Issue 173, Part Time CEO NewsletterHey, it's Dhiren π, Last week I posted something on LinkedIn about Cloudscape. About saying yes to projects I knew wouldn't work. About adding features nobody needed because the client clapped. About working weekends I didn't have because stopping felt like losing. Someone commented. A good comment. Not the usual "loved this, so relatable." An actual question. She wrote: how do you currently filter out the lucrative but misaligned opportunities when they land on your desk? And I answered. Right there in the comments. Two points. Concise. Structured. The kind of reply that gets a few likes and a handful of saves. But I've been thinking about that reply ever since. Because it was accurate. And it wasn't complete. π§ What I said First: figure out what alignment actually looks like for you. What lights you up. What puts you in your zone of genius. For me, that's coaching founders inside Council. Building Part-Time CEO. Creating something I can still respect in five years. Second: once you know what alignment feels like, you can use it as a contrast. Something can only be called misaligned when you hold it next to what you know alignment is. So when an opportunity lands, the question isn't "is this lucrative." It's "does this get me into my zone of genius, or pull me away from it." Two sides. Works together. Good answer. But here's what I've been sitting with since I posted it. A friend of mine, Samir, runs something called the Clarity Game. He said something once that I haven't stopped thinking about: you can't give clarity to someone. They have to find it themselves. What I gave that reader was a filter. Two steps, cleanly laid out. And a filter is only as useful as the clarity behind it. If you don't know your zone of genius with real specificity, the filter has nothing to run against. You're holding a ruler with no markings. I gave her a map. But I couldn't give her the territory. π§ What I left out I also didn't say how long it actually took me. I spent years performing a version of Cloudscape I didn't fully believe in, before I could even articulate what I did believe in. The yes to Part-Time CEO only made sense because of the decade of wrong yeses before it. I didn't know my zone of genius at Cloudscape year three. I knew it at year ten. Because I had ten years of contrast to look at. I'm not sure I could have found the right answer without the wrong ones. Like in the story where the princess had to kiss a few frogs before finding her prince. That's not a great motivational message. But it's true. So here's what I've had to make peace with as a coach. I can give someone the two-sided filter. I can walk them through it, ask the right questions, hold the space while they think. But I cannot give them the clarity the filter runs on. That part is theirs to find. And it only comes the way it came for me. Through accumulation. Through contrast. Through enough wrong yeses to finally recognise a right one. Samir's line sits with me because it applies to me too. Not just to what I give my clients. But to what I thought I was giving that reader in the comments. The clarity comes. Gradually, then suddenly. But only after you've earned enough contrast to see it. β
|
Every Thursday, I send my best strategies & resources to elevate creative entrepreneurs from full-time founders to Part-Time CEOs