Blissful Boss Babe: How to stand out in a saturated market

I can remember very clearly, the day I decided that I was ready to start my new jewelry business, Love Ashlina Jewelry. It was such an incredible feeling, it felt like I was falling in love with life all over again. Just like in a fresh romantic relationship, it felt so utterly blissful. When you are in a state of searching for clarity, once it finally begins to come together, the experience can be absolutely invigorating. (Side note: if you are looking for clarity in your life and/or your business, Labradorite is an excellent crystal to work with.)

I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 10 years at this point but as I have transitioned from interior design to jewelry design, I feel like I am starting all over again. It’s like my second life. Luckily, I have plenty of experience in entrepreneurship. However, when I was starting out many moons ago, it was fairly easy for me to thrive because I didn’t have a super saturated market in my field. I was a pioneer of my particular type of business. Now, with my new jewelry business, I am navigating the ups and downs of building something from scratch, while trying to stand out in a market that is already plenty full.

I felt it would be important for me to share some valuable tips and tricks to help you navigate your own business. These tips can be useful for life too. As always, I feel it is important to document and share what I learn, so my blog has been a consistent element that I have found to be invaluable. Not only does it help when you document what you experience, it serves as a great resource for others and a great way to reference things. Hope you find these tips to be helpful.

#1 FIND YOUR WHY:

When you are wanting to start a business or even grow one that you are currently working on, I have learned that one thing in particular has been incredibly essential for staying focused and on track. Determining why you are even doing it in the first place. You have to find your why, something that goes deeper than money, and deeper than just a superficial desire to feed the ego. There has to be a meaningful and soulful reason why you are creating something. I dish more on this in episode No.45 of the Blissfully Ambitious podcast.

Before I began my jewelry business, I had already determined my personal why. It was something I deeply prayed about and worked on after reading this book. When you are called to and driven by a why that goes deeper than you, you will be spiritually more aligned with a flourishing business. When the core meaning behind your business is to ultimately help only you, you are going about it the wrong way. When you determine what it is that you can do in business, that is all about truly serving others for a higher purpose, there’s a grander supply of energy that flows towards that.

Once I finally got clear on my why, the idea for my jewelry designs came to my soul and the whole business fell right into place. I would also like to add that I find myself in a continual state of inspired ideas flowing right to me. I truly believe that it is because I am clear on the why and the purpose behind what I am doing. When the reason is bigger than you, the business grows that way too.

#2 STAY CONSISTENT:

Here’s the deal. Life is busy. It’s hard to work on your business and in your business while living a life. There are absolutely a million things to do between branding, marketing, emails, socials, networking, oh and not to mention the actual business or service you are providing. It can cause you to be effective in one area and not another or go lax on your accounting, etc. It’s important that even if you feel overwhelmed, you are being consistent in the way you do what you do.

No matter what happens in my life or world, I am focused on creating content that provides inspiration and education. Even if I am between ideas, feeling uninspired or just not in the mood, I do something that is creating value for my business and brand. And I do it consistently. The reason for this is that consistency builds trust and that trust will gain you a loyal customer base.

One of my mentorship clients is a personal trainer. She does virtual sessions. Sometimes she is slow in her business and so she takes a break from social media and goes MIA for weeks at a time. Then she comes back and wonders why no one really responds. I remind her that in today’s digital age, we are bombarded with 97234234 messages every hour. Naturally, we can’t keep up with everyone and everything. HOWEVER, If she were to offer an informative piece of content, consistently, her people will find her and crave her.

Picture this: a girl searches for diet tips for pregnant women. She stumbles upon your instagram page, every Tuesday she sees your business/brand offering ideas for recipes for pregnant women, she’s going to come back next Tuesday and look for more. She also will do all she can to find the past 52 Tuesdays for more information on recipes and tips. By the time she is done consuming all that content, she feels you are friends, she knows you, supports you and buys your product! Heck, she even signs up for your newsletters, too. This is how you build your cult following. Stay consistent, show up and keep going. It will pay off in dividends in the long run.

