The WorkSelfLife Podcast

There’s a myth that true achievement can only come from struggle and strain. That in order to feel successful and happy, you need to first pick a specific goal—and then apply consistent, forceful effort to mold the world according to that vision.

But there’s another model of success to consider. One where you shift from trying to force specific outcomes based on some made-up goal, to learning how to align with life and take the right action in each moment. 

In this episode, Leon VanderPol, founder of the Center for Transformational Coaching, joins me to share:

- The difference between transactional and transformational achievement.

- The limitations of setting fixed, rigid goals.

- How to tap into a deeper sense of purpose, and accomplish great things in a way that’s an expression of yourself as a whole and complete person.

Connect with Leon at:

If you’re relying on inbound channels and gig platforms to land new projects, you’re probably missing out on the majority of clients who need the type of creative services that you offer. 

You can’t simply wait around for good clients to happen upon your website, portfolio, or LinkedIn profile. It’s up to you to reach out to them and initiate the kind of conversations that lead to new projects.

The challenge is that a lot of freelancers feel uncomfortable with cold outreach, and hate the idea of coming off as “salesy.” 

The good news is that learning how to proactively reach out to potential clients—and sell your services in an authentic way—frees you to take more control over the future of your business, and greatly increases your odds of success.

In this episode, freelance content marketer and B2B SaaS copywriter Christine Gomolka joins me to share:

- How she used cold outreach to book her first copywriting clients and produce a full-time income within 4 months.

- How to take the discomfort, resistance, and pressure out of cold outreach.

- How to sell in an authentic way. 

- Why introverts have an advantage in selling.

- Why listening is the key skill for selling your services.

Connect with Christine at:

We all want to experience the upsides of entrepreneurship—the success, the praise, the creative freedom, the money.

But each of those things is just one side of a coin. For every upside, there’s an inherent downside. The possibility of success comes with the possibility of failure. Same for praise vs blame, creative freedom vs external judgement, and financial abundance vs financial scarcity.

In this episode, we’ll explore why fighting with reality limits our potential, and how to find the right balance of up- and down-sides that works for you.

I recently had the chance to be a guest on the We‘ve Got a Problem podcast with Andrew Wallace, where we talked about ways to get unstuck and build the business you were born to create.

Andrew was gracious enough to give me the green light to share our conversation here on the WorkSelfLife podcast with you. 

I hope you enjoy our conversation, and please go ahead and check out the We‘ve Got a Problem podcast. 

Constant change is something we all need to face head on. At some point, new technologies, changes in market demand, and increased competition will likely disrupt your business and force you to pivot your approach.

How can creative entrepreneurs like copywriters and content producers evolve their business in a way that accounts for these types of changes? In this episode, Beam Content co-founder Brooklin Nash joins me to share:

- The potential near-term impact of AI tools on creative entrepreneurs and freelancers.

- The types of creative and strategic services that aren’t in danger of being replaced by AI (at least not yet).

- How to future-proof your creative career.

Connect with Brooklin at:

What does it look like to build a business that’s aligned with your authentic strengths and interests? In this episode, B2B messaging advisor and founder of Punchy, Emma Stratton, joins me to share:

- Her take on a book that we both love—The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling, by Stephen Cope—and how it’s impacted her life and business.

- The meaning of Dharma, and how that relates to her work as and entrepreneur.

- The obsession with “getting there” vs being authentic to who you are in the present moment.

- Why moving toward Dharma can be scary, and requires the right balance between intention and non-attachment to the outcome.

- What it means to “trust the gift.”

- How buying into false beliefs about struggle and success keeps us stuck.

- How to approach marketing and sales from a place of service.

Connect with Emma at:

It seems like the only constant in today’s world is constant distraction. More pings, meetings, emails, Slack alerts. Less space, time, clarity, quiet.

In this episode, we’ll explore how to live more of your life in flow and tap into your highest creative potential as an entrepreneur.

I’ve always believed in the value of prospecting. Yet for most of my career, I really hated actually doing it. Despite my attempts to connect with potential clients in an authentic and personalized way, my approach tended to feel a bit generic and spammy.

In this episode, we’ll explore why relying on selling “best practices” and cheesy prospecting hacks can hurt your business, and how to prospect for customers in a way that doesn’t feel gross.

So many entrepreneurs and freelancers operate from a scarcity mentality, causing us to take projects that don’t align with our interests, charge too little for our work, and chase the wrong opportunities.

In this episode, fractional content director Nicole Bump joins me to share:

- How she builds variety into her work.

- Ways to overcome imposter syndrome.

- The importance of owning your value and charging what you're worth.

Connect with Nicole at:

Aligning your business with your strengths starts with getting clear about the types of projects that just aren’t a good fit. 

In this episode, content marketer Dana Herra joins me to share:

- Why it's so important to know yourself, and be able to say no to opportunities that just aren't right for you.

- How she found the right target niche for her business.

