Wanna be an amazing new you in this new year? Then read on.
First of all Happy New Year! 🥳
Before I get into how you can be an amazing new you in this year, I wanna share with you what I did during the holidays prior to the new year.
I took time out of my business to relax, rejuvenate, spend quality time with my family (since it’s also the kids’ school holidays) and just evaluating where my business is heading. You know taking back and looking at the big picture and all.
I also just spent the last couple of weeks learning, absorbing, taking lotsa notes. More specifically – going through an amazing course by my dear friend, Sarah. More on that later.
My First Few Years in Business
For the last few years since getting into the printables business, I was just working day in and day out, but not really focusing on the things that truly matter in business. I was running in the rat race but there was no end to it.
I was working my guts out, trying to keep up with others, comparing myself with others a lot, the feeling of not being good enough, I was self-sabotaging myself most of the time and wonder will I ever be at the level where some of my peers are as they were doing very well and some were doing better than myself than when I first started.
Yes, I was seeing progress in my business, sales trickling in as I put in the work. But there were still a lot of uncertainties and always felt I wasn’t good enough.
Not getting enough sales.
I was not generating enough traffic to my website
I did not have enough followers.
and the list goes on and on and on.
I always felt I wasn’t enough.
A Bad Year
And then 2021 happened.
And my world went spiralling out of control. I was starting to lose my grip on the world where I felt safe, in control and powerful.
I fell ill.
The illness lasted for 5 months or more. It was a bad viral cough, cold, sore throat that went on and on and on… it would stop for a couple of weeks and then come back again like a vengeance like it would never end.
I went for 2-3 corona virus tests. They all came out negative.
Okay, phew… At least that’s that.
If you really know me at all, I never get sick. My kids and husband always do and it’s me (the healthy, strong one) that is always on call. If there’s anyone sick – it’s ME who gets them the medicine, bringing them to the doctor and nursing them back to health. So when my close friends heard about this, they were all very surprised too.
So NOOOOooo… mommy never gets sick.
So when this happened to me, you can just imagine how I felt.
How I Felt
I lost my motivation to work as I always felt ill.
I couldn’t focus.
I became depressed.
I stopped exercising.
I was eating badly.
Everything went downhill from there.
And just as I was getting better in June, I found out that my daughter needed a throat surgery. So again, I felt like life has thrown another huge rock at me.
My poor 5-year old had to experience surgery at her age. It was terribly scary and as much as I was scared for her, I didn’t show it because I wanted to be strong for her. It was tough. Fortunately she’s all better now.
Then in August, the Delta variant was starting to spread like crazy in NZ. We had to go onto another lockdown (2nd one after a short one in March) which lasted us for 4 months!
That REALLY, REALLY affected my mental health. Just as I was starting to get into a routine, to work on my projects and into the grind of things again, this happened.
My Poor Husband
In September last year, something happened to my husband. You probably know this if you’ve been reading my newsletter at all. If you’ve missed it, you can read this blog post here.
My husband woke up me up at 3am ish in terrible pain and was suddenly admitted to the hospital by 4am. He was diagnosed with a kidney stone. Apparently it is more painful than child-bearing. I joked to this day – that if he ever gets pregnant (God-forbid), he’ll be able to handle it like a champ! 😂
By the end of it all, I was going through an emotional roller coaster ride.
2021 has been the most challenging year for me physically, mentally, emotionally and has tested me beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.
Some may call it bad luck, negative energy, karma, or whatever you want to call it. NO offense, but I don’t believe in that at all.
Was I Angry?
To be honest, I wasn’t angry at God, at my situation, at my life.
However I was actually grateful for them. God allowed them to happen to me, for my own sake, for my own good and for me to step back more from the business to see what is most important in my life.
I saw He was refining me, teaching me, humbling me, throwing all these variables in my life, breaking me to a point that I only clung to Him and nobody else. Even my husband could not have saved me even if he wanted to. He was seeing all these were happening to me, to us both and he couldn’t stop it.
If I did not have God in my life, I would’ve have already cursed Him, blamed Him and everybody else and just drown myself in my misery.
While all these were happening, I have clung to God like you never believe. I prayed more and wanted to know Him more during this time. Just filling my time and my soul with good, holy things. Reading the bible, watching apologetics, Christian talks etc.
With Him All Things Are Possible
If you believe in God or not, or whether you are a Christian or not, this is a FACT that man cannot change. God can even make good things.. NO, GREAT things out of worse possible outcomes.
Just look at my friend, Sarah.
She was abused all her life. Her dad left when she was very young. Her mother didn’t want her. She was bullied by her peers growing up. Her abusive ex-husband left her and her two young children and was left to live in a homeless shelter. People did NOT believe in her. Her pastor, friends, peers turned against her, even the judge did not believe in her. Saying she will lose her kids, alimony and all if she did not get a proper job to support her family.
The Tables Have Turned
And NOW the tables have turned, she has now built a multi-million dollar empire and are changing people’s lives every day. Isn’t that amazing?!
WOW – how could you not be inspired by that?!
She was drowning in debt, she was at her lowest point, her life was a living hell and God picked her up from the pits of hell, guided her every step of the way and transformed her life! Only He could’ve done all of that. Not by our own merits, not by our own strength but ONLY by the grace and power of Christ – because she too clung to Him like you never believe.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28
Lessons Learned from 2021
After reflecting everything that’s happened in 2021, I have learned more than a few things which will remain with me for the rest of my life:
- Life is precious. Don’t take people you love for granted.
- Be the best mom and wife I could possibly be.
- Money is NOT the most important thing in life
- Be there for your children when they most need you. Take the time to listen and spend quality time with them.
- Stop comparing myself with others.
