3 Things I’ve Learned after 3 Years in Business
November 15th marked 3 years since I completed my Coaching certification and therefore 3 years since starting my business! I launched my business a bit earlier than I had planned due to COVID-19. I started my Coaching certification in January 2020 with an exit strategy from my retail job in place for February. I worked my last day on February 14th. I had been searching for an admin role, preferably remote, that would allow me to make some money while I started my Coaching business part-time in the evenings/weekends. I enjoyed February break off with my family (my son and my teacher husband) and the next week, I officially started working from home on my business. And then we all know what happened in mid-March 2020. 🦠😷
Suddenly, the entire world was looking for remote work. And working in an office or a school wasn't even an option for the foreseeable future (remember when we thought it would be just 2 weeks? 🤣😭). I was deep in the middle of my coaching program with multiple calls a day scheduled to meet my minimum coaching hour requirements. I had no plans to start my business until at least halfway through the program. So I accelerated my plan a bit and started working on my Virtual Assistant (VA) business. I was in no way prepared to coach a paying client yet and I had always planned on being a VA first. I wanted to get some recurring client work & income under my belt. I like to joke that I accidentally started my business during a pandemic. Now looking back, I just see that I’m a true entrepreneur at heart and seized an opportunity. The sooner I started my business, the quicker I started making the mistakes that I needed to early on in my business to learn what I needed to learn.
I’m currently in what I call phase 3.0 of my business. I built two businesses that I hated, but were absolutely necessary to help me get to where I am now. I am so sure that this is “the one” that I’ve actually been dreaming of, what a successful business looks like to me. It’s so interesting the definition of success that I have now vs. the one I though was my definition of success. I’m working full-time (outside of the house). I’m not really making any money in my business right now. I’m Coaching as an independent contractor…that got me back into Coaching consistently and allows me to float my business expenses. I’m in the process of building my group coaching program. In the past, these might have seemed like “failures” to me since they weren’t my vision of success. And they definitely aren’t on my expected timeline (though some of them are earlier than I planned), but I love to put high unreasonable expectations on myself. I’m learning to trust how I actually feel in the moment vs. some arbitrary date/goal I decided years ago… probably when I was miserable at my job (and sometimes in my life). So, back to the things I learned…
I hated being a Virtual Assistant (VA). This was a real mindfuck and I really tried to avoid the truth. “I’m good at it! I’m making money!“ This was my plan (since 2017!) of how I would support myself as I did my Coaching training and built my Coaching business. (I call this Brianna King Coaching & Consulting Version 1.0). How the fuck did this happen? Well, it turns out that while I’ve always been really good about the detail-oriented stuff (thanks anxiety?), I have trained my brain to become a big picture thinker and leader (thanks to Coaching and being a Manager). While I can do both, I didn’t realize that with the bigger picture/leadership thinking, it’s hard for me to pull back and get back in workhorse mode. That mode served me for many years in my career, but now I had outgrown it. Which is a good thing…but was really fucking confusing as I realized I didn’t actually know what that meant. I was basically just a freelancer but I couldn’t reconcile that fact with the wanting and needing to be a business owner and leader. There were also several external factors that probably influenced my circumstances such as parenting/virtual school during the global pandemic (while doing my Coaching certification and later living with my in-laws 🙃), making money but not enough money for our monthly expenses, so needing to get a part-time job to make up this difference (thanks Target!). And then being so exhausted from all of this crushing pressure that I burnt the fuck out. Like harder than I ever had, which I honestly didn’t know was possible. I started this business to rid my career of these toxic pieces and yet I landed myself right back in them. This was the first big lesson about setting boundaries with myself in my business (and in my life). Cue Anti-Hero🎵, I was definitely the problem.
I didn’t believe in myself as a Coach. I spent countless hours and coaching session topics being coached around this belief that “I didn’t have what it takes to be a Coach, I wasn’t ready yet, I’m not any different than any other Coach out there, etc.” (Full disclosure: I still feel like this sometimes, just now I have supports in place so I know what to do with it when it comes up). At first, this showed up for me as being both inspired by, and then crippled by overwhelm about, the fact that my unique skill set would allow me to offer both Coaching & VA work as a Consultant. I just couldn’t make it make sense to me. I had this overwhelming feeling that I HAD TO choose one or the other (hello urgency fueled by anxiety…I remember you) . And choosing VA work in my mind made me feel like I had given up on Coaching. Choosing Coaching was actually a harder road because it was harder to find my voice, get clients, etc. because I hadn’t actually learned the marketing piece of starting a business. (My Coaching certification team believed that we needed to fully learn the skills & craft of Coaching before even thinking about any of the business stuff. I have always wholeheartedly agree with this, and I still do.) But I chose Coaching. This was version 2.0 of my business. Then we got into marketing month and I literally couldn’t figure out how to explain who I am (and I still have trouble doing that 🙃). Now I understand that I’ve been in major life/career transitions pretty much since I left my job at NYCDOE back in 2017. Nevermind since getting pregnant and becoming a mom in 2015. I’ve finally made a bunch of smaller career moves and gotten to a good place: working full-time in an admin position and having the headspace & time to work on my business in the evenings and on weekends. And I’m still working on it, but I’m finally figuring out this whole parenting thing (🤣 8 years in). So yeah, of course it was hard to believe in myself as a Coach. I haven’t been doing it that long. Making these career changes has been hard, especially while doing them as a newer parent. And even though I might have had a lot of experience being 10-15 years into my career, the starting over and over again felt so jarring, it was hard not to feel shaky. But honestly, now I realize that feeling shaky didn’t mean that I couldn’t believe in myself. It means that I believe in myself even more because I know for a fact I’m resilient! 🤩 I proved it to myself, even though I didn’t necessarily realize it at the time. I couldn’t have made a single career change or even gotten to this place that finally feels stable unless I was resilient and had the courage to keep going. To keep believing there was something better out there and that I would find it eventually.
I am allowed to trust myself instead of trusting something outside of myself. I can actually do whatever I want in my business, there really are no rules (And oh so much love for the Coaches who keep reminding me of this!). While I learned this lesson in a business context, it really feels like something I’ve needed to re-learn as a person. I’m still healing so much as I continue to struggle with (Complex) PTSD, but always looking for the answer outside of myself is getting old. I’m giving up my power. It’s actually fucking exhausting and unfulfilling. Yeah, maybe trusting myself trying a new thing might not make me money, which for awhile felt like the worst possible thing (my circumstances were also very different because I felt pressure to make money in my business, which isn’t really how it works). Now, the worst possible thing feels like doing something that everyone else is doing but that doesn’t actually make me happy or isn’t what I want now, or even in the long run. Trusting myself looked like deciding I wanted to go back to work full-time and treating my business like a hobby. I knew that I could be “successful” financially if I just “did the work” of learning and perfecting 1-on-1 Coaching like many Coaches before me have done and continue to do. But honestly, I just couldn’t “get myself” to do that. Because it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to build out a group Coaching signature program as my first real offering. And now I’m no longer able to push through when I realize I’m miserable, even though I used to be able to. And that’s actually a good thing. I spent so much of my life and my career doing that and now it’s no longer an option. So I trusted myself to go back to work full-time and that I wouldn’t forget about my business. And I didn’t. I have had more clarity than ever about what I really want to spend the little time I have to do it. Limiting the time actually gave me more possibility. And I’ve navigated a few opportunities in my career and trusted myself that this is the right path right now. 🛣️
