Let's kick this. post off by celebrating with you that we have officially crossed half a million dollars for 2021 on December 28th. Nothing like hitting your goal the final hour of the year! For those of you guys who are doing goal setting right now, I think this is really, really relevant and important to set your goals for what they mean, set your goals for the feelings and the experience and the sensations that you want to have behind the goal. When you hit the goal, what is the feeling that you want to feel? What is the experience that you want to have?

I set the goal for half a million dollars in my business this year and as we crossed that benchmark, I said to my mentor "I am so proud that I held that vision and that it went through the finish line, but I am far more proud of the way that I did it and how I chose to build my business and how I chose to stay so in alignment with my values and my boundaries." I'm so much more proud of that than I am hitting the goal itself. I'm proud that I worked less this year than I ever have. I am proud that I stuck to my own way of operating and stayed in my own lane, doing it my way. I'm proud that my clients get just as wild of results and healing as me personally.

I am proud that I listened to my body when I needed rest. I took extended periods of time off and I breathed and I allowed space for my family when we needed it. I'm proud that when it looked like it wasn't going to happen, I held the vision anyways, and I kept taking aligned action, but I didn't put any kind of frantic rigid energy on it or make it mean anything about me. If it didn't happen, it was the most laid back knowing that I knew it was going to happen eventually.

I'm really, really proud that my values never took the back seat in the pursuit of this goal. It was always family first, freedom first, healing first, being of service first. The income was a by-product.

The reason that I wanted to share this goal with you is because we can have huge goals and we can have a big vision and we can want magical things in our life, and we can have it all. We can be a good mom. We can be a present mom. We can live our life. We can be a present spouse. We can have hobbies and we can do other things. We don't have to be so married to the outcome of our goals or our business. So I share that milestone with you just to be proved that in the pursuit of that goal, of that vision, of that thing that felt so freaking expensive for me. I didn't sacrifice time. I didn't sacrifice being present. I didn't sacrifice my well-being or my sanity or my marriage or my self care or my slow mornings or my sleep. I didn't sacrifice any of it -- and it is possible for you. 

You can freaking do it. I am by no means any kind of a marketing guru, I just saw my vision. I knew what I wanted. I knew that I was going to do big things but also my family and my freedom mean the world to me. So you get to have it all.

I'm a mom of three little girls. They are nine, five and two. So they're still very little and this time is a very, very rare, valuable resource around here. If you're a mama, I feel you and I'm sending you so much love. It's a crazy ride. So here are the things that I did in 2021 to help me build half a million dollar business while raising my babies...

NUMBER 1: RELEASE EXPECTATIONS 
Nothing is ever going to go the way that we think that it is. Not your launch, not the plans that you set, not the birth of our children, not the way that we think that our family is going to grow and the way that things are going to happen, nothing ever goes as expected. There were many times where I had to shuffle things around and I had to give myself grace and I had to honor the very little time that I had. And there was a lot of things that I had to say no to. There was a lot of times that it wasn't pretty, there were so many videos that I put out where I was bouncing a baby on my hip, or, you know, one of the kids that come running into the dining room and smoke her head off the corner of the table. She'd be screaming on a live video. And that's okay. It's okay that it's going to be messy. Honoring the little time that I had and when shit hit the fan, knowing that that's okay. I didn't beat myself up about it. When I got tired or things got crazy, I could still feel like I was moving the needle forward in my business, and I could still feel proud of myself. I could still feel really good about the work that I was doing even if it didn't look perfect.

NUMBER TWO: I DIALED IN MY PRODUCT SUITE.
I got really laser focused on the programs and the containers and the experiences that I was doing that were my main income sources and getting rid of having 900 different moving pieces in our business. There are a lot of incredible mentors in the online space who I was watching and their creativity was just so beautiful and so inspiring. Even my mentors, I watch them and I'm like, "dang, I would love to be able to operate like that. I would love to be launching new offers and new ideas and being creative all of the time. I would love to be launching all the time." I love launching. I love selling.
I love the hype of it, but the reality is I had to be really honest with myself and say that I'm in a season of my life right now where I can't be doing that because I can't constantly be live running programs because there's too many variables. I can't always be launching because I'm going to burn myself out and I'm going to beat myself up if I have to take three or four days off and it throws off the whole thing. So I dialed in my product suite this year, where I have only a couple of signature programs, The Co-Creatrix Method being one of them. I looked at my products and I got clear on what were the top producing programs. I fine tuned them. I mastered them. I revamped everything. I prerecorded 90% of the content that is in these programs and then I got really clear on when I was going to be launching them throughout the year. I had enough flexibility in my launch schedule that I could move things around as we got closer to the dates. I was giving myself three to four week launch periods for the programs and only running these programs two, three, or even four times a year. I created more passive programs where I didn't have to be on but my clients were still getting me and my up-to-date value. This allowed me freedom that I could take two days and batch record four months worth of program content in like two days. Then I brought on two co-coaches into most of my programs. I could still be in my programs coaching, but it wasn't taking so much of my time and I could do it when it felt good for me.

