Create YOUR independence day

Everything I do is designed to help you someday achieve complete independence in how, where, when – and ultimately whether – you work.

That’s why July 4th, Independence Day for the U.S., is my favorite holiday.

Here are some examples of Smart PR Inner Circle members – PR people like you – who have recently achieved new measures of independence:

• Maureen Carrig did her time in large corporate communications, excelling at media relations. Then she decided she only wanted to work with and for people she likes and respects. So she left her Fortune 500 employer. Now she works when she wants to and not when she doesn’t. And only pitches people she likes and respects.
• Julia Wouk-Brown loves what she does as a publicist for authors and other experts. But she loves spending time with her high-school-teacher husband more. So every year she takes the entire months of July and August off. Her clients know it’s coming, and she hasn’t lost business because of it. “I’m choosing freedom, the ability to create my own schedule, and to do what I want as a business owner,” she told me. “Both current and prospective clients respect this choice.”
• Jenna Cason worked for an NFL team, ran comms for fast-growing tech startups, and led FleishmanHillard’s crisis practice in Houston. But now that she has a toddler, she doesn’t want to work at the same pace. So she tells her clients from the beginning that she’s not available on-demand. “I spend time with my little girl, I exercise, I make dinner, I even take naps when I feel like it,” she says.

You DON’T need to run your own business to achieve independence. I know PR pros who are part of in-house teams who are so valuable, that their bosses let them set the terms of their work. This is even easier now that WFH and variable hours are so much more common.

What you DO NEED to achieve independence is be awesome at what you do. Julia, Jenna, and Maureen established a track record of success – and developed the mindset to own that success and act in the power that follows. That track record means opportunities flow to them, and they know they are in control of their lives and careers.

This Independence Day, start developing that same mindset. Here are some previous blog posts that will help:

• The PR guy who “bought the farm” and then retired at 47
• What are you really working for? Set your own career goal, not your mom’s
• The key difference between financially free PR pros and the rest

Read one or more of those, then schedule your “independence day.” Maybe the success story I’ll be sharing on a future first week of July . . . will be yours.