Category: Business + Entrepreneurship

Inside My Business Philosophies: What’s Worth Your Time, Attention, and Money?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I’m not in the business of selling quick fixes.

In fact, a lot of the work I do is slow and boring. I can whip up content marketing like the best of them, but I’m most interested in what behavior change approaches actually work, and what really helps us in our business and personal lives.

There are so many programs and courses and marketers out there selling you the “top ten easy ways to do things.”

The perpetuation of the “how” generation is desperate for advice on how to do something. Most of this is just noise. A lot of it is smoke and mirrors. Raise your hand if you’re tired of it — I know I’m tired of it.

Because how do you know how to figure out what kind of life you want to live? 

And how do you set up the right structures for you in your own unique business and life?

I’m not sure the internet can give us those answers.

What’s more important is identifying and knowing your own universal business and life principles.

Today, I want to share with you some of my core principles for my business and why they matter to me.

In my work over the last decade, I’ve learned a few truths that have been universal for me, and they’re what create the foundation for my business and the decisions I make.

When I share them with people I work with, friends, or even recently, the coffee shop barista near my new house, I get smiles and nods. These are my people.

These are the values and beliefs I hold behind the work I build. Everything I build, everything I make, the things I think about — these are what’s guiding my decision-making. When I make a new course, it’s usually in an effort to solve one of these problems.

Belief #1 — A lot of people are lonely, especially in today’s hyper-connected world.

We are more connected than ever before, and yet we’re more separated and disjointed. Social media is rewiring our brains. We have a lot of loose connections but we have lost the depth of our close ties. We live in very separated houses, with individual bedrooms, silo’ed into our own automobiles, staring down into our cell phones.

We’re so separated that we don’t know how to approach people or date people without the help of apps.

Loneliness is a big, pervasive problem.

That’s why what I’m working on now in my business isn’t a scaleable one-off, me-to-you video program. (You can take those, of course — and watch my writer’s workshop, etc). But it’s more than that.

I want to build places for people to come together in community.

Specifically, I want to create small micro-groups of people that can become friends for life. I am invested in building ecosystems of support through connecting highly talented, creative, independent people together.

Belief #2 — Discomfort, guilt, and feelings of uncertainty aren’t markers of failure.

Modern education has trained us to be obedient, subservient, and to pass tests. How has that served us? We seek comfort and familiarity rather than growth and challenges.

But discomfort, guilt, and uncertainty aren’t bad. It’s not a sign that you’re on the wrong path. It’s actually a deep measure of growth and learning.

If you’re ever confused, uncertain, or questioning: these aren’t markers of failure. These are markers of growth and learning.

We’re not on a quest for certainty and expertise. The gurus in my life are still students, always students. We’re always learning.

I learn so much from each person that joins my mastermind. And they tell me they learn so much from me. To put yourself into a place of learning is to allow yourself to grow. Stagnation is one step before depression.

Learning and growth require periods of uncertainty and discomfort. It’s part of the equation.

Belief #3 — We’re swimming in information and yet unable to speak.

So often we’re told and taught that if we just learn a little bit more, then we’ll be okay. That if you just read a little more, learn a little more, or watch a little more, then you’ll have the answers. Then everything will work.

Has that actually worked in your life? Once you finish that video series or that class, did you feel like you suddenly had all the answers?

No! It doesn’t work like that. Each time you learn more, you unpack more… that you don’t know, or that you want to know.

In my work, I encourage people to use their voices.

I don’t want to be sharing information to a silent room. I want to be in the room with you, learning from you, hearing what you have to say, seeing your work evolve and grow over time. Using your voice, through whatever medium is best for you, is part of the work of being human.

Belief #4 The things worth investing in take time and dedication.

In an instantaneous world, it can feel antagonizing to work on long-term projects. The quick hit of a social media “like” or an open to your email feels good. But when you fast forward a little bit, and you add up what matters, will having 200,000 views on your YouTube channel translate into the life you want?

In my own life, I’m in pursuit of smaller, richer communities.

I want to add vibrancy and resonance to real human lives by creating a place to invest deeply in ourselves and in each other.

The Mastermind project I’m working on now is something I’ve been wanting to make for a long time. I want to figure out how to bring people together, connect them, and unpack what it means to live a complex, rich, devoted life. What does it mean to have devoted time to yourself and your dreams?

So, what does this all add up to?

Over the next 14 weeks, you can check Facebook a little more.

You can attempt to read all of your emails. (Yes, even I still try to do that, even though I know it’s not going to get me what I want.) You can even buy a bunch of classes. But what’s going to really add up to change in your life?

The Mastermind that I’m creating is about the following principles:

  • We do better work when we’re connected deeply in community.
  • Using our voices is an art, built on principles of deep listening and engagement.
  • The things that matter can take a long time, and require dedication and commitment, even through periods of uncertainty.
  • Uncertainty and frustration are markers of growth, not failure — and having a community around us to witness our growth and struggle can make all the difference.
  • Building places for people to come together in community
  • Deep work, built on principles of deep listening and engagement (I teach you how to use deep listening in your work).

In the Mastermind (if you do decide to apply to join), we take the time to look at why you do what you do.

There’s an exercise we do called “finding your ways of being” for how you want to show up in the world. We look at what mantras and principles you want to live by. We examine what works and what doesn’t work, and why there might be differences.

It is a rich place of growth, depth, and connection, and it takes us time to go through the process.

These aren’t things that I can sell in an e-book or a course.

I’m sharing this because of how important and vital I think this work is. I can’t scale it because there is so much 1:1 work involved.

This blog (and the free email info series all about my Mastermind) is my attempt to share what it is I’m building and why I’m building it. If you do decide to apply, I read every single application, and get on the phone with as many people as I possibly can.

When you take the time to figure out your “why” in your own business and personal life, it helps you shift the way you see your work in the world.

It means you meet the right people, and choose projects that matter. It’s helped me in countless ways: setting up boundaries between what I’ll say yes to and what I decline. Helping me make decisions and set up structures for success.

