NEVER GIVE UP book – Action Taker Publishing
Chapter by Virpi Tervonen
More freedom. Mostly freedom of money and time.
That was me. I was crystal clear and fully committed to starting my own business. Alas, I had no idea what it would be.
So, I signed up for the course they were selling. I think it was called either “Be your own boss” or “Make your own money”. Cliches, I know. But very accurate in describing what I and others who signed up for the program desired for.
I remember one thing that they emphasized in that program: “Just do something!” Retrospectively, it’s a vague piece of advice. After all, it’s a transition from being an employee with a steady paycheck to being self-employed with no guarantee of income!
Regardless, I joined a “Work At Home” business opportunity that I found online. I was so determined to make that business a success that I promptly quit my job at the University.
That happened twenty years ago. Today, I understand the shock some people expressed. I was a first-time mother of a baby girl, fresh out of a maternity leave, recently moved to the other side of the world in Asia to continue my promising post-Doctorate career as a biomedical researcher. I had moved my family from Finland to Singapore for that job. Quitting it after a few months wasn’t a rational decision, I admit. It wasn’t even a well thought out decision. I made the decision to get away from the uneasiness I was feeling in the new job, and the expectations to work exceedingly long days with a long commute. I made the decision due to a strong desire to be at home, and be more available to my precious baby girl. It was an urge to do something new with my life in the new country where I felt free from the societal and cultural expectations typical for Finland.
So, I do understand it was shocking to some. Furthermore, I understand why some people laughed out on my face when they heard about my plans. I really didn’t know what I was doing. But I was determined that I would figure it out. I was eager and willing to learn anything I had to. I believed that I would make it work, if I just worked hard enough.
Not so surprisingly, my first business venture wasn’t a success. Little money dribbled in; enough to whip up my desire to make more of it. Earning more money became critical, when the then-husband lost his job. Instead of trying to find another job, he chose not to. “I want to stay at home, like you,” he explained.
I became the sole breadwinner for our family. I couldn’t have done it without our full-time helper Nemy, who took care of the household and looked after our daughter. She was just a little bit over 1-year old at that time.
It’s fascinating how my subconscious motivators – namely to be strong and independent, and smart and knowledgeable – drove my choices and actions to a direction that furthermore provided me options to be strong and knowledgeable. Until all the available choices demanded me to be strong and independent, and smart and knowledgeable, even if it was beyond my capacity to be that. It wasn’t just my subconscious motivators but also my inner Saboteurs that had a remarkable impact on my thinking and behavior.
Our commonly known but little understood mental enemies
Our Saboteurs cloud our discernment, and cause us and people around us unnecessary unhappiness and misery. They harness some of our natural strengths and coping methods into a controlling system that appears to help us. In reality, they undermine our innate capabilities, such as empathy, curiosity, openness, innovation, navigating our life’s path, and taking focused action.
My strongest Saboteurs, Avoider and Hyper-Achiever, had a significant impact on what options I was able to see, what kind of decisions I made, and what kind of action I took – or didn’t take. (Do a free assessment and see what your strongest Saboteurs are at SaboteurTest.com)
Characteristic of people with a strong Avoider Saboteur is that they tend to avoid things that appear difficult to them. They avoid conflict even if it means saying yes to things they wouldn’t want, and downplay the importance of real problems as an attempt to maintain harmony or balance.
People with a strong Hyper-Achiever Saboteur have a High need for constant performance and achievement for self-validation. However, joy from any achievement is fleeting and self-acceptance seems to constantly hide behind the next achievement. I’d describe having Avoider and Hyper-Achiever as the strongest Saboteurs feeling as comfortable as driving a car with one foot on the gas and the other on the brake pedal. They cause inner resistance, friction, and discomfort that consumes loads of energy and mental bandwidth.
Having learned these things about myself it makes it easier to understand why I accepted the full responsibility of supporting the whole household alone so easily. Occasionally I was feeling proud of how much responsibility was on my shoulders and how much I was doing to provide my family.
