The End-of-Quarter Habit That Will Change How You Run Your Business

  Sam Vander Wielen: So you’re sitting here at the end of quarter one with two tabs open. One is your bank account, analytics and subscriber account, and the other one is your actual nervous system. And what you want is pretty simple. You just want quarter two to go better, not just in revenue or in growth, but in how it actually feels to run your business and live your life while you do it.

Most of us only do one kind of check-in. We either obsess over the numbers and ignore the vibes, or we talk about burnout and we don’t really ever look at the data and then we just kind of accidentally roll into the next quarter with the same habits, the same. I’ll fix it later energy and the same dead weight commitments dragging behind.

So in this episode, I’m walking you through a quarter one check-in that you can do in real time to check your stats and your vibes so that you can choose one clear focus for quarter two, map a simple plan to move it and adjust what you’re doing so you can actually feel better while you grow your business.

I’ll also share my quarter one gap year update. I can’t believe we’re at the end of one whole quarter already. And I’ll share what’s working for me, what’s not, and what I’m changing going into quarter two.

Welcome to On Your Terms®. I’m your host, Sam Vander Wielen, and On Your Terms® is a podcast for online business owners who want to be as present in their lives as profitable in their businesses. And it’s pretty hard to do either one of those if we don’t ever stop to check in on how things are going. So that’s what we’re doing today.

I also wanna make sure that, you know, I just created something very exciting. If there’s something you want me to cover on a future podcast episode, or even in one of my issues of my weekly newsletter, Sam’s Sidebar go ahead and click the submit a question link down below in the show notes to send me a video, a voice note, or even a text.

I cannot wait to see what you send me and hopefully feature it on a future episode or issue.

All right, so let’s hop right in and start doing our quarter one check-in. I’m gonna break this quarter one, check-in into two parts. We’re going to talk about checking in on your stats, some of the hard numbers and data behind your business, and then we’ll talk about the vibes, essentially how you’re feeling about how things went this quarter.

First things first, from a stats perspective, obviously you can look at all the obvious numbers of revenue, subscribers, followers, your click through rate, your open rate, essentially whatever you’re tracking. And if I just said this and you’re like, wait a minute, what am I tracking? This is a really good opportunity for you to realize that maybe we lost focus of what exactly we are focused on quarter to quarter in our businesses.

Typically speaking, we always want to know what revenue is, right? Because we need cash flow as a business. So that is one number you can’t really ignore. You shouldn’t really ignore. But after that, it depends on what your focuses are or even like what social channels essentially you have in your business.

So if you have, uh, email newsletter, for example, which I, I hope you do, then that would be like the subscriber count would be the thing to be looking at. Maybe you’re really focused on YouTube, and so you’re gonna have some YouTube specific stats, or you have a podcast like my podcast, and then you’re looking at podcast stats. So of course it applies to whatever you have and whatever you do.

One of the most important things is that when you are looking at these numbers, do the best that you can to look at them without mapping on any drama or any stories. So , for example, like if you pull up your YouTube stats or you pull up your Instagram stats and you’re like, oh, well I didn’t grow nearly as much as I thought, or I actually lost some subscribers this month, or something like that. Just be careful not to start filling in stories of like, I lost subscribers because clearly when I talk about this thing, it doesn’t go well or I lost subscribers because I didn’t post every day. And the people who are posting every day are the ones that get subscribers. I post three times a week and we are gaining a lot of subscribers every single month.

So like there are, I mean, on Instagram and so like there are lots of different stories here that do and don’t work for different people. The purpose of this exercise though is really just to put your like curious scientist hat on and go look at these numbers and be like, Hmm, that’s interesting. You might also have some surprising numbers, like you might have some surprising numbers that you’re like, this is doing a little bit better than I thought. Right? Or this is an area that’s picking up some steam.

I’d also be curious if, when you look at these stats, if you’re able to see any sort of relationship between them. Like for example, if you looked at your email list and you said in quarter one I was consistent with my email list, like whether that means you emailed once a week or every other week or whatever, but you were consistent.

Do we then see subscriber growth? Do we see less subscribers unsubscribing, fewer subscribers leaving, right. Or do we see even an increase in sales? Right? Do we start to see some, sort of relationship or pattern that forms here when you’re like, oh, when I email more consistently, I see an uptick in sales. Now, of course this would all also really help if we going into the next quarter, even a future quarter later this year, if we could update, uh, some of these things using unique URLs.

