Welcome to Life of Agency!
It’s great to have you here.
The name ’Life of Agency’ has a double meaning for me. In the first sense, it’s about my experiences of running an Explainer Video agency from home since 2012, after 20 years working in Insurance.
But the word agency is also defined as: ‘the capacity to act or exert power’. So, although some of the posts will be covering business strategy, I’ll also be writing about the different aspects of living a life of agency - one where you control how you spend your days as opposed to being told what to do.
Being your own boss can be a double-edged sword in that you can take credit when things go right, but also need to take responsibility when they go (sometimes disastrously) wrong. If you want to run your own business, I’ll be teaching you about the various mistakes I’ve made over the years to help you avoid them.
Focus and productivity can be a problem if you’re your own boss and working from home, especially when you’re used to following orders. Using productivity tools can help, but not if the problem lies with your mental habits, so I’ll cover different ways to help you DO THE THING.
One of the greatest skills you can master in life is awareness, which covers three key factors:
1. Awareness of how you spend your time and how you can better spend it for your own benefit and the benefit of others.
2. Awareness of, and ignoring, external influences that can persuade you to either waste your time or spend it in a self-destructive way, and:
3. Self-awareness - knowing your values, strengths and weaknesses and being able to think and talk truthfully about them, to avoid self-deception.
With each of these three factors, your ego can have a negative influence, encouraging you to get caught up in a whirlwind of negative thoughts, and think that you’re heading down a positive road where, in fact, you’re facing the completely wrong direction. I’ve read some great books on dealing with your ego and am continuing to improve my relationship with mine. I’ll be sharing my findings and experiences with you here.
In my 50 trips around the sun, I have plenty of stories to tell about how I’ve been my own worst enemy, but have still kept my business running through challenging times, and benefit from living a life of agency.
I’ll be exploring questions such as:
· How do I decide on the right business model for me?
· Is it better to live for yourself or for the benefit of others?
· How can I better deal with, and even prevent, stress at work and at home?
· How can I create and build a successful business when I’m working 9-5?
· How can I live a happier life?
· How do I deal with those tasks that I keep avoiding?
· How do I decide what to charge for my product/services?
· How can I improve my working environment to maximise my focus?
· What is the meaning of life?
With such a variety of questions, my approach to the articles will also vary. Some of them will be mainly instructional, some will recount stories of my experiences and those of well-known figures, and others will be centred around thought experiments, to hopefully get you thinking differently about your situation.
So, if you’re looking to improve the quality of your life, or run your own successful long-term business, my aim for this Substack is to help you.
Click the Subscribe button to ensure that you don’t miss future posts, and feel free to post a comment if there’s any topic you’d like me to cover.
These questions look interesting. I look forward to reading your answers. Especially the last one, it's a doozy!
Excited to read this newsletter and to learn from your perspective. I'm intrigued!