Episode 298 – An Evolving Definition of Success

In this week’s episode, we’re diving into a deeply personal and reflective journey about how our vision of success can evolve over time. I’ll be sharing the twists and turns of my life and career since I left my corporate job over a decade ago. From the early days of consulting and carefree digital nomadism to navigating the complexities of parenthood and balancing a family, business, and personal health – we’ll explore how adapting to life’s ever-changing circumstances is key to making work truly work for you. Whether you’re just starting your entrepreneurial journey or at a pivotal crossroads, this episode offers valuable insights and inspiration. Join me and discover how you can redefine success on your own terms.

00:00 Designing a career around personal circumstances and goals.

04:30 Many adventures and people, especially during pregnancy.

09:49 Values: freedom, flexibility and financial security.

10:47 Balancing work, finances, and health over time.

14:15 Adapt your business, evolve your childcare, succeed.

*Resources mentioned during the episode*
1:1 Coaching & Mentoring – If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. www.onestepoutside.com/coaching

Evolving definition of success

Making work work for you means taking a really personal and individual approach to designing a career in a business around your particular circumstances, lifestyle aspirations, family situation and so on. And that definition of success, that vision of how you want your work life balance or work life integration to look, can evolve, will evolve as you do, as the circumstances of your life change, as your ambitions ebb and flow and so on. And so I wanted to be a bit self indulgent today and share with you how my vision of success has evolved over the last decade or so since leaving my job back in 2013 and the personal changes that have happened since then. So I hope this story can give you permission that you don’t need to evolve and let your business and career do so as well. So when I first started my business, I was single and carefree. In 2013, that was, I quit my job after taking a sabbatical. I founded, incorporated my business, I think, February 2014. And so initially I had no home even, in fact, because I’d given up my little ghetto flat in Geneva and Switzerland where I was living.

I had no dependents, I had no boyfriend, I had no children, I had cats that I gave up when I left Geneva. Also partly because I was very, very allergic, so that was a necessity. But those were the parameters. You know, I had savings from my years of corporate life and I didn’t have a lot of outgoing. So initially I very luckily, I’m going to say, I’m going to say fortunately because it’s not luck, but it was a combination of luck and my incredible skill of digital marketing and a great network from my corporate times. I had the fortune of landing on my feet with a number of consulting contracts. This meant that I basically started working in a company, did my thing, did my digital marketing consulting for three months, since six months, whatever the length of the contract. And then afterwards, the best thing was I could leave.

I didn’t have to get deep into sort of the politics, the office politics and so on. I could sail off into sunset, go travelling for a few months and then go for the next contract after that. Now, again, to some extent I was a bit lucky that it just kind of fell into place. That way. I didn’t have those dependents and so on. So that could be seen as a bit of a risky way of doing business because I certainly didn’t have a systematic way of getting clients in those days. It was quite early days and it was very much via word of mouth and referral, but that’s what I started doing. So digital marketing consulting, travel in between and then I’d come back and evolve into the next role.

Then I discovered coaching and I invested in a comprehensive coaching course. It was a two year course, I believe, that I loved so much, I did in six months, and I had the time to do so. I did my final kind of exams at 03:00 in the morning, because I was in Hawaii at the time. I did the digital nomad experience of taking my business on the road with me. So I was blogging, I was doing coaching calls and so on from abroad, and that was, of course, super flexible. Again, no outgoings in the form of mortgage and cars and that kind of thing, but obviously quite expensive flights and Airbnbs and so on. At the time, as part of that coaching, actually sharing a personal insight into my relationship status, I recognised that I would at some point, like to meet somebody. So I opened up to going dating a bit more, and that process led to meeting my now boyfriend and father of my children.

And he was doing a city job at the time, or at least was working in the city. He wasn’t finance or anything, he was in advertising in London. And so because of that was a kind of Monday to Friday, nine to five, I fell into that rhythm too, which meant also, coincidentally, because I had that structure, that I doubled down a bit more in the business in terms of. I published my book, September. No, October. It was my birthday, 2018. I was running a couple of group programmes, I was doing more London based stuff. I suppose, then that’s all gone very quickly 

This road, I mean, a lot more happened in the meantime, fell into a lot of adventures that were amazing with the groups of people that I met, the whole world of people who were leaving their jobs at the time. It was certainly the people that I fell into. Those communities were really exciting. You know, the time was quite a new sport. We did paddle boarding, I was canoeing down the Mississippi and wild swimming and camping outside the m 25 and all sorts of things. Right. So that was going on in the meantime as well, from a lifestyle perspective. When I was pregnant with Sophia, so Sophia’s just turned five.

That was 2019, she was born. I very confidently and arrogantly wrote articles about how to manage your business when you are a parent. So as I was pregnant, I was giving lots of advice. I’ll have to find those episodes and articles for you. To be honest, I stand by everything I said, but obviously it was based on theory and no experience at all. Certainly really helped me do it, a lot of it. And I’ll talk about this next week, actually, was around pre recording, pre scheduling content and obviously managing group programmes, pausing individual coaching and so on, and being clear to all my clients. Right. 

So that worked quite smoothly. When I had one newborn baby, I was able to do calls very early in the morning, like I had asian workshops I was doing for Singapore and Asia, 05:00 in the morning because of the time zone, and also late at night. I did coaching calls at sort of 08:00 in the evening, which I couldn’t do now because I’m far too tired. But at the time, that was that I knew that my partner would be home. He came home around 630 and could do bath time and have Sofia while. While I was working. Right. So that kind of worked around having one newborn.

I have photos of me kind of podcasting with her, sleeping peacefully in the corner, which seems very easy now that I look back on it, but of course it wasn’t. And I wasn’t really sleeping for a long time. Then she became a toddler and I had a second baby, little baby Zach, in spring. No, winter, 2020, end of 2020. So all the lockdown stuff happened as well. Right. That then meant that I had two children. It meant that I had a toddler who would not just sit quietly in a car seat and, you know, while I was podcasting and so on, it meant that the timings were.

Were much more complicated. And during that time, which only recently kind of ended, really, with a three and a half year old and a five year old, now, I really had to be super clear on my boundaries. And when I unfortunately did make exceptions and do calls when the kids were home, and it wasn’t quite the ideal circumstance, inevitably I regretted it greatly because it wouldn’t work out and they’d be standing outside the door wanting me when I was in the middle of a call. So that wasn’t the best. There are a few touch and go moments there, and I thought, oh, it’s not. Not ideal. During that time, obviously, if you know anything about childcare, certainly here in the UK, been paying extortionate nursery fees for both of them. We actually had them home quite a bit.

I was lucky because my partner left his job. He was flexible, and I obviously had my flexible business, so I was able to work around the kids, I think, oh, now, I’m really testing my knowledge here, I want to say Sophia started when she was two at nursery, and Zach soon thereafter when he turned one. Does that make sense mathematically, something like that. And so they were initially three days a week and then four days for most of the time up until now, in fact, because my. So this is very, very detailed, but you kind of need to understand it to know what I’m talking about. And my daughter started school in England. You start school in September of the year, you turn five. So she started in September.

I have Zach at home on Wednesdays, and then he’s in kindergarten the other four days. And after this, next summer, as of September, they will be five days a week. Two of those days are longer days. At the moment, at least. We’ve got sort of after school clubs, and then two are short days. And then, as I said, Wednesday at the moment I’ve got Zach at home, and then as of September, I’ll have the five days. So all this to say, and I’m boring myself as I share it, but I think this is where the. What’s the expression? I always come up with these random idiomatic expressions where the.

I want to say where the rubber hits the road, which is an expression I’ve never used before. They always pop into my mind when I’m doing podcasts. This is where the rubber hits the road, because it’s in the detail that your vision dies or lives, right? Survives or dies a tragic death. Because as much as I can have a beautiful vision of success, if the day to day isn’t set up to work practically for that, it doesn’t work. I can want to have a three day work week, but I can’t afford to have childcare for those three days falls apart. I can want to not work at all, but that doesn’t work because I need the income and so on. I should say more recently, we’ve now built, renovated a big house by the sea. So we’re very settled here.

We’ve got the car, obviously I’ve got children. The situation now is very different to over ten years ago when I started the business. So when I started, I had these values which I’m always going on about, freedom, flexibility and fulfilment, and I still totally stand by them, and I think so many people resonate with them and they’re still kind of the framework through which I see things. I think you could add two extra f’s, which would be financial security, or even better, financial freedom and fun would be a fifth f if you want to have five f’s. But that’s kind of been my lens through which I make these decisions. But obviously, when you don’t have a lot of bills and things, you don’t have dependents and so on, you can make different decisions. Compared to when you’ve poured all your money into a house and you’re still paying, you know, childcare and so on, then the bar is raised as to how much you need to be earning. So we always say, oh, it’s not about the money, it is about the money.