If this post resonated with you, if you find yourself nodding along, if what I’m talking about makes sense, then I’d love for you to apply to the mastermind. It’s a small group of people, and I think very carefully about who ends up joining. But I can’t add you to the group if you don’t apply. We start on March 6th, so I’m finalizing interviews through the rest of this week, looking for one or two more faces I haven’t met yet to possibly add to the mix.

Here’s the link to apply if you haven’t already — Apply today.

Are You Chasing Productivity At The Expense of Your Soul?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

pexels-photo-large - coffee

I’m struggling with two competing challenges: being present and mindful, while also chasing the ego-driven aims of “success” and “productivity.” Is there a middle ground?

I reached out to my dear friend Mathias Jakobsen, author and creator of Think Clearly, to dissect this competing pull between these two desires. This is the conversation.

Two Competing Challenges: Present vs Future

Sarah: I’m struggling with two competing challenges. It seems there are two challenges affront, ahead of me, right here. I tackle them daily, I deal with them on the regular. They are sworn opposites, or at least, I have not figured out how to accompany them both.

On the left we have Present. Present is my desire to be here, to be present, to be grounded. To touch base with myself, to write, to surrender, to meditate. To dwell in the taste of the now and know that even if I were to do nothing for the rest of my life, the sweetness of being where I am and who I am would be treasure enough.

Present is my desire to be here, to be present, to be grounded. I want to pause and taste the riches of the living, and feel what’s happening right now.

Present is the call that masks itself as adventures and oceans and beaches: to escape, not as escape from reality, but to escape the endless thrust and chase of the ‘productive’ world, the ‘ego’ world, and to sink into being. I want to pause and taste the riches of the living, and feel what’s happening right now. Present reminds me of itself in the call to meditate, to practice yoga, to commune with friends, to taste food fully.

Present is the call to transcend the ego, to transcend the mind.

On the right we have Future. We might also call it Ego or Productivity. Productivity wants me to plan, to build, to dream, to DO. I must do to be worthy; I must create more. Productivity is the siren call of success; the ladder of ascendence.

You are never enough, because you are always climbing.

Our companies and corporations and economies are built on Productivity. We must chase the next goal, the next metric, the next objective, the next project. We champion growth above all else.

The humans at the center of this Productivity Machine are exhausted. They are also — although they don’t know it — expendable, just another part to the machine that doesn’t matter in it’s uniqueness. We can find another human to dispose of and use up.

I work and live in a world that idolizes Productivity. Productivity is all about the future: dreaming of what could be, what can be, and what will be. It manifests as if only, and when, and how. The American Dream is built upon this reality: you can have more things, you can have a bigger house, a bigger backyard, a better job. We are slow to realize that the thing being sold is a dream, and what we’re all really doing is running, running, running in place. We have our arms outstretched, unaware that we are on a treadmill. The focus on the future has left us lost of the present.

How do we wake up from the monotonous strum beat of the future, banging it’s dream so loudly in our faces? How do we let the worries and anxieties, most of which are all born by dreaming in the future and worrying about how to change from where we are to where we want to be — how do we let them go? How do we work within them, or embrace them, without them overtaking us? Is that even possible?

 

Mathias: First, let’s look at this idea of present vs future. This one actually seems rather straightforward to me.

I agree with you on the present-stuff — even though it is extremely hard for me to really taste food when trying to entertain my nine-month old Uma, get some extra food for my 27-month old Noah, wipe up something from the floor, and also have a conversation with my wife.

But it’s practice in headwinds and uphill.

As for the future and productivity and ego stuff I also agree with your analysis. We live in a world dominated by this. But the problem is not that it’s dreams and future. The problem is that we implicitly think that only by making these dreams come true can we feel whole and complete and successful and happy.

The problem is that we implicitly think that only by making these dreams come true can we feel whole and complete and successful and happy.

But here’s my hack: dreaming about the future can also be done very consciously in the present. By dreaming very precisely and without bounds it can be immensely pleasurable to imagine the future. The focus then, is on the dream itself and there is no fear of not being able to manifest this future since the maximum pleasure that can be derived from it is already done in fantasy.

The mistake is the implicit belief that these dreams are only valuable when turned it into goals and plans and actualized.

 

Sarah: Mmm, yes. Dreams aren’t invaluable in and of themselves. It’s when you lose sight of the present, and the process, that the dreams can become unwieldy. Relying on the achievement of a dream, only once actualized, to make us happy, is dangerous.

Mathias: Exactly right. That doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t actualize our dreams. I’m hugely proud of some of my big dreams that I have made happen.

But I am not deriving joy from the new reality as much as how I have grown in myself along the way. And even if a different future had materialized then I could still have grown in the pursuit and thus found capacity to enjoy the present.

Goals and plans and dreams. It’s amusement. It’s fun. It’s like LEGO. You don’t build with it to make a house you can keep. But you also don’t just put bricks together at random since that’s not particularly interesting (except as one particular experiment maybe once or twice). You build a house to see if you can build a better house today than when you built yesterday. Maybe today better is a bigger house. Or better is taller. Or better is smaller. Or better is more elegant. And you succeed in your pursuit or you don’t.

But it’s just LEGO and tonight you break it apart and tomorrow you build another one. And when you’re satisfied with your houses you begin building cars or planes or something else. But the cars and the planes and the house don’t matter. They only serve to make the building process more fun by giving direction. But building is always in the present.

 

Sarah: Right, the building is again, about the process and the journey. This makes so much sense to me. We lose sight of the purpose of dreaming about the future when we completely let go of the present. But we do not need to forgo dreams and plans, because they can inform who we are and how we behave in the present.

How do you translate this into the working world? What do you do about organizations that are organized around achievement? How do you address the urgency of achievement, the need for more productivity?

Mathias: [In my work], I’m not sure what we are building exactly but I find plenty of pockets to just enjoy the building process and I try to let others enjoy it too. Some do. Others keep being frustrated because they feel that others are getting in the way. But I’m not participating in the war on either side.

