Rai Cornell 0:02
Welcome to Season Two of the SOAR podcast, the place for creative entrepreneurs who want to build healthier, happier, more profitable, self employed businesses. I’m your host Rai Hyde Cornell, business mentor at Chiron consulting and CEO and senior copywriter at Cornell content marketing, get ready to soar.

Welcome to Episode One of the second season of the SOAR podcast. For this one, it’s just me and you. And I want to start the season off by talking about something that is so insanely important for freelancers and creative entrepreneurs to understand if they’re ever going to be successful in building a healthier, happier, more profitable, self employed business. This is something that most people are afraid to talk about. They’re afraid to look at, they’re afraid to examine and to understand – yourself.

In our digital everything world, we’re constantly put in minute by minute, second by second situations where we are asked to compare ourselves to someone else. Instagram, Facebook, Tik fucking tok, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, all the things, all the places, we’re told what entrepreneurship is supposed to look like, we’re told what we’re supposed to look like. We’re told what we’re supposed to want and what we’re supposed to work towards. We’re even told what successful work looks like. And most of the time, it either looks like busting your ass working long days, and sacrificing your health and happiness to succeed. Or it looks like lounging on the beach with a laptop and a cocktail where you’re supposed to get all of your work done for the week, within four hours. Well, fuck that. And fuck everyone who’s sending out those messages. That’s not reality. And it’s not you. That’s what’s most important. That’s not you.

The most important thing I need you to keep in mind as you’re building your business is you. And it can get really hard to tell who you are, if you’re constantly absorbing others messages. So here’s what I need you to do. Some people think it’s fun. Some people think it’s scary. Some people think it’s both. No matter what it’s necessary. If you’re going to build a successful business, you need to look at yourself, and to get to know yourself and deeply understand yourself. For example, you need to understand your own unique energy patterns. What I mean by this is, everyone has ebbs and flows of their energy throughout the day. Some people are early birds, some people are night owls, some people wake up early, and then they need a nap in the afternoon. Some people have long stretched out peaks of high energy, other people have more peaks throughout the day. But they also have more valleys, you need to understand what your unique energy pattern is.

Because that traditional eight to five, grind to five, whatever the fuck that typical kind of work schedule does not work for most people. Most people do not have perfectly sustained energy from 8am to noon, take a lunch break, and then have perfectly sustained energy from one to 5pm and then go home, and then have perfectly sustained energy to do all the other shit they have to do in their lives, like running a household, taking care of a family, all those things. That’s not most people. But that is the box that our society has forced us into. That is what our society has said we should do. And so if you are expecting yourself to work from 8am, to 5pm, 9am to 5pm, to work a regular eight hour day, when you’re a creative self employed entrepreneur, that’s likely not going to work for you. So what you need to do is look at your own unique energy patterns. Where do you have peaks during the day? Where do you have valleys? What tasks on your list take very little energy that you could basically do while you’re asleep. And you can kind of strategically place those in your valleys. What tasks on your to do list give you energy? Which ones take away energy, which ones do you need the most energy to do?

You need to understand what it is you’re doing and how you are naturally inclined to function. Because the biggest problem that I see people go through in this arena is trying to force themselves to change. They read books like The Miracle Morning, which don’t get me wrong. It’s a great book. I love that book. But it says what you should do, not what you could do. It doesn’t give you ideas, it gives you a prescription. That’s not what I want for you. I want you to figure out exactly how you work best and then instead of forcing yourself to wake up at 5am and spend five minutes on this, 10 minutes on this, 15 minutes on this, five minutes on that, I want you to figure out what’s important to you, how your energy flows best. And then lean into that. Leverage your own energy pattern instead of trying to change your energy pattern. If you’re trying to force yourself to wake up early, or stay up late, or power through a day, just because you see other people doing it, that’s not what’s right for you, if it doesn’t feel good. Instead, go with your own natural energy pattern, fit your tasks and your goals and all the things that you want and need to do in your life, not just in your business, but also in your personal life, fit those into your natural energy pattern. And then you won’t be fighting anything, everything will just flow, everything will roll one thing into another, and you will get everything that you need, while getting everything that you need to get done, done.

