Late Bloomer in Business? Me too! [313]

As a late bloomer in business I know how it feels when you don't hit the 10k months when you think you should, or when someone else is having amazing launches and you aren't but that doesn't mean it's okay to forget the joy in your own journey and it's okay to have your own path vs what "she's doing".

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Are you a late bloomer, and we've heard that term growing up, but sometimes we are late bloomers in our business. And first of all, I just want to preface this whole entire conversation with this is your call to action, to stop beating yourself up for not being on someone else's timeline for not doing things, the way that you think that you should have for not doing things in the timeframe that you think you should have. We all have a journey, it is very unique to us. And I am actually going to go out on a limb here and say which I'm gonna preface this to say that some people may find this triggering anybody that started their business before 2020 dealt with some hard ish, like, we have been through the wringer. And I see you. And I do believe that if you came into business, and you started your business in 2020, you had a way to uplevel everything went online, it before 2020, we were trying so hard right to help these businesses understand why they need to be on social media, to understand why they needed to have an online presence. And then when 2020 happened, they got forced into it. So it was a lot easier to grow a business right after 2020 and the shutdowns and all of that stuff. So I'm gonna preface that to say with that, however, it's kind of like, this is what I truly believe. And again, this could be triggering to some people, but I'm saying this with love. I'll never forget, I read this book. I don't know, it was something I don't know who wrote it was something about being a strong willed child. And typically, if you're, if your kids are really difficult when they're younger, they're gonna be easier as a teenager. And if they're easier when they're younger, they're probably gonna be more difficult as a teenager. And I can raise my hand with raising three and tell you yes, that is true, right? So even if it was easier, I'm doing air quotes for people who started and came into this world in 2020. They are going to experience things that they've never had to experience before moving forward. And the great thing is for us late bloomers right, is that we've already been there. We've dealt with the suck, we've dealt with the hard time getting clients, we've dealt with all of that. So I just want you to know that your trajectory, and your journey may not be what you wanted it to be. But let me tell you a little bit about mine. So you can see where mine has been. And I get to go back to 2012. Because 2012 was when I owned my first business with a business partner, we made skincare in our basement. And I I've said this before, but it is the business, I did everything wrong. And I literally had no clue what I was doing. I didn't even know there were business coaches. I didn't even know that they existed. I didn't know what a mastermind was. I didn't know that there were trainings out there. Like I just had no clue right? In 2012. In my mind, in my community and where I was surrounding myself, it was either you went to college, or you just figured it out, right? That's pretty much what it was. you Googled it. And so that's what I did. I grew a skincare business with no chemistry background, and made recipes from immersing myself into learning everything. Now, let me just preface this to say, I Googled everything. I learned everything. I didn't talk to anyone who had experience. I wasn't able to fast track that business. I don't think we ever paid ourselves more than $500 a month. And that was not consistently, that was only when we had a really good month or really good event and probably around the holidays. So I did everything wrong in that business. Like I had no clue what I was doing. I figured it out. I fumbled through, I wouldn't say that I had the success that I wanted. But can I say that I learned a lot in a gorilla. Absolutely. Absolutely. Keeping it positive? Absolutely. From like 2014 to 2016. We decided to dissolve that business. I had a lot of friends who were asking me to help them grow their social media, because we because we bootstrapped everything. So I think we had grown our Facebook page to like, I don't know, three or 4000. It was a lot easier time with the algorithm back then. But still. And so people were like, can you help us? Because they knew I'd done that. And I was like sure would $12 An hour sound good. And everybody of course said yes. I had no idea right. I think it's funny now but like looking back, I was totally serious. But you have to remember this whole podcast episode is about being a late bloomer. So for a couple years I did content creation for other businesses and optimize their social media. Yeah, channels all for the big price of 12 to $15 an hour. Okay? This is pre coach. This is pre mentorship. This is pre mastermind, this is pre before what I really knew what I was doing, right. But I knew enough was I know enough to be dangerous, I think is what they say. So in 2017, I finally hired my first business coach. Now, mind you, two years prior, I would say I was playing around, I was playing around. I didn't really know what I was doing. But I was playing around, I was making some money, but didn't really know, right, I was working a lot exhausted. In 2018 or 2015, I hired my first business coach started raising my prices. In 2018, I joined my first business related membership. So it was a $47 a month membership. And I remember thinking that was so expensive. money mindset, thank