How I know for sure that you can do this "business thing"! Recording of a livestream
Mary Schiller, a coach who started her business in her mid-50s, says entrepreneurship isn't complicated. Do what inspires you daily, invite people to join you, and money follows. She built income through audio blogs, consistent outreach, and side projects like Airbnb and painting.
Chapters
Hello, hello, it's Mary Schiller, author and coach of MarySchiller.com. Thank you so much for joining me for this call today, all about following the fun in life and business. And this particular talk I have called Know for Sure that you can do this quote unquote business thing. So thanks so much for being here, whether you're joining me live or you're watching this on a replay. I really, really appreciate it. If you happen to be joining me live, if you could type something over in the chat letting me know that you can see and hear me okay and maybe tell us where you are dialing in from, that would be amazing. Hi, Robin. Thanks for joining. I'd love to hear what cities and countries might be represented around the world. Hi, Erna, nice to see you. So good to have you. I am— oops, now I got lipstick on my teeth. I am representing the American in Paris contingent here. Hi, Susan, nice to have you from Canada. Robin from Scotland, Lou from Brighton in the UK, Erna from the Netherlands. Uh, let's see, anybody else? I don't see anything else so far. But don't you love the fact that we can all be located wherever we are in the world and we can still communicate like this? I just find it, um, so amazing when I think about how the internet was years and years ago and how much better the technology has become. I'm just always amazed and so, so grateful to these very creative and talented developers who make all of this possible for us. So thank you so much for joining me. And just a little bit of housekeeping, I will definitely keep my eye on the chat during the whole time that we're together. If you have a specific question that you want me to answer, please put it in the ask a question area because then I'll for sure see it. It'll give me a little alert that there is a question posted in there. And this particular talk is going to be very informal. No slide presentation, or anything like that. I'm really going to focus on sharing some of my own history with a business and creating a business. And then towards the end of the presentation, I will give you some really, really, really simple things that you can do if you are kind of struggling to get something going or you feel, you know, a bit stuck and you're not sure what to do or that the whole business thing looks very, very complicated to you. So that's really my first question that I'd like to pose to you is, does the whole idea of a business seem, you know, scary? Does it seem too complicated? Does it seem like there are too many moving parts? Or maybe you've had one type of business and you're trying to create a new type of business and you're not really sure how to make all of that happen. Or like some people I've been talking to recently, maybe you've had a business that's in person and you're moving into the online realm and are just like, whoa, what do I even need to do here? Is anybody else besides me, because this is how I used to see things for sure, having any thoughts like that? Mike, hi there. It seems not me. So the whole idea of working for yourself, is that what I gather, Mike? And nice to have you here. Thanks. That it doesn't seem like something that you can do. It doesn't seem like something that's possible for you because you've never done that before. And that's definitely something that a lot of people struggle with. You know, they've always had a job and, you know, the idea of actually striking out on their own seems, you know, like, what, like, is this even possible? Or doesn't seem like I have the skills necessary for that. Or, you know, so if you want to share a little bit more about my, uh, about that, Mike, I'd love to hear more. Uh, hi Clifford, thanks for joining from Northern Ireland. Uh, okay, Mike, the idea of me being a business always worked for others. Yeah, I think that, you know, there is kind of a a switch that needs to get flipped there, but maybe it's not the switch that you think it is. So that's kind of what I'm going to go into here on this call. Lou says, for sure, it seems like it could take a long time to change direction, right? Because if you've been doing something for a long time, even if it's something you've been doing on your own, I mean, I can relate to that because I had been a writer, a professional writer my whole career, writer and writing teacher. And had always been related, doing things related to communications. I worked for a lot of other people in that capacity over the years, and I then sort of cobbled together some freelance things. But then I made this huge leap into being a coach, and it was like, whoa, what am I doing? So I can relate to that. Hi, Robin. That's the issue for me, so used to having a reasonably well-paid, secure job. Yeah, you know, there is something in that security thing. I'm putting security in air quotes because, you know, how secure is it really? And is that where our feeling of security comes from? Even more to the point. Hi, Mimi, good to see you. So lots of good fodder in there for this discussion. So yeah, it is true, Robin, right? You know, we look to certain things out there for security and maybe we should be looking elsewhere for that. So I'll get into that a little bit too, uh, just to give you guys a little bit of background on me. And even if you know me and have come to many of these talks and spoken to me or even worked with me, I'm going to share a few things that you may not have heard before. So, um, I started this particular business almost 3 years ago now as a coach, and, um my kind of personal history related to being in business for oneself actually started when I was around, I guess I was about 12 or 13 years old. At that time, my dad had his own small business. He went into business with my brother and they were in business together for almost 30 years, I guess. And that business changed and morphed and, you know, did all