Last week I was grousing about marketing—complaining that it’s unpleasant. And then I had an idea.

In My Discovery Day, a post on my Blog-Zine, I wrote about a long bike ride with a friend when I was not in shape for it. My friend rode his bike for exercise regularly. I rode mine for fun occasionally.

Marketing can be a large, involved task. You can’t hop on your bike and take on the hills and the many miles without some preparation. The best preparation is to ride on a regular basis for a comfortable amount of time, then go further and add more hills. If you’re regularly riding four miles on level roads and occasionally taking paths with hills, it’s not that big a step to take on seven miles with hills along the way.

I realized I am already marketing. I set up a Blog-Zine and completed a month of posts. I need to keep that pace and add a hill—setting up an auto-responder for people to sign up and be notified when my Blog-Zine is posted.

I have my business cards ready and people in my social network know I’m starting a coaching business. It’s time to talk more openly about it. That’s not a huge change or a big step, just a small one.

The owner of my son’s Tae Kwon Do studio asked me to do training on managing children’s behavior for the instructors. I can build on that experience and train other instructors or seek out similar opportunities at child care centers and private schools. With free or low-free training, I’ll give people a chance to get to know me and understand how I can be of help.

Coaches help people set goals then break them down into manageable steps. With help and guidance from friends training to be coaches, I had planned comfortable steps to start marketing my business. I hadn’t talked with anyone about marketing in a while, so I forgot my next step is—well, just a step, not a leap. I don’t need to build a comprehensive marketing system in a month. I need to keep doing the steps I’ve started and add the next one.

One step is choosing a focus for this blog. I started it when Barbara Sher challenged her list to begin a blog tracking the steps we’re making on changing careers. I used it along the way to try out some ideas for articles about coaching topics as preparation for writing my Blog-Zine. Going forward, I want to keep the focus on creative career choices and career change.

This will be a blog about discovering a career path and how that is revealed little by little over time. I’ll track my own steps and things I’ve learned, and I’ll write about other people’s struggles and discoveries.

Since I titled my Blog-Zine Chasing Wisdom, I am going to change the name of this blog. My friend Stella helped me see that rambling along unexplored roads takes you to new towns and more new roads. She helped me see that the journey is often the point, because you have to create your future instead of driving straight to it.

With many thanks to Stella, I am re-naming this blog Twisting Road. Pack your bags and come along.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey