Why Donna Has Been MIA

Well, you may have noticed by now that I’ve been missing in action for the last month or so.  No emails, no newsletters, few social networking updates.

There’s a pretty good reason for that. I’m trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. 🙂  Yes, seriously!

I’ve been in a funk since last December, and turning 50 in May didn’t help matters much.  I’ve been trying to psych myself up for the last 6 months to get excited about my business, but I’ve finally come to a conclusion…..

I don’t want to be a marketing coach anymore.

Wow, I said that out loud. (Well, in print, I guess you could say <g>)

I never thought I’d ever hear myself say that, because marketing comes pretty naturally to me.  However, I’m at the point now where I was back in 1993 when I was trying to figure out how to make my 8th year of conducting Resident Advisor training fun and invigorating for myself again.  I failed miserably at that, and, due to a number of other circumstances, left my job in higher education about 6 months later and never returned to that industry.

Early this year I attempted to try and pull everything I was doing under the brand of BizSmart Marketing and “reinvent” my business.  However, most of what needed to be done to make that happen hasn’t happened, since I’ve lacked the motivation and enthusiasm to follow through.

What I’ve been doing instead is remembering what I wanted to do back in 1997 when I first learned about coaching and reflecting on what excited me about that industry. Since that was when few people had web sites, I would park myself in the Business and Self-Help sections of my local bookstore, buying books and newsletters by Paul and Sarah Edwards, Terri Lonier, Barbara Brabec, Barbara Winter, Barbara Sher (lot of Barbaras there!), Valerie Young, among others.

What truly inspired me were stories of micro business owners taking a risk and starting their own businesses.  In recent years it’s been stories of people taking their passion and turning that passion into an online business, whether they’ve been downsized from work, are launching an online business while they work, live in a rural community with high unemployment, are a retiree who’s bored or needs to earn money, a military spouse who needs a portable career, or an expat who wants to reinvent her life in another country.

I love helping people manifest their dreams, and trying to make that happen via marketing coaching and just doesn’t do it for me any longer.  I’m beyond bored doing that. 🙂

I’ve been pretty successful keeping myself entertained in the marketing arena, adapting my business from a virtual assistant who offered marketing services to an online business manager to a small business coach to an online business coach to a marketing coach to the founder of a community of and a magazine for independent service professionals who want to better market their businesses online.  It’s been quite a ride in the last 14 years, (wow, it really has been 14 years!) and the longest I have stuck with any type of “job” in my life.

So, it appears it’s time for me to blow up my life again (like I did in 1998), but do it much less drastically.  There’s no divorce in the works and no cross-country move planned (like my 1998 life blowup), but there is a desire to bring forth what I was put on this earth to do.

I think my purpose is becoming clearer as an Internet Startup Specialist, or an Internet business launcher. Now that I have articulated that (and see it in writing here), I feel a frisson of excitement throughout my body at the prospect of doing this day-to-day!

My long-held dream has been to develop a business like two people I avidly admire, Barbara Winter and Valerie Young, who help others channel their passion into profit, or, as Barbara puts it, “joyfully jobless.”  I’d like to do that as well, but focus on those who want to translate their passion into an online business.

I’m going to post this article on my blog, as well, so I welcome any and all comments and feedback.

And, BTW, for all of you OnlineBizU members, OBU will continue on but may transform as well..:)