Some of my story, dealing with a set back and asking advice for the skills to learn for the next path

[JamesQB8]

Hey guys,

I want to ask some advice on my next steps please.

The reason for this post now is that I’ve suffered a bad ankle injury and I’ve been severely limited in my movement for over 5 months and I’m still in the process of recovery.

My background is in Coaching for health and performance. Mainly Personal Training and Nutrition Consulting.

However I’ve always been entrepreneurial and enjoyed business. I had an e commerce business when I was 15 which did really well (imported poker sets from China to the UK). Then played around with drop-shipping on amazon which was also profitable.

To go back to my story, I was a fat unsocial kid and really wanted to improve my physique/confidence so I flipped from studying business and economics to Sport and Exercise Science once I started training seriously in the gym a long with eventually playing American Football at a high level (from around 16-23). I've just turned 28 now.

I worked as a Personal Trainer alongside university and always did little bits to make money; trading markets, reselling etc.

From 2016-2019 I worked in London in high end personal training, got into gym management and made some decent money but got fed up of the corporate world and decided to travel long term. I had done some solo travelling in between working stints during 2018 and 2019, with taking ayahuasca in Peru in 2018 followed by hiking to Machu Picchu being the highlight and most life changing. 2020 was set to be a year of travelling, starting in Colombia (I had visited in 2019 to learn Spanish and feel in love with the country).

Then of course Covid plus lockdown hit and I unfortunately re-injured my ankle pretty badly, came back to the UK in June and Spent £3k+ on treatments, scans, consultants etc etc. I’m still working on the process of rehab because of complications and if anything it is worse now than when I started . This has had a very negative affect on my mental health as I really depend on an active lifestyle. I’m down to about £8k liquid with £4k or so tied up in some Investments. I have a small client base for about £750 of monthly income to supplement my living expenses and have been lucky to maintain these clients so I’m not in a very bad place financially.

So when lockdown hit again I panic bought a flight to Costa Rica and I’m here now in San Jose (If anyone on this forum is in Costa Rica and wants to grab coffee then please hit me up! haha).

Anyway now I’m taking some time to think about what skills I want to develop from here and what path to pursue. I was brainstorming some ideas but I would really appreciate some advice from you guys on this forum. I will list my skills below.

Skills

• Really enjoy learning and become obsessive when I discover something I’m interested in. I’ve read around 35+ books this year and I’m near fluent in Spanish.
• From the years of Personal Training and working with people. I have strong communication and sales skills. I enjoy the small amount of online coaching I’m doing right now and would say my coaching skills are strong as well.
• Of course a ton of knowledge on training, nutrition, behaviour change and health overall.
• I find it easy to work with numbers and business strategy comes fairly intuitively
• Public speaking and teaching

The thing is now I’m pretty much incapacitated and have a lot of free time on my hands (as does a lot of the world) I’m searching for the next skill to learn and monetise.

I was considering learning to code but I’m not sure if that would fit my skill set. But at the same time I’m happy to put my headphones on and sit at my laptop cranking away if I’m providing value and building financial freedom for myself.

I’ve just thrown up some paragraphs above but I’m open to any suggestions for skills to learn/monetise and if a certain pursuit would make more sense that people may suggest based on the little info I have provided.

I also really enjoyed MJs latest video which breaks down this problem really well. Now I’m just looking for the first experiment to start, I’m dabbling in some coding resources and also drafting some more content to potentially take on some more coaching clients. I have a website for my online coaching but it is very bare with only a couple of articles and a results/inquires page.

I want something I can do remotely and more or less on my own time. I would say for now more of a lifestyle business as I want to be able to travel and explore the world for the next few years before I start to settle down in the future. Of course my ankle is a screw in the works but this is how life goes so I want to maximise the positive work I can do here and now to set myself up for when I'm finally recovered.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my post.

 

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