You also need to understand what you want. This is why in so many of my workshops, and in everything I do with my private mentoring clients. This is why we always focus on your big picture vision first, there is no sense in creating a goals list, a to do list, a quarterly plan, if you don’t have those minut granular items, carrying you towards the big picture vision that you want for your life. So reverse engineering. Understand what you want, understand what your big picture vision is, in all areas. Within Chiron. I call this the Chiron constellation. There are 17 different points on this constellation. And they each correlate to different areas of your life, like your financial well being, your health and fitness, your sex and your romantic relationships, your friendships, your need to hunt for the next adventure versus your need to haven and nestle and nurture yourself and heal and grow. All of those things are factored in when we do this work within Chiron. And I need you to understand what you want in all of those areas. Only then, can you take the steps that will carry you towards those things that you want. Because if you are just doing what everybody else says you should be doing, then you’re only carrying yourself in all the different directions of all the different advice that you’re following. You’re not carrying yourself in the direction towards your future self that you want to be.

You also need to understand how you work best. For example, over the years, I’ve learned that as an introvert. Yeah, I might surprise you to know that I’m an introvert especially because I have a podcast. But I am an introvert, a major introvert. Calls take a lot out of me. When I do client calls, mentoring calls, anything like that. Whether I have one call in the day, or I have 10 calls in the day, it takes just about the same amount of energy from me, and I feel similarly drained. So what I’ve done is I block off. Tuesdays and Thursdays are purely for calls. That’s when I do all of my client meetings, whether it’s for Cornell on the agency side, whether it’s for business mentoring on the Chiron side, I do all of my calls all of my interactions with people on Tuesdays and Thursdays. What that allows me to do is conserve my creative energy for Mondays, I’m sorry a bunch of papers just fell off my desk, for Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. That’s when I do all my creative work, my writing work for my Cornell clients, my creation work for workshops and courses and action plans for my Chiron clients. That’s when I do all of that.

Because I know that there’s no way I’m going to be able to expect myself to get anything creative done on the days when I need to meet with people. And I really enjoy my calls with my clients. But they do drain me. And so I just batch all of those in one day. And understand, give myself that understanding that I’m not going to get any of those deliverable projects done on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The calls are the work those days. So how do you work best? Do you work best when you can have conversations with clients over phone instead of zoom? Just because the whole fucking world is using Zoom nowadays, thanks to COVID, that doesn’t mean that you have to. If you don’t like to be on camera, if you don’t like to have that visual component where you have to be in constant eye contact with someone and just have that focused attention and you’re kind of wondering Oh, does my face look right? Am I making the right facial expressions? Or are they just looking at the top of my head while I’m taking notes on this project we’re working on together. If that is distracting and draining to you. Just go to phone calls, you don’t have to use Zoom if you don’t want to.

This comes down to you understanding how you work best. Do you work better when you are kind of in this like collaborative co working energy where you know other people are working alongside you almost like a co working space or being in one of our digital co working sessions within Chiron? Or do you work better solo? Do you work better out in sunshine? Can you take your laptop to the pool, the park, whatever you want? Or do you work better indoors. Do you need to put on music to focus and just, you know, like, block out any distractions that are around you? How do you work best? You need to understand that so you can build your business operation in a way that is conducive to you working at your best. See how this is contrary to everything that you’ve been told on social media and in how-to books and things like that, where they say, you should do this, you should do that, this is how to be effective, this is how to be successful. They are teaching you what has been effective and successful for them.

You need to figure out what’s going to make you effective and successful because you are you. You have different personality traits, abilities, weaknesses, strengths, energy patterns, all of that. And that needs to be understood, in order for you to be at your best rather than trying to force yourself into someone else’s mold. So after you understand all of that about yourself, you need to build a business that supports all of that, when that allows you to be who you are, be at your best and be the most creative version of yourself and feel like wow, this is really fucking easy. Holy shit, if I had just been myself all along, it wouldn’t have been such a struggle. That’s when the magic happens. When you have a business that checks all the boxes for you, that makes your life so much easier. Because it’s by your own design. That’s when you have a formula for success. That’s when you have figured out this huge puzzle that all freelancers and entrepreneurs struggle to figure out.

That’s when the money will start flowing in. That’s when the clients will start flowing in. Because when you are at your best, when you are in that state of wow, I can’t believe this is my life. Wow, I can’t believe I get to do this. Wow, I can’t believe I don’t have to do that. That’s when you feel gratitude. You feel abundant. You feel those emotions and those mental states that make you a magnet to the other things that you want. And people want to be around that sense of contentedness and confidence and comfort and order rather than chaos. So you need to create the order for yourself. And that really comes from you knowing yourself. And instead of bringing in pieces that actually belong to other people, other book authors, other YouTube sensations, other Instagram influencers, whatever the fuck, rather than bringing everyone else’s pieces into your life. You need to figure out what pieces really represent you.

