The Phases & Emotional Journey Of Making A Work Shift (Stephen Warley)

[03:20] Paul: Today we are talking to second-time guest Stephen Worley, one of my friends and inspirations, helping self-employed people carve their own paths for Time before the gig economy and future of work was cool, I think.

[03:41] Stephen Warley: Before it was a thing. You know what I also love? By the way, thank you for having me back on. We both connected in Boston, we both grew up in Connecticut, and currently you're in Taiwan and I'm in Aruba while we're doing this.

[03:56] Paul: And fun fact, you ended up taking over my lease when I left to Asia. So we—

[04:02] Stephen Warley: That's true, I took over your life. I not only had to take over your lease, I also joined the same coworking space that you went into. And yeah, that was funny. But I had my own friends. I did not intrude in that area.

[04:12] Paul: But what I wanted to talk to you today about is the journey people go on. And you've talked about the journey in terms of a series of stages moving from full-time to side gigs to solopreneur. But I want to get even more nuanced about this. I want to try and pull out some of the emotion around this shift. You've worked with probably hundreds of people at this point.

[04:40] Stephen Warley: Mm-hmm. And hundreds of people, and I've interviewed over 500 people have gone through this process, like, as intentional, like, interviews.

[04:51] Paul: So if people want to learn more about your story, they— I'll link to to the last podcast we did. You have a fantastic story up on your site I'll link to, but let's dive in. When is the earliest you start talking to people about making a shift? Like pre, pre, pre-shift? When is that like first moment and what is that like for people?

[05:19] Stephen Warley: For, yeah, for me, very quickly it came outta nowhere. It was like, for— there's two ways this happens for people. A crisis, or it's these recurring feelings inside that they're starting to realize they don't have the energy to repress them anymore. So this all just— let's bring out the— actually, the crisis is actually the easier one. It's more obvious. Either it's an economic crisis like it was for me.

I was flat out laid off Election Day 2000. So my entire work world as I knew it was blown up. And I did not like that. You know, the idea that somebody else cut off my income and told me to stop working when I was not ready to stop working, like that did not sit well with me. And that started to open my eyes to be like, hold on a second. Have I even liked working the way I've been taught to work for the first 5 years of my career?

It could be a healthcare crisis. Like I think you've kind of gone through that. I would say that precipitated why you've been on this path. It could be a family crisis, which is positive or negative. A lot of people have like, their first kid actually end up starting a business. Like, you would think like, that's the worst time.

A lot of people do it because they want to reorganize their life around raising a family. So that's kind of like some crisis stuff of like why people decide to like create their own work. The other stuff that is emerging, that there's a lot of people who are like, I am having these feelings over and over again about trying to come to grips about why do I feel overwhelmed or burned out or unhappy? And a lot of times what we've done is we repress those feelings and I tell people to start exploring them. So another pattern people should be aware of what they do, they, they feel this way and they're like, oh, I'm just sick of this company, my boss, the team, I'm going to get another job. So they get another job.

Maybe they even, it's a lateral move or they get a promotion. It's within the same industry, same career path. They go there. Within 6 months, those feelings are back. Oh my gosh, what the heck? And then sometimes people still go get another job within the same industry, same profession.

Then they're like, well, maybe it's just, I'm burned out with this whole industry, this career path. So I'm going to go back to school. I'm going to go do something completely different. I'm going to go to a different industry. So they go through that process. They go there, guess what happens?

6 months, year in of this, even in getting a new job, new industry, feelings are back. And then sometimes what people will do is like, well, I start to talk about, and we can get into that more, but I would say that is kind of a common thing of where people start job hopping, start career hopping, industry hopping. And they're starting to realize the common denominator is them. Them and those feelings that they, that they're ignoring and not exploring. And I think what we've been taught is in terms of work, if you're not happy with it, that means I need to change my job or change my profession. Turns out you and I have discovered there are infinite options that people don't realize.

[08:26] Paul: Right. Have you noticed some of the metaphors people are using to describe that feeling? I've been throwing out terms like low-grade stress, low-grade burnout. Uh, I even heard somebody refer to it as like a pebble in your shoe. That you just can't get out of your shoe.

