Stop Making Excuses, Make Choices Instead
Isn’t it time to stop making excuses about why you aren’t working for yourself?
How long have you been thinking about working for yourself?
Months? Years? Longer than you care to remember?
Ever wonder why you haven’t done it by now?
I have a theory.
It’s because of your Excuse Monster!
Beware of Your Excuse Monster
What on earth am I talking about?!
We all have one, even YOU!
It’s that often judgy, yet sometimes scared voice in your head.
It’s always telling you stories about why you can’t do something or suggests fun distractions to get you to procrastinate.
It’s very convincing!
It says stuff like . . .
Who do you think you are to start a business?
Is your boss really that toxic or are you just being too sensitive?
Have an extra glass of wine, you deserve it.
You can do it tomorrow.
Why not watch one more episode? Your night is already shot.
It’s not perfect enough, don’t share it just yet.
Do you hear what he did now? Why aren’t you outraged? You really should be outraged!!
Finding the answer to that is too hard, so why bother?
I wonder what your ex is up to now. Go check Instagram.
You’re too busy with your job and the kids. You don’t have time to think about starting a business.
We’re in the middle of a pandemic for heaven’s sake and you want to start a business?
Your mom and dad don’t get why you want to do this, so don’t disappoint them.
You just got an invitation to a pity party! Let’s go!
What does your Excuse Monster tell you?
Why We Make Excuses
Making excuses has been such a natural rhythm in all of our lives, it’s like breaking an addiction!
We do it way more than we care to admit!
We make excuses to protect ourselves from our fears.
We make excuses to avoid exploring the boundaries of our comfort zone.
We make excuses to justify when we don’t commit to what we said we were going to do.
We make excuses to avoid learning more about ourselves that might make us feel uncomfortable.
We make excuses, so we don’t have to test our assumptions.
I’m guilty too! I’ve made oceans of excuses throughout every single aspect of my life! Ugh! Don’t even get me started!!
I even made excuses for five years about why I couldn’t work for myself even though I was already doing it!!
Ever think about why you make excuses?
What do you make excuses about?
Isn’t making excuses exhausting?
What excuses are you making right now that are preventing you from living the life you really want to live?
You know what making excuses did for me?
It wasted my energy.
It fed my fears.
It denied me valuable and life-changing lessons.
It prevented me from listening to my true self.
It made me avoid tough choices that needed to be made.
How are making excuses hurting you?
Stop Making Excuses, Make Choices Instead
You know what I do now instead of making excuses?
I make choices in alignment with my values, needs and abilities.
Making choices enables me to live life intentionally.
Making excuses keeps me stuck doing what others expect of me or allowing my fears to rule over me.
My brain still tempts me to make excuses, but I now use those potential excuses as a self-awareness exercise to help me learn about myself.
Excuses are now my “teachers”.
They make me realize I have a tough choice I don’t want to make.
They make me realize I’m not being honest or realistic with myself.
They make me realize I need to slow down and gather more information, so I can make an informed choice instead of avoiding an uncomfortable decision in the guise of an excuse.
No Excuse Shame Spiral
When we make excuses, we’ve been taught to feel ashamed.
That’s not right!
We already feel unworthy. The burden of making another excuse puts us into a shame spiral.
Naming the part of your brain that makes excuses stops that shame spiral.
When you recognize your Excuse Monster, you are giving yourself a choice. Previously, maybe you didn’t believe you had a choice.
The next time your Excuse Monster rears its ugly head, stop and identify your choices and the consequences of those choices.
Choice A: Give an excuse about why you can’t or don’t want to do the thing you say you want. Stay stuck.
Choice B: Take action on the thing you say you want, even if it might scare you, to see what happens as a result of doing it. Move forward.
When you take on your Excuse Monster, you allow yourself to explore, learn and grow.
When you give into your Excuse Monster, you hide, abandon an opportunity to learn and stay stuck.
Unfortunately, you can no longer deny the existence of your Excuse Monster.
Stop giving it your limited and valuable attention and energy.
Choose to give that attention and energy to creating work that works for you instead.
Rule yourself, don’t be ruled by your Excuse Monster!
Call Out Your Excuse Monster
One of the very first challenges we ask our new Community of Practice members to try is not to make any excuses.
None. Zero. Absolutely no excuses!
Why? Because nothing will stunt your growth like making excuses!
They deny you the opportunity to explore to figure out what you really want.
Challenge #1 Recognize When You Make Excuses
Over the next week, try bringing awareness to each and every time you feel like you are making an excuse.
Don’t beat yourself up for making excuses, just start being aware of what triggers you to make them.
Then try making a choice on your terms, instead of making an excuse. More often than not, it’s a liberating feeling!
Exercise #2 Call It Your Excuse Monster
Let me introduce you to your Excuse Monster.
Ready? Because once you see it, you can’t unsee it!
Ask yourself this question, “How badly do I really want to work for myself?”
Then ask, “What on earth is preventing me from doing it?”
Those two questions should be enough to poke your Excuse Monster out from hiding!
Start making a list of all the reasons why you aren’t working for yourself right now and the common excuses you’ve made preventing you from figuring it out.
That’s your Excuse Monster’s voice!!
Do you face obstacles preventing you from work for yourself? Sure, but are you making excuses preventing from taking on those obstacles?
Exercise #3 Take Action Instead of Making an Excuse
Over the next week, take two actions you’ve been afraid to take in terms of starting your business.
Basically, I’m asking you to taunt your Excuse Monster, so you are forced to face it!
When you take action, I want you to show yourself that you can take on your Excuse Monster and slay it!
Beware of how often your Excuse Monster pops up over the next week!
Stop giving your power away to excuses!
What excuse are you making right now about why you can’t design work on your terms?
Consider joining one of our Communities of Practice to get support and accountability for creating work that works for you!
How To Talk To Your Family About Working For Yourself
When you decide to start a business, one of the toughest and most unexpected challenges you may face is how to talk to your family about working for yourself.
Believe it or not, one of the most common questions I receive from our community has nothing to do with starting a business!
I’m often asked in varying ways, “How do I talk to my loved ones about the work I want to do?”
You may be super excited about making this big change in your life, but talking to your loved ones about it makes you feel very apprehensive.
Why?
You’re afraid they won’t understand.
You’re afraid they won’t support you. Worse, they’ll doubt you!
You’re afraid they will judge you and your business idea.
You dread questions they might ask like:
So how’s work?
What are you working on now?
How’s your business?
Are you making any money yet?
It’s especially tough hearing those questions in the early days of your business when you don’t have everything figured out.
Not having answers to those questions makes you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.
Those questions make you feel judged.
They remind you of your own doubts too.
The hardest thing about working for yourself is coming to terms with your new identity.
You’re shedding your employment identity to give life to your new identity as a solopreneur.
The way you view your attention, energy, time, money and relationships is going to change dramatically.
When you make such a big change like this in your life, how others perceive you will change too.
You’re nervous about talking to your family about working for yourself because you’re afraid it will change how they see you.
You’re afraid you might lose them because they won’t like the “new you”.
All you want is to feel supported and understood by those you love the most because you already feel so vulnerable about making this decision.
But what do you do when your mom or dad or wife or husband or best friend just “don’t get it”?
How do you talk to your family about working for yourself when you feel like they might be critical of your idea or even try to talk you out of it?
First, I know this might be hard to do, but remember they love you.
What you might be receiving as judgment and criticism is their way of “protecting” you. More often than not, they believe they are acting in your best interest because they don’t want to see you get hurt financially or emotionally.
Your loved ones are your first investors. They might not give you money, but they can provide emotional support.
Give them the time and space to understand what it is you’re creating. Try to use language and analogies they understand.
And from my experience, it’s going to take more than one conversation. Look for opportunities to share what you’re doing over and over again. Do it in a way that aligns with their interests.
Your family’s reaction to the work you want to do says more about their own fears about starting a business than doubting your ability to do it.
Over time, as your loved ones see that you’re financially secure and happy, they will tell you how proud they are of you!
Second, they aren’t critical because they don’t believe in you, they’re just unfamiliar with your idea or way of working.
My parents still have no idea what I do after 25 years of working for myself! Working online from anywhere in the world is so far removed from what they were taught about how to earn a living.
When someone is unfamiliar with something new, they’re understandably going to have a lot of questions. Calmly answer them.
Try your best not to take their questions personally. Again, they’re reaction has more to do with their own issues than your abilities.
Third, they’re envious of you.
Many of your harshest critics take out their own self-doubt on you.
They would love to do what it is you are doing, but they have convinced themselves they can’t do it.
We all have an inner critic.
While you’re choosing to put your inner critic in its place, people close to you are allowing their inner critic to unknowingly rule them.
Finally, build a new family of support.
As you continue to transform how you work, you’re going to need support from like-minded people to motivate you and encourage you.
You may not get the support you’re seeking from your loved ones off the bat, so start building relationships with people who are excited about your plans.
I like to think of my closest supporters as my “adopted entrepreneur family”. I have intentionally chosen them and they have chosen me. Our values are aligned.
I still love my own family very much, but have realized long ago, they support me differently, but love me no less compared to when I was employed.
Are you still struggling to find your new entrepreneur family?
6 Ways To Make Rejection Suck Less
Want to figure out how to make rejection suck less?
I mean who doesn’t! Am I right?
Rejection may make you feel like:
not worthy
unlikable
not heard
misunderstood
not accepted
You feel like an imposter.
Getting rejected reminds you of all the doubts you have about yourself and your ability to build your business.
From my experience as a business coach, the action first-time business owners avoid the most is outreach.
Business is about serving other humans. Plain and simple.
If you aren’t regularly finding ways to connect with potential clients, you don’t have a business, you have a hobby.
Most people who start a business for the first time focus on every other aspect of their business to avoid doing outreach.
They will tinker on their website.
They will fuss over the creation of their product.
They will obsess over the name of their business.
They will overthink whether or not to organize their business as an LLC.
I’m not suggesting any of those actions aren’t important to the development of your business, but they also provide a convenient excuse for avoiding the most important action for growing your business: meeting other people.
Why You, Me And Everyone Else Avoids Rejection
Rejection is an unavoidable part of working for yourself.
Not everyone is going to like you.
Not everyone is going to like your product or service.
Not everyone is ready to buy from you when you want them to!
Let’s face it, humans don’t like rejection because it hurts.
It hurts us emotionally.
We take it personally.
We feel like our very being is being attacked.
Thousands of years ago when humans roamed the Earth in tribes, acceptance by our peers was quite literally a matter of life and death.
If you got kicked out of the tribe, your chances of survival plummeted when you were all on your own.
We live in much different times, but we still have brains coded to believe that rejection is a threat to our very existence.
Our brain makes rejection feel so painful (as painful as experiencing physical pain), so we prioritize acceptance to increase our chances of survival.
If you get rejected by a potential client, you’re not going to die, but your brain still makes you feel like you might.
The first step for reducing the threat of rejection is to recognize its evolutionary roots.
Why People Reject Others (and why you do it too)
As much as you don’t like rejection, you still do it to others.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
The next step to reducing the fear of rejection is to recognize why YOU do it.
Most likely, you’re not doing it to make someone else feel bad, right?
You’re doing it because you don’t feel a connection. You can’t like everyone and not everyone is going to like you.
You’re doing it because the timing just isn’t right. Someone might love your service, but they just don’t have a need for it at this moment.
You’re doing it because of your own assumptions and fears. Many times the person rejecting you is projecting their own issues onto you.
Rejection is usually not personal to the person giving the rejection, but frequently the person receiving rejection takes it personally.
Further weaken the power of rejection over you by putting yourself in the shoes of the person “rejecting” you, so you learn to take their rejection less personally.
6 Ways To Make Rejection Suck Less
It takes practice to get more comfortable with rejection. It’s an inevitable part of doing business.
Following are some exercises you can give a try to start making rejection a little less sucky!
1) Misalignment, not rejection.
The next time you’re declined by a potential client, think of it as “misalignment” instead of rejection.
When someone tells you “no” they’re actually doing you a favor!
Maybe your values aren’t aligned and you’re just never going to click. Maybe the person is really into your product or service, but it’s just not the right time for them to buy.
When someone tells you “no” they’re saving you time and energy, so you can go find someone else who’s more aligned with you!
2) Beware of the data point of one.
Don’t fall into the abyss of self-doubt when just one of many potential clients tells you “no”.
Stop chasing after the person who doesn’t like you! Seek out the people who are into you and your service!
Don’t overemphasize an individual interaction as the key to your success. Get in the habit of regularly seeking out MANY prospective clients to engage or learn how to use the Rule of 3 to defend against the data point of one!
3) Yes/No Ratio.
Track how many “No’s” it takes on average to get a “Yes” when you land a new client.
For example, for every “Yes” you might get an average of 10 “No’s”.
This helps give context to the “rejection” you experience by knowing the path to “Yes” has to go through rejection first.
For every person who became a member of the 30-Day Accelerator we previously offered, we lost an average of 10 email subscribers each time we promoted it!! And that’s OK!
Business isn’t about keeping everyone happy. It’s about finding your people and keeping them super happy!
4) Process your emotions.
Even if you can rationalize why you got rejected, it still hurts!
Take the time to process it, so you can move on more quickly the next time you get rejected.
5) Rejection therapy. Build up your experience with rejection by inviting more of it!
Like anything else in life, the more you practice dealing with rejection, the better you’ll get at it. Listen to my interview with Alex Grodnik about how he endured getting rejected by 1,000 investors!
6) Learn from every “No”.
Did you realize getting a “No” is sometimes more valuable than getting a “Yes”?
The next time a potential client tells you “No” ask them why, so you can improve your business!
Maybe you’ll learn to refine your target client.
Maybe you’ll learn about a problem more important to your clients than you realized.
Maybe you’ll discover you need to adjust how you engage potential clients by clarifying how you communicate with them.
The more you learn from your “No’s” the more you can close the gap between your Yes to No Ratio!
Consider joining our Outreach Mastery Community of Practice to improve your outreach skills.
Stop Making Goals, Set Intentions Instead
Earlier this year, I decided to stop making goals. I’ve decided to set intentions instead.
This small, but powerful reframing of my mindset has made me feel so much more satisfied, productive and a heck of a lot less anxious!
Why?
Because intentions focus on creating lasting and sustained change. Goals focus on hustling after a temporary and fixed outcome.
Goals can be limiting. Intentions can be much more expansive.