#3 SHARE YOUR TRUTH:

This is a tough one. Let’s face it, we all worry about what others are going to think about what we say, think or do. It’s just part of life. Other peoples opinions can be detrimental to the growth and expansion of our businesses. They say that starting a business is the best personal development course out there. It’s pretty accurate actually. In order to be honest and authentic, you have to work on yourself daily to be able to speak your truth and not be afraid of how that looks.

Let me ask you a question…do you refrain from posting things on social media because of what someone may think? Can you picture a particular person who may be standing in your way of your own authentic success? Most likely, there are a few people so it is very important to become aware of the people/situations that may be holding you back.

Begin to work on declaring truths about yourself. Who you are deep down. Are you a pink haired pixie inside but a blonde girl with extensions on the outside? Are you a vegan leather backpack carrier on the outside but a Chanel toting woman on the inside? Or vice versa? Do you do run on the treadmill 5 days a week but actually prefer to do a barre class but you’re scared to step out of the box? There are many variables to it but take some time to go deeper into who you really are.

For a long time I was in the spiritual closet. Not really sharing the meditating, soul searching, crystals, sage, etc. I would have crystals all over my bathtub and vision boards hidden all over the place. Over time I came around to it and luckily, the self development/spirituality world blew up.

HOT TIP: These little insider secrets that are your truth can actually help (not hinder) your business & its success. The more you come out of your own closet, the more you will inspire others to do so too and they will hire you or buy from you along the way. (The other day I saw a meme that said something to the effect of, I am not interested to check my phone for texts or emails but rather to see who is buying my products from online sales. For me, I could relate because each woman who purchases jewelry from me feels like a soul sister. It is a relationship I am thrilled to pour into because these are my people with little truths like my own)

If you are looking for an easy way to uncover those truths about yourself a little more, I highly suggest my book the Blissful Living Journal. Inside there is 30 days of journal prompts with deep diving questions that really give you the opportunity to get to know yourself more. I wrote the book when I was pregnant, a very transformative, soul searching time for me. It is the exact questions I gave myself when I was needing some more truths.

#4 SHIFT YOUR MINDSET

One of the things that I believe is integral for your small business success is to continually shift your mindset to one of major success. In order to shift yourself out of self-sabotage and into flourishing success, you must build up a mindset that supports you. In Neuro Linguistic Programming, you learn that through repetition and true emotional belief, you can manifest anything you want. You have to believe that you are the best at what you do, believe that you provide absolute value, believe that you are a gift to your customers!

There are several modalities that can help you program your mind for success in your business, I teach this specifically inside my 21-day video course, Soul Aligned Success. You can do this through repeating affirmations and mantras on repeat. Here are a few to get you started:

💕 My business is a huge success

💕 I believe in myself and trust in my abilities to succeed in all that I do

💕 Being successful is natural for me

💕 Success, money and happiness come easily to me

💕 My work makes a difference

💕 I am smart and successful

💕 I can achieve any goals I set myself in business

💕 I create wonderful business opportunities

💕 My income is constantly increasing

I am passionate about teaching women how to launch and grow their businesses, especially online. In today’s world, it is so important that we realize the limitless potential that the online world can give you. In my program, Online Boss, I teach you everything you need to know about building your online business empire.

Life Hack: Why you should definitely start a Bullet Journal

Let’s talk about your mornings.

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time, you should probably know that routines are EVERYTHING to me. I start my day with with specific routines, I have always been very intentional about how I show up in the mornings. The thing about my routines, is that I like to make them glamorous. Pretty. Curated so as to really visually be lit up. That’s why I make a big effort to make everything around me really pleasing to my eye.

For as long as I can remember, I typically spend the majority of my mornings in a notebook. Whether its my planner, journal, doing the morning pages, making to-do lists, etc. I am always comforted by the act of sitting down with my coffee, pen, paper and letting all the things in my mind out. It helps me to start the day with a clear, focused mind.