kinds of things. But My first exposure to what it was like to have your own business was when I would work at my dad's company. So I often would work there after school, like starting literally when I was 13 and through high school. And I helped to run some of the things in the office. And at one time I was fortunate enough to go on a big business trip that he took to Asia. And we went to all these different countries. When I was, I think I was 14 or 15 when I went on that trip. So that was really exciting. And, and I could see just from watching him and from being in that environment, I definitely got the sense that having your own business was a really creative and exciting thing to do. Of course, when I was that age, I wasn't thinking about the money piece at all. It was simply, you know, I was answering the phone and back in those days we had Telex machines. I don't know if any of you are old enough to remember Telex machines, but I was in charge of the Telex machine and, you know, I did filing and did some, you know, little minor bookkeeping. And then at one point we were doing something with printed circuit boards. So I learned how to solder things and I was doing little soldering jobs. So I kind of did the whole gamut of things. And I thought, hi Adriana, nice to have you. And I thought, wow, you know, this is kind of cool. What's so interesting though is that I never really saw myself at that time. I never saw myself working for myself or having my own business. And I think it was probably because I couldn't picture myself being in that type of business. I didn't know, you know, what it would look like if I worked for myself or if I started my own company. That was just not on my radar at that time. And so, you know, but it was an interesting early exposure to what it was like to work for yourself and have employees and, and, you know, have meetings all over the world and all these kinds of things. It was quite interesting. And then, you know, my life took some interesting twists and turns after college and things like that. And I didn't have any real desire to work for myself until I was in my mid-30s. And in my mid-30s, I was married for the second time. I had— my daughter was around 9 or 10 years old, and I started wishing that I had more control over my time. I thought, you know, I'd really like to be able to do something where I can be home when she is home from school and I didn't really know again what that would look like, but I felt like I wanted to have more control over how I was spending my time. So I started to kind of cobble together a bunch of different things. So I was teaching at my local university. I was doing some online teaching for other universities. I then was, oh, hi Robin. This is how I feel about my time with my own kids. Yeah, like you wanna be there, right? You know, doing all of this teaching, and then I was doing freelance copywriting for various clients. And so I kind of was cobbling together these different things, not as a company or as a quote-unquote business, but just trying to do what I could that would fit the schedule that I wanted. And so by the time she was in junior high, I was able to be around after school. I had arranged my work life so that I could pick her up from school, take her to her dance classes, and, and be available to her in the evenings. So that was really, that was really kind of nice. Excuse me. The only thing was it was really scattered. Like, I was doing a lot of different things and I didn't feel very much focus at all. I felt like I was kind of being pulled in a lot of different directions, and I didn't love everything I was doing. I have to be honest with you. There were times when I enjoyed the teaching, but most of the time it just felt like it was a lot, a lot of work. I was an English writing teacher and essay grading and essay grading. It was just taking up so much time, and I was having to get up really early. And sometimes after my daughter was in bed, I would stay up late and so I just didn't really feel like it was the right fit and I don't know, it just wasn't really working. So shortly after my daughter went to college, we ended up moving and I decided, oh, oh, my cat is doing something really crazy right now. Starbucks, hey, come here, honey. Uh, anyway, I'm really hoping she doesn't do something terrible right now. She's very mischievous. In any case, when we moved, I decided, you know, I really want to get a job. I'm kind of tired of trying to cobble all these things together, and I just want to get a regular job where I can go to the office every day and I can meet people. And we were moving to New York City, and I didn't know anyone there, and It just seemed like the right thing to do, so I went and got a job and had really good benefits. Hi, Claire, nice to see you. And that was fine for a while, and then I started getting that tug again, like I really wanna have control over my time. I started feeling resentful when I couldn't take a vacation at a time when I wanted to because maybe somebody else was gonna take a vacation and it conflicted. And that really started to weigh on me, this notion that, you know, at that time I was in my 40s and I was like, you know, I want to have control over how I'm spending my time. So I'd like to pause there for a quick second and ask you if that is something that is kind of drawing you towards this idea of having your own business, or if you have had your own business and you're changing into something else, Is it because there's some aspect of what you're doing that you're not really enjoying, that you're not feeling like is really utilizing your full talents and abilities? Because I'm raising both hands for that. I definitely had that experience. Maybe you kind of are spending your days thankful for a paycheck and that's about it. I definitely got to that point. Where I was literally just doing it so I could get paid. And, you know, as we mentioned a moment ago, have the sense, the sort of false sense of security that comes from that. So I'd love to hear in the comments. Robin, for me, it's lack of freedom, flexibility, and not being able to use my creativity. I can relate to all those things. I felt very hemmed in by the