Working for yourself & escaping the rat race

A few years ago I thought it was silly or unreasonable to think I could work for myself, run my own business, or make any sort of a living on the internet.It hasn’t been long since humans have had the opportunity that we do now: an opportunity to make an income on the internet, scaled by your own brain power & effort. (infinitely)Today I want to cover 5 high-impact lessons I’ve learned in the past 3 years trying to make “working for myself”, work.

Lesson 1: Just do it.

“Just do it”: Nike’s cliche slogan, that’s also one of the more transformative 3 words you could repeat to yourself on a daily timeframe to take more action in your life & stop wondering “what if”.I delayed making videos or any stride toward my ideal future of working for myself because I was scared of what others would think... I just did it: started posting every day & creating, and in no time it became easier & habitual even. It doesn't have to be perfect, it never will be perfect. Simple, powerful advice… here’s your reminder to start, say frik it & — Just Do It.

Lesson 2: Consistency is everything.

Want to be consistent? I used habits to make my life easier & more consistent in my progress toward creating things (because that’s what I needed to do in order to grow my business & personal brand)It doesn't matter if you have a goal to reach 10,000 subscribers or followers if you're never doing things to get there. You need systems that enable consistent action so you can make progress every day. I forced myself to make a video every day, and after a month it became a habit I still maintain to this day. I also developed systems over time to make the habit more efficient (templates, preset scenes for recording, etc)1% better each day times 365 days... suddenly you're 38x (3800%) better. If you fail to be consistent, you’ll struggle to gain the momentum needed to compound progress & it’s unlikely you will see the same results as someone who remained consistent.

Lesson 3: Productize yourself.

If you have 100,000 followers but you don't have a product or service to offer, you're escaping the race on hard mode. Adsense or platform revenue sharing won’t cut it, trust me (or don’t). It took me years to realize this.I leveled up 10-fold with freelance offers, sponsorships, & making my own things to provide what people want. For a while I had trouble charging money for my services, after giving away and doing things for free I improved my skills to the point where I felt more than comfortable charging people and taking on high-profile clients.

Lesson 4: It’s all on you

Working for yourself, everything is on you. Most people stay in the rat race because people tell them what to do, and they make a predefined amount of money per month.. it feels safe & certain. The large difference between being employed vs employing yourself is that you take credit for 100% of the losses & the major winfalls. You make your company $100,000 from a big client? Get paid a $2000 bonus. Land a $10,000 client working for yourself? Pay yourself $10,000. When you work for yourself your output is directly correlated with your input. got a problem? You solve it = you grow your business. I love this model, which is why I decided to work for myself instead of getting a job out of college.

Lesson 5: Don't get complacent.

It took me years to get to where I am, along the way here I got comfy many times... my income suffered & so did my business growth. If you aren't growing then you're losing progress. In life even just to stay where you are: you need to be growing.On top of you losing progress when you aren’t growing, if you get complacent you not only stop growing but you also lose a more important element to business growth: momentum.Momentum is an absolute monster of a weapon in your toolkit making progress or growing in any aspect of life & business. Think of a snowball rolling down a hill, the longer it rolls the bigger it gets, and the bigger it gets the more each foot of it rolling increases its size, compounding more & more each foot it rolls.Eventually, your “snowball” of momentum may break or be split into smaller balls that you need to start over again, but for the time you can utilize momentum it will bring a ton of results that would otherwise be left unrealized if you get complacent quickly after seeing some success or growth.

That’s all for this newsletter! This was based of a thread I wrote first on Twitter, sometimes I make my newsletters into threads too… So if you want to catch all of the valuable content I post make sure you follow me there too :)Thank you so much for reading, I appreciate you immensely. Checkout the FREE & paid resources below!

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