- How she chooses the clients that are the best fit for her interests, skills, and business goals. 

- Why you need to take "hot takes" and other advice online with a grain of salt, and test ideas for yourself.

Connect with Dana at:

Sometimes the best way to build a successful business is to lean into the unknown, experiment using the resources available to you, and double down on what works. 

In this episode, content marketing strategist Emily Amos joins me to share:

- How she started as a freelancer, and why she decided to build a team instead of doing all the writing herself.

- Why she initially resisted the idea of becoming an entrepreneur, and what changed her mind.

- Why entrepreneurs have more "job" security than employees.

- How she pushed past her discomfort with selling and self-promotion.

Connect with Emily at:

When’s the last time you felt truly in love with your work—when you felt 100% focused on the things that really matter, when you were overflowing with creative energy, when ideas seemed to pour out of you without any conscious effort on your part?

In this episode, we’ll explore some of the reasons why you may be feeling burned out and exhausted, and how to recalibrate your focus in order to live a more fulfilling, purpose-driven life.

In this final episode in the series about overcoming your fears around failure and rejection, we’ll look at ways to slowly ratchet up exposure to your discomfort and break down your deepest limiting beliefs—without getting completely overwhelmed. 

I recently shared some thoughts on how many of us accidentally train ourselves to expect failure, why trying to use “positive thinking” to overcome your fears rarely works, and how to start dismantling your fear-based, limiting beliefs. 

In this episode, we’ll look at a simple daily meditation practice you can use to let go of deeply ingrained fears and start instilling healthier mental habits.

“Positive thinking” seems like a reasonable way to overcome our fears. Unfortunately, trying to cover up limiting beliefs (“I’ll fail”) with newer, more empowering ones (“I’m unstoppable”) tends to keep us running in circles. Sweeping your fear under the rug and pretending it’s not there may make you feel a bit better in the short-term. But the moment you get triggered by failure and rejection, all that fear will just come right back up.

The alternative is to start facing your fearful thoughts head-on. To explore your limiting beliefs (and the fears they stir up), discover the source of those beliefs, and begin to unravel them at their core.

In this episode, we’ll explore how you can dismantle those fear-based, limiting beliefs by asking yourself one simple question.

We’ve all heard that you should think of failure as learning, that every no just brings you one step closer to a yes, and that rejection is the natural byproduct of success. And yet, despite your best efforts to adopt a more positive spin on failure and rejection, it’s likely that you still struggle with both of them.

In this episode, we’ll explore why your attempts to reframe rejection and failure as “good” usually fall flat, and what you can do instead to start overcoming the fears that are holding you back.

Do you struggle with a nagging inner voice that keeps telling you “this won’t work”?

In this episode, we’ll explore why many of us tend to expect the worst, and how these limiting beliefs relate to our fear of rejection.

Ever notice that when you try to consciously force yourself to come up with brilliant ideas, you just end up mentally exhausted?

In this episode, we’ll explore why reducing effort may actually help you tap into your highest creative capabilities as an entrepreneur.

What happens when you take the advice to “focus on the goal” too far? When does guidance become obsession?

In this episode, we’ll explore why attachment to outcomes actually hurts performance, common types of limiting beliefs that can lead to attachment, and how to achieve goals without all the toxic residue of neediness and fear.

Getting clear about your authentic purpose makes it much easier to build your business’s unique offering, positioning, and messaging around your true strengths.

But what if that authentic purpose looks a lot different than what you’re actually doing right now? What if the business you’ve spent years building doesn’t really seem to match your talents, strengths, and interests? 

In this episode, we’ll explore how to rediscover the common threads between your current business and your authentic purpose.

There’s a big difference between authentic vs ego-driven purpose. One is about creating from the “you” that’s already 100% whole and complete. The other is about fabricating a “self.”

In this episode, we’ll explore how to identify a sense of purpose that comes from an authentic place—from the truth of who and what you really are. From a place of inspiration, of creative expression, of ideas and solutions that you feel a deep need to put out into the world.

Figuring out your strengths, positioning, and messaging is key to building a business that’s truly aligned with your purpose. But turning that vision into reality comes with its share of internal challenges. Luckily, just being aware of these potential sticking points can go a long way toward overcoming them.

In this episode, we’ll explore these 6 obstacles:

- Being out of sync with your sense of purpose

- Quitting too early or too often

- Thinking reactively

- Spreading yourself too thin

- Solving the wrong problems

- Lack of influence

In the last few episodes, we explored strengths, positioning, and messaging. Now we’re going to bring these concepts together to help you design your business around your unique talents, interests, and purpose—bridging the gap between where it is today, and your vision of where you want it to be tomorrow.

Feeling stuck trying to communicate your offer in a way that truly resonates with potential customers? Finding the right words to describe the value you deliver is often a lot harder than it looks.

In this episode, we’ll explore how to craft a brand story that focuses on your ideal customers’ problems (and how you’ll solve them) so that your marketing and sales messaging is always on target. We’ll talk about:

- What a strategic narrative looks like.

