I haven't had a job for seven years.
Today is officially the end of my seventh year of being happily unemployed.
I left my job as a personal trainer on the 10th of October, 2017.
The actual story is that my boss had been cutting my hours since August to try to get me to leave on my own accord since they had no reasonable explanation for firing me.
So, by October 10th, I was barely employed anyway.
I was such a shocking employee...
When they started cutting my hours, I started giving my clients free sessions as a way to piss off the gym.
Since I was on a salary, PT sessions were how they made their money off me.
Needless to say, they weren't the biggest fans of that.
But regardless of the un-ceremonious resignation...
I still saw it as a big moment.
Because I had no intention of getting another job ever again.
By this point, I was having a big fat swing at freelance photo + video.
And I did okay... By my standards.
I made a little over $55k Aussie dollars in those first 12 months.
Which is about $37K USD.
And I remember being proud as can be.
But again, by my standards.
See, I grew up in a pretty well-off home for the first 14 years of my life.
My dad had a Ferrari when I was five years old.
My four siblings and I had an incredible early childhood.
But then, in 2012, when I was 14, my dad lost his business in an unsavoury partnership deal.
And then went bankrupt fighting it.
We lost everything.
I remember not fully understanding it at the time, but I knew things were pretty fucked up.
We've had our ups and downs as a family ever since, but we get through it.
That experience left me with a pretty low tolerance for risk.
And it also gave me a strangely low level of self-belief.
I remember back then when I left my job, thinking that $100,000 per year was the absolute peak of what I could ever dream of with my business.
And in those first few years of entrepreneurship, I didn't realise it at the time, but I was being taught a valuable lesson.
Between that October of 2017, and honestly, the end of 2021.
My business was survival.
I would make a few thousand dollars per month.
Sometimes higher, and sometimes nothing at all.
The biggest year I had between 2017 and 2021 was around $78,000AUD.
The lesson I didn't learn until much later was that your business is capped by your self-belief.
See the thing that most entrepreneurs don't understand.
Is that the business owner making $100,000 per year.
And that business owner making $100,000 per month.
Are working just as hard as one another.
I worked just as hard in 2019, as I do today.
Honestly, to some extent, I worked harder back then.
Yet today, my business makes over a million dollars a year.
The difference is the actions, and opportunities I take.
See Reader if you believe that your ceiling is $10,000 per month.
You will only ever take action and seek out opportunities that equate to $10,000 a month.
But you won't pass it.
I finally began to realise in the beginning of 2022 that I was the reason I hadn't achieved what I wanted to achieve.
My complete lack of self-belief was holding me back.
And so, for the first time in my life, I set a ridiculous goal.
I wanted to make $50,000USD in a single month, before the end of 2022.
I've told this story before, so I won't get into it in enormous detail.
But I made $29k in August of 2022.
$49,688 in November of 2022.
I surpassed the $50k goal a little late in February of 2023.
Then surpassed $100k in June of 2023.
I went on to do over $150k in September of 2023.
And in February of this year, made $320k in a single month.
All because I stopped playing within the boundaries of what I believed I was capable of.
Setting that goal was one of the greatest decisions I've ever made.
Something magical happens when you set a stupidly large goal.
You start to think bigger.
You start looking for evidence of its possibility.
And you start seeking out opportunities and acquiring skills that will help you get there.
But it has to start by understanding that you are the only thing standing in your way.
Whether it be the limited self-belief you were given from experiences growing up.
Or the lack of confidence you've developed from a few failed attempts.
Whatever it is, you are not a trustworthy source when it comes to setting your own goals.
So fuck your lack of self-belief.
Who gives a fuck if you've failed a few times.
Set goals so big they scare the fuck out of you.
Because the reality is, we are all capable of so much more than we think.
Myself included.
I have no doubt in my mind that even today, I'm holding myself back.
Because I'm still that fucked up kid who doesn't believe in himself.
I've just learnt not to trust that side of me.
I hope you found this valuable; I enjoyed writing it.
I believe in you Reader.
You've got this.
With enough time, you'll achieve things you can't even comprehend right now.
See you next time,
Tom Noske
...
By the way, I'm opening enrolments for Time to Build at the end of this month.
I'm making some profound changes to the program this time round, to really help some of you go on to crush it in 2025.
So, if you want to be a part of that cohort, click here and join the waitlist.