[08:45] Stephen Warley: I love that one. I would say the other way to describe this, I think the one that people— I'll even go a step further. This is a feeling that I, if you're listening right now, if you're not driving, if you're able to do this, I want you to feel your upper back as much as you can. Like feel your shoulders, like go along your shoulder blade. If you can like put your hands behind your back. And for many of you, you're going to feel knots like stones in your back, or all of that muscle is very hard.

Um, it shouldn't be. That is not the relaxed state of your muscles. So I point out this thing, realizing, I have so many knots in my upper back from all the years of anxiety and stress of forcing myself into conventional work. Or even when I was running my last business, in some ways I ran that conventionally. And I want to unknot all that stuff because that is just how I've been sitting, the different feelings and emotions and stress I've shoved into my muscles. Your muscles actually have a memory.

They contract. So when you're feeling all angsty and weird and your boss did something and you kind of stress like that, muscle stays contracted. So as you start releasing these muscles, you start letting go of a lot of that stuff. So I just wanted to point that out as someone who might not even be aware, or they're just in the early stages, that if you can start a journey of figuring out, I want to get rid of all those knots, I want to feel relaxed, your life is going to start changing. The more you can really let those muscles unfold, everything is going to start unfolding in your life in the best of ways.

[10:36] Paul: Yeah, I've noticed that once that happens, there's usually some, or at least people describe it as a moment. I think it's probably slower and there's almost like an opening up of imagination. And I've seen this happen in a number of ways. One, it could be making a new friend who's living life differently. Two, it could be travel. Have you seen any other ways people start opening up their imagination, or would you describe it in a different way?

[11:08] Stephen Warley: Yeah. I also like the way that you ask this question, because this is how I ask my similar question on my podcast. I'll ask, you know, was there a specific moment or a set of circumstances where you start to realize that you want to go in this direction? And I think for most people, it is a set of circumstances. They don't, it's never just a moment. For me, it was a moment I got laid off.

So it is meeting people. I think there's 3 ways that people really do this. The first thing that most of us do now, we go to Google in the middle of the night and we start asking like these questions that we think nobody else is asking, nobody's written a blog post about it. It turns out there's an entire podcast episode about it right now. And they're like, oh my gosh, you know, they start kind of going in that world. Or they start, then they get, start reading a book or they start going to a podcast.

I think it's also, be aware of this in the early stages, this is also gonna show you how you actually like to learn. A lot of us, again, we were taught how to work, we were also taught how to learn. None of us ever really, when you think about it, has anybody ever asked you, how do you like to learn? And so this is a nice little awareness moment of that. So I think there's a variety of entry points based on how people like to learn or they find enjoyable. One of the things I find most transformative, and you've alluded to this, is, is travel, is actually getting away from your home life as, as, as best you can, like a distance away and for a period of time, because what that does, it gets you away from all of your influences, all of your habits, all of your friends and family, everybody who has seen you in a certain way.

So that way, when you do go off to another place where nobody knows you, you kind of have a little bit of a clean slate for a little while to like kind of figure things out and actually like quiet the noise of everybody else telling you what you're supposed to do and actually exploring that feeling, that inner voice who's trying to say like, hey, hello, this is what you really want to do. We already have it figured out. You're just not listening to me. And I know not everybody has the funds to maybe take a trip, but even if you could just take a full day to go like to another part of town, that is unfamiliar to you, I think that is a great first step, uh, just to be able to rip yourself out of all of your normal patterns. That's really the point.

And in terms of hanging out with other people or listening to people, I often tell people to go to a conference, go to a workshop, find a meetup. Like, if you're starting to have these feelings and you're starting to wonder, like, what about this? Could there possibly be a group of people in the world who are interested in this? Well, most likely there is now. And if there isn't, um, maybe you're going to be the one to create it and put out the call to create a meetup or do something like that. Uh, so locally, or if you can go to a conference, huge believer in hanging around people who are doing what it is that you want to do.

So it kind of gives you the confidence to be like, oh wow, I'm not alone on this. And you can really start exploring your thoughts in a deeper way.

[14:18] Paul: Yeah, that definitely resonates for me as well. I think for me it was meeting new people and going to conferences, traveling. And a lot of people have these moments, right? When they, a lot of people read a book and it's funny, I've heard this from multiple people. They'll read a book, something like Tim Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Workweek" or some other book. Maybe your future book once you get it out there, but they'll read it.

But then they'll have an experience and then they'll be like, oh my God, I need to go back to that book. I totally missed the point. I've seen that as well.

[15:02] Stephen Warley: Like for my first book that I read after being laid off was Rich Dad Poor Dad. And I was still looking at my life and that's probably why I still talk about life in the way I do. I look at it from an economic perspective because it's so tangible. People are just very worried about their survival, and money is— we've been told is like the one key resource that is directly tied to your survival, which is not true. There's many other ingredients. And that book really started— I agree with that.

It starts, you know, I think when you read a book or you listen to podcasts, it starts giving you other language that you didn't previously have. And then when you're out in the world, you can start to become more aware of these things, start looking at the world in a slightly different way. You start looking out for those things. It's the classic thing, like if I tell you to like look at everything blue in, in your, your line of sight right now, for the rest of the day you're going to notice all kinds of blue things— objects, people wearing blue clothes. So I think this really starts the same, in the same way. You start noticing like, oh, this exists a lot more than I imagine in a lot of different ways.

I think that's part of the exploration here. It's what's a little bit different about this process It's not about looking for concrete answers and this is exactly the way it's going to be. It's realizing that there's infinite ways of doing everything, including work. And the goal here, as you really deepen and explore these feelings, is to start gaining confidence. And what I mean by that, I'm actually going to work on this for my Saturday email, is knowing things for yourself and being cool with it and not worrying about what other people think. That's, that's hard because we're so hardwired to constantly seek acceptance.

[16:50] Paul: People open their imagination and eventually you have to kind of pick a day, right? You have to literally, in many cases, take that leap, leave that job. Register that first business, like email some friends and tell people what you're working on. Have you, like, I haven't really seen that there's a perfect way to do this. I almost think it's a leap of faith. I think the best thing you can do is like build it down in your brain so it's not as big as you play it up to be.

But how have you seen people approach kind of that moment where they actually shift in the new direction?

[17:42] Stephen Warley: I would say, uh, there's two ways to look at this. I often ask people, uh, what are your triggers going to be? Like no more than three to say like, I'm something more significant. Like I'm ready to leave my job. Like, and usually it's like, what's the financial trigger? Um, in terms of like you've saved enough money or you had that, you're at peace with the financial part of doing this.

Uh, what's your emotional trigger? Like, what's like, if this happens one more time, I can't take it anymore. And you're going to have a plan instead of just reacting when it happens. You're going to have more of a well-thought-out plan. I often tell people, do not quit your job out of emotion. Quit your job out of a set of circumstances that is on your terms.

You know why you're doing it. Uh, and another trigger, uh, could just be, uh, time. You know, different things could, uh, occur where you have more time, uh, or there's been a change in relationship with your job that you've convinced them you can work from home for more, whatever that may be. So those— that's so for larger things, that is the trigger. Now, earlier on, there has to come to a point where your stop we stop just consuming because that means we're still looking for permission. When you're constantly just listening to other people's stories, you're listening to podcasts, you're going to these conferences, you're reading books, reading blog posts, all that stuff.

You have to start moving out of the consumption phase into the doing phase. And because until you do this for yourself, you're never truly going to know because what's important is not how all these other people did it and copying them. It's looking at them as inspiration, right? I always tell people, you're not going to do my exact path because You're not me and I'm not you. And also I started this almost 20 years ago. Like things are really different.

My circumstances were very different back then. In fact, I would like to argue it was a lot harder in some ways. It was easier too. So I think you've got to start doing stuff. And the number one thing, it's the first action I tell people, it's like first step. I tell everybody, if you want to do this, you actually have to intentionally create more time for this and start carving out time and being aware of that.

Like, oh gosh, I'm, binge-watching another Netflix series, like, is that getting me any closer to feeling happier and freer in the long term? Probably not. I'm not saying not watch your Netflix shows, but like, can you watch them a little less to carve out some more time to like do this thing that you say that you really, really want to do, that you want to be happier? You're tired of working this way. And so I think it's being aware of on a weekend to week out basis, like, Have you done anything? Have you had an experiment?

