Unencumbered: A Misfit Entrepreneurs' Guide to 2025

This Week We're Getting Reflective!
We say no to things that aren't for us so that we can say yes to the things that are. Even though you can do something, is it what's right for you right now? Does it fit with your goals? With your lifestyle? Is it something you even want to do?

In this week's episode join Lindsay for a journey into self-reflection on, 

• How rest years can lead to rediscovering your purpose
• Why saying yes to everything is the fastest route to discovering what is and isn't right for you
• How saying no will lead to faster business growth and less burnout (even when you really want to say yes)
• What it means to feel unencumbered and how you can make 2025 a less restrictive year in business and life
• Embracing your inner misfit: Why waste energy trying to fit in when you were born to stand out!

Resources Lindsay mentioned:
Fantastical Fatty on TikTok
Rachel K Albers
Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Summit
Danielle LaPorte
Shop Talk with Lindsay
Last month's Shop Talk replay

💌 Get Lindsay's Ick-Free Sales Scripts!
📺 Save your seat for Shop Talks on YouTube
🥰 Join the $9 Ick-Free Sales Membership


About Lindsay
Lindsay Johnson, aka The Radical Connector, is an ick-free sales coach for misfit entrepreneurs daring to build their business to the beat of their own drum and change the world. With 20+ years of teaching entrepreneurs how to sell more with less ick, Lindsay is passionate about helping you create life-changing money while freeing up your time and energy to lead an impactful life. Catch their marketing and sales brilliance on YouTube, podcast, blog, and stages (online and IRL) around the world!