As for the kids and future, I think I just look further ahead where there is more clarity and less worries about the mid term. I enjoy little goals in the short term — amusement — ego boosting entertainment. Long term I see this time with kids as a time to try and not accomplish that much in the sense of external achievements, but to build up myself and my character and my spine.

That’s also why I don’t get too worried about my job performance and the conflicts and tensions. They affect me, of course, but when Noah throws up in the middle of the night I know that this is the real growth opportunity. When Uma is sick. This is where I need to be. How to deal with this situation with joy. This is where my wife and I can grow together. This is where we have conflict. Conflict and blame and issues. And then we must solve and dissolve and heal and grow stronger.

This is the real deal. Uphill. Headwinds. Training for the soul. Coffee and coca-cola gets me through a lot of things :-)

But I know we are loving more.

It’s a thrill. It’s for real. I love when I can still be fully present and open and loving and giving with Noah or Uma or Pernille in the midst of craziness. And I forgive myself the many times I can’t. It’s life!

I’m more tired and more alive than ever in my life.

That’s all for now.

What about you?

What does this conversation stir up for you ?What are your take-aways? What will you begin doing? Stop doing? Keep doing but perhaps in a different way?

Mathias Jakobsen is a Learning Designer at Hyper Island and the creator of Think Clearly — a newsletter that helps you get unstuck. He loves notebooks, bakes bread and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, son and daughter.

The Creative Self: Why The Habit of Making is Essential

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

We don’t know if what we make will be any good. Whether or not it’s good is not the reason we begin. We begin because we must.

We practice because creativity is a practice. Showing up for yourself is a skill you must practice again and again and again, more than anything else you’ll ever do in your life. We don’t wake up with a new skill bestowed upon us in our dreams; we practice, practice, and practice more and each time, we carve out more ability in our hands, minds, and bodies.

Soul Pancake (the very one that features Kid President) and Unmistakeable Media reached out about turning a podcast I recorded with Srini Rao into an animated short piece. The video went live this week, and it talks about the essential art of practicing your craft.

Enjoy.

The Secret (Business) Beauty in Complaining

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

My head buzzes when I am around people who start to complain too much. It’s like an electric current goes through my head, starts building, and then my frazzled mind-space begins to implode under all of the pressure.

I like solving problems, and can be known to interrupt or interject with “Yeah, sure, okay, but — how do we fix this?” instead of patiently listening.

{I’m working on it. I’m a much better listener than I was five years ago.}

The worst is when complaints run in a continuous loop, as though their very existence begets more opportunities to begrudge the same thing over and over again. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. Someone who complains about the same thing over and over again, and yet does nothing to fix or change the situation.

But complaints aren’t always bad.

Complaints are valuable — the first time.

If we can ignore the tinny-tin-tin buzz chattering complainers (I sometimes picture those world cup Vuvuzuelas as the pinnacle of a swarm of complainers, buzzy bees dancing around my ears doing nothing for nobody) then we can try to hear the music in the buzz. I like to think it has something to tell me — or you:

Every complaint is an opportunity.

Even the gripers have their merits: a gripe is feedback, a reflection on the world, information for a product or a process — and it can be something that reveals a way in which our environments can be different, changed, or better.

If the complaint stops at just that — a vocal expression of disapproval or — well, then it doesn’t do much good. That’s just whining.

And if a complaint happens more than once, it’s time to act.

Sometimes I find myself repeating the same complaint in my head. If I hear myself say it more than once, though, I try to immediately think: What can I do about this?

A complaint is the first key towards solving a problem. The easiest problems to solve are ones we can readily identify.

A great way to solve problems is to look around and see that they exist. So the next time you hear someone complain, look again at what’s being said.

Complaining about late buses? Then figure out a system for notifying riders of the bus schedule and arrival times. Complaining that banks aren’t open on Sundays? Figure out a way to do banking on Sundays without going into a teller. Want to stop getting parking tickets? Make a map of the cities’ street signs and rig it to your iPhone alarm clock. Complaining that you can’t find things? Figure out a better way to stay organized.

Annoyed that telephones are stuck into wires in walls and you have to stand in one place to talk to someone? Oh snap, invent a cell phone.

Businesses solve problems.

People make stuff to fix problems you have — sometimes before you knew you had a problem in the first place — and it’s in order to make your life a little bit better.

Often, the opportunities require work, effort, or time (hence the complaint) but they are certainly opportunities. They should challenge us to figure out how to do something better and figure out new solutions.

Often, it’s just a small thing that can be fixed or tweaked to make something much better. Hipmunk gives Kayak a run for it’s money on finding cheap airline flights. HootSuite, TweetDeck, BufferApp, and Meet Edgar are all variations on the same problem: coordinating social posts and sharing your work in the social world.

Making something slightly better or easier to use can be a huge opportunity.

Complaints should happen once.

Then they should spur you to action. Complain. Then think: How can I fix this?

The brightest people in the world — and the basis for many, many business ideas — comes from a simple look at something that doesn’t *quite* work so well and coming up with a way to make it better. A greater challenge, of course, is to create a solution for a problem people didn’t know they had: Apple’s iPod, for example, solved a problem that many people didn’t realize they had in the first place: the ability to carry an indefinite amount of music around with you in your pocket.

Many of the best businesses, in fact, understand a problem or an opportunity and then fix it before you even knew it existed.

An amazing example of this will come from Google’s Cars, if the cars end up working very well (which I hope they do): the problem? People don’t like driving, or at least they don’t like driving on a regular basis, when the drive is the same day-to-day and they could be using that time (often 1-2 hours in traffic each way) for something else. Clearly, the public transportation systems and the way that they are run leave something to be desired in all of us — otherwise, we wouldn’t have so many cars cramming into our cities and spaces. People prefer being in their own cars, under their own terms. Even when it’s ridiculously expensive to own a car. I look forward to the solutions that stem from the opportunities of car sharing, private rides, and better public transportation.