you. And I really wanted to uplevel my social media skills. And I knew this was the way to do it. But I was struggling paying that price. In 2018. I also created my first webinar that nobody showed up, do, I actually did it eight times in a row, live until people started showing up. And then I also used it to practice getting better. That first time when I went live on the webinar, I had some kind of webinar software at the time. And they said you have a choice? If nobody shows, do you still do it? And the answer was, yes. Number one, people can come in late to a webinar. But also, like this was practice, right. And so I still did it. And slowly people started trickling in one at a time two at a time until I got to I think 10 people maybe showed up for the eighth one, but it was like my best one, right? I mean, I've done it three times live and like a three week period. So I got better, right. I also created my first membership, and it bombed. I wasn't visible. No one knew who I was. And it was like dirt cheap, it was $10 a month. And high also, this also led to me deciding and realizing I get to be consistent on video. In late 2018. I knew it was a priority. In 2019. Early, I joined my first mastermind that was basically going up the value ladder from that $47 a month program that I was paying for. And so I joined my first mastermind really up leveled being around higher level people. And I raised my prices again. I also in that same year created my first successful program that I did live monthly, and I sold out every month. Now this was huge. This is showing you from starting to be visible. Was there noise by thin 100% There wasn't short for a video, so or maybe tick tock it just started. But there, there definitely wasn't the noise that there is today. And so me getting visible and being on video every single day uplevel my business very fast. So I sold out this program every single month, I took 20 people, because I was helping them a lot, one on one. And so by the time I got to the month of July, I did it twice, because there was so much interest. And I finally so I did it live for March. So March, April, May, June, twice in July, August, September, October. So I did it live nine times over eight months. And I got really good at it right. And so I decided, Okay, it's time to make this evergreen, it's time to record this once and for all, and just sell it and not have to do this live every single month. And so it really, really served and supported me to be visible during all that time and to sell all of those every single month because at the end of 2018 I thought I was going in for a three day surgery, right? And that three days or a three day recovery surgery and then that three day recovery ended up being eight weeks. It completely debilitated me and I could not do anything but because of my consistent visibility up until that point. I had content I had content to repurpose is when I really learned to get good at repurposing because before that I don't think I was as good at it but I had no choice. And I wanted to show up but I did not feel like and I was laying on my couch I was getting my blood taken every single day pretty much to try to figure out what was wrong with me and the system like exploded in my body during surgery and we think that didn't get it all cleaned out. It was just like a mess, right? And so I had my first Launch while I was recovering because it was done. And it was successful. I mean, to me it was successful at that time. And I think I sold, I sold like 14, or 16 spots, something like that. And to me, that was like really, really good because it was a much higher ticket price than the monthly event that I was doing. And, and it just felt good. And it also felt good that I wasn't really showing up. I was regurgitating repurposing content that I already had. In 2020, I finally hit six figures and raise my prices. But that did not happen to I was killed my business I had been, I had almost hit six figures, or sorry, I think a month in January, in January was like 9900. And like, 95 it was like$5 off if something crazy. Which Yes, I could say yeah, I had to take a month, but I didn't I'm not gonna lie about it. It wasn't a 10k month it was $5 short. And February was good. March was good. April started to decline. May sucked. June sucked. July, sucked even more. July is also when I did the 100 lives in July, by the way, but and I needed a KPI that had nothing to do with money because I was basing good months on money and revenue. And because it wasn't where I wanted it to be in because I almost hit that 10k And then I kept doing well. And I didn't get close to it again. I started beating myself up like I'm not where I'm supposed to be like everybody surpassing me. I'm not winning. Like those are the kinds of things I told myself. And I needed a different KPI. And so I said, You know what, I can control video, I can control which video I do. So we did 100 lives, which started the movement 100 lives in July. And then in August, I had a client who was I had no boundaries back then let me just say that, but it was a three month contract. She asked if she if she could be refunded her three month payment or third month payment it just went through. And she asked if she could be refunded because she wanted to buy somebody else's program. Hit hard in the chest feel like somebody just stabbed me. Talk about morale talk about calm, like decrease in confidence. Like it was awful, right. And I was running her at the time actually getting really good results. And so it was a really big blow. But also, it's one of those situations where I taught her everything I was doing, and there was no reason to pay me right. At least that's what I told myself at the time. Real people don't care if they