Five Things I've Learned in Five Months of Self Employment

It's the fifth day of the fifth month and it's a Friday so it's a fortuitous day to do a "Five Things" post, don't you think?   Fittingly, it's also 5 months of self employment for me (amazing that I've littered a sentence with a bunch of F's and not one of them is an F-bomb, ha!) Anyway,  I can't believe it's been 5 months!  Time flies when you're doing what you love.  That being said, being self employed requires a fair bit of self discipline if you want to get things done and work at building / maintaining your business.

1.  Make a daily schedule.  If I don't do this, I guarantee that I will putter around and get nothing done.  I like to schedule my day into time blocks so I will schedule my work time, errand time, studying time etc.   It helps to keep me on track in terms of what I want to accomplish during the day.  Because left to my own devices, I could easily spend my day training, watching silly animal videos and reading.

2.  My calendar has become my life.  Now that I'm not leaving the house for work on a regular 9-5 schedule, the days of the week start to blend together.  So if I have athlete calls or meetings, they go in the calendar along with alarms / reminders.

3.  Don't be afraid to ask for advice and create a network!  Talk to people about how they started their business.  What worked for them, what didn't.   People are almost always willing to share their experiences.  When you're self employed you don't have the same network you would if you were working at a company so you need to create your own.  That was the weirdest thing for me when I left Westside.  I was completely on my own.  But I'm not really on my own, I know several triathlon coaches, therapists and personal trainers that I can turn to for advice.

4.  Not everyone I chat with / meet is going to work with me.  That is true of pretty much any business, especially one as personal as coaching.  This is still something that I struggle with from time to time but that's life and I'm learning to not let this bother me that much.  The world is a big place and online coaching allows coaches to work with anyone, anywhere so I've learned to look at the bigger picture.

5.  Each day is a blank slate and I get to choose how I fill it.  I am so grateful for that.   I'm learning to be open to new opportunities and I am slowly learning to put myself out there, which is something I've never been very good at (in my opinion)  I'd be lying if I said there weren't days that I've wondered if I'm cut out for this but I think that pretty much every self employed person has probably asked themselves that question at least once.  Even with those days, this was still the best decision I've made in a long time.

With that, it's time for me to get to work!  Happy Friday Folks, stay dry and stay safe!

`~Coach PK