Storytime How I Started My Coaching Business | My Entrepreneur Journey
It is storytime! Today I'm going to be talking about my entrepreneurial journey, next month I will have been on this journey of entrepreneurship for seven years and I want to kind of share my journey and hopefully you can learn a little bit more about me as well as some business lessons that will help you to make your journey a lot easier so let's get into this story time i attract money wealth is in my reach i got everything i want and everything i need i keep my mind open abundance overflows i budget right and i know where all my money goes i am debt free and money works for me money in my sleep a magnet for prosperity ain't nothing wrong with that i deserve a bit It's storytime! What up kingdom builders, welcome back to my channel! It's your girl Ebony Evaughn, your favorite business coach in these online streets. Welcome to Soulstruck land this is my internet home where i help you to go from confused to the cash generating boss that we both know you are meant to be now i am still in the house bored, bored in the house right so i decided that it would be a perfect time for me to just take some time and do a story time to share a little bit about my entrepreneurial journey with you so i have been pretty idle in the house and i was thinking about all the different things that i've done since i became an entrepreneur and i wanted to just kind of do a story time and share my journey with you how i got started. I've had multiple businesses along this journey i want to share what worked what didn't work so hopefully you will get to learn a little bit more about me and you will also learn some things that can help you along your journey and make your journey a lot easier so i started my very first online business in 2013 but in order to put all the pieces of the story together i feel like i really need to like go back a couple years and kind of start in 2011 so you guys understand why i became an entrepreneur in the first place so first things first is i am um a black millennial so like most other millennials my parents always told me Ebony if you want to be successful you need to go to college and get a degree so that you can get a good job so even though college wasn't necessarily what i wanted to do i went to college because that is what everyone kind of preached to me as the path to success but i am a military brat my dad was in the military so i moved around a lot as a kid and i always wanted to go to the military when i became an adult and my dad did not want me to do that so my dad my grandpa all my mentors talked me into going to college i went to college i ended up getting a bachelor's in business management and i minored in sociology and so after i graduated from college i ended up getting a job as an assistant manager working at walgreens and it was the job from hey d's okay it was the worst job ever uh okay job but i think what made it so bad is the manager that i had like he was really young and chill this is a time when walgreens was opening up a store like every other day so you could be an exec are an assistant manager one day and literally within two months you have your own store right so that's kind of how our manager was and so it was really hard to work with him because he was so nonchalant and just didn't care about anything and so it made it hard for all the assistant managers to really be able to do our job and enforce rules and kind of have processes and procedures in place because the store owner was just like whatever so i hated that job and i called my dad one day and i was like i can't do this like i went to college i got the degree and this is not what success looks like for me like i always wanted to go to the military like at this point i'm making this decision for myself to go to the air force and that's what i did so fast forward to 2011 2011 i was in the air force in my prime i had just applied for ots which is officer training school so that i can actually go from being enlisted to being an officer in the military and when i did that i was going through my medical evaluations and everything and they discovered that i had asthma and so because i had asthma i ended up being put on like a temporary disability list and then basically i had to wait for a decision from the air force to tell me if i could stay in or if i was going to have to get out so at this time i was stationed in ramstein germany and then in march of 2011 i got a decision back from the air force saying that i was no longer worldwide oh my gosh like i want to be tearing up like i i don't want this to be like a sad story or whatever but being a military kid and growing up in that life like i always wanted to go to the military i've always had a love for traveling and moving the world so the fact that i got to go to germany for my first duty station was like a dream come true right and my goal was to just literally stay overseas and go from overseas based to overseas i went to leave germany and go to korea leave korea go to japan leave japan and go to guam like i had my whole career mapped out so when i got the decision back from the air force that i was no longer worldwide qualified to serve and that i was going to be medically retired it was like a shock to me and everything happened so fast i was living in germany and then it was like all of a sudden i have to leave germany move back to the states so now i have to try to find another job like this isn't going to be a lifelong career thing and i came back to the states in 2011 in march of 2011 and the whole time i was in the military i was glad that um you know they pretty much pay like 90 of what you paid the cost to go to school so i ended up getting a double master's in business administration and also human resources so when i came back to the states i was like okay like let me find me a job in hr and uh whatever i could wherever i can find a job like that's where i'm going so i ended up getting a job in little rock as a hr trainer where basically i just did trainings all day um i did like new employee orientation supervisory training whenever like someone becomes a supervisor for the first time i would go into different department and do different departments and do all of those team building trainings that people hate so like effective communication building trust in the workplace team building that was me like i used to teach all of those workshops and i really loved it right um even my