A three year wait
Permission to give it time
Mindset Mastery is a weekly newsletter about the psychology of self-employment from Jenni Gritters. If you’d like to support my work, become a paid subscriber for $5/ month! Paid subscribers also receive business planning exercises, along with other perks like access to newsletters on sensitive topics.
The first time my coach, Damon Brown, met me, I was drowning in one-on-one coaching sessions. I’d recently graduated from my coaching program and I was following the recommended steps: Tell people they need to sign for a free intro call, then sell them a pack of sessions. I packed my schedule full of six sessions per day, all on Zoom. By the end of those days, I was catatonic.
How do people do this? I asked him.
He explained that some people are 1:1 coaches and teachers; they work with a few people for a long time. Others, he said, are 1:many educators.
I was intrigued. I spent the weeks following thinking about a possible 1: many model (which included this very newsletter!). I could see it all in my imagination: Courses, a membership program, and a few 1:1 clients. I remember writing this vision down in a notebook, then excitedly explaining the concepts to Damon.
Y’all, that was three years ago. No one who knows me would call me a patient person. I love efficiency. I hate waiting for anything. And yet… three years!!
When I launched my coaching membership, SUSTAIN, this fall, I had been thinking about this idea for three years. By the time I started building out the backend of the program in Kajabi and writing the curriculum, the ideas just spilled out. Of course they did: They’d been marinating.
I’m writing this newsletter because I want you to know that many beautiful, creative, inspired ideas take time to bring to the world.
Honestly, I would have loved to launch all of my ideas right away. But then I got pregnant and I had a toddler and I needed to make money for my family and we moved — and life got in the way.
I wanted to start a weekly newsletter that gave me a place to actually write again about a year after that first coaching session — but I was drowning in caring for two kids and walking away from one of my companies while running the other, with a mental health crisis to boot — and again, life got in the way.
This summer, when my husband walked away from his job, it was finally time to let all of these ideas come flooding out. And you know what? Everything I’m offering now is so much better because of how long it took. (Past me hates current me for telling you that.)
So many of my clients come to me month after month, dedicating themselves to finally working on that creative project. Many of the people I work with also have chaotic lives that include caregiving and living with chronic illnesses.
The devastating truth is that we can’t always work at the pace we’d like to. We can’t always create the things we want to create right when we dream them up. Life gets in the way. And, and, and, these ideas will still have their time in the sun. You will get to them. It is not too late. The non-work-related things you’re building and learning right now — the gardens and homes and relationships — are beautiful, too. And I’m becoming more convinced than ever that waiting, learning and growing is what makes our work that much more vibrant and unique.
I once asked Damon about the two companies he’d built and sold. How did you do it while also raising two little kids as the primary caregiver? I asked.
Jenni, he said. It took me 10 years.
The other day, I found an old drawing in my notebook; it was a picture of the exact business I’m running now — the one I’d drawn after that first session with Damon. At the time, I couldn’t fathom that it was achievable; all I could see was needing an escape from a calendar full of Zoom meetings. When I saw that picture last week, I burst into tears. It was all there:
a membership program, where people could go for lower-cost coaching and community
a free space (like this newsletter) where I could teach people about mindset, without the higher price of 1-1 coaching
a higher-priced 1-1 coaching offer, with a practice limited to coaching two days per week
Today’s program was once my big dream. Three years later, it’s alive and serving me in exactly the way I knew it would back then.
Take this as your permission to be on whatever timeline you’re on at the present moment, trusting that the thing you’re dreaming of will have its time in the sun.
Give it time, friends.
xo,
Jenni
If you need more career stability in 2024 and you’re craving business education focused on money, branding, client relationships and beyond for self employed people: My membership program, SUSTAIN, was created for you!
Curious about my background? I’m a writer and business coach based in Central Oregon. I have two small children and I work part-time so I can spend a lot of time with them. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with non-linear business building and teaching people how to build successful businesses that support their human needs first. Check out my coaching offerings here, follow me on Twitter & Instagram, or download my free business plan for creatives!