Nigel Fisher

40 years embedded in UK commercial and personal endeavour. Start-ups, scale-ups and shake-ups.

I have worked alongside founders, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, sales, marketing and business development professionals.

I have collaborated on a vast array of exciting start-up, scale-up and shake-up businesses, some of which have gone on to become major brands, earning the founders and stakeholders millions of pounds on exit.

I have navigated the rough seas and still waters of sales, marketing and business development in my own businesses.

I have experienced the turbulence, the chaos, the losses and the rewards.

The most valuable lesson I have learned, by far, when it comes to business is that the business is the game we play in pursuit of something much bigger. Commercial endeavour itself is not what drives you forward.

Your identity is.

You have embarked on a personal mission.

You started really well. Your priorities were clear. Your direction was set. Ambitious. Energised.

Achievement came quickly. You have accumulated material proof for your peers that you are capable. The reputation was built. You became known as someone who delivers, who gives freely of their energy, their knowledge, their time, and is willing to contribute, and even lead, financially.

What has changed?

You now feel challenged in a different way. Tension and inertia have crept in.

The scale you imagined feels just out of reach.

Your energy, your time and your resources are being consumed. Not applied. You are fighting to maintain the status quo.

You are now operating in High Maintenance Mode.

This is far from the original intention.

I see you.

I see that you settled for a while to enjoy the trappings of early achievement and moral victory. And you were absolutely right to celebrate and take a breather.

I sense that you recognise that you spent too long in that place and that you are now struggling to get going again. I have also felt the anguish of having to galvanise yourself to go again, and not for the last time.

I, too, have searched for that elusive sign that it is time to take action. And yes, it is actually harder than when you first started.

Through all of this, one constant kept me company.

Joy Through Perseverance.

A school motto. A companion. Something to come back to when the noise got loud.

It continues to prompt me to ask myself one question above all others.

Are my endeavours aligned with what really matters to me?

It was not until I went back to university and conducted peer reviewed academic research that I truly understood what it meant.

Two factors. Proven above all else to predict life satisfaction.

The quality of your relationships. The conscientiousness you bring to everything you do.

The Freedom Formula.

Profit and material reward are all well and good. They can be accumulated and enjoyed along the way. And if that is what drives you, I commend you on knowing precisely what you want and join you in celebrating your achievement.

If, however, like me, you are drawn to making an IMPACT and experiencing FREEDOM, then please read on.

Being on the edge of execution without being fully activated is a lonely, desperate and frustrating place to be.

Self-reliance in High Maintenance Mode is exhausting, and moving on seems almost impossible.

Reconnecting with your Aspirational Outcome requires ACTIVATION.

We need to recharge your emotional and creative resources and redeploy them as an investment in what is yet to come.