Hey there fellow Apprentices,
Thank you for deciding to support my journey with Mastery In Your 20s. The investment of your time (and now hard-earned cash?!?) has enabled me to create the 15 Guides so far and to level up the content with the new Diaries and Discussions.
Without you reading, the feedback loop that powers my motivation would be broken. So, thank you for being the conduit to my ideas and energy.
Here is the next step on the journey of Mastery In Your 20s.
What are the diaries all about?
The Diaries are my opportunity to give you a look under the hood of solopreneurship as I share my learnings, earnings and plans from building a portfolio career at 24.
The exact format is likely to evolve from feedback, but I can promise you one thing - that I will commit to being as open & authentic as possible with you.
I’ll show you what’s being going well, where I made mistakes and how you can avoid doing the same. As one of the pioneers of portfolio careers, I’ll be using these reflections as an opportunity to help you accelerate your career to align to the skills, passions and interests you want to pursue.
Today’s table of contents:
The 3 Lessons I’ve Learnt 📈
How Much I’ve Earnt 💰
What A Week Looks Like ⏳
What I’ve Been Reading 📚
What’s Coming Up Next 🚀
I haven’t yet developed a grand theory of the career journey I’m on, but for now I’ll steal this quote from Paul Millerd’s book on The Pathless Path until I have my own words to explain it:
“On the pathless path, the goal is not to find a job, make money, build a business, or achieve any other metric. It’s to actively and consciously search for the work that you want to keep doing.”
Now, let’s recap the last 8 months…
The 3 Lessons I’ve Learnt 📈
Okay, so I’ve learnt a lifetime of experience since November.
Going out on my own has forced me to up my sales skills, truly believe in myself and find an ease with uncertainty. I’ve had to accept that the path will morph into something I could never imagine in the beginning.
But, in the pursuit of briefness, here are three highlights:
#1: Never undervalue yourself
My first project management gig back in November was sponsored by a previous client of mine from House Hack. He brought me in, paid me more than I thought I was worth and exposed me to a great learning environment.
As I proved my value to him, it became clear that we had a mutual interest in the future of work and rare talent. This quickly evolved into a business idea that we spent several months building out behind the scenes.
The initial agreement was a 50:50 split of ownership in return of a 30:10 weekly hours, given his larger network and superior experience. At the start this felt like a fair deal - I’d get an accelerated learning opportunity and a network of senior decision makers in return for my time.
However, it didn’t quite work out that way. I absorbed as much information as I could about the future of work space and built some solid propositions, but the network wasn’t willing to bite. As time moved on, priorities changed and I felt pretty alone on what had started as a joint journey together.
After 4 months of this, I decided I’d had enough.
I spoke to my co-founder about my concerns and he gave me the time to truly listen to and understand my perspective. This quickly led to a discussion on him taking more of an investor role at a 10% equity share in return for seed funding to cover a salary & initial expenses.
I was pretty blown away. He’d just knocked himself down by 40% of the business simply by having a difficult conversation. But, it still didn’t sit right.
Saying no was a tough choice. He was offering me a guaranteed monthly salary, his 30 years of expertise and enough seed funding to build a great business. But, I knew it would mean having all my eggs in the hands of one person, which wasn’t the freedom I was looking to build.
So, I turned him down to focus on building out the solopreneur pathway that I’m now currently on and haven’t looked back since.
For sure, I’ve got unfinished business with the future of work space. I know I’ll be back to help larger organisations to create meaningful experiences of work. However, whether I decide to partner with him or not will be a simple business decision. It won’t be a career defining move.
The lesson: Know the value of your time, even without a lifetime of business experience. The opportunity cost of decisions in your 20s is huge.
#2: Letting go is part of the journey
In August 2021 I signed up for my first Ironman.
I was recovering from Covid and I wanted to prove to myself that anything was possible. That I could learn an entirely new sport and take on its greatest challenge within a year.