When I first became a new mom, all of a sudden I had zero time to sit in my notebook and to be completely honest, it gave me serious anxiety on top of all that post-partum stress. As someone who finds comfort in organizing my thoughts on paper, I felt pretty out of my element.

A friend of mine suggested that the best way to plan/document/make lists for her role as a busy mom is bullet journaling. Apparently it’s an efficient form of planning that is perfect for busy people. As per usual, I had to do some extensive research on this to see what exactly it consist of and how, if at all possible, it would work for me too.

WHAT IS BULLET JOURNALING?

In a nutshell it is a method for living in the intersection of Productivity and Mindfulness. It is a system created to efficiently organize your life, with intentionality, managing your thoughts and balancing your time. According to neuroscientists, a bullet journal helps you externalize thoughts. Put simply, this frees up mental space so you can think more clearly and concentrate better.

Psychologically speaking, bullet journaling is more powerful than other paper-planning methods because it’s also a life record, you document everything. In addition, writing things out offers a higher memory retention rate which makes you feel more confident in your life.

After suffering throughout childhood from ADD, Ryder Carroll wrote a book called, The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the future. He gave a Ted Talk on how to declutter your mind which I completely believe is something that holds most of us up in accomplishing all that we want in our own lives.

Quickly, I was very intrigued. I am always game for anything that helps with productivity, mindfulness, efficiency, etc. So I gave it a shot. At first it feels very complicated because you really have to look into how to set up a bullet journal. It took me a while to figure it out. Once I got into it, I became hooked.

I’ve always been a person who looks everywhere for the perfect planner/calendar/notebook. It seems to be hard for me to find the perfect layout. The thing about the BuJo is that you set it up yourself, according to your needs, your interests and whatever works for you. Each week/day/month can be the same or different and it appeals to my ever changing needs. It is the only system that I have consistently used and never gotten bored. There is so much fun and variety and its in a compact notebook and over time you can keep all your BuJos as a life record keeper series of books.

Here’s what you do:

• Grab yourself a dotted notebook. I went with the 1917 gold Leichtrum A5 size. I use these .03 pens that are and I love these highlighters because they are pastel and almost watercolor like.

• Read this BuJo basics breakdown post here. (this post was so helpful to me). I also like this one, its fun and colorful if that’s your thing. I especially love this write up on BuJo for moms.

• Look online for some inspiration and gather ideas so you can begin to plan out your book. I would start here.

What I love about the Bullet Journal Method:

Everything I need is in one place. One book to carry. I used to keep a journal, a planner, a log of lists, a notebook for taking notes, etc. So many different notebooks for different things. This method allows you to keep all of your necessary written collections in one book! So practical and efficient for any busy gal, especially moms.

The Index & Collections. I love that you keep what they call ‘collections’ which are lists of things like recipes, blog post ideas, notes for planning Romans birthday, book lists, moon phases, crystal tips, client notes, etc. Anything I want to record and make note of, I keep a collection and I document the page in the index (which makes it easy for me to find later). OBSESSED with this. It helps me so so so much.

Variety. Some weeks I am feeling creative and some I am not. With a BuJo I don’t feel the pressure to make things pretty in my planner all the time. I really like changing things up from week to week or month to month and the freedom I have to do that is what matters to me the most.

Peace of mind. There really is something to having an organized mind. When you get everything out of your head and down on paper, it transforms your life. You feel in control of all the things running around in your brain. I can remember in the early days of Real Housewives of New York, Ramona always attributed her success to writing everything down in a spiral notebook. That always stuck with me because my grandfather swore by the same method. There is something to it. I have been using the BuJo method for 6 solid months (which says a LOT for a planner ADD girl like me) and I have accomplished more at one time than I ever have before. There must be something to the productivity/mindfulness method.