In June, a professional directory entry connected me with a training coordinator who did not know she was my husband’s company’s coordinator, and I was booked for a workshop, and my husband sat in the third row, and his colleagues heard my accurate professional bio, and afterward he said I was really good.
Between June and now, the inaccurate version has been replaced, person by person and conversation by conversation, with the accurate one. The replacement is complete enough that the accurate version is now the default. It is not fragile. It is the established picture.
In this accurate version: I am an operations consultant with two years of independent practice and a growing client base. I am good at what I do. I earn a real income. I have professional associations and a speaker directory profile and a case study on my website and a spring conference slot. I am a full and contributing member of my own household, financially and otherwise.
This was always true. Now it is also known.
I could not have designed the mechanism by which it became known. A database search and a training coordinator and Julia’s efficient management of the referral inquiry — none of that was in my control. What was in my control, going forward from the June email, was what I did with the situation: I confirmed the booking, I told Daniel honestly, I prepared the workshop, I delivered it well, I had the hard conversations that needed to be had, I told the truth to his family in the form that was mine to tell, and I held to the requirement that the accurate picture be maintained.