I thought teaching guitar would be my dream job.

At 15, I knew I wanted to be a performer. At 17, I picked up the guitar. I had a great teacher who told me I surpassed him within one lesson (impossible, but it kept me motivated). I had a natural knack for it. Some talent. But I still had to develop it as a skill.

About a year and a half later, my teacher was leaving his job at a music store. He asked if I wanted to take his place teaching guitar. I said yes. It sounded cool.

So I started teaching. And within a very short amount of time, I realized: This might not be for me.

Teaching guitar drained me. Fast. Sure, it was nice that I got to play my instrument so much. If a student didn't show up, I could sit there and practice, mess around with tone, try different things. But I had to give a lot of attention to the students. Make sure they were doing the right thing. Make sure they were practicing.

And I'd often find a face staring back at me. "Have you mastered that skill already?" They hadn't gotten anywhere with it. They'd played it once or twice and were just sitting there. I thought, "Wait—is it not obvious that you need to repeat and practice this over and over to get good at it?"

I guess it was super obvious to me. Not so obvious to my students.

Don't get me wrong—I have my good moments with teaching. I appreciate it. It was an income source in my early career. I was a full-time musician for over 10 years, and teaching made up a part of my income. Yes, I ended up teaching for over 10 years. And every once in a while, even in recent years, I'd take on the occasional student.

But I thought for sure: This is a shoo-in. This is a dream job. I get paid to play guitar. Isn't that what I want to do?

And I found pretty quickly that it took up a lot of time. A lot of energy. I was supposed to have all this other time and energy to practice at home, rehearse, record, make music—and I just could not find it.

People sometimes think you can't figure these things out without going at it for five, 10, 20, 30 years. But in my experience? You can figure out pretty early on if it's not a perfect match.

I did my best through the years to conduct myself as a professional. To provide my students with the best quality training I could offer them. But teaching guitar just wasn't for me. It drained me too much.

In this post (and video), I share why teaching guitar wasn't the perfect fit I thought it would be—and what I learned about energy, time, and "dream jobs." https://davidandrewwiebe.com/?p=28039

How did I get to where I am today?

People ask me this all the time. And honestly? It wasn't by picking a destination on a map and saying, "This is where I want to go."

Sure, I had visions. Feelings. Notions of where I wanted to go. But it was never clearly articulated or defined. There were different steps. A lot of lessons. A lot of years in between.

From 2014 to 2016, I said yes to everything. Opportunity was flowing. I was juggling multiple gigs—teaching, blogging, ghostwriting—whatever came my way. In 2016, I stepped away from everything else and focused on blogging and ghostwriting because they were the most profitable things in my life. I focused on the goose that laid the golden egg. That took me all the way up to 2024.

Then 2024 happened. Everything fell apart. No contracts coming in. Sponsorship deals weren't working out. Freelancing gigs weren't coming together. And the few gigs that were coming together? They weren't paying me enough.

But you know what? I think it was a good thing. All the noise got out of the way. No noise in my inbox. No noise on social media. No noise on my phone. It all disappeared. It all dried up. It was gone.

And that's how I noticed a message in my inbox one day from LinkedIn. Someone was looking for a writer who had reviewed media—video games, TV shows, things like that. I'd had some experience doing that. That turned out to be the contract I now have in big tech.

The contract has paid pretty well. And one of the things I started doing was saving 10% of my income every single time a paycheck came in. That's one of the reasons I'm able to operate in greater solvency now. And when that part of my life was restored? Other contracts and other opportunities started showing up for me again.

Here's the thing: I don't have backup plans. I have multiple Plan A plans. There's no Plan B. My Plan A includes my big tech contract, IndieCareerFormula.com, and a referral marketing business. Those are the three or four things that continue to create not just financial stability in my life, but an opportunity to thrive.

In this post (and video), I share the full story of how I got here—and what I'm building now. https://davidandrewwiebe.com/from-financial-chaos-to-solvent-how-i-stopped-bleeding-money/

Why do so many brilliant creatives stay broke?

You do great work. You put your best foot forward. You pour everything into your craft. And yet… you still struggle to make an income. You still can't get your work in front of the right audience.

Sound familiar?

In this post (and video), I break down three reasons why so many talented creatives struggle financially—and what to do about it.

First, stubbornness. I'm guilty as sin of this one. My value of freedom was so strong that I refused to compromise. It had to be my way. I was unyielding. Unbending. But you know what happened when I started saying yes instead of no? I found a lot of work. High-paying work. In a variety of different capacities. Some of the coolest contracts I've ever done came through things that initially looked like nothing I would normally do.

Second, you're convinced of the superiority of your product. I've worked really hard on my craft. I think my writing is really good. I think I'm a great teacher. I think my courses and programs are top-tier.

But here's the problem: If you're convinced your work is better than most of what's out there, you probably don't put as much effort into sharing it, promoting it, or marketing it. And the customer? They have no idea until they buy it.

So having a superior product is nice… but it often convinces us creatives that there's no need for promotion. And that's just not the way it works. There's no market advantage to having the best product.

Third, you're unwilling to be a true do-it-yourselfer. Author, entrepreneur, and investor James Altucher wrote a book called Choose Yourself. There's a quote in it where he basically says, "Artists must be entrepreneurs. That is your choice,” suggesting there is no other choice.

A true do-it-yourselfer is an entrepreneur. I didn't identify this as a personal struggle until 2011, when I was introduced to network marketing. That's where I got all my fundamental core training in business. It was like someone turning on a light switch in a dark room.