manager and my director they were like i brought so much energy and fun to the job like they would give me these trainings and policies to do and they would be so boring like when you think about hr everything is so structured and like buttoned up and polished and so i remember having to do this training on the dress code like y'all i don't know what it is about people employees in their dress code when they go to work but for whatever reason like at one point they used to allow um employees to wear like jeans on fridays and then you know of course employees take advantage of that people start coming to work with jeans with holes in them you know ripped jeans cutouts and all it takes is one bad apple to spoil it for the bunch so they did away with like the whole wearing jeans on fridays and then they made a more strict dress code and so it was like a hot topic and i ended up having to do a training on the dress code policy for the whole agency and when i do this training my manager was like oh my gosh you're the best trainer we ever had like you're so good at this i like it and so i ended up basically revamping and redoing a lot of the existing trainings that they had to make them more engaging to make them just updating the content and the material and then putting it in plain language so that employees would actually understand without having any other questions and it would be crystal clear what the policy was and how the policies would be enforced so i was at this job getting all this praise from my supervisors and my director like everyone was loving like what i brought to the team and so shortly after i got hired then um they hired a older white lady who had less experience than me and she didn't have a hr background but she used to be like a manager at a shoe store so she came in and within a couple months our supervisor ended up leaving and when our supervisor left of course me and this new person both applied to replace our supervisor when she left and so in my mind i was thinking oh i got this in a bag like i'm about to get this new position like it's a no-brainer i got the degree in hr i have the experience i've been here longer they're always praising me about like all i'm doing for you know workforce development in our section so i got this in a bag and i did not have it in a bag so they ended up giving the position and i said giving because they literally gave her the position um because she i don't want to say they gave it to her because she was white but that was a contributing factor right and in our department it was kind of the opposite of a typical hr department typically in hr you have like an office full of white people and you may have like a black person who's like the secretary or an executive executive assistant you'll have two or three of us sprinkled in the department right but our department was actually the exact opposite our director was a black guy our manager was a black woman um pretty much all of our supervisors at the time were black women and so everyone was pretty much black we had like one white guy and the new white lady that they had hired and then another white lady that had been there for a while so when it came to hiring for the supervisory role my manager basically told me like ebony everybody in here is black we need to put a white person in a supervisory role and like she she does meet the qualifications yes you you had were a little bit more qualified than her but we needed to sprinkle it up in here and so from an hr perspective i get it i understand the optics but at the time i was young you know you feel like you got these degrees you went working hard you don't paid your dues you ready to move up the ladder so i did not like that and so i ended up getting to the point to where like i resented this job i started doing like the bare minimum my training is going from being on and popping so i'll be in there like welcome to new employee orientation i'm ebony i will be your trainer for these next three days and this is where we're going to cover it was like doing my job and that was it so after that i kind of became a little bit reclusive in my role i started to feel like i was undervalued significantly underpaid and so i just kind of sat in my office all day listening to podcasts whenever i didn't have a training or something going on and that was really kind of like what introduced me to entrepreneurship so as i'm sitting in my office listening to these different podcasts one day i come across this podcast called internet business mastery and it had two co-hosts jeremy and jason and basically on this podcast every single episode they would interview all these other um professional people who had left the workforce to start their own internet businesses and so week after week i would hear them talking to people and i heard them interview one lady who was like she was pregnant she went out on maternity leave and she said when i went on maternity leave she was like something in me just didn't want to go back like i was going to have this new baby i didn't want another adult dictating to me how much time i get to spend with my kid there was another guy who he said in his office he was in accounting and every every week almost the the company kept getting smaller and smaller like someone's phone would ring and they would get a call from hr saying hey we need to speak with you and then that person never came back right because they have been laid off um or terminated due to just like a reduction in force and he said like i knew that the numbers kept getting smaller and smaller it went from being 50 of us to 30 and from 30 to 20 and from 20 to 10 and he was like he knew it was just a moment's time away from when they would be calling his phone and and he would be picking up his boxes you know and escorted out the building and i resonated with that so much so internet business mastery they had this thing called the profit niche guide that showed you different ways that you can actually start an internet business it went through different profitable niches and industries that you could choose and so i got this guide and i went through it and one of the things that was on there that was really really lucrative was the hair industry and when i was in germany one thing that i would do all the time like of course when i was in uniform the rules have changed now but back then you would have to have your hair like up in a bun it couldn't touch like the collar of your uniform you