Where I've been, what I've been building, and why I'm speaking up now

The last time I wrote to you it was to let you know that I was closing down my coaching company to pursue something different. Over the last year, that is what I have done. Toward the end of the last year, I quietly co-founded a company called Graveyard Innovation with Janette Valentino, a brilliant coach, creator of the Mood Lady product line, and the most honest and trustworthy person I have ever known. It’s hard to explain the series of events that led up to these decisions. A divorce from my husband, a broken and over-leveraged business model, and three years of non-stop pushing left me physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted.

The pain of this was almost unbearable. Yet, in that space of feeling like I had nothing left to give…I let go. I took the time to rest, I gave myself the space to critically reflect, and I reconnected with the incessant curiosity of my childhood self and began questioning every area of my personal and professional life.

There were so many realizations throughout this period. One of the biggest ones is just how out-of-control the experts industry, with its excessive and domineering ‘launch’ strategies and misleading tactics, had become. There is a kind of exhausting insincerity that penetrates the way most of us do business, even among those of us who try to live spiritually and do business ethically. Add to this decreased trust, too much content, and market saturation and my greatest fear is that small businesses and entrepreneurs will be the ones left behind.

There were also spiritual realizations during this time. It was in this place of exhaustion that I remembered for the first time, in a very long time, who I was.

One night, I was sitting and looking out the window of my downtown loft and this incredible feeling of peace washed over me. I realized, “The universe doesn’t need me. And I’m certainly not going to fail the universe. What difference will it make to Jupiter or creation if I fail? If I succeed? I am not going to fail God, even if I fail at every single one of my human aspirations.”

A second thought, an inner divine revelation quickly followed, “I may not be needed by creation…but I’m here. Something is arranging itself as me. Something is expressing itself as me. That means something, somewhere out there, must want me.” I said to my sister later, “I could be anywhere in the entire world. You could be anywhere in the entire world. We don’t need each other. We don’t need to be together. But here we are because we want to be here.

It was the most empowering feeling I’ve ever felt. The feeling of being wanted. I said to my sister later when we went to dinner together, “I could be anywhere in the entire world. You could be anywhere in the entire world. We don’t need each other. We don’t need to be together. But here we are. Here we are because we want to be together.”

For the first time in my life, I knew what it was like to feel good about yourself, to love yourself, and to accept yourself. This feeling bubbled up in me washing over old wounds. I heard a voice in my mind say two things very clearly, “Give. Give generously. Give without expectation. Give as often as you can, give of yourself, and have faith. You’ve built the inner boundaries necessary so let go of the external systems and boundaries you created to keep yourself safe.” The second inspiration I heard was, “Make the things you want to see in the world. Be a part of building and creating the things you want to see exist in the world."

I’m not sure if the two realizations I had next were intuition, divine guidance, or the overactive imagination of a 31-one-year-old man reconnecting with his inner child. I don’t think it really matters. What matters is what I did with it, which was to close my company - multiple six-figure business (the last year I generated around $240,00 in revenue) and found Graveyard Innovation: a results-driven innovation firm focused on helping businesses with original ideas innovate key aspects of their business so they can tell their exceptional story to the world and win.

Looking back, I realize that guidance to give generously and make cool things wasn’t exactly a specific list of strategic actions I should take. This experience filled me with such love and appreciation for myself and for others…that hardly mattered. I'm humbled we've been able to build a team of six incredible people, build a client base, and work with some of the most interesting clients. I'm even more humbled that we've done it without a single dime spent on email campaigns, social media advertising, speaking events, webinars, or networking memberships.

We rarely have all the steps or specific information we need to make a good decision; instead we choose to move in one direction, hopefully and confidently, our convictions and inner wisdom serving as our compass. Always evolving, growing, and shifting as we walk down the long path that leads from the top of the visionary mountain-where we can see everything so clearly-back into our world where we can start to put our idea into practice in the reality in which we live.

You can read more of the Graveyard story here.

Please reach out if you'd like to share your reaction, ask me something, or talk to me about anything. You can email me, text my cell 515.447.6513, or call anytime day or night.

From my mind to yours,
Michael

If you’d like to have an innovation assessment where we prepare a short report outlining where your business might benefit from an innovation-driven strategy and outlines our Strategic Storytelling Process you can go here. We don't charge for them, we do them in the order that feels aligned, and usually takes us 1-2 weeks. Given the unique nature of our hybrid model, which includes sharing the risk with our clients through a pay-for-results model, finding a mutual fit is essential and we believe this process is a relaxed, and valuable, way to figure that out.