The thing that got me about staying in corporate America was stagnating. I was watching people who had just been doing their job for decades. And it was just like they were just on a loop. There wasn’t any progression there.
– What Brian saw in the corporate world that motivated him to start his own business
Listen to the Work From Home Forever Podcast
Meet Brian, Tax & Wealth Strategist
In this episode of the Work From Home Forever podcast, we have the pleasure of hosting Brian, an inspiring entrepreneur who transformed his side hustle into a thriving full-time venture following a company layoff eight years ago.
Brian is the visionary founder of Contigo Advisors, a leading platform dedicated to guiding entrepreneurs in scaling their businesses with confidence, mastering their finances, and building lasting wealth. Join us as we dive into Brian’s remarkable journey, exploring his motivations, challenges, and the ultimate success he enjoys today.
Episode Highlights:
- From Struggle to Financial Focus: Discover how Brian’s personal experience of witnessing his father’s struggles with a home repair during a layoff became the driving force behind his dedication to financial management. Gain insights into how this pivotal moment motivated Brian to prioritize his own financial well-being and set the stage for his entrepreneurial endeavors.
- Breaking Free from the Corporate Loop: Explore the allure of comfort and consistency that corporate life offers, while uncovering the common patterns of stagnation experienced by many corporate professionals. Brian shares his observations and perspectives on how he recognized these loops and found the motivation to pursue entrepreneurship.
- Smooth Transition: Side Hustle to Entrepreneurship: Learn how Brian’s prior experience running his side hustle laid a solid foundation for his transition from employee to entrepreneur. Discover valuable tips and lessons as he shares the insights gained from managing his business on the side, making the leap into full-time entrepreneurship a smoother process.
- Overcoming Challenges: Perseverance and Resilience: Acknowledging the realities of the entrepreneurial journey, Brian discusses the obstacles he encountered along the way. From moments of self-doubt and loneliness to making sacrifices that tested his commitment, Brian candidly reflects on the challenges he faced. Discover how his unwavering perseverance and resilience ultimately propelled him towards the success he enjoys today.
Connect with Brian:
- 🌐 Website: Explore Contigo Advisors and their services
- 📷 Instagram: Follow Brian @brianbasinger_cpa for regular updates and tips
- 📺 YouTube: Subscribe to Brian’s YouTube channel for informative videos on entrepreneurship and financial mastery
Why Are We Shouting? Podcast
“Looking for a podcast about small business blunders? Mistakes that entrepreneurs have made and how they’ve screwed things up? Look no further.
Jill Salzman can’t stop shouting, especially when it comes to business advice. She hosts the Why Are We Shouting? Podcast where she tackles the answers to every mom entrepreneur’s questions about running a company.
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Q & A with Brian
Why did you want to Work From Home Forever?
- I think ultimately it comes down to a desire to control one’s own life and career, which is probably one of the. More noble pursuits that we can have through life. We all have careers, but how many people are going through their careers in kind of a corporate world where they don’t actually have any control over what happens?
- They’re at the control of a corporation that could just decide to let them go one day. They are a very small piece of a big puzzle and they probably don’t individually have a lot of control over what happens within that corporation, and they don’t really have a lot of control over their own time. And I think that that’s a pretty awful way to go through a decades long career. At least for me it was.
- So having the ability to take responsibility for my own life and my own results, and kind of determine my own destiny was the big desire to work from home.
How long have you been Working From Home, Forever?
- Since 2015, I went full-time with my own CPA firm. I had been doing it on the side since 2011 and 2015 was when I quit my corporate job.
What trade offs, if any, did you make in order to Work From Home Forever?
- It was hard. I left my job, I left a salary and obviously a consistent paycheck. My wife is a stay-at-home mom and, at that time, we had three kids under 3 years old. I was able to get one big contract for an outsourced CFO role, but I had to travel out of state. Every week or two, I was leaving for several days, leaving my family and going to work in a different state. I was taking red eye flights so that I was sacrificing the minimal amount of time with my family.
- Remembering the sleep deprivation and all that kind of has these flashbacks of misery but was a means to an end. I feel like that was what was required of me to break out of the dependence on a salary as the sole earner for my family.
- And I don’t regret it at all, but it was unquestionably hard. The sacrifice was maybe a three- year period for me of really intense work where I sacrificed a lot of family time, a lot of sleep, and basically had no personal interests or hobbies or anything besides getting the firm going and trying to spend any amount of time that I had left over with the family.