- Why a strategic narrative is critical for entrepreneurs.

- What blocks us from developing a strong strategic narrative.

Having a hard time standing out in a noisy market? Does it feel like no matter how hard you try, you just can’t differentiate yourself from the crowd?

In this episode, we’ll explore how to develop your positioning strategy—that sweet spot between your strengths and the needs of your market—so you can set yourself apart from the competition. We’ll talk about:

- What an effective positioning approach looks like.

- Why positioning is critical to entrepreneurs.

- What blocks us from developing a strong positioning strategy.

Feel like you don’t have a clear vision for your business? Like you’re constantly reacting to external forces, rather than building something special based on your internal guidance and unique gifts?

In this episode, we’ll explore how to align with your talents, interests, and purpose, and then design a clear vision to move toward so you can focus on building the business you were born to create. We’ll talk about:

- What it means to play to your strengths.

- Why playing to our strengths is critical for entrepreneurs.

- What blocks us from playing to our strengths.

Feeling like your ideas just aren’t connecting with your customers, prospects, or employees? In this hyper-busy, “7-second attention span” world we live in, it’s easy to get drowned out by all the noise.

In this episode, we’ll explore how to expand your influence and clearly communicate your ideas so that you can move others to take action. We’ll talk about:

- What influence really is.

- Why influence and communication skills are critical for entrepreneurs.

- What blocks us from being better communicators.

Feel like you’re always putting out fires, but never actually making much progress toward solving your biggest challenges? 

In this episode, we’ll explore how to quickly analyze and reframe problems so you can overcome them more easily. We’ll talk about:

- What effective problem solving looks like.

- Why problem solving skills are so critical for entrepreneurs.

- What blocks us from being better problem solvers.

Struggling to stay focused? Feel like you’re always flip-flopping between periods of high productivity—and complete exhaustion?

In this episode, we’ll explore ways to maximize your impact—and how to focus your time, energy, and attention on what really matters—so you can accomplish more without burning out. We’ll talk about:

- What it means to focus for maximum impact.

- What blocks us from being more focused.

- Identifying your specific focus and distraction patterns.

Finding it hard to think straight with all of the noise and distractions? Feeling stuck in indecision mode and analysis paralysis?

In this episode, we’ll explore the concept of critical thinking and how to think and plan more strategically, so you can take decisive action and make more effective long-term decisions. We’ll talk about:

- How to define “strategic” thinking.

- Why strategic thinking is so critical for entrepreneurs.

- What blocks us from thinking more strategically.

Having a hard time sticking with your business goals? Feeling stuck in a never-ending cycle of starting and quitting?

In this episode, we’ll explore the concept of resilience, how it specifically relates to entrepreneurship, and how to start fine-tuning your ability to persevere through obstacles, rejection, and failure so that you’re always growing and evolving. We’ll talk about:

- How to define “resilience.”

- Why resilience is so critical for entrepreneurs.

- What blocks us from tapping into our resilience.

Not feeling inspired by your work or your business? Wondering what happened to all that passion you used to feel for living the entrepreneurial life?

In this episode, we’ll explore how to realign with that sense of purpose and calling that you used to feel. We’ll talk about:

- How to define “purpose.”

- Why purpose is critical for entrepreneurs.

- What blocks us from living our purpose.

You became an entrepreneur in order to build something special—a business that expresses your unique talents, interests, and purpose.

And yet…

You sometimes get this “stuck” feeling, like there’s something holding you back. A gap between who you are today and who you really want to be tomorrow. The type of person who:

- Has a clear sense of purpose and focuses on impact over “busyness.”

- Truly loves going to work and brings the best parts of themselves to their business every day.

- Embraces challenges, overcomes obstacles, and enjoys the ride.

How to Get Unstuck and Start Doing Your Best Work

To realize your full potential as an entrepreneur, you need to free yourself from the internal obstacles, fears, and conflicts that block you from creating at your highest level.

The WorkSelfLife Podcast will help you master 6 key ways to break through those bottlenecks:

1. Align with your purpose—Learn how to follow your calling and trust your intuition so that you can feel truly inspired by your work every day.

2. Tap into your resilience—Learn how to persevere through obstacles, rejection, and failure so that you’re always growing and evolving.

3. Clarify your thinking—Learn how to think and plan more strategically so you can take decisive action and make more effective long-term decisions. 

4. Maximize your impact—Learn how to focus your time, energy, and attention on what really matters so you can accomplish more without burning out. 

5. Solve problems faster—Learn how to quickly analyze and reframe challenges so you can overcome them more easily.

6. Expand your influence—Learn how to clearly communicate your ideas so that you can move others to take action.

In the next episode, we’ll explore why it’s so critical to align with your purpose, what gets in the way of following our true calling, and how to move past those blockages so that you can tap directly into the mission that most inspires you.