Being Self - Employed

My favorite office pal: Tasha

I think one of the scariest things you can do, is take a leap of faith. I mean after all....you're putting your hopes, dreams, wishes and fears into something you cant see, or hear, or feel....ok maybe you're one of those lucky few who actually do feel. Not me. If it doesnt exist on paper, I have a hard time believing in it. But that's exactly what I did. I left my comfortable, familiar and reliable job (read: paycheck) to pursue something scary and unknown. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I did know that helping businesses and financial advisors with their 401k plans was not it. Deciding to leave that job was admittedly one of the hardest things I've done in my professional career simply because I loved the people I worked with....well, most of them anyway. Towards the end it became more and more evident that my time was up though. The biggest wake up call was realizing that people I thought I could trust, people I thought were my friends, were actually nothing more than greedy, power hungry machines who would stop at nothing (including stepping all over me) to get to the top. I will say that I did have a great mentor during my 5 years, who - for full disclosure sake - did warn me that nobody was my friend, and that I shouldn't trust anyone. I guess it was one of those things you have to figure out for yourself...

Long story short - too late, I know - I decided to leave and focus on growing my business. I think all of us feel like we have some type of purpose in this world. I mean, how else could we continue to survive as a population if we thought otherwise. What would be our motivation? For me though, I've always felt that I was destined to do something great. Something bigger and better awaits me out there. There has to be a reason certain things happen and there MUST be a reason I was put here. Recently, I realized that there is no way I could find whatever that is by sitting behind a desk in a stuffy office (oddly enough, now I find myself sitting behind a desk in my home office, but hey at least my window here opens!) So I took a leap of faith, mostly in myself, and left. It took me about a month, maybe two, to make the decision and while I was contemplating the best course of action, I kept running the scene from Shawshank Redemption in my head where Red is reflecting on his friendship with Andy (SPOILER ALERT: after he breaks out of prison) and says: "...I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright...." My feathers are just too bright to be cooped up inside doing something I'm not passionate about. 

I encourage everyone to take a leap of faith. Go out on a limb. Do something every day that scares the crap out of you. You'll thank yourself when you're old and cant get out of your rocking chair. Not to seem like a bird freak with all these references, but honestly the best way I can put it is like this: 

Always remember to Live Zen

xo 
Jen