Change 1 Life Before You Change Many: Why I’m Finally Heeding My Calling

Dear Friend,

Are you heeding your calling?

Or are you burying your true potential with ‘busy work’?

These are questions I’ve asked myself recently, as I reflect on my goals around my writing, this newsletter, and the coaching business I’m building.

In this newsletter, I’m going to share the call I’m receiving from the universe, what it means for me, and encourage you to heed your own calling from the universe.

Pushing away resistance

I remember the first time I wanted to start a business.

I was 24 years old and realized I didn’t want to keep doing the same old thing as a career for 40 years. I was bored, didn’t feel any passion for my work, and slowly slipped into a state of depression, wondering if this is what being an adult was really like.

My entrepreneurial curiosity stemmed from an article I read on Forbes featuring famous podcaster Lewis Howes. I went down the rabbit hole of personal growth, reading books and listening to Lewis’s School of Greatness podcast and the James Altucher Show. 

I quickly noticed that many of the brightest minds in the world recommended a path of entrepreneurship. Not only for the freedom to do your life’s work in your own time, but also the impact your work could create. 

Instead of being a cog in someone else’s machine, you could be the machine. And take home significant financial rewards to boot. 

Despite that realization, I’m still not an entrepreneur 9 years later.

It hasn’t been from a lack of interest or effort. 

If anything, it’s been a struggle with resistance. 

Author Stephen Pressfield speaks of resistance as the internal force that keeps us from doing our best work, taking risks, and making mistakes in the pursuit of something greater. 

This is exactly what happened the first time I considered launching a business way back in 2015.

My friend Diane was also a big personal growth junkie like me. She, too, listened to James Altucher and introduced me to Ramit Sethi. 

Ramit is the author of the New York Times bestseller I Will Teach You To Be Rich and runs a company of the same name. He was running a course launch of his flagship course, Zero to Launch. 

As soon as I visited the landing page for the course, I was hooked.

This is when I first discovered the power of copywriting. 

While I don’t have access to the page now, I remember it being long. Probably 20k+ words long and stuffed with video testimonials and stories of people just like me who built incredible businesses. 

I read the page over and over and debated if it was something I should invest in. 

I craved the freedom to do what I wanted. 

I fantasized about making money in my sleep. I’d wake up to find email receipts from happy customers buying my products. 

The course sold the dream very well. 

Against my better judgment, I agreed to invest the exorbitant sum of $2,000 for the course. It was the first major financial investment I made in my personal growth. 

I started the course with a lot of positive momentum. Flying through the videos. Taking action on the exercises. Meeting regularly with my course accountability partners about the businesses we were building.

Until one day, I gave up.

I’d been playing with the idea of launching a career coaching business (tell me if you’ve heard that before). Even though I was only 24 and had just a few years of career experience under my belt, I helped family and friends with resumes, mock interviews, cover letters, and the like.

I was also in the HR field, so I felt like I had extra credibility because I had a good sense of what hiring managers and recruiters were looking for in job candidates.

Yet, I felt like an imposter. And a hypocrite.

An imposter because who was I, at the tender age of 24, to be giving people with decades of experience career advice?

A hypocrite because I wanted to leave the corporate 9-5 life to start my own business. So why would I help others land a similar 9-5 gig to the one I wanted to escape from?

This imposter syndrome and sense of hypocrisy were critical forms of resistance that I couldn’t shake off. They became so overwhelming that I ditched the idea of that business altogether, before I even took a major step, like attracting my first client.

Taking the easy way out

The truth is, I was scared. 

Scared that I couldn’t help anybody. 

Terrified I wouldn’t be able to get any clients. Or if I got someone on a call, that I’d freeze up and be rejected once I finally found the courage to make my pitch. 

I couldn’t handle the resistance that was coming my way, so I pushed it aside. 

I took the easy way out.

Around the same time as I was working on launching my first business, I rediscovered my love for writing. 

Self-publishing was becoming more mainstream. I figured I finally had a chance to re-adopt a creative writing habit that might also one day prove lucrative. 

I wrote a story series online, read books on writing craft, and listened to enough podcasts that made it seem like it could be both a fun and money-making venture for me. Knowing I still had a busy job, I didn’t want to focus all of my spare time on both writing and business, so writing won out.

When I told my accountability partners about my sudden change in heart, they understood. But, being older than me, I’m sure they thought my ambitions were naïve. Looking back, they certainly were. 

I was foolish to think that I’d become a best-selling, six-figure action thriller author. 

To date, I’ve only made about $2,000 (in revenue, not profit) just over 5 years after my first book was published. 

While I don’t regret taking all that time to write those books and develop into the writer I am today, I wonder if pouring so much of my creative energy into a passionate, but financially suspect endeavor was worth the time. 

Perhaps I would be a successful career coach already, instead of just getting started again. 

But because I was too afraid to go out and do market research in my niche, find customers, and take a chance in launching a business that might fail, I’m back at square one. 

Looking for a way to become an entrepreneur while not only indulging my passion for writing, but fueling my purpose of coaching.

Answering the universe’s call

The good news is that I finally have figured out how to do this.

But it wasn’t without trials and tribulations. 

