I’d just gotten back from Basic Training for the Army.

It was a weird time in my life. Just six months previous, I was a regular ol’ college student. Was playing football at the University of Nebraska, partying too much and doing as little school work as possible.

In the interim…

I’d joined the Army. I’d gotten married. My wife got pregnant. 9/11 happened and I shipped off to Basic. The possibility of deploying to Iraq hung over my head — and I returned home not sure what the hell I was going to do.

I joined the Army Reserves…

So, it wasn’t a full-time gig.

And, that’s when I stumbled on the books I’d previously mentioned. They were like a sledge hammer to the forehead. They made me think about things I’d never considered — and in ways I never imagined.

It was a much needed wake-up call…

And kick in the pants.

I don’t know that they publish books anymore — and when they did, you couldn’t just go online and buy them. You had to be “selected” (all very esoteric and mysterious), but I keep a few lying around the house still.

Even though, I’ve read them all multiple times.

I still glean insights from them all these years later.

In many ways, they’re my “secret weapon”.

Anyway, one of the very first things I discovered in these books was what they called your “Friday Night Essence”. It’s one method for figuring out the thing you were meant to do in life — your “downstream focus”.

The idea is simple…

Make a note of the things your mind gravitates towards to on Friday nights. Because Friday evening is the furthest away from Monday morning. And, it’s when you feel the most free to do whatever you want.

And, of course, there will be leisure and entertainment.

But, you’ll also notice things that others might consider “work”.

Things others might think you’re “strange” for wanting to do. But, if you look at the top entrepreneurs now and throughout history, you’ll see that before they came uber successful, they were doing these strange things…

Henry Ford taking things apart and putting them back together.

Steve Jobs tinkering with computers.

My daughter climbing on everything she’s not supposed to.

Haha.

I’ve just accepted she’s going to climb mountains and scare the daylights out of me for the rest of here life! 😀

Anyway, for me, early on in my life, that was coding. During the week, I’d noodle some big website or app I could build — just waiting for the weekend to work on it. And when Friday night came, I was usually up to the wee hours getting a start.

Today, it’s teaching.

I have to be very careful, in fact.

If I start down an idea path too late at night or I wake up in the middle of the night and start thinking about something… next thing I know, it’s the next morning and I haven’t got a wink of sleep.

It’s my “Friday Night Essence”.

So, anyway, spend the next couple Friday nights just paying attention. What does your mind naturally gravitate toward? Write it all down — whatever it is — then, come back a little later and look at your list.

Is there anything on there that others might consider work?

That’s a clue-in to your essence.

And, here’s the bottom-line business lesson… if you’re mind is already gravitating toward that thing when you’re NOT being paid to do it, imagine what happens when you ARE getting paid. Imagine how motivated you will be.

How productive.

How focused.

How energized.

This is the key to maximizing your potential AND your freelance revenue — because you’ll naturally do the one thing that matters most: MASSIVE ACTION. You won’t have to cajole or trick yourself.

No 7-step systems…

Or “sneaky little tricks”.

Just you… doing YOU.

Pure authenticity and raw productive power.

Anyway, in Part 1 of my Freelance Feast course I show you how to tap into that productive power through a series of exercises that help you to figure your essence AND tie it to a commercially-viable service.

And gives you an nearly unbeatable advantage…

Over other freelancers who are just phoning it in…

Doing stuff they can’t stand.

In any case, as I’ve said, Part 1 of the course is up on Skillshare now. I’ve put it there to give everyone a crack at it regardless of your financial situation — because I can get you an exclusive 14-day trial of Skillshare…

Where you get unfettered access to all 30,000+ courses…

Including mine.

So, you can start the trial, take the course and, if you want, cancel before the 14 days is up and you never pay a penny — essentially, getting to take the course for free — albeit a few hoops to jump through.

But, the course will come off Skillshare at the end of this month.

And then, be sold on my website for probably around $150 or so.

So, if you want to save yourself a wad of cash, this is a decent option.

Anyway, link to get the trial is here if you’re interested: https://myjohn.us/feast

Later,

John

P.S. For my Patreon homies… you, of course, already have access since you get access everything of mine, automatically. The link to the course on Patreon is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50847910. Also, in case you missed it, you get access to a number of Patreon exclusives — things only available to Patreon supporters — like this video where I break down the numbers behind my Cold Email Method launch last month: https://www.patreon.com/posts/51085343 and this “way too early” look at next month’s course, “The Ascension Matrix”: https://www.patreon.com/posts/51324240. In these posts, I take you into my thinking behind why I’m creating a particular course, my strategy for promoting it, how I create them, etc. Worth checking out if you want a behind the scenes look at how I run my business.