job I was in. I didn't feel like it was using my skills or my creative, impulses. Uh, there was very little flexibility in, you know, like you could never work from home or anything like that where I was working. They just would not even consider anything like that. So even though what I did, I didn't even need to be in the office for anyway, and I probably could have done it faster at home. Uh, Claire, yes, just not sure what I want to do, which is half the battle. I know things I enjoy, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'd want to do it as a job, or maybe do something but I'd need training, which needs money. Interesting, Claire, thanks for that. I think that sometimes, well, I'm gonna talk about this in a minute, but we can have this idea that, that there is somehow a separation between what we want to do and what, how we earn money. And I'm hoping that by the end of this talk, you will see that those two things do not have to be mutually exclusive. They can actually be one and the same and be a really, really fun experience. Sorry, my cat is really being goofy tonight. All right, let me go back to my notes here. So part of my problem then became, well, oh, let me check with that. Mimi agrees with Claire and Caroline. Hi Caroline. I have got my own business 9 years and take holidays during school holidays. I'm completely on my own with it. So getting cover is tricky. I teach Pilates, so work to a schedule. Only this year I decided to cut some classes to have less work overload, trying to think of ways to make more time for me and take holidays when I want. I tend to feel guilty when not working. Interesting, Caroline. So you're in a situation where you do work for yourself, but it's kind of become a job in a way. It's become tied to a schedule. And I have seen that happen to quite a few people too, where they end up— and this may not be totally your case— but they end up creating a business that just feels like another job. It doesn't feel like living. It feels again like working, and we may, you know, inadvertently do that and then wonder, how the heck do I get out of this? So I can see where you're coming from there. So kind of back to my timeline. So here I was working at this full-time job, really not enjoying it, and over the years I had looked at many different options for how I could work for myself. And nothing really happened. Nothing really worked. Yeah, exactly, Caroline. It just— I just didn't find the thing that seemed like it was the right thing for me. You know, I looked at all kinds of different online opportunities, and I tried a couple of different business models, and they just didn't work. At all. And I was getting really frustrated, I have to tell you. I was remembering this today as I was prepping for this talk. I may get a little emotional here, so pardon me, but I remember this day so clearly. It's just etched into my memory. My husband was away. I don't remember where he was. He might have been visiting our family or something in California, and I was in New York, and I was working in this job that I didn't like, and I came across something online a few days before that, and I decided to look into it as a possible, you know, business opportunity. During my lunch hour, I got on the phone with the person who was offering this business opportunity, and, and the whole time he's talking to me and I'm listening, I'm thinking to myself, I know this is completely wrong for me. You know what the work was, you know, he made all these promises of money. I mean, you can imagine the kind of thing I'm talking about. And yet I said yes. I said yes. And I forked over however much it was. I think it was like $1,000 or something, which was, you know, pretty hefty money for me at the time especially. And as soon as I got home and I started looking at all of the materials and everything, everything, I just realized it was just completely wrong. Just absolutely, like, I couldn't have picked a worse direction to go in. And I know that it was because at that point I was feeling kind of desperate. I was so unhappy at work and I was looking for any way out, any escape route that could maybe give me a different life. And I thought that that was going to happen if I could make a lot of money from something. And that night, as I said, my husband was not at home. I had kind of a breakdown, but in the best way possible. I remember this so distinctly. I was crying and I literally just lay down on the floor and just sobbed. I just lay there and sobbed. And at the same time, I was having that experience of just being like, what have I done? I've spent money I don't have on something that's not going to work. I'm never going to be able to do this business thing. I suddenly felt awash in compassion for myself. It was just a really weird feeling. It was like in the midst of all this guilt and pain and everything I was suffering through, this wave of compassion came over me and I realized, you know, I'm trying to improve my life. I'm trying to improve my family's life. I'm just looking in the wrong direction. And it was one of the most poignant moments I can remember in recent years in terms of this topic. I saw myself as someone who was really trying, but I was just looking in the wrong direction. I didn't know what the right direction was, but I knew that I needed to stop looking that way. And the way I was looking was I need to earn money so that I can have the life I want. I need to earn X amount of money so that I can leave my job. I need to earn X amount of money so that I can travel and do the things that I want to do. Now, that kind of phrase is so common, right? We all hear that even in our own heads. I want a show of hands here in the chat. How many of you have had that kind of thought process? Well, when I have the money, or if I can make the money, then— Claire says yes— I can leave my job, or I can, you know, start living the way I want to, and etc., etc., etc. I see some yeses in the chat. That was a really big piece of the story that I was listening to. Oh, Mimi says me too. You know, I was looking at things from this angle of when I get this figured out— Caroline gives a thumbs up, Ali says yes, hi Ali— when I get this money thing figured out, even if I have to do something I don't like in order to have more money so that I can quit my job or so I can do whatever, it was completely backwards. And somehow when I was lying there on the floor sobbing, I could see that. And like I said, I had no clue what direction to go in, but I knew that that way was the wrong way. That was not gonna cut it because I was gonna keep running into these brick walls, and I was going to keep spending money on programs and promises and things that weren't right for me, that just weren't right for me. So what happened after that was I stayed in that job that I didn't like for about another— I guess it was about 2 or 3 years— and tried to make the best of it. And then I started to see things a little bit differently. I started to realize that maybe I didn't have to wait for anything, that I could actually start living the way that I wanted to live and then see what happened after that instead of waiting for something to occur like some other way of making money or whatever before I could start living the way that I wanted to. So even when I was still in that job that I so desperately wanted to escape, I started to have more of a sense of freedom within myself. I started to take more time for myself when I had my own time on the weekends and the evenings. Hi, Claire. What life did you want to live at that point? It had always been to be a coach. No, not at all, Claire. Ever thought about being a coach. I'll get to that in a minute. But at that point, no, absolutely not. Not on my radar. I was still very heavily working in communications and writing and marketing and things like that. And I had written my memoir and had written a novel. And so I was, you know, very much in that mode of writing and communications and things. And yet within myself, I felt like something was brewing. I just I really didn't know what it was. And as some of you know, I did get an opportunity to leave that job, and I went to work for a startup that was much more in line with my interests at the time, and that it had to do with, uh, writing and editing. The startup had to do with writing and editing, and so it looked like a good opportunity. And unfortunately, or fortunately perhaps, it didn't turn out that way, and I ended up losing that job about 6 months after I joined the startup. And that was the real moment when I was sitting there with, you know, my, my hat in my hand, as they say. And I just was like, you know, how old was I? I guess I was 54, 53, somewhere in there. I'm kind of not good with math. And I thought, you know what, if not now, when, for goodness sakes? You know, am I going to keep spending my time doing work I don't really enjoy just for the money? You know, there's got to be another way to make a living. And so I decided to explore that by, as you may know, giving myself permission to do what I wanted to do and not even thinking about the money piece anymore, just not even having it in my consciousness. As if you're older than 50. Thank you, Claire. You're very kind. And so at that point, to answer your other question, Claire, was when I decided, you know what, I really want to be a coach. At that time, I had been having informal conversations with people that were sort of like coaching conversations. I had had a lot of experience as a teacher. I was a university instructor for a dozen years or something like that. And so I felt very comfortable working with people one-to-one or in groups and things like that. And I taught online, so I was very comfortable with all that. And I thought, you know, I don't want to do this kind of writing anymore. I still wanted to write books and fiction and things, but I didn't want to do marketing copywriting at all. That was just not what I wanted to to do anymore. I had done it for, you know, I don't know how many years by that point, 20 or something, and I was just done. It's just done. I think there are some other people on this call right now who are just done with what they've been doing and can relate to that feeling of like, uh, just don't want to do it anymore. So I just decided, you know, I'm going to coach people, and if I make money from it, great. If I don't, I'll figure it out. I'll figure out what to do. And I want to, to explain that I had no nest egg at all at the time. I had about 3 months of savings in the bank because our savings had been wiped out by a major incident that happened that we had to pay for that was not expected. So our savings was literally gone. I was looking at mounting credit card debt. So on paper, it would have been the absolute worst time you could pick to say, you know what, I'm just gonna go do what I want. It looked kind of crazy, honestly. And I didn't even really tell people what I was doing except for my husband because I thought they're gonna say, Mary, what the heck are you doing? You know you can make a good living doing this kind of copywriting. Why don't you just go do that? You need to get the bills paid. I just wasn't gonna do it anymore. I wanted to do with my time what I wanted to do with my time, and that was it. I didn't want to answer to anyone, and that meant answering to, you know, writing clients and all of that. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to set my own schedule. I wanted to work the way that I wanted to work, and that was that. So has anybody else reached that point— pardon me— where You just want to do what you want to do. And you're, you know, maybe you're older like I am and you're like, well, shoot, you know, whose life is this anyway? Who has the agency here? You know, I am not— nobody is holding a gun to my head telling me I have to go to this job every day that doesn't really interest me. Or, you know, no one is forcing me to do work that I don't want to do anymore. Is anybody else in that situation or can relate to that? Because I think I'm speaking for a heck of a lot of people who may not be on this call or watching the replay, that many, many people find themselves in that predicament. Hi, Lou. Yep, I don't wanna do the corporate illustration work anymore. Yeah, exactly. So we don't have to. Caroline, yes, I really wanna do more of the things I love. Then we can, you know. And this seems like a no-brainer. Hi, Lynn! I feel that too. I don't want to work for anyone anymore. This is the thing that was so hard for me to see for such a long time that I really hope that I'm helping someone to see it today, which is that we are not obligated to do things that we don't want to do, even when it really looks like we are. Even when it looks like we have lots and lots of people we are responsible for and that we have to get the bills paid and so on and so forth, we are still never obligated to do work that doesn't— that feels like work, do things we don't enjoy, spend our time doing things that we don't enjoy. I didn't see that for myself until, like I said, about, I guess, 2015. So about 3, 3 or 4 years ago, as I'm— or 2016, I guess it was. Yeah, so 3 years ago as of today. And it changed everything because I just thought, you know, who's making up these rules about how I'm spending my time? Well, Some thoughts I'm listening to are making up these rules about how I'm spending my time. What if I just break those rules? What if I just go do what I want and I see what happens? And, you know, it's been such an amazing lesson for me to continually, um, push this boundary in a gentle way, push it some more. How much more can I do that I want to do? And will the income piece make itself obvious? Every single time I have pushed that envelope, it's just fallen apart in a beautiful way, meaning opportunities have presented themselves. I've seen new things that I can do. There's never not been an answer to that question, which is incredible, right? You can relate to all of this, Clifford. I'm really glad you can, and I'm hoping that you're hearing something that is giving you some— I don't know what I want to say— confidence or hope or something that things can be different, because the rules that we have made up are rules we have made up. And we've made things look like we have to do them a certain way, but we actually don't. So that was a huge, huge breakthrough moment for me. The other thing that was really, really big was that I started to see— after I formed my own coaching business, I started to see that really, we have set this thing called business up as a separate entity somehow. You know, it starts to look like we are running a business, we're growing a business, we're— I don't know, we are, we are creating something that is somehow out there. And I don't know if this will make sense because I haven't really articulated this out loud before, so forgive me if I stumble a little bit. What I started to see now is that that isn't what is actually going on, that this quote-unquote business thing is all inside. It's all within us. It is a creation that is living within us and is coming through us, but it is not out there. It can simply be the way that we're living. It can be the part of this beautiful life creation, and it doesn't have to be this thing that is out there that we have to work hard at and we have to struggle through and we have to, you know, push through and drive and blah, blah, blah. You know, the whole traditional business conversation, especially related to entrepreneurship, is so focused on how difficult it is, how hard it is, you know, how challenging it is, how you have to put your nose to the grindstone, and sometimes you just have to, you know, put your head down and plow through. And my experience of quote-unquote business has been anything but that. I have not once— I am telling you the honest to God truth— In the almost 3 years that I have been doing this coaching business, not once have I ever had that experience of being like, I have to push through something. If I even sense an inkling of that anywhere in my experience, I just stop. You know, my whole motto is follow the fun. If something starts to feel unfun, I just stop and I don't do it. I wait for a new piece of inspiration and a new idea to come to me, and I do that instead. Hi, Lynn. This may sound a little woo-woo. Well, I'm sounding a little woo-woo too. But what I'm increasingly noticing is that money kind of shows up without a lot of effort, either through my Airbnb room I rent, or occasionally I paint worn-out furniture and people want to purchase it. I've been playing around with making charcuterie boards, and someone has already approached me that they want one. Just lots of different things showing up all on their own. I love that, Lynn. That's beautiful. And that's exactly what I'm talking about, is that we have somehow, somehow separated life into these pieces. You know, we've separated things out from, you know, our work life and our personal life, or this business that I'm operating. And we have tried to make these things seem separate. But what I'm seeing more and more, and what you just alluded to, Lynn, is that it's all one experience that we're having. It's all this beautiful life that we're living, and we have the ability to live that life in a more inspired way, in a way that doesn't feel like, you know, you're looking at your watch going, God dang, why isn't it 5 o'clock yet? You know, I remember days like that in the office where I just felt I had all these, all this creativity just trying to bubble up to the surface and there was nowhere for it to go in there. Nobody wanted what I had to offer in there. And I knew that if I stayed in that cubicle, that all of the things that I could do maybe in this one lifetime that I have were going to get squashed. And that was not okay with me. You know, here I'm getting kind of choked up. That just wasn't okay with me. I knew that there was more for me to do than that. And I was willing to just step out of that cubicle and then leap off the startup since they kind of pushed me off that ledge and just see what happened. And as Lynn just described, that can end up looking like anything. It can absolutely be anything. You know, one of the things when I was running that free Facebook group called Get Paid to Be You, one of the things that I used to put in there sometimes were funny videos of people getting paid to do amazingly crazy things. You know, like, I often look at people who have really vibrant YouTube channels or who have these amazing Instagram You remember those, Lynn? These