The Four Game Changers to Start Forging Your Business Path

I would advise reading my previous blog post “Do the Work You Love, A Must-Read For Beginner Pathforgers” before reading this one so things make a little more sense. I reference some of the exercises the book has you do in this post.

If you read my previous blog post about the book Do the Work You Love, you'll see that I was not on the adventurers path. I did not just drop everything and go all in on trying to become a business owner. Because I knew I would have failed.

I was the strategist. I started with 80% of my usual jobs and 20% freelancing. And over time that slowly transitioned. And like a big water bucket that slowly fills at a waterpark, there came a percentage where then the bucket began to tip quickly and pour out.

That being said, it took two years for me to get from an 80/20 split to a 50/50 split. And now I am all in on freelancing 100/0. I'm officially out of any 9-5 lifestyle. Getting from 505/50 to 0/100 took about four months. It was like dropping a mento into a coke bottle at the end.

So take this as advice that things will happen slowly, and then all at once. If you're going to take the strategist path like I did, you will spend a couple years setting up the dominos. And some will fall along the way because they weren’t set properly or just don’t make sense where they were placed, speaking metaphorically. But once enough are set up, they'll begin to fall faster and faster in order.

If I had to attribute the most key factors that led to finally getting the ball rolling as it is now, I would say it’s:

• Find out what I hate
• Invest time in learning about myself and my different skills
• Saying yes to things even when I didn't have the answers or feel ready to do them
• Giving my best every time

That timespan of getting from 80/20 to 50/50 is where the four key game changers I listed made the biggest difference. Let’s unpack them.

Find Out What You Hate

You need to begin trying things. You need to begin doing things. You need to learn for yourself, and feel it literally in your body what is right and wrong for you. If you went through and did the dream job chart and have been investigating yourself about the lifestyle you want to live, that's fantastic. But right now they're just ideas. And ideas alone dont make money, get results, or provide valuable information.

You have to begin trying the things on the Dream Job Chart list. Because I can almost guarantee you that your initial idea is somewhat in the right ballpark, but isn't the be all and end all of the path you're going to forge. But doing that first idea, trying to learn that skill, or applying for that specific position is going to quickly provide feedback and information about what is right and wrong. It’s going to be a step that will spring you to the next step.

Again, I started with being a virtual assistant, then social media management, then website design, then SEO, then Google Ads, then graphic design, then photography and videography. A lot of these were overlapping, happening at the same time. Your frame of reference always needs to be, “Does this fit my criteria for my ideal lifestyle? Do I enjoy this enough to not hate myself?” I wouldn’t have tried most of these things had I not tried something before. This is how you begin pathforging!

Sidebar. You don't have to be obsessed with what you do or love it with your whole heart. You just have to enjoy it enough to not want to slide a cheese grater across your forehead. I enjoy editing. But sometimes I also damn well hate editing and it feels like a chore. Hills and valleys. Breaths in and out. That's life baby.

Understand Yourself and Learn the Skills You Need

So the second point naturally goes hand in hand with the first. Because you can't just start doing anything with no experience and expect to get paid well for it, or at all. Once you begin to find things that make you think, “I think this could work. I enjoy this. It’s at least peaked my interest.” That's when you take it a step further and really test it. Start learning more and training yourself to become an expert.

There is so much free information online that universities and colleges must be weeping in their ornate offices. When I started, I knew NOTHING about business. I mean literally squat. I knew a little about videography. I knew nothing about SEO, Google Ads, or websites. I went to acting school! The only thing I know how to do is cry on command… sometimes.

Start looking on YouTube. You'll find out really fast if you actually hate something or not once you start to dive deeper. That happened to me with Google Ads. I tried really f*cking hard to get certified and I failed literally at least four times. I was trying so hard andi didn't even enjoy it.

If you begin to teach yourself to become an expert and you also still find you really enjoy the thing, that’s where you need to continue forging your path.

Say Yes to Opportunities You’re Not Ready For

This also goes hand in hand with teaching yourself to become an expert. Think of it as teaching yourself to become an expert with a deadline. While I wouldn't recommend doing this all the time, but in the beginning if you think you could do something but just lack some of the right information or skills, say yes.

Even if you fail, I want to put something into perspective here. You are just starting out. Everything feels much bigger and more important in the beginning (and don't get me wrong it is important!) because it's new and you're just getting started.