Connect with Lindsay
Instagram | TikTok | Website | Podcast | YouTube | Blog

Transcript

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You've probably heard this said a million times before, we say no to things that aren't for us so that we can say yes to the things that are. And so even though I can, or even though you can, is it what's right for us right now? Does it fit with our goals? With our lifestyle?/ Is it something we even want to do? Welcome to the Work Less Play More podcast, home to misfit entrepreneurs, just like you, building your business to the beat of your own drum and radical enough to believe you can change the world. I'm your host, Lindsay Johnson, AKA The Radical Connector, and I've been teaching entrepreneurs how to sell more with less ick for over 20 years. If you're ready to learn how to use your business to make great money and change the world so that you can ditch your desk and go have a life, you've come to the right place. Are you ready? Let's get into it. Hello, Happy New Year, friends. Oh my goodness. I am so flipping excited for 2025. I mean, what else is new? I am excited about all things all the time. But 2023 and 2024 were such interesting personal growth, professional growth, business growth years for me. And I'll tell you, 2023 was definitely a rest year. When this good old panorama hit, I got very, very busy. I was everywhere doing all the things. Because so many entrepreneurs and programs and people were like, Oh my God, Lindsay help. And of course, y'all know what is my specialty selling, right? Getting y'all to fall in love with selling, getting you making money. And all of a sudden people were losing their jobs. They had to get really serious about their businesses. And so I was everywhere. And by the time 2023 hit friends, I was wiped out. This is why we have seen a huge drop off in my content. I got so busy, I had to abandon my YouTube channel. The podcast, forget about it. I still have a backlog of interviews that I'm hoping to get edited and recorded. And yes, we have a new podcast manager on the team who is helping with that. So thank goodness those should be coming out throughout the year here. But I was done. I needed a break. And so I decided to take the year off ish, as in, I didn't really do any business development. I really just took what came my way. Referrals, opportunities to get on some stages, getting to work on really cool things like designing curriculum for different organizations. Doing a lot in the tech space, which was really interesting in 2013. I was doing a ton of pitch workshops, pitch reviews, pitch judging, getting in and working with tech entrepreneurs. And y'all know that is not my space, and yet I learned so much and had so much fun. But, as I said, I also didn't do any of my own business development. I really just took whatever came my way. Which, friends, is also why I say network, network, network. I've had my business since 2013, so I had a vast network who kept things flowing. And that meant that I got to go play. I created another brand called Fantastical Fatty, that was all about fat liberation, fat joy, and was a really important part of my own journey to body acceptance. Body neutrality and getting my head out of diet culture and living my frigging life. So yeah, I created this whole other brand. I went a little bit viral on TikTok, grew a bit of an audience over there. We did a retreat. I did a group coaching program. I spoke on some panels. I started a podcast, which I also ended up abandoning. Oh, I was just so busy. But it was fun. It was a really fun way to spend a rest year working. I know that's kind of funny to think of spending a rest year working, but my brain loves to create, my brain loves to work. And so it was a real gift to be able to play with this other brand and meet some really incredible people. I'm talking, I met friends for life from this. And it also just opened up a lot in me in terms of my own sense of radical self acceptance. And as I said, unshackling my brain from diet culture and weight loss culture. And when I tell you the mental space that I have now to get to apply to way more cooler things in my life. And what was fun from all of that was that I got to also do a little bit of cross training. I got to really step back from my business. And as I say, just work on the things that fell into my lap and let my brain have fun cross training, doing some other things. One of the interesting things that happened last year around this time in 2024, I went down to Seattle to participate in a FatCon conference. I hosted a panel on coming out fat and while I was watching all of these people who are super active in these different advocacy areas, I realized advocating for fat acceptance was not where I really lit up. Yes, I'm a fat person. Yes, I'm a part of the movement, but where I really light up is, entrepreneurship. Specifically how folks like you and me can use our businesses can use entrepreneurship as a tool to liberate ourselves from harmful systems of oppression, especially capitalism. And so I left that conference really secure in the knowledge that having this break helped me get clear on why I do what I do with The Radical Connector and with my work in helping y'all make money so that you can free up your time, your energy, your effort, you can have more money, more connections, more resources, more creativity at your disposal to go out there and have a positive impact on the world. So that brings us to 2024 and I hit the ground running last year. I was so excited to get back into business. And I was in my year of, yes, in 2024, I said yes to everything, any speaking gig, any opportunity to get on a stage or a platform somewhere. Any connection, any type of work that a client came to me that I could help with. I just said yes to everything because I wanted to understand what it was that I even did. Cause here's the thing. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. And if y'all have been around, you know, my business originally started out as The Networking Boutique. And my whole thing back then was to show entrepreneurs how to grow faster and easier using networking. But of course, what did entrepreneurs not care about, networking. So I had to pivot. I had to take a look at what y'all were coming to me for. And the bulk of the time is for sales and for marketing. But here's the thing, after 10 years in business, 20 years in business development and doing what I do with my Ick Free Sales System, cuz you have to remember, I developed the system in my early twenties and have been teaching it and utilizing it for two decades. After two decades of amassing all these skills, especially after 2020, when digital marketing skills were imperative, I spent so long and so much effort and time learning all these skills, honing all these skills and seeing how they fit with my system, with my anti capitalist. Consent based approach to marketing and sales. And I've been doing it for so long that I could do pretty much anything. But you know that saying, jack of all trade, master of none. That was how I was starting to feel. I felt like I could do anything. And because of that, I didn't really have a thing that was just mine. So 2024 was my year of yes. I needed to get out there and say yes to as many things as I could to finally start understanding what people were coming to me for the most, what I enjoy doing the most, what I didn't want to do. Because remember, just because you can, doesn't mean you have to. And there's a lot of things I can do. I remember in early on in 2024, I was like, you know what? I think I'm going to lean into sales. I think I'm going to lean into being a consent based sales coach and trainer and teacher. But then I kind of panicked. I started my Ick-Free Sales Membership, which has been thriving by the way. But I started the membership. I changed my entire website, all my socials. I'm the sales person. And then I kind of panicked. I started thinking about all the skills, all the experience, all the content, all the programs, all these things that I had amassed and created, and I didn't want to give it up. I loved copywriting and I loved teaching people how to copyright. I love content marketing and digital marketing, and I love showing people how to do it in an easier, but also a super strategic way with sales funnels attached to them. I love building sales funnels. I love taking people who were in hot mess stages in their business and cleaning everything up and getting them on the straight and narrow. There were just so many things that I could do, and I loved doing. And so I panicked and I went back to no, no, no, I can't do just sales. So I ditched just being a sales teacher, a sales coach and went back to, well, I don't know what I went back to. I called myself a business development strategist, a business strategist. I haven't tried on business coach for a while, but that didn't really fit because that's not what I was. But I just kept coming back to the same frigging issue. I don't know how to market myself. I don't know how to talk about what I do because I do so much. And I was having a call with one of my business besties we were chatting the other day and saying, I think I really do want to lean into sales, but I'm just so freaked out because there's all these other things I love doing. And she reminded me, of course, Lindsay, because you have spent a lifetime learning these skills of perfecting your craft. It makes sense that you'd want to get paid to do it, that you'd want to include that in your business, but you don't have to. And it just really freed me up because it helped me really see what I was holding onto. And you've probably heard me say this before, right? Don't keep going the wrong direction just because of how much time, money, energy you spent going in that direction. And that's kind of what I was doing. I had spent so much time and money and energy and effort learning and perfecting these skills that I kind of felt trapped. I felt stuck in going in the same path. But after, after a year of saying yes to every speaking gig, every appearance, every conversation, every opportunity, every summit, every podcast just saying yes to everything. What I realized time and again, that I'm known for is for selling is for teaching my ick free sales skills for helping entrepreneurs stop freaking out about sales and learn how to fall in love with it. By selling in a more ethical, kinder, gentler, aligned way, in a way that feels good for them and their customers. Really freeing people up from avoiding the manipulation, the ickiness, the sell at any cost tactics that we're all being taught and actually go out and make money. Because what do we always say here, right? If you're an entrepreneur, your job is to make money. And I want you to remember that your job as a person is probably to impact the world in some way, right? What did I say at the beginning of this episode? My passion, my purpose is teaching people how to use entrepreneurship as a tool to liberate themselves from systems of oppression, including capitalism. That is my personal purpose. That was my personal mission. That is my guiding light that helps me choose which opportunities, which relationships, which things in business I say yes to or say no to. It is what drives what I do. It is what fires me up. And my business's job is to make money. Because see if my business isn't making money, I can't stay in business, right? I don't have the resources to be able to first sustain my business, then sustain and myself and then take that money, time, resources, etc. and use it to have the impact on the world that I would like to make. And so for yourself, that's something to also consider. There is your purpose, but then there's your business's purpose and it's to make money. And so I'm also really, really great at helping entrepreneurs, not only fall in love with ick free selling, but also understand they have to sell. They have to make money. Otherwise, y'all can't stay in business and don't worry. You know what? If you don't want to sell, you don't have to start a business. You can have a really cool job and you can still achieve your purpose through volunteering, through the companies you choose to work with, through passion projects, creating content. There are many ways to live your purpose that don't have to be tied to compensation and being tied to having a business. But if you're going to have a business, babies, you got to sell. Now, let me tell you the other thing I really tuned into this year. I had done some work. I hired one of my friends