As a neurodivergent person, every job I ever had made me sick inside.
I didn't understand that I wasn't wired for the neurotypical workplace.
I just knew I needed to start my own thing for the sake of my health.
To work on my own terms, on my own time, with my own schedule, honoring my own capacity, and with my own accommodations to regulate my nervous system.
To have income, not a job.
Introducing:
The Self-Employment Society™: VIP Day
A One day intensive with me and my tools.
We'll work together to turn a skill or interest you already have into an actionable business, fully designed, mapped out, and ready to move forward before we log off for the day.
Designed by a neurodivergent mind, for yours.
Join a VIP Day
A job was supposed to be the safe choice.
Isn't that what we're taught?
For me, it never was.
I masked all day and came home with nothing left in the tank for my own life. I would try to cope with that in many unhealthy ways.
I would work all week, try to get to the weekend where I could hopefully come up for air, but it was never long enough to heal from the week I just endured.
In fact, I would start dreading going back to work on Monday by Saturday afternoon when I would realize it didn't matter what I tried to do for fun that night, it wouldn't cure my burnout. It was quite hopeless.
So, when the job got bad enough, I'd quit.
I couldn't rest, though. I would clamor to start a business in hopes it would replace my income before I'd have to find another job.
Over and over.
I don't know if I ever truly recovered before I had to re-enter the neurotypical workforce.
Then the next job would make me sick, too.
What if you could:
- Earn income on your own terms?
- Work on your own time, with your own schedule?
- Honor your own capacity?
- Have total freedom for your own accommodations to regulate your nervous system?
- Finally do work that doesn't make you sick inside?
That's what I wanted, too, and I spent years trying to build it on my own.
Here's why it kept falling apart for me.
I didn't know how to "business".
But I also wouldn't stop trying.
I knew it was a matter of survival for me.
Even though I kept failing over and over, those failures taught me something every time, and I kept learning new things, and in every program, course, book, etc., I learned something.
It took me years to piece it all together through trial and error.
Here's the most important thing I learned...
To be in business you only need three things.
A Product or Service
A Way to Get Paid
A Way to Be Contacted
Everything else in business is either in support of or an evolution of those three pillars.
Once you can see that, starting something of your own becomes a whole lot more approachable.
Hi. I'm Heath Close.
I grew up in a small town of 700. Being neurodivergent forced me into a life of serial entrepreneurship just to survive a neurotypical world.
I have had a lot of jobs.
I sold knives. Worked as a mechanic. Did landscaping. Worked in a factory warehouse. Drove a truck. Drove a school bus. On and on and on.
The pattern was the same every time. I would become miserable and burned out, so I'd spend every spare moment thinking about how to start my own business.
I made a course teaching musicians how to build a free online presence.
It failed.
I ran a recording studio out of my home.
It failed.
I started a freelance game business.
Blogs for musicians.
A cigar review site.
There were others.
They all fell apart.
That's the real cost of doing this alone. There's no way to tell what matters right now from what matters eventually. Every time I failed, I learned more about what matters and what doesn't.
But after a while of repeating this pattern, I figured I was missing something.
I needed to learn business at a bigger scale, and I needed a way to fund that education.
So I went back to trucking on purpose. I moved out of my apartment, sold my car, threw everything into storage, and lived in the truck, cutting my expenses to almost nothing to fund building a video game.
Living on the road, I built that game from the sleeper of my truck after 10-14 hour days, with the sole mission of making an artifact that would break me into the video game industry.
The goal was to release a mobile game of such high quality, Apple would feature it.
So I designed the game and ran a small team to build it. Then COVID hit and the money ran out.
Long story short, I finally learned to code, finished it myself, and Apple featured it.
Mission accomplished.
That's how I broke into the video game industry.
I wanted to peek behind the curtain of doing bigger business, with bigger budgets, and working with bigger teams (and business at that scale showed me a lot of what not to do as well).
Now I teach other NDs what took me years to figure out, so they don't have to learn it the hard way like I did.
That's what I put into The Self-Employment Society™.
One day, live on Zoom, working through my step-by-step roadmap with me right there alongside you.
Completely designed from the ground up by a neurodivergent mind for simplicity and community. I lean into what matters most to help you become self-employed without spending years on trial and error.
Join a VIP DayMost programs hand you 40 hours of video to sit through, then leave the building to you.
I don't know why people think a HUGE course offers a lot of value.
I never liked that approach.
How am I supposed to get through it all?
Remember the important parts?
Find time to both learn and then implement, while needing to go back to re-watch what I learned to follow along again?