So for example, if you are really focused on, and like curious about setting up an experiment where you’re like, if I email my list once a week and every week I talk about my product or my service. Use a specific link that you only use in your email list to track whether or not you’re getting more clicks or purchases from those people.

You can also, if you use Kit’, like what I use to run my email list, formerly known as ConvertKit. I use Kit to run all of my funnels, but obviously build my entire email list. I’ll share my link down below. I have like a, a link to share with you for, uh, a discount or free plan depending on which one you need.

But if you use something like that, you can also use tagging for this purpose. So it’ll be like when people click on this link, tag them as, you know, X, Y, or Z. And that way you could attract some of this too, to be like, oh, that’s interesting, when I’m more consistent with my emails, when I talk about my product every week.

I see how also my revenue correspondingly went up, right? Same goes for something like Instagram. If one of your focuses is to grow your audience on Instagram and you commit to a three times weekly posting schedule, and you start tracking that and you’re like, oh, I stuck to this for all of quarter one. Look at how much more I grew this quarter than I did in a quarter last year when you posted haphazardly or didn’t post at all.

Once we really get down to the nitty gritty, I start playing with smaller stats. But honestly, this was not until I had built like quite an audience that I started playing with things like click through rate and open rate, and even like testing out subject lines, like I’ll like AB test some subject lines sometimes.

I started to get better at understanding like, oh, when I do this in my subject lines, I see my open rates go up. Like when I do this with my links, I see my click-through rate of links go up. Like for example, starting your links, any link text you put in emails or anywhere else, always start it with a verb, right?

That will make your click-through rate go way up. So there are like little things you can start playing with on the nitty gritty level too, just to see how those are impacting your bottom line.

Yeah. Now you know me, I’m from Philly. We don’t have any time to like beat ourselves up over any of this stuff, so none of this is about being like, oh my God. Now that I look at it like I didn’t spend, I said I was gonna focus on my email list and I didn’t. None of that. We don’t have time for that. It doesn’t matter because it’s literally just like a waste of time.

If you want to shift and say, yeah, that was a priority. That was something I wanted to prioritize. Didn’t end up making the schedule. It’s going to this time and now let’s make a plan. Let’s put it into action. ’cause there’s literally no point in beating yourself up over it. Life is busy and way bigger than any of this stuff that we’re talking about.

Stuff happens, right? And your business is not gonna be built in a day anyway. But it’s better if you do it when you’re focused. Like that’s the way I would look at it. And so if you’re reflecting back and you’re seeing something you didn’t do that you wanted to. Now, let’s just put a solid plan into place in doing that in quarter two.

So if you weren’t tracking anything or if you realize that in looking back on quarter one, you’re like, oh, I wasn’t really focused on any one thing in particular, and I’d like to be a little bit more dialed in in quarter two, this is your invitation to do that, set that goal today. There’s no point in waiting.

You should reach out to me. Let me know. What is it going to be like? Are you going to just focus on your email list? Do you want to focus on email list growth? Do you have a leads problem even in general, right? Do you need more leads into your business or do you have a sales problem? Do you already have leads, but you’re just not selling to them?

So take a moment to reflect on that and then think about based on that, the answer to that. Do I have a leads problem? Do I have a sales problem? Figure out what is the one goal, what is like one thing? If I could convince you of anything, if you could focus on just one goal this quarter, this upcoming quarter, and not like 16 goals of like, I’m going to email and I’m gonna start a podcast and I’m also gonna create a funnel and start a webinar and revamp my website. Like if we could pick one thing and say, this quarter is all about audience growth. Put your head down for the next 90 days and you will see a heck of a lot more progress than if you had spread yourself across all those different projects.

Now, equally as important, if not more important, in my opinion, of checking all of your stats, is checking in on the vibes of this last quarter. So it’s really checking in on how this quarter felt for you and you know, I mean, I’ve been through my seasons of quarters of like, there have been quarters that, I mean, my business was the last thing of like what was on my mind when I reflected on how this quarter went for me.

And I think that that’s really important when you might be looking back at some of your stats and you might be like, me and your inclination will be to beat yourself up a little bit or see, see where you fell short and not how much progress you actually made. I want you to like map that on or compare that to maybe what happened in your life in this last quarter.

