things working in combination: memory, sensory input, and emotions.

Very briefly, this is the way I think it might work: our brains store memories (even the ones we think we’ve lost — they’re all in there) and call them up, shuffling through them perhaps as a computer does in the background while we’re actively working on some other problem or application. Stir in all the sensory input we’re constantly surrounded with (the body language of our conversational partner, for one example – minute changes in that person’s heart rate, perspiration, eye position/contact, respiration, together with more overt postural changes), and season with our own emotional responses (just another form of intelligence, no less valid than rational thinking ability or facility with numbers or factual recall), and together it produces a “sense” of things.

Nothing Weird About Intuition — Just Tapping Into Creative Thinking

As I wrote above, there’s nothing mysterious or supernatural or even “psychic” about intuitive wisdom. I see this method of problem-solving much as I do tarot cards — they’re just visual aids that help you turn off the right brain for a bit and let the left brain do a bit of the heavy lifting for awhile. The images you’ll note — whether you see them in a magazine, in the room before you, in painted art on tarot cards, or anywhere else — are just pathways into a different kind of thinking, triggers for “thinking outside the box.”

Some of us don’t even pay attention to intuitive leanings. Others fall short in the interpretation of what we “hear” when we “listen to our intuition.” Both skills are necessary. A full explanation of how to pay attention and how to interpret what you sense is beyond the scope of one little blog post, but I can tell you how I do it, and make a few suggestions both from personal experience and study of the subject.

First Step: ASK

Take a moment to ask the question specifically. Of yourself, I mean. You can write it, think it quietly if you like, but honestly, I find it more effective to state the question out loud, as if I was asking another person in the room this question. (Helpful suggestion: you might want to close the door and ensure privacy for this one, lest you find yourself on the receiving end of some mighty quizzical looks.)

Asking the question does two things. One, it signals your intuitive brain that you’re actively seeking the answer to an important question. Two, it helps you cement in your own mind the precise issue you need to address. After all, to get the right answer, you have to be sure you’re asking the right question.

Next: Get Still and Quiet

Just like any good conversation, if you want to hear yourself you’ve got to pay attention. You can’t participate in a difficult conversation in a loud, noisy room — well, not effectively, at any rate. So, get yourself quiet and comfortable. I actually tend to turn everything off (phone, TV, etc.) and dim the lights. Then I sit comfortably, close my eyes, ask the question out loud, and then … wait.

Listening Isn’t As Hard As You Might Think

You’ll want a tape recorder for the next step, if you want to try my specific method, but some might find it easier to use pen and paper. What you don’t want to do: assume you’ll remember. Make note of your stream of consciousness thinking somehow. This is very helpful both for answering your specific question and for tracking and evaluating your progress as you become more proficient at creative problem solving using your intuition.

Here’s what you do: after you ask the question with your eyes closed, turn on the tape recorder, then open your eyes. Whatever your eyes light on first — whatever they’re drawn to, whatever catches your attention — call them out loud by name. The first three things, or four things, or five or whatever feels right to you. No editing here. You have to simply pay attention and trust the process.

Now comes the creative part. After you’ve verbally identified these three (or whatever) things — “cat, sleeping on the couch, one eye open — television screen, showing last week’s finale of Friday Night Lights, the part where they’re on the football field and it’s all messed up — vase of silk red flowers on the piano” — just start talking out loud. Ramble. Don’t try to force a connection between the item and the question you asked — that will come in time. Simply keep describing your thoughts in real time, as they occur. Think out loud, in other words.

Warning: This will feel uncomfortable at first. Try to keep your mind firmly in the moment. Just keep gently bringing your attention back to the moment. If you feel silly, say so: “The cat – maybe I need a cat nap — oh, this is ridiculous, I feel like an idiot — he’s doing what he wants without second-guessing himself — maybe I can do that too?”

And you’ll find, eventually, that just as in the example I gave in the preceding paragraph, your judgments and doubts will yield to possible solutions.

Another tip: No editing, no judging your thoughts as “invalid” or “nonsense” or “inapplicable.” Oftentimes, the connection won’t occur to you until much later. Sometimes, it won’t occur at all with a particular item. That’s OK. If you’re truly at a loss, just move to the next item.

Once you’ve gone through this process, spending at least five minutes, but as long as you like, on each particular item, turn your attention to wrapping them up in some kind of cohesive narrative. To do this, you’re going to have to rely partially on your physical and emotional reaction to your thoughts. Does one interpretation in particular “feel” different to you than the others? It’s a bit different for everyone, but I find with clients and others who are interested in exploring their intuitive processes that there are some similarities. Generally, most describe the sensation as a “quickening” — a feeling of having a slight surge of energy, usually somewhere in the abdomen or just below the chest. To me, it almost feels like that proverbial light bulb just got switched on, only I’m the electric cord that got plugged in.

Why Does This Work?

It’s a valid question. And while I don’t have a definitive answer, I have some theories.

I think, as knowledge workers, most of us spend our days firmly rooted in our right-brain processes. Logic, reasoning, order, details, flow-chart approaches and nitpicky attention to deadlines — these are all the exclusive province of that kind of intelligence. While our rational processes are certainly important to daily life and the practice of our professions, there’s another equally important aspect to intelligence that often gets short shrift: our left-brain, emotional/creative intelligence (or intelligences).

But clicking out of one mode into another isn’t easy for most of us. How do we turn on this creative intelligence? Well, technically, I guess it’s always on — the trick is in tuning in to the right channel. Here’s where those visual cues come into play. They act as triggers, calling on those neurochemical processes in our physical bodies to wake up and give us some input. They’re traffic cops of sorts, rerouting us to a detour that will, ultimately, land us at the same destination — the answer to our problem.

None of this is to suggest that I think intuitive thinking is more valuable or more correct than rational reasoning, by the way. It’s just another tool to use. Try attacking a situation from both perspectives and then compare your results.

And what do you do if you get two very different answers using both intuitive reasoning and rational reasoning? Well, that’s another post altogether but, in a nutshell, I advise this: try visualizing each approach in turn, and monitor your reaction to both imagined outcomes. One of them will feel better, more suitable, more manageable than the other. That’s the one you should probably consider adopting as your solution.