Issue 017| I Didn't Want the Business They Told Me to Build

AUGUST THEME: THE LEADER BEHIND THE VISION

Victor and I love a good television series.

We're the kind of people who get invested and then, when the season ends, immediately want to know when it's coming back. 😂

Right now, we're watching Lioness, and we are locked in.

The funny thing about having an architecture brain is that mine apparently doesn't turn off just because I'm sitting on the couch watching television.

I'm always listening.

Always noticing.

Always making some connection between what I'm hearing and something I've lived.

And recently, there was a scene that stopped me, so I had to pause and rewind.

Morgan Freeman's character was talking to Joe about reaching a place where your recommendations carry a different kind of weight because your understanding of the sequence is no longer theoretical.

I felt that immediately.

Because there is a difference between knowing a sequence because someone taught it to you...

and understanding the sequence because you've lived through what happens when things are built in the wrong order.

I know something about that.

And when I look back at how I built my first consulting business, I can see that I was learning this lesson much earlier than I realized.

I Did What You're Supposed to Do

Once I understood that people valued what I knew, I wanted to learn how to build a real consulting business around it.

So I went looking for people who knew how.

I read.

I studied.

I took courses.

I listened to people who had already built successful consulting businesses.

And I learned the process.

You meet with a prospective client.

You ask questions.

You listen to what they need.

Sometimes you drive out to their organization and tour the facility.

You give them enough information to demonstrate that you know what you're doing, while also trying not to give away everything they need before they've hired you.

Then you go home.

You create a customized proposal.

You send it.

And you wait.

Sometimes they say yes.

Sometimes they want to pull pieces out.

Sometimes they want the price lowered.

And sometimes...

nothing.

You have already invested the time.

You have already started thinking through their problem.

You may have even begun solving parts of it in your head.

And now you're waiting to see whether any of that time turns into revenue.

I remember thinking:

I don't think I like this.

😂

Not consulting.

I loved consulting.

I didn't like the way I was being told I had to build a consulting business.

There is a difference.

Then I Found the Online Business World

And I started hearing another version of the same thing.

You need discovery calls.

Fill your calendar.

Talk to enough people and a percentage of those conversations will eventually convert into clients.

Okay.

So my architecture brain did what it does.

I started calculating.

If I have to speak to twenty people for thirty minutes each to get one yes, that's ten hours of conversations before I've done one minute of the work I'm actually being hired to do.

And I thought:

There has got to be another way.

Again, I wasn't saying the strategy didn't work.

Clearly it worked.

People were using it successfully.

What I was beginning to understand was something entirely different.

Just because it works doesn't mean it works for me.

That distinction changed a lot.

Because I Still Had to Live in My Life

I wasn't building a business in a vacuum.

I had a husband.

Children.

Ministry.

A home.

Relationships.

People I loved.

Things I enjoyed doing.

And yes, sometimes I wanted to get my nails done.

Sometimes I wanted to cook dinner.

Sometimes I wanted to sit down with my family and not be half-listening because my mind was still on a client problem.

I wanted date night.

I wanted ordinary Tuesdays.

I wanted room in my life.

And there were times when I followed exactly what someone told me to do and it worked.

I made the revenue.

But when I looked around, sometimes I had lost something else in the process.

That's when I began asking a question I think every visionary eventually has to ask:

What did it cost me to make it?

Because revenue tells you how the business performed.

It doesn't always tell you how the visionary is doing.

I didn't have language for The Visionary Comes First yet.

But I was already beginning to live it.

Now, Let Me Be Clear About Something

Putting the visionary first does not mean building a life where nothing is difficult.

I don't believe that.

There is discomfort in building anything meaningful.

There are things I know today because I was willing to sit down and learn what I did not know.

There were systems I had to figure out.

Skills I had to develop.

Mistakes I had to correct.

There were seasons when the work required more of me.

That's part of building.

And when you're a person of faith carrying vision, I think this distinction becomes even more important.

Because sometimes we can talk about vision as though receiving it and building it are the same thing.

They aren't.

God Doesn't Always Show You the Whole Thing at Once

I've been around visionaries and faith leaders for most of my adult life.

Pastors.

Ministry leaders.

Five-fold leaders.

People who know they have been entrusted with something.

And there can be tremendous pressure attached to that.

You received the vision.

Now go do it.

Build it.

Birth it.

Make it happen.

But that's not really how I've experienced vision.

God has shown me things in parts.

Enough for me to move.

Enough for me to obey.

Enough for me to start.

And then somewhere in the movement, another piece became clear.

I had to learn something.

Meet someone.

Study something.

Try something.

Discover that something didn't work.

Go back.

Make an adjustment.

And keep moving.

Sometimes what I thought was the destination turned out to be preparation for something I couldn't even see yet.

I can look backward today and see Business Architecture developing through decades of my life.

I couldn't see it while I was living every individual piece.

The vision was unfolding while the visionary was developing.

That's important.

Because receiving a God-given vision doesn't exempt us from the responsibility of learning how to build it.

The vision may be God-given. The architecture still requires our participation.

Maybe That's Why I've Never Completely Agreed With “Just Pick One Thing”

Now, I understand the wisdom behind it.

You cannot effectively run in fifteen different directions.

Scattered effort will wear you out.

But I also know a lot of people like me.

Multitalented.

Multifunctional.

Capable of doing several things very well.

And especially in faith spaces, that's not unusual.

You may preach.

Teach.

Write.

Lead.

Advise.

Strategize.

Develop people.

Speak.