amazing Instagram accounts and they've got a million followers of pictures of their pets out on mountains and things. And I think you can literally earn money any way that you could ever imagine. And it does not have to feel like work. It doesn't have to be this big business thing that you've got to suddenly be in charge of and create and blah, blah, blah. It just doesn't have to be that. It can simply be you living the life that you want to be living, the life that inspires you. Oh, I love those too, Lou. They're really fun. I still look for them now and then. I look for fun examples like that. And, you know, I personally am really— I really feel inspired by people who are simply living the life that they've always wanted to live. And, you know, it's really fun to see that, you know, income and living don't have to be two separate things, that creating a business can simply be part of living and creating. That's how it seems to me. I'll tell you a little bit about how my, my days look now. You know, I have times where I've got, you know, people that I'm going to talk to on my calendar, but they're always people that I want to talk to. They're people I enjoy talking with, like you guys. So, you know, it's all good there. I wake up in the morning and I think, you know, gosh, I'm kind of inspired to write an email to my wonderful subscribers. So what would be helpful to them today? You know, what could I write or what could I share that might be useful to them? And I'll come up with something like that. And then, you know, I'll have an idea maybe for a new type of coaching or program offering. So I'll start, you know, jotting down notes. And in between, I make lots of time to go out into this glorious city that I live in. It was such a beautiful day here today. It was sunny and just lovely. And I live right next to a park, so I'll go sit in the park. And, and, you know, I'm, I'm living, I'm enjoying my time. I feel like all of my, you know, natural creative resources are at my disposal, and they're being utilized in a way that is much more exciting and inspiring to me. And so, ah, gosh, I feel like if my self from a few years ago heard me talking, she'd be saying, this is crazy, you know, this just isn't possible, you know, it's not possible to just do what you want to do and money will show up. Well, if I could talk to myself back then, I would say With all the love I have in my heart, Mary, you're absolutely wrong. It's actually much easier for those things to happen simultaneously. Uh, so that's a big takeaway that I hope you get from today, is that— um, hi Judy— is that the more you focus on the things that you enjoy doing and don't worry about, you know, this whole business thing and what that looks like, but simply take one step and then another step and then another step, it all gets sorted out. It all gets created in a very natural, stress-free, struggle-free way. And the income piece just starts to become obvious. And the name of this talk again was Why I Know for Sure That You Can Do This Business Thing. The reason I called it that is because you can do the business thing because You can live the life you want to. You have all the creative abilities you could ever want to allow you to spend your time doing anything, and the income you need will be there. I can say that if I could legally guarantee something, I would guarantee something, but since I am not legally allowed to guarantee anything like that I will just say that that has been proven to me over and over and over again, and it's been proven by many people that I have interacted with over the years as well. So I'm going to just pause there and look at my notes because I had some other things I wanted to mention. Any comments about, uh, what we've been chatting about so far? Do you feel at all— oh, I don't know— inspired? Or do you feel like, you know, if there is something that you really want to be doing with your time, that you actually could do it? Because I'm here to tell you, you can. You have everything you need to do whatever it is that you want to do. If you are in a job that you want to leave, you have the ability to do that. You're free. Occasion and, and give you infinite ideas for what you can do next. Um, so I wanted to spend just a couple of minutes here since we're getting close to the top of the hour already. This has gone by really fast, is that there's really only a couple of steps involved, as far as I could tell. When I really looked at this yesterday and today, I was like, you know, what are the steps involved in working for oneself? And I realized there's, there's really only two, and they are spending time doing what you like to do and then inviting other people into the party. Doing what you like doing and inviting people into the party. That's kind of what it is. Hi Caroline, I have days feeling inspired and believing I can do something more and then other days when I pull back from making steps in that direction. Oh, I'll talk about that in a sec, Caroline. Thanks for that comment, I appreciate it. Lynn, is it just me but I can't see you anymore? I can hear you but I can't see you. Uh-oh, can other people see me? Am I still on? Let me know in the chat. You may, Lynn. Oh, now you can. OK, cool. So let me talk about what Caroline said, because it has to do with the two steps I just mentioned. Thanks for letting me know you can still see me, you guys. So it seems to me that the whole business thing is really about doing what you enjoy doing and then inviting other people in. So I'm trying to think of it. Well, I'll just use myself as an example. So I decided that I really liked having conversations with people. I really liked, you know, helping them to see things in a new way if I could, and, and helping them to have a different experience of their lives. And I really loved those conversations. So that's what I was doing. I was having those conversations. And I simply kept inviting more people to have conversations with me. And at a certain point, it became obvious that, you know, I could put a price tag on some of those conversations. And that was it. That was the simple equation, if you will. It's doing what you enjoy, inviting people to share it with