Why I started a business mentorship
When I launched my online fitness business Remodel Fitness over six years ago,
I had no idea how I was going to actually make money.
I didn’t know how online coaching worked, so I just planned to kind of copy whatever my peers were doing. I didn’t know how to create programs, or write ebooks, or record webinars, or use powerpoint.
I knew absolutely zero about technology, marketing, branding, or business.
What I did know was that:
I was meant to help a wider audience of people than I was reaching through my personal training practice (at the time, I thought that meant helping women feel more empowered and confident through getting strong).
I had some important shit to say about confidence, gender, body image, and self-worth.
I wanted to be completely mobile so that I could leave New York City and travel.
That’s it.
With these three facts in my pocket, I started my business and moved out of NYC, leaving my lucrative personal training income behind, and taking life’s epic masterclass in “How To Figure Shit Out As You Go Along.”
Those first few years I did a lot of “failing forward” when it came to running my business. I had so many setbacks and low points, including:
I spent $8k on a business coach who I then fired because he insisted my marketing be geared toward exploiting women’s insecurities.
I figured out how to do successful online fitness coaching… and then I overhauled my brand and stopped doing fitness altogether.
I did launches of programs nobody bought, wrote blog posts nobody read, and barely broke even on at least half a dozen live workshops.
I felt completely unprepared and uneducated every step of the way.
How do I get my email list to connect to my payment software? What should I make, and for whom? How should I market it once I make it? How do I get people to pay attention? What am I even trying to say??
The majority of those first few years bounced pretty consistently between euphoria and panic. I would wake up in Costa Rica, excited about the launch of my first ever group program, overwhelmed with gratitude that I got to do such meaningful work in the world… and then by mid-day I would be in a full-on spiral of anxiety about the complete impossibility of some mundane task I couldn’t figure out (like how to format something in WordPress) and silently screaming I CAN’T DO THIS! OMG I CAN’T DO THIS!
The only things that got me through those first few years (other than my conviction that I had shit to say and people to reach) was the support of other entrepreneurs and guides who helped me feel less alone, less incompetent, and more empowered in my role as boss-of-everything.
Eventually I left the fitness industry altogether, in a move that everyone (including several top tier business coaches) told me not to do, because I had built up a reputation for myself as the go-to online trainer for female empowerment and self-acceptance.
But having decided it was my job to fight oppression, and having also realized that up until then I had accidentally been contributing to oppression with my fitness content… I did what I had to do.
So, no more Remodel Fitness.
I started over, made new accounts, got new photos, rebuilt my website. I hired a business coach again to help me with my re-branding. I lowered my prices back to the beginning, because I didn’t have the years of experience and notoriety in this new niche, the way I had with fitness.
Back to the beginning, only this time I had more confidence.
I wasn’t confident in the “I know I will succeed because I’m amazing!” sort of way, though. It was more of a “I know how to fail forward and figure shit out as I go… so the worst that can happen is it takes me a long fucking time to climb back out of this hole.”
I’m happy to report it didn’t take that long.
The thing about being a solopreneur who expresses her purpose and calling through her business is that I’ve been pretty damn motivated to make things work.
My heart and soul’s calling won’t be held back by something as trivial as fear and doubt.
Interestingly, I often hear from my clients and readers that they feel a similar calling, a similar pull to what I felt back in NYC seven years ago. Often they don’t yet know exactly what the calling is asking them to do, or what their business would look like, but they know (like I did) that it involves helping people, and being mobile.
Last year when I opened up enrollment to the beta test of my online business mentorship program From Feeling Lost to Impacting People, I took a group of 10 wonderful humans through a year-long program, thinking I’d give them access to a system for support and accountability, and teach them the most important and relevant business and marketing skills I’d learned along the way, so they could skip some of my mistakes and get where they want to go faster.
I was surprised to discover through this experience though that the most important and relevant skills people need when starting a business have almost nothing to do with business or marketing at all.
That first year of running a business— and in fact perhaps the first three to five years— people just need courage, clarity, self-trust, resilience, support, connection, and to develop an absolute love affair with failure.
Which is, I was surprised to discover, my complete and absolute jam. So I’ve decided to offer this yearlong mentorship again, but with a few changes.
Given the rapidly changing landscape of internet marketing, I can tell you that what worked for me to build my business is not what will work for you now, and in fact what worked for people two years ago won’t work for you next year. As such, I have no interest in talking about or pretending to be an expert in the exact formula to get you from $0 to $100,000.
Also, most people who sell business coaching are sleazy and manipulative hustlers who prey on insecure new solopreneurs who want the “formula” or “strategy” that will work for them, and as far as I’m concerned it’s all complete bullshit. There is no magical internet marketing formula, social media strategy, or launch plan that will work for everyone, no matter how desperately we both wish there was. (Trust me I get it, the 8k useless business coach I hired promised me exactly that.)
The mentorship is for people who want to tune into their own damn calling, and carve their own damn path helping people and making money. It’s the exact equivalent to the way I do body image and self-worth coaching, only around business:
What do you think/feel? What do you want? What’s standing in the way of you getting there?
Let’s create a plan of action to overcome those blocks.
I’m here to support your unique journey and celebrate your courage in showing up, no matter what the outcome is. That said, I’m also a completely open book. I’ll show you how I run things in my own business, and I’ll answer any questions you have about literally anything.
The mentorship’s main focus however will be on helping my mentees build courage, clarity, self-trust, resilience, support, connection, and the most important one (developing an absolute love affair with failure).
Because:
You’re less likely to quit when the going gets hard when your work is in complete alignment with your heart and soul, instead of just something you thought maybe people wanted to buy.
Helping people get clear on and execute their authentic truth is my zone of genius, and what I do best.
You are the only authority on the work you’re here to do. You are the only authority on what lights you up, what you’re willing to suffer for, and what will feel meaningful and fulfilling. Nobody else can tell you what your business can look like. (But that doesn’t mean you should do it alone. I sure as hell didn’t.)
I’ll still be enrolling people in Feeling Lost to Impacting People 2020 for the next month or so, but I don’t feel like doing a whole fancy launch about it. (Throughout the year, dozens of you have asked me when I’m running this program again, and launches are 0% fun for me. So I figured I’d just tell you, as well as giving you some insight into how/why I run this whole thang!)
I suspect if this mentorship is right for you, you already know who you are.
Note that the mentorship is for anyone who has recently begun to create an online business in the realm of health, wellness, fitness, coaching, or any other helping profession. Ideally you’re in or around the first year of getting started, or at the very least have a strong skill-set and idea/perspective on what you’ll be doing, and for whom.
<3 Jessi
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