My First Two Months Living the Self Employed Life

I picked up a guy last Friday (7/8/16) while I was driving for Uber who told me he was using the Wi-Fi at the Barnes & Noble from where I had picked him up. It reminded me of my first two months of self-employment after I left my corporate gig last June 2015. My first Monday after I left, I got dressed in my office clothes and packed my laptop and drove up to Manchester, New Hampshire and found a Wi-Fi at a Starbucks. I was taking an online marketing course offered by another Online Guitar Teacher who was marketing his marketing program as a teacher who had found success and if I did what he advised then I too would be successful as an Online Guitar Teacher. So every day for these 2 months I read his materials of "how-to" write my copy for my website and I wrote what I wanted to write on my Guitar Lesson Site by following his advise. Of course, I take full responsibility for the content on my site and if it's not working it is my no means proof that this gentleman's advise was in error but perhaps I didn't write my copy exactly as he instructed though I did try to do so. I have also since then revised and added to my site content a bit.

I would sit in my car and connect my laptop to the Starbucks wifi while I sipped on an iced Latte. I had $12k in my checking account and no worries in the world. I read a paragraph or so on the instructions he gave and then I opened a Word doc and tried my hand at writing the message I thought fit the ideas of the instructions. A lot of what he had to say was that my copy needed to be less about me and more about what my guitar students would gain by taking lessons with me. At the same time he stated that my copy should under promise the benefits so when the student took lessons with me they would feel like they got over delivered in value. So I tried to make sure my messaging didn't go over the top like "You will be the best blues guitar player in the world after taking only 2 months of lessons with me!"

Every day, Monday through Fridays, for those first 2 months I left my apartment dressed for work, got in my car and drove down the street so all my neighbors would think I still had a job at my corporate gig. It was fun too. I remember how glad I was to decide at 2pm to come home early and be back in my living room practicing my guitar and by 5pm was back to things like my Facebook page.

Of course by the third month I was getting tired of this charade so I took a 2 week vacation, That was what I told my neighbors when they asked me why my car was in the parking lot for those 2 weeks.