The Freedom I Didn't See Coming

When I first started building businesses, I thought I knew exactly what freedom looked like.

Like many entrepreneurs, I believed freedom was something waiting on the other side of success. It was attached to future goals, bigger opportunities, and the next milestone I was working toward.

What I didn't realize was that my definition of freedom would continue changing as my life changed.

In this episode of Business Coaches Corner, I pick up where Episode 13 left off and continue the journey from Colorado to Tahoe, through the growth of my coaching business, and eventually into a year of traveling through Costa Rica and Mexico while continuing to work with clients and run my business.

This isn't a conversation about strategy, systems, or scaling.

It's a reflection on how the businesses we build often take us places we never expected to go, and how sometimes the things we're chasing look very different once we finally arrive.

If you've ever found yourself working toward a future version of success, only to discover that what matters most has changed along the way, this episode is for you.

Join me for a personal conversation about entrepreneurship, reinvention, travel, coaching, and the unexpected ways our lives unfold when we're busy making plans.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Business Coach's Corner. I am Bex Gold, your host. Last time I left off in Colorado. When I recorded that episode, I realized something that probably should have been obvious much sooner. Looking back at your life is a little like looking at a map after you've already arrived somewhere. The route seems clear. The turns seem obvious. You can see how one road connected to another and eventually led you where you are today. Living it never feels that way. At the time, Colorado wasn't part of some larger story I was trying to create. It was simply where had life have taken me. That's one of the things I find amusing about memory. Years later, we give events meaning they didn't necessarily have while we were living them. We connect dots that were invisible at the time. What I remember most about those years isn't a specific business achievement or some major milestone. What comes back to me are pieces of ordinary life that somehow survived while bigger memories faded away. I remember driving through areas that still felt unfamiliar and realizing I no longer knew where everything was. In Los Angeles, I could not evigate with almost not even thinking. I mean I was born and raised there. I knew the streets, I knew the shortcuts, I knew which roads to avoid and which routes would save time, which is super important there, for goodness sakes. Colorado required attention. I had to pay attention to where I was going. That sounds insignificant, but I think there is something interesting about arriving somewhere new and suddenly becoming aware of how much of life had been operating on autopilot before. Everything feels different for a while. The grocery store is different. You don't know where anything is. The weather is different. The rhythm of a single day even feels different. You find yourself paying attention to the things that used to happen automatically. Looking back now, I think I spent a lot of that period adjusting to change without fully realizing I was adjusting to change. At the time, it just felt like life. Years later, I can see that each move, each business, and each new chapter was quietly expanding what I believed was possible. The funny thing is that I wasn't chasing some grand vision. I wasn't sitting around creating a master plan for the next 20 years. Most of the time, I was doing what entrepreneurs do. I was working, solving problems, looking for opportunities, and trying to make good decisions with the information that I had available. That probably sounds less exciting than people expect. When people hear the stories afterwards, they sometimes imagine there was a blueprint. There wasn't. There was simply a willingness to keep working and moving when life offered a new direction. Eventually that direction led me here to Tahoe. Even now it's difficult to explain why Tahoe felt different. Most people who haven't spent time here immediately start talking about the lake. And they're right. The lake is beautiful. It never gets old. I mean Tahoe is gorgeous. Nothing about it ever gets old. There are mornings when water looks almost unreal, and evenings when the mountains seem to absorb whatever stress you arrived with. In fact, for mountains for me, always absorb any stress I have. But when I think about those first years, that's not actually what comes back to me. What I remember is the feeling of exhaling. Not literally, just the sense that something inside me had slowed down. I don't think I recognized it right away. In fact, if somebody had asked me about it at the time, I probably would have denied it. I still had businesses to build. I still had goals, I still had responsibilities. Nothing about my personality had suddenly changed, and yet something was inherently different. I remember mornings that felt less rushed. I remember spending time outside, so much more time outside, without feeling guilty that I wasn't doing something else. I remember realizing that success felt different when you could actually enjoy where you were while you were creating it. That last part took me longer to understand that I would like to admit. In fact, right now I look out my window right here and I see the beautiful mountains and a meadow and it's gorgeous. For years I had been focused on what came next, the next goal, the next business, the next opportunity, the next chapter. But somewhere along the way, Tahoe introduced a different question. What if this chapter mattered too? Not because it's leading somewhere, not because it was preparing me for something, just because this is my life, and each moment counts. Around the same time, the coaching business continued to grow. The interesting thing about coaching is that it never felt like work in the same way some of my previous businesses had. The conversations energized me. Watching people build companies, overcome obstacles, and create opportunities for themselves never got old. I loved seeing business owners discover they were capable of more than they thought. I loved helping them find clarity when everything felt overwhelming. I loved watching confidence appear where uncertainty used to live. Most of all, I loved the fact that no two conversations were ever exactly the same. Every business owner arrived with a different story, a different perspective. Every challenge came wrapped in a different set of circumstances. Every breakthrough looked a little different. What I didn't fully appreciate at first was how much freedom coaching was quietly creating in my life. Not because I was trying to build a business that could travel. The thought honestly wasn't front and center. I was focused on serving clients and building something meaningful. The realization came gradually. One day I noticed I could work from