I define a goal as: A predetermined result, arbitrarily chosen to achieve a temporary feeling in a moment in time.
I define an intention as: The desire to create a sustained feeling over time through the development of habits regardless of the ultimate outcome.
The language we’ve been conditioned to use when we want to make a change in our life has always been focused on achieving a tangible “goal”.
What I’ve come to realize is that we really don’t care about the outcome, what we really want is to change how we feel.
Right now you might believe that if you could just make “X” amount more money each year then you’ll feel secure, happy and have the life you’ve always wanted. (Studies have shown most of us won’t feel any happier earning more than $75,000 a year.)
We’ve been taught that we’ll be rewarded with the feeling we desire once we’ve achieved that one fixed outcome.
It’s just not true!
You can start feeling different right now! You don’t have to wait!
Think about the last time you achieved a goal, how long did that feeling you desired really last? Weeks? Days? Hours? Minutes?
I remember years ago when I started working for myself. I recall holding my very first check from my very first client.
It was for $1,000. Within an hour the dopamine hit of my accomplishment started to wear off and I wanted more.
I bet you know exactly what I’m talking about! Once that “high” feeling wore off you started feeling down again.
Maybe you even wanted to start chasing after another goal to get that feeling back like I did!
There’s a reason diets don’t work. It’s because they’re goal-driven, instead of intention driven!
Goals are hits of sugar that make you feel a temporary high.
Intentions are wholesome meals that make you feel satisfied all the time.
Examples of Making Goals v. Setting Intentions
The classic goal every American has been sold is the “American Dream”.
If you work hard enough, you can achieve upward social mobility. You can get married, buy a house, buy more than one car, buy a TV for every room in your house, have two kids, a dog and go on a two-week family vacation each year.
I chased after those goals for years. I achieved several of them, but they didn’t make me happy or feel secure. They felt more like obligations. They were someone else’s dream, not mine.
By the time I reached midlife, I no longer owned a home or a car. I’m divorced without children.
I couldn’t be happier!
Once I stopped chasing those goals, I started living my life with intention.
About a year after my divorce in 2019, I started living out of a bag.
I traveled the world as a nomad. I’m available to help my family and friends anytime they need it. I cured my anxiety!
I no longer wait for some future goal’s promise of happiness. Living my life with intention makes me happy right now in the present moment.
Here are some common goals many of us have created for ourselves that could be reframed as intentions:
Goal: Make a six-figure income three years from now.
Intention: Feel financially secure based on the needs of my current lifestyle. (Try calculating the cost of your ideal lifestyle now.)
Goal: Lose 15 pounds in the next three months.
Intention: Feel healthy, energized and comfortable in my own body.
Goal: Start a business that will be financially sustainable in six months.
Intention: Build a habit of meeting at least one new person each day who might be interested in my product or service.
See the difference?
Goals are what you think you are “supposed to do”.
Intentions are what “feels right” to YOU.
How Goals Can Make You Feel Bad
I was coaching a woman several years ago who wanted to sell 700 tickets to her conference over six months. At the time we spoke, she had sold 10 tickets.
She was a basket case. She told me she had never been more depressed in her life than at that moment. She was even considering leaving her boyfriend (whom she later married!)
Why? Because she chose an arbitrary goal that sounded impressive.
She felt if she didn’t achieve her goal she would be an utter failure.
She literally created an obligation that was a figment of her own imagination that was now making her feel depressed!
Crazy what we do to ourselves, isn’t it??
It was completely out of alignment with how she wanted to feel to say the least.
We started talking about the work she enjoyed doing on this project until this point. I could start seeing her light up as she shared stories about the interesting people she had met over the past year.
We also discussed alternative outcomes. I even told her it was OK if she didn’t do the conference at all. It was a possible outcome if she could allow herself to be open to it.
Within 30 minutes you could see her mood change.
Why? Because she realized she enjoyed the process of meeting new people and it didn’t matter how many people showed up at her conference.
Do you know what was most impressive to me? She had already sold 10 tickets six months in advance when she had never hosted a conference before, had zero traffic coming to her website and no email list!!
She already made something from nothing because of her habit of meeting new people!
Intentions Build Habits, Goals Don’t
Trust me, you don’t want whatever your goal is.
You want to make a change in your life and that comes from changing your habits.
Goals deny you other possible outcomes.
Intentions focus on changing your mindset and habits every day, so you can change how you feel moment by moment and be open to possibility.
Goals feel like an obligation. Intentions feel like an invitation to explore.
Chasing goals makes you feel like you are never enough. Intentions empower you to be yourself.
Intentions motivate you to be more curious. Goals ruthlessly make you feel like you have to find the “right answer” or the “right way” of doing whatever it is you are trying to achieve.
Goal setting is a relic of the old way of working. Setting intentions will help you thrive for how work is changing.
I’ve read hundreds of biographies about philosophers, artists, scientists, writers and inventors throughout the ages. Most of them didn’t set goals. They all set intentions. Every single one of them!
If you want to create real and lasting change in your life, you need to focus on the development of your habits.
Start by setting intentions.
I may not be an advocate of goals, but I’m not advocating sitting around on your butt either! Making a big change in your life takes focus and effort.
I’m merely suggesting the method of achieving the big change you want using intentions may be much more productive and enjoyable than enslaving yourself to a specific goal!
Special thanks to our Fall 2019 Accelerator members who got me thinking more about goals v. intentions!
I’m now setting an intention to no longer use the word “goal” in any of our materials, but to use “intention” instead. If I do, please call me out!
Get encouragement for setting your intentions when you join one of our Communities of Practice.
How To Judge Yourself And Others Less
How many times do you think you judge yourself or other people in a day?
In January 2020, I decided to do a 30-day experiment to observe how and why I judge myself and others.
I started the experiment by first bringing awareness to each time I judged myself or another person (even in my own thoughts!)
During my first day, I could barely keep up with all my judgmental thoughts, actions and statements! At times, I felt as if the majority of my thoughts were judgy!
It was as if my brain was scanning for opportunities to judge (and it was as I would discover later on in my experiment)!
Observations About My Judging Behavior
I have to admit, after a month of observing how and why I judge, it was hard not to judge myself for being so judgy!!
Here are the key observations I made:
I misjudged how I often I judge! There wasn’t an hour that went by that my brain didn’t want to judge something.
My judgy behavior said more about me than the people or actions I judged. Reframing my perspective about why I judged helped me learn a TON about myself!
I was classifying people according to my personal standards and what I believed was the “only right way” to behave. Remember, the only “right way” is the right way for YOU!
More of my judgy thoughts than I care to admit were petty and would be hurtful if I said them out loud.
I’m way more concerned about my appearance than I realized.
When I judge, it’s not the truth, I’m just making assumptions.
Comparing myself to others is a default measure of success that only makes me feel bad about myself.
My brain is kind of a jerk! (Oops! I just judged myself!)
Ugh! Am I really a horrible, insecure, needy and weak person?
Nope! I’m just being human like the rest of us!
Why I Did This Experiment
I’m constantly seeking ways to conserve my limited energy, so I can use it with maximum impact. I work for myself after all and I want to make the best use of my energy!
I had a sneaking suspicion that my judging behavior was a drain on my energy because it’s a negative, low-vibe form of energy. I wanted to put a stop to it!
For clarification, when I use the term “judge” I’m referring to making a comparison between my behavior and the behavior of another person. I’m either judging them against myself or vice versa.
When I use the term “judgment” I’m referring to making a comparison between my behavior and my values. I’m using my values as the standard of comparison and not the behavior or values of another person.
How do you know if you’re “judging”?
Ask yourself, “Would I say this out loud to the person I’m judging?”
And if you’re judging yourself, ask, “Would I ever say this to one of my friends or family members?”
As you might have experienced, constantly comparing yourself to others or judging them against your standards is a huge energy drain. It’s a major downer.
Yet, it’s one of the most common behaviors I see among the people I’m trying to help work for themselves. They can’t help but constantly compares their progress against other solopreneurs.
Even if it temporarily makes you feel good about yourself, you’re getting that ego boost at the expense of another person.
I’ve realized living life in alignment with your values requires significantly less energy!
You’ll never feel enough when you compare yourself to others.
You can feel your fullest self when you realize you’re already enough!
How To Judge More Effectively
The first step to judging less is recognizing we are hardwired to judge.
That’s right! You’re born to judge!
Back in our hunter-gatherer days, making snap judgments was key to our survival. Giving our trust or respect to someone else was often a life-and-death decision!
We had to constantly scan our environment for threats and we worried about getting kicked out of our tribe for not measuring up!
In our present existence, we’re not under constant threat, so we have the choice to choose how we judge.
When we let our brain fire off judgments with abandoned, we get distracted. We waste our limited attention and energy.
Do you really want to waste your attention on judging someone’s outfit or redirect it back to focusing on growing your business?
Here are some recommendations on how to judge more effectively:
#1 Bring awareness to each time you judge to understand what you can learn from your default judging behavior. What do you judge frequently? Why do you think you do it?
#2 Learn about yourself when you make a judgment. Ask yourself, “If I had to get real honest with myself, what is this really saying about what I want to change about myself?”
#3 When you compare yourself to others, remind yourself to compare your behaviors or accomplishments against your core values instead. Sure, lots of people around you are successful, but is their version of success going to make you happy?
#4 Conserve your limited energy and attention to focus on improving your life and work instead of focusing on others. Leo Tolstoy once said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves.”
#5 When you judge, you make an assumption. Test your assumptions by asking questions, so you don’t miss opportunities!
Don’t judge yourself for judging!
We all do it, but use it to your advantage to conserve your energy and to learn more about yourself as you build your business!
Enroll in our 12-Week Self-Assessment Challenge to learn more about yourself, so you can design work that works for you!
Organize Your To Do List By Maximizing Your Energy
Have you ever tried to organize your to-do list by maximizing your available energy?
I used to feel so drained, overwhelmed and even bummed at the end of my workdays because I felt like I wasn’t getting as much done as I thought I could.
Ever feel like that?
I felt like I could never keep up let alone get ahead.
I was tired of feeling this way, so I chose to reframe my approach to my to-do list by deciding to:
A) Get realistic with my limited energy by reserving the work that matters most for my peak performance period.
B) Get clear on my Why to prioritize the tasks most likely to have the greatest impact on my work and to reduce busywork.
C) Savor my accomplishments at the end of each day to honor the work I created and to realize I did enough.
There are several ways to organize your to-do list by maximizing your energy.
Here are three experiments you can try:
#1 MONO TASK
Multitasking might make you “feel” like you are getting a lot done, but it requires more energy than “mono-tasking”.
Your brain quite literally operates as a “one-track mind”. It can only give attention to one conscious action or thought at a time.
Multitasking gives you the illusion of doing two or more things at once, but in reality, your brain is switching super fast between each activity.
Try experimenting with mono-tasking by first organizing your to-do list by related task types.
Next, schedule blocks of time to work exclusively on one specific task type.
For example, I used to schedule all of my podcast interviews on Tuesdays only. My mind was in interview mode all day long, conserving my energy to conduct higher-quality interviews.
During my peak performance period between 7am and 11am I work on my writing projects like blog posts, trainings or our Weekly Reflection Reminder.
Try experimenting with mono-tasking by theming your mornings and afternoons by task type for one week.
#2 ORGANIZE YOUR TO-DO LIST BY THE QUALITY OF YOUR ENERGY
Organize your to-do list by the energy required for you to complete each task.
Tasks that require greater focus and attention, take more energy to complete compared to those that don’t require your full attention.
Determine how much energy each task requires:
High Energy
Moderate Energy
Low Energy
A high-energy task for me is any type of content creation. It requires my full focus and sharpest attention.
Moderate energy tasks for me include conducting a podcast interview, brainstorming ideas or meetings. I naturally have a lot of energy for social situations. Social tasks still require focus, but I don’t need to concentrate as much as I do when I write.
Low-energy tasks are generally more administrative for me like responding to email, planning or scheduling meetings.
We’re all uniquely productive, so different tasks might require different amounts of energy for you than they do for me or for one of your colleagues!
This method of organizing your to-do list is all about making the best use of your available energy, so you can keep getting stuff done in alignment with how you are feeling in the moment.
#3 GO WITH YOUR GUT
I know this might sound radical, at least it was for me when I first tried it, but try abandoning your to-do list for one day and go with your gut!
Why?
I have discovered when I use this approach, I often get more done using less energy, but also feel more energized too!
Honestly, my brain likes to create extra work I don’t really need to do, which often ends up on my to-do list.
My to-do list also feels like an annoying boss, who makes me feel like I’m never getting enough done.
As I’ve learned to trust my gut, I know I’m getting more of what really needs to get done that will have the greatest impact on my business.
It also reminds me of what energizes me and what makes my work fun for me.
As a recovering perfectionist and overachiever, I highly recommend waking up one day this week and just letting your gut decide what you are going to do hour by hour.
If nothing else, you are going to learn a TON about yourself very quickly and in the best of ways!
Learn more about yourself than ever before when you enroll in our 12-Week Self-Assessment Challenges.
Settle Your Mind Without Meditating
Would you like to settle your mind?
Maybe you feel overwhelmed by a chaos of thoughts?
When you feel this way, how many times has someone suggested, “Have you tried meditating?”
Meditation is a great option for settling down your mind, but it’s not for everyone.
Maybe you’ve tried it, but it just didn’t do it for you.
That’s OK!
Meditation isn’t the only way to settle your mind!
I now regularly meditate, but it took me many years before I turned it into a daily practice.
Honestly, I just didn’t get what all the fuss was about when I first tried it!
It actually made me feel even more anxious and my mind actually felt less settled every time I tried it!
I kept trying to do it the exact way someone else told me to do it. Stuff like:
Let go of your thoughts.
Create space between your thoughts.
It’s OK to let your thoughts arise.
Focus on your breath.
Repeat a mantra.
Lay down.
Sit down.
Do yoga.
Listen to a guided meditation.
Observe the sounds around you.
I thought the goal of meditation was to get out of my head, but everyone’s advice made me get into my head even more!
Looking back, I recall the first time I was aware that my mind felt truly calm and settled.
It occurred when I went downhill skiing.
I’m not kidding!
Nothing else was on my mind except being in the flow of flying down the mountain.
I felt so calm and peaceful at the end of my run. I wanted to feel like that even more!
Instead of asking you if you’ve ever meditated, I think the more effective question is “What have you done in the past to get your mind off something?”
I believe the goal of meditation is to find inner peace within yourself.
What makes you feel calm?
The first step toward that goal is recognizing that your mind is overactive.
It’s constantly stimulated and processing all the information it receives from your senses. Scientists believe one of the roles of sleep is to help our brain process all of the information it consumes during each day.
While you’re awake, your brain might be consuming more than it’s able to process, making you feel unfocused and stressed out.
Sometimes your mind feels like it’s being pulled in all different directions, except for the one you want it to go!
The second step is doing something that gets your mind off the trigger, situation or thought loop that is making you feel distracted and anxious. Try activities like:
Going for a walk or run.
Losing yourself in your favorite hobby.
Indulging yourself with a nap.
Doing some chores.
Talking to a friend or family member about something of interest to them.
Doing a favor for someone.
The process of learning how to settle down your mind involves recognizing that you have the ability to do it in whatever way works for you.
As you get better at settling down your mind, you’ll become more curious about developing your own unique meditation practice that helps you cultivate and maintain your inner peace.
You might think sitting in silence is impossible right now, but as you learn to settle down your mind more and more, it will get easier.
There is no one right way to settle your mind, the only right way is the right way for YOU!
When To Quit Your Job To Start Your Business
How do you know when to quit your job to start your business and work on it full time?
When it feels right to you!
Conventional wisdom will tell you to quit your job to start your business when:
You have at least three to six months worth of savings or more.
Your side business has more business than you can handle working a full-time job.
Your business is earning enough money to cover your basic monthly expenses.
I don’t want to downplay the financial considerations. From my experience working with hundreds of aspiring solopreneurs over the past decade, the majority of people don’t leave their jobs once their financial targets have been met.
They leave when they feel the time is right for them independent of their financial situation.
I’ve worked with people who have more than a year’s worth of savings. However, they still didn’t feel like the time was right to leave their job.
If you are still concerned about building your financial runway, here are some alternative methods for saving money without a budget on one of our podcasts.
When does it feel right to quit your job to start your business?
Only you will know when it feels right.
I know that’s probably an annoying answer!
You’ll know when you have a strong sense of clarity and confidence to finally commit 100% to your business. You’ll feel it in your gut.
Most people are more comfortable starting their business on the side until it generates enough revenue to justify leaving their job.
For others, they need to go all-in on their business from the start. They need to eliminate the distraction of full-time employment as soon as possible.
Everyone’s circumstances are different. Again, only you will know when it feels right for you to quit your job to start your business.
Here are some common feelings people experience when they know the time is right for them:
#1 Can no longer endure a toxic work environment
Any abuse or hostility you’re experiencing in your current job from your boss, colleagues or clients may be part of the motivation to become your own boss.
Definitely exit your toxic work environment as soon as you’re able! Don’t start your business by looking at it as an escape from your bad work situation. You don’t want to start your business off on the wrong foot!
If your work life is extremely unhealthy, consider getting another job first. Before you commit to working full-time on your business allow yourself to heal emotionally.
#2 Fear of starting your business gets weaker and weaker
Believe it or not, the fear that has been preventing you from starting your business might finally be overcome by the stronger emotion of feeling drained, undervalued or unheard by your employment situation.
Somehow going out on your own will suddenly seem less risky or worth the risk than clinging onto a steady paycheck that is sucking the life out of you!
#3 Financial confidence
You might have a savings goal to expand your emergency fund well beyond three months or set a sales goal you want your business to hit before you even consider leaving your job.
However, your financial goals may not align with your feeling of financial confidence.
For example, you may not be close to realizing your financial goals, but you might have built up your financial confidence to leave sooner because you have gained experience running your business and have cut your personal expenses.
You realize that by leaving your job, you will have an enormous boost of extra attention, energy and time to focus on growing your business faster.
On the other hand, you might hit your financial goals or even exceed them.
Even when you achieve these goals you realize you still don’t have the financial confidence to go all-in on your business. Somehow your business might still feel “untested” or there’s still a nagging doubt you need to resolve.
#4 Stretched too thin
There might come a time when you’re working so much on your side business it almost becomes a full-time job while you still have a full-time job!
If you feel like you are on the verge of burnout, it’s time to reflect on what it will take to let go of your job.
#5 Hiding your true self
You feel like it takes more and more energy to put up your facade at work.
You grow more tired of being someone you know you no longer want to be.
It gets harder and harder to not speak your truth, especially when you know it won’t be appreciated by your colleagues.
That’s the moment you know you’ve started identifying more with your business than your job.
#6 Desire to get laid off
You wish your manager would just lay you off. Somehow you know it’s time to leave your job, but it would be so much easier if someone else made that decision for you.
You fantasize about it with greater frequency. When you hear rumors about layoffs in your company you consider volunteering. The idea of collecting unemployment as you continue to build your business sounds more ideal than staying employed.
#7 No longer in the loop of office gossip
The moment you opt out of the office rumor mill is your first step out the door. You decline invites from your co-workers for lunch or happy hour.
You’re leaving your work tribe to build your new tribe around your business.
#8 Caring less about what your colleagues think
You barely tried to hide the fact that you’re working on your business during office hours. Colleagues think they are looking out for you by telling you about new opportunities for you within the organization, but your response is unenthusiastic.
They may even let you know that people are talking behind your back about your changed attitude and your appearance of slacking off. You listen, but no longer care.
#9 Strong emotional reactions
You get easily triggered in ways you didn’t expect by an off-the-cuff remark by a colleague, by a task your boss asks you to perform or by one of your workplace pet peeves.
You’re caught off guard by your strong reaction, yet not all that surprised. Your sensitivity makes you aware you can no longer take working at your job.
#10 Growing tension in your heart
The tension between the work you feel like you “have to do” versus the work you “want to do” grows to the point you can feel physical tension in your chest.
You feel anxious, easily distracted or exhausted. Your desire for your work freedom can no longer be repressed.
As excited as you may be about quitting your job to start your business, deep down inside you may always need to give yourself time to grieve the loss of your job.
When you make the significant decision to finally work for yourself, you are stepping into a new identity and you’re leaving the old one behind.
Give yourself a moment to reflect and let go.
What are you feeling?
If you’re experiencing three or more of the above feelings, it might be time to do some self-reflection on your exit strategy from your job.
If you need to stick it out a little longer for financial reasons, think of your job as one of your “investors”. It’s providing you with a source of funding, so you can continue to build your business on your terms.
When the funding from your job is getting in the way of generating more revenue from your business, then it’s time to quit your job to start your business!
Need some clarity or accountability? Consider joining one of our Communities of Practice.
Work Remotely On Your Terms By Experimenting
Are you trying to figure out how to work remotely effectively?
You may have already scanned through loads of other blog posts seeking recommendations.
The web has been littered with remote work tips and tricks since the COVID-19 pandemic forced many of us to work from home.
In my humble opinion, they provide a “corporate perspective” on how you should work remotely.
They don’t offer any advice on taking advantage of the biggest opportunity remote work offers you.
Discovering how you really like to work and what makes you feel uniquely productive!
We’ve all dreamed of not having a boss, so don’t squander this opportunity by asking to be told how to work!
There’s no one right way to work remotely, only the way that feels right to you!
Why Working Remotely Is So Hard
You’re not alone if you are struggling to work remotely.
It’s hard for a variety of reasons.
Anything new is challenging.
Think about the last time you learned something new.
What did it feel like when you first tried it?
How long did it take for you to get the hang of it?
If you started working remotely as a result of the pandemic, your work life was turned upside down.
In an instant, you were asked to work in a completely different way with no guidance. So, of course, you find it challenging!
Working remotely takes practice like any other skill.
The choice was made for you.
Fans of remote work choose to work in this way, myself included. They had time to transition from working in an office to working from home.
They had the luxury of getting comfortable with it over a period of time.
Those who are less than enthusiastic about it had the choice made for them instantaneously by the pandemic. No one likes to have the rug pulled out from under them.
I constantly remind people that remote work during the pandemic is not a fair assessment of what remote work is really all about.
We haven’t been taught to manage ourselves.
As much as we like to think we’ve had autonomy over how we work, the pandemic made many people realize how horrible they are at managing themselves!
Maybe you feel that way.
Most of us are so bad at managing ourselves because we’ve never been taught how to do it. We’ve been taught to defer to authority figures and to “follow the directions.”
Even now, you’re seeking direction for how to work remotely.
You’re grasping for the familiar.
The structure you relied upon to organize the rhythm of your workday was wiped out. All your routines, social cues, habits and influences have been erased or severely compromised.
Work as you know it died. You’re suffering a loss and you need to grieve it.
In an attempt to feel “normal,” you are unknowingly trying to grasp for the familiar by trying to recreate your office at home, but you can’t.
It’s lonely.
I’ll admit, working remotely during the pandemic is definitely the loneliest version of remote work I’ve experienced in the last 25 years.
Funny how we used to complain about spending more time with our co-workers than our family. Now the opposite is true! You may be happy or unhappy about that!
Again, pandemic aside, remote work doesn’t have to be lonely if you don’t want it to be. It gives you the choice to design your optimal social needs for your work.
Your work is valued differently.
Like it or not, most of the work we do in offices is valued based on how much we are “seen in the office.”
Now that you are working from home, your work is more likely to be valued on results, outcomes or deliverables.
It no longer matters how long it takes for you to get something done. You don’t have to fill an arbitrary 8-hour day to demonstrate your value. You just gotta get your work done, regardless of how long it takes.
When I first started working from home, I noticed how much more quickly I was getting my work done. I felt guilty, so I just did more work to fill up my day!
Eventually, I realized, I only had the mental capacity to do around four hours of quality knowledge work each day (the same is true for most people). If I was getting what needed to get done during that time, then good for me!
Don’t work out of insecurity, instead focus on the value you create for your company.
Work Remotely Experiments You Can Try Right Now
Make working from home easier by giving yourself permission to experiment with different ways of working.
Stop trying to align yourself with the rhythms of your corporate master and start honoring your own personal productivity needs.
Start by making a list of your biggest struggles, moments during the day when you feel the most resistance and anything that annoys you.
Pick one and explore ways to make your work align with your needs.
Here are some experiments you might consider.
#1 Dress How You Want To Feel
Most articles about remote work recommend getting dressed professionally each day.
What if that doesn’t make you feel energized or motivated?
What if you discover you’re getting more work done in less time while hanging out in your PJs?
One of our past Accelerator members, Jordin James, says she thrives off the freedom of being able to work in her pajamas whenever she feels like it!
Dress how you want to feel, not to impress.
If you thrive off the feeling of getting dressed up like you are heading into the office every day, go for it!
If you’ve never really thought about how your dress affects your mood, experiment!
You might discover you prefer to dress in different ways based on different work activities, like working in solitude versus being on a team video call.
#2 Design Your Workday Around Your Peak Performance
Most people struggle with working remotely because they don’t know how to organize their day.
Try organizing your day around your “peak performance period“. It’s the foundation of my workday. I design my ideal workday around it.
Mine is between 7 am and 11 am.
I’ve learned to reserve my most important work for this special time of the day when I feel the greatest clarity.
I can get my work done faster and of much higher quality.
Working remotely encourages you to reflect on your own unique performance cycle, rather than expending energy trying to align yourself with the rhythms of your co-workers.
When do you have your sharpest mental clarity and maximum physical energy?
Not sure? Discover your peak performance period now.
The more you align your work with your specific peak performance cycles, the more value you will produce and the saner you’ll feel.
#3 Observe Your Kids
If you happen to have kids, observe how they are dealing with distance learning or getting their homework done.
Their struggles are often your struggles. Like it or not, they hold up a mirror to some of your own behaviors.
As you observe what helps them focus or gets them distracted, reflect on what makes you feel focused or gets you distracted.
Instead of “parenting” your kids about how to get their work done, engage in a conversation with them about it. Ask them how you can help them or what could make doing their schoolwork more fun.
Don’t be afraid to share your struggles with them too, no matter how old they are! Ask them for their recommendations. They’ll appreciate feeling heard and you’ll be surprised by their insights!
If you don’t have kids, try “parenting” yourself. If you were advising your younger self, what would you recommend?
#4 Your Ideal Work Environment
You’re no longer stuck in your office, so what does your ideal work environment look like?
Take advantage of the blank canvas before you!
Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself:
How much light do I need?
How much background noise is tolerable?
What is my preferred temperature?
Do I like to move to different locations throughout the day?
Do I want to listen to music?
What physical objects in my immediate surroundings energize me?
What stimuli drain my energy?
How does clutter affect my ability to focus?
Do I want to sit or stand?
How much social interaction do I need?
Be honest with yourself! Experiment with a few ingredients first. As you become more aware of your preferences, make adjustments.
Check out our 12-Week Self-Assessment Challenge to help you design your ideal workday!
#5 Your Get Started Routine
Starting your working day remotely can be tough! Am I right?!
Your day used to start with a commute, but now what’s your new ritual for starting your workday?
Here are some suggested rituals to try:
Go for a 30-minute walk. When you return home that’s your cue to start your workday.
Designate a physical area in your home for work only. The moment you walk into that area, your workday begins.
Work somewhere outside your home to mimic a “commute”. Even if it’s just for the morning.
Try a morning meditation to clear your head before you start to work.
Enjoy one of your hobbies for an hour before you dive into work.
Take a few moments to make a plan for your day.
#6 Don’t Dive Right Into Email
Try dedicating the first hour of your workday to your most important work or the work that makes you feel most energized.
When you dive right into your email, you are unknowingly asking other people to tell you what to start working on.
Make yourself and the work you enjoy most your top priority!
#8 Your End Of Day Ritual
As hard as it might be to get your day going, it’s often just as hard to know when to stop working when you work from home.
Experiment with setting a firm deadline. You might even set an alarm.
At the end of your day, instead of wishing you crossed off more items from your to-do list, take a moment to savor all of your accomplishments instead.
To close out your day, you also might want to write a brief plan for your next day. Identify your priorities, so you can get into your groove more quickly the following morning.
Schedule a short meeting with yourself to reflect on your highlights and lowlights for the day. Think about adjustments you might make to improve your mindset, habits and productivity.
#9 Best Breaks For You
You probably benefited from a lot of different social cues when you worked in the office to let you know when to take a break.
Taking breaks is crucial for sustaining your motivation, but they are easy to forget when you’re working on your own.