That kind of product is so overwhelming.
Frankly, I believe that's just poor design.
That's why I built The Self-Employment Society™ differently.
I don't believe teaching you how to do it is the same thing as helping you do it.
The Self-Employment Society™: Foundations course is yours as a bonus.
Watch it before the VIP day if you want the background learnings before we dive in.
I wanted that option there for those who work better that way, but the doing part during the VIP day itself is built around AI agents designed to do the heavy lifting throughout the day, with me right there alongside you.
I've combined the learning with the doing.
It's all about actually taking action, rather than me teaching you how to take action.
Each step starts with a short video explaining what we're about to build and why. We watch it together, then you go to the AI portal and use the agent for that step. It's trained on my methodology, and it does the heavy lifting for you.
Together we'll forge the deliverable you need for forward motion at every milestone.
When the deliverable you worked on is done, you'll share it with a community of like-minded people doing the same work and supporting each other.
The kind of crowd that gets it.
In fact, I've even designed the AI agents to write your community post for you so you don’t have to try to come up with how to articulate what just happened in your building session.
Once your post is up, we take five. Then we come back and go over your work together, and the community can support you there too.
Here's what you get:
The Self-Employment Society™: Coaching
A Day With Me.
Guidance in real time.
The agents do the heavy lifting. I’m there for everything around it.
You get my eyes on your work as it happens. When an agent hands you a deliverable, we look at it together. I tell you what’s working and what to sharpen before you move on.
You get answers in the moment. When a step gets confusing, you ask, and we work through it right then. There’s no waiting on a reply.
You get someone who knows what matters now. I spent years learning the hard way which parts of a business matter right away and which can wait. I’ll help you focus on the ones that move you forward today.
The tools we'll use:
The Self-Employment Society™: The Agents
Where the action happens.
Here’s a sample of an intro video we’ll watch together for each step before diving into the agent work. Every step along the way we’ll get into what we’re building and why.
Pillar 1:
- Find Your Skill: takes everything you know how to do (or love, like a special interest) and narrows it to the one skill to start with
- Find Your Product: shapes that skill into a transformation statement you can sell
- Build the Offer: wrap that product in a compelling offer
- Write the Offer Doc: a place to piece together the components that convert in the right order, published and live at a link people can click and buy
Pillar 2:
- Map the User Journey: every milestone from before state to after state
- Design the Experience of Transformation: a quality standard at each milestone, and what could go wrong at each one
- Map the Operation: every step from paid to delivered, and what could run without you
- Run the Operation: data-driven decision making made simple
Pillar 3:
- Map the Awareness Journey: your buyer across all five stages, from unaware they even have a problem to ready to buy
- Design the Easy Yeses: the funnel plan, one small yes at every gap that moves strangers to buyers
- Sharpen Your Point of View: a compelling perspective that gets traction online
- Plan the Content Engine: your first repeatable content system so you never look at a blank page or not know what to post
Together, we’ll build out your business with the agents as we go. Your entire business mapped out and actionable across all three pillars.
Plus 90 days of access:
The Self-Employment Society™: Community
No masking required.
Share what you're building and get help and feedback from people working toward the same goal every step of the way. I wanted to make it super easy for every member to get involved in the conversation, so I designed each agent to even prepare your post for the community, and then link you straight to where to post it.
One click and you're surrounded by people who get it.
You'll see other people's work. Every step has its own thread. You can read other versions of the same deliverable, in different businesses. You'll learn as much from theirs as you do from your own.
You can ask when you get stuck, even after the day ends. Get help with your specific question on a specific step, where people are working on the same thing.
And I'm in there. Reading what people post, answering questions, and giving guidance.
Your first 90 days are on me. That’s three months to get up and running with a crew that gets it. If you'd like to stay after your 90 days, you’ll have the option to extend your membership.
Plus, as a bonus:
The Self-Employment Society™: Foundations
Ten lessons across all three pillars.
Free lifetime access.
Here's a sample...
Pillar 1: A Product or Service
Five lessons on finding a skill you already have and turning it into something people can buy. You don't have to learn anything new. The work here is finding it.
- The six places to look, including the one almost nobody thinks to check
- The three questions that turn a list of maybes into one decision
- What's actually changing hands in every purchase, from a T-shirt to a $20,000 coaching package
- The sentence that answers "so what do you do?" in a way that could spark a sale
- The three places to look when you have no idea what to charge
- The five ingredients of a compelling offer
- Why you don't need a website, and what to use instead
Pillar 2: A Way to Get Paid
Two lessons on delivering the result and collecting the money, built to run while you're at work for those who still have the day job, or with limited energy for those of you still recovering. This is the part that keeps a business from eating the little time you have.
