It seems like a simple question, but I venture to guess that you’re fumbling around in your mind right now, trying to figure out the answer. Knowing what you truly want is a crucial trait of successful hustlers. You can’t build something new or do something independently if you can’t identify what it is and take concrete steps toward achieving it. You can’t get what you want if you don’t know what it is. OG hustler Napoleon Hill calls this Your Definite Chief Aim which is one of the centerpieces of his philosophy around manifesting your desires. “Wishing will not bring riches. But desiri ..read more

What is your work worth? In traditional wage-labor relationships (aka “normal jobs”), your work is worth whatever your boss says it is worth. In most instances, you’re compensated for your time, which means efficiency and growth are disincentivized. If you’re hourly, you make more if you work slower. If you’re salaried, the more efficient you are, the more work is assigned. In a supposedly “capitalist” economy, we have no control over worth or the relationship between time and money when working for others. What is the promise of capitalism? (Stay with me here…I promise we’ll get to the pricin ..read more

When was the last time you were afraid? Fear is a slippery thing. In its most straightforward form, fear manifests as outright terror—panic at the possibility of a perceived outcome. In more subtle forms, fear can also present as complacency, apathy, indecision, and indifference. We can let fear paralyze us or use it to break us from our preconditioned reality. When the future feels uncertain, you’re simultaneously stuck in the present moment and desperately trying to escape it - scrambling to adapt to new realities and sitting on the sidelines observing momentous change. You are forced to be ..read more

Many of my clients successfully scale to a point where bringing on team members seems the obvious next move. But rarely is rapidly assembling a team the right path forward.  Many solopreneurs love the actual work of what they do, and when they’re told to “scale,” they can often shift into the role of “people-ing,” or just managing people, instead of doing what they love. People-ing is an art requiring thoughtfulness if we hope to build work that nourishes us rather than drains us dry. People-ing was coined by Rachel Everington, Founder and CEO of The Executive Ninja, on my podcast. Rachel ..read more

It’s time to jailbreak from toxic hustle culture.  We take “hustler” back from the belief that bigger is better, security is contingent on compliance, and freedom is reserved for the powerful. We restore “hustler” to its true meaning—to exercise free agency. We are works of art in a world of widgets. Instead of conforming to a predefined role, we build our work around our innate talents, motivations, and desires. We embody the natural human instinct to innovate, generate, and thrive in a world that wants us to fit in, comply, and settle. We derive our power from our ability to adapt ..read more

In traditional employment contexts, other people not only own your skillset, but they also own your ideas and the products of your labor.   This unequal bargain now means that because the company owns your skills, it is their job to “professionally develop” you. In employee-employer relationships, we rely on others to define our goals and push us toward achieving them. This dependence not only destroys our intrinsic motivation but also dulls our capacity to understand our purpose and build meaningfully toward it.   Independent workers must break away from the traditional po ..read more

When you work for others, you have the luxury (or crutch) of only having compensation conversations with your boss. Independent workers have to own their worth in a way that people who “work for the man” never have to. Without a corporate “safety net,” solopreneurs must take full ownership of their work and their value in the marketplace. When you’re 100% in charge of the money that facilitates your life and the time it takes to make it, you are forced to think about it differently. When you are the sole architect of your financial destiny, your relationship with money undergoes a profound shi ..read more

We’re trained to be employees our entire lives, fit into a box that someone else has defined, and be a widget in the larger system.   When we’re raised in a structure where we don’t define work for ourselves, having complete ownership over what we do and how we do it can be daunting. No one teaches us to be entrepreneurs, let alone solopreneur businesses of one. Instead of following an onboarding plan or a professional development schedule set out by someone else, you have to learn by doing, trying, and failing. Solopreneurs must learn to be a boss in a world where most workers never ..read more

As businesses of one, solopreneurs have the power to create work that is custom-tailored to their definition of freedom, the lives they want to live, and their specific talents. Where 9-5 jobs ask us to conform to other’s definitions of work and entrepreneurs with larger businesses and employees are constrained by their responsibility to their team, we’re free to build a completely unique business and rebuild it whenever we need something different. This level of freedom can be a blessing and a curse. When we’re trained our whole lives to be employees, fit into a larger system, and fill a role ..read more

I am in a constant battle with meetings. As a freelancer, I have multiple clients, projects, and organizations that I interface with regularly. As a project manager, I am also the person on the team trying to corral information, ensure things are getting done, and establish transparent systems and procedures. These two combined roles mean that my calendar is full of meetings, many of which I’ve initiated to get or disseminate critical information, solve common problems, or co-develop strategies. Every client and project I work with necessitates a different approach to information sharing and ..read more