Beware of taking unproductive breaks like going down a YouTube rabbit hole, getting sucked into social media or reading news articles designed to press your emotional buttons. These kinds of breaks are akin to eating junk food.
When you feel the temptation of taking one of those unproductive breaks, it’s your brain’s way of telling you, “It’s time for a break!”
Here are some more productive breaks to try:
Enjoy a cup of tea.
Meditate for 5 or 10 minutes.
Do a quick house chore for 15 minutes.
Call a friend and chat for 20 minutes.
Walk around the block.
Add a few pieces to a puzzle you are working on.
Try a creative outlet like an adult coloring book, doodling or dancing like no one’s watching!
As your brain gobbles up information throughout the day, give it a chance to digest by taking healthy breaks.
When you do, you’ll feel more refreshed. When you don’t you’ll feel more overloaded.
#10 Pomodoro Technique
You may have heard of the Pomodoro time management technique before, but have you tried it?
Break up your day into 25-minute increments, taking a 5-minute break in between each “Pomodoro.” Below is the official video for how to use the Pomodoro Technique.
Experiment with varying lengths of time and frequency of breaks to discover your optimal rhythm.
Personally, I run a 30-minute loop of the theme music from Lost as my unique version of the Pomodoro Technique!
#11 Friday Feels
Try liberating yourself from your to-do list one Friday and only do the work you “feel” like doing!
Abandon all your “shoulds” and just feel your way through the day. Start your day without an agenda. Take a deep breath. Do the first task that pops into your head that excites you!
Don’t judge whether or not it’s a priority! Just do what makes you feel inspired. After finishing your first task, take a break. Then decide what you feel like working on next.
At the end of the day, review what you accomplished. Reflect on how you felt about approaching your work in this way. You might be surprised by how much you get done without feeling overwhelmed!
#12 Automate That
What boring, monotonous tasks are you doing over and over again as part of your daily work?
There’s probably an app for it!
Again, since no one is looking over your shoulder as you work from home, figure out ways to get your work done faster using automation.
Here are some common automation’s you might want to try:
Start spending more time on the work you enjoy and less on the stuff that makes you miserable!
#13 Move Your Body
There’s no need to feel chained to your desk any longer!
Your body was designed to move, not to sit for hours on end! Experiment with different ways to move your body in different ways throughout the day.
During your breaks, take walks, stretch, bike, garden, jump rope, do yoga or get a house chore done that makes you exert yourself a bit.
Even as you work, hold and move your body in different ways beyond sitting. Try standing for part of your day as you work. Walk and talk during some of your phone calls. Sit on an exercise ball to strengthen your core!
Moving your body more will help you burn off anxious energy, boost your endorphins to help you manage your stress levels and keep your mind more clear.
#14 Make Your Work More Playful
Ever feel like you’ve been taught that work can only be considered “work” if it makes you obligated or miserable?
It doesn’t have to be that way! I’m not suggesting your work is going to be rainbows and unicorns every day, but working from home offers you the opportunity to make your work more enjoyable!
Remind yourself of your childhood. What types of activities motivated you to take action because you enjoyed them? Are there any elements from these activities you can incorporate into how you approach your work?
You can also experiment with gamifying your work. Here are nine ideas you can try.
When I have a few tasks I’m unmotivated to do, but need to get done, I turn them into a “beat the clock challenge.” I set the timer on my phone for 20 minutes to see if I can complete the tasks before the timer goes off.
I find this technique particularly useful when tackling email, so I don’t get sucked into my inbox longer than is necessary!
The next time you feel resistance to accomplishing one of your work tasks, stop and ask yourself, “How could I make doing this task more fun?”
#15 Mono Tasking
Think you are a great “multi-tasker”? I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing!
Studies have shown your brain can only focus on one thought at a time. If you feel like you are doing two actions at once, your brain is simply switching your attention back and forth super quickly.
You might think you’re saving yourself time, but you are actually depleting your brain’s limited energy more quickly. Rapid switching of attention between two different tasks is a huge energy drain!
Converse your brain’s energy and get more done in less time by mono tasking. Focus only on getting the same type of task done at any one given time.
For example, I only scheduled interviews for our podcasts on Tuesdays. By keeping my brain in “interview mode” that day, I could easily record up to six interviews and sometimes eight!
There are several different tasks involved in the production of each podcast episode. I needed to find guests, schedule the interviews, record the interviews, edit the interviews, write the show notes, share on social media, etc.
I group related tasks at different times of the month. I never perform all the tasks for the same episode on the same day or even the same week!
If I did, I would be asking my brain to switch between all different kinds of tasks. Even though they are related to the same podcast episode, it would be an inefficient use of my energy.
I often tackle administrative tasks on Mondays. I generally write blog posts (like this one), trainings and coaching emails in the mornings during my “peak performance period“.
Take a look at your to-do list. See if you can categorize your tasks and then schedule time blocks to complete those tasks.
Remote Work Is Here to Stay
I know we all fantasize about going back to “normal.” To some degree, things will eventually go back to the way they were before the pandemic, but many things won’t.
The pandemic has changed how we work. Working in an office and working remotely aren’t mutually exclusive.
They are both valid options and need to be evaluated differently by every company and by each individual.
I’m hoping our mass experiment with remote work has made you realize that you have more control over how you get to work than you may have realized.
I referred to the pandemic in terms of the changing nature of work as “The Great Reflection“.
I encourage you to keep finding ways to make your work, work for you!
Learn more about how to create work that works for you by enrolling in our 12-Week Self-Assessment Challenge.
Considering Going Back To School? Answer These 4 Questions First
So you’re thinking about going back to school?
Over the past several weeks I’ve been corresponding with people thinking about going back to school.
Maybe you are or you know someone who is.
Change is certainly in the air in these chaotic economic times we’re living through!
The first question I ask them is “Why?”
I’m always encouraging people to learn new things and to improve themselves.
Life-long learning is no longer an option if you want to make your career more resilient.
BUT “going back to school” may not give you what you’re seeking.
Most of the people I coach really don’t want to “go back to school”.
What they really want is to fundamentally change how they feel and think about their work.
“Going back to school” won’t help you do that.
Not only will it not help you do that, but it’s also helping you avoid finding out what you really want to do with your life and how you want to work.
When you’re not quite sure what you want to do, but you know it’s no longer what you’ve been doing, “going back to school” seems like a safe bet.
It’s a socially acceptable excuse to duck out of the workforce to “find yourself”.
Trust me, there are much less expensive ways to explore your life options! (See below.)
You’re not going back to school for yourself, you’re going back to school because you think it’s what others expect of you.
You don’t want to appear directionless and lost, but those feelings won’t leave you even when you try to hide them behind in school.
Don’t make the same mistake I did!
I should know! I pursued an MBA two years after I was laid off.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I figured I’d go back to school to make it look like I knew what I was doing!
It cost me $50,000 and two years of my life!
I learned more about business by starting my own business after “going back to school”!
I wish someone sat me down and had the chat I’m trying to have with you right now via this blog post!
4 Questions To Ask Yourself
Before you “go back to school” I want you to ask yourself the following questions:
#1 How much will it cost?
A typical master’s degree in the U.S. goes for between $35,000 and $70,000.
Do you really want to get yourself into that much debt?
How much are your living expenses?
How long will it take to pay off?
How much will it bump up your annual income?
Evaluate getting a master’s degree like you would any other investment.
#2 How susceptible is the profession you’re pursuing to automation and AI?
Over the next decade, many white-collar professions will be more susceptible to automation and AI than blue-collar work, so you may be preparing yourself for fewer work opportunities.
#3 How many people in the profession you want to get a master’s degree in have you talked to?
Make a list of people you know doing what you want to do and ask them if they think it’s a good idea if you get a master’s or if there are other options.
If you don’t know anyone, then find people to talk to!
You’re about to take on $50,000+ years of debt, so you need to do your due diligence!
Ask them about trends affecting their profession.
Ask them what they like and don’t like about their work.
Ask them about the pros and cons of getting a master’s.
Get better informed by people in the real world if you aren’t already!
#4 What’s the feeling you really want to change in your life?
Write down how you feel right now and then write, how you would like to feel after getting your master’s.
Make a list of options beyond school that may help you achieve your desired feeling (see below).
In previous recessions, “going back to school” made so much sense, it was rarely questioned.
Going forward, due to the skyrocketing costs of traditional education and the rapid adoption of automation/AI, “going back to school” needs to be more deeply scrutinized.
I was actually one of the fortunate ones among my fellow MBA classmates. I treated school more like an incubator to test a variety of business ideas.
I wanted my freedom (so did they) but too many of them ended up taking conventional jobs.
Sure, the jobs they landed paid better than the ones they had before getting their MBA, but the money wasn’t enough to numb the feeling that drove them to “go back to school” in the first place!
They were right back where they started, just with more debt!
I’m not saying don’t go back to school (and there are many professions in which a degree is unavoidable). I just want you to make sure you go into it with your eyes WIDE open!
Alternatives To School
“So, Stephen, if I don’t go back to school, what should I do?”
Fair question, I thought you might ask that!
Here are some alternatives that not only provide you with the opportunity to learn new skills, but to explore your feelings about what it is you really want to do! They also cost much less than traditional school!!
Talk to people doing what it is you want to do. Ask them alternative ways to experience the work beyond going to school first (this point is SO important it was worth writing again;)
Experiment. Lean into your curiosity and start doing the work you think you want to do. You don’t need anyone’s permission to start experimenting!
Apprentice yourself to someone. Ask someone if you can be paid enough to pay your bills as they teach you the ropes of their profession.
Take an adult gap year. If you need a cover story about “finding yourself,” tell people you are taking a gap year like college kids do after they graduate to explore and experience your options.
Get support. I think most people like “going back to school” because it provides structure. You can create your own structure by creating an accountability mastermind or your own personal curriculum. Check out our Communities of Practice.
Research alternative education options. There are so many new education programs for a variety of specific skills that are often lower in cost and shorter in duration to help you get a sense of what it is you really want to do.
I just want you to realize you have more options than the default one of “going back to school”.
Don’t BS yourself by getting a BS degree to ignore your true feelings. It costs nothing to start exploring them!
How to Overcome Overwhelm As You Start Your Business
Learning how to overcome overwhelm is an essential life skill for any startup solopreneur!
Getting overwhelmed is unavoidable! It’s just part of your journey!
“I’m overwhelmed,” was the most frequent statement uttered by our Accelerator members when we ran our 30-day solopreneur startup program!
I remind them, “Feeling overwhelmed is perfectly normal as you get your business off the ground. Don’t avoid it learn from it!”
I’ve been working for myself for 25 years and I still get overwhelmed more than I care to admit.
I still get overwhelmed when:
I’m trying something new and I’m not sure how to get started.
I overestimate the amount of time and energy I have to get all the work I want to get done.
I experience a setback, make a mistake or outright fail.
I have too many ideas and I’m not quite sure which one to focus on.
I say “Yes” more than I should say “No”.
I don’t get enough rest.
I don’t know where or how to get started on a new project.
I receive a lot of negative energy from other people.
I give into my money issues and start to worry about money.
I start comparing myself to others and don’t feel worthy.
I once stayed awake for 36 hours straight (without drugs of any kind) because I was SO overwhelmed by several challenges I was experiencing with my work!
You’d think after 25 years of dealing with overwhelm, it would disappear at some point. It doesn’t!
You just get better at:
Recognizing it more quickly.
Reducing how often it occurs.
Moving through it more productively.
What Feeling Overwhelmed Feels Like
What does feeling overwhelmed feel like to you?
I get a tightness in my chest and sometimes even a pain in my upper left chest.
My mind is almost always racing with a jumble of thoughts or gets trapped in one loop of unproductive thoughts.
Honestly, I feel trapped. I feel like I’ve run out of options or have no options at all.
Sometimes my overwhelm is super intense and other times it passes as soon as it comes on.
The better you understand how you feel when you are getting overwhelmed, the quicker you can do something about it.
Too many people are unaware they are experiencing overwhelm.
They let it take over. As they give into more and more intense feelings of overwhelm, they become more afraid and may even send themselves into a full-blown panic attack (been there and it’s no fun!)
I believe it’s important to also note, overwhelm is not an exclusively “negative” feeling. It can also be a positive one.
People often feel overwhelmed by emotion when they instantly fall into good fortune.
They also get overwhelmed when they experience something they never thought they would like meeting one of their heroes, landing a dream job or finding their soulmate.
Your Body’s Stop and Reflect Response
Feeling overwhelmed is a good thing. That’s right!
It’s your body’s way of paying attention when you’re not paying attention.
Those feelings of overwhelm are your body’s way of communicating with you. It’s telling you to, “Stop. Slow down. We’re having trouble keeping up!”
I like to think of feeling overwhelmed as your body’s “Stop and Reflect Response”.
Your body triggers intense emotions to grab your attention. It’s asking you to stop, to reflect and to make a better choice or savor a big moment in your life.
Your body wants you to pay attention when:
You are running low on energy.
Your attention is spread too thin to focus on any one thing.
You are receiving more sensory information than your brain can handle.
You experience physical or emotional pain.
You struggle to comprehend something that has never happened to you before.
You are feeling out of alignment with your values.
When you are faced with an unfamiliar situation or challenge.
When you don’t know when to stop to reflect on your situation, your body will do whatever it takes to stop you in your tracks!
How To Overcome Overwhelm In 5 Steps
Here is a 5 step process for how to overcome overwhelm by paying attention to your needs.
#1 Stop
The first and most important step is to stop. Recognize you are feeling overwhelmed. If you don’t, you are more likely to increase the intensity of the feelings you are experiencing.
Again, it’s important to become aware of what feeling overwhelmed feels like to you, so you can see it coming sooner.
#2 Breathe
When you are feeling overwhelmed, you are less likely to be thinking clearly.
Trigger your body’s natural “Relaxation Response” by taking a deep breath right down into your belly. Then release it slowly. Repeat several times until you feel the intensity of your emotions starting to wane.
From a biological perspective, when you feel overwhelmed, your body’s nervous system is being overloaded. Taking deep breaths reduces arousal in the brain. Your slow breaths, slow down your brain.
The pace of your breath changes your state of mind.
#3 Ask Why?
Once you are no longer feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself, “Why do I feel overwhelmed right now? What do I think caused this feeling?”
Remember, your body makes you feel overwhelmed because it wants you to pay attention to a need that isn’t being met or your brain is being overstimulated.
Give your body what it needs: greater clarity and more information!
