Some of the best things I've built started while it looked like absolutely nothing was happening.
I used to think patience meant waiting.
Waiting for the client.
Waiting for the money.
Waiting for the business to grow.
Waiting for something to finally happen so I could feel like all this damn work was worth it.
But after more than two decades of working, freelancing, building businesses, losing clients, gaining better ones, fucking things up, fixing them, and doing it all over again...
I've realized something.
Patience isn't passive.
There's work happening underneath it.
I Didn't Know I Was Collecting Receipts
In the early years of my business, I started writing things down.
Nothing fancy.
What worked.
What didn't.
What took too damn long.
What clients kept asking me.
What I kept fixing.
What I never wanted to do again.
At the time, I wasn't thinking:
“I'm developing intellectual property.”
Please.
I was trying not to make the same mistake twice.
But those little notes became something.
Because after you've written down the same problem five different times, you start realizing...
Wait a minute.
I've seen this bitch before.
Repetition Will Tell on Everybody
The same client problems started showing up.
The same bottlenecks.
The same questions.
The same solutions.
Different client.
Different project.
Same shit.
That's when experience starts getting interesting.
Because the first time something happens, it feels random.
The second time, you notice it.
By the fifth time?
Girl, that's a pattern.
And once I could see the pattern, I could stop solving the problem from scratch every single time.
I already knew where this was going.
That's How My Frameworks Were Actually Built
Today, I have frameworks.
Processes.
Systems.
Ways of doing things that I can teach somebody else.
But most of them weren't born because I sat down one afternoon with a cute notebook and decided:
“Today I shall create a framework.”
They came from doing the work.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Then paying attention.
Something would work.
I'd document it.
I'd test it somewhere else.
I'd change something.
I'd notice what happened.
Eventually, the thing I had been doing instinctively became something I could explain.
Then teach.
Then package.
That's a completely different kind of value.
Your Experience Is Trying to Tell You Something
I think people underestimate how much information they're collecting every day.
Every project is giving you data.
Every difficult client is teaching you something.
Every question you answer repeatedly is telling you what people need from you.
Every workaround you create because the original process sucked is potentially the beginning of a better system.
But you have to notice it.
Otherwise, you keep having the same experiences without extracting anything from them.
And where's the fun in suffering if we don't at least get some intellectual property out of it?
I'm kidding.
Mostly.
Patience Needs a Job
This is where my relationship with patience changed.
I don't want to sit around waiting for something to happen.
Give me something to do while I wait.
Let me study.
Document.
Test.
Watch.
Learn.
Improve.
Because then the waiting isn't empty.
It's collecting evidence.
Maybe the thing I'm building isn't ready yet.
Maybe I'm not ready yet.
Maybe I need another twenty repetitions before I can even see what the hell I'm looking at.
Fine.
I'm still paying attention.
Some Things Can't Be Rushed
This part can be annoying as hell.
Because we want the answer now.
We want the framework before we've had enough experience to build one.
We want authority before we've spent enough time doing the work.
We want to teach the lesson while we're still halfway through learning it ourselves.
I've been guilty of that too.
But there are things only repetition can teach you.
You can't microwave experience.
You have to live enough life to recognize what keeps repeating.
Then eventually you look backward and realize:
Ohhhhh.
That's what all of that was for.
Twenty Years Looks Different in Reverse
There are things I teach today that younger Monica couldn't have taught.
Not because she wasn't smart.
She simply hadn't collected enough receipts yet.
She needed more clients.
More mistakes.
More wins.
More weird situations.
More times getting it wrong.
More chances to get it right.
More repetitions.
That's the part of experience nobody can hack.
Time gives you perspective.
But only if you're paying attention while it passes.
So No, I'm Not Just Waiting
If something I'm building takes longer than I expected, I'm not automatically convinced it's failing.
I'm watching.
I'm documenting.
I'm looking for what keeps happening.
I'm figuring out what deserves to stay and what needs to go.
Because patience isn't me sitting in some imaginary waiting room hoping somebody eventually calls my name.
I'm working while I wait.
And one day, something that looked like a random note in my phone might become the framework I teach for the next ten years.
That's the funny thing about patience.
Sometimes you don't realize what you've been building until you've already built it.
CURRENT MOOD
“Keep Ya Head Up” by 2Pac.
Because patience isn't always pretty.
Sometimes it's continuing when the payoff hasn't shown up yet.
Sometimes it's trusting what you're learning before you know exactly what you're going to do with it.
And sometimes you just have to keep your head up long enough to see what all those damn lessons were building toward.
Listen to “Keep Ya Head Up” on YouTube
PEAK OF THE WEEK
Looking at the frameworks I use now and realizing how many of them started as random observations from years ago.
Something I scribbled down because a client asked the same question again.
Something I changed because a process wasn't working.
Something I learned because I screwed it up the first time.
Turns out, I wasn't just collecting experience.
I was building my own playbook.
#PatienceHasReceipts
XXX,
M💋
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