My reinvention story

I came across a quote this week referring to the end of the “one act life”. How everyone should expect and embrace doing different things over their lifetimes. The era of a job or career for life is behind almost all of us.

As entrepreneurs, we have such flexibility with this. I pondered all of my own acts so far:

ACT 1 – My early adulthood saw me take the next step from the job I had in my teens to working at the head office of the same retail company as they expanded aggressively into franchising. I crafted the operations manual and at age 19 was flying around the country as a store trainer setting up new franchises, teaching the owners how to run their stores.

ACT 2 – Only a few years later I attended my first rave and became extremely passionate for a new style of music. I become one of the biggest selling DJs of the 90s and one of the most prolific rave promoters of that era. My memoirs of this time of my life will be published as a book in late 2019.

ACT 3 – After that decade, I decided the growth was behind me and needed to find something new. I pivoted to being a corporate speaker doing innovative shows utilizing stage hypnosis. Again I found a lot of success in this appearing on television across the country and working for large clients like major banks.

ACT 4 – The biggest legacy of act 3 was it put me and my current (ACT 4) business partner, Geoff, together. As the saying goes, the sum was greater than the parts and we successfully launched a hugely successful webinar business in 2010. So that represents about another decade.

ACT 5 – I’m now transitioning to my next act, this time focused on how I can help others from my unique history. I feel like by helping others all the successes I’ve had can scale exponentially.

At this time, I’ve had 5 distinct acts, each more successful than the previous. I’m excited to see what the future holds as I believe my biggest acts are yet written.

If I had to draw a common thread, it’s that each one was a vehicle for my entrepreneurship. They also involved me being creative and solving problems. Also, by being willing to move on from the previous success, it allowed me to find an even bigger success in the next act. At this time, I’d hate to have stifled myself by clinging to a past act for longer than I did.

Each of these new acts were a risk. I risked everything for an unknown outcome. I don’t think you can find success without risk. There was also a lot of failure and struggle along the way. But those tough times are now just anecdotal stories within a much bigger narrative.

I can’t and won’t ever tell anyone to “do what I did” or “if I can do it you can do it”, but I can share my story for you to take whatever it is that is helpful and find your own path forward.