Launching Uncommonly: One Year Later (Chris Donohoe)

[01:44] Paul: Today I am talking again with Chris Donahoe, who I talked to about a year ago. After he had just launched his firm, Launching Uncommonly. I thought it would be interesting to check back in with him and see how the journey has gone, what kind of shifts he's gone through, and maybe touch on what people might expect when they are taking leaps like this in the first 6 months. So welcome back, Chris.

[02:10] Chris Donohoe: Thank you for having me.

[02:12] Paul: So looking forward to this conversation, mostly because I've been doing this for about a year now and feeling a lot less nervous than I was in our conversation last year, but just wanted to check in and just say, are you today where you would have expected you were about a year ago?

[02:34] Chris Donohoe: Oh, I don't know if I'm where I would have expected. It's been a really huge year. So we've been in business as a firm for a little over a year. November 1st, 2018 marked one full year as a company. And it was, I mean, it was a really big year. It was huge.

I, you know what I, what I didn't think was that I would be turning down work and consciously choosing not to grow. Yeah.

[03:05] Paul: A lot of, so when I was taking the leap, the most consistent thing people told me was you need to learn how to say no to work. However, as soon as you start on your own, your motivation is, "Shit, I need to make money." And I almost feel like there's like a period at the beginning of it where you just need to prove to yourself you can actually earn money in new ways before you can even get to that point of saying no. Does that resonate with you?

[03:36] Chris Donohoe: I don't know. I've been historically extremely money-driven. So I— I have no doubt in my mind that whatever number I say I want to make, I can make it if I'm willing to just do whatever it takes to make that amount. What I realized is that the opportunity cost associated with pursuing money is high in terms of quality of life.

[04:00] Paul: Yeah. What are some of those trade-offs for you?

[04:04] Chris Donohoe: The big one for me is time. I started the year committed that I was going to start my company on a 4-day workweek. Monday through Thursday. And I did that for a while until we started making some strategic— until a lot of opportunities started coming our way. Oh no. Uh, okay, well let's take it.

Let's see. We'll, we'll figure it out. We'll make it work. And then the money was really pouring in. So I was like, well, let's keep doing this until I just realized that it was super unsustainable. Like I became very, um, I didn't realize how hard I was working because I was so excited about starting my company like that.

I was so energized by it that I didn't realize what a toll it was taking. Cause in a lot of ways it didn't feel like work. It was just that when I finally would slow down, it was like a crash. I couldn't, I wouldn't get myself back together quickly.

[04:58] Paul: Yeah. So let's talk about that sustainability. I think one thing in people I talk to is, it is so much different than full-time, right? It's not just about the next project. You're actually working on you evolving as a person and like your interests, your direction might tweak a little. And if you're not at least paying attention to that and spending some time on it, you're just going to take the same type of project again, right?

So then maybe that leads to that burnout and you're like, what the heck? I didn't just want another full-time job.

[05:32] Chris Donohoe: Nobody wants to start a company so that they can replicate all of the shit that they've lived through previously.

[05:40] Paul: Did you get a sense that that was happening?

[05:44] Chris Donohoe: Yeah, at one point it was like we had a proposal in for a piece of work and I was like, if we get this work, I do not want to do this. I wanted to win the work, I didn't want to do the work. Like, I loved it, I love getting the work. That's funny. I don't like delivering on the work anymore. So yeah, I realized that if we just took work that was available because it was there and people needed a vendor that they could use, we're working, we're doing business-to-business consulting, then there was, yeah, there was a big, big cost.

[06:16] Paul: Yeah. And maybe let's dive into some of the details. Like, how were you working at first? Was it a per diem? Was it a project-based basis? Was it fixed fee?

How are you thinking about that and how did, how have you evolved on things like that?

[06:32] Chris Donohoe: We still have not broken out of time where people are buying our time as a consulting firm. And I don't like that and I want to shift that and I've made efforts towards shifting it. And that's how we would do it in the beginning was day rate. We would go as a day rate, oh, for a day you can get us, we'll come in for the day, we'll come in for 6 weeks. And here are the deliverables that we're also on the hook for. But essentially everything came down to the day rate.

And when people are buying your time, I mean, it's exactly that. It's exactly that. They bought your time. Your time is no longer yours. Your time is theirs. And then they're using you for your time.

