🟢 3 reasons to choose fulfillment instead of money (and eventually have both)

Why I feel good even though I'm not great at business yet

(3.5 min read)

Welcome to the 37 people who subscribed since Feb 10! 🤩

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You’ve likely heard the stats that:

• Only 12% of full-time creators make more than $50,000 a year revenue

• 46% make less than $1,000

Who knows whether those reports are accurate.

But we can assume the worst.

You can see in your own life that more people are moving towards a creator lifestyle.

So there’s a supply-and-demand problem.

Attention is scarce.

Your job as a creator gets harder (regardless of whether your business has direct competition).

Why are you choosing to be a solopreneur anyway?

Because you can’t not.

That’s my answer, at least.

For multiple reasons:

#1

Imagine the distant future.

You’re reflecting back on your life as a tiny cog in a huge corporate machine.

Was that what you dreamed of?

Was that really living?

If we’re not in control of our own paths—our own creations—what’s the point?

I know myself enough to know I’d regret not blazing my own trail.

Let’s call point #1 “Autonomy”.

#2

YOU appreciate yourself more than anyone else does.

There’s something thrilling when incentives are aligned properly.

When you’re fully responsible for your own harvest.

The seeds you plant today are what you get to harvest in the future.

In the past, the income and recognition I received from employers was never tightly correlated to my effort.

Well, that’s good, right?

(If I’m efficient, I want my output to be what counts.)

But the income and recognition I received from employers was never tightly correlated to my impact on the business, either!

You’ve seen what happens instead.

Corporate America pays the self-promoting, elbow-throwing, maneuvering people the most.

And I don’t even blame the bosses or the self-promoters. That’s how incentives work.

It’s the easiest option.

But that doesn’t mean I need to accept it.

Forging ahead on my own feels so wholesome in comparison.

Let’s call point #2 “Attribution”.

#3

You know that your air conditioning, medical care, transportation options, internet access, etc make you tremendously better off than billionaires from just ~100 years ago.

Luxuries become cheaper along with the accelerating pace of technology.

In the future (unless there’s an apocalypse), we can expect massive worldwide abundance as predicted in books like:

Imagine a world where:

• aging is cured (so people no longer die “of old age” / “from natural causes”)

• all knowledge and insights are immediately accessible

• matter is controllable at an atomic level (so we could make multi-carat diamond rings from pond scum if we wanted to)

• money is therefore obsolete

Alternatively, even if none of that happens, maybe you experience a windfall or earn a bunch of money.

Either way.

Where will you find meaning in life?

Once money isn’t a factor, you’ll be forced to find meaning in the same places you could find meaning now:

• relationships

• creating / expressing

• challenging yourself

I don’t know how quickly technology will bring widespread wealth.

Maybe it will take another 100 years. Maybe just 20.

But I suspect that even if I soon own a yacht and an electric jet and multiple mansions (and so does everyone else), I’ll still be asking myself these questions:

• Which people would be fun to create for?

• With whom can I have meaningful conversations?

• In what ways can I stretch myself and see what I’m capable of?

Let’s call point #3 “Authenticity”.

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So what am I doing now?

“If you knew everything was really all right, and that it always has a happy ending, then you would not feel trepidacious about your future.

Everything is really so very all right!

If you could believe and trust that, then, immediately everything would automatically and instantly become all right.”

- Abraham-Hicks

Even if you think “Wow, this makes sense. Ryan seems so smart. I bet his life is awesome.”

Think again.

Every day, multiple times per day, I bounce between:

• 😨 panic

• 😊 knowing that I’m in the right place and on the right path and that the risks I’m taking now are smaller than they sometimes feel

It’s hard to hold steady.

There are a few specific ways that I’m waffling, too.

Should I try to get a 20 hour/week job in software engineering (see my LinkedIn post asking friends), or should I dedicate 100% of my energy to figuring out a business?

Big question.

My body says to go 100% towards the business.

My fear says “maybe a steady paycheck from a fractional job would help you feel safer and extend your runway”.

Waffle #2:

Should I aim for an infinitely scalable product-based business, or should I offer group coaching (but figure out a better marketing than my previous coaching business had)?

I’ve been dreaming about building a course-based business.

But I know that it’s easier to get started with service-based businesses like group coaching.

Waffle #3:

Who is my ideal client? How can I help them solve a specific pain?

Nailing this down makes everything so much easier.

But fear creeps in:

“I’m terrible at marketing.

Even if I’m excited about how much I can help a certain type of person go from A to Z, I need to care about how financially viable this idea is.”

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My plan going forward

This is newsletter issue #20 out of 105 for the year.

I know that if I keep writing, if I keep learning how to serve you, it will change my life.

Even though this issue took you only 3.5 minutes to read, it took me a few days to write.

But that’s because writing forces thinking.

As a result of sculpting this post, a new plan is forming in my mind.

It’s big and scary.

It means adjusting the topic of this newsletter and changing its name (but slightly enough that I think you’ll want to keep reading).

It means changing my short-term focus.

The next issue (Tuesday) should be interesting! 😉

P.S. Stay tuned at linkedin.com/in/rcwalsh too.

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🕙 What we learned in recent posts:

🟢 Expensive problems are the best

🟢 What I learned managing $210 billion

🟢 Design your work around your ideal life (not the other way around)

🟢 How to be top 1% on Upwork within the first 24 hr of signing up

🟢 [See all posts]

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👀 Caught my eye this week:

Whenever Peter Bence releases a new video, I always watch.

Here’s his cover of “Every Breath You Take” by The Police. 😮

I’m so inspired by people who earn money from what they’d do for free.

His performances are spectacular.

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💬 Conversation starter:

“I want to earn a living doing something that I’d do for free.”

Too picky?

Or is that a reasonable standard to hold?

Reply directly to this email or leave a comment (even better)!

I’ll be so excited to write back to you. ❤

Feel free to share this post with friends

Or click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

📣 Special thanks to:

Create in Curiosity with Roc

and

The Lemon Tree Mindset 🌳🍋

for the referrals ❤️

My buddy Luke DePron for the support. (The fitness results Luke has helped his clients achieve at FitMenProject.com are 🤩)

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🙌 Do you want to get featured in a future issue? Let me know.