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It’s been a year since this Website and Blog went “Live” and I began the journey of turning my part-time Yoga teaching gig into a full on business venture. When I started, I remember desperately seeking out information and stories from others who had taken a similar path and could share some of the real-life, hard truths about what it would actually take to find “success” in this journey.
The information just wasn't there.
It was easy enough to hear from super successful people who shared the general stories of how they’ve made it to where they are, but I found that they often started sharing from a point in their journey where success was already viable as opposed to the time when they thought they may fail altogether. As motivating and inspiring as people’s success stories can be, I wanted to hear more about the real life stressors beyond reading “It was a lot of hard work, but look where it got me!” – I wanted someone to define “hard work”.
So, one year in, I am going to be the friend I needed when I started. I have not reached “super success”, I am still in the thick of it, and there has been a lot of learning as I go. But, the following are 3 things that I wish someone would have told me when I started.
1. It may take up to 5 years before you start making any money.
I learned this after taking a “Welcome to Business” seminar recently and to be honest, when I started I would have guessedit would take only 1-2 years to be making good money, which is why I am sharing this as my first piece of info (in case you're like me!). As much as it fills me with fear and frustration, it makes a lot of sense to me now, after a year of doing this. There are a lot of reasons for this lack of money making, including but not limited to: Start up and initial costs are higher, you just make less when you first start, and you are putting all of your money back into the business. This doesn’t mean you aren’t making any money, but you probably aren’t able to pay yourself for quite some time. You need to take this into account when planning and deciding if your side hustle will eventually become your full time gig. This is not a race, it’s a marathon.
2. Growth is going to be slow at first. AKA I don’t have a ton of views on my Blog.
You will hear stories about bloggers who after a few months have thousands of page views a day. You will see super successful bloggers who have monetized their blogs and now are making tens of thousands of dollars per month off it. That hasn't happened to me after 1 year of blogging and I am not letting it stop me because...I have figured out ways of attracting more people to my posts. I have worked on increasing my SEO (and actually know what that is now). I have people from all over the world finding my posts weekly – leave a comment and let me know where you are and how you found me! – and have seen some increase in daily page views. Also, because I am also a service based business, my blog views do not necessarily dictate my participation rates, which is where the bulk of my income comes from.
3. Quality > Quantity (AKA as Gary Vaynerchuk says 1>0)
Even when there was just 1 person in my classes at Your Best Yoga, I taught as though there were 20. I kept the quality, values, teaching, demonstration and professionalism the same. And you know what happened? Those people keep coming back. If I had thought – oh it’s just one person coming/I may as well just cancel/I’m losing money/it's not worth it, then I wouldn’t have created those relationships and had people return and tell their friends. Word of mouth is your best advertisement in service based businesses. Don’t underestimate the power of 1 person.
Have you been working on your own business? Do you have any pieces of advice you wish you had recieved when you first started? Share in the comments below!