Confession Time: I Don’t Like My Business

“You know very well that destinations never matter… it’s what you learn along the way”
(Quote from Once Upon A Time Season 6, Episode 14)

The quote above is VERY fitting for this post.
It was a reminder to me as I was about to do some editing while binge-watching my current favorite show that where I THOUGHT I was going doesn’t matter, it’s what I learn along the way.

That’s actually really what this post is about.

Regardless, it’s a tough one to write for me. It’s tough to admit I don’t LOVE and ADORE every piece of the business I’ve build to over six figures gross income per year. I hit that six figure goal in 2018 and THAT seemed like the “where I was going” but then when I got here it really didn’t seem to matter – nothing changed. My world didn’t suddenly shift to six-figure bliss. It was mostly as it was before, with no real noticeable change.

Here’s my confession in full detail:
There are PARTS of my business that I don’t like.

It’s not everything but the parts are so significant to how I’ve been running my business I felt it’s time for a full out confession.

Before we get too far into that let me tell you why you should care:

  • Businesses evolve and people change. You might be going through something similar without realizing it.
  • I WANT to serve my customers and subscribers and followers in a MUCH better way and I believe that starts here, now.
  • I think it’s so valuable for you to see the problems AND solutions to those problems in a real way. By sharing this with you now I can also show you what I’m doing to FIX IT.

This is where I’m at now:

I’ve been running my membership, Laptop Lifestyle YOUniversity, since 2015.

Since then it’s had three different names and a bunch of different kinds of offerings.

Currently we are running quarterly collaborations, a weekly call, have a Facebook community and a training library.

I built my online business by selling products. First it was a graphics course, then it was a course on WordPress websites. After that I created a bunch of courses I wasn’t all that excited about.

I’ve written a TON of digital products.

I’ve written ebooks, ecourses, reports, worksheets, checklists, presentations and I’ve recorded audios and videos and presented more live trainings than I can count.

Everything I’ve created over the years has always been out of service. It has always been out of a deep desire to help people achieve what I had up to that point. The problem, as I think I see it now, is that I also did it with an urgency to earn money.

The Urgency to Create Income Doesn’t Create Passion

When I think about it I move into most of my business ventures purely out of a desperation to earn money and find the thing that “worked”. I made over $100,000 from my WordPress course and I created that because I was so tired and frustrated with working for clients and I wanted to find another way to make money.

Being an academics type teacher has never been a goal of mine or even something that excited me.
I don’t love making outlines or creating the course content or laying out the program.

I did it because I thought I had to.

AND – I’m feeling pretty done.
I’m feeling pretty tired of teaching in this format.
I’m feeling pretty sick of trying to figure out the outline, the best format, write the salespage and teach the training.

It’s just not exciting me anymore AT ALL.
I’m not feeling the need to teach any more marketing courses.

How Do You Know When It’s Time to Turn the Page?

I was talking to my friend and accountability partner about this today and I said what I just wrote to you to her. I felt emotional as I said it but it also felt very true. I’ve actually been feeling this way since 2017 but I’ve fought it, tried to “get over it”, tried to just fix something I thought might have been broken in my process, my inspiration, my methods.

But the truth is it’s not my passion – course creation. Digital product creation WAS my thing once but now I’ll be happy to take it out of my skillset and move on to something else.

I also said to my friend “I just don’t want to teach anymore and that is unfortunate because I need to make money.”

That was short-sighted of me.

After I spoke out this truth my brain must have gotten to work in the background because ideas started flowing to me.

I thought if I said what I felt then I’d have to QUIT running my membership, DISAPPOINT my members and be left without an income!

That was not something I would willingly do so I think I’ve been avoiding facing this.

But now here I stand – facing it.

And what a time to face it. We’re in isolation right now, like much of the world. The world has in many ways come to a standstill and in this moment of pause it became really clear to me what I didn’t want.

I share it with you because as I write and create messages to you I want you to know where I’m coming from and what I stand for. It’s always been important to me that the person I buy from is committed to what they’re doing and to serving their customers needs in the BEST way they can.

You can ONLY serve in your best way from your zone of genius and I fully intend to open myself up to getting and staying in THAT zone, rather than the one I felt I had built myself into.

Surrendering the How & Committing to the What

  • I want to blog. I want to do what I’m doing right here, right now.
  • I want to do affiliate marketing. I want to share other people’s stuff because I am so good at telling people about stuff I love!
  • I want to build up my community. I want to support my members, share what I know in a way that fits me and bring in other people who know more than me to teach my members.

So I’m creating new plans.

They look something like this:

Laptop Lifestyle YOUniversity – This is my main gig, my main business. I have members who’ve been with this membership since the very beginning and I love seeing them grow and thrive. I intend to dig much further into the theme of collaboration I’ve built into the membership and I’m looking into ways to get others to teach my members in a way it’s a win-win-win!