And that feeling isn't— I don't like that feeling. I've tried the deliverables thing, but as a small firm, sometimes, especially we're just talking 2 people at this point, we were gonna grow, but we decided not to. So it's just 2 of us, um, to get in the door. It's so much easier to go in. The day rate thing is really easy for a lot of large companies because they can bring you in as an independent contractor and they don't have to, you know, you don't even have to go through procurement to get hired essentially.

[07:45] Paul: Oh, fascinating. And would you say that you were still showing up to these clients? Were you working remotely? How was that working?

[07:55] Chris Donohoe: A mix. I had a client where I've had— so the big clients, I've had probably like 5 big corporate clients this year, and it's really just been a mix. And I've done a variety of methods to get in the door. Sometimes I'll subcontract through other firms to get in the door with a big company. Sometimes I'll go direct to the company with, as my company. Sometimes I'll go in under the guise as an independent contractor.

It really has been a mix of how we've done it. And sometimes they want you on site, sometimes they don't. I have become increasingly— the biggest lesson for me as the founder of this company has been specify my terms and then don't compromise on them.

[08:34] Paul: Yeah. And what have been some of the terms you've landed on? Is it time? Is it expectation of deliverables? Is it— different things like that.

[08:45] Chris Donohoe: It took me November, December, and now into January, so like 2.25 months to iron out exactly what my terms are, which is that I will give a client 3 days a week of my time, and it needs to be like a really, really easy commute or else I'm not going in remote. Yeah. And, um, the other 2 days are for building my business and also coaching in my private coaching practice. So now I finally have everything happening Monday to Friday. I was working on Sundays as well, but now I think it's Monday to Friday, roughly like 7:00 AM on coaching days. I start at 7:00 AM on non-coaching days.

I'm starting at 9:00 AM, ending at 5:00 PM. And I just have started saying no to a lot of things. I had a work— I had a, I had a large company call me earlier this week. They wanted me to come in, come in for a few months. And I just point blank said no. And it's cause I'm not, I'm not at a point where I want to grow my— I don't want to bring on people yet.

I'm at capacity. I eventually, I do want to build out a business, but I don't feel ready right now. I want to do it 9 to 5. Essentially 40 hours a week, Monday to Friday, whatever can't happen in that time can't happen yet.

[10:08] Paul: That's awesome. And how are you spending your, uh, your 2 extra days a week now? Uh, either the coaching and/or just time you have for reflection and figuring out what's next.

[10:22] Chris Donohoe: Yeah. So on the 2 extra days, I have a total of 9 clients that I work with in a coaching capacity. And I meet with each of them for an hour a week. And so it's essentially like a 5-4 split, 4 Monday, 5 Friday. And, um, then on top of that, I'm enrolled in a coaching certification program, which has a whole curriculum around it. And there's a lot of that inner work that you were talking about where you're building the awarenesses, you're kind of exercising the muscles as a leader to become the leader you actually want to be in the world.

So that's where the rest of my time goes. And then every night around 6:30 or 7:00 PM, I'm like just hanging out.

[11:04] Paul: That's pretty good. I, I know a lot of self-employed people really struggle with finding those constraints. I think one, because they find the work fun and two, it's just hard to say no to stuff. So, uh, congrats on that.

[11:18] Chris Donohoe: And, uh, extremely intentional. Like, this did not happen. It's like, I have a— I also have a coach and I sit down with my coach and say, I want to work 5 days a week. How will I make it to work 5 days a week? And 2 and a half months later, you're finally working 5 days a week. That's awesome.

Snap your fingers. It really— and I have to choose it over and over again.

[11:41] Paul: So what's the coaching program called and what have, uh, what have been some of the biggest reflections in starting that?

[11:49] Chris Donohoe: I'm in Accomplishment Coaching, which is based out of San Diego. They have programs all over the country. New York, I think Chicago, DC, and San Diego are the 4 that I know off the top of my head. Uh, it's structured where I'm in a cohort of 24 other people who are also training to become coaches. And it's ontological coaching, meaning it's being-based. So we're taking a look at like, who are you being as a human?

And what place are you coming from as you make decisions and show up in the world. And it has been one of the most emotionally, metaphysically, spiritually demanding experiences that I've been through in a long time. And at the same time, my capacity as a leader is growing so much. So it's, it's a lot of, I hate the term deep inner work as like a corporate businessman, like deep inner work. I'm like, what are you talking about? But I do actually think there's some merit to the term deep work.

