 I used to dream about financial freedom. I know a lot of us do. And I started my business in 2009 with that dream. Now I had been dreaming about it even before then. It's this idea that what if I could have so much money abundantly that I could, you know, travel anywhere I like, buy anything I want, not ever have to worry about money ever again to be able to give to all the causes and people that I feel are deserving of support. And after buying into a lot of programs, a lot of business coaching and sort of like financial freedom type of support programs, I realized that the people who are making the money are the ones selling the dream of financial freedom, number one. And that number two, I was getting caught up in this culture of hype and sort of like illusory, yeah, chasing of this dream that I was actually delaying my true livelihood. Because what happens when we chase the financial freedom dream is that it's so easy to buy into strategies and programs that are basically taking shortcuts to make money, to try to be persuasive, to try to look really, you know, to look more successful than you might actually be, to use kind of manipulative sales funnels to get people to buy and to basically try to set up a system of making money as the goal for why we're in business. And I understand why a lot of us yearn for financial freedom as someone who used to because we're tired or exhausted about having to work. And in the last couple of years, there's been an increasing movement called the anti-work movement, and also the quiet quitting phenomenon where, you know, people are just tired of, well, tired of working. Now, it's so sad because I don't think people have really, they're not tired of, you know, pursuing their right livelihood. They're usually the anti-work quiet quitting movements are tired of bad jobs, bad employers, companies that don't treat them well, that don't pay them well. But for those of us who are solopreneurs, you know, it's even more, you know, our financial situations even more risky because we don't have an employer that just keeps paying us every month. We have to go out and get the clients and find ways to sell our products and services. So, of course, naturally we want this, you know, if money, this money problem could be solved, then I can really, can really embody my purpose, dive into my heart fully, and serve the people in front of me with utmost generosity and, you know, presence, because I'm not always being bogged down by the financial issue. And I realized after a while that I was missing out every single day on the deeper purpose that was available to me in the pursuit of having enough clients and having enough sales and all that stuff. I mean, on the way there, which how long does it take you to get to enough clients and abundance of business? It takes all of us different numbers of years. Some people are very lucky and you see them get there in a year or two or three. But for many of us, it's like 10, 15 plus years to get to a sustainable, viable business. And so, all along the way, if you are suffering, essentially, by not being fully accepting of the purpose within the moment of work, then the irony is that by always, like, chasing the money or by chasing away from bankruptcy or, you know, it's like, by going after the money and, like, letting that be the thing that will finally make your business feel like it's successful, you exhaust yourself even more and prevent joyful productivity, which ironically actually delays or may even prevent you from having a sustainable business altogether because you wouldn't have the staying power because the staying power comes from the energy of deep purpose, the energy of practice, the devotion to the practice of experimentation, of observing yourself and observing the market, of playing with different offers and content and technologies and formats and like the devotion to this kind of practice of authentic business is what allows us to actually create a sustainable and fulfilling business. But the chasing after the financial freedom makes you want to go after the formulas and the perfect strategies that are supposed to, you know, either you are the one, you know, copying someone else's strategy because they promise you the stars and the moon or you spend all this money from your life savings, hiring someone or some team that's supposed to get you there to realize as you probably have now known they can't get me there because they're not really building an authentic business for me because only I can build an authentic business. Of course, you can always hire help but you have to be the one in charge of the strategy. I want to bring in this quote from Mahatma Gandhi and he named the seven disruptive forces in society and I thought this was always so interesting and I want to kind of share this with you right now. Seven destructive forces in society, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice and politics without principle. Now I found it interesting that in these seven, two, there's only one area of life that took two out of the seven. The others just have one in itself and the two areas have to do with money, money slash work, not wealth without work and commerce without morality. And you might even say knowledge without character has to do with building an authentic business because you can learn all these strategies and all these things and not really have it grounded based on a developed character that has the integrity, the humility, the courage, the persistence to actually hold a genuinely successful business year after year after year. So wealth without work, I thought that was so interesting because that's exactly what the dream of financial freedom means is to have wealth without work. Like to be able to set up a sense system, an amazing funnel that just brings you money, brings you money. And I recently saw a thread in a Facebook group where the person was saying how they hired a one-on-one coach. Now they had worked with this teacher slash coach in group programs before and things were fine, things were good. And then they finally hired the coach at the highest level, the one-on-one level where they paid thousands of dollars for this person's attention on a regular basis. And they were surprised because once they hired this person on a one-on-one level, the highest level they had, this teacher slash coach suddenly wasn't paying that much attention to them. Like they were missing appointment or like postponing appointments despite the original agreements, they were showing up like not really being prepared. They just almost, and they were not answering their emails. It was like, now that they've paid this coach the highest amount of money, there's nothing else to sell them, the coach is now no longer really fulfilling the promise because it's almost like the coach is on to selling another person and another person, another person. And this is what happens with coaches and teachers and service providers who are hell-bent on financial freedom. They care more about making money in their business than they really do about the dedication to the customer, the dedication to the client's service, even delivering what they promised, let alone going above and beyond. So I just, when I see that, I'm like that coach or teacher has lost the plot. They have lost the mission of their business if they even had one. Maybe the mission was just to make money, but the mission in the business really should be to serve and create genuine impact and deliver more value than they receive in money from the customers and clients and students. But if they find their clients annoying now because now they have to serve them because they have nothing else to sell them, then it's terrible. But that's what financial freedom does. It creates this myopic focus on the seduction of marketing and the making of more and more money. And I know a lot of you are saying, George, I'm not even nowhere near that. I'm making 20,000 a year if