What I love about bringing teachers into LL YOU is that it really opens up the doors to teaching so many other topics that I’m just not experienced enough or have enough results in to teach. It will allow me to support members in the way I do best (community leader) and let others contribute to the membership in a way they’re great at. I can’t way to flesh this out some more and bring it to life!

MEconomy – Yes this is a course and yes I just hinted that I would rather stick a pickle in my eye than create another course. It’s actually a different kind of course though because it’s really a group coaching program. I am guiding students in live training and sessions and that I LOVE because I get to see and hear the lightbulb moments live and that lights me up. This course I am running now and for the next nine weeks and it’s not too late to jump into ANY week – now or in a few weeks.

Chasing Vegan – THIS is a new passion for me. I am coming up soon on one year of being a vegan and as I said above, I want to blog. I want to connect with people in this manner and I have had this dream of blogging since 2015. I LOVE words. I love sharing my feelings, emotions and thoughts with others and the content of an email to my list or a social media post is simply NOT ENOUGH for me. I want more ways to say what I feel and think and share what I know. Since Laptop Lifestyle YOUniversity is my main gig, Chasing Vegan is my side hustle and you will be hearing a lot more about that in the near future!

I’ll admit I’ve been down about the LL YOU membership for some time now and it’s shown in the membership sign up rates. I thought I might just need to let it go and transition to something else but I’m not feeling that way anymore!

I feel that I can run Chasing Vegan AND Laptop Lifestyle YOUniversity and create a diversity in my income, which is so important right now for everyone in the world earning money.

Where You End Up Won’t Be Where You Thought

As the initial quote of this post says it doesn’t matter what the you think your business goals are right now because you’re going to learn so much along the way. That will change you. It will shift and grow and move and pivot your business to a place you would never have imagined.

Having worked with business owners for over 15 years now I’ve seen so many people agonize over getting that initial goal “right”.

I see people needing to get all their ducks in a row, as they say.

But what if it didn’t matter.

What if you picked a spot and headed for it because what you learn along the way will be so much more important than that thing you picked.

That’s the surrender I’m talking about now.

I’m throwing out the monetary goal.
I’m throwing out the ideas of what I can buy at a certain level of success.
I’m throwing out the perception that what I create has to be or look a certain way.

And, instead, I’m going with my intuition. I’m trying the guidance of my gut and I’m going to share what I know to be real and true and valuable with my community.

Angela Wills
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7 thoughts on “Confession Time: I Don’t Like My Business”

  1. Thanks for sharing this Angela… much of what you wrote is how I am feeling right now and I am rethinking my way. I want to be of service. I have always felt that the more I learned, the more I would have to share with others. I have also realized that there are already a lot of great products produced by great people and I would like to connect my list to these great offers instead of trying to come up with my own products. I love creating graphics, but lots of people have amazing graphics, so I am still in the wondering/experimenting mode at the moment.

    1. There are some people who are AMAZING at creating products and it really excites me to share their stuff with my community. What I think is really important is we continue to be on a mission to find what we excel at, personally, and follow that path where we can do our best work.

      Keep exploring, you’ll get there!

  2. Hi Angela,
    Thanks so much for having the courage to post this, and to say out loud what I think a lot of us feel inside. I know there are parts of my business that I’m really not in love with anymore, and I can see me doing different things. But, the fear of losing my current income kinda keeps me stuck doing the things I don’t love because they’re the things that bring in the income right now. You’ve definitely given me food for thought on the direction I want to go in and it’s certainly nice to know that I’m not alone in feeling like this.

    1. Yes the fear of dropping what’s working to move on is what I was facing when I had to decide to face the fact that I don’t like creating products. Thankfully I’ve been able to shift and change my business model because of how I set it up !

  3. Chimica Robinson

    Burn out is the worst. I was all about ghostwriting from 2008 to 2014. Then burn out hit me. I realized I hated helping people make more money than myself when I was spending hours away from my family. From there, I began to explore everything I could instead of writing. From dropshipping to FBA, even become a cosmetologist. It was hard to dip my toes into each one and suffer money and time lost. But it allowed me to really find what worked. Now, I sell digital products on Etsy and JVzoo and I’ve published over 100 novels on Kindle. It’s all about finding the right thing and enjoying it. Glad you were able to admit and solve the problem. I look forward to hearing more about your vegan blog. I love trying new recipes that are plant based.

    1. Yes! Love that Chimica. I used to beat myself up for exploring new things and I realize that from time to time I NEED that! I need to change things up, try new things and then I get renewed passion from the old. Thanks for your comment! Good to hear from you 🙂

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