So who are you? What makes you tick? What motivates you? What lights you up? What do you enjoy? Likewise, what do you despise? What stresses you out? What de stresses you? What do you really want out of life, and what will get you there? That’s what I need you to figure out. And I’m here to help you. That is the whole purpose of this business that I’ve built. It took me years to stop looking at what everyone else is doing, to stop going outside of myself for answers and just start figuring out what I really wanted because what I want was valid. Who I am is valid, who you are is valid. There’s nothing wrong with you. And I started my business when I had wicked PTSD, depression. I couldn’t sleep when I could sleep thanks to medication, I would sleep for 18 hours. I built my business when I was dealing with a shitload of roadblocks. And the way I finally figured out to make it successful was I made my business conform to me. If I needed distance from clients, if I needed to get all of my work done in a three hour window during the day, then that’s when I needed to make happen.

And when you build your business to conform to you, to support you like this perfectly grafted mold that just holds and hugs you like the best mattress that you could ever imagine sleeping on, that just like completely contours to you. That’s what your business should be, it should hold you up so that you can relax. And when you relax, you release that death grip on things like money and getting clients, that desperation goes away, and you’re able to actually grow, you’re able to strengthen, you’re able to become a better version of yourself, which allows you to start overcoming those things that might be holding you back in your life. Rather than you having to expend energy becoming someone else or doing things someone else’s way. When you design your business around you, it frees up so much extra energy that you can then put towards healing those things within yourself. So I’m not just going to put you on the edge of a cliff and not help you find your way across. Don’t worry.

If you’re listening to this before July 21 2022. I’d love it for you to join me for the live Self Employed Creatives Business Plan Workshop, we will literally go through all of these questions I’ve asked here today and more. And we will incorporate your answers into a business plan that guides you in building a business that is 100% authentically yours. Now if you’re listening to this after July 21 2022, you can buy the self employed creatives business plan workshop and get access to the live replay, as well as a self paced audio of the workshop to do on your own. You also get the workbook and all the goodies that come along with joining for the live event.

I also highly recommend downloading my free guide the complete step by step guide to building a successful freelance business. The first chapter alone will help you answer a lot of these questions and truly get to know how you and your unique units can be translated into a profitable business. All without you losing that units. You also get info on everything from pricing yourself to structuring your business, to niching, to health insurance for freelancers, you can check that out in the show notes. Or you can go to Chironconsulting.us/guide to get that. And if you’re still feeling like you’re not quite landing where where you need to be, if you still have questions, if you’re still craving that self discovery, and you feel like you need help looking in the places that you didn’t even know existed, like, oh, I have a unique energy pattern, like what the fuck is that? Tell me more. And you want to dive into that and designing a business that is totally and completely custom to you, then just talk to me, I’m a real person, I am totally accessible to you at anytime, email, our free slack community, you can book a free call with me.

And let’s talk, I guarantee that we can make major moves for you and your business in a short amount of time. And if you want to work with me privately in business mentoring, that’s what I’m here for. Of course, I also know that a lot of people are lone wolves, they like to go it alone. I totally get that and respect that. That’s how I was for a really long time. That’s why I have all these workshops and guides and things for you. So I want you to pick the thing that feels the best for you that feels right for you. No matter what you do. Whether you use any of these resources I’ve put together for you or not, please just promise me one thing. You won’t fall victim to comparison itis. You won’t let everyone else’s narrative become yours. And that you will decide for yourself what you want out of life. Whether that’s to make a million dollars a year or $40,000 a year, whether it’s to have kids or not, whether it’s to travel around the world, taking videos of yourself and your adventures along the way. Or if it’s to stay private and build your own cozy little bubble. No matter what. Please trust yourself. Get to know yourself and always follow your own inner voice. You know what’s best. So stop silencing yourself. Now go out there and soar.

Hey, Rai here again. Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, please subscribe and rate us in your favorite podcasting platform. Want to be a guest on the show or know someone who has an amazing story of entrepreneurship? Apply on our website at Chironconsulting.us/podcast.