#4 Reflect
As you begin to understand what triggered your overwhelm, explore all the different ways you can fully resolve this feeling.
What physical needs weren’t being met? Do you need food? Rest? Water? Cooler or warmer temperature?
Where you overstimulated?
Are there external stimuli like noise or light you need to reduce?
Was your mind racing about particular thoughts?
Did you have too much caffeine?
Were you experiencing too much unfamiliarity?
Your brain LOVES certainty! It craves a sure thing.
If you are trying to make a big change in your life or try something completely new for the first time, there is a high probability your brain is going to trigger your Stop and Reflect Response!
#5 Take a Step
Now that you have a general idea about what made you feel overwhelmed, brainstorm some next possible steps.
Don’t take a big leap. Take a small, manageable step to move you away from your feelings of overwhelm.
This is what your body has been trying to tell you!
Stop, slow down and make a more intentional choice.
Choose to overcome overwhelm instead of riding the wave of overwhelm!
How To Feel Less Overwhelmed
You are definitely going to feel overwhelmed as you try to figure out how to make your work, work for you because you are exploring an unfamiliar path.
See it coming, so you can do something about it!
Here are some ways to overcome overwhelm.
#1 Recognize your comfort zone boundaries.
Take a moment to reflect on common overwhelm triggers. How can you start challenging your limiting beliefs about yourself? How can you start expanding your comfort zone boundaries?
#2 Break down your actions.
How often do you get overwhelmed by starting a big project because you just don’t know where to begin? Start by clearly understanding “why” you need to do this project.
What actions do you need to take? Make a list of them.
Make a list of questions you have about moving forward on your project.
You can’t take all of the required actions at once. What’s the very first action you need to take? Then what’s the next one? Continue from there. It’s really that simple!
#3 Support your mental health.
If you are feeling overwhelmed regularly, stop and ask yourself, “Why?” What can you do about it? What are your choices? What activities can you do to feel more relaxed? How can you settle your mind?
#4 Take care of your physical body.
Your body can take a lot, until it can’t. You will be able to deal with overwhelm SO much more effectively if you regularly get a good night’s sleep, eat healthy foods and move your body.
#5 Learn from overwhelm.
The most common reaction to feeling overwhelmed is to deny it’s happening to you. I’ll admit, it’s made me feel “weak” in the past. I now understand it can make me stronger by getting more curious about it.
Overwhelm can help you understand what’s really holding you back and your options for overcoming challenges facing you.
Too many people are feeling more and more overwhelmed because we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking we need to do everything ourselves. We’re chronically anxious about squeezing the most from every minute of the day.
Want to overcome overwhelm?
Slow down.
Do less.
Do what matters most to you.
Make Time For Self-Reflection (And What Happens If You Don’t)
What do you think happens if you don’t make time for self-reflection?
When you don’t reflect, you live in the default state of “more, faster and better”.
Instead of making choices based on your needs, you make them based on the needs of others or what you think others expect of you.
Sure, you’re running super fast, but are you sure you’re still even headed in the right direction?
As the pace of change in our economy accelerates, it’s tempting to go even faster to try to keep up with it.
I’ve discovered the exact opposite to be true for me!
It will be more important than ever to stop and reflect, so we can respond to the change we face in alignment with our values.
Several studies have also shown that those who self-reflect are more productive, less overwhelmed and happier.
WANT TO WORK ON YOUR TERMS?
Start reflecting more on your life and work!
Making time to reflect weekly helps you live more intentionally.
It helps you understand if you’re still running in the right direction or why you are even moving in that particular direction.
Reflection allows you to listen to your inner voice. The voice that knows what you really want.
Ever made a New Year’s resolution, but abandoned it just weeks later?
If you reflect regularly, you will dramatically increase your chances of making the changes you want to make in your life.
Without reflection, it’s easy to give up on your dreams.
If you want to become less distracted, reflect more. Heck, reflect on what’s distracting you from whatever change it is you want to make and how to minimize it!
When you reflect, you give yourself clarity to understand what you really want to change, how you’re going to do it and how you’ll hold yourself accountable.
HOW TO MAKE TIME FOR SELF-REFLECTION
It’s quite possible you’ve never self-reflected because you didn’t know how to do it or you weren’t quite sure what the heck it even meant to “self-reflect.”
I simply regard self-reflection as a check-in conversation with myself to see how everything is going.
It’s really that simple.
You might have thought self-reflection was a luxury. Maybe you thought it was self-centered or selfish.
It isn’t.
If you want to be there for your loved ones, you need to first be there for yourself.
Self-reflection enables you to check in with yourself, so you can hear yourself think.
Learn to practice self-reflection when you enroll in our 12-Week Self-Assessment Challenge.
Here’s what I want you to do:
First, there’s no one right way to self-reflection. Below are merely guidelines to get you started, but do whatever works for you.
#1 Schedule your reflection time on your calendar.
Make this time a priority as you would for the most important people in your life. Think of this time as having a weekly review meeting with yourself.
Try to schedule an hour or so.
Write down a very short list of circumstances that will prevent you from keeping this meeting like:
family emergency
feeling sick
apocalypse
The easiest meeting to cancel is always the one with yourself. Don’t let it be anymore!
If you want to work for yourself, treat yourself like your most important client because you are.
#2 Pick a location that makes you feel relaxed, inspired and has no distractions.
Make sure your darn phone is off while you reflect;)
Enjoy this special hour once a week to let everything settle down and come to a full stop.
This one hour will help you make more intentional use of the other 167 in the course of your week (including sleeping more soundly).
#3 Choose one thing you’d like to reflect on.
If you haven’t reflected before, just sit alone with yourself and let your mind wander. That’s perfectly fine. We don’t sit with ourselves nearly enough anymore!
To make the most of this special time you might want to reflect on:
Anything that’s bugging you.
A feeling you just can’t shake.
An unfulfilled desire.
A challenge you’d like to overcome.
Savor all the accomplishments from your previous week.
A change you’d like to make.
As you are reflecting, it’s tempting to give into the flood of thoughts in your head, but do your best to also feel how you’re feeling.
I believe you’ll also get so much more from your self-reflection time the more you become aware of your feelings.
Your feelings often provide you with a much clearer sense of direction than the chaos of your thoughts.
The stillness and the silence might seem uncomfortable at first, but just sit with it.
The most powerful insights always occur when everything else slows down.
OUR WEEKLY REFLECTION REMINDER
If you’d like a nudge to remind you to reflect each week, please consider signing up for our Weekly Reflection Reminder if you haven’t already.
We send questions, exercises and advice related to creating work that works for you to reflect on throughout the week.
If you need any help getting your reflection practice going, please contact me.
Make time for self-reflection. OK?
How To Calculate Your Hourly Rate As A Solopreneur
Are you trying to figure out how to calculate your hourly rate as you figure out how to price your services as a freelancer, consultant or coach?
Most likely, you’ve given little thought to your hourly rate because you’ve been paid a salary for most of your career!
Beyond understanding how much to charge your clients, your hourly rate also helps you:
Prioritize your limited time by assigning a financial value to every hour of your workday.
Identify the true financial value of all the tasks required to run your business, so you can free up more of your time by automating or delegating lower-cost tasks.
Appreciate the value of your expertise and not just the value of your time.
You’ll never treat your time the same way again once you calculate your hourly rate!
Basic Hourly Rate Calculation
Let’s get you started with a simple calculation by figuring out your current hourly rate or from your most recent salaried job.
Your Monthly Salary (after taxes) / Hours Worked Each Week (average) =
Your Hourly Rate
If you want to start thinking like a true solopreneur, our calculation isn’t quite done!
From your monthly salary, subtract all expenses that enabled you to do your work like:
transportation (gas for car or fare for bus, subway or train)
childcare
home WiFi (estimated usage when you work from home)
office clothes
eating lunch out
memberships to associations
subscriptions to trade websites
If you’ve been working from home during the pandemic, I’m sure you noticed a drop in some of your expenses!
For your average number of hours worked each week, include time spent working outside of normal work hours and activities to support your work:
commute
working outside of office hours at night and on weekends
networking and happy hours
professional development
even thinking about work!
Now let’s calculate your more accurate hourly rate with this additional information:
(Your Monthly Salary – Expenses) / (Offices Hours + Outside Office Work) =
Your Hourly Rate
What happened to your hourly rate?
Went down, right?
When you start working for yourself, how much money you make each year matters less than your hourly rate.
Your hourly rate helps you prioritize your time, tasks and intentions to help you work more efficiently.
In a video I shared on LinkedIn, I share another exercise to demonstrate the impact your living expenses have on your time. Watch Now
Calculate Your Lifestyle Cost
How much money do you need to live your ideal lifestyle? Not sure?
Download our Lifestyle Calculator now!
As employees, we are taught to ask for higher and higher salaries as a symbol of our advancement and experience.
As a solopreneur, you can reverse engineer your income by calculating how much you really need to earn based on your desired lifestyle needs.
Once you understand how much you really need to earn, then you can calculate how much you really need to work to earn your desired income!
Our Lifestyle Calculator not only includes the cost of your lifestyle needs, but it also includes your business and tax expenses, so you can calculate a more accurate hourly rate.
When you work for yourself, you’ll be paying your taxes on a quarterly basis based on your estimated income.
Accountants will frequently recommend putting aside 30% of your revenue to have enough money to pay your income taxes, especially when you are starting your business.
Calculate Your Solopreneur Hourly Rate
Using our Lifestyle Calculator, you’ll be able to calculate how much more per hour you will be paid as a solopreneur compared to your current hourly rate as an employee.
To find out how much more you can get paid, on the first sheet of the Lifestyle Calculator, scroll down to the section “How Much Do I Need to Earn That?”
It will look like this:
To calculate your solopreneur hourly rate:
#1 Put your current hourly rate into the field to the right of “Deliverable Hourly Rate”.
#2 Then put your years of experience into the field to the right of “Years of Experience”.
#3 Your “Total Hourly Rate” will then be automatically calculated.
In the fields below your Total Hourly Rate, you can see how much time you need to put in to earn your desired income.
If you’re calculating your hourly rate for the first time as a freelancer, consultant or coach, you will most likely undervalue your service.
We’ve designed our Lifestyle Calculator to compensate you for your experience and effort.
To compensate for your experience, we use a broad market rate of a 1% boost per year for each year of experience you have gained.
For example, if you have three years of experience in the service you want to provide, your hourly rate would be increased by 3%.
To compensate for your effort, we apply a 75% increase to your hourly rate to account for all the other work you do to keep your business running outside of the actual delivery of your service.
First-time solopreneurs often think of their “hourly rate” as the rate they are charging for their service, so they only charge for the hours they worked directly for their clients!
They vastly underestimate all the work they do outside of their direct client work. They are forgetting to pay themselves for work like accounting, research, learning new skills, finding new clients, improving their service and administrative tasks.
I want to make sure you avoid that common mistake!
In the same way your employer marks up your hourly rate when charging their clients for your work, you need to cover your administrative costs too!
Calculate Your Client’s Perceived Value
When you are figuring out what to charge for your services, what really matters is how your clients value your offering.
We work with a lot of heart-centered solopreneurs in our Accelerator, who often confuse the value of their service with their self-worth.
I remind them to calculate the value of their service from the perspective of a potential client. I suggest asking themselves questions like:
How much time does your service save your client?
How much money can your service make for your client?
How much time does your client waste on feeling frustrated by the problem you want to help them solve?
Here are two calculations to help you calculate the cost of your service from your client’s perspective.
#1 Calculation: Time Saved = Money Saved
In the course of a month, how much time can you save your client as a result of working with you and your service?
How much is each hour worth to them? How much money do they earn each hour, whether as a company or as an individual?
Simply multiply the number of hours they waste each month by the value of each hour.
Hours Saved X Value of Each Hour = Money Saved
If your client is wasting 10 hours a month on the problem you want to help them solve and each hour is worth $100 to them, then they are wasting $1000 each month by not solving this problem!
You might price your offer at $1000 to work with you over the course of a month. For an investment of $1000, you can help your client save $12,000 a year by solving their problem! Sounds like a good deal to me!
#2 Calculation: Percentage of Earned Income
If your service might help clients earn more money, you might calculate the price of your offer based on taking a percentage of the income you earn for them.
For example, you might be a consultant who proposes taking a 10% revenue share of any new income generated for your client as a result of using your service.
Maybe you’re a money coach helping someone build their wealth. You might offer a 5% share of any new wealth you create for them over the course of a year or a flat fee of $500 to save them a minimum of $5000 over the course of a year.
You will be so much more successful when you take the time to understand how your client values your service, instead of trying to justify your hourly rate.
Don’t Charge Your Hourly Rate
I know I’ve spent this entire blog post teaching you how to calculate your hourly rate.
Now I’m telling you NOT to charge your clients an hourly rate!
Honestly, I’m not trying to confuse you!
If you price your services based on your hourly rate, you will be trading your minutes for dollars. You will only earn income when you spend your time working.
Basically, you are just creating a job for yourself, instead of a business!
Here’s what ends up happening:
You’ll be trapped trying to convince your clients why to pay your hourly rate when it only has meaning for you and not them.
You’ll get burned out! You’ll become resentful for not getting paid for all the work it takes to run your business outside of delivering your service to your clients.
You’ll commoditize your service. If you charge by the hour as too many other freelancers, coaches and consultants do, you will leave your client evaluating your service on price alone, instead of focusing on your unique value and expertise.
When you sell freelance, consulting or coaching services, I highly recommend selling them as “packages,” focused on solving specific problems for your client using the calculations in the previous section.
So why do I want you to understand your hourly rate if I don’t want you to charge your clients that rate?
#1 I want you to understand the value of each and every hour of your day.
This will help you become much more focused on your priorities and will eliminate distractions. As the old adage goes, “Time is money.” Use your time as wisely as you use your money.
#2 I want you to understand different work tasks have different values.
For example, when you are performing routine administrative tasks a virtual assistant (VA) could do for $25/hour or less, doesn’t it make sense for you to do that same work at your higher hourly rate? It may make more sense to hire a VA to free up more of your time to spend on higher-value tasks only you can do!
#3 I want you to be able to increase your profit margin.
Think of your hourly rate as your “cost of goods sold”. It identifies the cost for you to deliver your service. Knowing this information will incentivize you to streamline your process, boosting your profit margin!
My core financial metric for success is my hourly rate.
As it increases, I need to work less, while earning more.
