Tag Archive for: Rebecca Tsaros Dickson

Bragging rights – not

Every entrepreneur wants to share her clients’ massive successes. They want to inspire you with what is possible and make themselves top of mind when you want the same results. It’s business.

What I don’t see discussed very much is down turns.

And, dammit, I’m in one.

Highs go with lows. After 16 years in business, I know this to be an absolute fact. Except this time, I don’t seem to care.

It’s scaring me a bit.

I’m not bothered by anything that’s not working. I don’t feel compelled to create something new and dazzling. I definitely don’t have the urge to do a big launch, splash my face all over social media or find some new platform or app to shake things up.

It’s got me thinking that maybe my time is up. Or maybe I need a very long vacation.

Or both of those may be true.

Over the years, my clients have hired me to build stronger businesses, write books, land speaking engagements, fill client rosters and bank accounts, and more. I help them do it all the time.

Yet I’m finding these days that I’m happier to have people work with me on themselves, on figuring out what they want (you’d be amazed at how many only want something because they think they’re supposed to), and feeling better about who they are. The people who just want to feel comfortable in their own skin, who sometimes simply need permission to feel how they feel.

Money and business-building are so easy, they’re almost boring. Does that mean my career is over, or morphing again? I can’t decide.

Things that light me up:

  • taking clients out to the herd of horses so they can see their own impact and if it’s who they want to be
  • forest immersions and learning via nature (trees talk, btw, and plants share healing energy)
  • normalizing emotions and helping people give themselves permission to live on their own terms

The irony here is all of those things actually make people better equipped to deal with the stress of business and life. They are all modalities that reset the nervous system and show you where you need to shore up your own emotional intelligence.

Obviously, they aren’t sexy 6-figure promises. That generally means people new to coaching have no clue about their value. And those who have been in this industry for a while know they need it, but they also know that’s going to mean getting off the hamster wheel, no longer hustling and changing how they show up. And they’re scared to do it.

Meanwhile, I’m over here – having gone through that entire transformation almost 6 years ago – waiting for the world to catch up.

Spirituality and frequency are the current buzzwords. I figure the next evolution will be serious mental health care. I may or may not be waiting.

Why you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur

For every person out there who goes after her dream, ten more sit on their hands and whine. Trust me. I hear from them every day.

I work 12-hour days. I’m exhausted.

I have kids and a husband and a full-time job.

I don’t know how.

Who would listen to me anyway?

But who am I to show up and say what helped me?

Good, then go take a nap and quit bitching about the dream you have of being your own boss and actually impacting human lives in a real, tangible way.

The rest of us stay up late and get up early if we need to. We function on four hours of sleep (sometimes less) and all but kill ourselves to get our message out. Because. We. Must.

Because the burn – the desire to support people and fulfill our mission – is so great, we can’t sleep anyway.

I’m officially declaring war on bullshit excuses

I work with women who get up at 3 a.m. and work on their own business until they have to get the kids off to school. Some stay up until dawn instead. A few do both. Some use their lunch breaks. Some record their ideas on their cell phones during the commute.

“My passions drive me to the typewriter every day of my life, and they have driven me there since I was twelve,” Ray Bradbury once said. “So I never have to worry about schedules. Some new thing is always exploding in me, and it schedules me, I don’t schedule it. It says: Get to the typewriter right now and finish this.”

But I’ll be too tired.

But no one understands what I’m trying to create. They look at me like I’m insane.

But my relationship with my spouse and children will suffer.

Really? Your family won’t understand if you need an hour or two to yourself every day to do what you love? You can’t muscle through a workday on too little sleep? Or is the truth simply you’re afraid you will fail?

Ernest Hemingway – Nobel Prize in Literature, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Bronze Star Medal – said the most terrifying thing he ever encountered was “a blank sheet of paper.”

Writing is hard. Creating is hard. Being your own boss is hard.

It’s not lucrative at the start. It’s isolating and often heartbreaking. So if you’re not getting it done, don’t beat yourself up.

Not everyone is meant to be her own boss

Not everyone has the fire, hears the thunder, feels the promise of the moonlight.

And that’s okay.

But the rest of us can’t help it.

Nelson Algren, who won the National Book award for his novel The Man With the Golden Arm, spent five months in jail for stealing a typewriter. That is dedication.

“In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me,” Kurt Vonnegut said.

So decide. Are you finally ready to dedicate yourself to your business? To do what it takes until it takes?

No one one will blame you if you’re not.

But if you are, take every excuse and flush it. Then get to work.

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