Like how did it feel? I mean, I know for a lot of us, at least here in America, quarter one felt like shit. It was hard. It was really, really hard. It was heavy. There were horrible things happening in the news. It was just, you know, it’s bad vibes over here. And so it’s been tough to then, you know, like it makes sense to not feel like you can go on social media and be like, Hey guys, here’s all this fun stuff that’s happening.

It’s, it’s unnatural. So be kind to yourself when mapping that on. Or maybe you have more personal things, right? I know when my dad was dying, when my mom died, I. There were also crazy things happening in the world, and the truth of it is that my world sucked and it was very hard for me to like see all, like I couldn’t deal with all the bad stuff that was happening outside of my little world.

And so you might have just had that kind of quarter, and so that’s okay. That happens, right? Even if you didn’t have technically a bad quarter or anything bad happening in your life, maybe you’re reflecting on quarter one and you’re just realizing it didn’t completely match up to how you say you want to feel, or how you set out to feel when you started on January 1st, 2026.

Maybe you wanted to feel more at ease and have more spaciousness in your day, and feel less frazzled and be more present. I hope that’s why you’re listening to the podcast and maybe when you reflect back on quarter one, you’re like, that’s not how it felt at all. It didn’t feel easy, didn’t feel spacious, like none of that happened.

So then it’s just an invitation to reflect on, like be curious, like why do we think that happened? What, what contributed to that? What did you do that contributed to that? And also what did you not do? Do you think that contributed to that? Was it like mismanagement of your calendar? Not saying no, not honoring your boundaries.

Right. There can be so many things that can both either way make, like, contribute, or things that you’re not doing that can really like, bring you down and, and get you off track of how you actually want to feel.

I also think the end of each quarter is a great opportunity to check in with yourself and see what feels like dead weight. Right. What’s feeling to you like, oh, that thing that you always have to go to. It’s like you dread it and you know it’s not good now, I will balance this with a little bit of a dose of reality as I always do, which is that like every day, every single thing I do in my business is not a fricking party.

Right? And like everything I do, I’m not like, I am so excited. Like what a, a heart-centered, blessed invitation to be here. It doesn’t always happen, right? I have my days, I’m in a bad mood. Somebody inevitably pisses me off somewhere or I see, I see a Just Salad and then it pisses me off. ’cause they called Just Salad and they do not serve Just Salad.

Like something always happens, right? And don’t get me started about Just Salad, but something always happens and I show up. Right? And I never want people to think that running a business has to be like all rainbows and butterflies all the time. I think you can tell the difference though between those things that always feel that way, right? Like there are always things that, it’s like things that, oh, every time I have to go to this, or like the delivery of this product, like the, the fact that I have to do all these live calls, like I’m just realizing I hate live calls, right? Or something like that.

Like I realized when I started my health coaching business, right after I left the law, I thought I wanted to be a health coach. I thought I wanted to have all these one-to-one clients, like have all these meetings, right? I just got done being an attorney where my whole job was meeting with clients one-to-one ’cause you know, attorney client privilege.

So I started having these health coaching sessions with people and I was like, I hate this. Not only because I actually hate these sessions themselves. Like this is just not, this is not my gift. I’m not good at it. But also the reason that I left the, one of many reasons that I left the law, and one of the reasons why I wanted to be self-employed and be an entrepreneur is because I wanted freedom and flexibility.

And you know what? A fast track to not having freedom and flexibility is, is being in calls nine hours a day. So I was like, oh, this way of actually like delivering my service or my product. Doesn’t match up to the, the vibe. The reason why I wanted to do this now, I needed money and so I didn’t just walk outta there.

I kept delivering it, but slowly but surely and quietly behind the scenes, I was building something better that was delivered in a different way. That got me closer to my vibes. So that, that is why this is a good time for you to check in. Maybe this is also just something of like. You hate being on Instagram. Every time you go on Instagram feels like death to you, and you don’t want to go on there and like, ugh. You open the app and you see all these things and like If you’re feeling that. And then also if you and I were having a conversation, you’re like, by the way, my Instagram’s not growing at all.

