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