Long form articles about Purpose for solopreneurs
Shorter articles about Purpose in a solo business
Writing about the search for happiness
Been thinking a lot about finding my niche recently.
I purposely write a lot about lifestyle design for freelancers because this was my background.
Freelancing was my entry point and the ticket that funded and enabled my experiments in lifestyle design.
It has given me the agency over my own time, and financial stability to run these experiments
But more and more I find find I want to write about my other interests.
Although I primarily write about systems to run a design agency,
The stuff that I find truly interesting
Is stoicism, meditation, lifestyle design, counteracting common culture, societal conformity and mindset shifts.
All of these things in service of a greater goal:
A fulfilling life
So why is it so few people actually write about this topic?
Guru preaching about making money?
They want more money so they can reach their lifestyle.
Manifesters?
They want the life of their dreams.
Productivity experts?
The want less time and stress.
Almost all topics, niches and content crestors are downstream from this topic of happiness.
Talking about money, productivity, and hacks is sexier,
Yet all are downstream of lifestyle.
Growth will be slower.
My audience will be smaller.
But I’ll continue writing about lifestyle design for freelancers,
because that’s the route to lasting happiness
How to make money and help people
If you want to make a little bit of money,
sell things people want.
If you want to make a lot of money,
stop selling things and start selling transformations that make people feel things.
If you want to make the most money,
But actually help people too,
Sell knowledge to help people change their life.
The market is full of creators producing and selling valuable products.
But over production isn’t the problem, over consumption is the problem.
After WW2 between leading physcologists and governments to design culture in favour of consumerism consciously.
They utilized newfound propaganda techniques which are now known as “public relations”.
The goal was well-meaning:
To protect a newly liberated workforce from mass joblessness.
But the long-term effect was rampant consumerism and zero-sum thinking.
The net effect of this social engineering is that…
Our culture says a good citizen is someone working to earn money to buy things we don’t need.
Culture says success looks like all the stuff in your garage you never use and the badge on the car you can afford.
Once people shift back to better values (experiences, people, consciousness) production has less power.
If find it strange that capitalism has changed so little in 50 years.
They are still selling products to satisfy needs on the lower rungs of the pyranid of needs (things, entertainment).
I think once production shifts to sell things at the higher level (safety, community, purpose) society will become a more stable place too
When you focus on doing good work and helping the client first,
the money becomes a side-effect of success.
“Your goal is not my goal”
I’ve been so brainwashed by default cultural values where the only thing of worth is income, job title or business growth.
I find I have to remind myself of this CONSTANTLY.
I keep forgetting my goal is to prioritize free family time.
Ill watch a podcast or chat with a peer running big design agencies,
or chasing ambitious income goals,
And I admire them for it,
and set my own similar goals,
all related to work.
then when I fail them,
because I don’t have the time or I’m battling with ambition or low energy levels to make it happen right now,
I think “I need to do this or that”.
Then I remember,
That’s their goal.
My goal:
I only work 4 hours per day.
The rest goes to family.
I’m right on target, for the only goal that matters
I just keep having to remind myself that that’s my measuring stick for success.
The solopreneur trichotomy
Freedom | purpose | profit
You should revisit each at different times
Balance is impossible.
I originally created the diagram below to represent the 3 pillars of Life by Design,
But I quickly realised it was innacurate, and worse,
misleading.
There is a hidden centre that lives in the middle of this ven diagram:
“impossible utopia”
You will prioritize different areas at different times.
Like stoicism, achieving perfection in any one area impossible,
rather it’s a life-long balancing and progressing little by little.
Profit
If you have unlimited profit with no free time to enjoy it and no purpose to guide your days you’ll become depressed and no amount of money will solve this.
In fact, time and profit can often be inversely related to purpose.
Freedom
If you have as much free time time as you like, but no money to live and no propose, again depression
The devil makes work of idle hands
Purpose
If you are filled with a singular purpose, but have no income to support your purposes, or no free time to work on your purpose you will be frustrated.
Example
Consider Nathan Barry, foudner of ConvertKit.
He built and grew his company to $1M/month in revenue, then stepped back from the company.
Despite the success, he publicly shared that he felt depressed, aimless, and unmotivated.
The problem wasn’t money or freedom—it was lack of purpose. He had hit his big goals, but hadn’t set new ones, leading to a kind of existential drift.
This is a classic example of the “arrival fallacy”—thinking you’ll be happy once you “make it,” only to feel empty when you get there.
He eventually found new meaning by re-engaging with creative work and mentoring others, writing about this experience in acclaimed blog post “enough“
In other words, he had built so much profit that he no longer needed to work, so he then had a surpluss of profit, leading to a lack of purpose.
We must live in the middle
We all must do our best to live on the middle,
To adjust accordingly,
To rebalance regularly.
Adapt…Or die??
The current state of AI and the creative job marketing has me thinking this a lot.
(parts of ) My job may be obsolete in about 5 years
The bottom end of the market will fall out and only the established experts will continue to earn
I know they’ll have a lot of learning to do.
The future will belong to those that can wrangle AI better than others,
and that can combine multiple skills into one package which sells
As someone who spent most of their life playing learning, creating selling and exploring in an online virtual environment,
I’m particularly worried about adaption.
I know I have a lot of cross-transferable skills
I know I can pick up new skills easily.
And I have the skills that I need to sell new skills
The question is not:
“How do I adapt?”
but
“do I even want to adapt?”
For the last 3 years, I’ve been accurately tracking my emotions throughout the day as well as getting more serious about journalling.
Using AI to analyse my journals
And analytics through my emotional tracking
There’s a pretty clear theme emerging…
I’m much happier when I’m building things in the physical world.
I generally find the internet is an exhausting place to be in recently.
Content and the internet in general in a broader sense is becoming more generic.
Short form content that rules on social media is like sweeties for children.
First, the online creator economy has flooded the market with shallow content.
Now AI is supercharging that deluge,
and social algorithms seem to be doubling down, speeding their own eventual demise.
It’s getting harder and harder find good content
And for my own content to get found,
Under an avalanche of over optimized engagement schlopp.
I can see two paths ahead of me:
1
I can permit my skills on my knowledge and authority in the design/ marketing strategy space into something that will still leave give me leverage and profit in the virtual world, probably something related to or aided by AI.
Or 2
I can pivot into some my physical skills, building things designing things, creating things in the real world
The latter is probably less scalable but more satisfying.
I would have to sacrifice the level of free time right now.
And probably a lot of the money that I make right now.
I wouldnt have as much time with Fin and Immy either.
In exchange for alignment, better physical health,
satisfaction
Have to also be aware that the grass is always greener on the other side
I could pivot into something new and end up hating it or getting bored.
This requires some hammock time to figure out…
Your revenue means nothing to me
Most freelancerrs measure success by revenue.
Revenue means nothing
Tell me about your profit ÷ time
Still meaningless.
Tell me what you do with your spare time.
Now you have a picture of your success.
If you want lifestyle business, don’t use the wrong measuring stick
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