That's what it's been in service of the life and the business and the relationships that I want to build.

[13:05] Paul: Yeah. Well, I think, I think there's just a challenge coming at it from the corporate angle of the language we had when we were in the corporate context. Something like deep inner work actually does sound slightly insane because it literally doesn't translate to like the, the way we're being in that environment. Right. See, I have the same thing too. My gut is to like roll my eyes, but that's, it's more because of the other phrases people are using, which are like definitely shallow.

[13:38] Chris Donohoe: Yeah. Corporate America sounds like, "We need to calibrate on the various norms that are received across the board." You're like, "What are you talking about?" Like, "We need to have some conversations. Let's use the terms." Yeah. Corporate America, it's funny because part of this ontological work, there's these baseline assertions around there is nothing wrong, there's nothing broken, there's nothing to fix. There would just be things missing. And when I look at corporate America, part of what drove me out of consulting and starting my own company is that I looked around and I said, there's a lot wrong, there's a lot broken, and there's a lot to fix here.

And I would be lying if I told you that I truly understood what it meant that, oh, there's nothing wrong, broken, or to fix. I think that's probably true, but I don't know what I'm actually talking about when I say it. But I am actively practicing relating to corporate America and organizations through that lens. There's nothing wrong, there's nothing broken, there's nothing to fix. There might just be things missing. And when we start talking about what's missing, the human aspect, the spirit, humanity missing from corporations.

And everyone's talking customer centricity, everyone's talking people first. And then we have people development sessions that sound like, we have 5 strategic levers, 5 behaviors that as an organization we're going to adopt this year. And it's like, what? Like, This is not how human behavior works. We don't write it down on a slide and then agree to adopt it. There are actual shifts that have to occur through self-awareness.

People have to actually look in the mirror and see who they're being as a leader, as an employee, as a manager, but we don't do that well yet.

[15:27] Paul: Well, I think you're right in some sense. When I see the corporate world, I see something that actually If you look at it at a fundamental level, it can't be broken, right? Because it's the system doing whatever it does. However, it gets really weird when we're talking about, well, the organization's purpose is to create meaningful work for people. That's just missing the point, right? And it also just— everyone's like, wait, this isn't meaningful.

And then you're just doing initiative after initiative to clean up the mess. So it's like, It's almost we need more honesty to say like, well, actually this is just a place to give people employment and make as much money from this specific market as possible. Right.

[16:15] Chris Donohoe: And money. And also, I know you and I have had conversations about money. I love this idea, the honesty of saying we're a business and we're in business to provide a product that people like and to make money doing it. Why? Because it feels good to make money and we want to have money because we like it. And that honestly, that honesty could go a long way.

And I also think too, I'm playing around a lot with the idea of what can I own? What piece of the corporate meltdown can I actually own? And I think it's coming back to me in the form of, this is my deep inner work talking here, but If we make the assumption that energy exists and that humans are generating energy on some level, I'm putting energy into the world.

[17:07] Paul: Right.

[17:08] Chris Donohoe: And if we then make another assumption that that energy is either coming from fear or it's coming from love, most of my career, if not all of, I would say 90% of the decisions and actions that I took in corporate America, especially to be effective, came from fear. Right.

[17:24] Paul: Right.

[17:25] Chris Donohoe: And if my actions are coming from fear, then I'm actually contributing and reinforcing the same paradigm that I don't like. Right. So my instinct when I was full-time employed by someone else was to sit back and say, oh my gosh, look at how broken this organization is. Don't people see that if we just change these 5 things that we would have transformation and that people would be happy and they wouldn't be leaving, etc., etc., etc. And actually, I wasn't aware of the piece— how I was actually contributing to the same problem within the organization by energetically coming from fear, withholding information, playing the game, choosing my words so carefully so that I could get to the next level, so that I could please everybody. All of those behaviors are reinforcing And in that sense, I own the meltdown too, the crisis in corporate America.

I am generating and reinforcing it with my own behavior.

[18:25] Paul: Yeah. And that totally resonates with me as well. I think over the past couple of years, I've really had to just look at myself and be like, I'm not actually upset with the corporate world.

[18:37] Chris Donohoe: It's—

[18:38] Paul: I was kind of disappointed in myself. Right. And it's kind of embarrassing to admit that. And deep down, like you said, you have that voice of saying like, well, maybe you just couldn't cut it. Right. And, um, I'm trying to shift that to a much more positive direction now, but I still catch that.

