Visionary
You’ve taken personality tests and even corporate strength tests over the years that have identified the areas that you thrive in and also highlights the places that you don’t love, want to avoid like the plague, and need to ask for the help of others in order to do the things you want to do. Well, I’m a huge visionary and I love to implement new techniques, ideas, and programs. The problem is…I’m a clinical social worker who loves impacting lives, but I don’t love technology, hate sales, and really can’t keep up with the millennials in today’s marketing arena.
3 Years In the Making
In January 2019, a marketing firm I had worked with that did a fantastic job with my website and taught me so much about running a business offered a pilot program to create something I was passionate about. Along with several other clinicians, I embarked on what was likely the hardest year of my life. I was forced to learn how to create the back end of a website, landing pages, marketing funnels, and email marketing sequences in order to launch a coaching program I created called Connect With Your Daughter. While the content was very informational, getting the content into the right people’s hands ended up being a huge challenge that cost me tons of money and personal time.
Pivoting
After a year of trying to build, market and sell a program I put hours of my time, tears and sweat into, I had to pivot and find alternative solutions. I hired a fantastic business coach who worked with me directly and helped me begin to put systems in place that I really needed in order to grow my business and expand into the next arena of coaching. I spent that next year revamping the program, redefining the name and we re-recorded all the videos with the pivot and the new name Raising Emotionally Savvy Teens. I also worked with my virtual assistant to get a newsletter out and increase my social media visibility.
Yet after the program was all rebuilt, I still had a problem of how to get this program into the right people’s inboxes and make the impact I had so desired to make in helping parents with anxious teens. I had even created a Teen Journal to help parents and teens communicate effectively, and it was sitting at the publisher awaiting some final tweaks. I needed someone who could hold my hand and walk me through step by step with marketing expertise.
Ouch That Hurt
Fast Forward to December 2021…when I met a marketing coach who actually understood the struggle I had endured over the past several years implementing the program and wanted to help hold my hand through the process in a different way.
At first I was offended and irritated as she looked at everything I had worked so hard to build with a very critical eye, hacked away at the program, the title, and the journal…in an effort to help me understand why I was having such a difficult time getting this information out correctly. Ouch that hurt!
After I picked myself up off the floor, and wiped a few tears away, I took some deep breaths and decided I liked and trusted this coach enough, and could understand her reasoning for the criticalness in an effort to actually help me take my vision to production correctly.
Still Grinding
I’m still grinding weekly to meet the goals we established and yet today this marketing coach has been with me weekly, helping me rewrite copy for a free mini-course as a snippet of the larger program. It’s been challenging and yet I see the big picture. I had to put my timeline away and trust in her wisdom. She is focused, supportive, and also calls a spade a spade when something doesn’t quite feel right to her. I have also had to learn to remove all the psychotherapy jargon and write conversationally. This is actually very difficult, and yet such an important task.
We are preparing to launch this free mini-course soon with a new name and fresh logo. When it launches, everything that was supposed to be connected and work correctly, like the teen journal, website links, and of course the email sequences…will all be done correctly. I am very blessed for the help I am receiving, and I am highly invested both financially and emotionally into this project.
I remember reading Jen Cisneros’s book “You Are A Badass” years ago and hearing her voice on the importance of hiring a coach whose price tag scares you. While I’m not an advocate for blowing money impulsively, I also understand that in order to grow, we have to do things that are completely outside our comfort zone and above the upper limit of our mind.
Tenacity and Grit
So often I work with clients who are afraid of failing. Failing is a difficult place for a perfectionist who tries to orchestrate all the risk out of something. As a business owner, I embrace the tenacity and grit that it takes to do the hard work, and then jump all in…not just toe in the water type of faith. Here I am 3 years later, still focused on my dream and vision to bring parents and teens together in a learning platform that will directly teach parents how to help their teen with anxiety and improve connection. The vision is still what drives me, as my mission is to help people make authentic gains in their physical, emotional, and social lives through vulnerability and decisive change. When you love what you do, it doesn’t matter now many times you fail. You just have to pick yourself back up, pivot if necessary, and recognize that to do big things, you need a team of people with specialities different from yours.