I would be, I would try not to laugh. Okay. I would try not to laugh, but I’d be like, do you hear what you just told me? You hate going on this app and you feel horrible when you’re on it. And then you’re wondering, why doesn’t anyone engage with your content when you’re on it? Right? Like it matches up. It it, this is how it is.

If I hated podcasting and I got on here. I was like, hi guys. Like I’m just sitting here today. I guess we’ll talk about a quarter one check-in. Like, Ugh, I hate audio. Like I hate being on here. You know, I hate the sound of my voice. I mean, it’s not gonna produce very good content. So I think you get the idea, but this applies across your business in terms of what are you doing because you think you should or you have to, or you heard somebody say that you’re supposed to, that is not, it’s just not clicking with you. And then maybe that maps on to the stats that we’re seeing and that it’s also not working. And so then like, really, why are we doing it? Right? So this is an invitation to figure out what you really do like about your business, delivering your content, marketing your business, and spending the next three months doing more of that and less of the stuff that’s feeling bad.

Now also on the vibes front, I also like to check in on your personal wellness and just invite you to check in on how well you took care of yourself because sometimes these sections can be a little off balance where maybe your stats are killing it, but then you realize that you’re actually not taking really good care of yourself, which is essentially a ticking time bomb.

So we don’t want to do that. We don’t wanna lead to burnout. And also for you to build a sustainable, long-term, longevity filled business, we need you and we need you to be in good shape, healthy, happy. So we need you to be taking care of your mental health, your physical health, everything. I’ve said it here a million times, and I’ll say it again, but I really do take an athlete’s mentality to my business.

I think about my workouts, my meditation, me drinking water, me eating well, me going to therapy as all, as equally as important as me recording this podcast because without that and without me having a therapist to go talk about how much Just Salad pisses me off. I’m just kidding. I don’t waste, I don’t waste my time talking about that.

But I got enough to talk about. But with without having that therapy session, like I would feel probably very creatively blocked, right? I would probably take it out on my team even more than I already do, and I would be frustrated and disgruntled with my customers, right? So like this is all very important, how you’re taking care of yourself, nourishing yourself.

Um, healing the parts of yourself that are probably, uh, very understandably and inevitably coming up in building your business. Like it’s terrifying to be seen, to have to ask for things, like to ask for the sale to take up space, right? All of these things to think you belong, all the things. That’s a lot.

And so taking care of yourself and doing all the work offline, off, off social media is just as if not more important than all the strategy crap that I could teach you, like last week’s episode about my launch.

Just like picking a priority and a focus, I would also invite you to take a, like a personal priority focus approach where you maybe decide like, we can’t fix everything this quarter, but maybe this quarter. I mean, it can even be as simple as like, I’m gonna start drinking water or like, I’m going to eat something before I have coffee, because like those kinds of things can have such a downstream effect.

Or like maybe you’re gonna get back to therapy, you’ve been saying it for a while and you haven’t, go back to therapy. Like maybe that’s the one thing we commit to this quarter. And I, I do think that that would have such a good effect elsewhere in the business and obviously your life. More importantly.

If there were things on the personal side that went really well this quarter, I would invite you to think about what those were. How did they go? What made them go so well? If there were things that maybe you started out really doing a great job with at the start of 2026. That got a little bit off track.

Can we see any sort of pattern or things that get them off track? Like I know for me, like my personal movement goals are like, if I don’t do things in the morning, I, it just tends to be harder to fit it in because then the day goes on and life gets complicated or you’re tired or you run out of time and there’s always gonna be another project and another email and another podcast and whatever else.

But like, if you know about yourself that protecting your morning time. It was really important then like that’s helpful to look back on your quarter and reflect about how important that is. I also feel like I really learned this lesson this quarter with my writing because I went to my first mastermind meeting at the very, very beginning of January of 2026, and made this like declaration of, you know, ’cause I kept telling everybody, oh, I wanna write more, I wanna write more, I wanna practice, I want to write different things. Um, I’ve been writing on my substack called Beyond Business. I’ll make sure I include a link in the show notes. It’s free. But I, I was saying that I had this thing and I wanna do this thing, and everybody at the Mastermind very rightfully and, and lovingly was like.

