What did you dream of doing as a kid? Steve Perkins believes that childhood dream still holds the key to finding your proffesional sweet spot today, and he is here to help you find it.In this episode, Steve, who is transitioning his profession from engineer to career coach, shows us how doing what we love is a possibility AND that it actually makes real business success so much easier.
We also discuss the pros of small business versus big business and how to scale a small business without losing all of that niceness you had at the beginning. This is an episode that you don’t want to miss!!
Teaser:
My Guest: Steve Perkins
Steve Perkins is very familiar with the feeling of untapped potential. He spent 12 years searching for his career sweet spot, from building superconducting particle accelerators, to launching a culture transformation within a Fortune 500 company, yet always feeling that he wasn’t making the impact he was meant to make. After discovering his sweet spot, he started a company to help others clarify and step into theirs!
And Steve is now the founder and CEO of Greenhouse Culture, helping people get unstuck, clarify their Sweetspot, and get intentional about making their greatest contribution.
Pivotal Moments:
As a kid, dreamt of being an inventor. Was advised to become an engineer, which turned out to be a totally mismatched career choice.
Worked in “super-geekdom” creating superconducting particle accelerators.
Was intrigued by what his purpose in life really was, so began taking personality tests and performance reviews.
Was drawn towards the idea of opening his own business, and spent years clarifying his purpose, goals, vision and business plan.
Left his coveted engineer job and created Greenhouse Culture, a coaching firm that helps individuals turn their strengths and passion into career that they love.
The Advice:
When you are in your zone of genius – or your sweet spot – everything becomes easier. Besides for loving each day and getting a thrill out of your job, you actually create a competitive advantage by default. This is because each individual has a different set of skills, passions and interests with no two people who are exactly the same. By maximizing your individuality, you automatically create a product or service that is different and unique.
What you dream of doing as a kid often ends up to be the highlight of your job, even if you didn’t end up as the fireman or rock star of your childhood dreams. In most cases, the part of your job that you are really good at and enjoy the most contains many aspects of the job you dreamed of doing as a child.
Don’t be afraid to tell people that you are planning to create a new business. Your friends, family and current business contacts are vital for helping you get where you want to be.
The Struggle:
Steve has built his company slowly and steadily and is doing well. He is now ready to scale his company but is not sure how to move forward. Steve has investors who are interested in his business now and they will enable him to scale his business very fast, but he is not sure if that is the best approach for his company? He is now at the crossroads between building a strong connection with his clients one-by-one and using Facebook ads to get the masses.
The Breakthrough:
The key to solving Steve’s struggle is understanding the differences between big business and small business. Although big businesses have more power and more resources, there are two areas where they can’t compete with small business:
- Big businesses can’t pivot as fast as small ones because there are so many people involved in every decision.
- They also struggle to give great customer experience and can’t build meaningful customer relationships.
If Steve wants to preserve the goodness of his small business while growing into a larger corporation, he needs to make sure that he doesn’t run too fast with the product/service and ignore the organization. He can scale his business, but scaling too fast will be damaging because then he will end up being like all those big organizations that he hated when he started out.
Quotes:
The only way to do great work, is to love what you do. -Steve Jobs
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor and some style.
Resources and Links:
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About the author, Estie Rand
I love turning ideas into money, and helping others do the same. I help small business owners with everything from marketing to fiscal management, business plans to staffing, database architecture to work/life balance coaching and I love it all! What do you need help with today?
