Living Financially Independent by Helping Others with Jillian Johnsrud

Have you ever wanted to become financially independent and never work for yourself? On top of that, what if you could do all that AND help other people at the same time?!

That is what Jillian Johnsrud is doing and in this article, we are going to learn how she did it.

Today, I am excited to have Jillian Johnsrud share how you can become successfully unemployed by starting a coaching business. On top of that, she shows us how to be financially independent and retire early with the businesses she created.

She is an expert in being financially independent and loves helping others retire early.

In this article, we will learn how to be successfully unemployed just like Jillian.

Article Contents show

How Jillian Became Successfully Unemployed

Jillian’s does a number of things, but her largest source of income is from one-on-one coaching.

She focuses on helping people through transitions, such as retiring early, taking a mini-retirement, switching careers, etc.

It is so easy to get stuck in the transition and not make progress, and she likes to help people through that process.

What life was like before quitting her job

Jillian worked a lot of really average jobs. She was a waitress, she was a manager at Starbucks, she did commission sales, and she was a youth pastor.

The jobs seem random, but they were all things she was good at and she enjoyed. She always raised her hand and took on more and more work.

Jillian always seemed to do all of the trainings. Sometimes she wrote the trainings and she probably trained close to 300 new employees between her jobs.

She always did the hiring. She loved asking the questions and figuring out people’s mentality and behaviors and how that would be a good fit at the company.

At Starbucks, she wrote people’s professional development plans. She loved seeing people grow and change and make progress.

In sales, she loved figuring out people’s motivations and where they were getting stuck. She sold high-end mattresses and office chairs, but some people struggled. She liked to find out the challenge, the struggle, and the hesitation.

There were some common threads in each job.

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Becoming financially independent at 32 years old

It was a subtle transition.

Jillian became financially independent when she was 32 years old. She was always very good at managing her money and she was committed to saving half and investing that half.

She looked at everything she loved doing and started exploring that. It turned out it was a lot of the same things she had been doing, but now it is a different container.

They paid down debt, kept their expenses low, saved half of their income, invested in the stock market and real estate, and by the time they were 32, they had enough income to cover all of their expenses.

Watch the entire interview here:

The Key Principals of financial independence and retire early

The math is a lot simpler than people might assume.

Jillian’s motto is “grow the gap, guard the gap”.

The gap is the space between the money you are bringing in and the money you are spending. If you don’t know those numbers, that is the first step. Figure out the difference between them.

Initially focus on growing the gap by getting a raise or promotion, starting a side hustle, or anything that is going to push that income up. Or we can grow the gap by pushing your expenses down by paying off debt or reducing your housing and transportation costs.

There are about 100 ways you can push income up or lower expenses.

Take that gap and use it wisely. Guard the gap, don’t consume it.

Guarding it could mean paying down debt, paying down your house, investing in the stock market, investing in real estate, or investing in a business.

How the GAP works in your life to be financially independent and retire early

Part of guarding the gap is putting it in good places, which could mean rental properties that could create passive income for you.

It might be a business venture that would create passive income or you could sell that business.

If you invest in the stock market, you could plan to pull four percent from your balance.

Our goals, values, and opportunities are different. Figure out the way it is going to work for you to grow the gap and guard the gap so eventually it starts creating income for you.

Ways to stay financially independent to never work a job again

It is a matter of doing what is right for you and your family in a given year.

Jillian never felt comfortable with the idea that they were retiring early. She used to say they were taking a one-year mini-retirement, then it was two years, and now it has been four years since she or her husband had a job.

Each year they examine the best thing for each other and their kids, and there is no right or wrong answer.

It is important to keep examining that by asking is it working financially, is it working emotionally, and is it working socially. Some people struggle without having any structured work, purpose, or contribution. It is core to our happiness.

Finding a meaningful, challenging, fulfilling volunteer job is just as hard as a paying one, if not harder. It is not as easy as we assume it will be.

We need to find a container that holds all of those ingredients. That container might be entrepreneurship, volunteering part time, running a little side business, consulting, working 12-week rotations, etc.

The coaching business will make you help others AND make money

We should all have some sort of passion project, whether it creates some income or no income.

Passion plus passive income. There is a real sweet spot when you have both of those.

With any kind of business, Jillian is a test and scale sort of person.