And I’m not just saying this. In retrospect, two years down the line, my biggest failure with one of my earliest clients really wasn't that big of a deal. Here’s the story.

I was given the opportunity to do social media management and content creation for a welding shop that my father in law referred me to. It was my first ever client where I didn’t already know the person. They also needed a website.

I had built one website before. I had not managed social media on my own before or been on my own in general when it came to providing and delivering a service. I was nervous as hell! I didn't think I was ready. But I said yes. I talked to the guy at the welding shop and gave myself ample timelines to get things done because I knew I had to do some learning first. I just told him that I was busy at the time and if it was cool with him it would take me a month or so to do the website because I also needed to shoot photos for it to fill it with their stuff.

He said no problem. Half the month was honestly me watching Wordpress tutorials. The other half was building the website. The website was delivered. And he liked it. And that was that.

It’s hard to have this perspective, but in hindsight, pretty much anything I could have delivered he would have been happy with.

Because your clients at the start will most likely have never hired someone with your offer. A graphic designer, a videographer, an SEO specialist, a copywriter, and an email marketer…They don't have a point of reference. And this isn't me saying you're going to do a terrible job!

What I’m saying is you don't have to break your back becoming a world class expert all at once in the beginning. You just have to be good enough for the needs of your client. And the needs of a client who hires someone who is honest with them about being newer at what they do shouldn’t be unreasonable.

A few months down the line I ended up firing that client. I was anxious. He kept providing negative feedback on the work I would do for his social media and I didn't have the confidence in myself to assert myself as the one with the knowledge. Remember, people are hiring you for a certain job because you know more about it or they just don't have the time to do/learn it themselves. So you need to remember that even if you're just learning something, trust your gut! Chances are you will already know more than the client knows.

The anxiety and frustration got to me and so I met with him and fired him 3 months into our 6 month retainer. He blew up. He threw the USB stick of all the materials I had created at the wall and stormed off. I was pretty shook. I felt like it was totally my fault. It wasn't totally my fault. It was definitely partly my fault. But by the end of it all, that relationship blew up and I failed hard.

To be honest though, he wasn’t the right client type for me. It was doomed from the start. And that just happens. You’ll get along better with some clients than others.

At the moment I was so anxious because I worried about what he thought of me. I was certain he was cursing my name, that if anyone ever mentioned me he would say terrible things about me and that it was a huge stain on my reputation.

That wasn't the case at all. Yeah, I failed at being a social media manager for the guy. But I hate social media management. So is it really a loss? So there's comforting fact number one.

And comforting fact number two is that, honestly, the work i was doing him wasn't all that important.

Yes it's helpful for businesses to use social media, but honestly, the work I was doing wasn't going to make or break his business. It was just a small addition, a toe in the waters of “digital marketing”, if you can even call it that.. So that failure didn't have a huge impact on him in the long run. Eventually he hired another social media manager. That was that.

So this huge failure that I had so much anxiety about in my mind and thought would put a big dent in me, over time it grew smaller. Yes, it was a bump on my path I was forging. And it felt big at the time. But now that I look back down behind me at the path I've forged, that bump looks really small in comparison to everything else.

You will try things and you will fail. And in the moment, they're gonna feel like big failures. It's up to you to pick yourself up and keep forging your path. That failure was an important lesson for me in client relationship management, as well as in the kind of work I don't want to do. And finally it was a huge lesson that defined the type of client I absolutely do not want to work with.

Do Your Best Every Time

The final thing is doing a good job. This seems pretty self explanatory. If you want to start freelancing and starting your own business, you have to have the drive to do your best every time. If you're here thinking it's okay to do mediocre work, don't do it. You're disservicing yourself, and you're disservicing your clients No one deserves just okay. It's just frickin rude.

Your version of a great job is going to evolve over time. What matters is knowing you put your best foot forward as much as you can. You also will not honestly do the best job every time. Sometimes things will turn out okay. Remember though, if it's good enough for the client, it's good enough. And if you know you tried your damn best under whatever circumstances, then that’s that.

So Now, Two Years Later…

So those were my game changers for the first two years of starting out. And I carry them with me still today as I keep forging my path. I hope it doesn’t take you two years like it did me to start to feel the ball rolling. But then again, the reason you’re becoming a path forger is to forge your own path for the rest of your life. And (hopefully) you see that spending two years figuring things out is worth the investment for a lifetime of better living.