If you’re complaining about the same thing over and over again and you already know how to fix it, or you have an idea of how it could be better, then it’s time to start working on it.

And if you’ve never thought about it this way before: every time you see something you don’t like, from trash on the subway to long lines to confusing information, realize that it’s probably a business waiting to happen, and it could be yours.

Listen to what other people are complaining about as free advice for what might be a great business opportunity.

What are people complaining about? What are you complaining about? How are you going to fix it?

Bam. There’s your next business idea.

Go make something better.

Ship. Iterate. Improve. Repeat.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Iterations

How do you make something great?

Start small.

Build something that you can do today, this week.

Ship a little piece of it. Stop holding on to it. Maybe keep the idea big, but just start with something so small you can’t not do it.

Make the smallest version possible. Give it away. Share it. Sell it. Tell people about it. 

But start small. Make an MVP (minimum viable product). It’s okay if you wince at the difference between your grand vision and your actual iteration. The first iteration can be improved. So can the second.

But only if you start.

Experiment. Play. Ask people to pay you money for it. (PS: it’s okay to ask for money.)

What can you start, today?

What can you finish, today?

What can you ship, this week?

Start. Ship. Iterate. Improve. Repeat.

What to do about negative feedback.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Are you hungry enough?

So I’m at home on a Saturday night, and I’m watching America’s Next Top Model, one of my guilty pleasures and trashy TV shows that I sometimes tune into (it’s that, Project Runway, and Suits that make me curl up with a bowl of popcorn after a long day).

While you can hold your comments about my show preferences, I noticed something about people in competition — and in life — that’s critically important.

Three models are competing to book a show. They’ve got their fierce looks on, they have to show their chops, demonstrate what they’ve learned, and show their skill in posing and/or walking. Two of them get booked — and one of them doesn’t.

Sometimes, after a competition, the TV cuts to a scene of the competitor in a corner, crying. “I don’t know what I did wrong,” they wail, teary-eyed. “I just don’t get it! I thought I was totally going to get this job!”

In two cases, however, I watched as one of the contestants got cut — and she walked up to the judge and asked,

How can I be better?

The judge gave a few remarks about confidence, etc, and the model continued to drill him:

“I’d really love your feedback because I want to get this right. I know it’s fiercely competitive, and I’m interested in upping my game.”

Both times, the contestants that took the exact moment where they got feedback that told them they weren’t as good as their peers, taking that opportunity to learn, grow, and build — the contestants transformed the most week over week.

Granted, this is ANTM. I’m blushing just writing about this.

But I see this happen all the time in real life, too.

My friends who are building programs on the internet, making projects, delivering results, starting companies — the most successful people I know are insanely curious about making things better. They take their project, put it in the world, and ask for feedback.

They know that life is a continuous game of learning, one that started when we were born. As toddlers, we might fall a hundred times while learning to walk, but very few of us sat pouting in a corner after we fell down a couple of times. We wanted to walk.

Not all feedback is the same, however.

Great feedback you can use. Great feedback is specific, clear, and something that you can work on. Negative comments for the sake of being mean should be ignored. (That’s called a troll). When someone has something to say that’s constructive, file it away. Store it — because it’s valuable. We wanted to explore, to move.

The hunger to learn is innate.

When life gets a little rough, we can cry. (I do that sometimes. And it often involves trashy TV and a bowl of popcorn in my bed).

And we can also ask,

How can I be better?

Does money make you crazy? The Money Toolbox: leave debt behind, build your savings, and grow your wealth.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Want money?

Money advice often boils down to some basic tenets: spend less than you make, or conversely, make more than you spend. Increase your earnings, then maximize your returns.

Sounds simple—in theory. But the difficulty lies in the application. How do you actually do it so that it changes? What do you do when change is so incremental that it seems barely noticeable? Is the snowball effect worth it?

Enter, stage left: J.D. Roth

JD Roth 2

I met JD Roth at the inaugural World Domination Summit. He was the popular blogger of Get Rich Slowly, although, to be honest, I didn’t know that at the time.

Instead, I danced with Adam Baker’s lovely daughter on a concrete barrier, did cartwheels with a goofy lady named Laura, and laughed with J.D. about how inordinately excited we were to be in Portland at this new conference series. At some point we eventually got to talking about our professions and careers, and once we did, we geeked out over books like Ramit’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich, The Millionaire Next Door, and ways to be frugal, savvy, and more importantly—happy.

Over the years, we became good friends, sharing tips on savings, wondering whether or not I should sell my car and go car-free (ps, J.D., I don’t know if I told you, but I sold it! And I used the cash to help start my own business). We’ve crashed in each other’s houses (because when you want to be a millionaire, who springs for a hotel?), and giggled about how we each own jackets that are more than 10 years old.

J.D. has been both a friend and a mentor, and when he told me he was working on a master series called the “Money Toolbox,” I knew it would be full of good stuff.

The Money Toolbox: leave debt behind + grow rich.

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“By following a few guidelines and completing one small step each week, you can master your money and build wealth for the future.” —J.D. Roth

J.D.’s story is familiar to many: a decade ago, he had more than $35,000 in consumer debt—credit-card balances, personal loans, car payments—and was living paycheck to paycheck. In a world where we’re taught that debt is fine, J.D. wondered: what processes actually work to make change with regards to money? And how can I become rich?

Today, he’s debt-free and has more than a million dollars in the bank.

My own story is similar—minus the million dollars part, at least at the moment—I started my twenties with piles of student-loan debt and promptly did the next smart thing all 20-somethings do: I bought a car, because someone told me it was an “investment.” Instead, my car loan was barely approved because I had already acquired so much debt. I began my first job nearly $100,000 in the red with a job that barely paid my rent—let alone the massive student loan payments that were due. I worked nights and weekends as a tutor and swim coach to bring in enough money to afford to buy groceries (My food budget was directly linked to whether or not I taught that week—some weeks were rice and beans).

And yet by the time I turned 30, I was in the black—and it wasn’t because of a miraculous scheme or a magical job. It was through small habits and the power of time.

Just like J.D., I didn’t turn straw into gold, and the process of changing my life didn’t happen right away.

Get the guide and toolkit, here: The Master Your Money Toolkit.

In his guide, J.D. documents the time-tested principles of putting his money to work.

What he learned surprised him: getting out of debt and building wealth wasn’t just about pinching pennies. He focused on reducing expenses and increasing income. For the first time in his life, he began to accumulate savings and invest wisely.

“Getting out of debt and building wealth isn’t just about pinching pennies—wise strategies for spending, saving, earning and investing can add up over time.”

Over the past eight years, J.D. spent much of his time writing and sharing these lessons on GetRichSlowly.org, a popular blog he initially founded to share his own quest for self-improvement. With over three thousand articles and more than a million words, this work still exists as a public archive.

From the mastermind behind the blog Get Rich Slowly comes his latest project: Get Rich Slowly: the year-long course, a money-makeover toolbox designed to help people leave debt behind, master their money, and achieve financial independence. Featuring a “Money Mondays,” email series, 18 audio interviews with money experts, and a comprehensive “Be Your Own CFO” guidebook, this course collects wisdom from financial gurus Ramit Sethi, Pam Slim, Adam Baker, and more.

With a 52-lesson guide to help people master their money, he created a road map to financial freedom, developed for anyone seeking to ‘master their money’ by getting out of debt and building independent wealth.

The Master Your Money Toolkit.

What’s your money story?

As important as J.D’s story is, the new Get Rich Slowly guide isn’t really about him. It’s about you. It’s a road map for your financial freedom, and it includes a 120-page “Be Your Own CFO” guide, 18 interviews with experts who offer specific advice on important topics, and plenty of additional resources. To ensure you don’t get overwhelmed (as I sometimes do!), you’ll also receive a different lesson with simple actions every week for an entire year. I’ve just started reading my own CFO guide, and I think the “Money Monday” emails are brilliant.

If you want a copy, JD is —naturally— offering budget-friendly options, and the three different scales of the program are all discounted for the launch (meaning you can get a copy without breaking your own bank)—because what good is a money guide that sets you back even further?

Get your copy here: Get Rich Slowly: The Money Toolbox.

Congrats, J.D.

The Write Life’s bundle: massive sale for writers!

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

The Writer's Bundle: Epic Resources

Writing is powerful stuff.

I teach several writing courses as a tool to gain insight into your inner wisdom, access your inner soul, and pen your own stories. If you’ve been itching to write, yesterday I shared several of my favorite resources in the March edition of my behind-the-scenes newsletter.

Today, I’m excited to share a few more awesome resources on writing, publishing, and marketing that you might love. If you want to know learn more about publishing, writing, building your own business, and marketing from some of my favorites—Seth Godin, Jenny Blake, Chris Guillebeau, Ali Luke, Alexis Grant and more—keep reading.

The Write Life Bundle—an epic steal at $79:

Want to know more about publishing, creating kindle books, marketing your book, developing your business, promoting your work, and engaging your audience? The Write Life packs a powerful punch in this bundle of nine different e-resources—a collection of books and courses that normally runs for more than $700 individually.

The bundle features:

  • Chris Guillebeau’s Unconventional Guide to Publishing (ebook and audio, retails for $129)
  • Jeff Goins’ How to Start Publishing for Kindle (ebook and audio, retails for $47)
  • Kristi Hines’ The Ultimate Blog Post Promotion Course (course, retails for $197)
  • Jenny Blake’s Build Your Business (course, retails for $75)
  • Tom Ewer’s Paid to Blog (course, retails for $29)
  • Sophie Lizard’s The Freelance Blogger’s Client Hunting Masterclass (course, retails for $98)
  • Alexis Grant’s Social Media for Writers (course, retails for $99)
  • Danny Iny’s Interview on Building an Engaged Community (audio + transcript, exclusive)
  • Ali Luke’s The Blogger’s Guide to Irresistible Ebooks, plus Publishing an Ebook Audio Seminar (ebook and audio, retails for $29 + $19.99)

The catch? It’s available for three days ONLY; the offer expires Wednesday, March 19 at midnight EST. That means if you’re interested, you’ve gotta act now!

Click here for more details and to get your hands on this bundle.

What is it about writing that’s so important?

People ask me why I teach a writing course.

To me, it’s so much more than writing. Writing is just the surface.

My deeper belief is that we’re all in need of connection to ourselves, as well as connection to each other. Writing, marketing, copy—it’s all just a way to tell stories and share them with our tribes. With the people that matter. When I look around, I see too much loneliness and disconnection. In plain English this means we’re kind of miserable, kind of bored, and kind of lonely—and we don’t know why.

Writing is one of the many tools we have to connect more deeply into our own inherent wisdom—and to tell stories that connect us to other people. Sometimes we forget how extraordinary writing is. It takes us out of our heads and lets us share a part of ourselves beyond our physical presence—we can share our ideas and our words in a space where other people can connect and learn about who we are.

Because of this, I’m sharing the writer’s bundle—for you to keep writing, of course!

Seth Godin’s Marketing Master Class—Another crazy steal at $10 for the class:

Want to learn more about mastering marketing with one of the all-time best marketers to date? Seth is offering another great skillshare class, available for $20 (or only $10 per student if you use my link). The course covers the following aspects of marketing:

  • 11 questions about your role and your leverage;
  • An action theory of marketing;
  • The 14 “P” words that you need to know;
  • Specific marketing concepts and exercises;
  • Case studies in action.

$10 for a marketing class with Seth Godin?

Crazy. CRAZY SAUCE. Am I right?

Previewing next summer:

But what about your courses, Sarah? When are you teaching again?

Awww, thanks for asking!