And, uh, it, I mean, it definitely resonates.

[19:00] Chris Donohoe: Well, corporate America, it has a tendency to reward hostile victims. So people who feel really victimized, but who are also kind of aggressive will like really do well in a corporate hierarchy because That's how you can muster up some motivation, right? Yeah. You know who actually does a really good job of this though? I never thought I would have said this, but I'm really impressed with old companies. Insurance companies, without naming names, but there are a few very old insurance companies.

[19:37] Paul: Like Aetna or something. They've been around forever.

[19:40] Chris Donohoe: Yeah. I mean, some of these are like 170 years old and I also work for a luxury brand as one of my clients and they've been around for, I think like 100 years, something, a long time. And there's something about this slow and steady, non-reactive mindset. Like my fiancé works at an insurance company and I used to really make fun of it because I would be like, He's not really coming from fear and a lot of the people around him are not coming from fear, but the job itself for me just seems incredibly boring and stale. But they all just kind of like show up and have conversations about it and make slow decisions. And there's not a lot of hyperbole around what they're doing and what the big vision is.

They're just there to make sure that they can pay out promises of money to people 100 years from now. And that's what they do.

[20:38] Paul: Yeah. And it's also something people fundamentally want, right? I think this is where things get slightly disconnected is perhaps I think some of the consulting is the world wasn't asking for some of the stuff I was doing in the past.

[20:53] Chris Donohoe: Yeah, that's a really good point.

[20:57] Paul: But yeah, there is something to that. I think just the slow and steadiness to it and just some of the predictability. I think people are just I mean, we could go off on a big tangent here, just lose themselves with the nonstop information, right? I'm sure you got caught up in this. And I think this is something that's been dramatically simplified as a freelancer because I'm not iterating and planning and trying to impress my project leader, is that you can do endless analysis. It's so crazy how much analysis you can do.

Whereas now I'm preparing stuff and just going, oh, I'm done. I just need to send it to the client and see what their reaction is.

[21:40] Chris Donohoe: Yeah.

[21:41] Paul: And that's like a comparison of, I don't even know, like 50 hours of work versus like 3 or 4, which has been a profound shift for me.

[21:52] Chris Donohoe: I would like to make that shift. I think still with my consulting work, I'm still in the same paradigm. I think I'm in the let's go over and over and over again with the same deck until it's perfectly acceptable to everyone who it needs to be perfectly acceptable to.

[22:11] Paul: But that's fine with the client, right? I'm talking about that inner teamwork that's like happening behind the scenes.

[22:19] Chris Donohoe: Yeah.

[22:21] Paul: Doing the mock pitch to your project leader internally. And you kind of avoid those cycles, but love to shift back to your reflections on the past year. So you started with a co-founder as well, which I thought was pretty cool. I think a lot of people just go solo, right? How has that been? I'm sure there's been just a lot of advantages from having a partner to bounce ideas off and talk through with this and even just keep you motivated on a basic level.

[22:52] Chris Donohoe: Yeah. My co-founder is an amazing human and we both did, uh, we're doing this coaching program together. So we're using the coaching program as the incubator to grow our business. So we made a collective decision back in maybe like May or June of 2018 that we would shift our work away from business transformation stuff. Toward people development and leadership development. And that's when we said, okay, well, if we're going to do that, we got to start turning down work, which we did.

And we need to also grow our own skills and build some, build some additional credibility and experience in this domain. So we enrolled in the coaching program and we've been going through it together. So we are growing our business first by growing our own capacity to lead individually and collectively together via this program. And so that's been our primary focus this year, has been the deep inner work and talking about it with each other and building a company from that place. So the types of conversations that she and I are having are very different from what I would've expected a co-founder to have.

[24:05] Paul: Right. So much more personal.

[24:08] Chris Donohoe: Yeah, it's way more personal. We're not sitting down going, We're not looking at the pipeline and looking at— we're not making a list of all of our opportunities and then prioritizing them and then choosing which ones and then divvying out the work. We're having conversations like, who are you being about this work that we're pursuing? And what will this get us? And what will that get us? And if we get that, what will that get us?

Getting to really the heart of what matters to us. Because again, we don't want to replicate the same nasty stuff that we've seen out there in the world. We want this to be something we believe in.