know there was all these rules and regulations about how women could wear their hair it couldn't hang down past your collar so on the weekend on holidays whenever we were on vacation that is when you would go get your sew-ins you would get your braids and you would just have your hair you know looking the bum straight slayed right black hair care products hair extensions were ridiculously overpriced the inflation was real so anytime i would come home from germany to the states for vacation then or for trainings or whatever like i would have a long list of people telling me to bring back certain hair care products or people telling me to bring back braiding hair or like bundles or whatever because like the the braiding hair that you get at your local beauty supply store for like 199 299 would be like eight dollars if you bought it in germany's economy so when i went through this profit niche guide i was like you know what like i i already know that i have an uh audience of people who are always calling me to get them here and to send it for them so this would make a really good business model like i already have a built-in audience and like just like anything goes like i was stationed at ramstein but there are so many military bases air force and army bases in germany that everyone was connected i had that whole audience on lock so i ended up saying all right i'ma start this hair company and um i'm just gonna start selling hair and that's exactly what i did i started my hair company i bought all this inventory and i basically just started selling hair and i did this for a long time and a couple of things all went into play and if i could say anything what i can say is the first business advice that i would give people is don't start a business just because you see other people doing it or you feel like it's something that's lucrative they can make you money but it's something that you're not really purposed or passionate passionate about right so for me i was like i know this is a profitable industry other people are making big bank with this like i can make bank too i already have a built-in audience but over the course of 2013 when i actually started the business and then um 2014 a lot of things started to happen number one your girl went natural so i was like i'm gonna liberate myself i'm about to live my best life so i no longer was really doing a lot of hair extensions myself um and then also in 2014 this is when at the time i was using a chinese vendor where um you know i used alibaba and at the time it was private so you had to have like all these things in place in order to do business with alibaba in september of 2014 alibaba actually became a public company and when they went public it really changed the game and if you really think about it this is a time when the hair industry really started to get very saturated because there was no longer kind of a gatekeeper or a barrier to entry because now anybody and everyone could go to these suppliers to actually get their own inventory without having to go through a middleman or without having to have the appropriate licenses in place so at that point of course i was serving all of these my audience was primarily overseas people who were military spouses in the military serving at overseas basis and they didn't have access to hair care black hair care products hair extensions and stuff like that so most of the money i had a good clientele most of the money that i was making i was putting right back into the business to buy more inventory and then also because i was shipping overseas i also had to pay overseas shipping fees right so my profit margin was not that not the best honestly and so over time i just ended up getting frustrated i was always burnt out trying to go ship these orders overseas to apo fpo po boxes overseas um my vendor was in china so i would literally have phone calls with them like one two three o'clock in the morning and i was tired of just dealing with shipping dealing with orders being delayed or lost or people claiming they didn't get them and i had went natural myself so i wasn't really into hair extensions so i just kind of like fizzled out right and i was just like kind of over this so i ended up just dissolving that business feeling like a complete failure or whatever and i just kind of laid low for a while and then shortly after i decided to let go of the business one day i was literally sitting at home watching the movie the equalizer this is the first equalizer that came out like the movie not the tv series and i was watching a movie and at one point during the movie there was a quote that came across the screen from mark twain and it said are the two most important days in a person's life is the day you were born and the day you find out why and so when i saw this quote it really struck something in my soul and i was like okay like ebony you need to be figuring out why you are here like what you are meant to do like how are you going to show up in the world how are you going to add value so after this i just kind of went on a whole journey of like self-discovery and just really figuring out what i was good at what i like to do the things i was passionate about and exploring everything so i used to work out every single day with one of my friends and she was telling me about like her sister was trying to get a new job and i was like oh i could help her with that i was like yeah let's just set up a time like we'll both come over to your house and i can help i'll you know look over her resume and she had a job interview already scheduled i was like i can give her some interview prep tips or whatever and so i went over my friend's house and i helped her sister prepare for her interview and i was just telling her like okay listen your name is i don't want to say her name and put put her out there so let's just say i'm gonna say her name was ashinka right urban black name so i was like listen your name is ashinkastre so they already saw that on your resume when you go into this job interview they have already formulated all of these opinions about you just based off of your name so when you go into this interview the first two minutes of it your entire goal is to dispel every single stereotype that they've already thought about you so i gave her tips on how to do that i went over most common questions that you know interviewers are likely to ask and how to answer those questions and then when i left my friend's house i just kind of