Free Solo and 8 lessons for art of self-employment
Imagine watching one man doing rock climbing on a 3200 feet wall without a rope! When I saw this in a documentary ‘Free Solo’, I was stunned. I couldn’t watch the documentary after initial few minutes since this concept of mountain climbing without any support is frightening. Still, I went on an watched the remaining documentary the next day. When I completed watching this documentary, I could only correlate it with self-employment. The documentary subject is Alex Honnold who is a professional rock climber who conquered El Capitan (EL Cap) which is a 3200 feet of sheer granite wall in Yosemite National Park in California. It was first climbed in 1958. The team who first climbed this wall took 46 days over 16 months because they couldn’t do it continuously. Let’s climb the correlation I thought of free solo climbing with self-employment.
1. Develop your map
“If the ultimate dream is to solo El Cap, then I need a good map of what that will take. Like mental image of what the hard parts are, where they are, what they will entail.”
-Alex Honnold
2. Follow your passion
“It’s the best thing in life to take the one thing you love most and have it work out that you can make a living that way.”
-Alex Honnold
I come across many people who hate their job but still continuing it as it is a high paying job. What is the point of leaving a life when you can’t enjoy your daily work? We spend almost two third of our waking hours in working for earning money.
Alex Honnold is passionate about climbing. He has achieved milestones in free solo climbing which many climbers will not dare to dream about those also.
Another observation I have about Alex Honnold is that he has been able to market his initiatives really well. Marketing is important aspect of self-employment.
3. Know the risk
Everybody who has made free soloing big part of their life is dead now.
What Tommy Caldwell, training partner for this initiative talked about in this documentary is the risk that a free solo climbers take. Self-employment may sound interesting but remember the risk. You don’t get this in self-employment: monthly fixed salary, perks of employment, respect from society and so on. What you get in self-employment is: uncertainty, always comparison with salaried people, perception that you are free from any professional commitments and so on.
4. Overcome the risk
“You’re not controlling your fear. You’re just trying to step outside of it.”
-Alex Honnold
Once you know the risk, you can plan to overcome it. Alex Honnold talks about looking at your fear objectively. As a self-employed professional, you will have to list down the risks along with how you will overcome those. If you don’t get paid on time, how will you pay your bills? In case if you are not well, how will you complete the project? And there can be many such scenarios like these.
5. Develop a business plan
“I try to expand my comfort zone by practicing the moves over and over again. I work through the fear until it’s not scary anymore.”
-Alex Honnold.
One of the important ways to overcome your risks in preparing a business plan. You may meet many people who will tell you that they did not prepare a business plan and they still succeeded. Remember, there is no formula for success, then why not to prepare and increase our chances of success? There are numerous ways to develop business plan, don’t get confused with complexities of the business plans, select business plan model which is simple.
6. Once you decide, don’t give it a second thought
“I’m not thinking about anything when I’m climbing, which is part of the appeal. I’m focused on executing what’s in front of me.”
-Alex Honnold
The essence of self-employment is focus. Don’t waste your time in only thinking, focus on the work at hand.
7. You should take the final decision
“I generally don’t climb something if it makes me feel fear. The beauty of soloing is that there’s no pressure – no one’s telling me to do it. So, if something seems scary, I don’t have any obligation to do it.”
-Alex Honnold
Don’t get into self-employment just because somebody else told you so. Also don’t take any project because of pressure from somebody else. Remember, you are the boss.
8. There is always room for improvement
“I have a journal of everything I’ve ever climbed since 2005. For the entry about free soloing Half Dome, I put a frowny face and added some little notes about what I should have done better, and then underlined it. Turns out that is one of my biggest climbing achievements.”
-Alex Honnold
The moment you will feel that you have achieved success, rethink. When you feel you have achieved revenue target, rethink? When you feel you have completed the project successfully, rethink. As a self-employed professional, you always have room for improvement! I have observed that Alex Honnold has used digital marketing very effectively, how about you?
Best joke is when an employed person says that she will not be able to get leave for some personal work. You get paid and unpaid leaves. If your personal work is important, then you should be ready to take unpaid leave. Exactly in this situation, it is assumed that the self-employed is handed over the personal work responsibility because she doesn’t need to take leave, her clients give her work without expecting professional work in return and they also pay on time without any follow-ups! Welcome to the jungle of free solo! 🙂
I would love to hear your comments and feedback and let us continue the learning journey.
Regards,
Self-employed since 2009
This blog is also posted here https://www.facebook.com/sachin.m.bhide/posts/10159796572818064