NUMBER 3: I BROUGHT ON AN EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT
If I can recommend spending your money anywhere, it's here. Get yourself a right hand person. The way that my brain works with ADHD and the fact that I'm a projector and I'm a little bit of an introvert and all the things, I knew that I didn't want a big team. I'm not a manager, I'm not a team leader. I'm not any of those things so it felt really wonky for me to have like 6 or 10 employees and having the pressure and all the things. So what I did is I brought on an executive assistant. Any of you who are in my inner world, you'd know my Jess, she is my whole world. She was a past client of mine so I knew her heart and I knew how good she was and her work ethic. I reached out to her and I asked her if she would come on as an apprentice and I apprenticed her for the first four months before officially bringing her on as an executive assistant. She took over all of the backend stuff that I just didn't have time for and it takes so much pressure off of me. So start to outsource and delegate some of the stuff that is sucking up your time.

NUMBER FOUR: CONTENT BATCHING + REUSING CONTENT
Another thing that I knew that was really leaking my energy was trying to constantly be on Instagram and creating new content and then reels started... And I'm like, "oh my God. And I'm learning all these new things and creating graphics and doing that kind of stuff. This is just not my jam." It makes me feel very tired. It feels like time wasting to me. If that is your creative outlet, kudos to you. To me, it just did not feel like that. So I had to be really honest with myself and say, "because I have such limited time, where is my time best utilized?" which is when the podcast and going live in. my Facebook group became a big part of my business. I had my assistant pull all of the audio and type it out into a blog. And then the blog went out to Pinterest and the blog became Instagram posts and the blog became Facebook posts and the Facebook lives became podcast episodes. It gave me so much freedom because I could always find 30 minutes in the week to record a podcast episode or go live in my group. This was my way of creating content and nurturing my audience when everything else felt like it was sucking my time. Reusing old posts, revamping them, reposting them. You don't always have to recreate the wheel and content batching. So whether it's one day and you sit down and do all of your content, or you find one stream of content that feels really good and expansive, and then chopping it up and making it into other pieces of content. When I'm out like walking with my kids and when I'm driving and I have intuitive heads, I will actually voice memo myself in Voxer and just let myself riff so when it's time to do content batch creation or go on my podcast, I can just listen to what I had to say, going back to the moment and then create my content from there.

NUMBER FIVE: GO BACK TO THE BASICS
I beat myself up for a period of time because I was watching all of these other people being so innovative and trying on all these new things and being mind blown by the creativity and the innovation and it felt like my brain was so exhausted that I started to make myself feel flawed. I made myself feel less than. I felt like if I'm not being innovative like this, that I'm not going to stand out in the industry. The truth is there's going to be a time and place for innovation but when the innovation starts to feel like overwhelm and suffocation, it's okay to give yourself permission just to go back to the basics for a little bit. The basics for me in my business are expand, nurture, and sell every single day. What is one thing that I can do to expand my audience? to nurture my audience? to sell to my audience? Expanding my audience might look like doing an Instagram live share with somebody else where we both go live together and we jam for 30 minutes. It might be me going onto some Instagram profiles and liking and commenting and engaging and creating relationships. I might be running some kind of a challenge, whatever it is every day. I just find one simple way to expand my audience. Even by 1-5 people. If we do that every single day, that's like over 1700 new contacts in your audience every single year and in three years from now, you'll blow your mind. What is one thing that I can do every single day, just to show up? Whether it's a quote that I post or a podcast episode that I record, or I go live for five minutes, bouncing a baby on my hip and sharing my personal development that I did from that day. Pre-recording a quick audio that I can send out or typing an email while I plunk the kids down with a snack at the table. After I nurture my audience, I sell. I put out sacred invitations into the world every single day. It's not that I'm hard selling, it's I always have a way for you to work with me. If you find me and you resonate with me, there's always a way that you can come into my world and work with me. By doing this going back to the basics, I didn't have to put so much pressure on myself to reinvent the wheel. I knew that my business was growing. I knew that I was taking care of my community and I was building trust and I was building relationships. It was those three elements that kept me grounded that gave me spaciousness. I could continue to take care of my babies and the business moved forward. I tripled my income last year, by doing those three basics, nothing crazy outside of the box.

