When you lose the fun in business

Yucks!

The longer I'm in my business, the more I lose my identity.

This is one of my biggest lessons in the last 2 years and I want to tell you how that happened and how you can avoid it.

I don't know if you are the same. Basically when I'm figuring things out, I always look at who is successful at that thing and try to imitate.

If you want a big YouTube channel, you should make videos like Mr Beast. If you want to be a knowledge creator, you should write a newsletter like Jay Clouse. If you want to be a successful creator, you should repurpose your content .... do a welcome sequence ... build out your value ladder.

Oh no. This sounds bad.

Don't get me wrong. I think it is 100% normal to want to imitate. We all do. Just like how in Find Joy in Chaos, I talked about how if you are new to a social media platform, you often talk like the first few accounts you follow.

Because you think that's the way things should be. 100% okay.

What's not okay is to be completely consumed by it. You just keep doing things the same way and not taking the time to reflect.

This was me in the last 1-2 years. I was doing things like:

• When I launched, I had to write 8-10 emails for the enrollment window.

• When I made a YouTube video, I had to figure out where I wanted the attention to go once I caught their attention.

• I had to have an interview show because everyone else had it

Now I laugh at myself.

The longer I'm in my business, the more I know, and so the more I lose my identity.

This got me thinking about Small School.

At first, I was really thinking about how I could help other knowledge creators do this full-time. It was the destination I had in mind.

But now, in Oct 2024, I'm thinking why not build a small school on the side? You should not need to give up the great things you're already working on.

Instead, build a small education business on the side to complement whatever you do.

(Maybe that's the reason I rebranded to "Small" School ... hmmm.. )

This way, you are free from all the "business ways" I shared above. You can create value for your people and have fun with it! Why am I suggesting you to do this?

Because that's a shift I'm making myself! I'm going to prioritize fun.

I'll show you a fun thing if you keep reading.

But wait, if I'm no longer 100% working on Small School, what will I be doing?

I did something fun this week by adding a <Now> page on my website. There are a couple of points there but I want to highlight one here:

At this point, I am allocating time to explore companies and projects I can join to play a meaningful part. Either full-time or contract base. Something that aligns with my interest in education, knowledge-sharing, and creation.

Honestly, after 4 years of working solo, I crave working and collaborating with talented people. I had been in my own zone, and that's not healthy.

As to having fun, I did something super random for fun:

This made no sense but this is was what I wanted to do.

This refreshing approach to business was obviously inspired by Derek Sivers.

I was reading his book "Anything You Want" last week and wanted to run my company the way I wanted.

I also found this amazing interview with Derek Sivers that was published a month ago.