The bottom line: We've got to be willing to create our own opportunities. That's the only way forward now. There's no one coming to save you. We've got to go out there and share our work, create partnerships, and develop opportunities. That's what it looks like to be a true do-it-yourselfer. https://davidandrewwiebe.com/?p=28028

I almost didn't pick up the phone.

2011. The worst year of my life. Working five jobs. Falling behind on mortgage payments. Barely keeping my head above water.

Then one day, my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number. It looked like spam. I was in the habit of ignoring calls like that. But for some reason… I picked up.

It was the bank. "We can refinance your mortgage," they said.

I had no idea what that even meant. "What would that allow me to do?" I asked. They started explaining how it would change the amount I was paying. How it could put a bunch of money back in my pocket. "Sign me up. Say no more. If it's going to put money back in my pocket, I want to do this immediately."

It was a windfall. And here's the weird thing about windfalls: Most people find themselves back in the same situation they were before they got the windfall about a year to a year and a half later.

Refinancing my mortgage was the right move. It made a lot of sense at the time. It was something I needed to do. But only about a year and a half later? I ended up selling my house.

So that was the solution that saved me… temporarily.

In this post (and video), I share the story of the phone call that changed everything—at least for a little while. Because sometimes the thing that rescues you isn't the thing that changes everything. It's just the thing that buys you time. And sometimes, that's exactly what you need. https://davidandrewwiebe.com/?p=28013




I was working five jobs in 2011. Driving all over Calgary. 50, 60, 70 hours a week. Falling behind on bills.

And the hustle? It didn't save me.

Not because I wasn't working hard enough. I was working too hard at the wrong things.

In this post (and video), I break down why hustle alone doesn't work—and what I learned from one of the hardest financial seasons of my life.

I was living in established patterns that weren't serving me. I was supporting a lifestyle I couldn't actually afford. I was too spread out—five jobs meant no focus, no leverage, just survival mode. I had no time to find better opportunities. I was trying to do too much myself without the support I needed. And there were invisible expenses to the hustle—costs I couldn't see because I was too busy to notice.

My mindset was also off. I wasn't trying to find a job. I was trying to find a calling, a purpose, a passion. And while that's noble, I wasn't being pragmatic about my practical needs.

Here's the truth: Virtually everyone who makes their dream a reality works a job at some point. Sometimes for months. Sometimes for years. Sometimes much longer.

But one thing I've learned about financial setbacks is this: It puts you in a different mode. It bypasses your inhibitions. You start having conversations you wouldn't normally have. You start doing things you wouldn't normally do. You start texting people, messaging people, calling people—asking for things you wouldn't normally ask for.

And there are seeds of lessons within that. Lessons that can prove very valuable.

The hustle didn't save me. But what came after? That's a different story. https://davidandrewwiebe.com/?p=28008

If you watched my last two videos, you probably heard some of my values come screaming through. In this post (and video), I want to break down the three values that define success for me: freedom, love, and self-determination.

Freedom means the ability to do what I want, when I want, with whom and where. This is why I was so drawn to self-employment initially and entrepreneurship ultimately. I love how Derek Sivers describes it as "the Playground for adults." I never wanted to stop playing. I haven't stopped being a child ever. I just want to keep playing, keep experimenting, and keep enjoying myself for the rest of my life.

Love is something that's emerging as a value of mine. I'd often hear people talk about things like self-love and think to myself, "That's just nonsense, isn't it? What does that even mean?" But there were some valuable lessons for me in that. It seems like most things in life begin with self. The outer world reflects your inner world. If you don't have love on the inside, if you're unable to demonstrate love, if you don't have love for yourself… how can you expect the external world to respond in kind?

Self-determination is a synonym for entrepreneurship to me. It's you making an empowered decision. It's you going after the things that you want to go after. It's you pursuing opportunities that are in alignment with you. That's what it means to be self-determined to me.

If you're reading this right now, I imagine at least one of these values completely resonates with you. Share your values in the comments. I look forward to reading them. https://davidandrewwiebe.com/?p=27990

It's 2014. I'm living in a basement room in a house full of roommates, working away at my own venture. The year before, I'd lost pretty much all my contract work, freelancing gigs, and part-time jobs. Now I was trying to drum something up from scratch, surviving on maybe $500 a month.

I had an unpaid intern working with me at the time. He didn't always show up on time or put in a full day's work, but he was looking for something too — and he thought maybe internet marketing was it.

As with most things, there's no such thing as overnight success. But I had a decision to make: Do I go looking for work again? Do I try to find a job? Or am I going to keep building my business?

The decision I made was: I'm going to keep building my business. Because I didn't see the alternative as an option. I'd already been in jobs where I did things I didn't like, for far too little money, around people I didn't enjoy. It was time to take a chance on myself.

I'm tempted to leave this as a cliffhanger… but here's how it all turned out: I struggled for months. But when summer rolled around, things started to change. The wheels started to turn, and all of a sudden, opportunities started landing in my lap. People started throwing money at me to blog for them. I was asked to teach guitar again. I was asked to work at the university as a theater tech.

Suddenly, all these opportunities showed up for me. Maybe it wasn't exactly what I imagined… but there was still a miracle in that moment. The way things started showing up for me made me feel valued.

In this post (and video), I share that exact moment I realized the "safe path" wasn't for me — and what happened when I took a chance on myself instead. https://davidandrewwiebe.com/?p=27987