I Don't Even Like Jazz - But...

A few weeks ago, my friends and I headed over to Bill's Place in Harlem — a teeny tiny jazz club with a big reputation. Harlem-born and raised renowned American saxophonist Bill Saxton opened the place with his wife in 2006. But it has a long history that precedes it.

Bill's Place is the bottom floor of a very narrow brownstone on 133rd street, formerly known as Swing Alley, and in opening it up, he rejuvenated a jazz landmark.

Before it was Bill's Place, it was another club...where Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes used to hang out late night. And, perhaps most notably, where Billie Holiday was spotted as a rising talent.

The place has star power. It's also BYOB and the size of a living room with walls painted the color of a Mexican restaurant. I'm also guessing the place isn't up to code. But that doesn't matter when the band starts.

I'm no jazz aficionado, but you don't have to be. The music just feels good. The sound shoots like a flurry of ribbons from the sax, tumbles like confetti from the drums. You can feel it on your skin, in your bones. And Bill himself is amazing. At 78, his hands move so fast they're a blur on the keys. He's also got the presence, the showmanship—and a great sense of humor.

Why did he open the club 21 years ago? Because there were more musicians than there were places to play. So he hired himself, he said. “And it worked.”

You may not be a jazz musician or aspire to be a performance artist, but what Bill does is not so different from what any of us wants to do when we go into business for ourselves:

To make an impact, draw people inside, create regular customers and raving fans.

And it often requires a fair bit of improvising.

But we refer to it differently: As "going out on our own," or "freelancing"— a term that always made me feel a bit loose and ill defined.

We'd do well to think of our work the way Bill does: As hiring ourselves.

Hiring yourself means betting on yourself.

To hire someone requires that you decide what job needs to be done, and who best can do it. Working for yourself, whether FT or as a side gig, requires this kind of decision making.

In other words, you are not a 'default.' You actively choose yourself for the job. And being hired isn't permanent; which means this is a decision that you make every single day.

If you hire yourself, you always have a job to do.

How you talk about, and describe, what you do matters. And it starts with how you think about it.

ASK YOURSELF:

How can you challenge the way you think about a thing? What if you thought about your work in a different way, even if it felt or sounded weird? It's probably not as weird as you think it is.