Every time I streamline our services, outsource tasks to others and use automation to make our systems more efficient, I know we are increasing the hourly rate for every member of our team.
Knowing your hourly rate also helps you maintain your focus on building a business that works for your pace without the need to constantly hustle!
How To Get Paid For Being You
Imagine getting paid for just being you?
It’s possible!
When Jeff Harry, a member of our Fall 2019 Accelerator first learned about this concept, he said it blew his mind!
He said, “That’s exactly what I want! I want to be paid for just being myself!”
He even shared this video on LinkedIn about his epiphany.
I want to help you create work that works for you too.
What does that mean?
It means creating work in alignment with your values, needs and abilities.
It means designing your own unique business model around your core habits and strengths.
It means YOU are the starting point of your business, not your customers or even your idea!
Work as it has been taught to you has been designed for the needs of corporations.
Work was never designed for your individual needs as a human being.
Think about it. In our current economic system, you are either referred to as a “human resource” or a “consumer”.
Your being has been reduced to nothing more than input and output to be exploited.
RECLAIM YOUR PERSONAL RESOURCES
Do you know how Big Tech companies became the most valuable corporations in the history of humanity?
They mined human “attention”. They capture your attention, my attention and everyone else’s attention. Then they sell that harvested attention to the highest bidder. (Watch The Social Dilemma if you haven’t already. I insist!)
Your attention is your most valuable and limited resource. Corporations know this, yet we easily let it be stolen from us every day.
Without reclaiming your attention, it’s next to impossible to get paid to be you.
I remind our Accelerator members that they are the first and most important resource of their business. Without you, your idea, your passion, your skills and your effort, your business won’t get off the ground.
When you want to get paid to be you, you first need to reclaim your personal resources of your attention, energy and time.
You need to take full ownership of them. Stop letting them be stolen. Stop thinking they are infinite.
How would you feel if someone stole money from you?
You’d be upset. You’d feel violated. You’d want it back!
Why on earth don’t you treat your attention, energy and time the same way? They are more valuable than your money!
To harness your personal resources, you first need to reclaim your full attention. It enables you to make more productive use of the rest of your personal resources.
To earn money you first need to focus your attention to direct your energy at a specific moment in time to acquire knowledge and to build relationships.
Then you get paid money.
Stop leasing your personal resources to your employer to fulfill their needs.
Harness them to fulfill yours.
WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL PRODUCTIVE?
Too many of us are overwhelmed, anxious and burned out because we’re working out of alignment with ourselves.
You’re so stressed out because you put SO much effort and energy into aligning yourself with the needs of your employer and our economic system.
We’re told how to be more “productive”. Heck, we were taught to “follow the directions”!
There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to productivity!
You want to get paid to be yourself?
Define what it means to be productive for yourself.
Have you ever asked yourself what makes you “feel” productive?
You know what makes me feel more productive?
Doing my most important work before noon every day.
Taking long walks in the afternoon or gardening.
Dropping everything when a family emergency arises.
Giving into cat naps when I need them.
Talking out challenges with my peers.
Reducing the number of decisions I need to make.
Listening to music without lyrics when I write.
Depending less on my to-do list and more on my habits.
Taking at least two months off each year.
Working an average of 5 hours a day.
Imagine if I asked for just three of these needs in a job interview??
Conventional work will never meet my needs, to say the least!
That’s why I decided to create work that worked for me so long ago.
How can you start the process of getting paid to be you?
ASSESS YOURSELF FIRST
Again, if you want to work for yourself, the most important resource in your business is YOU.
The first and most often overlooked step when starting a business is assessing yourself.
I believe most businesses fail because founders, solopreneurs and business owners skip over this crucial step.
They don’t know their strengths, what makes them feel confident or how to deal with distractions of all kinds!
You can’t get paid to be you without knowing yourself for yourself first.
When you choose to work for yourself, you’re hiring yourself.
Unfortunately, you can never fire yourself, so you need to learn how to manage yourself!
The only way to learn how to manage yourself is to first learn what makes you “tick”.
When you choose to work for yourself, you are choosing to explore what makes you feel productive.
Choosing how you like to work has not been a luxury most employers have extended to their employees.
So, the first question I want you to ask yourself is this, “What is the role you want work to play in your life?”
Second question, I want you to ask yourself is this, “Outside of earning money, what motivates you to work?”
If you’re ready to assess yourself now, I highly recommend taking a look at our 12-Week Self-Assessment Challenge.
Each week you’ll receive a new challenge focused on exploring a specific area of your life like managing your energy, understanding your values and learning how you learn.
If you’re sick and tired of working on someone else’s terms and you’re ready to work on your own terms, get started by assessing yourself first.
Honor your values, needs and abilities by creating work that works for you.
As work continues to change as we know it, getting paid for just being yourself, doesn’t just seem like a nice option, it’s fast becoming THE option!
Are you ready to get paid to be YOU?
How To Get Health Insurance When You Work For Yourself
Do you want to work for yourself, but you’re concerned about how to get health insurance?
You’re not alone! It’s one of the most common obstacles holding people back from working for themselves.
Many people hang onto jobs that make them miserable just for the healthcare benefits!
Do you know that only half the U.S. population currently gets health insurance through an employer?
Did you also know that self-employed workers now represent one-third of the U.S. workforce?
Like you, I was also concerned about my health insurance options when I was first laid off in 2000. Here are the highlights of my own personal healthcare insurance journey as a solopreneur:
When I was first laid off in 2000, I continued my employer’s healthcare insurance coverage using COBRA for about a year, which was super expensive!
Between 2001 and 2007 I didn’t have healthcare insurance at times, but for a few years during that period, I purchased a catastrophic healthcare insurance plan that was super cheap, but didn’t cover much!
From 2007 to 2014, I was lucky to be a resident of Massachusetts and benefited from the statewide universal healthcare program implemented there. For the first time, I felt like I had affordable healthcare insurance that covered all of my healthcare needs!
Since 2014 I have purchased my health insurance through Obamacare. You have no idea how much harder and more expensive getting healthcare insurance was before Obamacare as a self-employed worker!
I believe more people would be open to taking the leap into self-employment if they had a better understanding of their health insurance options. Here’s my attempt to get you informed, so you have the confidence to finally go out on your own!
Most Common Health Insurance Options For Solopreneurs
If you are currently employed, I suggest talking to someone in your HR department to understand how much you would have to pay using COBRA. This program enables you to continue your existing healthcare insurance from your employer for a limited time by paying the entire premium on your own, plus a service charge.
Most likely, you will get sticker shock when you see the true cost of your healthcare coverage! However, if you have dependents, an existing medical condition or suddenly lost your job, COBRA gives you peace of mind to continue with your existing healthcare coverage until you figure out your next step.
Your best all-around option for understanding your health insurance options is searching your state’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) healthcare insurance exchange (also referred to as Obamacare). Visit Healthcare.gov to get started.
Before you search for a plan, I highly recommend checking your state’s website to see if you are eligible for discounts and subsidies based on your income. When you are starting your business, every bit of savings helps!
Unfortunately, the cost and quality of health insurance coverage varies from state to state, so I can only speak about my experience as a resident of Massachusetts. I have generally opted for the lowest monthly premiums and highest deductibles known as the “Bronze Plans”. My monthly premiums have crept up over the past several years to over $400.
The annual enrollment period is generally between November and mid-December, but you can enroll at any time of year, if you’ve had a “qualifying-life event” like losing your job.
Family Member’s Insurance
There are a variety of scenarios in which you can secure health insurance through a family member and in some cases as an unrelated domestic partner.
Spouse: If you are married and your spouse has a full-time job, explore the cost of adding you to their plan.
Parent: If you are 26 or younger, you are eligible to remain on your parent’s health insurance plan.
Domestic partner: In some states, counties or cities, domestic partners are legally recognized as two people cohabitating in the same household and are unmarried with certain legal privileges, such as sharing health insurance benefits. Some employers also recognize domestic partners. Check your local laws and the policies of your domestic partner’s employer (if they are open to it of course;) to see if your domestic partnership may help you get health insurance.
Health Insurance Brokers
If you want to explore your health insurance options beyond plans offered by Healthcare.gov, you can purchase plans directly from insurance providers through a health insurance broker. You can start searching for a broker in your area using AngiesList or consider asking The National Association for the Self-Employed for guidance.
Business Associations
If you are already a member of a business association or are considering joining a membership organization serving the self-employed, you may be able to buy health insurance through them. Here are some member associations that offer health insurance:
Alternative Health Insurance Options
Over the past 25 years, I have also relied upon many alternative and unconventional options to meet my healthcare needs outside of conventional health insurance.
My high insurance deductible has incentivized me to constantly seek lower-cost alternatives for specific healthcare needs.
Below is a mix of some of the services I have used and others some of my solopreneur peeps have tried.
Talk to your doctor about your healthcare needs. During the times I didn’t have health insurance, my doctor found ways to keep my costs low. For my office visits, he charged me just 25% of the rate he would for insurance companies (that tells you something right there about the outrageous costs of healthcare!)
To treat a sinus infection, the same doctor once gave me a free Z-Pak! He said a drug rep recently gave him a few samples. Anytime he prescribed medication, he always found the lowest-cost option.
Also, talk to the administrative staff in your doctor’s office to get suggestions about which health insurance they would recommend. They have to deal with them all the time, so they’ll provide insight into which ones will give you the most bang for your buck!
Negotiate a payment plan for large medical costs. Most healthcare providers will let you pay what you can, but you will need to pay consistently. Also, medical debt under $500 no longer affects your credit score as of 2023.
Catastrophic health insurance is an option to consider if you are healthy, have no dependents and are under the age of 30 (offered as part of Obamacare). The monthly premiums are low, but the deductibles are very high. Basically, you are just getting this insurance in case you get into an accident or if you are diagnosed with a serious illness.
Consider buying a traveler’s health insurance policy if you plan on spending extended time abroad working as a digital nomad. The cost depends on your destination, age and length of time you’ll be overseas, so it’s generally much less expensive than staying in the U.S. and paying for health insurance.
Health Savings Account (HSA) could be a good option to supplement your health insurance, especially if you have regular medical expenses or anticipate an upcoming procedure. Think of them as an IRA for health expenses. You can contribute up to $4,150 a year (for individuals as of 2024). HSA gains are tax deductible and withdrawals aren’t taxed when used for valid medical expenses.
First-time patient offers are my go-to move for reducing the cost of my eye and dental exams! Standard annual dental insurance would cost more than two cleaning visits in the course of a year!
Fortunately, I have healthy teeth, so now go to the dentist just once a year. I have paid as low as $60 as a “new patient” for a cleaning, a full set of X-rays and fluoride treatment, which would cost upwards of $150 as a “regular patient”.
I use the same tactic for my annual eye exam! When I need new prescriptions for my glasses, I use Zenni Optical. It now costs less to get a new pair of glasses than when I was a kid! No joke!
Retail medicine is completely changing how I view my healthcare options. Again, I have a high insurance deductible, so barring a hospital stay, I’m never going to hit it. It’s often cheaper and faster for me to get a flu shot, my cholesterol tested or treatment for minor illnesses at a walk-in clinic or a pharmacy like CVS.
Save on drugs costs by buying generic drugs, by getting them from a retailer like Wal-Mart or find coupons on GoodRx.com.
Take your health insurance premiums as a tax deduction! Unlike an employee, you can take them as a tax deduction when you work for yourself!
Check out Care Credit Card for health and wellness expenses. I’ve used it to pay expenses over time with no interest.
How To Choose the Right Health Insurance For You
I’ve given you a lot of different health insurance options to consider because I want you to realize you have far more options than you realized!
You are no longer limited to the handful of options provided by your employer. I want to inspire you to create a health plan that works for you and your budget.
Here are a few key factors to determine the right healthcare plan for you:
#1 Your Health Needs
If you want to work for yourself, your health can’t be overlooked! You are the engine of your business, so you gotta take care of yourself better than ever!
Take a moment to list your existing medical needs, like prescriptions, therapies and your average number of doctor visits each year.
Also, consider your health goals over the next year. Are there any procedures or other anticipated medical expenses on your horizon?
Understanding your overall health costs will help you determine your desired annual deductible versus your monthly premium.
#2 Dependent Coverage
If you have a spouse, children or other family members reliant on your health insurance, make a list of their medical needs as well. The number of dependents covered will have a significant impact on the type of insurance you choose. Also, look into the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for subsidized coverage for your kids.
#3 Your Risk Tolerance
Everyone has a different relationship with risk. Your risk tolerance might also vary from one aspect of your life to another. When it comes to your health, you want to make sure you feel secure in whatever way that means to you.
If you are providing for a family, your risk tolerance is most likely lower than mine as someone who is single.
If you are younger, your risk tolerance might be higher than someone like me in their 40s.
If there’s one crucial lesson I’ve learned in business, the lowest cost option isn’t always the best option. Choose the option within your budget that gives you peace of mind.
#4 Your Questions + Needs
Finally, what else do you expect from your health insurance provider? Hire them as you would for any other member of your team and consider at least three options to make the best choice for you.
What unanswered questions do you have about buying a health insurance policy?
Take a moment to make a list of all your questions and start finding answers for them.
The more familiar you get with buying health insurance, the more confident you will be about overcoming this obstacle to working for yourself!
First 3 Actions to Gain Your Work Freedom
It all begins with an idea.
Are you ready to finally gain your work freedom?!
Here are the very first 3 actions I recommend you take to meaningfully begin the process of figuring out how to make your work, work for you.
ACTION #1: Leave Work On Time
Honestly, this is the very first piece of advice I give someone who is currently employed and thinking about working for themselves.
On average people can find an extra hour a day just by leaving work on time! I’m not advising you to blow off your current job, but don’t feel like you have to go the extra mile anymore either.
Do exactly what you’ve been hired to do and clearly establish boundaries about when you will arrive and leave work.
Leaving work on time puts your job in a new context. It’s now funding your transition toward becoming a solopreneur and will force you to make more productive use of your time while you’re at your job.
ACTION #2: Schedule a Meeting With Yourself
Once you’ve taken back 1 hour a day from your current job, use that time to schedule a daily meeting with yourself to focus on figuring out how to work on your own.
You’re now your most important client! Treat yourself like it! Set up an appointment in your calendar with yourself just like you would do for anyone else.
How you spend your time says more than what you “say” you want to do. If you’re serious about working for yourself, you have to make time for it!
