The “right next move” isn’t what you think

Sometimes Your “Right Next Move” Has Nothing To Do With Business

Back in June, the day before my brother’s funeral, I had a big weird idea. 

Something unexpected about Quentin’s death is that it really thinned the veil—a lot of ideas are coming through. And they don’t feel weird at all, truthfully. They feel like the direction and clarity my heart has been longing for. 

I texted my friend Laura Sprinkle, who prides herself on being the person you call when you have a big weird idea. Sprinkle is what’s called a non-technical founder in the software business, so she knows all about unscheduled left turns. 

“Sprinkle!,” I texted. 

(That’s how I talk IRL. I’m the youngest of six children. Sometimes you have to yell to be heard.)

“I’m receiving some songs that I believe are meant to be sung at your event. I’ve never led a song circle before but I want to try, if there’s room for that.”

Sprinkle wrote me into the program, no questions asked:

7:30pm — Song circle and s’mores

(To be clear, those things were not done concurrently.)

You can watch a clip of the song circle here. 

In partnership with my co-conspirator Maegan Megginson, a person who has actual experience in song circles, we led forty people in four songs with up to three parts. Forty non-singers who graciously set aside their fear and uncertainty to step into the unknown with us.

I sent the clip to my friend.*

“Did you watch the video?,” he asked me.

Being the one who sent it to him, I obviously watched it. But he seemed to be asking a deeper question. 

“I mean, have you zoomed in on your face?,” he said. “I watched it a bunch of times. There’s so much joy in your face. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that kind of joy in my life.”

He was right about the joy, and it wasn’t just me. If you watch the clip you can see the joy in everyone’s faces, the pleasure of being together and finding connection in a way that was literally beyond words. 

Listen, not everything has to end in a lesson about business. (How boring!) I’m telling you this story for two reasons:

1)  Things are shifting for me, and I want you to come along for the ride. 

I’m not sure where this is going. I’m on the waitlist for a song leader training in October, plus I signed up for a whole week of circle singing at Omega Institute in September. 

It’s part of an ongoing inquiry into collective leadership, and how to move away from the hierarchy of online business (putting myself above you), and toward more collaborative ways we can work together (putting Tarzan and everyone in the circle on a level playing field). 

Another business lesson from this experience was inspired by something my therapist Jen Leland said before I left for Maine to lead the song circle at Sprinkle’s retreat.

2) “Sometimes you don’t get to the solution by focusing on the problem.”   

That idea is a seed that I’ve been watering daily. 

I am following my joy. It seems unlikely that song circles will be integrated into my business model going forward, but I am choosing to walk where spirit guides me, and cultivating a deep trust that these things will lead me somewhere wonderful, that an alive and thriving Tarzan will lead to an alive and thriving business. 

So no, this isn’t an invitation to my next song circle. Maybe that’s coming, maybe not. 

This is an invitation to sit with the idea that the solution to whatever problem you’re trying to solve right now, including the problem of what to do next in business, might lie somewhere completely unrelated. Or maybe only a little bit related. 

Sometimes you have to think multi-dimentionally. Maybe the next step in your business’s growth, the clarity and stability you crave, can actually be created in another area entirely. 

Maybe you need to get divorced first. (Or, glass half full, married!)
Maybe your next move is to fire your therapist and sign up for piano lessons. (Personally I love therapy but you do you.)
Maybe it’s to take a sabbatical and sit deeply in your not-knowing.
Maybe it’s to take up smoking or start a band. 

Standing in the center of that song circle, I did not have a plan. Just a deep knowing that my work right now is to trust this feeling, this moment, the next note, to trust that the next step will reveal itself in its own time.

I wonder, friend—

If you were to tap into that energy, that deep well of knowing that exists within you, what would your next step be?

Feel free to hit “reply” and tell me what’s coming through. 

~ Tarzan