A friend offered to put me in touch with a large company who specialized in hiring former military to give me an idea of what I might be worth. Having no better method, I sent the guy my resume and agreed to meet over lunch.

He didn’t waste any time. He told me, “The first thing you have to do is prepare yourself that you won’t make as much money as you did when you worked for the government.”

I think my mouth actually hung open. I’d always been led to believe that contractors made a lot more money than government employees. My heart began to sink.

But he wasn’t done giving me advice. It got worse.

“The second thing you have to realize is that the longer you’ve been away from your government job, the less valuable you are.”

That’s when I got angry.

I realized he was looking to take advantage of my naivety. It’s possible I called him a “job pimp” inside my head. I imagined him trying to bill me out at whatever price he wanted while telling me my only value was in my fading connections.

If you’re anything like I was, you probably have some insecurities about your professional value. Worse, you tend to base your value on what you’re getting paid today, thinking only small fluctuations are possible. You tell yourself you’re lucky to have a job at all, that you have to choose between fulfillment and a decent salary.

And it’s just not true.

The solution isn’t to scope out salaries on glassdoor.com or hire a therapist. You need to start a business.

Now before you exclaim that you don’t have time to feed the dog, much less start a business, let me explain what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about growing an empire through hot-shot investors who are envisioning the next Google. I also don’t mean you should abruptly quit your job and hope your wild freedom fantasy comes true.

I’m talking about something easier and much more strategic.

You see, I think everyone (yes, even you) needs to start and run a side business at some point in their career. When? Why, whenever you feel stuck of course.

The point is not to keep the business forever (unless you discover you love it, like I did), but to use it to radically alter how you and others value your work.

Because absolutely nothing will help you see what you enjoy doing, what you’re good at, and what you’re worth better than entrepreneurship. Let me show you how it works, and introduce you to a brand new community I’m putting together to help you get started.

Reinventing your worth

Starting a small side business can pay enormous dividends while actually reducing your career risk.  Here’s just a few of the benefits.

1. The safest & easiest career test-drive

When you’re dissatisfied at work, it’s easy to romanticize that anything and everything is better. This leads a lot of people to job hopping, only to discover the new job has some major issue too. Most people tell me it’s incredibly defeating.

The trick is to find a way to mimic a new job or career before you commit to it. A business can’t always replicate the experience of working in an office, particularly the culture of a specific company, but you can get valuable input on how you’ll like the work itself.

For example, think you eventually want to move from a technician role to that of a manager? Think about building a business that plays to your current skills, and then hire someone else (or a team) to actually do the work. Or if you think you want to change careers, let’s say moving from IT to marketing, a side business where you put together online marketing campaigns will let you see how you can leverage your current skills in a different way.

You’ll get great insights on how you like the work and how well you can perform it, along with more feedback than your boss ever gave you.

2. You see the big picture

In your current job, you’re probably a specialist and chances are, you’re taking a lot for granted. You get to focus on your little piece of the puzzle while the rest of the company worries about finding new clients, making them happy, all while serving the bottom line.

In a big company, it’s easy to become disconnected from the ultimate product or service that the company offers. Running your own business lets you close that gap. For me, it was a bit like suddenly becoming a superhero. I could see things that my former colleagues couldn’t because they were isolated and largely blind of what happened outside their department.

I remember attending a blogging conference and sharing some of my career ideas with a small business owner who had a unproductive employee. In 15 minutes, I’d given him some viable alternatives to firing her, creating a potentially huge win-win situation. He told me, “I’ve hired a lot of consultants to get to where I am today. You just gave me $2000 worth of good advice.”

Now that’s the kind of value I’m talking about.

If you’re looking to get promoted or move into a new field, this “big picture” perspective is what will set you apart from your competition.

3. It forces you to be brave

In my experience, there are few things that strike fear into the salaried employee’s heart like doing something new and solo. You’ve probably gotten comfortable with your work and the idea of taking on something you have zero experience with is overwhelming.

But if you want to make changes in your life, you need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. This is probably holding you back more than you realize. The great thing about a side business is that you can experiment with ideas and strategies with almost zero consequence. It’s like being in college again, where everything felt like all play, no responsibility. And that kind of freedom can be liberating.

4. You see yourself (and your value) from a different perspective

When I calculated my hourly wage as a government employee, it came to roughly $40/hour. When I got my first freelance gig, my customer asked what my rate was. I got flustered. I still had that darn contractor’s voice in my head.

So I looked at the average salary of people working in my new industry and used that. Now I was making $73/hour, but I didn’t feel good about it. At times it felt too high, other times it felt too low, but it always made me feel uncomfortable.

