Everybody has multiple points of having to redirect where their footsteps were heading. The beauty of being single in entrepreneurship is that you can redirect as many times as you want without the added pressure of feeling like somebody is waiting on you to be successful.”
– Asha Wilkerson, Esq.
Episode Summary:
This week, we are talking about recognizing the superpower that singleness can be while building your business. If you’re single and you’re not sure if you should be focusing your energy on looking for a partner or growing your business, tune into this episode.
From having the freedom to invest your money and your time the way you want to allowing yourself to be indecisive and making room for failure, this episode will help you recognize and maximize the benefits of being single as an entrepreneur.
What You’ll Learn On This Episode:
- [01:12] Why you shouldn’t be against being in a relationship
- [02:18] The number one reason why singleness is a superpower
- [03:48] Why you should use this time to nurture yourself
- [04:06] The value of having the freedom to invest your money the way that you want
- [06:11] The superpower of getting to control your time
- [08:22] Singleness allows you to flip-flop and be indecisive until you figure things out
- [08:50] The role of failure in entrepreneurship
- [10:26] Experiences of being an entrepreneur before divorce
- [11:13] A recap of all the ways that singleness is a superpower in business
- [12:12] Maximizing the benefits of whatever season you find yourself in
Resources Mentioned:
- Learn more about the TRANSCEND Community
- Get the New Business Checklist for free
- Need help forming your LLC in California? Check out From Me to LLC
- Download your Wealth Building Roadmap
Connect With Us:
- On Instagram | @ashawilkersonesq
- On Facebook | @ashawilkersonesq
- Connect with Asha on LinkedIn!
- Subscribe to our YouTube channel!
EPISODE 63
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:03.6] AW: You’re listening to the Transcend Podcast. I’m your host, Asha Wilkerson, an Attorney by training and an educator at heart. This podcast is all about empowering you to build a business and leave a legacy. Here’s the thing, the wealth gap in America is consistently increasing and while full-time entrepreneurship is not for everyone, even a side hustle could change your financial landscape if you’re intentional about using your business to build wealth. I’ve run my own law firm for over 10 years and in that time, I’ve helped countless California businesses go from idea to six figures. On this podcast, we talk about what it truly takes to build a sustainable business and find financial freedom. Let’s dive in.
[DISCUSSION]
[0:00:47.3] AW: Hey everyone, welcome back. It’s another episode of Transcend the Podcast and you are here with your host, Asha Wilkerson. I am so excited to be here and I am thrilled that you are listening. This week, we are talking about using singleness as a superpower in entrepreneurship or maybe not quite using it as a superpower but recognizing the superpower that singleness can be while you’re building your business.
Now, I am not someone who says, you know, “Build a business only while you’re single” or that, “Men are bad” or that “Women are bad” or “relationships are bad” not at all. I am presently single, I am ready to be in a relationship and I’m actively pursuing that in my personal life but until that happens, I am 100% without a doubt, for certain, going to maximize this season that I am in because no matter where you are, there are benefits, opportunities and constraints to whatever it is that you are experiencing and going through.
While there’s some stuff going on in singleness that maybe fun or maybe to challenge, you better believe that in partnership, there’s going to be some stuff that’s fun and also a challenge at the same time. So I just want to highlight for you, if you were one of those people that’s like, “Oh man, I’m single, I’m not quite sure what to do” where they feel like, “Should I build my business, should I find a spouse?”
Look, I’m going to break it down for you, to let you know why it’s so important to absolutely maximize the season that you’re in, so that when you move out of that season, you have no regrets and no missed opportunities.
[0:02:17.8] So let’s just go ahead and get started. The number one reason why singleness is a superpower is that you really only have to think about yourself. Now, I think about this all the time because not only am I single but I also live alone, which means that I don’t have to think about what time of day I’m recording this podcast because I’m not trying to wake somebody up or because someone else has to be on the phone call.
I am only worried about what I want and need to eat and when I want and need to eat and so if I go, you know, four or five hours working really hard on a project, I don’t have to stop and think about providing for somebody else or caring for somebody else. Same thing with children too, even if you’re single but you have kids or you’re thinking about having kids, that’s an extra responsibility where you just have to worry about somebody else other than yourself.