Many of you know that today’s the day I wrap up teaching three different courses—our Writer’s Workshop, the Content Strategy course, and the Grace & Gratitude courses that I’ve taught this Winter quarter. It’s been a pleasure and a joy to journey together with more than 160 different faces through each of these workshops. After 3 months of back-to-back teaching, I’m editing and refining the program and will be brining out the next round of courses sometime later this Spring or early Summer (mark your calendars!).

Until then, go get your hands on one of these amazing programs, and — keep writing.  

Are you letting the numbers deflate you?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

The thing about numbers is, we give them far too much power to make us feel bad. “Only” have 100 people reading your blog? That’s like speaking to a jam-packed coffee shop or on stage at a live speaking event.

Alexandra Franzen reframes the expectations we have around blogging (and online writing) and I think it’s so spot-on that I have to chime in. You are enough. Ten people is enough. Your audience of 45 people is fan-freaking-tastic. FORTY FIVE PEOPLE! That’s a lot of people listening. [tweetable hashtag=”#story #numbers #data @sarahkpeck”]Stop letting the numbers tell you a story of inadequacy.[/tweetable]

As Theodore Roosevelt said: [tweetable hashtag=”#quotes #inspiration #joy @sarahkpeck”]Comparison is the thief of joy.[/tweetable]

People often ask me how much traffic you need before you start a business or a project. We get discouraged with low traffic, thinking that somehow we’re not “good enough” if we don’t have thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people listening in. The secret is that you don’t need 10,000 people reading you to make a sale to 30 people. (In fact, that’s a pretty low conversion rate). If you’re doing something that helps someone else, then one sale, one client, or a small classroom might be all you need.

We’re so eager to hyper-glorify the entrepreneurs who are billionaires and the writers who reach hundreds of thousands of readers that we gloss over the beautiful middle, the delicious space where you get to express yourself, connect with others, and share your work. There is nothing more beautiful than this. Delight in the expression and the sharing. Show your work. Love your audience, in all its shapes and sizes.

It’s about connection, creation, and expression—not traffic.

I made a business out of teaching 30 people at a time in workshops. I coach people one on one. I feel honored when one hundred people read an essay I wrote. I feel the same when one person reads what I’ve written. Start small. Walk into the room. Be proud.

And also, traffic isn’t all that it seems: there is an ironic downside to too much traffic. [tweetable hashtag=”#truth #business @sarahkpeck”]Too much traffic can be a downer for your growing business.[/tweetable] It costs money, and then you end up paying for people to listen to you. Some examples: when you hit 2,000 subscribers, you need to pay your mail client (if it’s MailChimp) $30 a month to keep sending your emails. When your traffic gets high enough, your web hosting might turn into $50-$100 a month. Those U-Stream videos cost $99-$999 for viewer hours, so 4,000 people watching can cost you thousands of bucks. SoundCloud lets you do 2 hours free—then you pay.

You get the picture. If you want a big audience, you might have to pay $200-$500 a month (or more) for it.

There’s something beautiful about medium-sized.

Just like Alexandra Franzen so beautifully re-frames: there’s something gorgeous about your own personal coffee shop. Cherish it.

 

Making Money as a Creative Entrepreneur: How I Make Money, Where I Spend My Time, and What I’ve Learned From Launching My Own Ventures

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

When I was four weeks old, my mother and father took our then-family-of-four from Germany to Idaho Falls, little baby and tiny toddler in tow. We were standing around in the living room, as my mother recalls (to be be fair, I can’t recall and I certainly wasn’t standing—more likely drooling), talking about the insane temperatures sweeping in. My grandfather looked out the window at the temperature: it was minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Indoors, the heater warmed the house to 70 degrees.

“That’s a temperature differential of 100 degrees on either side of that glass pane,” my grandfather remarked, tall and lanky, white hair puffing out of each side of his head.

“That’s pretty impressive,” he chuckled.

Across the states, temperatures have been dropping and reeling – with 40-degree changes in mere hours as cold fronts sweep down invisible air channels and smother cities with their frozen molecules.

As a small-business entrepreneur, these temperature swings are analogous to the feast-and-famine cycle that can be all too familiar when you’re getting your business off the ground and becoming friendly with the ideas of cash flow, budgets, expenses, projections, and launches.

Dealing with the volatile ups-and-downs of entrepreneurship: it’s a bit windy out there.

Some days and months are big days full of courses sold, booked with clients, resulting in high-cash-flow months. “I’ve made it!” You think, gleefully, unwilling to look at how much you’ve spent to generate that cash flow (and just how far it really goes—because if you knew that it would only last a couple of months, you’d be back on the streets selling again the next day).

Other months are buckle-down, negative-zero income periods where you spend what money you have on resources and materials that you need (labor, equipment, time, skills)—in order to invest in and make what you want. It doesn’t matter if you’re a brick-and-mortar shop owner, an online retailer, a consultant, or a freelancer—creating a life you love involves seeking and finding customers and clients, understanding the highs and lows of business, deciding what you need to spend money on now and what can wait, and—for better or worse—’making it work.’

“Make it work!” — Tim Gunn.

So how DO you make your money as a creative entrepreneur?

What does it take to branch out and start your own side hustle, business, or creative endeavor? As a long-time “side-hustler” who started both a consulting practice and more recently an online teaching business, I’ve been invited to participate in a “blog tour” of people writing about their reflections on life as an entrepreneur.

While I still stumble over the words “entrepreneur” and “founder,” I’ve started a number of projects that have turned into profits. This month, as part of the Laser Launch Blog Party, Halley at Evolve-Succeed asked me to contribute to a collection of stories from small-business owners with all my tips for making your first and second year as a business owner fun and profitable. This post is part of a collection of essays with reflections, wisdom, and lessons from the journey it takes to become an entrepreneur.  (If you’re curious about the rest of the collection, check out the footnotes at the end of the post to see more.)

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what I’ve learned so far about “making it” as a creative entrepreneur. Some of the questions people ask me all the time include:

  • How are you making your money right now as a creative entrepreneur?

(Right to the point: they want to know where the money is — and I don’t blame them! Things in life cost money.)

  • What were some of the biggest surprises about starting your own business?

