When I was growing up, the stores were closed on Sunday; it was a day for family and relaxation in our family. And for many others, it was a day of worship. Now there never seems to be a day to kick back and chill. Today is the day to enjoy either doing absolutely nothing, or doing something you enjoy that helps you relax.
And speaking of relaxation, I am a lot more relaxed these days in my business than I used to be. The changes have been subtle over time, but when I look back to where I was a few years ago and where I am now, the change has been huge!
When I started my business, people were throwing money at me. I didn’t really have to understand marketing, I just had to show up and teach my program. But over time, the competition grew and fewer people were registering for the workshops. However, I was able to increase the value and raise my prices so, they were still profitable, but it depressed me because I wasn’t helping very many people as I had in the past and marketing the workshop was painful,
I tried to launch a membership twice and neither one of those stuck either. I was getting paid nicely, but hardly anyone was showing up from the calls and that didn’t sit well with me. I started hating it. I lost my confidence, and I felt like a failure; I had made almost a million dollars online, and in my mind, I had very little to show for it.
I was chasing business, and it was exhausting. And on top of that marketing was changing-Wordpress websites, videos, social media-everything was changing, and it was overwhelming. Plus, I felt like the harder I worked, the worse the results got.
I was so tired of it, I stopped doing my workshops. I hustled to make enough money doing affiliate marketing and picking up clients here and there while I tried to figure out how to make my business work in a way that was more effortless and fun again. Along the way, I fell into doing #1 bestseller launches and that kept me going. But, it got to the point where that was all I was doing and that was frustrating because I knew I could do so much more to help authors. But how to let people know? I wasn’t sure.
I knew I needed help, but I had become skeptical of hiring coaches because I had spent so much money on them over the years and nothing was working. And I didn’t have any extra income to spend on one at the time when I needed it most.
Finally, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I wanted to give up. But, I did have access to a program that I had bought many years ago that had a lifetime membership, so I plugged back in. And on one of the calls, I heard a colleague who I know, share how she had been helped by working with this expert, and it wasn’t that expensive, just $125 for a coaching call. So, I reached out to him.
He told me what I needed to do to get consistent cash flow back. Create a webinar. Reach out to companies and do presentations. It didn’t thrill me, but I decided to try. I really wanted to automate my systems but I needed help and didn’t have the money to do it, I had to stick with what I was good at.
So, I hired someone to create a powerpoint slide show from the notes he gave me while I worked with a few clients. When I got the powerpoint back, my heart sunk. It didn’t feel authentic to me, and it was never going to work. I would have to redo it if I wanted to use it and I had just enough work to keep me from focusing on that at the time. Meanwhile, my coach kept pushing me to start my podcast. I had taken a course on how to do it 10 years earlier but had never done anything with it because it had been overwhelming, and I didn’t know how to monetize it.
I was scared-not of doing a podcast-but the costs involved. I didn’t need another energy-draining activity that didn’t pay. He told me not to worry about it, to keep it simple, but I couldn’t do it. It’s not in my nature. If I were going to do it, I wanted to do it right. And I didn’t have the money to get someone to help me, so I had to teach myself. I made a lot of mistakes. The first batch had terrible sound quality, and I had to scrap several of them and start over. That was almost a year gone with no results. But, I started over because the idea of doing a podcast was something I could get behind. Eventually, I got all the pieces done, and I launched it last year.
I’ll continue the story in my next blog post.