When I first started this newsletter, I’d just started training with my coach training program. My program is based on Jungian psychology, Eastern spirituality, and social neuroscience. I find each of these fields deeply interesting and think each can help us ease suffering and lead more fulfilling lives.

The creators of my program also have a podcast, and right away I saw how this type of coach training would help me make a big impact on the world. 

I figured I could use the training to align with my SNACK philosophy, which would help more people suffer less and become more content. 

The program aligned so much with my own path of achieving self-love and embracing non-attachment that I figured it would make all the sense in the world for me to become a spiritual coach. 

In a way, I’m sharing a lot of lessons in Waking Up that I would work with clients on. Not teaching directly, of course, but using the principles and baking them into my questions so my clients can find their inner wisdom through the questions.

As I started working through the training program’s modules on launching my business, an entirely new coaching niche entered my brain.

Career coaching.

Nonsense, I thought. I’m here to do deeper work with clients, and the only way to do that deeper work is through spiritual coaching. Career coaching isn’t that deep.

It’s funny how my mind came back to this idea, given my earlier experience of failing to launch a career coaching business so many years ago.

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. All the signs were there:

• Friends and family (and random strangers on LinkedIn) frequently asked for my support with career and job challenges 

• My highest performing articles in terms of reads, views, and earnings on Medium touch on career change

• I built a successful decade-long career in the HR field, rising to middle management

• I completely changed careers at age 30 and am thriving in this new role as a UX Writer

• I’ve even mentored others looking to become UX Writers on their portfolios, assignment feedback, and career decisions

My fitness coach (who I’ve since received coaching from in relationships and business as well) also helped me change my mind about this.

He asked me if my physical transformation involved spiritual work. I thought about it for a minute, and saw how right he was. 

I created an affirmation about achieving my ideal body, long before I had any physical proof I could do it. I had to form the mindset of the fit, confident person I wanted to become. 

This belief in the unknown, this faith in being able to achieve something I’ve never achieved before propelled me into being in the best shape of my life.

When I brought this same concern about career coaching not leading to deeper work to the coach I work with in my training program, she also challenged me on my newfound niche.

Shadow work, emotional power integration, family and cultural shadow dynamics, goal setting from the true self instead of the ego, and almost every other topic we cover in our coach training can apply to careers and career change. 

I saw how I can help clients not only with practical challenges like formatting their resume, reaching out to hiring managers, and negotiating their compensation, but also the deeper spiritual work that held me back from changing careers for many years. 

Imagine the possibilities of feeling completely empowered in your career. Able to reinvent your career, become a leader, change jobs, or even start a business at any time. 

Because you know how to work with the ego, the shadow, and make decisions from your true self. 

You can operate with self-love to set better boundaries at work, and embrace non-attachment to goals and outcomes.

This lets you do your life’s work and feel a deep sense of love, gratitude, and completeness at work. 

I finally saw what the universe had been calling me to do all along. And it felt exciting.

I now present to you all, Spenser Warren: Career Coach!

My path forward 

The last time I attempted to build a career coaching business, I stopped myself short.

I couldn’t handle the discomfort of rejection from clients, so I focused my entrepreneurial endeavors on one of the few businesses where I didn’t need to attract clients.

Writing is still very much a passion of mine, but my writing needs to serve the business I’m building and not the other way around.

I can use my love of writing in a new way to promote this business. But it means I need to pivot how and where I create right now. 

The biggest change?

I’m pausing the publication of Waking Up indefinitely.

I may pivot down the road with a new newsletter focused on career empowerment. Perhaps I’ll navigate back to spiritual coaching and resume this newsletter where I left off. 

But I know that my coaching business has to be a priority. 

I need to spend my time attracting clients and not only building a business I’m proud of, but a business that can help thousands of ambitious but struggling professionals discover their life’s work. 

Besides pausing my newsletter, I’ll likely post less on Twitter/X (shout out to my followers there!) and more time sharing content on LinkedIn and Instagram. 

Before I go too far down the content rabbit hole, I’ll be finishing some brand building exercises, finalizing my offer, and determining my free consultation focus so I can start helping people ASAP.

If you’re interested in finding clarity with a career challenge you’re facing, whether it’s:

• Feeling more empowered at work

• Navigating a stressful work relationship 

• Getting clear on your career goals

• Reinventing your career

• Or, anything you’d like to bring to the session

Then I encourage you to schedule a free consultation. 

You’ll walk away with clear next steps on how to move forward in your career, and we can decide if we’d like to keep working together.

Otherwise, if you want to keep up with my work as I take on this new journey, give me a follow here:

• LinkedIn

• Medium

• Instagram 

• Twitter/X (though I won’t be posting as much there)

Thanks for being on this Waking Up journey with me over these last few months. 

Now that I’ve woken up to what the universe has in store for me, I hope you’ll feel inspired to do the same.

The universe wants you to share your gifts. You just need to answer the call. 

Much love,

Spenser

P.S. If you’re looking to reinvent your career or are struggling with anything at work, schedule a free career clarity consultation today. I’ve not only been on the other side as a 10 year HR practitioner, but I’ve changed careers myself. I’d love to chat more about how I can help you.