It wasn’t until I started my business as a career coach that I began using market forces to determine my value. What were people willing to pay me? How did the price differ with services provided?

It was eye-opening.

I was regularly getting work at the $200/hour range. Most of my clients told me this was very reasonable based on the value I was providing. So when I got my second big contract, I boldly asked for my new rate. I figured if ordinary people were willing to pay me that much, a company could certainly afford the same.

And they did. Within the space of 2 years, my business gave me the confidence to increase my average hourly rate 5-fold. It enabled me to work part-time and put almost $70,000 into savings in one year.

I had re-invented myself–not just to the outside world, but to myself.

The smart way to start a new business

Many of my No Regrets clients decide they want to experiment with entrepreneurship or want to use it as a test-drive for a different but still traditional career. They haven’t got the faintest idea how to get started, so they look for help from someone more experienced.

Unfortunately, they discover that many programs teaching you how to start a business are quite expensive ($1000 and up). This usually results in people abandoning the business idea or forking over a lot of money and feeling stressed about it. The latter is the path I took and I’m here to tell you it was really dumb (and unnecessary).

What many people don’t realize is that such courses set up a kind of co-dependency. You think you need someone to tell you what to do instead of just experimenting and having fun with it. You can actually become less confident with these reminders of what you don’t know. Again, I’ve lived it.

Starting a side business can be incredibly simple and easy if you dial down expectations and surround yourself with people going through the same process. If you look to your corporate friends to cheer you on, you’re going to find yourself discouraged. If you base your progress or success on someone who has years more experience, you’re going to feel depressed.

So I decided to start a community just for new entrepreneurs called the Bright Entrepreneurs Club. The idea is that you don’t need a guru to tell you what to do, you need a group that helps you build the confidence to play with ideas and take action. You need to hang around other smart and talented people, all of whom will experience the normal ups and downs of learning something new along with you.

If you’re interested in joining us, you can find out more here. We’ll be accepting beta group members through June 15.

But the real message I want people to take away is that you can start a side business without a lot of capital, education or big name partners. You don’t need to take over the world in the first 12 months, nor do you need to immediately replace your salary.

You just need a bit of courage to experiment, to grow, and to see you have so much more to offer than you ever imagined.

Believe it.

I completely understand, because much of my life has been a crazy courtship of the concept. I just didn’t understand the cost until recently.

After high school, I joined the military to escape a totalitarian father, which even I have to admit is funny. It’s true that, by comparison, the military was a picnic. The upperclassmen at the Air Force Academy nicknamed me Cadet Happy Camper because even when they were yelling in my face or making me do iron mikes, I couldn’t help but smile.

The military culture convinced me I was willing to die for freedom, the kind that belonged to someone else. But I struggled to take even the tiniest risks to grant me my own.

I picked a college major that would be more likely to pay the bills should I ever return to a civilian life. I accepted a car loan I couldn’t afford. I got engaged to a perfectly nice man I didn’t love because my heart had been broken by someone else and I was afraid at 25 I’d never find anyone to love me.

When I finally got the courage to leave the military and take a chance on a new career, I thought I’d finally done it. I was free! I could do anything I wanted!

But the ability to do anything was undermined by my fear of failure. Could I really make a living? Were all the doubters right? What if I never amounted to anything?

So I hedged my bets by maintaining some financial life-lines to my previous career instead fully committing to the work I really wanted to do. I wrapped my freedom up in bubble-wrap and told myself it was safer that way.

And it was safer. But it wasn’t better or happier or easier.

We tell ourselves lies about freedom all the time. We think if we just had more money or power or flexibility that we’d be free. We think freedom is a border crossing and we just need to get to the other side.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

When people say they want freedom, what they really mean is they’re not living the life they want and they think something outside of themselves is preventing them from getting it.

Neither money, nor power, nor time will magically grant you a life you love. Trust me, I’ve tried all three. It’s not circumstance that held me back. I had challenges to overcome just like anyone else of course. But the biggest challenge by far was me.

The price of freedom is pretty low, but it requires a currency few of us carry: courage. [Click to tweet]

Moreover, you don’t just buy freedom once. You have to purchase it again and again, as long as you want it.

This is good news. It means if you value freedom over everything else, you can have it.

What I wish someone had told me was that you’re not always ready for freedom. You have to work up to it. Freedom is a wild animal you have to tame.

So if you don’t have complete freedom yet, quit berating yourself or your circumstances. It’s okay. Really.

Work instead on a freedom mindset. Practice vulnerability. Inch closer to the edge and look out, not down.