had this aha moment i was like yo i feel so good like about helping her answer these questions and telling her what they they think giving her this whole inside scoop on like how interviews go how hr works what they're looking for and i just like had this aha moment where i was like yo i should be charging for this like i am always writing resumes for people helping people prepare for these interviews um even when i was in the military like in order to get promoted you would have to submit like a packet or if you wanted to get an award and i would write these packages and awards on for other people right and i was like i should be charging for this and so that's what i did like i just started charging to write resumes for people i started charging people to help them prepare for their interviews i started charging people to um help them negotiate their salary and so i kind of started career coaching without even knowing that i had started it and then after a while i was like no like this is a real business model like i could do this full time and i can like make a real legit business out of this so i kind of fell back into entrepreneurship and so i started doing one-on-one clients just doing coaching career coaching services and then eventually i started creating online courses where instead of me having to work 101 and help people prep for their interview i created an interview prep course instead of me actually writing resumes for people which was really time consuming i actually started um i created a resume writing course to teach people how to write their own resumes after that i was like okay this one-on-one money is good working person to person like how can i tap into like getting some of this corporate money getting some of this business money out there so i started pitching the same workshops that i used to do inside of my department like the effective communication the team building trainings i started pitching other non-profits colleges churches universities like and i started pitching companies to say hey like um i reach out to non-profits that like help homeless people get off the streets and get jobs right and i would say hey do you need someone to come in and teach a resume writing workshop or teach someone like how to prep for an interview whatever so i started reaching out just to local businesses and going to these businesses and doing trainings for them i reached out to my church and then um i started reaching out to other churches within our district and doing trainings for different organizations that way and then eventually my career coaching clients started asking me like well how can i do what you're doing like i want to be able to start my own business that is how i really got into business coaching so i actually started unofficially business coaching probably in like 2015. so in 2015 i started unofficially doing business coaching and just helping my previous career coaching clients to start their own businesses and walking them through that process just working with them one-on-one and then from 2015 to 2018 i basically did both i was part-time career coach helping people land their dream jobs negotiate their salaries whatever and then part time i was helping them also start their own businesses do consulting on the side do coaching on the side and then um around 2018 my mentor was like look ebony if you really want to be able to scale your business you have to be known for one thing like when you're doing career coaching talking about career coaching one day then the next day you're talking about business coaching you're confusing your audience right and so you're trying to talk to two different audiences so she's like you gotta pick a side you gotta do one or the other and so of course at the time i ended up having more people who were interested in starting their own business more so than getting their dream job so i ended up kind of slowly phasing out my career coaching business and focusing solely on business coaching and then i did a lot of one-on-one business coaching for a while and then i went into like group programs creating courses and then creating speaking engagements and things all around business coaching that is how i got to be here business coaching full time seven years later so i say all of this to basically say if i could give anyone that's thinking about starting a business any piece of advice i would say like don't try to build a business around what you think is going to make you money build your business around your skill set build your business around your strengths when i started my hair company looking back i realized that i never probably should have started that business in the first place right even though it was something that i was passionate about at the time it was something that would i created an opportunity where i saw a need in the market for people who were overseas but um it helped me learn a lot about entrepreneurship but it wasn't something that i felt like i was meant to do and i think it was more so where i saw an opportunity and i was like hey this is a good money grab but it also made me very frustrated i felt overwhelmed and burnt out because it wasn't something that i was really passionate about but when i fell back into entrepreneurship with my career coaching in business coaching it was something that i was passionate about i was working in my expertise i was leveraging my skill set my education so it's been an easy journey for me and that's what i want to tell other people like tap into your strengths when you tap into your streams you're going to be able to number one build a business that you love but the work is gratifying and it's that much um easier because you're doing something that you're good at you can excel at and something that you like to do so i think i'm gonna end this video here i have been talking for a long time but i wanted to just do a story time and share my journey with you like let me know in the comments are you an existing entrepreneur what has your journey looked like um do you have any questions for me if you you aren't an entrepreneur you're thinking about starting a business let me know in the comments below this video and as always if you are new here girl make sure you hit that subscribe button and turn on those notifications so anytime i upload a new video you'll be the first to know in the meantime you can always hang out in seoul struggling and watch these videos right here bye y'all
2021-07-24 07:53