Have you taken more action? Have you done something to know for yourself? And if you're not, you're going to continue to remain kind of stuck. You're not really exploring your feelings. You're starting to starve them.

[20:33] Paul: Gretchen Rubin has an awesome quote about this. She was a corporate lawyer and now she's an author. A lot of people know her books and she said, I'd rather fail as a— fail writing my book than succeed as a lawyer. So I love that because like the internal calculus flipped, right? And suddenly there was no reason to go back anymore. Have you noticed like in the moment, like when they literally leap, I've noticed there's almost a sense of relief for people.

It's like, oh, I was capable of this all along. Have you noticed Something like that?

[21:16] Stephen Warley: Yeah, I rarely have encountered somebody who said like, this was a big mistake. Like, it's almost like even a lot of their previous money issues, because they anticipate what it feels like to have so much time back in your life, your energy, and also realizing that you need so much less. And that happens for a lot of us. Even people who are, I would say, tend to be high consumers of material stuff really start to realize, I don't need— like, your patterns are just going to change in terms of like how your day goes down. And I think— and people do struggle initially because there's so much freedom. And I think that's, that's the one area where I think people do freak out a little bit.

They're like, I don't know how to schedule my day. There's so much going on. I don't know what to focus on. And I think it's, again, it's that subconscious training conditioning that we've had done to us, our society has done to us in terms of I'm looking for permission. Like I need somebody to tell me what to do and what it is. And I want you to tell yourself what to do.

And what I often tell people, this is why I'm a big believer in doing some sort of journaling to really look at your patterns and trends, to really start to get to know yourself of how do you like to work? As a quick example, if you are somebody who just identifies as a night owl, somebody who feels more energized by doing work at night, say 7 at night to 11 at night, think about our entire economic system has always been gamed against you. Your best productivity period has always been outside of normal work hours, quote unquote normal work hours. That's a subject for another podcast. I'm trying not to use the word normal anymore. And that is, can be quite liberating, but also hard because you're like, it still feels wrong.

Or the, for my first realization, uh, I realized I didn't need to work 8 hours every day to get my work done because I didn't have all that, just the distractions. I felt pressure to be sitting at my computer for 8 hours a day. And then I realized, but I'm getting all my work done in like 3 to 4 hours. Like, is Isn't the point of doing this because I wanted more freedom and it's okay to like, to, uh, to have that time? And yeah, it is. And so it's really, again, it's understanding what it is that you need.

And I think most people realize that they're going to be okay. They're going to survive. There are, there are so many people out there who do want to help and support them if they could only just ask. And that's again, something in the conventional work world, you know, asking for help is perceived as weakness. But when you're out here in the jungle, like, asking for help is key to your survival, and people want to give you help.

[24:03] Paul: That's why it's key to make other self-employed friends along the way.

[24:08] Stephen Warley: It's crucial. Like, I always tell people, if you're hanging out with employed people and you want to work for yourself, you're making it so much harder on yourself. Because once you can start having a posse or tribe, whatever you want to call it, your peeps of people doing this big change that you want to make, like working for yourself, then, uh, it's going to be easier because it's almost like things start taking care of themselves. You don't have to overthink every little part of the process. It starts happening because you're just hanging out with people doing the same thing. And it could be casual comments, something that you would have stuck in your head for like the last 2 days about.

You go and meet up with people and 2 of them say something and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I've been like thinking about those last 2 days like that. And you just said that one thing and like Problem solved.

[24:52] Paul: Yeah. What do you notice that occurs in the first few months of people after they take that leap? The rush of actually taking that leap wears off a little. Uh, for me it was a mix of panic and also contemplation, reflection, rest. Basically not working. But then there was this moment of like, oh my God, I actually need to take ownership of what I'm doing.

And the first 3 months I ended up landing my first gig as well. So I think that was like this, the first sign. And I do think people get some sort of sign, right? That's like, keep going, or like, maybe this isn't the right path. What have you seen the directions people go and the experiences they have?