to help me with some copywriting, help me figure out how to market myself. Friends. I've also, I should say I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars over the last couple of years to try to get people to see me and to pull out of me what I'm struggling to tell the world about myself. And one of the people I worked with, Rachel Albers, RKA, she had a whole swarm of copy that she gave me for me to kind of pick and choose from after our work together. And there were words on there like non conforming, going against the status quo, misfit. And I was like, man, I love all of this. And I started playing with it early last year and I panicked. I was like, will people get it. Will they be offended if I called them a misfit? Am I a misfit? What does non conforming even mean? How does this align with how I want to be taken seriously as a business owner? But then I realized I am . Such a misfit. I have always been a misfit in everything I do in all aspects of my life. And it wasn't until realizing that I don't fit, because I am not a part of those worlds. I'm not a straight cis person. I'm not a straight sized person. I'm not a corporate girly. You know, I don't fit into a lot of the places I was trying to fit into. And instead of internalizing that, really understanding that, oh, yeah, I am a misfit. And quite honestly, it's who I am without even trying. And then I started to look around at my clientele and the people in my community and realizing they're all misfits too. They're the plus size personal trainer who's working hard to make sure that people in bigger bodies take up space in the fitness world. It is the queer counselors and therapists and coaches who are helping youth and adults connect to their queerness and take up space. It is the gender non conforming university professors creating programs and spaces for other trans and non binary folks to connect to their gender identity and feel like they can finally come home into themselves. It is the anti capitalist business coaches, accountants and money coaches who are refusing to use exploitative business practices and are showing other entrepreneurs and people how to view their relationship with money and consumerism and business in a totally different way. Not only am I a misfit, I love working with misfits. One of the other things that also really helped open my eyes to the fact that I am a misfit and I love misfits is that I had the opportunity, honestly, the privilege, the honor of participating in the neurodiverse entrepreneur summit last year. A friend had told me about it the year before, but I missed the deadline to apply. And so I was on that wait list. And when the application call came out, boom, I was in there as quick as possible, How to Sell Without Selling for Neurodiverse Entrepreneurs. Now, I actually didn't realize, but there were only 15 people that were accepted to speak. So when I say honored, truly, I was honored. But when I tell you, I did not expect what was going to come from that event. And it's a part of why I didn't have any time off this summer. Because it blew up. I connected with so many really cool misfit entrepreneurs. They came into my programs, they worked with me one on one, they came just into my community as a community member. Because remember, y'all don't have to pay to be a part of my community. My free community is for everybody. But never have I felt so seen or understood from an anti capitalist entrepreneurship perspective, from a neurodiverse perspective, from a queer and non binary perspective, even from a body size perspective. A lot of times when I say things like, Oh, I teach consent based selling, people kind of look at me a little cross eyed and go, wait, what's that? But every time I said it in the Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Summit, everybody immediately got it. Why? Because us misfits, we get consent. We get what that means. And so that was another big piece of the puzzle for me for just really having y'all mirror for me who I am and what I stand for. And yes, there is value in that. It is wanted, it is needed, it is appreciated. And so if I were to hold up a mirror for you right now, my question to you would be, who in your life, who in your ecosystem, is mirroring you back to you? Where you are seeing yourself through their eyes? Preferably people who get you and what you stand for and what you're all about. And let's keep it real, if you're a misfit entrepreneur, that's not always easy. We have to work hard to build our community of fellow misfits. Am I right? And so where are we at? We said 2023 was a rest year and a play year. 2024 was my year of saying yes to absolutely everything, to try to figure out who the heck I am. And now as we head into 2025, and I'm reflecting on my word for the year, my word is unencumbered. Unencumbered. What does unencumbered mean? The literal definition is not having any burden or impediment. Another version is, without something making it difficult for you to do something. Some of the related words and phrases are free as a bird, at leisure, autonomous, free hand, free reign, free form, non restricted, at will, free spirit, and the biggest one for me, not trapped. You see, in my year of saying yes to everything and everyone, what I started to notice, and I know this is relatable, is that I stopped saying yes to me. And now y'all know I have a very specific schedule that I make for myself. Every year I take August and December off. Around here I have the belief of sleep when the business sleeps. For me, those are my slower times. My clientele, my community, they're off having fun on vacation, on holiday, celebrating. So I take those months for myself. And I enjoy my own downtime. Love to work on little behind the scenes projects for myself, whether it's related to business or to life. I spend lots of time catching up on TVs and movies, resting, just sitting around and thinking, lots of time with friends. I Truly get the most and yet sometimes nothing at all out of those months. I also reserve a week every month just for myself where I don't have any meetings. No client sessions, no podcasts interviews, no workshops. That's my time to catch up on admin, or content creating, or sleeping, or TV. Whatever the heck I want to do. And it's what allows me to go