What’s the deal? Like, what’s the deal? Why isn’t this not happening? Right? And I’m like, it’s not happening ’cause I’m not making it happen. Right? There’s no excuse. Um, and what I learned this quarter was that I do really well with this kind of writing where it’s maybe more, a bit more creative, a bit more personal, writing that I can easily let like a lot of self-judgment come in and be like oh, I don’t know if I should say this or people might not like this or I don’t think anyone’s gonna care about me saying this. It like, the longer the day went on, the more, it was almost like as if the more the world infiltrated me and my thoughts and all that kinda stuff. And then I’d see an ad for Just Salad and then that would send me off on a thing, right?

So I, I learned this quarter that I had to, um. I had to wake up in the morning and write. Um, so a couple of mornings per week, first of all, it helps to be, I came out as my mom used to say, I came out a hundred years old, so like real easy for me to say, ’cause I’m like 187 years old. So on the inside and so, and right now my back is feeling it, but, but I. I, I go to bed really early. I wake up really early, so like, you know, adjust what I’m saying for your personal calendar and way of, of being. But I’m an old lady who wakes up early, and so I like to come down when it’s quiet and it’s usually still pitch blackout.

Personally, I like to do a morning meditation. I love my Peloton meditation, as you know. I talk about it all the time and I will then write, and because I have the brick, which, if you don’t know what this is, it’s like a little, uh, square brick that goes onto your, you can put it on your refrigerator.

It’s a magnet. You can put it on anything that’s magnetized. But it essentially locks you out of whatever you want from your phone. So I, I have a link for down below. I can share that in the show notes, but the brick is really cool. It’s very, I think inexpensive for what it is as well.

But it’s cool because you can, uh, it, it kind of injects this like physical barrier between you and the apps on your phone that you otherwise might not have. And so that’s been very helpful because the brick has a feature where you can also schedule, um, blocks, like blocks of certain apps. And so I have created a schedule on there called Wind Down.

Starting at 8:00 PM until 8:00 AM the next day, I have a certain set of apps that are completely blocked out on my phone. If I wanna override it, I gotta go to the fridge. I have to go through a couple of steps, tap my phone to it and agree to it to come out of it. So it’s, it’s kind of annoying and I think just adding in that little like barrier makes you not use your phone so much.

That has been really helping me with this more like creative project that I said I wanted to get to. But frankly, in the past I would either not prioritize or I would go down some rabbit hole on Instagram or I’d see something in the news or I’d get an email that annoyed me and then I would be like not in the head space to write about something fun.

So yeah, that’s been really helping me. But hopefully that serves as like an example of kind of how we can like reprioritize this for ourselves.

Now last but not least, speaking of my substack, I wrote earlier this year about how 2026 is what I’m considering to be my entrepreneur gap year.

And then it was so interesting ’cause like what I ended up starting to hear from people is like, oh, you’re taking this year off, or like, this is your sabbatical, or like, I heard you’re not doing anything this year.

And I was like, where did everybody get that idea? And that’s not what I meant by gap year. So I wrote a follow up post. I’ll link both of these down below in the show notes. But I wrote a follow up post called, I said Gap year. And everyone heard you’re off. Um, because it was like, that was not what I meant at all, but I thought that it was, it, it was interesting.

Anyway, point being that I haven’t really talked about this on the podcast, I don’t think at all. And I thought that I should talk about it here more and of course you can come follow along on my substack, but. In terms of what this year has been like for me, so the goal really was to like, not any, anything new.

Um, I have a lot of very fortunate to have like a lot of opportunities come my way and like cool things I could do or I have ideas for, like people I could reach out to or these things I could do. And the goal really for this year was to not do those things. For the most part, it was like to run, I have two live launches, uh, usually February and October, and I run a sale in the summer.

That’s extremely easy. I run like a one day sale at the very end of the year. Uh, also extremely easy. And so it was essentially to do that, to like not add on. I don’t, I’m not coming out with a book this year. So that was already naturally happening and, to really just not add on anything new for myself ’cause I can be somebody that when things are stable or comfortable, I’m like, there must be something wrong, like, I gotta add something, I have to change this. So I, I really was committed to like, I’m not adding in all this stuff. I’ve tried to reduce like, the number of like meetings and outside calls that I have for example, um, I had already committed to this year long mastermind, that I’m in, that I referred to earlier before I decided the whole gap year situation.