somewhere other than my office. In fact, I went outside a lot and work outside because it's gorgeous here. Oh my gosh. Then I noticed it really didn't matter where I was sitting when I talked to clients. Then I noticed that a lot of limitations I assumed existed weren't actually limitations at all. All I needed was in my computer and the internet. The idea sat in the back of my mind quite a while before I did anything with it. And then one day I found myself booking a trip to Costa Rica. Not just a trip, a whole year I decided to leave. I remember feeling excited about Costa Rica, but I don't remember feeling like I was making some life-changing decision. That's probably one of the reasons I've been thinking about all of this lately. Looking back, so many of the moments that changed the direction of my life felt surprisingly ordinary while they were happening. At the time, booking the trip felt less like a major decision and more like something I wanted to do because the opportunity was there. I mean, I sold everything to do it, but I really didn't book that far out. I booked a month, even though I know I was going longer, so it was I was free. The coaching business was running well. My clients were doing what clients do, building businesses, solving problems, creating opportunities, and working through challenges. For the first time, I found myself in a position where there wasn't a compelling reason not to go. What felt unusual wasn't the travel itself. I had traveled before. What felt different was the realization that I wasn't leaving my work behind. The business was coming with me. The life I had spent years building was coming with me too. For most of my life, travel had existed in a completely different category. Travel was something that happened when work stopped. It was a reward, a break, a temporary escape from responsibility. I know you guys all know what this feels like. This felt different from the beginning because nothing was being put on hold. I can still remember arriving and realizing how aware I suddenly felt. New places have a way of doing that. Back home, so much of life happens automatically. You know where you're going, you know how things work, you know that tomorrow will probably look like the same, right? In a new country, even simple tasks require attention. You wouldn't notice things you normally wouldn't notice. You pay attention to conversations, routines, sounds, and details that would disappear into the background if they were familiar. I found myself settling into a rhythm that felt surprisingly natural. Mornings often started differently than they had back home. Some days began with a walk on the beach before work, other days at the coffee shop around the corner, or another one that I'd never been to before. Then I would open my laptop, talk with clients, review plans, solve problems, and do all the things I had always done. The work itself hadn't changed very much. What changed was everything around it. That was the part that I hadn't expected. For years I had associated freedom with reaching some future destination. Freedom was always something I was building towards. It sat somewhere ahead of me, attached to a goal, a milestone, or a version, I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice, or a version of success that hadn't happened yet. Sitting in Costa Rica, I started realizing how much of my life had been spent looking forward. I don't mean that in a negative way. Looking forward is part of being an entrepreneur. It's part of being ambitious. You build your businesses because you can see possibilities that don't exist yet. The challenge is that sometimes you become so focused on what's next that you stop noticing what's here right now in the moment. You stop living this moment right now. I wasn't having some dramatic revelation on a beach somewhere. Most days felt surprisingly normal. That's probably why those memories mean so much to me now. The life I had worked so hard to create wasn't showing up as some giant life-changing moment. It was showing up as ordinary days that happened to look different than they once had. Eventually, Costa Rica led to Mexico. And those months have a way of blending together when I think about them now. What stays with me isn't a particular destination or a specific memory. What stays with me is feeling the feeling of having enough space to notice my own life while I was living it. And I was living it every day. Years earlier, or I had spent a time of I spent a lot of time focused on what came next, the next business, the next goal, the next opportunity. Somewhere along the way, without really noticing it, I had stopped asking myself whether I was enjoying the chapter I was already in. Think about that. Travel didn't answer that question for me. It simply gave me enough distance to realize I'd been asking the wrong one. What I appreciate most now is that none of those earlier visions of me or versions of me were wrong. The woman building the plumbing company in LA wasn't wrong. The woman building a fitness business wasn't wrong. The woman building a coaching business in Tahoe wasn't wrong either. They were all building the best future they could imagine from where they were standing at the time. The older I get, the more appreciation I have for that. It's easy to look backwards and focus on what you would do differently. What feels more interesting to me now is recognizing how each and every chapter created the one after it. None of it makes much sense if you isolate the pieces. The home office in Los Angeles, the trucks, the employees, Colorado, Tahoe, Coaching, Costa Rica, Mexico, taking separately, they feel disconnected. Looking back now, they feel less like separate stories and more like different parts of the same conversation. When I think about the property in Los Angeles today, I don't see the beginning of a plumbing company. I see the beginning of a journey that was going to take me places that I couldn't possibly have imagined at the time. The other day, after I got back from walking my dog, I found myself thinking about that property in LA. A little longer than I expected. I could picture the trucks, I could picture the outbuilding, I could picture a younger version of myself. Looked much better then. Moving through another busy day, completely convinced she knew where she was headed. The funny thing is, she wasn't wrong. She just couldn't see very far ahead. Then again, none of us can. Maybe that is part of the adventure. We make decisions with the information that we have at that moment. We follow opportunities that seem interesting. We build businesses, we move, we grow, we change. We spend years trying to create a future that makes sense to us. Then one day we look back and realize the road led somewhere we could have never predicted when we started. That's certainly been true for me. And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you so much for spending part of your day with me today. This is Business Coach's Corner. I'm Bex Gold, and I will be happy to see you next time.