(Oh yes, there were plenty).

And often longingly:

  • I wish I could do whatever I wanted—do you get to just sit around in your pajamas? 

(Hah! I wish. Nope, that’s not my life right now). 

I wish I could say the last one were true — except I love learning and creating far too much to sit around all the time. In addition, the job of finding, getting, and retaining customers is a full-time job, so while I might write early in the morning in my pajamas and preferentially wear yoga pants during the day, I don’t just sit in my pajamas at home all day (and we don’t have a TV at home, either).

A quick disclaimer: I don’t have the magic recipe for everyone, but I do have a few nuggets of wisdom from learning and making mistakes along the way. Take what you will and enjoy.

Getting started (money-wise) as a creative entrepreneur:

As I shared with Brazen last month, these are the big 3 things you need to make it as a creative entrepreneur:

  • First: reduce your costs.
  • Second, save a bit of runway (emergency savings), and
  • Third, start with a side hustle to test your ideas.

People often think you need a big plan, a giant 30-point strategic framework, or have it all figured out to get going. The reality (in my opinion), is that you start small, test and iterate, and get smart about not spending too much money where you don’t need to.

First, reduce your costs — live on the cheap:

Live minimally. Gain freedom from your job by not needing the paycheck. The more expensive your lifestyle, the riskier it is to jump to something new and uncertain that could have a potentially low income at start. The more you can reduce your overhead, the less risky it is to make that jump.

“The more expensive your lifestyle, the riskier it is to jump to something new and uncertain that could have a potentially low income at the start.”

If you want to start something new or break out of a dead-end job, follow the path of the Ramen-eating hackers who live cheaply. If you live an elaborate lifestyle, you may burn through your paychecks. See how much you can cut.

Make it a game. Buy a $75 sewing machine and give up buying clothes for a year (which is something I did—and now I don’t buy new clothes very often, if ever). Learn from the family in San Francisco that lives with no trash. Eat on the cheap. Give up restaurants and alcohol for a year, or even a few months. Track all your purchases and decide whether that night out with friends or new pair of shoes is more valuable to you than your freedom.

The nomadic entrepreneurs who live around the world and work from anywhere are often working in places where the cost of living is low. They’re not somehow richer than everyone else; instead, they’ve often worked the airline systems to get thousands of frequent flyer miles and travel on the cheap. The life they’ve built is incredibly inexpensive, making the need for a giant business (and lots of possessions) unnecessary. My fiancé and I talk about and analyze ways to live with less—figuring out what we truly “need” and what makes us happiest, often discovering that things are not synonymous with happiness. The more I interview and meet people as well, the more I realize that the happiest people don’t “have it all”—they have what they want, and skip the rest.

Sound like too much to give up? Consider how much you want to leave your job or chase your business idea. What’s it worth to you? How much do you want to start this business? When you want it, you’ll make it happen.

Second, shore up your emergency savings for when you *will* have low-cash-flow months.

This is part two: save up a nest egg or a “freedom fund” while you’re on the job, if you can. Cobble together several different income streams (bartending, teaching, coaching, waitressing, and many other side hustles kept me in positive cash streams).

When I started my first job after school, I actually made less than the cost of my rent and loans. In order to make it work, I picked up two side jobs: teaching swim lessons on the weekends and tutoring high school students in the evenings after work by posting an advertisement on Craigslist as a geometry and algebra tutor. That extra $200 a week was my savings and food budget, and I was able to save a little bit each month—and eat. [tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck #money #freedom http://dev.sarahkpeck.com/money”]To get started on your next project, create a freedom fund.[/tweetable]

After a year, I had saved $4,000 on the side from little side jobs. It was just the cushion I needed for the next step: several months where I used that same night and weekend time to concentrate on tweaking my side business endeavors. Soon I started making thousands of dollars on the side.

More recently, I left San Francisco to head to New York to start my next business adventures. To make it happen, I sold my car for $12,000 and had about the same amount in liquid cash savings that I was willing to use towards building my next set of projects. I also tested the projects I wanted to build in advance, demonstrating that people were willing to buy what I wanted to make—and then, not leaving until cash flow was positive and knowing that the buffer funding was there for the variant months of lower-than-expected income (or higher-than-expected costs).

In an ideal world, you’ll have about a 6-month buffer so you don’t work month-to-month, but in the real world, you do the best you can. Nearly every one I’ve talked to has said it takes longer than they expect to generate consistent income—so that cash savings helps during the buffer months when you’re making money—but not as much as you need. [tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck #money #truth http://dev.sarahkpeck.com/money”]The less your life costs, the longer the money lasts.[/tweetable]

The lower your expenses, the longer you can stretch your savings. If every paycheck goes straight to paying your expenses, consider taking on a small side job to boost your income, even while building your project.

Third: build it as a side hustle, if you can.

Does it make more sense to start your business from scratch or build it as a side hustle?

I recommend that everyone have a side hustle. It’s called moonlighting, and it’s a great way to test whether something you want to do is feasible. For some it’s a paper route or a nail salon job; for others, it’s taking care of elderly on the weekends, for me, it was teaching swim lessons and tutoring high school kids. It’s a great space to make a little side money, keep your options open, and develop your skills in a particular area when you’re thinking of changing careers.

[tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck http://dev.sarahkpeck.com/money”] The best time to try out your new project is now.[/tweetable]

Test the market viability by seeing if there’s any traction for your ideas, and tweak each iteration a bit to improve the offering. Perhaps you want to start a side culinary and health business. Set up evening showcases on the weekends for friends and family and let people know you’re doing a cooking class at a discount to raise awareness. Pitch your services to local vendors. Offer to teach at a high school. Spread the word about private lessons.

After a couple of months, reevaluate and see if you’ve made a profit. Tweak your project to build something people want that you also enjoy doing. If you need to, stay home and do things no one else is doing to make it work.

How do you know it’s time to finally take the leap?