The temptation is to sit on the couch, think through all of the details, and come up with an amazing plan and not stress test it at all and then go big or go home. That generally doesn’t work.

We need to test and experiment first. After that, figure out what you learned and how you grew. Pivot a little and do another test. Take that in and cross some things off the list. Eventually, we get to something that we actually want.

People get stuck when they go all in. Jillian finds that people don’t want to test or experiment, because they don’t want the feedback and figure out their idea won’t work. They don’t want their dream to change. They love it so much exactly how it is and if they test it, it may need to change.

If you get the courage and go big and get burned, you feel injured and wounded. You’ll take a break, heal your wounds, and then dust yourself off, try again exactly the same way as before and it’ll fail horribly again. You will feel injured and discouraged again and then try one more time, then usually you will take your ball and go home.

You will either be bitter and pissed off or you will feel like you are a failure. Neither of these is true, it is just the wrong process.

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The steps to scale your business to even more success

Take a step back. One of the best tests is talking to other people. There is so much power in just talking to people who’ve done it.

One of Jillian’s friends calls it being thrown into the wolf pack, because the wolf pack will socialize you and teach you to be wolves. If you jump in, they will teach you all of the rules.

You will find out if you like it, if it is the right fit, if it lights you up, if it creates flow, etc.

We need that community and those conversations and to see other people, like us, who have done it.

The great thing about entrepreneurs is that they are such an encouraging, generous, positive group of people. Successful people typically will see something in you that you don’t see, and it is so obvious to them. There is something powerful about hearing someone else think that your dreams are possible.

Find a community and have those conversations.

There is something amazing that happens when you show up and help other people. You learn what they liked about your help, what is the most helpful, and it creates those relationships and community.

Try to help as many people as you possibly can.

Jillian’s general rule for coaching is the first three to five are free. Find out what you are doing, how you can help, if it is effective, and what process works.

Then, figure out your pricing for your first three clients. Make it low and approachable and let them know it is an introductory price. You can’t know all of the details before you start.

After you get your first three, adjust it. Change your pricing, change your process for the next ten and then do it again.

Don’t sit on your couch and try to figure out the next five years.

Finding what you are good at and start coaching others how to do it as well

Jillian has a ten-day, free course with videos explaining all of this information.

In her superpower exercise, Jillian starts with the stuff outside our circle of capabilities (imagine a circle and an “x” way outside of it). This is the stuff we should not be doing.

List out what takes a disproportional amount of your time or a disproportional amount of your energy. This could be emails, taxes, cold calls, hiring people, firing people, research, etc. What should you not be doing?

Inside the circle, the “x” on the very edge is stuff you are just okay at, not amazing, but you can get it done.

You have one little circle inside of your circle that are your superpowers. What are the areas you have deep knowledge in? What are the things that create flow? What are the things that really match your personality? It could be organization, teaching, details, creativity. Look across all different areas of your life.

An indicator of future performance is past behavior. What you were good at before is probably what you will be good at in the future.

List your skillset, your knowledge, and your flow. What is your passion, what fits your tendency and personality?

If you have a little bit of financial independence, build a business that is 80 percent your superpower, so you can hire what you are not good at so not too much of your time is consumed by those things.

Making the world a better place with service

Jillian serves on the board for the Choose FI International Foundation, which promotes financial literacy. She manages the speaker’s bureau, and it is her personal mission to get personal finance speakers in every event, every company, and every conference. When we are good with money, it opens up so many options in life.

When Jillian worked a full-time job, she had such limited time and emotional bandwidth. It was difficult to give an hour to someone else. Now she is intentional about planting those 1,000 seeds.

The Advice the would have helped 20 years ago

One of Jillian’s biggest regrets of her 20s is that she didn’t give enough time, energy, or money getting in proximity of people she found inspiring and encouraging. She was scared to invest in herself and she didn’t know how to go about it.

Now, with the internet, it is very easy to go to meetups, join a mastermind, or go to a conference. Get around people who are doing things that interest you.

You should do this if you want to get started today

Figure out your gap. Know that number and start growing it.

If you want to be a business owner, start with the 1,000 seeds. See if there is somewhere you can help for 20 minutes or an hour. Start to listen to the problems people are having and see if you can help or connect them with someone.

One of Jillian’s favorite quotes is from Seth Godin: “Every door that we open for other people, stays open for ourselves”. Try to open as many doors for other people as possible.