You’ll fail at freedom far more times than you’ll succeed.

Give it everything you’ve got and cherish the pride that comes with trying.

It’s just as sweet.

Do you ever feel like you’re selling your creative soul for a measly paycheck in a “safe” job?

Maybe you never finished writing your book because you just knew you couldn’t pay the bills with it. Or you set aside playing that instrument when it came time to start really making a living. You think you could have gone farther with your photography, but you know that you’d just end up investing way more money on the equipment than you’d ever make from it.

Most of us have a story like this.

After all, art is a lot of work. It requires putting yourself out there and being open to criticism. Why go through all that hassle when (conventional wisdom says) artists are always poor and struggling?

My Unexpected Quest

I thought the same things many years ago, when I started learning music as an adult. I knew in my gut my job wasn’t the best fit, but it was pretty good and I thought it was too late to change careers. I immersed myself in music simply because I loved it. Honestly, I didn’t expect any returns at all and certainly not financial ones.

I’m happy to say I was pleasantly surprised.

Since I took that first step, I’ve successfully started part-time careers in teaching music, writing songs and performing, coaching, and most recently, blogging. I also finally got to the point where the income I generate from these activities could replace my full-time income.

It took time. I made mistakes. I invested a great deal of time and money and wasted some too. But over time the benefits far outweighed the costs, and many opportunities came from sources I never anticipated.

You don’t have to feel trapped. You have many more options than you realize.

The surprising truth is that opportunities pop up all over once you get started. Here are just a few examples of the benefits I’ve experienced from pursuing a creative career, and you could too.

1. Tax benefits of creative work

Once you start treating your hobby as a business, you can write off many of the expenses you incur in the course of doing work you love. That includes equipment, supplies, networking lunches, training, travel, and much more.

I was able to write off most of my lessons, workshop and course fees, materials, and related travel expenses while I learned the ropes in new industries and applied what I learned in my businesses.

Think of it as a cash-back bonus for being the artist you already are and doing what you love.

2. Creativity spillovers into other areas

Creativity is really a way of life. It doesn’t stay confined to your studio when you are writing, designing, sculpting, or marketing. Your ideas, inventive solutions to problems, growing resume of experiences, and newly acquired skills flow over into all areas of your life. Everything you do benefits.

Let’s say you become a whiz at writing newsletters to market your wares. That skill can easily carry over into your day job and increase your value to your current employer. You could also help peers with your new knowledge as a freelancer.

Training skills are definitely transferable. A Train-the-Trainer session that I initially dreaded taking at my full-time job gave me many super ideas to strengthen the career and music workshops I offer.

3. Surprising job and gig offers

When you are inspired and passionate about your work, everyone notices. Your excitement attracts both people and offers you never expected. Folks see that you have something going on and they love to be part of that momentum.

When I promote my teaching studio, I often get more offers to perform. It seems counterintuitive, but the visibility keeps me on top of peoples’ minds.

Each time I expanded into new areas in my music career, I’ve gotten more excited about life in general. Colleagues sensed that passion and offered me both full-time and part-time jobs. This is common. You’ll find that some offers are tempting, some are not, but it sure is nice to be in demand!

4. Partnership and collaboration opportunities

Once you go public with your art, writing, or music, other people start to see what you are doing and how you can work together. They propose ideas for collaborations and new projects.

Just by setting out as a solo musician and teacher, I’ve gotten opportunities to be in bands, to collaborate on songwriting, writing and instructional products, to head up festival committees, and even to be on a foundation board.

If you had asked me when I started, I never would have anticipated I’d have had these all these great experiences. You’ll never know unless you take the steps.

5. Fan funding options

Fan funding, also known as crowdfunding, is huge right now. It has plusses and minuses but overall there are many advantages for artists. If you grow your platform through helping other people, they will likely be very happy to return the favor with your latest project – whether it’s a book, e-book, live production, CD, exhibit, or video.

These campaigns are a lot of work to do well. You’ll need to do your research and keep up the momentum and the communication. But the results will be well worth it. Your backers become part of your support team.

I recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for a music festival and may use the experience I gained to record my next CD. If you have a dream project and even a start of a fanbase, it pays to test the waters.

6. Charity sponsorships

Businesses commonly sponsor the performing arts and related events. Charity sponsorships, although lesser known, are growing quickly.

Performers develop very loyal and trusting fanbases and charities are happy to pay artists to take a few minutes out of a show or presentation to raise awareness and leverage the trust they’ve built with their audiences. This form of outreach is more effective than any other advertising the charities do, including print media, radio, or TV. Anyone who is regularly in front of groups – speaking, performing, or teaching – can apply, and the income potential is significant.

My musical mentor has headed up these programs for 20 years and is pushing the $1B mark for monies raised for charity, with artists from all levels and walks of life. The only requirement is that you be in front of people 20-25 times per year, either performing, speaking, or teaching workshops, etc. You could be in coffee shops, schools, libraries, festivals, or stadiums filled with tens of thousands.

Today’s audiences are socially conscious and often want to help. Charities value the relationships you’ve built with your fans. You can do good in the world and supplement your income. Everyone wins.

7. Becoming a certified teacher

Your mentor or coach may train others to do the same work they do. If you are a star student and advocate, you may benefit from being certified to teach their method. You have a trusted credential and exposure to their audience of already engaged fans.

Adding a proven, world class performance program to my regular music lessons was great for my program offerings as well as for my students. I receive a commission on top of my regular teaching rates, but most importantly I represent a successful approach that I practice and strongly believe in.

If this idea appeals to you, start doing some research in your field and studying with people you admire.

8. Grant opportunities

I am learning more about these as a I am preparing a proposal for a non-profit community arts program. There are grants and residencies available to individual artists if you are willing to do the research, put in the work to craft an amazing proposal, and prove that your art fulfills a need in the community that foundations champion.

Grant writing is a skill like any other. It takes willingness to learn and hone your craft, but it’s well worth the effort.

The bottom line?

You don’t have to know where all your money will come from before you even begin. As a matter of fact, NOT starting is what keeps you from finding the opportunities! Inaction and indecision are the culprits that leave money on the table.

There are truly as many ways to fund a creative career as there are people in the world.

Be open. Apply as much creativity to finding ways to get paid for your work as you do to actually doing your art.

Take those steps. If you’re at all serious about making money with your art, you won’t need to sell your soul forever just to keep a roof over your head.

Leanne Regalla spent over 20 years in corporate America. Twelve of those years she pulled double duty as a part-time entrepreneur, much to the dismay of her black lab. Leanne is now a self-employed writer, musician, and coach who is on a mission to help creative people of all types how to pursue their art without going broke, living in their cars, or starving to death. Grab insider tips on building a solid income here The Rebel Artists’ Mastermind – 12 Top Experts Speak Out On Making Audacious Money From Your Creative Career.

I was waiting for my daughter to get out of school, when another mum asked, “How are you doing?”

“Good,” I said breathlessly, “but crazy busy!”

(Lie #1: I certainly was busy, but I was not well at all.  My back pain had returned in spades and the stress was so bad I’d started getting recurrent cold sores in my mouth.)

“I’ve got a launch coming up, I created a new product, and I’m wrapping up the book chapter I’ve been writing on contract.  And of course the hubby’s been out of town a lot, so doing most of the child care. But,” I sighed, “I just have to get through April and things will slow down.”

My friend cocked her head and asked, “Haven’t you been saying that since October?”

Lie #2, that I thought everything would “slow down next month,” was the worst of all, because at least part of me believed it.  Indeed, I’d been engaged in a vocational sprint for more than six months, where the finish line always remained just a few steps ahead of me.

In my last update on my no goals experiment, I shared 3 strategies for de-cluttering your commitments. I’m here to say I tried juggling and failed.  It was a good experiment, but at least for me, I couldn’t make it work.

I decided the only real solution was to remove all work commitments and start completely over.

For many of my clients, the thought of starting over is one of their biggest fears.  There were certainly days I just wanted to curl up and hide in my room.  I was so stressed about the how: how to break ties without burning bridges, how to throttle back without losing momentum, and how to focus on the work I love without burning out.

In this post, I’ll show you how I’m addressing all three of those concerns and how you might do the same.

Breaking ties without burning bridges

Last year I accepted a part-time job to write thought pieces on the topic of human performance enhancement. It’s been a great gig, but the time commitment turned out to be a lot greater than the client or I anticipated.

It became apparent back in November that I wasn’t capable of juggling this project and my business while preserving my sanity, but I couldn’t see a way to back out without hurting my relationships or reputation.

The key to making a clean break was to combine honesty with empathy.

Instead of spending a lot of time worrying about how to do everything, I looked for an exit point that served us both. It’s less than we originally planned on, but it doesn’t leave them in the lurch either.  And just having a clear end date to the project reduced my stress, making me more effective for the time I have left.

Throttling back without losing momentum

I just wrapped up the latest launch for the No Regrets Career Academy, my most successful ever.  My goal-oriented, over-achiever tendency would be to celebrate by starting five new creative projects. Simultaneously.