[25:49] Stephen Warley: I'm going to first say something I observed. I think everybody should do. And I, again, should is a word that I do not like using too often. We all have our own path. We have our own circumstances. We have our own issues around finances, but I think the people that end up taking a little bit of a break, like at least a month, like I know you're listening, you're like, what are you— you're saying take a month off before I even I think exactly what I'm saying, because you don't realize there's so much low-level trauma that has been done to your brain and to your body by forcing yourself into alignment with these conventional work hierarchies that you need to learn how to just breathe again.

Like, it's, it's again, almost think of it as like, I want to unknot all those muscles in my upper back and just go on a journey of just doing that for a month. Like, Do journaling, go do stuff that energizes you, uh, discover yourself again. I think that's so important because I always tell people, you're the first resource of your business and you're its biggest obstacle. It's really important to get to know that resource in a way that you will not know any other resource of your business because you're the common denominator in every single decision that you're going to make. Right? So that's one thing.

I think the people that do have the wisdom to do that, like I need to process some of that stuff that has just happened and give myself some space, some to clear out, to really appreciate this new chapter in my life. That's about to happen. I think a lot of people, what they end up doing is they're still, they still think like an employee and they approach the start of their business like an employee. So there's that immediate pressure to be like, everybody thinks I'm crazy for doing it. So I got to show them that I'm not crazy. So I got to hustle and I got to get as many clients as I can and show them that I can take care of myself financially.

And, uh, so then what happens, uh, people do, you know, they do get their clients and they do, uh, start bringing in some money, but then they discover that they're still unhappy. So what this is, back to my earlier analogy, it's so you went from job to job, then you went from one industry to another. Now you're going from one form of work to another, but you're still not owning yourself. You're still not doing what you want to do. You're still doing what other people expect of you. And so you've created another job for— and, but the worst thing this time is you created the job and that is not what we want.

So I just kind of like to put that little, for what it's worth, awareness out there to, uh, if you're in the midst of thinking about doing this, Everybody has different financial circumstances, but know why you're doing this for yourself.

[28:43] Paul: Yeah, I think that's fascinating you say that about the vacation. Are you hearing the baby in the background?

[28:50] Stephen Warley: I am, but that's okay. This conversation, all the energy vibes are going to that young babe, and they will never have to endure conventional work.

[29:00] Paul: We'll leave that in.

[29:03] Stephen Warley: I can actually— quick little sidebar as a little lesson here. As podcasters, there's podcast knobs. You're not supposed to hear any other sound. I always tell people it's a little baloney because it's perfectionism. It's another form of corporatism that like life is happening around you and around me right now, and it's not taking away from this conversation. They can still hear us loud and clear.

So again, when you're starting your own work, I am a huge believer in taking consistent and perfect action. Otherwise, you're never going to move forward. If you want to make everything perfect, or people will also say to me, Paul, I just want to make sure I'm doing things the right way. And I tell them, the only right way is the right way for you. And they're like, oh my gosh, you know what this whole struggle is? It's about taking relentless 100% ownership of yourself and your personal resources, your time, your energy, your money, your focus, your attention.

Your connections, your skills, your knowledge. And when you think about conventional work, we're leasing all of that stuff out to people to tell us what to do with it. And I think that freaks people out. They, we, they've actually been convinced that they are unable to take care of themselves. And I just want to remind you, you are an animal, very highly intellectual animal, but let me tell you, allow those survival instincts to kick in.

[30:22] Paul: They're there.

[30:24] Stephen Warley: For a reason. You will survive.

[30:25] Paul: Yeah, it's troubling. It's, it's really a shift from thinking about how do I do something right? And this is what these articles like, here are the 10 hacks to do Y feed into.

[30:38] Stephen Warley: You just said hacks. And I'm like, oh, by the way, but run the next time you see a blog post with the word hack in it.

[30:46] Paul: But I'm sure I've written something with the word hack, but go edit those. Anyways, but it's really a shift away from that to these meta skills, right? And learning how to understand your emotions and reactions to the world, learning how to learn, like learning how to listen to your body and like how you're driven and how you can reach states of flow. And that's really hard. And I think people mix that up, but like, I need to learn the correct way to do things.

[31:22] Stephen Warley: Like you said, like there's people now that they write about meditation and it almost seems competitive about how long they can meditate and that sort of thing. And I'm like, you know what? Just because you said that shows me you still do not get meditation.

