On today’s episode, I’m sharing how my life path appears so askew that one may think I’ve been drunk this entire time…
All my businesses have been more than 10 years in the making… and I finally feel old enough to say that.
But seriously, upon reflection, I’m in awe of how my seemingly willynilly life path towards my businesses actually had some direction to it.
Let’s take my comedy show for example (ya, I’m also in show business).
My life on the stage started way back when I was in the HEIGHT of my ice hockey career.
There I was, going to the gym between high school class, working on my slap shot in practice, and being scouted by every university coach I could get in front of when suddenly…
I was struck by the theatre bug and fell in love with this new found art.
In fact… I was struck so heartily by Cupid’s stage arrow that it threw my entire hockey career into jeopardy. Eighteen years of dedication to one sport suddenly shadowed by the hot and heavy lust for make believe.
I’m sure you can imagine the shock wave that ripped through my family when I said adios to hockey, packed my bags, and headed off to university as a non-athlete.
Was theater my newest love or did it just shake my tunnel vision and show me that there was more to me than the pursuit of professional sports?
Whatever it did, I only knew how to pursue one thing with all I had. So, the moment I tasted the free independence of college, I auditioned for every play, joined comedy troupes, and even spent 5 months studying under the best theatre masters in Moscow, Russia (more on that in another episode).
I was thriving like I had never truly thrived before!! I’d finally found a passion I could dedicate my life to that could be a legitimate career. The summer after my senior year rolled around and I was off to Los Angeles to become… a movie star!!
When I reflect back on my days in LA I feel like I’m reflecting back on an entire lifetime.
Firstly, I loved it! That city eats, sleeps, and breaths show business like I did; however, as a non-US citizen, my days were limited.
I had only 365 of them to make it big.
I hustled. I practiced. I got in front of anyone who would listen.
Ice hockey deja vu
But as the year circled in on me I knew that “making it” in LA would actually take decades of my life and… decades off my passion.
The clock struck midnight, my visa expired, and I moped my way back to Canada via every national park along the west coast.
LA had lit such a fiery spark under me and yet I could slowly feel the glowing embers fade to grey…
I spent a couple of years in Canada auditioning, updating my headshots, and even working behind the scenes in the industry. I dimmed my dreams of acting in front of the camera to doing more production work and resolved to becoming a movie producer.
(I wouldn’t be the first person to get into an industry for passionate reasons just to find myself slowly settling behind a desk that was significantly less attractive).
You know that scene in the Titanic where Rose is floating on the door and has to slowly let Jack sink into the freezing depth of the mysterious ocean?
That was me. Slowly losing grip on the love Cupid’s bow sparked all those years before.
Creating a sustainable career in the film industry was too hard.
Auditioning over and over again and not getting picked cracked the porcelain of my passion.
I didn’t have enough social media influence to appease the casting directors.
Too many other actresses looked like me.
And I wasn’t obsessed with movies enough to know how to make one myself.
That was another piece of advice I heard a lot:
meh… we can’t all be Good Will Hunting.
So, I said goodbye to the acting career dreams, prepared for a full system reboot, and jumped to a path out of left field:
Online Virtual Assisting.
Hey, I figured, if I couldn’t travel the world and do cool shit acting in movies, then I’d build a remote freelancer business for doing those things instead.
I hired a coach, started a full-time Virtual Assistant business in 3 months while backpacking Ireland, and launched into the next big adventure of my life!
Total reboot.
I moved away from the movie city and headed straight for the mountain town.
I took my laptop to Greece, Mexico, Japan, and all over North America.
I was living life so large, I nearly forgot about my acting days those many years prior.
Except…
The pilot light of a true passion never goes out.
In 2020, I was tagged in a Facebook post about an upcoming meet up for improvisers. You know, like, Whose Line Is It Anyway.
I felt a little rusty (it had been nearly 12 years since I last improvised comedy on stage), but my little pilot light flickered, so I decided to register.
… you know that scene in The Notebook where several years later Allie and Noah meet again and their passionate love is rekindled over a couple of Budweisers in the room they first banged?
That was me and improv comedy.
Fast forward ahead and I’m now two years into co-founding, producing, and performing in a hugely successful comedy business.
How the fuck did I get here??
Listening to this story it may seem really obvious to you, but imagine trying to build this puzzle when you don’t have the box cover to go off of.
I was pursuing hockey. Remember?
Then I was in the thick a university degree.
I abandoned theatre performance for movie stardom.
Got my foreign ass kicked out of LA.
Switched gears and spent a number of years shifting into movie producing.