so full on the rest of the month and the rest of the year because I really have found that balance for me in going flat out when I'm working and then chillin when I'm not. But but when you say yes to everything well you have to put those things somewhere. That meant that my weeks off slowly started to get swallowed up. And then soon that meant my months off started to get filled with other people's things. And I realized that not only was I giving away all that time that I need to be able to function at my best and to not fall behind in my admin or my day to day life stuff, to not feel totally stressed out and overwhelmed, but also in having the attitude of, yeah, I'll do it. Yeah, I can do it. Yeah, sure. I'll do it, I started to get spread so thin in all these areas that I didn't necessarily want to be in, or at least not be in anymore. And so here comes the relatability part, and you've probably heard this said a million times before, we say no to things that aren't for us so that we can say yes to the things that are. And so even though I can, or even though you can, is it what's right for us right now? Does it fit with our goals? With our lifestyle? Is it something we even want to do? And this led me, like it always does every few years when I forget to say no, into really viscerally, palpably feeling how easy it is for us to be consumed by our businesses. And don't get me wrong. Oh, I love, love what I do. But that's also what can get me stuck into only thinking, sleeping, eating, breathing, doing what I do 24 7. And that's not okay with me. I don't want that. Now, don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong. I have a great balance in my life. I have lots of time with friends, lots of time for hobbies and interests. I mean, I have been utterly obsessed with powerlifting since the summer. If you follow me on Instagram, you know. Or if you're in my life, whether you're a client or a friend, nobody is safe. But my point is that even having hobbies, even having balance, even having rest, even having downtime, we can still be consumed if we just keep saying yes to everyone else but ourselves. And so my year of saying yes was phenomenal for finding myself again, for reconnecting to my passion and my purpose, and to finally understanding exactly where I fit in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and where I don't have to try to fit in anymore. Are you picking up on the misfit theme still running through? And so as you're listening, I hope that you're also reflecting a bit on, Hmm, where am I trying to fit that I don't fit? Or where do I expect myself to fit where really I don't have to. And where might you be getting swallowed whole by your business right now? Where you can say no to one or two things and free up some space for you to say yes to yourself? I want to feel unencumbered this year because there are some things that I want to do this year that are outside of my business that I'm going to need time to be able to do. And I miss making podcasts and YouTube videos and blogs. And I want to get back to that because I love creating content. And I have so much to say. And I have so many cool people I want to feature so that you can hear what they have to say. So now that I feel so rock solid in what I'm known for, ick free sales training, who I am and who I love to work with, all those entrepreneurial misfits out there and I know what I stand for and why I do what I do, so that you and I can use our businesses as tools for liberation from systems of oppression, I know it's so heavy, my aim in 2025 now is to become unencumbered. The other thing that has been really just absolutely magical this year is all of the community engagement that is happening. Y'all are responding to my emails. You're sending me voice notes and messages on social media about cool things that have been happening in your business. You're sending me screenshots, you're sharing your wins, and truly, ah, you know, community, community, community is everything. Community is a spiritual practice. I got that one from Danielle LaPorte. Community is all there is. And the way that y'all have been showing up for our community, collaborating with each other, supporting each other, sharing resources, working with each other, buying from each other and hiring one another. And the way you've been showing up for me, cause friends, leadership is hard. Listen, I'm always going to show up as the leader of our community. I'm always going to come through for you, but that doesn't mean I'm not a human and also sometimes make mistakes, sometimes get it wrong, maybe project a little bit of my own stuff if I'm in the middle of a messy situation. And it's just been a real honor to not only get to know you and watch your struggles and your successes, how you've overcome and how you've grown, but to feel that you're in my corner too. And you let me be human. You let me be imperfect. I really just want you to know from the bottom of my heart, how much I love our community and have nothing but gratitude for each and every one of you. So as I wrap up this episode, this little love letter to you, to me, to our community and to misfit entrepreneurs all around the world, I'm wishing you a year of feeling unencumbered. A year of freedom. Unencumbered from a belief that you have to fit in in places where you don't fit. Unencumbered from saying yes to things that you'd rather say no to. Unencumbered from being so obsessed with your business that you forget that you also get to have a life. I'm really looking forward to making 2025 an aligned year, whether that's a rest year for you, a play year, a breakout year, whatever that looks like. I wish you so much success in 2025, both in your business and in your personal life. I cannot wait to see what magic we're going to get to create together. Be sure that you're following me on social. Come and hang out with me on YouTube. Get on my email list./ And let's have a lot of fun together this year. Thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast. You can find all of the links mentioned in the show notes. Be sure to come find me on all socials at a @radicallinds. And for more information on how you and I can create more business magic together, check out theradicalconnector.com. Now get out there and be amazing.