[24:47] Paul: So that fundamental question of what's it all for?

[24:50] Chris Donohoe: What's it all for?

[24:52] Paul: Yeah. Have there been any exercises you've done either with her group or even on your own through this program or otherwise that have really shifted your perspective on things?

[25:03] Chris Donohoe: We do so many things.

[25:08] Paul: Like one a week. Or maybe the better question is, what have you taken from that that you're instantly using with your coaching clients?

[25:18] Chris Donohoe: The biggest distinction that we're taking to our clients— there we have in coaching, in the world of ontological coaching and specifically accomplishment coaching, the program we're in, they make a distinction between being at cause versus being at effect. Being at cause is you are happening to the world. You are taking responsibility for everything. You're owning every single piece that there is to own of everything.

[25:47] Paul: Yeah.

[25:48] Chris Donohoe: So this company is broken. Well, actually, how am I contributing to how broken it is? That kind of, that mindset and owning as much as you possibly can versus being at effect, which is like the victim side. The, this is happening to me, blaming, oh, well, if they blah, blah, blah, like, um, the at cause, at effect is critical to how we're building the business because it's the foundation for setting parameters around when we'll work, how hard we'll work, what clients. We're not at the effect of what everyone else says we should do or need to do, or what clients are asking for or demanding. We're at cause, choosing in advance actively what we want to do because it's— because we know what our commitments are.

So that distinguishes between when is a person, when is an organization, when am I myself at cause versus at effect, has been huge for my life, our business, how we're growing this thing.

[26:51] Paul: And how are you thinking about what's next? So maybe we'll check in a year from now. Where do you think things will look then?

[26:59] Chris Donohoe: Well, I am— as in the world of coaching, the big question is what's next? What's possible? It is inherently a future-based conversation. So I think about this constantly and what's next for me is I am the future of leadership. And as the future of leadership, I want to build a company that creates great leaders and empowers great leaders. And that's all in service of what I think my life purpose is, which is peace.

And if I'm building a company that creates great leaders in service of peace, then that could be my life's work and something that I'm really energized by, something that's worth— that's a game worth playing. So what does that mean practically? I think if I'm choosing from that place, it looks like we finish out the coaching program through August. We still don't really— I have no, and no vision to like take on staff before then, taking on additional team members. I do think that we will likely take the things that we've learned and from both corporate clients and our individuals, we want to create a mass market offering. So something that kind of gets to the heart of what does it look like to be and show up as a great leader in your life and at work.

Market something that has passive income so that we're not selling our time all the time. And grow the business in a way, continue growing the business in a way where we're not killing ourselves and that we're doing a 40-hour work week. I think that's what the next year looks like.

[28:54] Paul: Wow. Yeah. I think just reflecting, comparing like your view on this a year ago and now where you at, like, it's so clear where you're headed. And I think all the pieces were there, like the energy, the intention was there a year ago, but You can feel the confidence and energy about that path going forward. Maybe one question to close on is, and it sounds like, I think my takeaway from all that is the journey over the past year has enabled you to arrive at this, like stepping into that uncertainty, going on your own, taking the ownership for that. If you were talking to somebody that was thinking about taking a leap, What would you tell them about what they might experience in that first year?

[29:46] Chris Donohoe: I would tell anybody, you can throw away everyone's advice and just do whatever you want.

[29:53] Paul: I love it.

[29:55] Chris Donohoe: It's whatever you want.

[29:57] Paul: That's great. Yeah. No, I think that's great too. I think one of my messages when I talk to people is don't listen to me. That's crazy, right? It's more about going, doing that deep work, to quote you, and figuring out like what's driving you, what's down there, what's really behind that pain or that drive, and just tapping into that.

[30:19] Chris Donohoe: Yeah, I mean, the deep— yeah, listen to what you already know. You already have the answer inside you. What do you want in your company? Name it that. Don't go asking Samantha what her opinion is. I love it.

[30:33] Paul: Well, thank you so much for giving us this reflection. I think this will be incredibly helpful just for people as they're thinking about— I can, we can show them the before and after, but I love it. And I'm obviously a big fan of your mission and purpose and just keep up the good work. It's much needed. And I will definitely be interested in where you're headed.

[30:57] Chris Donohoe: Thank you. Thanks so much for giving me a space to talk about this stuff. I appreciate it.