- My journey is my own. Our lives, experiences and situations vary from person to another. It’s kinda ridiculous to compare.
- Do more of what works and get rid of projects that do not work in your business.
- It’s not the goal or that 1 million dollars which is most important. It is the journey, the process of what kind of person you become when you finally achieved your goal.
- Do the maths. I realized that I don’t need $1 million to live a comfortable life. I can earn way less than that and still achieve all of the other goals I want and have more time with my family.
- Your goal or success is not going to fall from the sky and onto your lap. You need to set goals and put in the work. Nobody is going to do it for you but YOU alone.
- It’s always a process. There’s no such thing as an overnight success. Good things take time to build.
- Cling to Him. When bad things happened, cling to God with all of your heart and soul. There was where I found solace, comfort and hope and it gave me the courage to keep going.
- It’s never too late to pick yourself up where you’ve left off.
I Have Redeemed Myself
Finally, I started to feel a lot better.
At this point I was at the last quarter of the year, and felt like I haven’t accomplish much at all. But I kept going and told myself its okay, I’ll just work extra harder to do as much as I can for the last quarter of the year.
So I stayed true to my words and this is what I’ve accomplished in a short amount of time:
- Finished turning the rest of my ID templates into Canva templates (over 215 of them)
- Promote them in my newsletter
- Helped my client improved her physical planner design and aliasing with her printer.
- Started improving my diet and eating better again
- Created 2 new digital planners and updated my exisiting digital planner.
- Published 2 new products on Amazon.
- Created a full-fledged digital planner course as a bonus course for Sarah’s Illustrator course. (I recorded 20 videos in 3 DAYS!!) And the videos were edited within 2.5 weeks and came up to about 24 videos that were fully edited and exported!
- Cranked out 3 more new videos for my YouTube channel. (Psst.. I’ve just reached 1k subs! 🎉)
- Planned all my promotional emails for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
- Started the process of moving my courses and IPClub to a new course platform
It’s never too late to catch up
When I put my mind onto something, I accomplish it no matter what. I see my projects through to the end. When I put my heart and soul into something, I put my blinders on and get to work and I do it well. That’s just me 🙂
And that’s how I work with my clients too and it is how you should be as well. People would want to work with you if you have a strong work ethic.
Oh and one last thing that I’ve learned in 2021.
If you don’t know how to move the needle forward in your business, or if you’ve done everything you can but not seeing any success in your business, this is THE time to get back into the books and start educating yourself by finding a mentor or a course that would help you accomplish what you need to accomplish in your business.
And for me, it is blogging.
Since I was a teenager to early adulthood, I love to journal, write and pour my heart and soul into writing. When I heard about blogger.com, I signed up immediately and started writing for the world to see.
Since being in this business, I’ve always wanted to blog more seriously for my readers, to give more value and share my experiences, help others, but time was not on my side. And what I knew about blogging only scratches the surface. There were so many priorities and goals I needed to focus first before blogging. And after working on one goal after another in my business, I FINALLY came to a place where I can say…
What I Chose to Focus On
YES! This year is THE year to focus on my blog!
It took me 1-2 years to get to this point. I wanted to build a strong foundation for the business and each part of the business took me time to build. For e.g. creating courses, creating my printables club, building my Shopify store, creating products etc.
So what did I do? Yes, you guessed it right!
I went through Sarah’s blogging course – the Honest Bloggers Academy.
In January, while resting and enjoying time with family and friends, I was busy educating myself. When I get into something, I will take all the time I need to get through everything at one setting so I won’t miss anything.
I just work better like that. I can’t just start and stop and do something else and get back to it. I just can’t. I have a short attention span and I need to go ALL in at one go. I work at one thing at a time and that’s how I get things done and I feel more productive that way.
What I’ve learned
Because of this I finished her course within 2 weeks!! It’s a BOMB of a course. There was SO much meat and potatoes and I can’t wait to implement them on my new blog. There were many countless of Aha moments and golden nuggets in the course that will blow you away! There were so much wisdom shared in her course. Not only the how-to’s. But why you do things this way and how to do it better and faster.
OMG, I couldn’t sing praises of it highly enough. She’s REALLY good at what she does, she knows what she’s talking about and really, I mean REALLY knows her stuff. She’s been blogging for 9 years and in 2020 has earned over $8.4 million in her blogging revenue.
Just let that sink in for a moment.
Over $8.4 freaking. million. dollars.
Her blogging revenue consists of her store and courses revenue as well.
And after going through her course, I am now not surprised at all by the results that her students are having. Just read the testimonials on her sales page.
I mean I don’t know if I could ever reach that kind of success but even if its a small, tiny, winy fraction of it, I will die happy. Lol. 😂
I hope to be in one of her testimonials this time next year, so I can share my success story too – fingers crossed! 🤞🏻 Having said that, I definitely got to put in the work first 🙂
Sarah’s Courses
In my other blog post, I actually shared more about Sarah’s Million Dollar Shop course (because it would NOT fit in this post – I actually sat and wrote all day talking about it) which have truly made a HUGE difference to both my businesses.
So if you want to make this new year, a new you by improving your business and investing in yourself and in your education, what better time than TODAY to do so.
- Million Dollar Shop
- Top 13 Things to Sell in Shopify
- Honest Bloggers Academy®
- How to Create Printables in Illustrator
- How to Make Money From Home
Printables, design elements, graphics and any digital products provided on this site are for personal use only. You may NOT modify them or redistribute them for free or monetary gain without the written agreement from the author, Janice Banks. You may share these with your classes or co-workers (educators/teachers/tutors) as long as they are not modified in any way. Please share the link to the blog post if you want to share these digital resources with others.
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