I know it sounds selfish and I wouldn’t say that it’s selfish. I think it’s just the true thing. When you are single, you get to choose who you are paying attention to and if you absolutely can make yourself the priority and I think that you should because when you partner with other people, when you have little dependents like children running around, you should still try and make yourself a priority. But you have other competing needs that will infringe upon your ability to take care of yourself. Like, you’ll have to have help getting the space to take of yourself whereas right now, in singleness, it’s all about you.
So please, please, please, do you boo and do it to the max, do it to the best. Again, not saying that you have to be selfish or rude or self-centered but you really only have to think about yourself and what’s best for yourself.
So take care of yourself, nurture yourself so that you can grow. Nurture yourself so that you can be creative, nurture yourself so that when your time gets to be a little less abundant, you have poured into yourself and you are mentally and emotionally ready for the task at hand.
[0:04:06.7] The number two perk of singleness being a superpower in entrepreneurship is that you have the freedom to invest your money the way that you want. You don’t have to check with anybody else and say, “Um, I think I want to pay $2,000 a month for this course for the next six months and I’m not sure how that affects the household.”
If you decide that paying $2,000 a month for this next course, which you think is going to take your business to the next level and that’s how you want to spend your money, you are the final check in balance on that. You don’t have to get anybody else’s opinion and more importantly, you don’t have to get anybody else’s approval because your money is your own.
When you were sharing your money or when you have joint financial responsibilities, you do have to take other people and their wants and their needs into consideration because if you’re building a community together, your finances are actually going to contribute to that. So before you have to think about what is best for the community, you can think about what’s best for you and what you want to do because you’re in a period of singleness.
So even if you have been doing that but haven’t really recognized it as a super power, I just want you to be aware of what it is, not because you need to go tout or brag to other people or throw it in somebody else’s face but often times, we don’t recognize the advantages or the privileges that we have until they’re gone.
So, I want to just acknowledge for a second, right? That being single as an entrepreneur can be a superpower, it can absolutely be a privilege because you get 100% control over how you want to use your money.
I just had a consultation with somebody the other day, fantastic consultation. She wants to sign up for business coaching. She’s like, “I really need you, I really want to work with you, let me go talk to my husband.” I’m like, “I get it, well, I get it in theory.” I’m currently not married. Divorced, I was married once before but I just was thinking to myself, “Like, man, what a privilege that I can just decide to do what I want to do, when I want to do with my money and with my time.”
[0:06:11.4] Which leads me to the next point, the third super power of singleness in entrepreneurship is that you get control over your time. You don’t have to worry about taking care of anybody else. You don’t have to be on a set clock, you can take the time to figure out what your schedule is and what works for you.
I was just talking to a friend of mine yesterday and he is also single and it takes him a little while to get into a routine. He’s just one of those folks that it just takes about four or five days in a new place to get settled and he was in another country for a bachelor party and I think it was an all inclusive or something like that. But it was a number of people in the group and he said, one of the things that he wouldn’t have thought would have bothered him but it kind of did like it threw him off, it wasn’t angering or anything like that or aggravating but it just threw him off is that people were really eating three square meals a day.
Now, that’s important. It is important to nourish yourself. I couldn’t think of the word there for a minute but he says he hasn’t eaten breakfast in a long time because he gets up in the morning, does his routine and then maybe starts to eat breakfast around 11 or 12 but he’ll get started on whether it’s the workout or stretching or get started on work.
Then when he was on a house full of other people, it was like, “Come on, come on, we got to go to breakfast” and then a couple of hours later, “Okay, okay let’s go to dinner” or go to lunch and then a few hours after that, “Okay, okay let’s go to dinner.” He said he felt like he was force feeding himself because that wasn’t his routine and he wasn’t on his own time. He was on the group’s collective time.
So if he would have been by himself and just like you are if you were single as you are building this business, you have control over your time. When do you want to wake up, when do you want to eat, when do you want to write emails, when do you want to set that deadline, when do you want to go to the networking event? When do you want to, I don’t know, write a blog post, record a podcast? Whatever it is that you want to do, you have control over your time.