How do you manage work/life balance Working From Home, Forever?
- It really comes down to setting boundaries and isolating things. So when it’s time to work, be working and have the discipline to kind of shut out anything related to personal or family and be a hundred percent working. And then having the discipline to draw a clear boundary and say, okay, it’s personal time. I’m not working now, I’m not checking email.
- One thing I’ve done is I’ve taken email off my phone completely so I can’t check email on my phone. And that’s been one of the best choices I’ve made. That’s just one specific example of a larger philosophy, which is when I’m working, be working when I’m at home or doing something outside of work, I try to be completely there and not have my mind be somewhere else.
What’s your best advice to others who want to Work From Home Forever?
- Do it. That’s my best advice. We’re all going through this life and we all have careers and I think that one of the most beautiful things about doing things differently and working from home, which I really just see as a way to have control over your career, is that it forces you to develop in ways that you would never be forced to develop.
- It forces you to develop yourself in new areas. It forces you to get uncomfortable and do things you’re uncomfortable with. It forces you to just grow and find these solutions and become something and someone that you maybe wouldn’t be challenged to become if you were working for someone else. You’re just not pushed to do all the different things..
- And like even down to like the development of understanding how to balance these things at work and life when you have more freedom, that leaves more room for error. Just understanding that and just growing as a person. I just think there’s nothing better. I think everybody should take more control over their life and career and I would encourage anyone to do that.
- So my advice to just do it is like you will figure it out and you will grow and be better in the process and probably be better for it. It could probably make more money if you do it this way and you’ll just become a better person, a more developed person, which is really what a career is about, I think.
What are your three must-haves to Work From Home, Forever?
- First and foremost, you have to have total clarity about what your goals and desires, because you can’t achieve something if you don’t know what you’re aiming for.
- Two, you need. to be supported by whoever is living with you. It could be a significant other, family, children, whatever. People need to understand and respect that you’re still working and you have to set those boundaries.
- And three, I think it’s absolutely critical that you have a separate space. Just like they say that your bed should basically, you know, only be for sleeping because otherwise you start to associate it with watching TV, playing on your phone, hanging out because then you make these mental associations. In the case of a bed, like if you associate it with things that involve being awake and spending hours not sleeping, then you’re not going to sleep as well. But if you only associate it with sleeping, as soon as you get in bed, your body associates it with that and says, okay, it’s time to go to sleep. Same, I think, is true for workspace and office environment.
- At home, to the extent possible, carve out some corner and make that corner for work only. And when you get in that corner, it is as free of distractions as possible, and it is the place that you associate with getting work. You can go there and it immediately puts you in the mindset of getting work done.
S3 E5 Corey Walker: From Marketing Specialist to Instagram for Dummies – Work From Home Forever
In this episode of the Work From Home Forever podcast, we chat with Corey Walker, a social media agency owner and co-author of "Instagram for Dummies" and "Instagram for Business for Dummies."
Corey shares her journey from working in a corporate cubicle to running her own successful social media agency from home. The catalyst for her transition was the desire to spend more time with her young daughter, who was in daycare while Corey felt unproductive in her office cubicle.
Determined to find a better work-life balance, she began freelancing and eventually established her agency, The Marketing Specialist.
Corey highlights the importance of having a dedicated office space at home and setting clear boundaries with clients to maintain a healthy work-life balance. She discusses how the rise of short-form video content has transformed digital marketing, noting the challenges small business owners face in creating engaging videos. Despite the obstacles, she emphasizes the necessity of leveraging platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn to connect with clients and grow their businesses.
Corey also touches on the importance of maintaining personal connections and taking breaks to avoid burnout. She shares strategies for managing client expectations and stresses the value of networking and continuous learning to stay ahead in the ever-evolving field of social media marketing. Throughout the interview, Corey provides practical advice for those considering a transition to remote work, whether for a company or as an entrepreneur.
Connect with Corey:
Website: The Marketing Specialist
Instagram: CoreyCWalker
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- S3 E5 Corey Walker: From Marketing Specialist to Instagram for Dummies
- S3 E4 Stay Fit While You Sit: Ergonomic Tips with Mike Jones
- S3 E3 Creating a Kind Workplace: Michael G. Neece on Leading with Kindness
- S3 E2 From Family Therapy to Bestselling Author: Jack Lawrence's Career Pivot
- S3 E1 Building a Remote-First Culture: Insights from Danielle Cuomo of Virtual Assist USA