Thankfully, the voice in my head that thought it was a bad idea didn’t back down this time.

Of course, I didn’t want to clear my commitments and keep them cleared.  I just wanted to add back activities more intentionally.  I’m calling it a “working sabbatical.”

I know from experience that working with new clients is an energy-producing activity for me.  It’s something I look forward to and it’s the first thing I’m putting back on my professional shelf.

Everything else will be added back once I’ve established a pace I can manage.  Many of you know I usually take a blogging sabbatical in July and August. This time, I plan to start that break immediately, but unlike in previous years, I won’t stop writing completely.  I’ll write when the desire strikes, but blog posts will be more sporadic between now and the end of August.

The key to throttling back was experimenting with sabbaticals before I needed one.

Prior experiments gave me the confidence that stepping away not only wouldn’t hurt my business, but would be good for it.  Real momentum takes the long view.

Doing what you love without burning out

You’d think that once you found the work you love, the issue of burnout would go away. Instead, it just changes the nature of the problem.

I’ve even considered I might be addicted to flow.  Maybe my next project should be a 12-step program for creatives (I’m kidding–mostly).

But I only have a little over a year left in London and I’m determined to enjoy it. This means in addition to making more time for work I love, I want more breaks to explore this awesome city and Europe in general. I also don’t want to approach my time off like another achievement checklist.

In the past, I’ve been terrible about this. I actually stress about how many places in Europe I haven’t visited yet, while simultaneously telling myself I don’t have time to be taking vacations!

The key to reducing burnout is to get clear on what provides real relaxation, and then scheduling time for it.

To start, I booked a weekend getaway for the family to Versailles.  We’ll stay in a hotel right on the grounds of the palace, where we can wander through the gardens to our hearts’ content. I’m also booking lunches with friends, an afternoon at the butterfly exhibit, and a day to draw inspiration at the Tate Modern over the next several months.

The other big change is I’m returning my weekends to their rightful place: with family and friends. Running a business necessarily means some hustle, but no one works their best when they’re working 7 days a week.

To new beginnings…

The more I thought about getting rid of my commitments and only adding back the ones I really wanted (and could handle), the more excited I got.

I started asking myself, what if my life was driven by joy alone?  Not ambition or obligation or fear.  Just joy.

This is fundamentally what the no goals experiment is all about.

It doesn’t mean you don’t take on challenges or avoid activities that are hard.  Those things absolutely bring me joy.

But I can let go of expectation, ambition, and envy.

Because I don’t need them. I’m lucky to already have everything I need.

Now I intend to enjoy it.  Slowly.

The response was over-whelming.

Many were along the lines of “Should I change careers/jobs or not?”  If you read the review, you know that “whether or not” type decisions are dangerous anyway. But this one in particular is troubling because it jumps to a solution (changing careers/jobs) before identifying the problem.

And THAT is a recipe for making a bad decision.

It occurred to me that before I can help you design a career you love, we have to discover and address the underlying problem.  If you’ve been struggling with the idea of career change for a while, you probably know this is easier said than done.

Over the next two weeks, that’s exactly what we’re going to tackle.  I’ll be running a free mini-course that unpacks the “Should I change” question and takes a step back.  We’ll examine

1. How to productively reframe the “I don’t know what I want, but it’s not this” mindset
2. How to challenge the limiting beliefs that hold you back
3. How to discover the real problem you’re trying to solve when contemplating career change
4. How to widen your options and prevent a catastrophic wrong turn
5. Case studies of alternatives that produced big wins

Finally, at the end of the two weeks, I’ll host a live Q&A webinar on April 20th that wraps up all the material and helps you confidently plan your next step, whether that’s a career tweak or a big leap.

This is a mini-course, which means I don’t want you to just READ about this topic–there are actual exercises to do that I’ve never released before.  That’s going to require some work and engagement on your part, but hey, it’s Spring.  Instead of cleaning your house, let’s work on the things that are really nagging you.

Of course, there is a catch.  Everything in the course is private and exclusive for my subscribers.  It also happens to be free for a limited time. If you’d like access to the material without paying big bucks, you have to sign-up here.

All the course material comes down on April 28, so don’t put this off.

Why am I doing this?  The No Regrets Career Academy will be opening again in just a few weeks. But as good as the No Regrets material is, I realized it’s worthless if you’re incapable of making a decision on the first question: should I consider a new career?  I’ll probably turn this into a paid course in the future, but for now, consider it my way of saying thanks.

Hope to see you on the other side!