We’re doing income and assessment this month, so if you haven’t made your own copy of the worksheet, grab one here.  

I’m going to backtrack a little to talk about how we should be approaching our work as CEOs of our freelance businesses.  

This isn’t the easiest mental shift to make — most of us are conditioned to look at our work like an employee student. That puts us in positions where we have little power over assessment or what’s done with what we find.  

This is different.  

As a CEO, it’s our job to look at the bigger picture and figure out a plan that gets us to our goals, whatever they are. This takes an orientation that has 3 important traits... 

• Holistic: We’re looking at the big picture  of our businesses and the niches we function in (which is why it’s good to do these exercises on a day you aren’t working). 

• Objective: We’re minimizing personal bias. Money, aspirations, and emotions are all important, but we need to approach them with as little “slant” as possible.  

• Action-oriented: We need to be ready to act. That might be a small tweak to the hours you work or restructuring how your business functions, but this is bigger than observation.  

It takes time for this to become natural, but honestly, anybody can work toward it. If you want to talk out what you’re seeing in your own workbook as a CEO, come by the Academy boards to get a conversation started!