It took me a decade to learn this. It will take you 4 minutes.
I was about to announce the crowdfunding of my fifth book when I realized I was ashamed to share it.
I’m proud of the work, but terrified of looking unfocused.
Earlier in the week, I was catching up with a friend about life and business. She was excited about some of the things I shared, then right after, paused to ask: “Nifemi, how are you managing it all? Life changes. Your business. Your GTM tool. New podcast.”
I laughed, shrugging it off.
But later, alone, when I wanted to start working on the crowdfunding campaign, the question stuck.
It triggered questions I’ve explored for over a decade now.
A question about perception.
Too many options can diffuse your focus.
“You’re all over the place.”
I’ve heard this one too many times. In the last ten years, looking from the outside, I can be one of the most unfocused people you’ll meet. My career does not fit into a 2-page resume. Whenever I edit a resume, I have to do some fancy jigsaw puzzle for it to make sense for the role. And then there’s the exterior brand, in which people think all I do is write books. Wouldn’t that be nice.
The tool? The podcast? The GTM agency?
These are all threads that seem disconnected.
I started my career young at 19, after graduating college. I feel I have had five careers in 20 years.
I’ve been a graduate researcher, teaching assistant, application engineer, predictive model control support engineer, music producer at night, student worker at elite institution/corporation disguised as a school, web designer, app creator, knowledge-sharing marketplace entrepreneur, emerging market international developer, online writer, non-fiction author, sci-fi author, GTM for solo entrepreneurs.
Woooh, that’s a lot. “Damn, Nifemi – make it make sense.”
It’s a blessing to be able to do all these things.
However, it does come with its down side.
It’s hard to define clearly what I do. It doesn’t fit neatly into a title.
Working that fine balance requires skill that I’m still trying to master.
Because if you do too many things at once, you make something that’s simple more difficult, and simplicity is the best design.
I see this diffused leverage across the board.
Products with too many features.
Leaders with too many initiatives.
Teams with too many projects and decisions to make.
When you have too many things to choose from, it diffuses your leverage.
Your leverage is supposed to elevate what you care about the most.
But when your leverage is split across multiple options, something happens – you move the needle across many things, but only a little on the thing you care about most.
I’ve learned through the years of cyclical income, at the base of what most of us care about is finances. If you can’t boost this, everything else struggles. Your creativity diminishes, you develop a scarcity mindset, you feel even more unfocused.
On the flip side though, having all the money in the world doesn’t help either.
You have the perfect resume. You used leverage only to boost your finances. But you never explored your interests, never put yourself out there beyond your title, never developed how to build your own personal agency without a company logo backing you up.
Worst of all, you fall into the trap of putting all your self-worth in one basket.
One lay-off sweep and your entire world is turned upside down.
That’s why finding the balance is important.
Without it, you’ll find it hard to build agency and control the use of your time. Either you wouldn’t be able to pay the bills as you spread yourself thin, doing multiple things that weaken your leverage. Or you can pay all the bills but get stuck on other people’s time.
The main income driver for me is my go-to-market agency and I’m still tied to the time of other people but I can choose the people.
Although the business is still cyclical in its early phase.
But then, I’ve been building the muscle to find my balance – one that supercharges what I do.
What if the fusion of your interests was your superpower?
I’ve spent over a decade testing this question. I’m finding that it starts with acceptance and building a system to manage your curiosity.
Developing your own VCH model
Here’s what I’m learning on the practice ground.
The people that find this balance know themselves. They live an examined life.
Reading Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, back in the day, I realized I was an incrementalist. He had three personas – dreamers, doers, incrementalists. Incrementalists are the people who make progress through small, consistent steps, but they struggle to scale beyond their immediate circle. I can dream a bit and do a bit, but that could only take me so far without proper intention.
I had to accept this first.
So over the years, I started focusing on how everything I do can compound into more leverage.
I’m taking the threads of my interest, and fusing it into a braid that reinforce one another.
So I built a framework to test this. Here’s how it works:
Vocation: This is the base. It is the skill you have to get paid right now, not in the future. I have developed marketing and sales skills from running my business and helping others. That’s a skill I can trade. What’s your vocation? It doesn’t have to be your life-long goal or your passion for now. Just get paid.
Craft: This is where you develop your interest. It’s the one thing you want to get better at. For me that’s writing, storytelling (or communicating new ideas), and building new tools. It’s self-directed. I do this with my newsletter and my books. It doesn’t make as much income but the writing helps me write compelling narrative for my GTM work. It reinforces my vocation.
Hobby: These are just things you enjoy. Do them. For me, it’s playing basketball and making music. There is no connection to anything commercial. It’s just the pursuit of leisure. Although, I find that the music helps me become a better storyteller.
When I weave it all together, I’ve developed something.
A system that crafts compelling narratives for people who want to drive opportunities to what they are building without hiring a sales and marketing team.
I invite you to experiment with the VCH model today.
Spend 70% of your time on your vocation, 20% on your craft, 10% on your hobbies.
With time, the craft and hobby bucket and time allocation can get bigger.
Big enough that it starts to take care of the base. That’s the dream.
Closing Reflection:
A lot of us shy away from what we really want to do.
The same way I didn’t want to share my 5th book.
It’s primarily because I didn’t want to seem all over the place. A personal insecurity. But it’s funny that that insecurity is probably what makes each of our stories unique. The fusion of our interests and experiences. Accepting it, having a framework to take care of the base, and then fusing it together in a way it can be communicated for maximum leverage is a life-long skill.
I’ve been working on it for years, and it gets me through most of the time. It definitely helped this week.
So here’s my question for you: “What’s one thing you can do today to find more balance between how you make money and how you nurture your interests?”
The fusion of your interests is your unfair advantage. But only if you have a system to manage it.
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. What’s one craft you wish you could foster? (I’m testing this VCH framework with entrepreneurs I work with – reply and tell me how it lands for you.)
