Hi friends,

Today marks my 1-month anniversary at my new employer. An employer that’s not me. It’s the first time that has happened in 5 years. 

The whole experience of working for someone else again has been a crazy ride actually – like entering a different world. It has also been way more challenging than I ever expected. It’s teaching me a lot about myself. About both the good and the bad. 

Well, bad… let’s call it ‘things I want to work on’ ✌️

I think it’s a good practice to reflect once a month on things you want to keep doing and things you want to work on in the month to come. 

Just for a few minutes. With a journal, or a newsletter, in my case. 

I’ll start with the good stuff 🎉

There are a lot of things that I love about working for someone else, like…

👍 Feeling part of a team (which reminds me of this awesome song)
👍 The ability to work with a lot of clients, without the hassle of selling to them
👍 Being surrounded by other people who are great at what they do
👍 Getting to rapidly improve my own skills as a an e-learning professional
👍 Oh, and the lunch buffet! It’s amazing

I thought I knew a lot about the e-learning industry, but there is still so much more to learn. And learning goes so much faster when I can finish projects in two weeks, which would’ve normally taken me at least two months to finish. 

Because now I don’t have to do it alone. 

And I guess that’s the best part about working for an employer again – not being alone anymore. Not feeling like a freelancer anymore. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love being a freelancer and the freedom it provides. But it’s also great to be surrounded by others who can inspire you to be better and have more fun.

So if you’ve been freelancing for a while and feel like you could use some new inspiration, I can definitely recommend trying out working for an employer again. Even if it’s part-time, like I’m doing. I wouldn’t want to give up working on my own projects completely, after all.

What I want to work on 💪

Despite all the good stuff, there are also things I don’t like about working for an employer again. But instead of focusing on those things now – just one month after starting – I want to focus on things that I can improve myself.

One month is just not enough to make up your mind about what’s good and bad about working somewhere. I barely made it through my onboarding process. Plus, we all have a lot of power in shaping our own experiences. Whatever feels bad now can become something good later, just because we change our actions or attitude about this thing.

So with that thought, these are the three things I want to work on this month:

📅 Being on top of my planning
🕑 Freeing up time for long-term projects
🙃 Feeling confident in social situations

Last month I was not on top of my planning. I missed important deadlines. I was working almost every evening. I didn’t have a lot of sleep. I couldn’t even work out as I normally do. I was constantly juggling between the job, freelance work and KREW. 

In other words: I was all over the place.

I want to be one of those people who just schedules times for something and then sticks to it no matter what. To just sit down and do the work. That’s going to be me next month!

Which brings me to my second point: freeing up time for long-term projects 👇

Last month I only had time for the urgent and important stuff. Next month, I want to spend about as much time on the non-urgent and important stuff. 

I’m working on my own platform for online courses at the moment, which deserves a lot more time than I’ve been giving it recently. So kind of a planning thing as well, but more of a priorities thing – I could spend my free time in a ton of ways, but next month, I’m going to choose to mainly spend it on this project.

Finally, there’s this bit about me being awkward in social situations 😅

Does anyone else have that? Like, whenever I do not feel comfortable around a group of people yet, I don’t really speak. For example, when having lunch with my colleagues or during Friday drinks. I have the natural tendency to only speak when spoken to. 

It became painfully apparent that this is something I want to work on, now that I’m back in an office with other people. And again: that’s after having worked mostly alone behind my laptop for 5 years. 

So… time to get to work! 🚀

Thanks for reading my monthly reflection. I hope it inspires you to do a short reflection yourself and pick several things you want to work on for next month.

Just don’t forget to actually check in a month how that’s going. 

Schedule a monthly call with an accountability buddy if you need to. It’s what I do and it works wonders if you’re having trouble keeping yourself accountable. Can’t find one? Ask a friend or family member. Anything works, as long as you ask them to not go too easy on you – they are there to keep you accountable after all.

By the way, if you have any tips or tricks to help me with my ‘things to work on’, please let me know in the comments or by replying to this email. I’d be happy to return the favour. 

I hope you’ll have a great month ahead. Let’s make sure we come out a little bit better than we are now. Good luck to us!

Cheers,

Marc

What I Loved This Week ❤️

🦁 King’s Day – It was super cool to see the Dutch national holiday restored to its former glory after the corona years. It didn’t top the KREW Meeting though…

🥳 KREW Meeting – This month, we had our biggest monthly gathering of entrepreneurs yet. With nearly 30 people attending, an optimised format and amazing energy of people willing to help each other grow, I truly got the feeling like we created something special here. I can’t wait to see where KREW is going to go over the next few years. In case you’re curious, you can find the pictures from the last meeting here.

📘 Book – Somehow, I felt like picking up a book about LinkedIn this week and I landed on 60 Days to LinkedIn Mastery by Josh Steimle. It’s essentially 60 LinkedIn post ideas with great explanations to help you come up with ideas yourself. If you had trouble getting started to promote your products or services on LinkedIn, give this book a try (I recommend the written version, by the way). Enjoy!