Category / work

by Nathan Coumbe

Did You Do Something Good Today?

“Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.”

—Thomas à Kempis

What are you doing right now? Okay, you’re reading this blog post – bad question to ask.

What have you done today? What are you planning on doing today?

Have you written anything? Have you read a good book (or blog post?) 

Have you developed your self-awareness? Or your ability to empathize with people who are different from you? 

Have you done something for the good of another? 

Have you performed any selfless act of service?

Too many of us end each day with a resounding “no” to all these questions. Instead, our answer to the question, “What have you done today?” is usually something like this: “I went to work, came home, and binge-watched Netflix until I passed out.”

Change How You View Your Work

Perhaps you really did nothing other than work today. Perhaps it really had no other benefit than growing your checking account. 

Or perhaps you should reevaluate how you spend the time you are not at work, so that you do create something, learn something new, or serve another person. Or perhaps you should change the way you view your work – I’m betting you did something today that benefitted someone. Reflect on that. 

Too often, we use work, podcasts, and the always-available streaming services to block ourselves from creating our art. We chalk it up to a lack of time. 

But where is your time going? We all have the same 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. Unless we are doing shift work or have a newborn at home, we have time to create good for the world. 

I challenge you to answer one question every night before you go to sleep: “Did I do something good today?”

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by Nathan Coumbe

Should You Get Paid Every Time You Send an Email?

Wouldn’t it be great if you got paid every time you sent an email? I dunno about you, but I’d love to live in that world. 

I send hundreds each week. If I earned the price of a postage stamp on each one, I could make a pretty easy living.

Am I Devaluing Myself?

I’m an up-and-coming copywriter. To make a living, I spend several hours each week reaching out to potential clients, offering them my services as a writer and marketer. I do this because I’m a salesperson. And if you’re trying to make a living in a similar way, so are you. 

I recently came across a Twitter post telling me that I was devaluing my work by selling myself. To sum it up, the writer said I should either:

  1. Have clients beating a path to my door willing to pay me, OR 
  2. I should get paid every time I send an email, proposal, or pitch to a potential client before any work is done. 

I understand the author’s point. My time is valuable, and it stinks when I feel I’ve “wasted” my time pitching to someone who doesn’t buy. But I 100% disagree.

Sales Professionals Don’t Get Paid to Prospect

How do professional salespeople get paid? They sell a product and get paid a commission. They don’t get paid when they prospect or send proposals to customers. The only way they make money is by closing a sale. 

I sell a service, and I only get paid if I provide that service. And that service is not pitching ideas. If it was, I’d be a billionaire right now because I have a few thousand ideas each day, and most of them are awful.

Selling Your Service Is Like Applying for a Job

Each time I pitch a client, I’m putting in a job application. Think about all the jobs you’ve applied for in your adult life. What if you got paid for every job application you ever completed? Wouldn’t that make for an awesome career?

Often we don’t have a lot of experience for the jobs we are applying for, especially if we are new to the workforce or a field. When asked what a beginner should do, the Tweeter said, “get paid to pitch.”

We’ve all gotten those phone calls from sleazy salespeople. Does this sound familiar?

“I’ve got this great new system that will keep you from paying any taxes this year. But I can only tell you what it is if you sign a non-disclosure agreement and pay me $2,000 upfront.”

You know you’re losing money and going to jail if you get in bed with that guy. You don’t want to have anything to do with an idea you can only hear after signing an NDA and paying upfront.

How to ACTUALLY Get Paid to Pitch 

There are two parts to this tactic:

  1. Charge higher prices to compensate for the inevitable rejections you’ll get.
  2. Overdeliver to your clients and customers so it’s worth paying you higher prices!

One of my favorite phrases comes from the marketing genius Seth Godin:

“You’ll pay a lot, but you’ll get more than you paid for.”

That is the only way this guy’s Tweet works. 

Selling Is Tough

I get it. Creating proposals, pitching to customers, and facing possible rejection—it really stinks. It takes a lot of time and hard work. It’s frustrating. 

But let me be clear: THAT DOESN’T MEAN ANYONE OWES YOU ANYTHING!

The world doesn’t work that way. We are all in sales, and much of that involves reaching out to others. It means facing the very real possibility of rejection coupled with no monetary gain. 

So go ahead and pitch. And if you want to get paid for that, build the cost into your pricing structure. 

But make sure you overdeliver on that promise to your customer. 

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by Nathan Coumbe

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

“What do I want to do when I grow up?”

We have all asked, or been asked, this question.

But it’s the the wrong one—it has multiple answers that change much too often.

Instead, ask yourself : “who do I want to be?”

How do I want to contribute?

What legacy do I want to leave when I am gone?

It might be part of what you do for a living, but it might not.

More likely, you will approach everything you do in life—your job and your personal relationships—with a new sense of wholeness and possibility.