that. And that's why I need more money. Well, I'll just say this. It really first comes down to self-care because with a focus on our self-care, I hope we have the sense of health and balance that allows us to connect again to our deeper source, our higher self to realize that, no, it's not about the money. And the chasing after those things gets you into circles of people and teachers that you know the values you don't really agree with. Like if you really were well rested and you were connected to your deeper source, your higher self, you realize that some of the people you're buying from or have bought from or have learned from, you don't agree with their values. They're chasing the money. They're trying to tempt you with they're trying to tempt you with the money and the dream of financial freedom. Like that stuff is just going down a road to hell. A road to the seduction of making money, always converting more and more people to make money and not really having a dedication to service. And so that's why I'm here and I'm always trying to encourage, inspire us, remind myself too, that with a dedication to authentic business, we commit to the value of daily practice of continually exploring, understanding, giving value and understanding how to give value in ways that the market is happy to pay for because our calling, the deep calling of our work is this intersection between our wants and desires and passions and energy and skills and what the market wants enough that they can't find for free to pay for. This is the intersection of us and the market and that sweet spot intersection in the middle is always what we're exploring, experimenting, playing to discover. And that is the work of authentic business. That is the daily practice of humbly putting out offers or content and then observing, not immediately, but observing days later looking at the stats and go, Oh, wow, that one really worked. Oh, that one didn't work. Well, that's okay. I'm just humbling offering this as a service, as an exploration and seeing who responds and how they respond. And the other thing is, I think about how when this, we have this dream of having just money come in and we're like taking vacations and we're resting, even resting, just resting a lot, we're just money just keeps coming in. Think about what that means. That means people are paying you. If you got to that state where it's like, Oh, I'm just, I have so much time off. Like I hear people say, Oh, I'm only working a few hours a week or I'm only working a few hours a week and making all this money. You know what I hear? I hear number one that they're exhausted and that they haven't found a way to deeply rest. And number two, they haven't really found their purpose in terms of their work. Because if you really, when you really find the purpose of your work and the devotion to the practice of finding that sweet spot, you can't wait to get up in the morning and get back to it. Like why are you so tired and wanting to work three, five, 10 hours, 20 hours a week, whatever it may be. It's because you're tired and you need to get better about the self-discipline of self-care. It's like number one, you got to get the system of self-care good enough so that you're not so tired all the time. Like you're not like deeply exhausted about life, right? About work. And number two, you have to reconnect with the passion you have for your authentic business and finding that sweet spot of your calling so that you like can't wait to get up after you sleep, however long you sleep, get up to, that's what I, every morning I like, I'm so excited to get up and get back into exploring my calling and because I tasted the sweetness of that sweet spot. And so let's go back to this, when you're making all this money and like working only five hours a week or whatever, you know, that dream people have or 10 hours a week, making all this money, you know what that means? Is that all these people are giving you money for you putting in relatively little effort. And what that means is that you could have been putting even more effort in to improve the value you're giving back to them, but you're kind of coasting, right? That's the dream, right? Oh, I'm back at just coast, lots of money coming in. I'm barely working. I'm just coasting. That means you over time, while they're paying you the money, you're giving less and less value. You know why? Because the market keeps changing, the world keeps changing and your competitors or your niche mates keep on improving and innovating and adding even more value to your, to your industry. And you're just coasting, you're content, right? That's the dream, right? You're barely working and getting all this money in. No, that means you're not really adding value anymore. You're not keeping up with your niche mates. You're not keeping up with your industry. And over time, the customers get more and more, maybe resentful of you or they see your niche mates offering more value, better value, more innovation and they'll go over there. And then your money will start drying up because you're not add, you're not continuing to challenge yourself to add more value to your industry. So I'm like, why are we dreaming of vacationing and working so little and having all this money come in because you're exhausted? Like I said, you don't have self-discipline for self-care and boundaries and all that stuff, which is all of us are working on, myself included. And secondly, all of us are also working on, continue to reconnect with the purpose of our work so that we feel this passion to show up every day, to practice, to explore, to observe, to truly serve, to innovate, to connect even more effectively with our audience. Like, yeah, it's like, so I want to basically be as much as I can an example of what work can look like. I want to be an example of what true freedom can look like. It's not the sipping my ties on a beach while Czechs rolling in. As you, anyone who's ever tried that knows it becomes pretty meaningless after three days or three months. Fine, you're exhausted. You have to rest for three months. Go for it. But what then? You're still sipping my ties on the beach. What then? What's your reading novels? Fine, that's fine. That's pleasure without conscience, right? That's what Gandhi said, like, there's no sense of, okay, these people are paying me and how am I innovating and delivering even more value to my customers and my clients and my, right, my participants, my students, et cetera, my members. So I guess I'll end with this. The phrase having it all, everyone wants to have it all. I want all of it. Having it all usually means lots of money and plenty of free time to use that money, right? And again, this is an illusion promoted by the people who are selling you that dream so that they could get rich. Instead, let me offer an alternative definition to having it all. Here it goes. It's not as concise, but bear with me. So having it all means, in my definition, earning money by expressing your strengths to uplift others, practicing your joyful productivity, continually growing in meaningful ways, and having a rhythm of self-care that keeps you refreshed and connected to your highest self. Not as concise, but hopefully more meaningful and more complete. So I want to thank Lauren, Van Molen for chatting below. Thank you on my Facebook live. I know I'm not probably seeing all the comments. So those of you who commented, I'm not seeing it yet, but I will see it later. Thank you for joining me for this. May you continually sense into the deeper joy of what work can mean for you on a daily basis. And when you have that joy and you activate that joy or you practice activating that joy daily, you don't have to worry about financial freedom because it will find you. Thanks also to Craig for your comment there. I'm seeing that as well. Well, have a wonderful rest of your day. May you rest deeply and wake up refreshed again to explore and to play and to serve. Be well.