Matthew Kimberley

I’ve got a confession:

For the last four months I’ve been working out of a temporary office in a bedroom of an apartment building that is ripe for condemnation.

While the builders rip apart my regular residence: new floors, ceilings, electrics, plumbing, bathrooms, kitchen and some heavy-duty wall-dropping and archway-reimagining, I have moved out.

My wife, my son and I are now living in an apartment that belongs to my wife’s family. It was supposed to be for a month or so, but builders are builders, and we’re still here.

I’m hugely grateful (due to my notorious tightfistedness) that this solution exists. It saves us forking out a few thousand euros each month for short-term housing.

I’m doubly grateful as it comes at exactly the same time as our tenants in Brussels return home, leaving us with a temporary hiatus in rental income until we find new ones.

The place we’re living in now has a seafront view, a double balcony overlooking the Mediterranean and is large enough for a few more people.

But it’s a bit grim, a bit old, a bit desolate, and it’s affecting my work.

The apartment has been on the market for about three years and needs some serious work doing to it. The doors don’t close properly. The windows rattle at night. It contains the accumulated debris of three generations of good-living Mediterraneans and the taps run rusty for the first minute of each blast.

The office I’ve appropriated is a back-of-the-building bedroom.

I’m uncomfortable there, which is no big deal, as it’s temporary, but it’s difficult to do your best work when you’re not in a good place (physically and metaphorically).

Every couple of months I decide to get myself an office outside of the house. Occasionally I get as far as calling real-estate agents and landlords and seeing what’s available.

And every couple of months I decide that I’m better off working from home.

There’s a financial consideration, of course. The last one I liked the look of was big enough for seven people and would have cost $30k a year. It’s not a massive sum, but it buys a lot of plane tickets, birthday presents and (let’s be honest) beer.

The others I don’t like much.

And so I return to the back-bedroom of the slightly grim apartment and decamp regularly to the cafe on the corner, which has its own distractions in the form of carrot cake and newspapers and the Polish waitress with the big boobs and friendly smile.

I don’t LOVE to work from home. The regular distractions abound, particularly with a two year old in the house and a wife who has a real job: lack of separation of work and non-work, facility of wandering into the kitchen and re-emerging forty five minutes later trailing cookie-crumbs and guilt, stubborn refusal of aforementioned two-year-old to keep his fingers out of plug-sockets and tongue off the TV-screen …

But they’re also the reason I stay at home. The coffee is cheap and exactly how I like it. The “staff room” is the playground on the sea-front. We don’t fob off our son onto hired help (at least, not any more – he had better ideas).

Working from home is a choice, not a compromise borne of financial or practical considerations.

If you work from home, you’ve made a choice to live well, to carve your own path, even, perhaps, to stick it to the man.

But you’re likely suffering a little.

Even if you’re lucky enough to be doing a job you love, you’re going to suffer from occasional bouts of boredom, frustration and stir-craziness when it’s just you and your computer all day long.

Solitary pursuits become unhealthy when they’re solitary for too long: drinking, sexual activity, exercise and working.

You need people. I need people. Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow. You’re no exception.

In addition, you need to have FUN. Fun on your own is possible. In my life, at least, fun with other people is kind of mandatory.

Introducing the Water Cooler

Every month, I drop a few hundred dollars on mastermind groups: rent-a-mobs of like-minded independent professionals who chin-wag and bounce around ideas and solicit and reinforce and nurture and strengthen and cross-promote.

It is, by far, the most important money I spend on my sanity.

But they’re all very structured. They all involve an element of teaching. There are assignments to complete, forms to fill in, boxes to tick.

What I’m looking to build – with you – is something that looks like this:

An informal group of peers who get on the phone every two weeks in a group, but that are actively encouraged to get together individually by Skype or phone as frequently as necessary.

A group without a leader (I’ll do the facilitating) and no structure. No syllabus or checklists, which means no getting behind and the associated hand-wringing that goes with it.

Every member gives in return for getting. Time, expertise, connections, advice, a friendly ear. Every member brings something tangible to the group.

You get what YOU need, not what’s on the agenda, because there’s no agenda. If you want accountability, we’ll give it to you. If you want to goof off for half an hour to better focus later in the day, but don’t want that goofing off to be mindless Facebook stalking, then there’ll be somebody you can chat with.

If you want to talk about the non-work issues that are affecting your work, then do that. If you want to talk about your difficulties getting your membership site to play nicely with your shopping cart, then you can talk about that.

But it’s NOT group therapy, despite its therapeutic implications. This isn’t a group of people who are looking for the next big idea or advice on “how to make money online” or trying to identify their passion or select their niche.

Everybody in the group is a content-creating, product-making service professional who has been in business for at least a year. You’re a little or a lot creative and you’re good FUN. We’re not going to focusing on the negatives. Life is too short.

There is no coaching here. It’s a group of equals, bolstering one another and making new friends, contacts and avenues for income.

There’ll be some kind of forum that you’re under no obligation to use, but will house everybody under one roof. You don’t have to come join the calls if you don’t want to. You don’t have to hang out round the water cooler if it doesn’t suit: you’ll be able to find somebody when it does.

Everybody will take it seriously as a commitment, not to others, but to themselves. Everybody will recognize the huge importance of the water-cooler in their home office, and take full advantage of it.

It will drastically improve the quality of your work-from-home life.

You’ll get access to the hive-mind: shared connections, expertise, knowledge and compassion from people like, but you who aren’t you (or your son, or the Polish waitress.)

It won’t be free, as free is isn’t taken seriously. But it won’t be expensive.

(There’s this post’s marketing lesson: you’ll get no-shows at a $5 seminar. You won’t get many at a $500 one.)

If it’s right for you, the $500 one-off fee for six-months will be a no-brainer. It had better be, because there won’t be any refunds. It’s a joining fee. An introduction fee to a group of people that will change your working life. Once you’re introduced, nobody can take that away from you.

Who’s in?

I’m in. If it’s right for you, you’re in as well.

I reckon we need five people to get it off the ground. I think any more than about ten on the twice-monthly calls will be too many, but we’ll see.

Scheduled calls will be every other Friday at midday Eastern time, which is 9am Pacific and 5pm UK. Unscheduled calls will be whenever you like. It’s your group.

Click here to let me know you’re in and find out more.

I’ll look at all the notes as they come in. If you’ve got any questions about this, then use the form here as well.

There’ll likely be an exchange of emails, or a phone call, before we both commit. The integrity of the group is important.

But I want you to think hard about it.

If you’re looking for coaching, then you need to click here instead.

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