- How to map what a customer goes through with you, start to finish
- The two questions that set the quality bar at every step
- Three questions to ask at each step that tell you exactly what to build
- How to get any step running without you, even if you've never automated anything
- Free ways to build your operation, and when a paid tool is worth it
- How to take your first payment
- The one number to watch each week, and what to do with it
Pillar 3: A Way to Be Contacted
Three lessons on getting found and turning strangers into customers. This is the piece most people guess at, and the reason their content goes nowhere.
- The five stages every customer moves through before they buy
- What your customer is thinking at each stage, and how to talk to them there
- Why cold traffic won't buy, and the small ask that works instead
- How to design the step that moves someone from stranger to customer
- How to find the view that gets you seen, and why the safe take gets ignored
- Six ways to shape a post, and which one fits what you want to say
- How to know what to post, every time, without staring at a blank screen
You also get the Foundations Build Sheet. It includes a section for every lesson across all three pillars.
- Map your delivery, milestone by milestone, with a standard at every step
- Map the operation, then answer how each step runs without you
- The one number you watch each week
- Your buyer at all five awareness levels, what they're feeling and thinking
- The next easy yes at each level, so cold people move warmer
- Your contrarian view, and the content loop that runs on a few hours a week
A whole day of building a business can sound like a lot.
As someone with a neurodivergent mind, I understand that, so I designed the work and the day with that in mind.
The agents will do the heavy lifting. Your part is answering their questions about what you already know.
Accommodations are built into the day.
- Body doubling. You’re never building alone. Working alongside someone is part of the whole day.
- A small group, no audience. The VIP day is a small group call on Zoom. Up to 5 people will come together for each step, then everyone can quietly work muted and off camera, alone and focused, or on camera. It’s your choice. We’re all there to help each other, not create a need to perform.
- An agenda ahead of time. You get every step and rough break times before the day starts.
- Notice before transitions. You get a heads-up before we move to the next step.
- Regular breaks. We'll take a short break after every step, with a longer break for lunch.
- Breaks on request. Step away anytime. There’s no need to ask.
- Camera optional. Camera on or off.
- Other ways to communicate. Use the chat instead of speaking if that’s easier.
- No spotlight. Nobody gets put on the spot.
- Processing time. Take the time you need to think while working on any given step. Your agent can wait.
- Movement welcome. Move, fidget, stim, or pace to meet your needs.
- Recorded and transcribed. Every call is recorded and transcribed, so you can read it or watch it again.
- Materials ahead. Foundations opens the moment you buy, so the ideas aren’t new on the day.
After the VIP day, the Community is there for you.
You'll build what really matters to earn income on your own terms, surrounded by people who get it. Your first 90 days are included.
Ready to build income on your own terms?
This is for you if:
- You've ever wondered if maybe you're just not wired for the neurotypical workplace
- You've realized you need income, not a job
- You want to build something of your own, designed around your needs and good for your health
- You want to build alongside people who get it
This is not for you if:
- You've found a job that accommodates you, and you're thriving
- You're looking for help finding a job that fits you better
- You love your job and couldn't be happier
- You already run a business that supports you
Waiting costs something. I know because I've paid it.
Years of weekends where I dreaded going back to work on Monday.
Years of trying to spend my off time with people I love and not really being there because I was either burned out, or part of me was somewhere else, trying to figure out how to leave the neurotypical workforce to save my health.
But nothing changes if nothing changes.
So here's the choice.
You can close this page, go back to work, and try to piece together a plan to get out, or you can join us for a day of building income on your own terms, side by side with people who get it.
This isn't just the map I wish someone had handed me when I was trying to escape the prison of employment. It's the hands-on coaching I wish I had to guide me and the community of people I wish I had surrounding me when I needed it most.
Let's build it together. Click the button below to get started.
— Heath
"I don't have a skill I could sell."
"What if I've never sold anything before?"
"What if I get overwhelmed?"
"Do I need any tools or money to start?"
“What happens after I book my seat?”
"What happens after I finish the steps?"
"How long do I have access?"
"Do you offer refunds?"
Results vary from person to person and depend on your own effort and circumstances. Individual business results are not typical or guaranteed. This isn't legal, tax, financial, medical, or mental health advice. Business registration and taxes are different everywhere, so sort the formal side out where you live, with a local professional.