If we start by asking the wrong question, we will never get the right answer.

But if you ask the right question, you’ll at least be on the path to the right answer.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Why is freelancing so terrifying?

We human beings like security – it encompasses the first two levels of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.” It’s fundamental.

To get that feeling of security, we work hourly wage jobs; we try to get hired at famous companies for regular, unchanging salaries with hopes for a 3% raise every year (which doesn’t outpace inflation).

Freelancing – being “a knight without a king” as Seth Godin likes to say – seemingly goes against that feeling of security. There is no guarantee; you don’t get paid simply for showing up somewhere for a specified amount of time.

But it’s better.

The illusion

There is no security in hourly rates; there is no security in working for a famous company. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, the moment something bad or unexpected happens, your security is at risk.

The security is an illusion. No longer can we work at the same company for 20 years, slowly moving up a corporate ladder, waiting for that day when we call it quits and HR hands us a gold watch and the envelope containing our pension information.

There is no security anymore. There is only you.

“Security lies in our ability to produce.”

–General Douglas MacArthur

Make your own security

What do you already know or do well?

Can you write? Create websites? Draw and paint? Build things with your hands? Sell?

Maybe you’re a whiz at smoothing customers’ ruffled feathers. Perhaps you have a knack for motivating and encouraging other people.

There is something you already do, or something you already know about, that other people are willing to pay for. You simply have to muster the courage to offer it to them.

Each of us must explicitly state to ourselves what we know how to do and do well. That knowledge and the willingness to execute on it are the only things that give us any sort of real security in the workplace.

If you can find someone and offer them something they are willing to pay for, and do that over and over again, you are a freelancer. You have no boss, no one telling you what to do next, but also no one telling you, “I’m sorry but we have to let you go.”

You have no guarantee of income – in either direction! You can make as little or as much as you want, as long as people are willing to pay for it. But I’ll bet you got stopped on the phrase “no guarantee” or “as little…as you want” while glossing over the rest of it.

As a freelancer, you determine your job, the work you do, your hours, the people you serve. Perhaps it’s not the loss of security you fear: it’s the fear of complete and total responsibility for your success or failure.

We aren’t used to that, but it’s the only way we’ll survive.

Secure your own future today. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you.

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by Nathan Coumbe

You are a salesperson…don’t screw it up!

“But Nathan! I’m not in sales!” I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.

What’s your role at work? Office manager? Administrative assistant? Florist? Customer service rep? Your title doesn’t matter–you’re in sales.

We all work on commission. Perhaps that commission is a “guaranteed” bi-weekly paycheck for a certain amount each time, or maybe you are paid on the number of hours you work each week. It doesn’t matter–you work on commission.

How is that possible? If you don’t show up to work, you don’t get paid. If you screw something up badly enough, you get fired. Your income is only guaranteed if you work, just like a salesperson’s income is only guaranteed if she sells.

Even if you physically don’t work in a role where you are allowed to sell a product or service to a customer, you are still involved the sales process, because you represent your company.

If you offend a customer or badly represent your brand in some way, it’s quite possible you will lose a sale for the person who actually works in sales.

Since sales is the only part of a company that actually produces revenue, any lost sale results in lost income for your employer which might mean you don’t get that raise you were hoping for next year. Or worse yet, you might get fired.

“Not everyone can make a sale, but ANYONE can lose a sale.”

–Zig Ziglar

We all get paid for results, regardless of how well it’s hidden in hourly wages or a regular salary.

Think like a salesperson.

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by Nathan Coumbe

You are self-employed

All of us, if we do work that causes us to get paid, are self-employed. It doesn’t matter who signs our paychecks–we work for ourselves.

What does it mean to be self-employed? It means you are your own boss. It means your income is based on your work.

If a freelancer or entrepreneur doesn’t show up for work–if they don’t create enough value for another person–they don’t get paid. This is obvious when you don’t work for a big company with payroll every two weeks.

What about the salesperson working on commission who does have someone who signs her paycheck? If she doesn’t contact the customer, provide value to that customer, and make a sale, she doesn’t get paid.

What about you? The hourly worker or the salaried cubicle-dweller (perhaps virtual cubicle-dweller is more accurate right now)? What happens if you don’t show up for work?

You don’t get paid.

What happens if you fail to create value for the company that employs you?

You get fired.

As soon as you realize you are self-employed–as soon as you realize that you are responsible for the value you create and the income you generate, regardless of how you get paid–you will secure your future.

Even if you are laid off, the attitude of self-employment will cause you to stand out from droves of people who want to know what a company can do for them rather than what they can do for their potential employer.

Adopt the self-employed mindset and you’ll rarely have to worry where your next paycheck comes from.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Grow dandelions or develop software?

My mentor Dan Miller said something profound which I would like to share today:

(I’m paraphrasing) It is better to grow dandelions if that is what you are truly passionate about than it is to learn software development.

What does he mean? Instead of looking out there–into the world and the job market to see what jobs are there–look inward and find what you are both truly passionate about and skilled at doing. Then find a way to generate income with that passion and talent.

If you hate working with computers or can’t stand plugging in thousands of lines of code everyday, why would you spend time and money learning those skills? Simply to make a lot of money?

If you spend 1/3 of your day (and remember you also sleep 1/3) doing something you hate, will money really compensate you for your misery?

It is better to do something simple or common at an uncommonly high level of excellence, and find a way to generate income doing it, than it is to try to fit yourself into something you hate simply for money.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Talk isn’t just cheap–it’s poor.

Proverbs 14:23 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible:

“Work brings profit,

but mere talk brings poverty.”

–Proverbs 14:23

Talking about your ideas – the job you want, the business you feel like starting, the person you are thinking of asking out – does absolutely nothing for you.

Action – taking steps towards a goal – is the only thing that brings reward. Waiting for some outside force – a company to find and employ you or a government to protect you – won’t get you anywhere.

Mere talk is impoverishing.

Work and take action today.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Finding ideal work

“For 95% of people out there, finding something they pretty much like to do most of the time would be a 100% improvement. Shoot for that, and from there, fine-tune toward the ideal.”

–Peter Bowerman, The Well-Fed Writer

Each of us wants to find that dream job that hits every single point on our “ideal career cheat sheet.” So we read, listen, take tests, research, and obsess over and over again without actually ever stepping foot into a field or career to test it out for ourselves, especially if that career is freelancing, entrepreneurship, or any sort of work where you are your own boss.

Start with what you want

I’m learning each day what I want more than anything else is freedom and a better, more balanced lifestyle over some ideal dream job I can’t seem to figure out. That is why I’m exploring this freelance writing field. I’m a good writer (good enough), and I enjoy it well enough, and it would give me time and money to explore the other things I love in life–something my current situation doesn’t allow. I can’t say that I absolutely love every second of writing, every article I write, or every item I write about, but what I do love is the freedom.

My mentor, Dan Miller, has a saying: “passion is more developed than discovered.” Try something out and see if a passion for it, or some aspect of it, develops rather than waiting around for some ideal career to magically drop into your lap.

It’s a quest

I’m not saying “what the hell–just pick something,” but perhaps I am saying “MERELY pick something.” Take something you think you might enjoy well enough, try it out, and see if it gets you closer to your ideal situation. You won’t know until you actually experience it. Then it becomes a step on the ladder to your ideal “dream career.” It’s a process of discovery and exploration.

I don’t think this quest for dream work is a true-false test, and neither is life. Everything we do is more of an open-ended essay question you get to write yourself.

The trick is to start writing.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Encourage ignorance (and overcome it)

When you are serving other people (i.e., working), there will be times when you don’t have the answer to the problem in front of you.

Perhaps you work in customer service, a retail store, or banking. Someone is going to ask you a question for which you do not have an answer. What do you do?

If you went to a typical school or were processed through typical corporate training, you might have a few possible answers immediately:

  1. Tell the customer you don’t know, you’re sorry, and you can’t help them.
  2. Immediately go to your boss and ask her to give you the answer or take over the situation entirely (unless your boss is a crazy control freak and wants her finger on the pulse of every step you take, she won’t appreciate this).
  3. Try to figure it out yourself by moving through all the formulas, procedures, and company policies with which you were conditioned (definitely not the worst option, but it’s limited in its effectiveness).

Do you see a better option?

The better option

You are surrounded by people that know more than you, have more experience than you, and do the same type of work as you, either in person or resources on the internet. Ask them for help, but take it one step further.

Learn alongside the person you are trying to help. It’s easy and has two benefits: 1) the person in need gets the help he or she requires, and 2) you learn something new that will be in your toolbelt for next time.

Here’s your answer when you don’t know:

“I don’t know the solution to this problem, but I guarantee we can find one. Let’s find out what it is together!“

The flaw in our system

Most of our education and training conditions us to work by ourselves, independently from everyone else, under an authority figure who has all the answers.

“Only raise your hand if you know the answer” becomes “never acknowledge ignorance in front of customers!” That will only discredit you. They will lose faith in you. You will be humiliated.

Actually, no – by being humble enough to admit your ignorance, they will respect you for not lying to them, not giving them bad information that will fail or hurt them in practice, and not wasting their time.

The real world is full of collaboration, synergy, and needs us to use all available resources to find the answers. The real world is an open-book group test.

It is not full of, nor should we encourage, independent work with no outside help, an authority figure with all the answers, or a lack of information that you are not allowed to remedy by looking up the answer.

If the real world isn’t like that, why are we training people to operate that way?

Be bold, be brave, and admit your ignorance. Then go find the answer using every person and resource at your disposal.

“I don’t know – let’s find out together.”

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