Partly because most of us are in the situation where we do need to pay some bills at least, and cost of living and so on, and we might have quite, quite luxurious lifestyle aspirations in some ways. And also because earning money with the business is also part of making it fulfilling, I think, as much as charity work and doing things pro bono and so on can be rewarding, really knowing that, hey, I’ve done this incredible work and I’ve been rewarded for it financially, you know, that really raises the bar a little bit. I think, in terms of the value that we bring to a business and so on, it’s incredibly rewarding. So all this nitty gritty, rubber road stuff to say that you will evolve, this is over a ten year period. Your situation will evolve, your health will evolve. Sadly, you know, sometimes things deteriorate. I’m, at the moment fitter and stronger than I’ve been, but that’s mainly because I’ve really invested time, energy and money into looking after myself and I really make a priority of that. But of course, we’re only getting older so that I’m sure there’ll be unexpected things along the way in the future. 

And that’s something that we just have to deal with. We’ve got. You know, I talked to someone at the gym the other day, her parents, she’s quite a bit older than me, but she’s having a real tough time with her parents needing end of life care. You know, children become teenagers and they have different demands and so on. Right. So again, as I said at the beginning, I hereby give you permission that you do not need to evolve personally, professionally, to let your ambitions ebb and flow. As I said, they, you know, my lovely friend said to me once, maybe this is not our season to be, you know, flying around the world and best selling authors with Ted talks with bloody, bloody blah, earning millions of dollars, whatever, right? And that could be a choice. That is your season right now, and that’s fine. 

It wasn’t our season at the time when we were sort of barely operating thanks to no sleep with newborn babies and so on. My ambitions now are inching up, are growing, and so I’m looking at different ways. I’m doing more speaking a little bit more tentative travel and so on. And that’s really exciting. And at the same time, I’m keeping an eye on, again, my health, making sure that I’m still able to go to the kids sports days and, you know, be together as a family and so on. So there are so many nuances to it, and it’s so individual, and that’s the point. But don’t think, and this is what’s empowering and liberating, I think. Don’t think that the decision you make now is locked in forever and ever because you can’t possibly know what you want or need.

In a few years time, the market evolves. Things that I was doing a few years ago that was working really well, that were working really well aren’t necessarily working now. On the other hand, there are other opportunities that weren’t available before that I also feel more confident to do that I would never have considered in the past. And those doors are open, you know, so new opportunities will come along, things will change, and that’s exciting, and I think that keeps things interesting for us. If I’ve been doing the same thing for ten plus years, you know, I don’t think it would be as, as fun and rewarding as it has been, thanks to all these different twists and turns along the way. So, by all means, be intentional and strategic in your choices, but know that you’re not committing yourself for the rest of your life. You know, you can adjust as you go. You can say no to projects.

You can evolve your business model, change your boundaries, change your childcare. If that’s the situation you’re in, you absolutely can evolve. Let your business do so, too. So again, a bit of a self indulgent episode, sharing my own personal ins and outs of kind of work life integration on a very high level. But I hope that just gives you an indication of the many twists and turns that it can have. If you’re certainly at the beginning of this journey as well, or if you’re at a pivotal point when you want to go off and do something completely different, you know, then again, you absolutely can. And let me know when you do. I’d love to hear your stories of evolving and how your vision of what success looks like for you has evolved along the way, too, and how you’re wanting to make work work for you at this point in your life.

Thanks so much for listening, and I’ll see you next week. Bye for now.

WORK WITH ANNA

Let us help you design a business and a life that gives you freedom from the 9 to 5. There are several options for how you can work with us. Choose the programme that’s right for you.

The Outsiders Business Incubator

A year-long business incubator for experienced corporate professionals who want to translate their skills and passions into a profitable and fulfilling business. onestepoutside.com/9to5

The Outsiders Business Accelerator

An ongoing mastermind for service-based business owners, freelancers and online entrepreneurs who are ready to achieve success on their own terms. onestepoutside.com/accelerate

The Outsiders Business Academy

A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5. onestepoutside.com/course

1:1 Coaching & Mentoring

If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching