The Big Experiment P2
Touring the US in the new Airstream Interstate 24GT.
What 2020 was teaching me was that it was still possible for me to work remotely with clients and produce high-quality work. As long as I’ve been an entrepreneur, I brought my work home with me, so working from home was never slack time for me. In fact, I was often more productive at home than I was in a disruptive office.
While COVID itself was shutting down the world, I just kept on working as I normally would. I took on the temporary role of shutting down PicoBrew for the primary investor, and other clients were still floating around the edges of my day as they sorted out what would happen next.
After we wrapped up PicoBrew, it was almost complete silence because of COVID. It was when the world stood still in my world. As always, I poured myself into other work, including a Zoom series online. Still, when I looked around, when I looked at where my business was coming from, it wasn’t local anymore. It was national and international, and so where I was located didn’t seem to matter—or so I thought.
The big experiment: Would it be possible to find the most wonderful work setting imaginable and build a successful consulting practice without the trappings of a major city?
I kept daydreaming about it. I kept thinking, why am I not in some tiny shack by a stream, still doing the same work? Why the hell did I need to remain in Seattle? If clients needed me there, wouldn’t they need me everywhere? And if so, wouldn’t I just use Zoom as I did during COVID?
When I started the drive to the Midwest, it was eye-opening and somewhat maddening. Maddening because I didn’t do it sooner and had bought into all the false stereotypes that didn’t exist.
I didn’t know where I’d land. I had no idea, and pushing myself to keep driving and looking around was a little harder than I thought. Where do I actually go? Yet, everywhere I went was better than what I was expecting. I kept asking myself, could this be where I do my best work?
All of this effort, including how this website evolved, was part of the big experiment. It was me tweaking and adjusting my image and branding so that all the pieces fit together. I strongly believe in authenticity, and that was part of the dilemma. How do I explain all this?