It’s a reasonable enough question, so here’s a little background about me and my business journey…
I’ve been a home educating parent for the last 20 years, working with my four children and building my sole trader business along the way. I work with people to help them realise their health and wellness lifestyle goals by encouraging great energy flow in their bodies and buildings. I’m a qualified Senior Flying Stars Feng Shui Practitioner and a Holistic Health Practitioner, weaving modalities together to find what suits the most efficient pathway of success for my clients. However, along the way I lost enthusiasm for what I was doing because I was ‘doing’ all the time, and not ‘being’ enough of the time. Not ‘being’ myself, not being with my children, and instead showing up in the version I thought was appropriate for the role I was fulfilling. The healer, the all-capable home-schooling mum, the professional consultant, the approachable small business owner.
Whatever hat I wore I tried to wear it to the best of my ability but changing costumes multiple times per day IS nuts. I lost touch with who I really was. I lost sight of what I was doing and why I’d started my business in the first place.
The way I was doing things had to change, and so I took steps to make that happen.
In 2017 financial situations occurred that made me take a long hard look at the processes I was using and the losses I was taking to assess how I was going to make my business work for me, and not the other way around. At the time this all came to a head I had injured my back three times in a row over the course of three months. One day I found myself yet again calling out for help, directing my young children to do the housekeeping while I was unable to move without excruciating pain. I felt useless. I felt like a fraud. I felt like a failure. Here I was helping other people take care of themselves but I was burning the candle at both ends and in the middle! I was also finding that my clients, as lovely as they were, often tried to bargain my rates down even more and I even had a few bad debts to write off simply because I didn’t have the energy or time to chase money that I’d invoiced for.
It had to change…
I didn’t want to go into the advertising spiral. I didn’t want to be sensationalistic and make money out of fears and phobias. I didn’t want to peddle the same old story that was so prevalent in mainstream health and wellness circles. Because we aren’t broken. Maybe worn down a bit…but, not broken.
We are a magnificent machine that needs tending well, just like a garden, just like an engine, just like the land we live on.
Maintenance. That’s real health. That’s what I wanted to talk about! So I did.
And it flopped, spectacularly.
Back to the drawing board. I redefined my brand, reworked my website and began to understand my attracted the kind of clientele that ‘got’ me. They wanted maintenance, but they wanted it in bite sizes. So bite sizes I began with. Over the next three years I took my business from making a loss to making five figure profits, while I was learning and teaching. But I got a little enthusiastic and invested in a business strategy for what I thought was a perfectly aligned way of advertising my way into the kind of income structure that would finally give me financial freedom and security, only to find that I’d got hustled. Yep. Me. Cautious, overly analysing Me, got taken in by sympathetic, sensationalistic, coercive hype.
Out of that experience I gained so much insight into the way I wanted to present myself. I am my brand. I am my business. If it’s not authentic then it’s not me. I am a maker. A potion-maker. I am a leader in the way I do things and I don’t sit around waiting for anyone to catch up with me. I set the pace and tempo, … please keep up or come back later.
I am real-natural, no synthetics, vegan-friendly and succinctly comfortable about it.
Once that was the frequency established in my business everything bloomed.
Practically I had to shift energy as set up spaces to achieve the work flow I was wanting to take on. Bulk quantities take up space so I expanded my workshop to accommodate more workshop area, shelving for ingredients and packaging. Energetically I reduced my outgoings towards microprojects and focussed on the essentials of attracting wholesale clients. I took the time to go within and make myself rock-solid when it came to owning my knowledge and experience. What I am doing is NOT the norm within the industry, and there have been some serious misgivings regarding the viability of being ‘all natural’. By testing my formulations and knowing they were robust for purpose helped to establish that confidence in what I do. It’s this kind of extremely practical and necessary protocol awareness that helped me get over the mental and emotional hurdles I’d put in place years ago.
Within months I had tripled my income and gained three high quality clients! Plus, it felt great to work with other people, to collaborate with the creative aspect of making products. I felt like I’d walked around a corner into the most comfortable space.
My clients typically generate approximately 50% return on their product investment. That’s a great margin when most of the industry is working on 15 to 25% return. And that 50%? That’s AFTER packaging costs as well … all they have to do is market and deliver which can be done efficiently if you are willing to put in the work. Paying someone to do this part of the process might cost at first but having a steady stream of orders to fill is better than having stock sitting around getting closer to their expiry date. You know what I mean…
I’ll be talking more about the process of becoming a small-scale bulk maker in the upcoming workshops, but if you’re interested in finding out more about how to become a small-scale producer and still make a decent income, contact me today to book an information call. They’re free and we can choose and day and time that suit us both.
It’s time to take your dreams and make tangible those ideas that have been swirling about for a while. Touch them. Smell them. Feel them. SELL them!
You deserve to create and manifest more than just money. Why not manifest a small business you can run from home and make a living out of it. And if it’s not that, then spare time for spare cash. I bet you have a ton of ideas, so let’s see what you can do!
Something you may want to think about before then is this:
What is your major stumbling block when it comes to making your own product(s)?
Time, money, ability, design, distribution?
Or is it You?
Do you need to know you can do it?
We’ll talk through all of that then get on to the practical side of making from scratch, in a healthy, environmentally responsible way, using sustainable practices from the ground up. Can’t wait to talk with you.
Blessings
Nette
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