It meant training every week, sacrificing evenings, weekends and social life for the challenge, clocking up over 408 hours of exercise over the Winter period. It was tough, but it was working… I was the fittest I’d ever been and my sights were being set higher and higher. First just cross the line, then sub 12 hours then an age group 1st place.
The May training camp to Mallorca quickly came around. I was in form. The swimming was stronger than I thought. The mountains were easy and confidence was starting to stir inside me.
Then I took on a descent at 62km/h. As I slammed the brakes, the bike started to shake, the wheels gave way and I smashed into the crash barrier. I flew like superman over the cliff edge down a 10ft drop, scraping against the barbed wire and hitting the boulders below.
My life flashed in front of me. It felt like it could’ve been the end. Fortunately I was still conscious, but I knew I needed to get out of the river and onto the roadside for help. Staying down there was dangerous.
So, as adrenaline flooded my veins, I took the hands of my fellow riders and we pulled my body onto the roadside. They wrapped me in jerseys donated by passing cyclists and we waited an hour for the ambulance to arrive.
Once it did turn up, I was rushed to A&E, where they x-rayed me and assessed the damage… Scraped arms, heavy bruising & a broken finger. It was miraculous. It should be 10x worse.
I got off with my life.
But, at the time I was more concerned with the 9 weeks of training I had left until race day. I was determined to cross the finish line even if it meant cycling indoors and pushing myself through the pain.
However, as I tried to get training back outside I realised the extent of the damage. The back wasn’t going to magically heal overnight and I’d be nowhere near the fitness level I’d just peaked at.
My hopes of a top 3 spot were slipping away and the 45 day deferral date was fast approaching. So, I took one hard look at myself and asked “did I really want to simply cross a finish line this year AND risk further injury?”.
The answer: “No”. I was in it to give the race my all.
It took me several days to accept that fact. But, once I did and I hit the defer until 2023 option, a sigh of relief overcame my body and mind. I could let go of resisting the reality and commit to coming back stronger than ever.
Now I’m back up to fitness and training for my first Ironman 70.3 (half the distance of the previous race) on 18th September. I’m at ease with my training and enjoying the journey getting to the start line.
The lesson: Always zoom out. One year of commitment feels like a long-time, but actually another 12 months is nothing in the grand scheme of life.
#3: Always operate at less than 80% capacity
Burnout isn’t cool. Neither is undervaluing your services.
Along my path into solopreneurship, I’ve always had the tendency to think I can become superman and say “yes” to every opportunity. Even if no new clients land with exciting deals, I have this insatiable desire to find a way to spend my remaining hours on “personal projects”.
Using my paid consulting & coaching time to re-invest into ideas like Mastery In Your 20s has been one of my greatest sources of joy. Hitting publish each week to a larger audience of people who keep telling me they enjoy my work is at the minimum rewarding and at the most enthralling.
The confidence often gets the better of me though, as I agree to more and more new projects. I add time in my diary to build a cohort and course because diversification is the key. A plan comes together, underpinned by a Miro illustration or two and motivation starts to rise.
However, when the slot in my schedule comes around I realise I need to prioritise other immediate projects. The deadlines slip away and my plan is left in tatters before I’ve even started.
To avoid overwhelming myself by committing to too much, I now try to lock myself at 80% capacity. This means getting comfortable spinning the plates that I’m currently managing, before taking on whole new projects.
Going forward, I’ll be focused on sustainable growth and effort across all business activities from marketing to operations before adding even more complexity and stress into the mix.
The lesson: Commit only when you actually have capacity. Starting takes longer than you think, so make sure you keep a 20% buffer.
How Much I’ve Earnt 💰
It’s easy to shy away from sharing how much we earn. There’s a huge taboo around discussing our income as we fear that the conversation will either make the other person envious or leave us to feeling inadequate.
Sharing these numbers for the first time, I can wholeheartedly relate to these worries. Especially as I know my own clients will be reading this reflection alongside family and friends. A strange mix, for sure.
But, here goes nothing…
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