I just looked back at 2019 and all the things I’ve done this year – I’ve been busy last year! In this episode I’m sharing my biggest learnings from 2019. You get all the nitty gritty details of what worked and what didn’t work so hopefully you can learn from my mistakes – and my successes.

Sometimes I think I don’t celebrate enough all the things I achieved already, I’m always busy working on the next thing and rarely allow myself the time to look back. If you can relate, I invite you today to look back. Take some time and write down everything you’ve accomplished in 2019. That’s what I just did to prepare for this episode, and it felt really good!

Awesome things that happened in 2019:

In January I run a 10-day marketing challenge. I had around 250 people signed up and I didn’t pitch anything, it was totally free and awesome to start the year.

In March I completely redid my Build Your Website course and relaunched it as Blissful Websites. I created a new template website and redid all the lessons. It was a crazy amount of work, but it was worth it! 80 yoga teachers enrolled in the course so far and I love seeing their finished websites.

I’m always smiling when people talk about online courses being passive income. There’s really nothing passive about it, at least in my business. Yes, you can earn money in your sleep, and I love that, but you’re also going to want to work on your course content and improve it and make it as good as possible, so you’re going to get back to work on it again and again.

I want my website course to be the best course out there on WordPress websites and I’m actually going to refilm all the videos again in February, because so many things look differently in WordPress and I also have more feedback from my students and know where I want to improve some things.

In March I also took on a freelance job in Hamburg, working 3 days a week in an advertising agency on a big online campaign. Just thinking about that time makes me feel stressed. It was just too much. I have the highest respect for people who have a job, and a family, and are managing to build a business on the side.

In April I launched Blissful Websites and had my first $ 5000 launch. Since I did this launch while also freelancing and I wasn’t as present as would have liked to, I was super happy with the result!

In May I enrolled in Tribe, a course by Stu McLaren on memberships and started to completely redesign the Blissful Biz Hive, my membership community for yoga teachers.

I started the Blissful Biz Hive in May 2018 and back then I wasn’t ready to join Tribe because it’s an expensive course, so I decided to wing it and set it up in a way that I thought would make sense.

Well, this was a mistake. I would have avoided so many mistakes and been able to grow so much faster if I’ve joined Tribe in 2018 already.

I basically set up the Blissful Biz Hive from scratch. I updated all the trainings and I launched it again, with a much lower price point of just 20$ per month because there would be less trainings available for the new start and I wanted to get as many people interested as possible.

I launched it in June with a yoga business bootcamp, where people got a video every day from me for 4 days with tips and strategies how to grow their biz. After that launch I decided to keep enrollment open and offer a $1 trial for the first month and have now 90 members.

In June I decided that I needed a break from Hamburg and went to Bali for 4 weeks. The shortest period I’ve ever spend in Bali, but it was so nice! I did lots of yoga, and worked on content, list building, blogging… the normal things that are ongoing.

In August I launched a new program, the Blissful Biz Accelerator, where I taught my students with lots of 1-on1 coaching and support how to build an online course. I pre-sold the course for the first time and dripped the content every week, so this time I didn’t have to create all the trainings in advance, which worked out great.

And then I made one of my biggest dreams come true! My lovely and generous dad and my stepmother offered me to borrow their campervan and so I went on a trip for 5 weeks, by myself, to France and Italy! Originally the plan was to drive all the way to Portugal, but I got stuck in France. I really fell in love with the Provence and I could totally see myself living there one day. Click here to read more about my experience working in a campervan.

End of October I came back to Bali where I’ll stay until March.

Wow! It’s been a busy year!

But I feel great. I’ve been meditating a lot the last weeks, doing lots of yoga, and working less hours, and it feels good.

I learned that I have to ease up a little bit, to have more balance in my life. It’s great to have a vision and ambition and I strongly believe there are times where you have to work hard and hustle when you’re building a business, but I’m turning 50 next year and I don’t want to kill myself over it.

My biggest learnings in 2019

#1 You have to invest in yourself and your business. Not enrolling in Tribe in 2018 and trying to get my membership the Blissful Biz Hive off the ground without any real strategy behind it was a big mistake, that I actually already made in 2018.

#2 I didn’t show up enough. I was so busy with creating content, I didn’t do nearly enough live videos or connect with my audience, and it affected my results.

#3 Not going to move into a campervan any time soon. I’m simply too focused right now on my business.

So, what are my plans for 2020?

The biggest thing already happened, and it’s my brand new podcast! I hope that this podcast will help me to connect with you in a deeper way and also inspire you to build your online business. I love my freedom lifestyle that allows me to live and work anywhere, and if this is your dream as well, I want that for you, too.

I see so many yoga teachers struggling and then there’s this huge potential in the online world opening up right now with more and more people getting interested in online education, and I just love being a part of that.

I’m also growing my team! I just hired an editor for my podcast, and a new VA, and I‘m really excited about that.

A big goal for me for 2020 is to be more visible, so I’m working on that, too. You are going to see much more of me on video, especially on social media, but also in my programs. I love the connection this builds, and I know it’s going to help my business grow, so I’m working hard on getting comfortable with video. Not there yet, truthfully, but doing it anyway…

What else. I plan to launch my Blissful Biz Accelerator course this January and one or 2 more times in 2020 to help you build your audience and launch an online course. I also want to grow my Blissful Biz Hive to over 200 members and update the Blissful Websites course and launch it with webinars and everything.

What are your learnings and plans?

If you haven’t done a review of the last year yet, of what worked for you and what didn’t, I really recommend that you do that.

Take some time and think about what where your biggest achievements, what were your failures, what worked and what didn’t work, what don’t you want any more in your life and what would you like more of in your life, where do you see growth in 2020, and overall, how did 2019 feel.

KEEP LISTENING: