Decision! - Transition Next Phase Launched

 I think. Actually, I'm pretty damn sure.

Given Wife and my track record over the last few years as we've made massive efforts to figure out if we could live outside the U.S. with all the gyrations on what we could or could not do, I would expect anyone following this blog to take the statement of 'Decision' with more than a grain of salt. But somehow this time if feels different. 

The effort to move abroad or spend substantial time abroad in a place that was like living in one location, had pretty much been dismissed as result of the many challenges. Examination of moves within the United States also were rejected after deeper evaluation. Even moving within Albuquerque to something smaller proved to be unsatisfactory when looked at critically. So as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stated, "When you have eliminated all which is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." For us it is staying put, working a bit to pay for travel, and keep traveling as we have been. There is a good chance we will do the two to three month stays in a location, but that will remain to be seen. 

What I can say is this feels very different than what we've gone through since 2019. If feels right. And we are moving on things. We are looking at all that needs to be done to get our house really up to snuff; the deferred maintenance that slowly accumulates when you are not sure where you are going to be. Already we've talked to various vendors of services and purchased items like a new mattress that we'd been putting off. 

And (😂), despite the complaints of the last post, I booked to inside the U.S. trips for us; a trip to Charleston, S.C. in October, and a trip to Lafayette, CA and the #1's for Christmas.

We are actually thinking of doing some remodeling. Heck, we haven't torn down and rebuilt a piece of the house for almost a decade! Time to find another deal to do to pay for it all!

I think the biggest thing about all this for Wife and I is we feel we are going forward. We are not just going to sit in this house and let it and us deteriorate. We are not just going to sit at home and not travel. If a little bit of business work is required to make that happen, that's all part of moving forward. 

It just feels very right.

A Caged Tiger

 That's what it feels like.

No travel. No travel planning. Just staying home. Waiting. Waiting for my new passport. I have requested expedited service. That is 7 to 9 weeks thanks to a State Department gutted by the prior administration, the effects of the pandemic shutdowns, and poor management to begin with. 

I haven't had such a long period without any travel since 2020. Oh. I guess that is only three years ago. It seems a lot longer. 

I may have to plan a trip to somewhere here in the US just to keep from going crazy!

Back To The Future

Once upon a time de-I was a DEAL GUY. I put together business buy-sell transactions for a living. I wasn't in the big leagues. But, I was dealing with many millions of dollars of value with each transaction. There is a bit of an adrenaline rush associated with the Deal Business. The numbers are big. The fees are big. You know you doing something significant. However, along with that came uncertainty and risk. Because you (generally) were not paid unless you successfully closed a transaction. You could have a year's worth of work end up paying you nothing if a seller got cold feet the night before the closing (that actually happened to me more than once).

Ultimately, I found the work shallow. I found that I wasn't really helping people/business owners that much. I found you needed to start working with them much, much earlier if you were going to have them get results that were really meaningful and satisfying. So I changed my career to become a consultant and that is what I did for the last 30-years of my professional career.

Fast forward to this year. I still do some consulting to help pay for my outrageous travel lifestyle. But I've gotten tired of it. Then a colleague of mine asked if I wanted to join up with him to do deals (like I used to) after we ended up selling a business together from one of my consulting gigs. As we talked it through, I realized he would do the part of the work that I really hated. And I was happy to do the work, he had no knowledge of, or patience to do. So we agreed to try and do this kind work again. 

Lo and behold, one of my old clients came to me wanting to sell their business. I said, "You've come to the right place!" We took them on last winter, and last week we closed the deal. We got them a helluva price and we walked away with a nice big fee - the equivalent of two years of consulting work at my part-time basis!

It turns out that working with my partner, I can work a heck of a lot less and produce more income to support that lavish de-I lifestyle. Looks like it's back to being in the DEAL business.

Feeling The Breakthrough!

 What a difference a week makes!

This week we had the single, most significant surge in new business closings ever at Theodora. And it was accompanied by an equal surge in payments from those new businesses. These new closings represent the fruit of better quality work, and a better packaging of our initial value proposition. And the month is not complete! We have quite a few additional commitments and prospects we are working on.

A result of this was an ability to weather a rather unexpected expense combined with our normal payroll out of our regular cash flow! That's never happened before.

I do think a big contributing factor is an improved overall attitude toward the economy by both business and consumers in the U.S. Regardless, I am leaving Ghana with a real upbeat feeling.

Pushing For The Breakthrough

 Theodora Project is just a tad more than three years old. We launched our first training in April of 2020, right into the full force of the pandemic lockdown. 

Setting forth in the teeth of the pandemic was both a curse and a blessing. We were cursed in losing a lot of contributions, my being forced to manage from afar in the U.S., losing resources and supporters in Ghana, having to completely change our initial plan. But we were blessed in being forced to adopt to U.S. business, in having virtual work become far more accepted in the U.S., and a big influx of new self-employed people (our target market) into the market. 

When I last updated our progress in March, I commented on:

• Our ongoing work related to the fighting the cultural differences and how that related to building a sustainable success model
• The challenges of putting into place true succession to reduce the reliance on myself.
• The ongoing dichotomy between what the team is mastering, and the things they still need to work on.
• Our drive to get to breakeven

Before we did our spring Spain trip, I recognized I was in need of a break. I made a decision that I was going to let the Ghana team work on its own unless they absolutely needed me. It was a good test. Upon my return to action in June, I found they had accomplished a major breakthrough related to attention to detail. That may not sound like a lot, but for the kind of administrative work these women do, it is really important. And it had been holding us back. This now allowed us to take on a number of client tasks that provided clear cost savings and income generation possibility for clients. 

They had also done some good work on new client on boarding. We'd had a couple of rough initial weeks with some clients. But the team engaged in active communication and problem-solving with the clients and retained them. 

On the not so great side, we were not able to make any progress toward our goal to get to breakeven. We had some new client additions but we also had runoff from some of our old, angel clients (which is to be anticipated).

Since being back and getting back engaged, I feel the overall tenor is positive. Actually more than positive. I think we are getting close to a breakthrough. Why do I feel this way? I'm not exactly sure. It's a feel/intuition type of thing. As a business person who has gone through multiple start-ups and as sports coach, I have observed that progress/improvement is rarely straight line. More typical are long periods where you work your ass off and don't see a whole lot of progress. Then, suddenly, something happens and things click. Your performance suddenly surges. You advance rapidly until you reach the next performance plateau where the cycle starts again. That's the feeling I am getting now.

We've had a number of new business conversions in just the last couple of weeks. We are have a marketing channel we've worked on for years (Rotary) starting to finally show tangible opportunities. We've had a number of referrals from existing clients. Our August billing set a new record. We are in discussions with a couple of business partners that might open still further new business channels.

There is still a ways to go but the momentum is all in a positive direction.