NUMBER SIX: BE OKAY WITH IT BEING MESSY
I said this already, but your people love you for you. On my last podcast episode, my kids came in, they were screaming, then you can hear my husband go up the stairs, trying to get the kids. And I'm like, "oh my God, it's real life. It's real life." You know who I am because I share that with you. I share the messy. When you're on videos with me, you'll see my kids. You know my kids, you know my family, it just is the way that it is. My hair is sometimes messy. My house is often a disaster and my people love it. Most of the people who hire me are moms or people who desire to become a mom eventually and want to set up their business now for freedom and scalability without sacrificing time. The reason that those are the people that I attract to work with and be in my world with me is because I showed her part of myself. It's so far from perfect and I love it that way. Your people will love your messy. So you have to be okay with it too. My job here is to show up and serve, find ways of easy growth and sell messy. I show up and I serve when my kids are on the video. When I had little tiny baby cooing on my podcast and I was nursing on live videos. I have done it all. I just continued to show up and share my heart. I found easy ways of growth. I didn't make it any harder than adding 5 to 10 people to my audience every day. And if 20 found me, hallelujah. I'd celebrate so big and I sell messy. It doesn't have to look perfect. Even if it's just me going on to my Instagram stories and saying, "Hey, this is what I have available. If it resonates, shoot me a message." I did it every day.

NUMBER SEVEN: LET THE SEASONS BE BEAUTIFUL
There is going to be seasons of your business and there's going to be seasons of your life and it's okay to honor them. So many people come out of the gate in their business and they want to be all in in their first year of business, they want to hit six figures. You know, we hear this all the time, "I went all in and skyrocketed my business." But the reality is most people who are going all in that way have no other obligations. So you have to decide what your all in is and what your level of consistency is and what your level of being able to show up in your power is an honor the hell out of it. The season where you get to absolutely explode your business and run is going to be beautiful. The season where all of your kids are finally in school and you get to do your business way differently is going to be beautiful. The seasons where I was very, very fresh postpartum and I was tired and my body was hurting and my boobs were here huge and my baby didn't sleep and was nursing every two hours. That was a season and I didn't want to rush it away. It's so short. I wasn't willing to rush it away. The season that I'm in right now with a crazy toddler who, if I'm not watching, well, I shit you not, burned my fucking house down. She's rogue. She's an animal. My five-year-old is just so incredible and loves doing crafts. She's so full of life. My nine-year-old is just magic. Learning how to play a piano and how artistic she is. I don't want to miss any of it. You guys, I'm in this season right now where I don't want to miss the moments because I'm so hyper focused on my goals in my business and that's okay too. So in this season, it's going to look different than when I was brand new postpartum. And when they're all in school, it's going to look different again. And it's all perfect. I make it mean nothing about the income that I can make. I make it mean nothing about the incredible service that I can give to my clients. I make it mean nothing about my capability as a coach or a leader or a boss or anything else. So look at the season of your life, look at how beautiful it is and not making it mean anything about your capability to build a badass business. 

NUMBER EIGHT: GET SUPPORT
There is no shame in asking for help. No shame in getting a housekeeper, no shame in getting a nanny. If that speaks to you, no shame in asking people, friends, family, for help every once in a while so that you can get all of your content done. No shame in asking for a babysitter to go out on a date night, no shame in getting support. You don't have to do it all yourself. You don't have to be superwoman and no one is going to give you a fucking trophy. You are the trophy. You are the prize, your babies are the prize. No shame. You have your own way of doing it that feels true for you in only the way that you can intuitively know what is best for your family and your babies. It is no different for your business. You are the only one that will know what intuitively feels good and right, and true for your business and your life and your kids. And you will find many mentors in the industry doing a million different things, a million different ways. My advice to you is stay in your own lane and take everything in the way that other people do things with a grain of salt. I put it through the funnel of my values. I take what aligns with my values and then I move on to the next thing and I piece together all of the pieces until it feels just right. Just right for me, just right for my family.
I don't beat myself up that it doesn't look exactly how other people's businesses look.