[31:37] Paul: Yeah. I always give myself permission to quit. I was doing it for a couple minutes yesterday and I was like, yeah, it's not working. We're done.

[31:45] Stephen Warley: So it is, it is again, because it's the right way, or then we're also comparing ourselves to each other again, because we just have an instinctual need for acceptance from other people. I know that's also hard to kind of do things your own way. Like here I am building my next online business, but I'm only on Twitter when I feel like it. Everybody's, you must be on social media. You don't have to. And I can't tell you how many times when I talk to people that I work with, who want to start a business, like, I hate social media, I don't want to do it.

And I'm like, you don't have to. And they're like, really? Or I talk a lot about, you know, you have to get some sort of outreach habit. That's, you know, when you're building a business, you're serving other humans. You have to like kind of get in that groove in a way that works for you of reaching out and connecting with other people. And they're like, what happens if I'm not like excited about like emailing somebody even though they supposedly look like they're within my perfect target?

And I'm like, just don't. I'm like, really? I mean, it's, it's, it's what this is. The more you can, and it sounds so counterintuitive because again, we were taught that work has to be miserable in order to be considered work. But if you can have that awareness when things start being not fun or you feel obligated, that's when I stop now and be like, what is it about this? Is there another way to do this activity?

Do I just need a break and I've done enough for today? Or do I just really not like doing this and I'm going to stop doing it? You can do all of that, it's okay.

[33:08] Paul: I try to get people to understand that it's really about a shift from making money, winning a client, scaling, being successful, to finding work you actually want to keep doing, right? It's finite game versus infinite game thinking. And I think that is so much harder, right?

[33:28] Stephen Warley: It's so much because what people can, views is, and it is, I agree. And I've struggled with that. And even recently, I still struggle with that because it's that, that survival need to make money. Right. And I think we're also taught that if you do X, Y, and Z, and you have around the beginnings of this amount of money, then, then you will be happy and you will have peace of mind. You won't be anxious anymore.

But then there's lots of people listening to us. This has happened to you. This has happened to me. You did that. Still, I'm not all that happy. I'm anxious and I'm even mad now because I jumped through all the hoops and I don't feel like you— like I'm supposed to.

So what that's all about is, is it's what people want is a feeling. I believe that's what I've come to realize. You want a feeling, you want to feel in a certain way. But you have to start decoupling money from that. And you have to understand those exercises, like how would you like a typical day to go down for you? You know, for me, it's like doing lots of walking, doing my stretching, having some social time, doing some content creation.

And however that all goes down in the day or how in some days it's more than others, but I think it's about being intentional and realizing that there's going to be different seasons to your life. I do think when you are starting a business, you, you do need to have a little bit more intention in terms of getting things off the ground. But I think where I am radically turned off now, when people talk about starting a business and another trigger, it's like you used the word before, when I hear the word scale, it's another corporate term. You know, a lot of times The way we've been taught to build businesses are based on the needs of corporations and startups in Silicon Valley. You are an individual. You're a human.

Work is designed currently for the needs of corporations, not individuals. And what Paul and I here are trying to talk to you about is you can design work that works for you, for your needs, and no apologies.

[35:40] Paul: Yeah, it's a, it's a baked-in assumption that more is better. And I don't actually fault people for this because I don't think they see where it comes from, right? And I think it's been interesting for me living in Taiwan where economic growth, or at least incomes, have been for the median person stagnant for 30 years, right? So they don't have this idea. The idea that you should always have more is not baked in. And in some ways we need to celebrate that we have this in the US.

It is so incredible to be born in a country like that where incomes have grown for many people, not everyone, but it's figuring out, okay, what is enough? And then what are we gonna do with that now?

[36:34] Stephen Warley: And that's funny because, you know, like one of the questions I always ask people, I'm like, how much money do you wanna make? And one of the most common answers I get is like, I want to make 6 figures, Stephen. Oh, okay. Where'd you get that number? And they're like, they look at me, blank stare. And they're like, ooh, he's got me here.

