Explore and Experiment
Reflections on experimenting to find what works as an entrepreneur
Last year, I wrote a post about the importance of making time for career experiments:
Career experiments give us permission to explore and learn about something that is interesting or meaningful to us. They also provide us space to fail, learn, and try again. Intuitively, we all know that these are things that are important, but we often fail to create conditions to do this.
Just like a science experiment, a career experiment has merit, but when it succeeds and when it’s proven false. Instead of approaching our career development as having a clear sense of the 10 steps you need to take on a clear path, you can think more about intentionally trying something out, learning, and then taking a step.
What I didn’t grok but now know is that being in business for yourself in your early days is a constant state of career experiments.
When I decided to go full-time on being a soloprenuer, I had an idea in my head of some short term plans (consulting, training, speaking) as well as some long-time plans (sustainable path towards sufficient entrepreneurship) the means and specifics to get there were still rather hazy. I wasn’t scared about this, but I also wasn’t entirely sure how it was going to work out. Enter experiments.
The beauty of not having a direct path is that you have the freedom and autonomy to explore it to find the way forward. That is also what makes it so challenging. When it’s unclear what to do, or when you have a lot of choices, how do you figure out what works and what doesn’t?
This is especially true when you have something where you’ve gotten some working feedback that what you’re doing is working, but perhaps isn’t at the level you want it at just yet, which is the bucket that I fall in.
I know enough right now to know that from a business perspective I am doing some of the right things that are leading to directional outcomes that I want to hit. But I don’t know for sure, and certainly not quite yet at the level I’d like them to be at.
As a reflective person, I know enough to know that you cant reflect your way to a desired goal, so experiments are my way of figuring out if the thoughts in my head are actually true, and if not, what’s the next best step to take. What I didn’t realize is that for where I am right now (which I would categorize as the early days of soloprenuership) it’s just a series of experiments.
A lot of this is fun. Most of it is freeing. Some of it is nerve-wracking and a little scary. But years of teaching others to run their own career experiments has been a helpful frame to me in thinking about how I can apply this to my day to day.
Updates on my Current Experiments
And on that notion, here is an update on three experiments I am currently running
1) LinkedIn Lives to Grow The Edge of Work and Build Awareness
As part of being in LinkedIn’s Podcast Academy, I’m committed to testing out some features on the platform as a means to strengthen my show and grow my podcast. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about the program is that it’s helped me think differently and more expansively about how to both strengthen and grow my show.
I think it's natural sometimes to focus on building and growing a show by looking at what other people are doing and emulating some of the best practices that you think make sense, and I don't think that there is anything wrong with that.
BUT what I would say is that this program has helped me think differently about how to grow the show outside of the tried and true norms for podcasts. For fear of starting the obvious, unless you are a big name host or have a big name brand it is very hard to grow a podcast. And even if you have both of those, nothing is guaranteed.
So far, I’ve experimented with starting a LinkedIn newsletter, crowdsourcing Linkedin for guests, and most recently, doing a live LinkedIn show. Here’s my most recent one with Udemy Chief Learning Officer Melissa Daimler about culture in the workplace. After the live event, I uploaded the podcast into the feed the next day, so its a cool way to give people a sneak peak into an episode, and doesn’t hurt when you have a marquee guest.
Whether that's through some of the tools like newsletters, LinkedIn live, audio, etc, spending the time talking with others to learn, or hearing from some of the guests, I think I've got a much more creative/expansive mindset about growing and building the show than I otherwise would have without it.
Watch It Here
2)Testing Out Workshops and Content Out Loud
Two challenges as a speaker/facilitator/podcaster are:
When you’re working by yourself and coming up with ideas, how do you know if any of it is good?
What’s a good way to find perspective clients and customers in a scalable way?
I still struggle with the answers to these questions but one way that I am going to experiment is through testing out new ideas I have for my workshops and programs that I run inside of companies out loud in my network and on linkedin. I’m hopeful that this will help me get feedback that strengthens what I am working on, but also finds and attracts people who might be interested in working with me in the future
If you’re interested, my first one is on Tuesday June 6th and it’s all about Influence Without Authority —> Sign Up Here
3)Teaching on the Internet with CoRise
A few months ago, I started talking with CoRise about teaching a course on their platform. They initially have focused on training and teaching early and mid-career professionals on technical skills and serving tech focused startups and companies, but they were looking to expand into more leadership focused topics, and wanted to partner.
A few weeks ago, I launched their first course in their new Leadership vertical around how to stand out and grow your career. The purpose of this course is to teach people the habits and practices for managing your career in order to thrive and evolve in a changing world of work.
I am finishing up week 2 of the three week course and I am happy with how it’s going. It’s been a slightly different audience than I’ve traditionally served, which has given me great learnings for my content and methods. I’ve shied away in the past from running an open course because its just so much work, trying to build the thing and get customers at the same time. I only really had to do one of those this time (build the course) which was one of the main reasons I was curious about trying it.
While I will say that doing this has still be a good amount of work, I am excited about what I am seeing so far. I’ve also gotten good feedback from CoRise about my materials and methods, which is valuable to me as an instructor. I’ve signed up to teach another section in August, and hopefully that one will continue to grow.
The potential of this opportunity is that once you get the foundation set, in terms of the content and the experience, if the course is good and people like it, hopefully each time you run it it A) takes less work and B) the amount of students taking it grows. This course is all about teaching people the practical tools and habits that nobody teaches you when it comes to managing your career, so in addition to wanting to see commercial success I have a big motivation for making sure it touches as many people as it possibly can.
This year has stretched me in a lot of ways. But whenever I finish a chance to do the work that comes as a result of this I usually think to myself something to the effect of “It’s a privilege to be able to get to do this work.” While I have a lot I need to figure out, I’m optimistic and confident that the learnings from these experiments will fuel my path toward my longer term goals on my entrepreneurship journey.
Finally, If you’re looking for some help for your learning and development, team meetings or professional development for next year, I’d love to work with you: Here is how I might be able to assist:
Team Trainings & Professional Development: Happy to facilitate training or professional development opportunity for your team & organization - common topics include: career development, influence without authority, effective relationship building, and stakeholder management
Support Your Offsites & Meetings: Speak or facilitate at your team’s offsite. Need a guide to facilitate or speak at an upcoming offsite, QBR or all hands? Happy to engage here.
Leadership & Learning Programs: Formal training and leadership development in your company, such as new manager or new leader training, or skill-based programs.
Feel free to contact me directly for more details!
Have a great week!
Al