135: Design Your Life: Finding Freedom in Time, Location, and Finances

Freedom means so many different things to everyone and it's something that we talk about a lot. Build a business so that you have freedom. Well, what does freedom even mean? I mean, at the end of it all, what do you want to be able to say about your life? And what would you describe as a life well spent? That's really what freedom is to me. So I often talk about how important it is to chase after your goals and your dreams and, and not to just do so haphazardly, but with purpose and intention. But in order to do this, you've got to get really clear on what those long term goals are and it's important to be really specific.

I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing

the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to

become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today, I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the professional Creative Podcast.

So when I first started and I was starting at zero, I had no intention of getting to where I am today. But I did have really clear dreams and goals and I knew what they were, but I also knew what they were for my level of freedom and how much time I wanted to spend being present in my life. I really wanted to figure this out. To be able to achieve really big things, but also live a life that set my soul on fire. So when I think about that in terms of freedom, there are three types of freedom that I think are so incredibly important to build into your long term goals. The first one is time freedom. So for me, time freedom really means being able to work when I want to work. It doesn't necessarily mean not working as much because I do typically put in probably a good 40 hours a week. That's a little bit hard to quantify because I feel like I love what I do. And so even sometimes when I'm, you know, painting on the weekend, that's technically work maybe, but I'm also just enjoying myself so much and doing it because I want to. So let's call it 40 hours a week. But I wanted to be able to choose like what times of day they those hours were put in and what days of the week those hours were put in as well. It means that when my kids are off from school or if they're homesick, I get to go and be with them. It means that I get to travel when it works best for my family rather than someone else's calendar. And even the freedom to do simple yet meaningful things like pick up my kids at the bus or take an impromptu snuggle break. You know, time freedom is so valuable and I don't think I realized it until I lost it so early on in my career. I had to get a day job. I was making ends meet. I was working really, really hard on my big goal. This was back in about 2010, 2011. And I started working a couple of odd jobs, but one of them was an ordinary job. I was a receptionist at a and I just didn't have control over my hours. I didn't have control over how many days off I could take. I didn't have control over when I could travel. And it wasn't until that was really stripped away from me that I realized how important time freedom was to me. I had to be in control of my own time. And so I think you'll find the same it once you get a taste of what it really feels like to be in control of your time. It is something that is so incredibly valuable and it means a life well spent for you. It could mean working at your peak times, you know, the times that you're most creative. So maybe you're a really early morning person, or maybe you're a late night owl, or maybe your midday jog is just what you need to be productive for the rest of the day. You know, even though I have a team who works for me, we love building in time freedom for people. I've got one person on my team that loves to start working at 4am which means that they wrap up their day by around one or two o'clock in the afternoon. And then I have another person who likes to work up until 1 or 2am in the morning, which means that they're not really coming online during the day until 10 or 11 o'. Clock. And it's all good. It all means that you have freedom to choose the times that work best for you. You know, people really all over are liberating themselves from that traditional work. And I think it's such a fun thing to see people, even if you are an entrepreneur or work for an entrepreneur who really gets the importance of time freedom. It is so fun to see people getting a taste of how impactful it is to just be in charge of your time. You know, Jim Rohn says time is more valuable than money. You can get more money than, but you cannot get more time. I think time is a sense of currency and so we want to make sure that we're spending it well.

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The next one is location freedom. Location freedom really just means that you get to work from wherever you want to work. Now, I think probably right off the bat, you might envision someone sitting on the beach with their laptop out is some exotic location. For me, this really meant that I could work in my tiny, tiny town tucked away in the mountains of North Carolina where all my family lives. I don't want to have to live. I don't want the work and the revenue that I make dependent on my location. And so this, of course, also means that we get to travel more because I can work on the road. Really all I need is wi fi and my laptop and my sketchbook and I can really work from everywhere. This, for us meant that we got to choose where we wanted to raise our children and put that as a priority and then kind of align everything else with it. And it means that we're not living a super traditional path when it comes to our business being a reflection of where we live, but where we live being a reflection of intentionality and how we want to live our life. You know, I know so many people who location freedom means that they pack up and they go live in another country for a couple of months, or they travel in an RV around their country for a couple of months, or maybe they even take a year to go travel and do something different. So I know of some designers and artists and creatives who are truly nomadic, meaning they don't have a single place that they call home. They travel all the time, all over the world and do their work on the road. So what does location freedom look like for you? Where would you live if you could choose anywhere in the world? Where would you travel if you could do so anytime you wanted to? Because you can take your work with you. If you can imagine it, I think you're already half the way there. Now, the last one is financial freedom. What does financial freedom look like for you? You know, this has looked like a lot of different things for me over the years. At first, financial freedom meant that we didn't have to check our bank account every single day. This actually took many, many, many years. Me and my husband both would have a alarm set on our phone for like 4 o' clock as a reminder to check our bank accounts and make sure that we were in the positive. That's how closely we were living day to day to day. The next one, which I never really even thought was possible, was to be debt free. And so we made that happen in 2019. We own our home, we own our cars, and then we also own a lake house, and we own them in full, meaning that we are entirely debt free. So when that happens, what's your next financial goal? What does financial freedom mean for you for another level? And I think the next level for us is impact and setting ourselves up for the future so that we really have, you know, a lot of flexibility built in as to what we want to do in 10, 20, 30 years. I think it will also include making sure that our family is set up for many years or generations to come. And most of all, that we can really impact the things around us in our community and in the world that we are passionate about. So for you, I think when you think about financial freedom, just start with the first level. What would financial freedom look like for you if you could do something achievable to get there? Maybe get out of debt, maybe pay off your home, Maybe pay off everything except your home? That is a huge accomplishment as well. Maybe it's to make a specific number, maybe it's to hit a specific revenue amount, Maybe it's not having a fear of being laid off or a fear of having an unreasonable employer. I want you to dream whatever your dream is. I want you to know that it's possible it's going to take a while, or it may take a while, and that is just so incredibly worth it. You get one life and, you know, you get 30 or 40 years to really use the best of it for your work and the impact that you want to make. And so if time, location and financial freedom are at the top of your list, you've got to keep them at the top of your list every single day. You've got to say, today, today I'm waking up with this as my goal. They don't necessarily happen overnight, but they can absolutely happen. So set it with intention, day over day, week over week, month over month, year over year. And I believe that you can. There are so many different reasons that you may want these freedoms and to build them in. And I am excited for how you might be able to build them into your next endeavor and the goals that you set forward. Make sure that you're not only using things like data driven goals and metrics and revenue numbers, but also how well are you living in time freedom, location freedom. Financial freedom, my friends. Create the beauty that you want to see. Come alive in the world and remember, there's room for you.