HOW I FIGHT LONELINESS BEING SELF EMPLOYED ⤵️
WORK (BUT SAY IT LIKE RIHANNA)
🤓
WORK (BUT SAY IT LIKE RIHANNA) 🤓
This one is for all my self-employed (or aspiring self-employed) girlies out there. Firstly, HOW ARE WE DOING? 😅 It’s a hard knock life being self employed, but equally the most rewarding experience I have ever created for myself.
Quick backstory if you’re new ⬇️
I graduated college in 2017 with a degree in Business Management and Communications.
I moved to Los Angeles and continued working in retail while I applied to jobs.
I landed a job in medical sales. I was really good at it, but hated my life. I felt like I was chasing sales numbers and had no sense of purpose or fulfillment outside of making my sales manager happy (barf 🤢).
In January of 2019, I transferred to technology sales. All was well (so I thought). I landed a $100,000 offer at 21 years old and was on top of the world. Until I realized… I wasn’t.
Nearly three months later in March of 2019, I quit my job cold turkey. I had about $7,000 in savings and no plan. The new plan? 👀 Pursue jobs that made me happy and weren’t centered around financial success.
I spent the rest of 2019 doing what I call, “fun jobs”. I nannied for high profile + celebrity families, sat in TV show audiences for cash, organized people’s closets, took up ice cream catering.. amongst many other “gig" jobs” (in which I highly recommend for anyone who feels lost in life).
Once 2019 concluded, I realized I met a lot of people that year. One thing these seemingly “successful people” had in common was their lack of understanding for social media (something I felt very comfortable with being that I had basically grown up alongside it).
In January of 2020 I started a marketing agency - The Business Side of Things (which I still run today). Take that with a grain of salt because I had zero experience and my pitch to potential clients was quite literally.. “I have no clue what I’m doing but I can assure you I’ll work hard and give it my all”. Somehow that seemed to work and I scored my first two clients.
Fast forward to March of 2020, the pandemic hit. 😅 This was the greatest blessing I could have asked for because my 2 clients turned into 12 overnight (!!!). I suddenly had a rapidly growing business with no plan and very little experience. I didn’t even have a public Instagram (LOL).
I decided to start sharing marketing tips on social media. This felt like a natural transgression from my line of work but to my surprise, the traction was minimal and nobody cared about my marketing tips.
I pivoted, started talking about my life and fast forward 4 years - my social media now has a following of 550K+ across all platforms (pinch me). 🥹
Now that you’re up to speed, let’s talk about what I’ve learned along the way. 👀
➡️ MY ONLY SOURCE OF MOTIVATION COMES FROM WITHIN.
To state the obvious, this job is incredibly difficult. I don’t care what realm of “self employment” your job falls under, it’s HARD to wake up and pump yourself up to do things that typically require a team of 10 (SOS). Self employment means you’re the accountant, editor, marketer, operations team, tech support, customer service, etc. etc. - all at once and all the time. And if you have a team - forget it! The stress associated with being in charge of making sure people have money deposited into their bank account is an anxiety I wish upon not even my worst enemy.
All the negative aside, I find it really liberating to have a job where I “choose my own adventure”. One of the boxes I felt confined to in my short stint working 9-5 life was that some days I feel creative, others I did not. And it’s really hard to be forced to do a job at the same time every single day when realistically humans are not wired like that (as I’m sure many of you already know).
To be transparent, I find the self-motivation aspect to be one of the easiest parts of my job. Perhaps this is because I’m a self proclaimed energizer bunny 🐰 - or maybe it’s because I genuinely LOVE (!!!) what I do. That being said, I COMPLETELY empathize with anyone who might wake up and struggle to tackle all of the ✨ not so fun ✨ things that come along with being your own boss.
I WILL MAKE MISTAKES AND THAT IS FREAKING OKAY. 👌
If I’m being honest, I should probably get that tattoo’d on my forehead. ⬆️ Just the other night I was quite literally sobbing to Matt (my bf) because I realized I was incorrectly collecting sales tax on my merch orders which created a nightmare for my accountant. I couldn’t believe that I made such a “dumb mistake” when setting up the back end of my website and could not let down the fact that I made such a simple error when I’ve accomplished so much.
