From Empty Calendar to Full Impact: How I Built a Business Around Time Freedom, Serendipity, and Service

Most people assume building a business starts with a detailed strategy and a full calendar. Mine started with… nothing.

After being laid off, I was staring at an empty Google calendar and a wide-open future. No meetings. No deadlines. No playbook. Just me and a vague idea that I wanted to do work that mattered, on my terms. So I began experimenting with how I spent my time, not with hustle, but with intention.

And over time, I learned a few things most gurus won’t tell you. Here are 6 of the biggest lessons I've learned along the way:

Hustle ≠ Success

One of the first things I realized? I didn’t want to scale some massive empire. I wanted time freedom, not a 7-figure cage.

The hustle-porn advice didn’t resonate. I wasn’t trying to be rich at the cost of relationships, peace, or purpose. I wanted to serve people and build something sustainable, not become a slave to my own business.

The Coaching Lemonade

In the beginning of my journey, I paid big bucks for coaches that didn’t deliver. At first, it felt like I’d been burned. But looking back? It was a gift.

It showed me how not to serve people. It revealed a gap in the market, a glut of amateurs trying to wing it. I realized if I committed to doing it well, with integrity and real value, I could stand out.

The Client That Cut Me Loose

Early on, I lost a client out of nowhere. It stung. I questioned everything, was I even cut out for this?

But that gut-punch became fuel. I sharpened my approach, refined my offers, and doubled down on choosing clients just as carefully as they chose me.

Since then, I’ve never had to “fire” a client, because I don’t say yes to the wrong ones in the first place.

A Book Changed Everything

The game-changer? Writing a book that documented my own unique framework (The Zero In Formula). It wasn’t just a calling card, it became a tool that opened doors, landed clients, and built trust at scale. I started getting booked on several podcasts. The Zero In Formula hit number 1 best seller on Amazon in it's category in 4 different countries. I was having businesses from around the world contact me for consulting instead of just those in my local area. The book open my eyes and my world.

So, I did it again. I wrote The Accidental Solopreneur, a business parable that shows the journey of someone who leaves their corporate job to start their own one person consulting business (sound familiar) and all the lessons they learned along the way. Again, the book took off and I started getting booked for coaching calls to help other people bet on themselves and start their own businesses.

This proved to me that having a compelling perspective and packaging it well could do more than a thousand cold emails ever could.

The Role of Serendipity

Here’s a harsh truth I’ve learned along the way as well: success is never fully under your control (I even gave a TED Talk on the subject). We love to pretend there’s a blueprint. That if you just follow the 7 steps, the outcome is guaranteed. But that’s a lie we tell ourselves to feel safe. I know it was a lie I believed (for the first 43 years of my life...before being laid off).

In reality, serendipity plays a much bigger role than we admit. The people you meet. The timing of your ideas. The happy accidents that turn into inflection points. It’s easy to rewrite the story in hindsight as if it were all part of a grand plan, but most breakthroughs don’t arrive on schedule.

Often, it’s a chance conversation, a wrong turn, or a missed opportunity that ends up opening the right door (just look at the accidental discovery of Penicillin or how Sarah Blakely started Spanx). Success isn’t always about control, it’s about being open, observant, and ready when the unexpected shows up.

That’s where the real magic lives.

Turning Notes into Assets

Throughout this journey, I developed habits that now fuel everything I create. I leave voice notes. I jot ideas in my phone. I observe patterns across industries. Everything is an opportunity to test and build. Some ideas are a flop (in fact many of them are) but some of them turn out to be pure gold. The point is to collect them and act on them.

I once turned a board game into a client engagement tool... and it worked.

When COVID hit, I didn’t panic. I pivoted. From in-person sessions to creating re-sellable assets like books and courses. Yes, I had to do a lot of marketing to sell those assets (see this article that dives into this in more detail) but now I had more passive income streams that didn't rely on me having to trade my time for money.

It wasn’t planned, but it worked. (Thanks again, serendipity.)

Final Thoughts

If you’re starting with an empty calendar and no roadmap, take it from me: that might just be the best place to begin.

Bet on your ideas. Choose time freedom over ego. Say no often. And leave room for the unexpected.

You can’t force serendipity. But you can make yourself easier to find when it shows up.

Ready to bet on yourself? Book a 1:1 coaching call with me and we'll walk through it together.