Gave up on that
Started a Virtual Assistant business out of the blue
Moved away from the bright lights, travelled, expanded into coaching
All just to end up back on stage.
When I think of my journey here it seems impossible that it could make any sense.
All I know is that I’ve been chasing dreams, ditching fizzled passions, jumping tracks, and making my poor parents dizzy!
And yet, here I am.
In business, on stage. Taking that advice I got more years ago than I can count:
Make and star in your own projects.
The path you are on right now may not make sense and you may feel lost in wondering where the hell you are even going (not to mention trying to explain to others WTF is going on).
But trust that along the way… on this journey… you are LEARNING and gaining experiences that WILL be applied in the future.
TEN OR TWENTY YEARS IN THE FUTURE!
Simply due to the fact that you wake up everyday and jigsaw in another puzzle piece means that all this crazy shit will connect and make sense! It’s impossible not to!
There’s a lesson I learned from ‘The Secret’. It’s both a book and a Netflix movie that is so fricken woo woo I nearly evaporated into buddha levels of enlightenment simply by holding it in my hands.
The lesson went something like this:
Think of that! You’re not about to see results from all the hard work you are doing now. You have to WAIT. The results of all your hard work today may not express themselves for… years!
Oh, and the results you ARE seeing today… those may be the sum of the actions you took so fucking long ago they feel bygone and abandoned.
Let me double down with another story.
When the pandemic struck, it negatively affected my online business. I was also birthing this new comedy show idea so, I had to adopt another flexible way to create income.
I got into catering events because it was fast, social, and easy.
Little did I realize at the time that this casual catering gig would catapult me into working at venues all around town and directly connecting me with their owners.
Guess how that has come in handy building a comedy show?
But wait, there’s more!
A little while back some room opened up in my Virtual Assistant roster making space for another client. I implemented all my teachings: reached out to my network, targeted Facebook groups, and actively prowled for my next dream client.
Who did I end up bringing on?
An overwhelmed performing artist, agent, and event manager.
Guess how that has come in handy building a comedy show?
Look, this may sound like universal energy voodoo shit, or perhaps it’s your superior entity of choice doing what they do best, but I’m not willing to give the stars 100% of the credit.
THIS IS ME!
Doing this for future me!!
And that’s what I want you to trust in. Right now, you are making moves and using your powerful electrons and protons to attract what will serve you. And, you also did this in the past!
So I have an exercise I want you to do.
I want you to reflect back– either by journaling on a piece of paper or flipping back through scrap books. Ask yourself these questions:
What were you like as a kid?
What studies interested you in school?
What groups did you join and activities did you get involved in?
Did you study in college? Find yourself traveling? Pursuing additional training or applying for specific jobs?
Write it down. Get it out of your head and see it all again with present-day eyes.
Through intentional reflection you may see that stars have been aligning and dots have been connecting. This willy-nilly path you’ve been forging may be more forward tracking than it feels.
And you’ll also find the outliers. The chapters in time when you took a gamble, tried something out of left field to see if you liked it. Even these dots may feel hard to connect, but every lesson we learn is still a little accoutrement on the charcuterie of life.
Only now do I finally feel old enough to say “my business ideas have been 10 years in the making” because any younger and I wouldn’t have had enough data to start seeing these patterns!
Back when I was in university, I felt a lot of pressure to determine who I was going to be for the rest of my life based on the fraction of it I’d been living. How confusing!
I was studying economics (which I love), spending all my free time in the theatre (which I love), and untangling an 18-year identity tied to sports (which I love).
None of those things made sense together, and in panic I kept postponing the looming Sophie’s Choice between them all.
And yet, here I am. Being an entrepreneur (which I love), in show business (which I love), working as a team, and hustling like every future-determining scout is watching.
DON’T GIVE UP IF SHIT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE RIGHT NOW
There are a lot of people my age that have hit more classic milestones:
Landed their career job, got married, bought a house, and started a family.
Those are milestones that one can clearly quantify across an age timeline.
So when you hit a certain age and you’re not married. No house. No kids, and definitely no career job, you feel behind.
It’s so much harder to measure what the hell you’ve been doing with your life.
However, maybe you’ve haven’t looked back and seen the progress you HAVE been making.
The work you have been putting in.
All the breadcrumbs you have been laying this entire time.
Don’t be fooled, Hansel, if you don’t initially recognize what linear progress looks like for you.
Grab a pen. Open your laptop.
Reflect.
Look back through your life and start connecting those dots and seeing that you’ve been guiding yourself this entire time.
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