you. And then at some point, when it seems obvious, You know, like in my case, people said, you know, I'd like to pay you for this. Okay. And then you just take that step. Now, getting back to Caroline's comment about, you know, you feel inspired and believe you can do something more, other days you don't take those steps. I have a solution to that. Now, I'm all about keeping things simple and, you know, really acting from this place of fun within us. And so what I would suggest is if you're nervous about taking steps in this direction, simply set a goal that every day, every day, you will do something something. You will do something. It doesn't matter how big or small, if you can measure it that way, it doesn't matter. But every day you will do something that you enjoy doing, something that you are inspired to do, preferably something that is shared with another person. But doing that— sorry, I've got a frog in my throat today. Doing that every day without question means that there's no getting out of it. It's especially good, and there's somebody who at least was on here live earlier, I'm not sure if she's still here, who has made a commitment to doing something daily for a certain period of time just for that reason. That people start to expect it, they start to enjoy hearing from you, and you have no excuses anymore because it's a daily thing you're doing. That was something that was really helpful to me. I set up a daily blog, an audio blog, and I literally sent out a recording every day for a year. I did it for 365 days in a row, including weekends. I sent out an audio recording, and that was great because it was something I was inspired to do, and I had a little bit of accountability there. I was sharing it with people who were waiting for it. So if, if it feels like, you know, you're hedging and sometimes you're just not doing these steps or whatever, if you can make that commitment to yourself that every day without fail you're going to do something that is inspiring to you, that's all it takes. Pretty soon And this I can guarantee, pretty soon you'll start to notice that your time is being filled more and more and more with things that you really enjoy doing. That time starts to kind of magically appear. Has anybody else had that experience before where you suddenly start to go in a direction that you're really excited about You suddenly start filling your time with activities or whatever it is that you really like, and then you realize you've got more time. You've got more time for them. I don't really understand how this works. It's beyond my understanding, but give me a shout out in the chat if that rings any bells with you. And the things that you, you no longer enjoy will start to kind of fade from view. They will start to drop off. Uh, I have, uh, had so much personal experience with this. Uh, Clifford says yes. You know, I, I never thought that that was really true until I experimented with it myself. And I thought, what if I only start doing the things that I want to do? What will happen then? Well, guess what happened? The things that I wanted to do now fill all of my time. I don't do anything that I don't want to do because again, the rules that we have set up for ourselves are illusory. They're not real. We can break them. We can change them. We can do what we want to do. We are free to do what we want to do. So that's how I know for sure that you can do this quote unquote business thing. You have access to infinite creative ideas. You can jump the job ship at any time you want and know that there, not just that a net will appear to catch you, but that it's already there. It's always been there. Even if you're not sure exactly what it is that you want to be doing, you have the ability to explore that. You can take your time and explore that. So I think I'm going to pause here and check back with my notes and see if I've missed anything. I'd love to hear what thoughts have come to you during this last 50 minutes that we've been chatting, so let me know in the chat while I take just a quick moment here to check my notes. You know, a big part of this for me too has been recognizing that I don't have to work anymore. I can set my life up to be a time of play, a time of creating and experimenting and having a good time. That this idea of work is also a thought-created notion that isn't real. It doesn't have to be real. And, you know, I realize that what I'm saying goes against the grain of most of the discussions out there about entrepreneurship, um, and I just haven't had that experience of things being so difficult. Let me go back up to the chat here. Oh, great. Lou, yes, she's doing the, the commitment thing that I mentioned. Lynn, I love the idea of making a commitment to myself to do something I love every day. The audio idea is a good one. Awesome, Lynn. I want to hear about it. Caroline, I love that idea of doing something inspiring every day. Lou says, yes, I think you're talking about the time. The time thing is quite weird. All of a sudden there seems way more time available. I can't explain that, but there is something that seems— okay, now talk about woo-woo— it seems a little bit magical with time that, you know, we've all had the experience of being bored out of our minds and time seeming to slow down to like a crawl. And then we've had things that we've been so engrossed in and suddenly 3 hours have gone by, it seems like 3 minutes. And what I've experienced with spending more time, literally more of my energy on things I enjoy, it's like the days feel quite languid and peaceful. And I've— I mean, even like today, I had that experience where I just had so much fun with everything I was doing today. I had some amazing phone calls with people. And I was looking forward to this. And this day has felt just so rich that to put a timeframe around it, it doesn't even seem real. And so that is what life can be like all the time. Lynn, I love the idea of making commitment to myself to do something I love every day. The audio you did every day is a good one. I already have loads of them on my phone where I've recorded thoughts and insights that come up. Awesome. Great, Robin. I hope that you try some of this. Um, hi Judy. Uh, that's what I'm beginning to see. All my thoughts about work have seemed to constrict my willingness to experiment and allow myself to have fun. Yeah, because we have this, uh, this very kind of rigid way of seeing work, of seeing business, that it all looks like I said, like it's something hard, like it's kind of out there, we've got to deal with it. That we have to, to, you know, conform to, I don't know what, some kind of rigid idea of what that looks like. But then again, thanks to, you know, I know social media gets a bad rap, but you got to admit it's done a beautiful job of showing us different ways of living. You know, there are people who make a wonderful living opening boxes of things on YouTube and having a good time playing with whatever it is. Or like I said, the people who are traveling the world and documenting their travels and writing blog posts about it and, and making a living that way, you know, earning money that way just by doing what they want, traveling the world. You know, I mean, I look at myself, I think, you know, here I am living in my favorite city in the entire universe You know, spending time in— I'm going to go this week and buy— I think I'm going to get an annual pass to the Pompidou Center, which is the modern art museum, because it's really close to me and I love it. And I keep thinking I want to go there more often. So I think I'm going to get an annual membership to that. I had an annual membership to the Louvre because that's pretty close to me too, and I would go there frequently and hang out. I mean, what kind of life is this? Does this look like work? Does this look like a business? And yet I'm earning a living and I'm having a great time and I play all day long. So if I can do this business thing, you can do this business thing because I told you just a tiny snippet of my experience before with— oh, thank you Clifford, I really appreciate that. Lynn, it all sounds and seems so simple. Why is it we struggle with it? Well, my impression, Lynn, is that we're looking at a lot of old thoughts that are trying to convince us that they're true, and we don't have to look there anymore. We can look within ourselves. We can answer what is calling to us inside, and we can act on that. And as I said, we can do that every day. We can make that. It's a relatively small commitment that yields amazing— I hate to use the word results, but that's the only word that comes to me— but it just yields something amazing when you make that commitment to doing more of what you want to do every single day and recognizing the fact that you are free to do that. There is no one saying you can't. No one. Not even the thoughts that run through your mind can tell you that you can't do something. I'm here to tell you that you can. Oh, thank you, Lynn, I appreciate that. Hi, Caroline, I find I come up with my most creative ideas and solutions to business issues by going for a gorgeous long walk on the moors. Exactly, Caroline. Again, we have this idea that, you know, work means, I don't know, sitting at the desk or, you know, being on the phone or whatever it is. That's just not the case either. You know, work, quote-unquote, can look like anything. It can even look like playing. It can look like just being ourselves. It can look like anything. And so I'm hoping that you're walking away from this chat today with this idea that you're free. You're simply free. And you are fully capable, fully capable of creating any type of daily life experience that you want to create for yourself. And that when you do that, what happens is the opportunities that have been around you all the time start to become more obvious, and people are drawn to you more and more and more. You know, we're, we're inspired by people who inspire us. And we want to be around them, and we want to, you know, feel that within ourselves. And so that's a beautiful gift that we can give to one another. It seems to me that, that we, as we live more from this vantage point, we are also helping others do the same, even if it's not in a direct way. I don't know about you, but simply being around someone who is living that way is very inspiring to me, and I feel that within myself, and that's worth more than, than anything, really. Hi, Lynn. I was in the forest most days and I haven't— yeah, exactly. Being outdoors gets rid of all the tension and restrictions. We just, we can feel the freedom that's within us already. So thank you so much for being here for this chat. I have really, really enjoyed talking with you. Just really quick, I, and if you're on the replay, again, thank you so much for taking the time to watch the replay. Really quick, I have a new program that I'm going to be opening up. I'm not exactly sure when, the timeline is not quite set, but it's going to be about a really fun and exciting way to earn money in a very creative and sort of expansive way that is not like anything else. I guarantee that you have ever seen. It's going to really focus on all this beautiful creative stuff that is within us and, and working from inspiration and a sense of service to others. If you are interested in that, then click the little button on the screen to join that list and I'll let you know when that's available. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Clifford. Anybody else feeling a bit fired up? Oh, you're welcome, Lynn. I hope that you have a wonderful day and evening wherever you are in the world. You're very welcome. And if you have a question that you didn't feel comfortable asking on this chat, please feel free to email me, mary@maryschiller.com. I'm happy to answer. And I hope to talk to you again soon. I have 3 more talks coming up this month, once, once per week. Next week is all about the money thing and how we're not going to stress about it anymore. And then I have a special guest the following week who is actually on this call, Lou the artist. And then the final week of February, I'm happy to welcome another artist friend of mine and client, Ingrid. So I hope you can join for those as well. Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you for the kind comments. I really appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again soon. Bye for now.