There are times when you need to make the leap without a nest egg, without changing your costs, and without a plan. This happens, and people make it work. Sometimes the intensity of the jump forces laser-like clarity and an immediate reduction in expenses. But [tweetable hashtag=”@sarahkpeck http://dev.sarahkpeck.com/money”]if your goal is to set out on your own by next summer, start building your business and reducing your overhead right now.[/tweetable]

Most folks running their own businesses and building the life of their dreams are always in the process of doing that — running and building. These are active verbs, which take time, energy and innovation. It’s not about pulling all-nighters or creating an endless stream of energy; it’s about being smart about building something a little bit at a time.

People who are working on new projects or problems aren’t immune to risk. But they’ve mitigated potential risks by using strategic tools, building up their savings, creating clever cost-saving lifestyles and forming plans to tweak their systems to get what they want.

Leave your job when you need more space in your business or venture and when you have a few leads. I knew it was time to head out on my own after I made almost half of my full-time income on the side—I decided to trust that if I put my day-time energy into my side-hustle, that I’d be able to make up the difference. I also kept trying to get my expenses down to make it easier to make the transition.

If you can save a little, cut your costs, and test your ideas on the side, you’ll be excited about what’s ahead because you’ll have already planned for the risks and confirmed that project has the potential for success.

How I started teaching online and in-person:

I’ve always loved teaching and coaching—from one-on-one tutoring in high school to assistant teaching in graduate school. After I left school, I kept teaching by signing up for workshops and events and volunteering my time to run events.

I started teaching on the side—in the evenings and on weekends—by putting up an advertising on Craigslist as a tutor, by pitching conferences and workshops as a workshop leader, by running lunchtime events at my company, and by reaching out to places like General Assembly, Skillshare, and Udemy to work with them. As I built both my teaching experience and reputation over several years, I was able to test my curriculum, build ideas, practice presenting, and later teach more through my own website.

What if you have savings and a side hustle, but you like your job? When did you know it was the right time to quit your job?

I liked what I did in my day job—I got to manage the communications and work on our marketing efforts at a 200-person architecture firm. It had it’s own challenges and entrepreneurial endeavors—we created a new blog, redesigned a website, and launched a journal from scratch, and I got to work with some of the most respected names in landscape architectural design. It was intense, demanding, and rigorous. 

Yet I knew I needed to leave when I got too tired I couldn’t see straight, and when enough people were asking me for what I had—and I couldn’t answer their responses quickly enough during my night hours.

(It was also convenient that my then-boyfriend and I decided that living in the same city might be nicer that cross-country dating, so the universe conspired to get me to head out to New York. Life tells you to move and change, if you’ll listen to the call). 

Financially, I knew it was the right time to work for myself when I was able to draw clients, fill up my classes on a regular basis, and when I wanted to chase the next challenge in front of me.

What do you do now as your business—how do you make money?

Ahh yes, the money question. (I suppose I thought I could get away with not answering this!)

I do three things: I run a teaching and media company (SKP Media), I consult, and I coach. From time to time I take on additional creative and collaborative projects as well—depending on what needs to be made in the world, how much time I have, and how exciting (read: “Hell Yes!”) the project is and the people are.

SKP Media is the bulk of my current time and energy. It’s where I teach writing workshops, content strategy workshops, and my newest course—Grace and Gratitude, a two-week course on cultivating kindness and gratitude in your life. We have sold-out (and over-sold) each of the courses, and during teaching months I spend a fair amount of time interacting with participants, reading and grading, running the program, and researching new examples to share with the crew.

This is where I spend about half my time, and it brings in about half of my yearly business income. With this business income, I invest in teaching equipment, the fees and hosting charges for each of the platforms I use (in addition to processing fees), pay taxes, hire a teaching assistant, and collaborate with a number of other freelancers (like proofreaders, web designers, and graphic designers)—who help get everything up and running. It’s important to note—business revenue is not the same as income, by any means. If my business is making $60,000, I might only be paying myself $30,000 depending on the variables of expenses. So reducing your expenses and living costs is a great way to help in the early stages of building.

In addition, I consult from time to time with clients who are interested in publishing, writing, content development, and social media movements—my typical clients are people interested in developing their own thought leadership platforms, need help running a multiple-month PR campaign, or want help understanding and developing their social media and content strategy.

I also take on a select number of coaching clients if there’s space in the schedule, but I’ve been keeping this part of my business quite small as I ramp up the teaching and media company, which is taking up the majority of my time at the moment.

It should also be noted that not all time is spent on activities that make money directly—writing, for example (such as this post) isn’t something that necessarily generates a lead or a sale directly, but takes a fair amount of time. Learning how to balance business-generating activities with other activities that don’t directly generate income (writing, social media posting, meeting people at conferences)—is a balancing act, and one that’s been subject to a lot of finessing.

What else do you spend your time on?

The above strategies for how I earn my income and spend my time add up to about 60-70% of my time—but I spend a fair amount of time writing, as well (as much as 30-40% of my time, if I’m lucky).

I write about 100,000 words on this blog and my essays annually, and I write an additional 30-40,000 words for each of the various program platforms I create as well, which doesn’t include the amount of writing that’s left on the cutting room floor when I go back to edit and revise.

Each morning I get up early and write, for as much time as I have time in my schedule. (Some days are booked solid with client and teaching work, so my writing window is from 7-8:30AM before my day gets off to a roaring start). Other days are luxurious when I spent 7AM—11AM writing, before getting in to begin my work. I still have a habit of writing on Friday evenings and Saturdays, as those times are “me” times that are often undisturbed by regular work calls.

There are other parts of my life that take up significant portions of time — sleeping, eating, meeting with people face to face, yoga teacher training, traveling — but this list is focused on what I do in my business life.

What about you? Do you have any other questions about making money as a creative entrepreneur?

What have you done that’s worked? Do you have any advice for small-and medium sized business owners that would be helpful?

Leave a note in the comments! 

For more from this series on entrepreneurship, small-business success, and business wisdom, check out the posts going live this month over at Evolve and Succeed.