The A La Carte

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what exactly it is that I do.

Which is probably a dangerous question for someone who has spent the last six years building a business called Admin À La Carte.

Because “admin” seems pretty straightforward.

Except… what happens when it isn’t?

I started this business because I was good at getting things done.

Spreadsheets? Sure.

Mailings? Yep.

Websites, databases, newsletters, organization, event planning, random things that nobody else wants to deal with? Absolutely.

I’ve always liked variety. Give me a list of things that need to happen and I’ll happily start connecting the dots.

But lately, I’ve noticed something changing.

I’ve had more than one person tell me some version of:

“I don’t really have a specific task for you. I just want to work with you.”

That sentence has stuck with me.

Because if someone doesn’t have a specific task, what exactly are they hiring me for?

The answer, I think, is figuring things out.

I recently helped a business move locations.

Was there administrative work involved? Of course.

But the bigger job was figuring out the move. What needed to happen? In what order? Who needed to be involved? What hadn’t been considered yet? How were we going to get from “we need to move” to “we successfully moved”?

This weekend, I’m running an auction.

Again, there are administrative pieces involved.

But mostly, I’m figuring shit out.

And that’s becoming a pattern.

People want me in the conversation when they’re trying to figure something out.

They like the way I think about things.

They know that I can take a pile of information, questions, problems and moving parts and somehow turn it into a plan.

And then, importantly, I can actually get the plan done.

Sometimes that means creating the spreadsheet.

Sometimes it means making the phone call.

Sometimes it means figuring out a process.

Sometimes it means coordinating five different people who apparently have five different understandings of what is supposed to happen.

And sometimes I just have to do the damn thing myself.

There isn’t really a clean line between “admin” and “consultant” in my world.

And I’m not sure I even want there to be.

I don’t want to stop being the person you call when you have a weird collection of things that need to get done.

That’s one of the things I actually love about Admin À La Carte.

I like that one day I might be organizing information and the next I’m helping solve a much bigger problem.

I like being useful in a lot of different ways.

I like that no two days look exactly the same.

So maybe I’m not trying to figure out what title comes after “admin.”

Maybe I’m trying to figure out how to make room for the fact that what I bring to the table has changed.

Because here’s the other problem.

I still only have one of me.

I have looked into this.

There is apparently no commercially available clone machine.

Rude.

And that’s becoming the real challenge.

There are only so many hours in a day, and more and more people are interested in having me involved in things that require my particular way of thinking.

I can’t just keep adding more work to the pile.

At some point, I have to figure out how to separate the things that require my brain from the things that simply need a capable person to get them done.

That’s probably the next chapter of Admin À La Carte.

Not becoming less of an admin.

Not becoming a consultant.

Not choosing one neat little box and squeezing myself into it.

Instead, figuring out how to build a business around the thing I’ve apparently been doing all along:

Seeing the whole picture.

Making sense of the mess.

Figuring out what needs to happen.

And then making it happen.

I’m still Admin A La Carte.

I’m just starting to realize that “admin” doesn’t really explain all of it.