Create.

And somewhere along the way, somebody tells you:

You need to pick one.

But what if the problem isn't that you have too many gifts?

What if the problem is that you haven't discovered what all those gifts are supposed to build together?

That's different.

Because today, I can look at myself and see a lot of abilities.

I can consult.

I can advise.

I can teach.

I can write.

I can develop programs.

I can build frameworks.

I can strategize.

I can speak.

But I don't see eight different businesses anymore.

I see one.

Business Architecture.

That's the main thing.

My abilities simply give me multiple ways to express it.

And that has changed the way I think about Paid Pathways too.

A course doesn't need to become another business.

A digital product doesn't need to become another business.

Consulting doesn't need to compete with teaching.

Speaking doesn't have to pull me away from advisory.

They can all serve the same architecture.

Now we're talking about focus differently.

The one thing isn't necessarily one gift.

The one thing isn't necessarily one offer.

The one thing can be the architecture that organizes everything else.

That makes much more sense to me.

But You Still Have to Build It

This is the other side of being multitalented that we don't always talk about.

Having the ability doesn't mean you automatically have the architecture.

And having the vision doesn't mean you're automatically equipped for every part of building it.

Some things will come naturally.

Some things will not.

There have been plenty of times when my gifting got me to the edge of something and then I had to become a student again.

I had to learn the business part.

Learn the technology.

Learn the system.

Learn the language.

Learn how to package what I knew.

Learn how to make something repeatable.

Learn how to let other people help.

That's stewardship too.

Sometimes obedience looks deeply spiritual.

And sometimes obedience looks like sitting at your computer figuring out the thing you wish somebody else would just come do for you.

😂

Both can be necessary.

Because there is a cost to refusing the development the vision requires.

You can keep waiting.

You can pivot every time building gets uncomfortable.

You can rush the execution because you don't want to learn what you don't know.

Or you can decide:

If I've been entrusted with this, I'm willing to become capable of stewarding it well.

That doesn't mean doing everything yourself.

Quite the opposite.

It means becoming wise enough to understand what requires you, what you need to learn, what someone else should carry and what shouldn't be built at all.

That's architecture.

And That's Why I Didn't Want the Business They Told Me to Build

It wasn't because I thought I knew more than everybody teaching me.

I didn't.

I needed what they knew.

I still believe deeply in sitting at the feet of people who understand something I need to learn.

But eventually I had to stop trying to reproduce their businesses and start using what I learned to interpret mine.

That's where judgment enters the room.

I can learn your strategy without assuming I need your business.

I can understand why your sequence works and still recognize that my sequence needs to be different.

I can respect what you've built without believing God gave me your blueprint.

And I can be teachable without surrendering my responsibility to discern what belongs in the vision I've been given.

That's a very different way of building.

And I think that's what I was hearing in that Lioness scene.

Eventually, you've lived enough of the sequence that your understanding isn't theoretical anymore.

You've seen what happens next.

You've made the mistakes.

You've lived with the consequences.

You've rebuilt things.

You've watched something work beautifully.

You've watched something else work beautifully and still decide you never want to build it again.

Experience gives you that kind of judgment.

This Is What The Visionary Comes First Means to Me

It isn't:

Do whatever feels good.

It isn't:

Never build anything difficult.

And it certainly isn't:

Ignore wise counsel because you're the visionary.

It means we understand the person who has been entrusted with the vision before we determine the architecture required to carry it.

Who are you?

What have you been given?

What are you extraordinarily good at?

What have you learned?

What do you still need to learn?

What capacity do you actually have?

What does your life require?

What kind of work are you willing to do?

And what is this vision actually asking you to become?

Then we build.

And this is the part of Business Architecture I am becoming increasingly intentional about.

I don't only want to tell a visionary to build a consulting business, create a course, start a membership or develop another way to make money from what they know.

I want to understand the visionary well enough to look at all the possibilities available to them and help determine:

This fits you.

This doesn't.

This may fit later, but it doesn't belong in this season.

And this is where I believe you should begin.

Because the goal isn't to build everything your gifts make possible.

The goal is to architect what this vision requires from the person who has actually been called to carry it.

Not somebody else's business.

Not the business that happens to be popular online.

Not a collection of things your gifts technically make you capable of doing.

We architect the business that allows you to steward what you've actually been given.

That's the work.

 

The Architect's Question

So this week, I want you to sit with this:

What is the vision actually asking you to build—and which parts of your current business belong to someone else's blueprint?

Don't assume the answer means doing less.

Maybe you need to learn something.

Maybe you need more discipline.

Maybe you need to finish what you started.

Maybe you need to build the system you've been avoiding.

And yes, maybe there is something you've been forcing yourself to do simply because somebody told you:

This is how it's done.

Only you can discern that.

But I believe the visionary has to participate in that discernment.

Because you received the mantle of the vision.

Your responsibility is to interpret that vision through the gifts, talents, wisdom, capacity and resources you've been given—and then put your hands to the work of building it.

The Visionary Comes First.

Then we architect what the vision requires.

Grace and peace,

Angela Myles
Founder, The Myles Factor

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A NOTE FROM ANGELA

Throughout August, I've been sharing more of the thinking behind the Business Architecture methodology I've been developing through years of building, consulting, advising and living through my own evolution as a visionary.

Now I'm ready to begin putting some of that thinking into practice.

I'm preparing to personally walk a very small number of visionaries through the first application of this process with me—starting exactly where I've told you I believe we should start:

with the visionary.

I'll share more with you soon.