If you feel like working from seven to 11 PM, go ahead and get it. That’s absolutely your choice. If you feel like working from 5 AM to 11 AM, absolutely, go ahead and get it. That’s your choice. You don’t have to worry about anybody else because you are in control of your own path, your own destiny and your time.
[0:08:21.3] Now, the fourth reason why I think singleness is a superpower in entrepreneurship is because you could flip-flop and be indecisive until you figure it out. When I know that someone is waiting on my decision, an extra little bit of pressure on me to figure it out. Whereas when I am just doing something for myself, I feel like I can take the time to work through it and decide, you know, what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, how it’s going to happen.
Part of entrepreneurship is trying and failing. I know we don’t like the word failing. Failure is not something that is celebrated in our culture, in our society but it is absolutely a part of living life, right? There is nothing that you probably have done one time and you’ve got it. We learn from our mistakes and I wouldn’t even say mistakes, we learn from what doesn’t work, right?
I think there is a quote about Thomas Edison about the light bulb and you know, I think it was the 100th try that we have the light bulb as we know it today and he’s like, “I didn’t fail 99 times. I found 99 ways that didn’t work” or a hundred ways that didn’t work, right? There is value in that.
[0:09:31.4] Back to my actual point of being able to flip-flop and be indecisive, there is value in the process of figuring out what it is that you want to do and how you actually want to do it. Often times we think because we see things on social media, the coaches that we follow, things like that, often people aren’t sharing their repeated moments of having to reset and recalibrate.
Often times people share like a one big event that, “I was here and I was stressed out and I felt like I was failing and then all of a sudden, I did this and everything changed” but everybody has multiple points of having to redirect where their footsteps were heading and the beauty of being single in entrepreneurship is that you can redirect as many times as you want without the added pressure of feeling like somebody is waiting on you to be successful, waiting on you to figure it out.
When I was married, a while ago now, every decision that I made I had to keep my husband in mind, right? Which is what you should do when you’re in partnership, think about who you are affecting. Now, which at some point I will say that was kind of grounding because there’s this thing called the paradox of choice when you can do anything you want. It is almost like you have too many choices and it is hard to make a choice but now, I can do whatever I decide to do. I can take my time to figure it out. I can try one thing one day and then decide that that’s actually not what I want to do or it is not working and let me try it differently the next day.
I can flip-flop or I wouldn’t even say float around because it is certainly more decisive than that, more intentional than that but I get to take my time to figure it out without having the added pressure of someone waiting on me, right?
[0:11:13.7] So again, singleness is certainly a superpower in business because of all of the reasons that we just talked about. You really only have to think about yourself. That’s all you have to think about is yourself when you are single. You have the freedom to invest your money the way that you want to. Ah, what power to be able to decide that you want to hire this coach or try this program or stop doing something, right?
You have control over your time. That is so important. You don’t have all these competing interest that are begging for your time and if you do, it’s easier to decide that you want to do this or don’t want to do that because guess what? It’s just you.
Lastly, you can flip-flop and be indecisive until you figure it out. You don’t have to take on any added pressure to hurry up and get it “right.” You get to decide how you want to do it. You get to flow through all of the things that will give you feedback that we may interpret as not working but are so informative in finding what does work.
So wherever you are in your season, whether you’re partnered or not partnered, looking for a partner, happily un-partnered, wherever it is, ground into the period that you are in right now, really think about the benefits and the privileges that you are carrying from your position and lean into those because when your position changes, it will be more clear.
When your status changes it will be more clear all of the benefits that you had in that previous season and I don’t want you to feel like you missed out on it. So take an inventory of what you’re doing, what you have access to, what your privileges are and maximize them so that when your status or your season changes, you’ll be ready for the next one, leaving nothing on the table.
All right you all, I love you, love you, love you. Can’t wait to talk to you next week. I am super excited to continue to talk about building our businesses and leaving legacies and yeah, that’s it for now. Ciao.
[END]
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