ACTION #3: Write Daily
I have interviewed 500+ self-employed people and they have said the number one habit for getting unstuck is writing daily.
If you are considering working for yourself but haven’t taken any action, you’re stuck. You know the path behind you is no longer an option, but the path forward is unclear.
Writing daily enables you to get your thoughts out of your head, so you can gain a new perspective as you read them in written form.
Getting in the habit of writing on a regular basis also primes your pump for idea generation and your creativity.
I believe writing daily is the most important self-awareness habit you can develop.
You can track your fears, your unproductive habits and anything else holding you back from becoming a solopreneur. Once your obstacles are in written form you can finally confront them.
Remember, your writing doesn’t have to be anything formal. It can be lists, random thoughts, drawings and anything else that gives you the freedom to express your thoughts and ideas.
Get our Daily Growth Journal as one of the free resources when you sign up for our coaching emails for Managing Yourself. Enroll Now
Lessons From My Career Story
How many times in the course of a week are you asked the question, “So what do you do?”
I used to dread that question because I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer it while still being true to myself yet not sounding like a potential burden on society.
Now I love answering that question!
I have come to realize just how important it is to tell your story, especially when you are feeling uncertain about your future (and as you’re about to read I got really stuck a couple of times in my career).
In fact, I believe it’s one of the most important Life Skills That Matter.
Telling your true story is often one of the first actions I recommend people take when they want to work for themselves or design their lifestyle around more satisfying work.
What do you really want to do with your life going forward and how can your past help get you there?
Even telling yourself the story of your career up to this point in time can reveal patterns from your past experiences. It can help you make new connections, so you can see new possible paths for your work and life.
As you keep reading, I’ll share have many lessons (feel free to scroll toward the bottom) from my own story to help you learn how to better tell your story. (Sorry, this isn’t the short version, it’s the long one:)
A disclaimer: This is just my story. It’s not an endorsement of decisions I think you should make for your own career and life. After all, you are you and have your own unique story to tell. Use my story as an example of how to recognize patterns in your own career story.
So What Do I Do?
I’m a solopreneur business designer. I’ve been researching alternative ways of working for 20+ years now.
I am passionate about helping people work on their terms and in alignment with what makes them uniquely productive.
I want to relieve people of their anxieties about work. I suffered from chronic anxiety about work for the first 10 years of my career and got much better at managing it with the help of the Life Skills That Matter.
I believe everyone’s story deserves to be told, but everyone also owes it to themselves to discover their own authentic story.
I want to help you tell your story by making your work, work for you.
No matter how many different jobs or work experiences you’ve had, there is always one thread in your career that ties all of them together, no matter how disparate they may seem.
Whether you realize it or not there is a common motivation for why you choose the work you do.
For me, that has always been listening to stories about how other people lived their lives.
As a kid, I would read biographies of historical figures like Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and President Lincoln. My mother can tell you stories about how I could talk to just about anyone (still to the amazement of my father). People endlessly fascinate me. They are like fine wines to be appreciated and curated for their unique qualities.
My core motivation for work and the thread of my career has been to witness and share the stories of other people. I love helping people discover their own potential. I truly believe we all have a great untold story buried deep within us that needs to be shared.
My superpower is creating clarity from chaos. I help people like you see the patterns in your story. I show you the connections between your past experiences, so your unique purpose and source of motivation for work can be revealed to you. What’s your superpower?
Let’s see how the thread of my career led me to where I am today!
The Thread of My Career
I’ve been happily unemployable for 15+ years now. But it hasn’t always been that way. I’ve been stuck and got myself unstuck many times to transform myself from a compliant employee into an accidental (formerly reluctant) entrepreneur.
My journey to embrace the thread of my career has been a long and challenging one. In the end, it’s been totally worth it. I now live and work on my terms.
There are loads of experiences, stories and emotions I can share from my career over the past 20 years. Probably a more effective (and slightly shorter) way to describe my career is by highlighting its 5 phases:
1) Employee
2) Deeply Stuck
3) Reluctant Entrepreneur
4) Stuck (Again)
5) Purpose-Driven (Here and Now)
1) Employee: The First 5 Years of My Career
When I started my career I did what I thought I was “supposed to do.” I became an employee.
From the time I was 12, I thought I was going to be a lawyer. I attended a public high school in an affluent town in Connecticut (although my parents were not rich by any means) where the paths in life most discussed were the law, medicine or getting a white-collar job. At this point in my life and for years to come, I was listening to other people’s ideas about what I ought to do for work.
But then David Letterman changed the course of my life. On a whim, I applied for an internship on his show just before my senior year in college. I landed an interview, but didn’t get the internship. However, the experience did change the course of my life. (Has that ever happened to you?)
Applying for the internship gave me a glimpse of an unfamiliar world that changed my outlook on my career entirely. I questioned my career choice. Working around fascinating people in media and listening to their stories spoke to me in a way the law never did. (I’m so glad I didn’t ignore my inner voice that time!) Thanks, Dave.
After graduating from Providence College in 1996, I landed a job at Edelman Public Relations in New York City.
Most of us build our careers based on that mindset. Get a job, any job. You have bills to pay once you’ve graduated.
However, you aren’t necessarily working for your own ideals, but rather for someone else’s. We work to be accepted by family, friends and society. We are afraid of failure, especially of failing before our peers. It scares us so much, we’d rather do what we’re “supposed to do” in life than strike out on our own.
I was taught to be an “employee” and not an “entrepreneur.” My saving grace was my endless desire for new experiences and inspirational stories about people who blazed their own paths.
During the launch phase of my media career, I swung from opportunity to opportunity. I deluded myself into thinking I had complete control over my career because I got any job I wanted during those first 5 years.
The first 3 years of my career were driven by acquiring new skills and responsibilities while working at Edelman Public Relations and CBS News Sunday Morning.
I learned a ton about journalism from some of the best storytellers in the world at CBS News. Even though I was the “low man on the totem pole,” I created lots of opportunities to get myself out into the field to help produce stories. The highlight of my time working at CBS was helping to cover the 1998 Winter Olympic Games onsite in Nagano, Japan. It was a blast!
After two years at CBS, I realized I wasn’t learning as much as before and I wanted to be paid more, so I headed to CNBC for a promotion and doubled my salary.
I lasted 5 months at CNBC. It was my shortest working stint ever. The job delivered on my goals for more money and secured the title I coveted, but I lacked passion for the subject matter. I barely knew a stock from a bond at that point. As an associate producer I booked 3 guests a day, so at least I got to share some cool stories.
Money is important, but I discovered a passion for my work was the key ingredient for a sustainable source of income over the long term.
As the realization set in that I needed to leave CNBC, I heard my old boss at CBS News took a job at ThirdAge.com, a dot-com partly owned by CBS at the time. Everyone was jumping into the dot-com frenzy of the late 90s, so I followed suit.
It was my first experience at a startup. The work was exciting, my co-workers were great, I traveled to San Francisco once a month and the money was decent. Then after just 11 months, I was laid off as part of the fallout from the dot-com bust of 2000. I had no idea at the time it would be one of my last work experiences as an employee.
2) Deeply Stuck for 5 Years
Election Day 2000 was the day I was laid off. My career was stopped in its tracks. It would become one of the most pivotal events in my life. Everything I thought about work, money and how to live was about to be challenged. Thankfully, I went through this experience early in my career.
We all assume our career trajectory is a linear progression rising from left to right until we retire (whatever that means). Reality has shown me that it looks more like a stock market chart with lots of ups and downs. I was not prepared for that reality. No one told me I would experience “stuck” moments in my career.
My old friend and colleague James Sheridan told me I “got knocked off my hamster wheel.” Man did I ever. As I continued to seek employment over the next 5 years, I would reluctantly transform myself into an entrepreneur.
I may have felt stuck, but I took continuous, productive action to keep growing. Looking back it was my natural path, but I was unable to see it at the time. Here were the incremental steps I took to become self-employed:
a) Freelancer
After collecting unemployment for 3 months, I finally got a freelance job in Greenwich, CT, producing an interactive CD-ROM for a pharmaceutical company.
I had never freelanced before. Prior to getting laid off, I would have never considered it, but I was so desperate for work I leaped at the chance. Those 3 months without work gave my idle mind lots of time to think. I believe that’s when the seeds of entrepreneurship were sown in my thoughts.
Freelancing was my first entrepreneurial experience, and I didn’t like it one bit. It paid well, I was good at it and I was left alone, but I couldn’t handle the pressure.
Honesty, I was afraid of working in an entirely different way. After all, I was taught to be an employee my entire life, and there is a certain comfort in that way of thinking. Freelancing felt too unreliable as a method of generating income.
b) Business School
Freelancing might have turned me off from the idea of working for myself, but it sparked my interest in the business side of media.
Back then, the only path I saw for acquiring business knowledge and skills was by getting my MBA. After some temping gigs and a 2-month stint freelancing at CBS News after the attacks of September 11th, I enrolled in the Business School at Fordham University to study media management in January of 2002.
c) Managing My First Web Business
The business theory taught to me in the classroom wasn’t enough to satisfy the entrepreneurial instincts bubbling up from deep inside me.
I took on an internship managing a website called TVSpy.com to complement my business studies. At the time, it was owned by the career website Vault.com and focused on the television news industry, something I knew a lot about.
In under a year I turned myself from intern into the General Manager of TVSpy.com. It taught me the most crucial skill in business: how to sell. (Ironically, it’s something you’ll never learn in business school.)
In 2 years I doubled the website’s revenue from $150,000 to $300,000. I had never sold a thing before in my life! Previously, I stuck up my nose at sales. It conjured up images of a car salesman or an insurance broker cranking out cold calls all day long trying to get people to buy something they probably didn’t need. No thanks.
Fortunately, TVSpy would change my perspective on sales. I came to understand that the best salespeople find problems to solve and then sell solutions to solve them. Now that was my kind of sale!
d) Digital Ad Sales Expert & Trainer
While at TVSpy I had the opportunity to start my own weekly email newsletter about future business opportunities in local television.
I got to tell stories again. I interviewed industry experts and proposed my own new sales ideas. Writing was fun and I enjoyed engaging with the community I served. Little did I know, that same newsletter was actually laying the groundwork for the next phase of my career as a sales trainer.
In the fall of 2003, I was contacted by the Freedom Broadcast Company to speak at their annual executive conference in West Palm Beach to share some of my ideas about the future of TV news.
They owned a handful of TV stations throughout the U.S. I was so flattered, I did it for free! It would be my last unpaid speaking gig. 😉
As I finished business school I was still strongly considering employment opportunities until Graeme Newell, another contributor from TVSpy, asked if I wanted to team up with him as a digital sales trainer at his firm.
He didn’t offer me a job per se, but rather a revenue-sharing opportunity. He would sell my digital sales trainings to his clients for a commission, and I was free to find my own clients. I waded a little deeper into the entrepreneurial waters.
Traveling around the country speaking on something I was passionate about and getting paid to do it was a blast, but after 3 years it took its toll. It was time to find a way to make money from my expertise without having to leave my house.
After 5 years of inching closer and closer toward entrepreneurship, I completed my transformation. I finally had the confidence to strike out on my own.
3) Reluctant Entrepreneur
As you might have learned by now, I did not set out to be an entrepreneur. It was never a dream I had or an option I even considered until changing economic realities kept nudging me down this path.
I believe there will be more and more “reluctant entrepreneurs” like me in the coming years due to unforeseen changes in our economy. I may have pursued entrepreneurship reluctantly, but I have absolutely no regrets about my decision. I am now happily and proudly unemployable.
Just before the economic meltdown in the fall of 2008, I started my first business, LocalBroadcastSales.com (LBS). It was profitable on day one, and I never relied on debt to build it.
Most people weren’t starting businesses at the beginning of the Great Recession, but somehow that wasn’t a distraction for me. On the contrary, it was an opportunity.
In 5 years I built an archive of 600+ video training modules with over 30 trainers and managed 4 employees. These modules became a lower cost sales training alternative for broadcasters. Rather than fly someone like me in for a day of training, they could access our archive of sales trainings every day of the year for almost the same cost or less.
At its height, LBS generated $600,000 in annual sales. My hourly rate also increased compared with selling in-person trainings because I eliminated my travel time and was able to sell the same trainings over and over again.
I eventually ran the business so efficiently that I put in an average of 30 hours a week and was able to run my business from Seville, Spain, for 4 months.
Building my first business was exciting, and I learned a ton. I was thankful for the amazing opportunity LBS provided me, but by year 3 I knew it wasn’t going to be a sustainable source of income over the long term. My passion for broadcasting and digital advertising sales had waned.
I realized the core of my training was around personal transformation and strategies for managing change. I no longer wanted to serve the traditional employee mindset, but rather those with a more entrepreneurial one.
I knew I didn’t just need an exit strategy from LBS, but for my entire broadcast career path. I was fortunate enough to sell LBS to one of my trainers in 2012 (it would still take me another 3 years to call it quits on broadcasting altogether).
It was time to start helping others get unstuck and help them design their lifestyles around unconventional possibilities.
4) Stuck (Again)
Feeling stuck for 5 years is tough. Once I got myself unstuck, I thought I knew everything I needed to avoid becoming stuck again. Oops! I was totally wrong.
As I get older, I realize that life is never going to stop challenging you. Sometimes you might not feel up to the challenge, but if you face it, you’ll learn a ton about yourself.
Not only would I feel stuck, but I experienced depression for the first time in my life. If you’ve never experienced before, it’s a whole other level of feeling deeply stuck. Here’s how I think I fell into it…and how I got myself out of it:
a) Comfort Zone
Once I sold LBS at the end of 2012, I didn’t have a clear plan about what I would do next. I was drawn to helping people transform their careers, but I didn’t know what that would “look like” yet.
For the next year, I did what a lot of people who aren’t sure about their next step do: I retreated into my comfort zone. I continued doing in-person sales trainings for broadcasters and even took on more clients than I had in the previous 5 years running LBS.
b) UnStuckable
Around this time I was having on-again, off-again conversations with my friend Chris Wilson about working together. We started doing some research and experiments with podcasting in the fall of 2013. We eventually launched a podcast called UnStuckable, which focused on how people got unstuck in their careers and transformed themselves.
It was both an exciting and draining experience. Four weeks after we launched UnStuckable in April 2014 it shot up into the Top 100 podcasts on iTunes!
