U for Understanding - the alphabetical story of rightcoverage growth

This is a blog about learning to understand YOURSELF.

There are times in my life, both personally and professionally, where I've been about as understanding as an angry baboon. To give you some context into baboons, there are plenty of videos on YouTube. In a nutshell though, whether they are alone or in significant numbers, they will use their intelligence to get to the outcome they desire and if that fails, they'll use brute force. When they go into attack or defence mode, they're not very understanding at all.

I think we all know that as we get older, learn more about life and the things we want to achieve, whether personally or professionally, we generally develop a greater level of understanding and empathy. Life shows us that you catch more butterflies with jam rather than vinegar.

However, and here's the disclaimer, the above usually applies when you're on a happy path. the path which may not always be 'happy' but is predictable and fairly safe. This path is diametrically opposed to the path anyone can take when starting and running a start up or scale up.

Most of the time, even with the best planning and forward thinking, running a scale up is like playing snakes and ladders - without the ladders.

Things take longer than you want and need them too. People offer you deals and, for whatever reason, the deal doesn't come off. Some things you try just don't work. Some routes you take waste time and there's a consequent huge opportunity cost. Competitors with more resources might outfox you. There's a whole range of things which could happen, and most likely will, and most of them are not positive.

All that stuff is outside your control. You can't control what will happen when there is another actor (person) in the process who, like you, has free will and will make their own decisions and choices.

What you can do, is really work to understand yourself, and therefore dictate how you'll deal (react) to this uncertainty and 'rainy day' path. If you can do that, you'll understand how to focus and keep your scale up growing.

And that's exactly what I've learned to do* since I quit (full time) consulting in 2017.

*ok, sometimes I don't get it 100% right

To make this interesting and real, here are some of the questions I've been asking myself over the last 60 days. All in an event to understand myself more. You might find some of these surprising - but I'm being 100% honest here.

1. Shall I just sell up, have no debt, and just get a part time job doing something more rewarding? Would I be happier? Would this allow me to achieve some other goals over the next 10 years?
2. Is it possible to make rightcoverage 100% self sufficient so we don't rely on anyone else and therefore remove 100% of the uncertainty? I think we are probably at 85%, but getting to 100% would remove 90% of current stress
3. What is pushing me to keep creating new things? If I can identify it, can I then ignore it?
4. If I go back to consulting, what day rate will compensate me for the lack of freedom? Is that enough to keep me happy?
5. Where do I actually want to live when my daughter is self sufficient and out of school? Is this the UK or somewhere else?

So as you can see, there are some massive questions happening right now and all in a quest to understand myself more, and help rightcoverage grow. Understanding yourself can help your scale up grow, 100%.

Stay safe out there.