last week, i took the week off work to heal
i canceled my client calls. i wasn’t in my client telegram. i wasn’t posting or even signing on to social media.
i was very intentionally not “working.”
and yet… wanna know how i spent my time?
i coached one of my friends on nervous system regulation.
i coached another friend on inner leadership and holding standards in relationships.
i coached another friend on meditation and business.
my friends are probably glad i’m back to work so i can stop coaching them 😂
i went to a cafe and started reading a hafiz poem, then decided i wanted to analyze it. so suddenly i’m going deep into sufi symbolism and thinking, “i want to be the david ghiyam of sufi poetry.”
i came up with new business ideas and podcast ideas and wrote down pages and pages of thoughts.
i went to a meetup to talk about big dreams and hold visions for each other.
i had conversations by the pool about purpose.
i also accidentally joined an indonesian dance crew for independence day. unrelated, but a fun side note.
and yes. i also slept a lot. i went to see a specialist doctor in another city. i created a recovery plan and started actively following it.
but once i had that plan in place and had a little more space, i had to actively hold myself back from creating content, getting on social media, and signing into telegram to support my clients.
at one point i even thought, i could probably reinstate my calls this week.
and it made me realize something.
the things i do for my business are exactly how i would want to spend my time. even if no one was paying me for it.
coaching people. thinking about business. talking about purpose. writing. creating. learning about things i’m fascinated by and then immediately wanting to teach people about them.
my work feels like an extension of me.
and that’s why i keep saying:
you couldn’t pay me to quit my business.
because if you paid me to quit my business…
i’d apparently just keep doing my business for free.
i’m unavailable to dance for dollars.
a year and a half ago, i was at an entrepreneur retreat outside of mexico city.
we were going around introducing ourselves when one of the women described that trying to make money in her business sometimes felt like dancing for dollars.
meaning she felt like she needed to perform, or check a series of boxes just to make money.
people around the room were nodding because they understood exactly what she meant.
and i understand why people feel that way.
i just don’t relate. i don’t feel that way about my business.
my to-do list genuinely feels more like a get-to-do than a “have to-do”
which i’m sure can be annoying to hear. it feels annoying to even say it.
and its also true.
i don’t feel like i’m performing for money.
i don’t feel trapped by my business.
i don’t feel like i’m doing things i don’t want to do- so that i can grow my business.
someone messaged me on linkedin recently asking if i knew my “retirement number.”
i responded with something unhinged like:
“i’m already living the life i would live if i was retired, so that’s not a relevant concept for me.”
i’m not waiting for retirement. i’m not dancing for dollars. i’m spending my days how i want to.
when i started looking closely at HOW i’ve done this. I noticed a few patterns.
there are three things i’ve gotten really good at that i don’t hear many people talk about. so i want to share with you my top 3 “rules” for building a business you couldn’t pay me to quit.
1. dismiss whatever insults your soul.
there’s a walt whitman poem that says:
“reexamine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.”
since i started my business, i had a very clear line in the sand. i didn’t leave medicine to build a business i hate.
this is something i would regularly say to myself whenever business started to feel like stress or pressure. “i didn’t leave medicine for this”
i didn’t leave medicine to dread my work.
i didn’t leave medicine to feel trapped.
i didn’t make this radical decision to follow my intuition and create a different life for myself just to fall back into the exact same patterns in a different outfit.
i’m stubbornly committed to finding a way to make money- that doesn’t feel like sacrifice.
if a marketing strategy makes me resent my business, i don’t optimize it. i replace it.
i’ve taken months off instagram without it impacting my income.
i refuse to accept that something that insults my soul is somehow required for me to build a successful business.
2. understand first principles
as much as i can, i try to understand business and approach business from a first principles lens.
if you don’t know what “first principles” is, there’s an old zen story that I think explains it well
a great saint who would lead his followers in meditation, but there was a slight problem. Just as the followers were dropping into their zen moment, they would get disrupted by a cat who would “walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone.”
The saint came up with a simple solution: He began to tie the cat to a pole during meditation sessions. This solution quickly developed into a ritual: Tie the cat to the pole first, meditate second.
When the cat eventually died (of natural causes), a religious crisis ensued. What were the followers supposed to do? How could they possibly meditate without tying the cat to the pole?
they had been so accustomed to tying the cat to the pole before meditating, they felt that they needed to do it in order to meditate.
they forgot the real reason they tied the cat to the pole, was to reduce disruptions. (and if there is no cat to tie to a pole, there is also no cat to create disruptions)
first principles vs strategies
ok so how does this relate to first principles.
first principles: a basic, foundational truth that cannot be broken down or deduced any further.
they are what remain when you break concepts down to their fundamental irreducible truth. its the thing the behind the thing. the deeper level of why something works. usually they are so simple you can put them in equation form.
strategies: specific methods for deploying the first principles. or ways that people do things.
when a strategy works. its because they followed first principles.
for this example the first principle might be: less disruptions → more zen. or that disruptions and zen have an inverse relationship.
tying the cat to the pole was one strategy for reducing disruptions. but overtime “tying the cat to the pole” became conflated with “experiencing zen”.
this is why listening to online business gurus can feel so confusing. especially when they are directly contradicting each other.
trial reels are how you grow on IG. carousels are how you grow IG
email lists are dead. email lists your #1 priority.
everyone is hyping up their strategy as if the strategy itself creates the outcome.
when its never the strategy that creates the outcome.
its the first principle that explains the outcome.
and until you understand the first principles of why certain strategies works, the best you can do is copy-paste someone else’s strategy.
i don’t want to know the exact hook someone uses in their subject line to improve open rates.
i want to understand the principles of how to capture attention. ( and they i can study examples to make it concrete)
i don’t want to know whether i’m supposed to make a yap reel or an educational reel.
i want to understand how to create content that makes my people feel seen.
once you understand the thing behind the thing, you can stop blindly following someone else’s method and start figuring out how to best apply the principles for your business.
3. tap into your own co-creative power.
i’ve dismissed everything that insults my soul. i understand that i don’t have to copy-paste other people’s strategies.
I’ve figured out what i DON’T need to do. so now the question is… what DO i do?
this is where my journaling practice comes in.
whenever my income feels stagnant or my business feels off, i don’t immediately reach for another course. i don’t go hunting for another strategy.
i go to my journal.
over the years, i’ve developed this co-creation process where i essentially treat my intuition as my co-founder and god, source, the universe, creator (whatever language works for you) as the board of directors.
it’s how i access my own inner wisdom. it’s how i release self doubt and limiting beliefs. its how i unlock new ideas and income streams.
give me an hour with my journal when i’m overwhelmed, confused, stressed, or unsure what to do next, and i can always find my next step and feel at peace about it.
first principles tell you WHY something works.
co-creation helps you discover what YOUR version of it looks like.
these top 3 “rules” are how i’ve “cracked the code” for making money online without turning my business into a job that i hate.
i dismiss what insults my soul.
i understand first principles
i use my co-creative process to decide how i want to apply them.
that’s how i’ve built a business that feels like an extension of me.
a business that doesn’t feel like dancing for dollars.
a business that genuinely feels like my happy place.
a business you couldn’t pay me to quit.
and i’m teaching you my “co-creation process” inside my 21 day journaling challenge “co-create your income.