That story is all to provide that self employment is a JOURNEY. You will make mistakes and 4 years in, I continue to make them 👏 all 👏 the 👏 time. I don’t like making them, but when I do I get really upset. Which is normal, because hello, 👋 we’re human. Some have cost me thousands of dollars, others a lot of tears. And well, that’s just life.
Was I prepared for how much I would continue to learn (and mess up) on my journey of self employment? Absolutely not. In hindsight, it’s one of the parts I like most about this job. And in the words of the kids on TikTok - I think I like this little life. 🎶
THIS JOB IS LONELY. SO WHAT? 🤷♀️
Not enough people talk about how all-consuming self employment is. If you’re anything like me (or happen to be a Gemini/Cancer cusp ♊️ 🦀) my job is basically my life and my life is basically my job. I know they say we shouldn’t “live to work” but hey! I love what I do. I get insecure about talking about it too much but if I’m being honest - I don’t have anyone to talk to all day (besides my incredible assistant, shoutout Sarah). My days look the same in terms of routine. And 90% of my time is spent alone.
I realized how much time I was spending alone and wanted to assess if I was truly okay with the loneliness associated with self employment. I realized the real problem was that I used my work to mask or avoid how I was feeling inside (deep, I know). To combat this, I forced myself to get uncomfortable. And for me, that meant taking myself out to dinner once a month for an entire year. To further clarify: when I say “take myself out to dinner” - I mean the whole nine yards. I got dressed, did my makeup, chose a fancy restaurant, studied the menu.. all that jazz. More importantly, I opted to leave my phone in my purse for the entire dinner. I simply sat, observed, ate and reflected.
My findings? 🤔 I’m not that lonely after all. I actually REALLY enjoy my own company. I also gained more confidence from those 12 dinners than I think I did in an entire lifetime. I felt powerful, successful, ambitious, empowered, beautiful, smart, observant. The list goes on and on. This solo dinner adventure sparked an entire lifestyle change for me over the past couple of years and I couldn’t be more grateful.
One of my greatest lessons: the only person you have to spend the rest of your life with is yourself - so start enjoying it. ✨
🔍 HOW THIS ACTUALLY APPLIES TO MY DAILY LIFE
If you read the paragraph above, I guess you could say that was my sappy/metaphorical answer to combatting loneliness with self employment. Consider this paragraph the more logical response. 🤪
Here are some things that have tremendously helped me in my day-to-day as a “one woman show”:
In the least creepy way possible: talk to strangers online. Find your people. Message with them.
Use voice messaging instead of text messaging. It’s nice to hear someone’s voice once in a while. Especially if you live alone.
Join a club or take up a new class - I recently did a tufting class. I also tried pottery making. On my list for this month is a sewing class. Maybe even a cooking class? I also joined a book club!
Express that you are lonely to the people in your circle. No one can help you if you don’t talk about your feelings.
Get a therapist! I’ve realized a lot of my feelings are the side effect of something else going on in my life. Not to say your feeling of loneliness isn’t valid, but perhaps something else is going on that is amplifying your loneliness.
Implement positive self talk - think affirmations (they work, I promise).
MOST IMPORTANT: Uplift and support other self-employed people. Your “competitors” are going through the same struggles that you are. Make friends with them and learn from one another. Collaboration > competition is the winning formula. Always.
I feel like the only appropriate way to end this blog post is with a quote from our pink princess, Barbie.
"I worked hard so I deserve it.” 🎀
I see you. I feel you. I relate to you more than you’ll ever know. The beautiful thing about vulnerability is that we begin to realize we are more alike than we are different and I hope you found that to be true while reading today’s post. I firmly believe my purpose on this Earth is to uplift others and if I did that in any way today, that’s a win in my book. 😌
I would love to hear more about where you’re at in your career journey (self employed or not) in the comments section below.
I’m rooting for you! 🫶
XOXOX
Reagan Baylee 🩷
