George Kao (podcast host) reflects on his 16+ years of self-employment and argues that the key to sustained success as a solopreneur is building self-trust. He defines and promotes "self-appointments" — scheduling and showing up for appointments with yourself (treating yourself as your most important client) — and gives concrete habits (time tracking, daily appointments, showing up without requiring perfection) along with mindset guidance (be strict about showing up, lenient about results).
Chapters
When you got into self employment, did you think that you were getting away from having a job? Well, the dream is I can be my own boss. I don't have to show up for work until whenever I feel like it. Well how is that working out for you? Because I have been self employed now for since 2009. 2009, so about 16 years. And gratefully all that time I've been able to have a full time income being self employed. And I will tell you that the biggest myth about self employment is you can just show up whenever you want to do whatever you want and you'll be successful. Right? If that were true, then everyone would be self employed because it sounds really easy and fun. Well let me tell you, it can be fun and it can have a level of ease. But the ease to be honest is to be found on a deeper kind of more spiritual level of trust, of self trust, trusting higher guidance, trusting higher self. But really ease comes from building self trust. I found over the last 16 years of self employment, of solopreneurship. And I'll tell you, the most reliable and frequent way of building self trust that I can tell you is to make self appointments and to show up for them. So again, maybe you thought you were getting away from having a job. Now I'm my own boss. But it turns out that it's not easy to be a good boss and turns out that you do need to be your own boss because otherwise when you had a job, you had an appointment, right? To show up for on a daily basis or Monday through Friday or whatever it may be, you showed up for that appointment. Because if you didn't show up for the appointment, you no longer had a job. Now as a self employed person, you also need to show up for appointments and not just for your clients. Of course you'll show up for your clients, right? You're not going to say well I'm sorry my client scheduled me today, but I just don't feel like it. I just don't feel, I'm just not inspired. So I'm just not going to show up for the client. No, of course you take your client seriously and you respect your client enough to show up for them. So now my question to you is who is your most important client? You. You are with you all the time. And if you don't coach and help yourself, you can't help any of your other clients. So whatever modality or service that you do, you first have to probably do it on yourself the most. And also when it comes to Your business development, you've got to show up for the most important client, which is you. You've got to help yourself. Okay? And so every week you've got dozens of opportunities to either build self trust or erode self trust. So the question is, what will you do? And it's so subtle because you think, oh well, I'm my own boss, I could just, you know, I have a whole week ahead of me and I'll just do whatever seems important at the time. And then if you actually look at how you spend a week, it's probably not very effective and not very efficient. I always tell my clients to do time tracking faithfully for at least a week, ideally two weeks. That's what I do on a yearly basis. I time track religiously for like two weeks so that I can recalibrate my understanding, my awareness of where my time is actually going. And with awareness allows control and actually options to choice. Awareness brings choice. And so I'm going to encourage you to build self trust, which is the greatest asset you really have in your business. The ability to say, when I make a plan, I know I'm going to show up for the plan. No matter how hard or confusing or unclear it is, I'm going to show up for it. Now if you are really bad at showing up for your appointments, you need to know that when you show up for your appointments, you don't have to be perform perfectly. I hope you don't give yourself that kind of pressure to perform perfectly. Right? You show up and you say, I'm glad I showed up. And now I'm going to, you know, break down my task into smaller things that are very doable. I'm going to do whatever self regulation that I need to do that I know is going to help me to get into a good mind and emotional space. And I know that if I show up and stay long enough, it's much more likely to create flow versus if I just show up whenever I want to. I know that I keep procrastinating and delaying. So please give yourself the gift of creating self appointments. You have dozens of opportunities every week create even just starting with one self appointment per day. Then treat that like your most important client and then show up for it and you're there. You showed up for whatever you plan to do, whether it's writing a blog post or planning a launch or announcing your services, whatever it is, you show up and you actually do the thing you showed up for. Lenient with results. I always say strict about showing up, but be lenient about the results. You don't give yourself that pressure to have to perform. You just show up and do what you can lightly. And I always also say work lightly. That's one of my mantras. I always remind myself and my clients, work lightly. Just show up for it. Work lightly. Who cares about the really? Who cares about the results? You say, george, I care about the results. But the results will take care of themselves over time. When you keep showing up for your practice, business is also a practice. Self appointments are the practice of creating self trust and creating integrity. I hope this is helpful. I hope you'll join me for creating and showing up for your self appointments. I wish you well.