In reality, I was efficiently burning my candle on both ends. I was working hard to grow my business and manage household matters, while constantly feeling guilty for not being the mother I wanted to: spending plenty of time with my daughter to build a wonderful relationship with her and create memorable moments that she’d cherish. That was difficult to do from the Saboteur-led state I mentally was in. I could mostly think of work, no matter what else I was doing. I believed that I could be the person and mother I wanted to be only after I had attained success. I also believed that “if it was to be, it was up to me”. It is a belief that turned me inwards instead of being open for help and support. To live up to that belief, I was pushing myself to work harder, do more, faster. And if I couldn’t, it was a sign for me to toughen up, put my head down, and solder on.
Self-criticism, denying satisfaction, and threatening yourself with worst case scenarios can seem like an efficient way to motivate ourselves. Especially when they work. They do, to a point. What we don’t realize is the actual cost of a negative mindset. It stops us seeing the bigger and more impactful outcomes we could have created, if our mind had been operating from the Sage-led stage, instead of the Saboteur-led one. Little good comes from choices, decisions, and actions taken in a Saboteur-led state. It consumes you and your wellbeing, and negatively impacts your relationships and people around you, leaving you little life to truly enjoy.
The entrepreneurial freedoms
Most people think that the main motivation to start a business is money. But it isn’t. Money is the means to something more important… freedom.
Those who start businesses do it with no guarantee of success or even income because they are motivated to have more freedom. The founder of Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan, names four different varieties of it: Freedom of Money, Time, Relationships and Purpose.
I began to get a sense of what Freedom of Money was, when my business income exceeded what I earned as an employee. I realized that my income was not tied up to years of experience or limited with salary brackets. This first profitable business of mine was an Information Marketing business selling ebooks.
My training as a science researcher turned out to be useful in launching and building the information marketing business. It was exhilarating to do keyword and market research that revealed what people were wanting and to what extent the demand was fulfilled. When I identified a niche topic with a high volume of searches and low number of quality search results, it was an opportunity for me to provide that information. I bought or loaned a few books about the topic from the library, studied them, wrote an ebook and made it available for a fee. The topics varied from beekeeping and cake baking to acupressure massage, and thus I was publishing these ebooks under a variety of pen names.
My timing with my ebook business was great. Increasingly more people were getting used to making purchases online and were willing to pay for a digital book in a form of downloadable PDF instead of receiving a hard copy in mail.
In addition to creating the products from scratch, I also built the websites for each of the products myself. Dreamweaver software was the most advanced “WYSIWYG” (what you see is what you get) website development software and I used it to build my first few HTML websites. When WordPress became available, I learned how to create WP sites for my niche products.
Getting traffic to my websites was another set of skills I became good at. I learned SEO and got even certified as an SEO expert. Backlinks and articles were big SEO elements at that time. I wrote loads of articles and published them on sites like eZineArticles and Squidoo. Adding paid traffic from Google AdWords increased the targeted traffic further.
I worked hard but I also got rewarded for my efforts. Everything seemed to work great, and the revenue kept increasing so quickly that I began dreaming of becoming an Internet Millionaire! So, I doubled down to do more of what I was doing: bought more keyword rich domain names, put up SEO optimized niche websites, and created more ebooks.
Everything is temporary
When things are going great, you want to believe it’s going to be that way always. The truth is that change happens. If we are not able or willing to adjust accordingly, some of the good will come to its end. This happened with my ebook business. The global financial crisis 2007-2008 happened and it had an impact on my sales. Google made a major algorithm update and it was strongly unfavorable to my niche website rankings, making them sink down in search results. Bidding for keyword placing at Google AdWords became expensive for tiny businesses like mine, selling low priced products with no upsells. And finally, the number of sites competing on the same keywords increased, and some of my best-selling products got modeled after or copied. All that killed growth and the ebook business began to wither.
I panicked. Instead of becoming rich, I was going broke. My then-husband suggested that I’d get a job to support the family, and so that he could stay home. It didn’t sound sensible to me. Furthermore, I had gotten a taste of entrepreneurial freedom, and I liked it. The idea of getting a job was revolting.
