I came up with The Empower & Express Yourself Online Business Toolkit after reflecting on my core values. I was struggling with an SEO client who seemed to be whole-heartedly committed to misinterpreting, and misunderstanding me.
The fact is he’s just a white man in his 70s who expected to hire a woman of color and tell her what to do. And he really couldn’t handle that she knew more than him and that she moved without his direction and had done what he couldn’t achieve.
I’ve been in white spaces long enough to know how resentment manifests with them.
I was also reflecting on the state of dissatisfaction within my personal life. I’d been seeing a guy who could be charming – when he wanted to be – and he very often wanted to be. But the performance tired fast. And he also lacked depth, substance, intelligence, and integrity.
Integrity will very likely be my ultimate undoing.
I’ll either find the most irrelevant situational hill to die on over it. Or I’ll drive myself to madness dissecting its absence from the world at large.
So, it was at this intersection of frustration at being simultaneously challenged at every turn and ignored (by my paying client), and being intellectually understimulated by a one-shtick phony who never read books, and secretly resented confident women, that I asked myself “how can I best use my time?”
Before I go on, is it me? Am I the drama? Do men resent me, or do I resent them and project? Can it be both? Can I be the problem in a problematic world? Who’s reflecting who? Are we all the problem? Next time.
This, in my opinion, is the difference between the most active entrepreneurs and the ones who never get their ideas off the ground: a gnawing obsession with improvement, asking questions and finding solutions.
It’s a never ending obsession that you can not fake.
You don’t just wonder things. You wonder whether you can do something, or figure something out, and you don’t stop until you do it – or until you know for certain that you can’t. But you also don’t say “can’t” until you’ve exhausted every possible channel or method of doing the thing you wondered about.
Can’t simply doesn’t exist for entrepreneurs until every alternative has been attempted.
There is no “time got away from me.”
There’s only using every single waking hour on your goals until your eyes cross and your vision blurs from fatigue.
And it’s that obsession with finding the answer, solving the problem, taking an idea into action and bringing it fully to fruition in reality which makes entrepreneurs so insanely possessive of their time.
I’m too selfish with my time to let it get away from me. Are you mad?!
Which is why people who keep letting time get away from them – like the ones who email me that they want to work together, but then miss, or reschedule their call repeatedly, going on 4+ weeks – never actually start or maintain their businesses.
Girl, if you have 2 periods before you follow through with the person who knows how to do what you want done, you’re not serious. Call your mother, and argue with her.
Every single client, or potential client, I’ve spoken with since 2018 who’s “let time get away” from them has either:
- not started their business
- or, has failed to keep their website online.
I know because I’m obsessive like that, and I keep tabs like I keep my word.
Start at the top and write it down…
So, anyway, I stopped seeing the world’s dumbest, and most boring Gemini, and I got out my big, wide sketchpad.
Starting at the top, I wrote down WHO I wanted to work with, WHO more than likely needed my help the most, and WHERE they needed it.
You’d think that having done what I do for more than a decade, that I already know who needs my help, and where. Of course I do.
But the gag is that as a business grows, so does its market.
The girlies who hired me in 2020 when the pandemic first hit, and everyone thought they’d sell lip gloss and eyelashes from Alibaba, are not the same women scheduling 1 hour zoom strategy sessions with me now. The same fashion students-turned-designers whose sites I built 5 years ago, aren’t the same coaches and consultants looking to strengthen their funnels and SEO rankings today.
My audience grows, my market changes.
And along with it my experience expands, my skills improve, and my tolerance for fucking bullshit depletes.
I love what I do even more than I used to, and I offer more services now, and I’m obsessed with using everything I’ve learned to help get more people consistently earning online. I know what’s possible because I’ve been my own guinea pig for 10 years. I know what’s possible because I have the client roster to show for it.
And while the girlies and fashion students aren’t the same, and global circumstances have shifted since 2020, it’s still true that I started my business to empower people who looked like me, and felt like me – ignored, disregarded, forgotten. I started my business to remind women that they’re smart, and talented, and that they also have a voice worth hearing, and ideas worth sharing.
I started my business to give people their own platforms and personal stages to present the show they wanted to see more of. Whether that show is art, illustration, literature, tarot, or community outreach.
I know my voice is worth hearing. I know a lot of fuckin idiots don’t listen to me. But still, I post, I write, I TALK MY SHIT. I toot my horn. And girl, you know what else?
I get paid, and I get clients.
And that’s why I made The Empower & Express Yourself Online Business Toolkit: to get paid and get clients – duh!
But also, to provide a comprehensive and cost-effective resource for the people who legit can’t afford my rates. I wanted to make something anyone could read and follow and hold onto, and execute on their own, whenever they finally got their shit together.
The entire toolkit is 10 ebooks (if you count the free starter) and that’s essentially 10 one-hour zoom sessions with me ($750 TOTAL value, if you can stomach it). Actually, let’s bring integrity back into the mix: It’s probably more like 20 one-hour zoom sessions with me. Because question and answer.
But the benefit of 10 ebooks in your phone is that they don’t cost $1400. And you can revisit them whenever you want, and you can read, and re-read them, and have your phone open while you work on your computer to research everything I’ve shared with you.
Even more, when you have the toolkit on your phone, you can book one-hour with me to ask questions based on what you’ve read to get the most out of my writing. All at a price point you can afford.
I’m charging 2 grand for SEO consulting, love. I’m booking marketing retainers by the quarter. And I’m not going to provide labor intensive digital expertise “at affordable rates” for anyone who hasn’t even taken pen to paper and planned their business.
The very first step to starting a business and MAKING MONEY is to sit down and make a plan. People avoid doing this part because they think it will be hard, and they doubt they can push through.
These ebooks will give you the direction and confidence to take yourself from “I don’t know where to start” to “Holy shit! I made a few grand this month, selling my art.”
Note: I said the ebooks will give you confidence and direction to take yourself.… YOU STILL HAVE TO SHOW UP FOR YOU. I did not say my ebooks will make you a few grand. If you want to become an affiliate marketer and promote my ebooks, that’s another discussion that you can kick off here.
Obviously, individual results may vary. But if you never get the tools, and you never put in the work, you’re guaranteed no results. I know that fuckin much.
Anyway, kittens. Good chat.
Please go forth madly, furiously, obsessively in the direction of your most passionate, wildest dream. Please I BEG do not jump in my replies or email box with “I can’t language.”
I CAN promise you I don’t care about your reasons why not.
I only want to interact with big thinkers, can-doers, people willing to learn, and people who actually heard/read wtf I said.
Stay blessed.
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