The cool thing about it is that, first of all, I would’ve probably committed to like a lot of different things and the positive to already having committed to it was that A, I love the people that are in it. I already did before we went in and now I like love all the new people I didn’t know. And B is that it kind of gave me focus in a weird way to just be like, this is my thing. Right?

So when I was saying earlier of like really having that one thing and focusing on it and going deeper on one thing versus spreading yourself thin. This can even apply to stuff like this. Like I am, I’m in this one mastermind, I think there are 18 of us, including myself. It is not an expert led mastermind, so there is no teaching. There’s no like, oh, here’s how to run a funnel or something like that. It’s none of that. It’s like support, essentially for us to be in community with one another.

So I don’t have to be learning all these new things and I can just be really focused on being really intent and present with these amazing people. And when I go on the trips, I can just be on the trips and like not, oh, I have a hundred other things like coming in and I’m off to do this and off to do that. So I’m very focused.

It’s also been an invitation to have to like constantly reset myself because even when we are in these, uh, we have like, um casual zoom, catch up every week where people can check in, people can ask questions, kind of bounce things off of people. And the way that my brain works is that when I hear other people talking about marketing or growth, and this is the thing, and everybody’s gotta be doing that, I’m like, fire alarms are going off in my head.

Like, I gotta go do this. Or I have like 300 ideas for how I could do this. I have to be like, Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And , I’ve gotten better and better at it almost every week. I can see that when I’m in it, I’m just like, okay. Not right now. Not right now.

I got invited to be a part of a mastermind. It was like a peer led mastermind and that I very painfully declined to be a part of because it was like huge names, huge people, and I was like. I’m, I all had all the same fear come up of like, I’m gonna miss out on this thing. No, no one’s ever gonna ask me again. This is a huge lost opportunity. You’re an idiot.

I felt bad for saying no. I felt bad for the fact that I was already in another mastermind. It was making me look bad, but I tried to explain it. I had all of this stuff. I stuck to saying no. And just the other day I saw them post a picture on Instagram of all the women, uh, gathered, uh, together and. Let me just tell you, it was a, who’s fricking who of the online business industry, and it was painful.

It was painful. And I was like, okay, you said you wanted this. This is what you want. You want this spaciousness, this is important for you.

And it like what an incredible lesson invitation opportunity from the universe to be like, oh yeah. Like yeah, how about this? And it was it. I will not lie. I had a freak out for a couple of hours.

And then I pulled myself together and was like, no, I am confident in my decision. I’m confident in what I’ve done. I’m not in the place to, to do that right now. Like, it’s just not, it’s not for me right now, and it’s okay, and maybe it’ll be for me in the future. Maybe it won’t, so it’s okay. Right? We don’t have to be a part of everything in order to be, uh, valuable, to be worthy, to grow, to change, you know, all that kinda stuff.

In fact, I actually, I think one of the things that helped me pull out of this the most, in case it’s helpful to you, is that I actually realized in looking at that picture, how much being there probably would’ve damaged me quite a bit because I would’ve been there, first of all, would’ve been the smallest person there by like, you know, the vanity metrics perspective and podcast perspective and all of that, and book perspective, just like I am, by the way, in my mastermind, uh, in many respects, but I would have constantly been like, oh, I have to do this thing because that person’s doing this thing. I have to, or I just would’ve realized like, wow, my podcast is a nothing burger compared to this person’s podcast. And like, how is that helpful? How is that helpful period, let alone, how is that helpful in this year that I’m in, right?

Where I want the spaciousness, I want the white space in order to kind of see what’s next in terms of seeing like, what else do I have to offer besides legal stuff, besides maybe even business. When I first went down this path, I thought the point was that I was gonna come up with a business idea of like, okay, maybe I won’t just sell legal templates.

I’ll also sell this business thing. And then with even just like an ounce of spaciousness, I was like, maybe it’s not even about business either. Like it’s kind of the only way that I think of myself, and I see now even with only a couple of months under my belt into my gap year, that like I also see that I have to be. I have to be valuable and useful to people all the time in order to be worthy of their attention, of their, like them just thinking I’m good enough right to exist, period. And so I got lucky that when I started my online business in 2016,17. That, uh, education and value-based businesses were the thing.

So like my way of like, here, I can be useful. Let me give you like more and more stuff and like, let me throw in more and more things for free and let me sell you this thing and like, I can give you so much stuff. Do you like me now? Like, am I okay? Am I good to be here? You guys think I’m worthy of being here?