Uh-oh. And I'm like, you don't know. You pulled that out of the clear blue sky because it sounds good. They're like, yeah. And that's why I have a lifestyle calculator. You can go to lifeskillsandmoney.com/calculator and you can actually calculate your number to understand what is enough for you for how you want to live your life.

And when people do this exercise, man, it is so much less money than they realized. It kind of blows their mind. And also why I love doing that exercise, it also makes it so much more achievable to start your own business. You don't need to make millions of dollars. Turns out you need to make $65,000 a year to live the life that you want. Like, oh wow.

[37:28] Paul: Yeah. Well, one exercise I just, kind of created, mashed together a couple other ideas I took from some other people are trying to figure out what your money buckets are. And I have like a slide of like actual buckets. And we just automatically assume that rent gets $2,000 a month, right? But how much joy do you get out of that bucket?

[37:54] Stephen Warley: Right.

[37:54] Paul: And then do you have another bucket which you get like a 10 out of 10 power up joy out of, right? Maybe it's like giving gifts to people in your community. What if you 5x'd that and like took away some of the rent or got a roommate or didn't buy new furniture or something like that? It's—

[38:19] Stephen Warley: I once helped a friend who was in $20,000 in debt. She was making $50,000 a year. To erase that $20,000 debt in less than 2 years by making what you described a lot of radical financial decisions to like her entire central principle in life for those less than 2 years was to get rid of this debt. We all have that hanging over us, right? A lot of us do. Too many of us do.

And, and even just that point, I think you and I are discovering like challenging everything of like, why do I pay this? For that or anything, right? What's really going to happen? You and I had like a really probably out there conversation last time we saw— we're in person in Boston about healthcare. Like what happens if I just stopped paying for my healthcare? Like what's going to happen?

You know? Um, and, and I think what I've realized now that I've gone nomadic in the last few months, how people are so generous. Like there's so many people willing to help and so many people, and there's also so many other ways that I can help people that I, I live with friends who have kids and I get to make them dinner every night because they don't have the time to because they're so crazy in their modern lives. Right. And it's like a nice, like symbiotic, cool relationship of adding. And because a lot of times we always feel like we're taking from people, if we're going to do stuff like that, it doesn't have to be like that at all.

[39:43] Paul: That's amazing. What, so let's go back to the journey. We talked about the first 3 months, and what I've found is that anywhere from 3 months in to 6 months in, and even up to a couple years, there comes a moment when somebody realizes, oh crap, I am on, or not even, oh crap, but oh wow, I am on a longer journey and I am excited to be on that. I call this shifting from like the first steps to commitment. Have you noticed that that emerges for people as well?

[40:22] Stephen Warley: I would even just point out to my own journey. I always tell people it took me 5 years to even accept that I was working for myself. 5 years. Because we didn't have all this language and communities and resources that we do today back in the early naughts. And I think what people will go through is like that first business very commonly ends up not being what they're— and it was kind of— and that's— and it's— I think that's okay by design. I often recommend starting a business around a lot of familiar things in terms of your skills, uh, in terms of people that you already know, because you already have to go through these other crazy learning curves like managing yourself.

In a way that you really haven't done before, or learning how to set up a business and setting up systems. Mind jumping in?

[41:22] Paul: It's shocking. It's shocking how common that is. Like the first business that doesn't end up being the first business. I'd say like 50%.

[41:31] Stephen Warley: Yeah. My last business, I did really, really well. I had an online business, offline business. I was doing sales training in the broadcasting industry. And, uh, I decided I'm like, all right, I'm making a lot of money, but I'm not happy. And I discovered that I was like, oh, I've kind of created this entity out of sheer survival.

Uh, because I knew these people, I saw an opportunity. I went with it again. That was good. It's given me the financial cushion that I have today to have the intention for how I really want to live my life. And the kind of business that I would like to build now. And I can make a lot of different decisions in my business that maybe you can't when you're starting a business for the first time.

Like, I'm not going to have advertisers on my podcast. Um, um, I'm— if I do affiliate marketing, it's going to be super intentional. Uh, so there's a lot of opportunities that I've declined, um, because I want to be relentlessly there for my community and not be distracted by making more money than I need.