The ebook business had assets, such as almost a hundred keyword-rich domain names, a couple of dozen of optimized niche websites with a product, each of them getting organic traffic. And a subscriber database of over 25,000 people. The deep sense of failure that was made worse by harsh self-criticism, blocked me from seeing value in what I had built. And because I had been doing most of the work alone and had not developed a network of peers and mentors, there was no one to help me to shift my perspective. So, instead of even trying to monetize the existing assets, I let all of it crumble away.
My solution was a new business model that was trending at that time: small business online presence building. I was capable and qualified of helping local small businesses get their website up and optimized. However, some businesses wanted more than just a simple website. I had to hire people to do website graphic design and development. With that I was out of my playground. Managing people in my team, dealing with the demanding customers, and disappearing developers was not what I had prepared for. It was messy and stressful.
Then I got lucky. A prospective client wanted business coaching instead of online presence services. We had a conversation about what she wanted from coaching and I said yes to the opportunity. The work I did with her was a mixture of mentoring and consulting rather than coaching. But the client got great outcomes, better outcomes than she had hoped for. The next two coaching clients seemed to appear almost from thin air, and working with them turned out to be successful, too. Achieving desired results while doing something that feels natural and energizes you is a solid sign that you have found your playground. It felt incredible to have found mine!
Since working with my first coaching client ten years ago, I have developed my professional skills with certifications in Business, Executive and Mental Fitness coaching. I have created coaching programs for entrepreneurs who want to develop themselves, increase the value of their company, and have a business that is less dependent on them.
The freedom to choose with whom I work with has given me amazing clients, and fantastic peers to collaborate and become friends with. I love the freedom to do work in which I get to make a positive contribution using my natural strengths and conative skills. I find what I do purposeful. And if I ever grow out of this current purpose, I am confident that I’ll find a new one, if there are future seasons requiring such a transition.
When looking back is good for you
Many times, life may turn out in ways you least expect, regardless of your effort to create something else. Those periods of life can feel overwhelming and demanding for any person.
It’s a common saying that you should not look back but focus on the future. I disagree. If you don’t look back at the past events, you are going to miss a great opportunity to distill richness from your successes, mistakes, and failures.
You can better understand how you created your successes and hence you can use that wisdom to replicate and multiply your successes. Also failures can be transformed into gifts of knowledge, inspiration, or power.
My lessons to share with you
- Embrace necessary endings
Never giving up isn’t about never quitting anything. If you resist necessary endings, you’ll get stuck. Starting a new phase in your life, or getting to another level with your business requires ending something and leaving it behind while moving on. The new phase might have a different purpose and value priorities. If we don’t accept endings and handle them well, the improvement or growth that we are seeking will never materialize, whether in terms of advancing our businesses or improving our personal lives.
2) Think where the energy comes
When you want to start something new or create a bigger impact, think where you’ll get the energy to do that. You can preserve your energy by using the wisdom your procrastination provides, and get someone else to take care of the activities that take a lot from you to get them done. Developing professional relationships plugs you in a network of energy. Neglecting relationships is a poor strategy. This includes the relationship with yourself. Get to know your strongest Saboteurs, how they steal your energy, and then improve your mental fitness to stop that happening. The entrepreneurial freedom allows you to build a business in which you can focus on using your natural strengths and do things that re-energize you. You actually can do what excites you and get paid for it!
3) You are not alone & all is not dependent on you
We have rather amazing capability to overcome challenges and navigate through rough patches of life. Our resourcefulness helps us to get through transitions, and our ability to renew our minds, identity, and purpose helps us to thrive in different seasons of our lives.
When we feel lost and disconnected, it doesn’t mean that we are. Often we are at the right place but are just not familiar with it. At times there seems to be no progress. You, however, don’t need to be constantly pushing things. Take your rest and trust that God is doing her part as is promised. And remember, whatever tomorrow brings, you’ll be there.
Resources:
- Get a copy of the NEVER GIVE UP book and the book bonuses here.
- Take the free Saboteur Assessment today to discover how you self-sabotage here.