know what they're doing. They value right the the people who want to uplevel so do I almost killed my business in September. I was done. My revenue at the time, I think on I think I messaged my mentor on September 3, it said I'm only gonna make $2,000 This month, like that's what was recurring coming in at the time. And then I turned it around and had a 13k month I had a 15k month like I just kept like exceeding through the end of the year and hit my first six figure year which was insane after all the bad months. But you know, when we say I need to hit when is it $8,880 Or something to hit six figures technically, it's not going to look like that right second look like that. And I had to give up that this is how it's supposed to look and I was just hit$10,000 I never hit $10,000 I was $5 Short shy of it. And then I totally over exceeded it right by 1000s of dollars. So again, Late Bloomer here, but all that transformation, right realizing why Why does it have to be this amount right? In 2021, I hit multiple six figures and created my inner circle to beginning of the year had a 40k launch had a 30k launch had a 20k launch, and also raise my prices on my one on one clients. I probably had the most amount of one on one clients at that time. Also running a weekly, inner circle mastermind, whatever you want to call it, and really putting all my time and energy into this container. In late 2021 I created my second membership that didn't bomb that's still moving forward today. I gave myself a raise. I realized through what I was doing. I was really creating raving fans and my business. So I decided to stop working 80 hour weeks But I had no plan. And I didn't know how I was going to do that with the clients that I had at the time because I have a lot of clients. So what I decided to do was the end of 2021, beginning of 2022, I was going to raise their prices, people leave when you raise their prices, so it's a really easy yes or no. And the ones who stayed are aligned. So I would say 2020 would be my biggest transformation year from beginning in I fully embodied stream stack and scale, I started creating the business freedom that I wanted with less one on one clients, I raised my prices on everyone, I up leveled my membership, really increasing that price as well. And went from barely launching to launching every single month. From teaching live and selling every single day, I gave up over 10,000 Instagram, right and started over I learned to ignite my launches, I really built a lot of confidence in 2022 a lot more than I had any other year, even though I felt like I'd built a lot, especially after 2020 when everything went downhill. And then it like, it was like a phoenix, right? Like, it's just like it died. And then it came back to life. And then in 2022, I also invested the most in my business and my growth, including my money mindset, I was paying $3,000 a month for a mastermind I was paying $7,000 a month for mastermind, I was paying $1,000 a month for memberships to uplevel my learning Am I training and I also traveled eight times in 2022, twice to Hawaii in my revenue digits. And this was really something I didn't want to ever talk about. But it dipped because my business model changed. And I'll never forget my mentor at the time. She said that was I didn't have my face on Zoom. And she's like, get on camera right now. Your revenue dipped because you changed your business model that happens. And I'm like, I know, I know. It's just wasn't what I was expecting. Right? I was on this high. And so I'd beat myself up for I but I also realized, yeah, it sucks to tell people that your revenue dip, but you know, what does it suck, living your life, going on eight vacations, like doing what I want when I want. Having more program based clients teaching what I want when I feel aligned, like that is a freedom based business. Right? living my life instead of living at my desk. I started surrounding myself with bigger dreamers with better action takers, and it made me want to do more, but not work more, because I went from those 80 hour weeks to 3040 hour weeks. Again, making less but enjoying life more. It's funny to say I had less sickness, because I'm sick right now during this podcast, and more joy, but less stress and more celebrating I had less living at my desk more living my life all day every day. And being more aligned with what led me up was priceless. And then obviously, we can't skip out on 2023. Because already it's starting out better than 2022. And 2022 was really good. It was a learning up leveling transformation. But 2023 Again, with the talk of the economy, and you know, the recession and all of that stuff. It was scary, right to go into 2023 thinking, Okay, how's this gonna affect my business and it's not affected my business. My programs are on fire. I took my inner circle to Florida. I said yes, a lot more. And I said no, a lot more. And I'm planning my third travel of the year to go back to Hawaii with my family. And so yeah, to all that to say, Yes, I'm a late bloomer. I own that I'm a late bloomer. But no matter how hard it's been, no matter the obstacles I faced, maybe I didn't hit I hit six figures and I was 21 years old, and full commission job. And maybe I didn't hit it again until I was in my 40s. But the wisdom, the knowledge, the mentorship, the lessons, the comebacks, right. The breakthroughs, the growth is priceless. And age is just a number. So I'll take being a late bloomer in my business if it comes with all that. And to me that is the ultimate transformation when you can transform your life. Like really quantum leap that transformation multiple times in a year as growth my friends, and I can't think of any better way to live your life, grow, learn and better yourself every single day.