[42:35] Paul: Yeah. So did you almost experience that shift after wanting to move on from the broadcasting sales business as very similar to your previous shift in terms of the phases and how you're feeling? Of course you had more information, you had more belief in yourself and confidence, but was it kind of going through the same phases looking back?

[42:58] Stephen Warley: Yeah, it was a little, let's see, it was a little, uh, it was, there was real, that same kind of relief, but it was also hard because I created this business. I had 4 employees, uh, people that depended on me. Um, I was very established in this industry and I had created that. I put so much energy into creating all of this. You know, this wasn't just like a job. And so that, you know, to— and it took me 4 years to slowly give it up.

You know, I sold like the online portion in 2012. And by 2016, I gave up my last project, my last consulting project, and to dedicate myself full-time to life skills that matter. And so it was a process. It was scary. And it was also just the money issue to like, think like, I'm starting over again because we're told— and I started over again in my— this process started in my late 30s, right? So maybe I was around 37.

And you're— we were taught like there's got to be some moment like in your mid-career where you've hit your stride, you get to coast, and everything's going to be fine. You can start working less. And so I was kind of blowing up that myth for myself that, well, I'm going to start over again and I'm going to have to work again, um, and hard at times. And once I kind of got through that, I actually found it to be very liberating. It made me feel very alive. It made me feel very youthful.

I, I, it made me feel that, wow, this is really how I want to live my life. I always, I love feeling like this. I want to feel this curious in my 90s, if I should be lucky to live that long. I don't— what I've learned is the more you keep that mindset of wanting to learn and being curious and wanting to meet other people and wanting to keep learning about yourself, that's what keeps you motivated. And that's what keeps you feel really happy in a deep way. Instead of having all the boxes checked off, that's very unsatisfying because when you're checking off the boxes, you're really doing that for other people.

You're doing that for acceptance. And that just didn't matter to me anymore. I wanted to be happy for the way I needed to be happy.

[45:22] Paul: Yeah, that's, that's powerful. I think what— it's interesting. I've talked to people across all age groups and I think people don't realize how many more options have emerged in work and how much work has changed. For the same person in the same shoes over the past 30 years?

[45:44] Stephen Warley: Let me blow people's minds. A stat and a statement. Can I do that?

[45:48] Paul: Let's do it.

[45:49] Stephen Warley: There are infinite forms of working. There are infinite American dreams. You get to, instead of choosing your job and choosing the American dream, which again are what other people say you should want, you get to know yourself and you— that's the starting point. This is about creating work from the inside out, not the outside in, like we were taught. And that's what gives you the, all the variables and different ingredients for how you're going to want to do this type of thing. Like I know a guy who runs a bar on, uh, on Cape Cod.

He works crazy hard. He's been doing this for like 30 years, May to September, makes a ton of money. Rest of the year, he does whatever the hell he wants. Technically he still has like kind of a job, right? Um, yeah, there's investors and then he runs it, but that is just one way that I've seen, because everybody thinks you got to work all year long. You know, that's just the way it's going to be done.

But again, it's not true. There's a lot of seasonality in how this could be done. And the US Census Bureau came out in 2013 with a very interesting stat that In that year, babies born in that year, 65% of them would have a job or a profession that had yet to be invented. I mean, that's— I know things are happening so fast, we're becoming desensitized to the accelerated pace of change. Their great-great-grandparents learned a skill and it gave them income for the rest of their life. And now they were born at a time when 65% of them would have no idea what they're gonna end up doing.

[47:32] Paul: I think that's probably a good place to wrap up. I think you added a lot of nuance and I think you helped me clarify some things around just the journey and the emotions. So I appreciate that and keep doing the work you're doing.

[47:51] Stephen Warley: And I want to leave people on a high note. This is your journey. You own it. You get to decide whatever the heck it is you want to do, regardless of even what somebody like Paul and myself say. But the only way you're going to get there is to stop more and give yourself time to start reflecting on different things in your life and whatever bubbles up, kind of go with it, explore it. Don't overthink it.

A lot of times, I'm sure this has happened in Paul's life, it's happened in mine. So that is, there's no one right way of what to focus on first, because whatever you ended up focusing on is actually going to change a lot of other things in your life in a way that you can't possibly imagine. So just kind of do whatever pops up.