Even 2 years later, it was still one of the top 150 career podcasts on iTunes. Clearly, we were onto something, but we didn’t have a business plan. That turned out to be a big problem.
Chris was still working full time at this job, while I was working full time on UnStuckable. I was cranking out 5 podcasts a week and still managing some broadcast sales training projects. By the summer of 2014 a variety of forces in my life conspired at once to send me into my first-ever depression.
c) Depressed
Depression is a funny thing. It kind of sneaks up on you. It takes you into its grip and you don’t know how bad you were until you’ve come through it. At least that’s how it worked for me.
So what caused it? Three primary events.
First, my mom had a stroke in February 2014. She was very lucky. Physically she is fine, but she lost most of her short-term memory. She has always been one of my most important confidants.
The experience has been one of the most significant losses of my life.
Second, I turned 40 in July 2014. Honestly, the number didn’t bother me, but I wasn’t prepared for my “midlife passage”. I had no idea the changes men go through physically, mentally and hormonally until it started happening to me (probably in my late 30s).
I know our society jokes about the “midlife crisis,” but now having gone through it, I think it’s time we had a more productive conversation about it to help reduce the associated anxiety that inevitably goes with it!
Third, Chris and I struggled to align our work styles, needs, values and expectations. We are both talented in our own right, but we couldn’t get into a workflow together for our project.
I think we would both agree that we spent more time trying to figure out how to work with each other than turning UnStuckable into a business. That’s never a good thing.
d) Purge
My breakthrough moment came when my sister visited me in August 2014 while I was vacationing in Cape Cod. She got me to have a good cry about our my mom. It was the emotional release I needed. It was the bottom of my depression.
After that I resorted to one of my favorite life skills, purging. Almost nothing else gets me moving forward again like letting go.
I just needed to clear lots of stuff out of my life to help myself heal. Stuff that was holding me back and stuff I probably should have dealt with long ago.
I spent the fall of 2014 decluttering all my possessions. I used the basic rule, “use it or lose it.” If it had no use or brought me no joy, I got rid of it.
The process of getting rid of physical stuff generated momentum to get rid of digital waste, obligations and relationships. Most importantly, I was long overdue for a declutter of my mental space.
I tackled my fears, re-evaluated my expectations and questioned my desires. The theme of my 2015 was “let go.” It was liberating and energizing!
In March 2015 Chris and I decided to end UnStuckable. I have no regrets and have UnStuckable to thank for laying the foundation of Life Skills That Matter.
I also decided to let go of my remaining broadcast sales projects to start the next phase of my career with a clean slate.
5) Purpose-Driven (Here and Now)
As they say, “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” Depression isn’t fun, but it forces you to stop, reflect and evaluate your life in a way we all never seem to make the time to do. I had fallen into one of the deepest valleys in my life, so here’s hoping I’m about to climb one of my biggest mountains.
Spending a year reflecting has helped me understand myself in a deeper way than ever before. I have a clear purpose. I found my pace in life. I clearly understand my work needs, so I can design a business in alignment with my work habits and the needs of the community I want to serve.
I’ve always wanted to build a business to help people, but at the same time it needed to financially sustain my family.
I’ve had a lot of ups and downs . . . lots of downs I wouldn’t wish on anybody, but that’s why I’m doing this. I believe teaching the Life Skills That Matter can help bring greater and deeper awareness to your work, saving you a lot of time, energy and emotional distress.
Takeaways From My Story
If you’ve read this far, thank you! After writing about my story, I discovered a few lessons I would now like to share with you.
1) Build on your past experiences, don’t throw them away.
When you are looking for a change in career or life, it’s often very tempting to throw away your past. It seems easier to build a new identity when you don’t have to compete with the old one.
The trick is learning how to apply your past identity to a new vision and confidently explain its enormous value. I’m still using the content production skills I learned at CBS News and will use my training skills for Life Skills That Matter.
2) There are other ingredients besides money to building a sustainable career.
Once I built a financially successful company, I thought it would be the pinnacle of my career, but to my surprise I became unhappy. As they say, be careful what you wish for!
I realized that not only did I enjoy the freedom of being an entrepreneur, but I also needed to have passion for the work. What motivates you to work?
3) Never stop learning and challenging yourself.
The second I feel like I’m starting to coast in my career, I know it’s time to reassess and learn something new. Our economy is changing too quickly now for me to rest on the laurels of my college degree from 20 years ago and my MBA from 13 years ago.
There are so many new ways to teach yourself and acquire new skills thanks to the miracle of the web. We all need to set regular learning goals for ourselves.
4) Know your story.
Your resumé is not the story of your career. The last time I updated my resumé was 13 years ago. I no longer have one and never will again.
The titles on your resumé don’t define who you are as an individual. Create your own label. Define yourself. Be able to clearly communicate your “superpower.” What is something you can do effortlessly, with joy and a sense of mastery?
Understanding the story of your career also allows you to be honest about your failures and what you can learn from them to build the lifestyle that works for you.
5) Be aware of when you are getting stuck.
Sometimes they are small moments and sometimes they are life changing events. Getting stuck shouldn’t be something to be avoided. Recognize it. You should never feel ashamed if you are feeling stuck. It’s your inner voice trying to tell you to take a new path. Listen to it.
My warning signs for when I’m getting stuck are recurring negative thoughts about something in particular or feeling a little too comfortable.
6) More of us will become reluctant entrepreneurs than we might think.
Only you can choose your path in life. Only you know if you are happier and more productive as an employee, careerpreneur, freelancer, solopreneur, entrepreneur or some other way of working.
I believe more and more of us need to wake up to the reality of working for yourself for two primary reasons:
a) Managing yourself is the future of all work, whether you work for someone else or yourself. If you have to manage yourself, why not own yourself and create work that works for you?
It’s sneaking up on us more and more as jobs are automated or outsourced. I believe more people will become reluctant entrepreneurs in the coming years.
I’ve been there, and I want to help you make a productive transition.
b) We’re all seeking inner peace (I know I am!) and one of the most effective ways to reduce your anxiety, to feel like you are enough and to live life at your pace is by designing work in alignment with your values, needs and abilities.
Tell Me Your Story
Enough about me! Now it’s your turn to tell me your story.
Send me a question about how I can help you make your work, work for you. What have you always wanted to do? How would you like to work?
Remember, it’s possible!
Stephen
My Personal Self-Assessment
What do you really know about yourself?
What do you think you should know about yourself?
What makes you tick?
The most important subject none of us have ever been taught is how to learn about ourselves.
We are never given a process, method, framework or strategy for learning about ourselves.
We learn about ourselves purely through trial and error.
It seems very inefficient, but then again no one has ever been you before in human history. You weren’t born with an operations manual!
Learning about yourself takes a lot of time, but it’s well worth the investment. The more you know about yourself, the better decisions you’ll make about the lifestyle you’ve always wanted to live.
Self-knowledge will enable you to use your energy more efficiently by aligning your habits with your purpose. The more you know about yourself, the more confidence you’ll have in your decisions.
Self-employment has forced me to learn a lot about myself. After all, I have no one else to answer to but myself.
The more I’ve learned about myself, the more I’ve been able to enhance my personal productivity and be able to do everything I wanted to do in life. It has made me more energetic and much less anxious.
The most effective way to learn about yourself is through self-experimentation and self-assessment.
I’ve conducted loads of different lifestyle experiments since I was laid off 25 years ago. They have taught me a lot about myself.
Here’s what I’ve learned from my personal self-assessment.
My Purpose, My “Why”
I like to think of the purpose of my life as a combination of my values, motivations and why I’ve chosen to the work I have chosen to do.
Understanding my purpose gives both direction and meaning to my life. It grounds me in my values when I have a very important decision to make and keeps me focused on my core beliefs.
What’s my “Why?”
I want to help people find more meaningful work.
I believe everyone has a great untold story inside of them that deserves to be told. I want to give people permission to themselves to create that untold story by designing their lifestyle around the work they’ve always wanted to do.
My Values
In no particular order, my values are:
choose time and experiences over money and material possessions
keep things as simple as possible
challenge the status quo and “make it happen”
family first
be frugal, not cheap
work from anywhere
be genuine
Learn how to discover your values.
My Motivations
My core motivation is to help people design their lifestyle around more meaningful work.
My natural motivations included supporting my family, meeting new people, having new experiences, traveling, being outside and learning something new.
Any combination of these motivations will get me to take action and sustain my momentum.
My Energy Needs
My “peak performance period” is during the morning and I need to set aside time to restore to increase my personal productivity.
My Daily Routine
I’m a classic morning person. I start my day with a half hour of stretching and meditation.
I get my best work done between 7am and 12pm. After lunch I focus on less intensive work tasks like answering email, paying bills, website maintenance, etc.
After that, I go to the gym and then take my dog for an hour-long walk.
When we get back I start dinner.
I’m usually in bed by 8:30pm.
My Work Needs
I’m a highly motivated worker, so I generally prefer working on my own.
I do value doses of collaboration throughout the week to challenge my thinking and perspectives. I don’t value endless meetings.
I’m a highly focused worker, but do everything possible to reduce potential distractions. I will work at home, in my co-working space and even enjoy working in the lobby of hotels.
What Restores Me
I need at least eight hours of sleep every night, sometimes as much as 10 hours (especially during the winter). There’s no cutting corners with my sleep. I’m not as energetic or as focused without my proper rest.
I need to chill out after 8pm at night.
Exercise helps me burn off anxious energy.
Meditation helps put on the breaks of my frantic thoughts as I wake up each day.
Going for a walk outside each day also fuels my energy.
I need at least four weeks of vacation each year. My ideal vacation involves being completely disconnected from all digital devices.
My Natural Preferences and Tendencies
There is much we can change about ourselves, but our natural preferences and tendencies make us who are are as unique individuals.
My Learning Style
I love reading. When I learn a new concept for the first time, I generally prefer picking up a book about it. Then I try practicing the concepts or skills on my own.
When I get stuck, that’s when I reach out to an expert with a specific question. Finally, I develop a routine for mastering the skills.
I definitely learn better by “doing”.
My Strengths and Abilities
Several years ago I took the Clifton Strengths Assessment here’s what I learned about my top five natural strengths.
Learner
“People who are especially talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.”
Strategic
“People who are especially talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.”
Responsibility
“People who are especially talented in the Responsibility theme take psychological ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty.”
Intellection
“People who are especially talented in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.”
Relator
“People who are especially talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.”
My Personality
To learn about my personality type I took an assessment similar to Myers Briggs.
I am a classic ENTJ: an extrovert, intuitive, thinking, judging.
Myers-Briggs describes the characteristics of my personality type as,
“Practical, realistic, matter-of-fact. Decisive, quickly move to implement decisions. Organize projects and people to get things done, focus on getting results in the most efficient way possible. Take care of routine details. Have a clear set of logical standards, systematically follow them and want others to also. Forceful in implementing their plans.”
My Emotional Intelligence
I would describe my emotional Intelligence as a strong ability to focus while I’m working, but a tendency to be more lax with my self-control the more fatigued I am.
When I work with others I have a tendency to be a “people pleaser,” but when I get excited about something, I tend to talk over people.
My ability to delay gratification is also very strong. A friend of mine once asked me if woke up super early on Christmas morning to open presents. I told him I didn’t and in fact, my parents usually had to wake up my sister and I!
My Source of Confidence
I draw my confidence from three primary sources: 1) my council of life advisors and 2) practice tons when no one is watching and 3) quick wins
My council of life advisors includes my parents, sister, close friends and trusted colleagues. I rely on them all for different reasons.
When I’m feeling stuck or down I generally know exactly which person to call to get me going again. Talking out my problems with others energizes me and significantly reduces my anxiety.
My mom loves telling everyone the first time someone saw me walk. My aunt was babysitting me at her house. She had an enormous living room. To her astonishment, I walked straight across it without any help!
My mom missed my first public steps, but she knew I had been secretly practicing how to walk in my crib. She caught me a couple of times.
Even today, I like practicing a new skill or concept over and over in private until I feel ready to go public with it. Being thorough makes me feel confident.
I also strengthen my self-confidence by giving myself the opportunity to take small, consistent actions on a daily basis. These are achievable goals or quick wins that propel me forward and generate momentum toward my goal.
Everything Holding Me Back
We all have stuff holding us back from what we really want to become. Sometimes we are aware of it, sometimes not. Here are my issues.
My Fears
I still fear not having enough money to pay my bills. I have more than enough, but it’s deeply embedded in me. While I’ve worked a ton to minimize this fear, it still crops up from time to time.
I also fear disappointing other people. Sometimes I don’t feel like whatever I have been asked to do is enough. I get anxious just thinking about it. I want so badly to make everyone happy. I tend to overwork to compensate for this fear.
Finally, I like to think I have a “healthy” fear of heights. I’ll walk along the edge of a cliff, but it’s without much enjoyment.
My Unhealthy Desires
I have always had a desire to be financially independent (see fear of paying bills above). It has provided both a source of healthy and unhealthy motivation.
I have achieved most of my personal financial goals, but this desire also led me to build a business in the past purely for the money. It was a soul-sucking experience and a mistake I know I won’t be repeating with Life Skills That Matters!
My Cravings
As I’ve become older, I’ve been more honest about my cravings.
I consider them activities I seek out for comfort, but tend to overdo and end up losing my self-control.
My cravings include consuming chips, chocolate and alcohol. To deal with my cravings, I need to abstain from them. The comfort they offer in the short-term, end up making me feel lousy in the long term.
My Expectations
Whether this is fair or not, I have high expectations for anyone who works with me. I am a very hard worker and expect the same from my colleagues. I like plenty of free time in my life, but when I work I want to be productive about it.
I also tend to be very efficient with my time. I am almost never late and don’t like it when others aren’t punctual or don’t contact me if they are running late. I want to be respectful of other people’s time and I expect the same in return.
When I make a commitment, I follow through on it. I enjoy knowing people can count on me. I have high expectations for myself and don’t want to let people down (see fear of disappointing others above).
How You Can Start Learning About Yourself
I didn’t share all this to blab on and on about myself. I did it to show you how well I want you to be able to know yourself one day. This is a self-inventory.
If you want to work for yourself, you have to know yourself first. You’ll choose work and a method of working that makes sense for you.
The most effective method for learning about yourself is by starting a practice of self-awareness.
The most effective self-awareness habit I’ve learned is writing a daily journal.
You can also learn more about yourself than ever before when you enroll in our 12-Week Self-Assessment Challenge.