So this type of business and that time period worked beautifully. I think we’re moving into more of a period where educational content is a little more not popular than as it was like when I started, which has been really interesting to watch people, me and people like me, um, be a little uncomfortable with being in the online business space, being like, wait, where? Where does that leave us? Like, I’m so used to just delivering educational tips as my value. How else can I be valuable? And so I think that this has like also been a invitation to be like, well, I don’t just need to go from offering legal tips to offering you email list tips.

Maybe my, maybe I don’t have any tips for you at all. Like maybe, maybe I’m tip less, you know, I don’t know. And maybe it’s about sharing my story and like I remember my therapist said at one point, like, your story is enough and how, like you talking about even like what you’ve been through or sharing open openly and honestly with other people being vulnerable.

That does help other people. Like that’s enough. Like me talking about grief, for example. People reach out to me all the time asking for me to, to help them or like, or give advice, feedback through the grief process. I’m like, I have nothing to offer you. I, besides the fact that my well is completely dry myself, like I’m using it all up for this situation.

I don’t have any advice. I don’t know how to deal with this. And so that’s not, that’s not where I’m supposed to be. Where I can be is showing you like. Hey, look at what I went through and here’s how I’m navigating it. Like, not always great. Uh, sometimes okay, you know, other times like, this is what I’m learning about grief, or this is something interesting that’s coming up.

Or have you ever noticed? No one ever says this about grief, but I kind of feel it. And then other people write me privately and they’re like, ah, I always thought that too. And nobody ever says that.

So. I just sat on Instagram the other day about how I feel so conflicted about having children because of the amount of grief that I have been through. And it was crazy to see how many people wrote to me and were like, me too. Me too, me too. Right? Or like, I felt that too, and then maybe they ended up having kids or something. So yeah, it’s just, anyway, all a point of saying of like. I think when you’re in this kind of business, it’s very easy to start feeling like you have to be providing all the time and teaching and like so valuable.

And first of all, you just existing is you are worthy and valuable enough, like you don’t need to do anything, but don’t discount the amount of like just you showing up and being present and sharing your story can also be end up like. I don’t know, as a side effect being valuable to people. So that’s essentially where I’m at with my gap years.

Like I’m just kind of in that head space of like figuring out what’s next and what, yeah, what do I wanna do. Still, still kind of struggling through that. Like, am I valuable to people? What do people wanna hear from me? What do I want to talk about kind of thing. Um, and I would say just quickly that a couple of the ways I’m exploring that is like through a lot of creativity. Um, because I think I’ve reached a point in my grief journey, as my therapist said, where like, you’ve talked about it and we’ve kind of verbally processed it, but we have to express it in some way, like has to move through you. And so I’ve started doing.

I started a pottery class, for example, and so I’m doing that. I took a drawing class. I’ve been doing this 100 day Peloton challenge, which I only have like two more weeks left of as as this episode airs. But yeah, even just something silly like that where it’s just like getting me outside, getting me moving.

So I’m doing a lot of that and I’m doing the personal writing on my Substack, Beyond Business, because part of the idea there is like breaking this mindset that I have, that the writing, whatever I produce, my content has to be valuable all the time. And so it’s really hard for me that sometimes I sit down to write these things and I’m like, how is this helpful to anyone?

How does anyone care? And I’m just so conditioned to only be creative for like performance, right? And to like produce things for other people. It’s very hard to decondition myself. And so I, the only way I know is by practicing. I’m literally just like showing up on substack and hitting send anyway, even when I’m like, oh, no one’s gonna like this. And I’m like, that’s not the point. That’s not the point. That’s not why I’m writing it.

So just kind of getting in the act of doing that every week has, has actually really been helping. So. That’s what I’m doing. I’m curious if you have any questions for me. I will also leave the, I will leave the links to those substack posts, um, but come over and, you know, follow on substack.

Anyway, it’s a cool, more like personal, behind the scenes place to hang out. And if you, if there’s a topic you want me to explore here on, On Your Terms® or in my weekly newsletter, Sam’s Sidebar then definitely go ahead and send me a quick video or voice note or a text, um, using the submit a question link down below.

With that, I’ll chat with you next week. Happy quarter two.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.