Coming Soon: An Astonishing Achievement

Popular terms of art that the modern marketing & PR industry have successfully imprinted on the culture are “Purpose” and “Mission.” Before you seriously go about pursuing any project or goal, you must think about your purpose and your mission—“your WHY” as the beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed marketing gurus with podcasts who sell $1000+ webinars to broke people would say. I must admit that I find it very difficult to articulate my purpose/mission, as it’s more of a feeling or a vision than a linear process with a defined outcome. For this reason, I tend to ignore this step before diving into a project or idea.

For about 2 years, I paid for a business coach who I met with once per month. Despite having a million balls in the air during that time, nothing was bringing in the income I wanted. I had my non profit, I had YouTube channels, I had a blogs, and I had a 9-5 to pay the bills. But it was impossible to put the necessary time into any of those other areas with my 9-5, which of course was never only “9-5.” Law firms often expect associates to be available 24/7. Although I have always had a deep and meaningful purpose in my soul driving my endeavors, the truth is that my main “Purpose” and “Mission” at that point in time was to bring in money from any source that wasn’t my law firm job, so that I could afford to quit and dedicate myself fully to work that brings me joy.

Ironically, I made precisely zero dollars during the period I was paying a business coach to help me figure out how to monetize my creativity. One day it dawned on me that I was giving my hard-earned money to another person to “coach” me in how to make money, and that I had not managed to increase my income or revenue in that entire period of time. It’s really quite absurd, when you think about it. I stopped participating in this absurdity in late 2021, and finally began to make money on my businesses in 2022.

In a reflective moment sometime around New Year’s 2023, I had the following series of thoughts: I thought that my purpose during the time I was paying the business coach was to make money from my side projects, but really my purpose was to feel like my goals were possible. That’s what I was actually paying someone to validate for me. At the same time, my business coach’s purpose was to keep me paying for sessions, which become unnecessary if I achieve my goals. But if my purpose was to make money and show at least one of my businesses could successfully do that, and I achieved that in 2022, what was my purpose now?

For the first time in a very long time, I reconnected with my original, true purpose. The one that’s been in my heart all these years, the one at my core—behind the basic need to be a contributing member of society who is able to pay their rent. The reason I feel so compelled to write, to share my story, to be an advocate.

My purpose is to empower people to believe in themselves, in every possible sense.

Whether it’s to be empowered to believe in your ability to heal yourself from illness, to file your own Trademark, to start your own business, to speak your Truth, to cook that family recipe, or to achieve any number of astonishing things.

In that vein, I’m converting this Substack into a place exclusively for Essays based on chapters from my many unfinished books, one of which is titled An Astonishing Achievement. You can read more about it in the About section, if you care to. The essays and articles that were formerly here will be moved or repurposed.

Professional legal content or content related to the services we provide at Astral Law Group, P.C. (such as my articles on Copyright/Trademark, Corporate Formations, and Open Letters to the CA State Bar) will be moved to the Blog section of our website, www.astrallawgroup.com. Pieces that were more like Rolling Stone features (such as my essays on Andrew Tate and Eliza Bleu) are being repurposed.

It occurred to me that, if I can use Substack to create content that empowers others while allowing me to write creatively and finish my books—what an astonishing achievement that would be.