Since it's Thanksgiving today I thought it would be fun to do a Thanksgiving edition post.
I will share with you the top four things that I am super grateful for in my business and life this year. Essentially, this is a mini 2020 in review.
This year has been a doozy for everyone, so I wanted to write this post just focusing on some of the positive things that have happened for me, and this is in no particular order.
Investments
The first thing I am super grateful for is all the Investments I've made.
For so much of my life, I’ve been planting the seeds for the future and it's so rewarding to see those bear fruit.
I started really working on my YouTube channel almost exactly a year ago today.
I made a commitment to myself to publish two videos a week and it is a lot of work guys.
We spend upwards of 10 to 15 hours of my time and our team's time per video to get It produced and promoted.
It is so cool to see that we've grown to over 40,000 subscribers in a year.
When 2020 rolled around, I made a vision board for myself for the first time and I had put on there that I wanted to get to 10,000 subscribers by the end of 2021.
I started creative Hive in 2014 with the intention to just help other people and share what was working (and what wasn't working for me) in my jewelry business.
I didn't have a platform to do that when I first started and I was blocking on and off for years without getting any traction.
It has definitely been so rewarding to see that we can reach a much larger audience and help more people.
Ads
Another example is, as you know, I work a lot with paid Facebook ads.
For a long time, I was nervous because my business lacked diversity in marketing and I was afraid of what would happen if any one marketing channel went down for whatever reason.
Facebook is notorious for shutting down accounts for no reason at all.
I set my eyes on doing YouTube ads for a while now, and in the summer, I joined a $10,000 YouTube ads program which changed. my. business.
I also took a $5,000 conversion rate optimization program that taught me how to do exactly that in an organized and systematic way that I didn’t know how to do before.
That helped me become more profitable and save more money.
Not to mention, some of you guys know that I'm pursuing acting out here in Los Angeles.
Earlier this year, I joined a mastermind program just for actors that cost $5,000 and I get to work one-on-one with an amazing coach who herself is a working actress.
I've been able to get so much more momentum with this program than I ever did by myself.
My Circle
The second thing I’m thankful for is I’ve been surrounding myself with people that I want to be like.
I wanted to be more successful in certain areas of my business, so I surrounded myself with people who are already doing that.
I’ve learned strategies from those people, I learned how to have a better mindset.
It's just been an incredible year for growth and learning.
Generally speaking, I owe so much to the wonderful people that we work with, in our businesses.
My Team
We have amazing teams that we love and trust and that do phenomenal work.
I am someone that I know is very hard to please because I’m a perfectionist.
It didn't take me overnight to find all of my team members.
I had to kiss a lot of frogs to find all of my Prince Charming's.
I've had to fire a lot of people who just didn’t cut it.
All of that took many years to do, and my businesses are all mature now because of it.
My team is established and we have momentum.
They're just wonderful to work with. They're kind, smart, respectful, and supportive.
Good people are really hard to come by.
This could be:
- friends
- business employees
- contractors
- coaches
- mentors
It's very hard to find people that you’re aligned with and that do good work.
One thing I have learned about them is that I can be comfortable and feel safe to reach out to ask them for help.
For example, a few weeks ago in our free Facebook group, someone randomly left a comment saying that I was a bitch.
Now, I hate drama, and this was hard for me to process.
What did I do to earn this title?
So I reached out to my team and I was really surprised at how supportive and compassionate they were about it.
They really cared and for a long time, I thought it was impossible to find people on your team that would care about your business as much as you do.
They proved me wrong.
The people I’ve surrounded myself with also push me to do more and be better.
Sometimes I struggle with problems that I don't have solutions to, and I have people that I can talk to that are smarter than me who can help me figure things out.
Those people are my husband, and a mastermind friend that I meet with once a week and we've done this for years, as well as my coaches and mentors.
One thing I've learned recently is that I’m worth so much more than I thought and that I don't need to settle for anything less than what I deserve.
That's a really hard thing to wrap my head around as someone who has self-esteem issues.
I'm just so grateful that I have people around me who keep me accountable for that.
Health
I know that sounds so ironic to say considering all that's happened in 2020, but truly, I am so thankful that my family and friends are all healthy and safe.
As some of you know, all of my family are still back home in Malaysia and Singapore and it’s certainly very worrying to be so far apart.
Especially since my parents are in that age range where they're more susceptible to COVID.
Also, at the end of 2019, my husband started having a lot of mysterious muscular and nerve pains.
For most of this year, he's been on countless doctor trips and he's done all the tests and scans you can think of.
No one can tell him what's wrong.
It got to a point where it really affected him emotionally, and he literally thought he was going to die.
It was pretty serious.
He’d stopped working out for the whole year because he wasn't able to without getting into a lot of pain.
Fortunately, in the last couple of months, his health has been looking up and he's been feeling a lot better.
He got the new virtual reality Oculus Quest 2, and that’s really helped him get more movement in his day and get back into fitness.
That seems to have helped with his overall health.
We're still in progress with figuring out his diagnosis but for now, I'm glad that he's feeling better.
You
The last thing that I am so grateful for is you.
If you weren't here reading my posts I wouldn't be making them in the first place.
We wouldn't have been able to build this community of really awesome and talented makers and artists.
So I just want to say thank you for always taking the time to read my posts, for leaving me comments, and giving my videos thumbs-ups because those things help my videos and website get seen by more people.
Thank you, I'm so grateful for you and I appreciate you.
Please share in the comments below what you’re thankful for this year. And once again thank you for supporting and being a part of my creative hive!
Don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for more great tips for your handmade business.
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