Are You Struggling To Make An Income In Your Business With Chronic Illness

Hello, welcome to Crafted to Thrive for entrepreneurs living with chronic illness. I'm your host Nikita Williams, who is here to help you grow a business living with chronic illness. And in this episode, we are going to answer the question, or the thought if you will, I'm currently not making any income at all. I'm struggling to make an income. What do I do?

Welcome to Crafted to Thrive, the globally ranked podcast for entrepreneurs living with chronic illness. I'm your I'm your host, Nikita Williams, and after being diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses myself, I figured out the surprisingly simple missing links to growing a profitable business without compromising my health. Since then, I've helped dozens of women just like you learn how to do the same. If you're ready to own your story and create a thriving business that aligns with your health and well-being, you're in the right place. Together, we're shifting the narrative of what's possible for entrepreneurs with chronic illness. This is Crafted to Thrive.

There are 3 things you can do as a chronic illness warrior who is growing a business to make an income, and these things are so powerful. But before I get into the things, the 3 things that you got to do in order to help your business to make an income, I want to talk to you in the context of why you might not be making an income right now. So some of you are just starting out. Some of you have just started a business. You're thinking about starting a business. You have a social media account, most of you do, and you've put up a website and you haven't signed your first client. For some of you, you might be in a, what we call a client drought where you haven't signed a client. You haven't had a sales call. You haven't had a discovery call. Whatever the case may be, or you feel like you've kind of plateaued on having new people in your audience. So therefore you don't have any new income coming in, meaning new clients. So you're struggling to make an income. And all while this is happening, you're living with the aspects of what it is to be a chronic illness warrior. You have doctor's appointments, you have pelvic floor therapist appointments, you have physical therapy appointments, you have therapy, you have doctor's appointments to deal with this specialist, an endocrinologist, the neurologist, the herbologist, the functional medicine doctor. All of these different things are all of the things that are also going on in your life. So the feeling and the, the reality of not making income in your business at all is like triple-dipple, like heightened in your thoughts about not having signed a client, not having any income coming into your business. And so what this is causing you to do now is try everything and do everything and see what strategy needs to work for you, what thing, platform you need to be on. You're probably tweaking that Instagram or LinkedIn or TikTok profile over and over again. You are almost like hyper-focused, like we might be hypersensitive to pain in different situations. You are hyper-focused on the things that I'm gonna be honest, don't really matter that much and aren't the reason why you aren't booking a client. Okay, I don't mean to laugh. I'm laughing only because I am like, this is literally me. This is literally me all the way up until today. Like, I have had so many times in my business where, oh my gosh, I'm freaking out, I haven't signed a new client recently in the last month. It could be the last 2 months or something like that, and I'm freaking out and I am having a nervous breakdown, if you will, because I'm like, I need to make money even though I have clients, even though I'm having revenue come in from clients that are current clients or other opportunities for me to make money in my business. Like as a residual thing, I'm not signing brand new clients. I can easily see myself and I laugh at myself every time I think about this. And when I talk to my clients, they're like, think I'm the, like, they're the only ones who are experiencing this. I'm like, no, I experienced this too, where I start hyper-focusing on the things that I know, in reality I know, don't matter. So I'm just trying to help you out. You don't have to fix this, but it is something to be aware of to know what cycle you're in, because only can you be— only when you're aware of this can you start to pivot your actions so that you can start doing the things that will bring you in income. And it's only a simple thing you have to do, or the thought you have to shift in thinking about, which I will share with you in just a moment. But I continue— I want to continue sharing with you the things that you're probably doing in case you think, I'm not doing that, I'm fine, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do to bring in clients. Telling you all these little things that we sent— we tend to focus our attention and time on aren't necessarily the things that bring us the clients. So just listen through with me. One, you are probably on your social media platforms tweaking every little profile there is and your Linktree and your website and the colors and the words and all of those different kind of things. And you're like, I gotta get this right. Okay, if that's you, I'm raising my hand. That has been me. I have had my coaches coach me like, stop doing that. You can stop. That's not the reason why you haven't and you're not having any income coming into your business. It's not. That. Okay, you probably have been either investing in small little courses for doing different things, so you might have invested in freebies, free master courses, challenges, yada yada yada, all those different things, and you haven't actually done those challenges. You haven't actually looked at all of those things because you've kind of hoarded collecting all of them. You also might be, if you're a client, um, of another coach, if you're working with a coach, or even you're one of my clients and you are, you're working with me and you are still looking at everyone else's things that they're doing strategy-wise, you're still taking in information from other people. You're still, um, like investing in other courses, all of these different things. And you're thinking that's the reason why it's because you haven't found the it, you haven't found that magic bullet to bring in your first client. So you are dabbling in every little thing. You're pulling every little thing and you're wondering why you are not bringing in an income. And here's the reason why: you have forgotten the power of one. You have forgotten the power of one person, one craft, one skill. You have forgotten the power of that. Now, how do I know this? Well, I think about this in the context of living with chronic illness. Some of you may or may not have known my story, might be the first episode you've ever listened to, but part of journey back in the day, like back in the day, like we're in, oh my gosh, me and my husband have been married for 15 and a half years. So I always have to like mark it between our marriage of thinking, okay, we're at 15 and a half, like we're at 15 years. So if I go back to like when we were living in Florida, let's say about 8 years, like 8-ish years ago, let's say 8 years ago when I was trying to figure out all the things that was going on in my health, I was very similar to this kind of mindset in my life when it came to my health of like, I need to try everything and do it all and just figure it out. I just need to figure it out. I need to find the one thing. And the only way I'm going to find the one thing is if I just try and consume and do all of the things. So I was trying to do all the green diets. I was trying to do all of the exercise things. For me, from a financial, like, business thing. I was like learning all of the different knacks and tools of the world when it comes to marketing and sales. And I was like taking all of the medications that the doctors recommended because I was just trying to solve the problem of not feeling and being in pain and all of that. So much so that I had gotten to a point, and this is the aha I want to give you, that I was completely numb of what my body really felt like. Not trying to do all of these things, and I was completely disconnected with what I really wanted to do and who I was really wanting to do it for. Because I was so focused on trying to get this thing right, uh, bring in more income or making income in my business, getting a new client. I was just trying all of the things that I completely lost myself. I lost my skill, I lost my talent. I just kind of was like we gotta make it work. I lost my voice. I lost my identity as who I am as a person and who and what and why I was here for, right? And I was stuck also in the comparison shame spiral. I was looking at other chronic illness warriors who have businesses and seeing how like they were blowing up. I was looking at the fact like I'm at the time, I pretty much was, I was the only woman of color doing what I was doing and I couldn't see another person who wasn't. I was like, what do I need to look for look like to like attract clients. Also, when I was looking for resources and things like that as far as my health, and all the advice I would see was from other people who didn't look like me, so I felt like, okay, well, there's something wrong with me physically and how I look as well. So maybe that's part of the reason why I'm not getting the answers. So I started trying to be other things, trying to like put on and wear different masks that really weren't authentic to me. Until one day it all came crumbling down and I was like, I'm done. I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm doing. I tell my doctors I'm stopping all the medications because when you ask me where do I feel pain, I can't tell you because it feels so overwhelming. And if you try to ask me what this medication does and what that thing and that resource I needed to do, I couldn't tell you because it was too much. So I want you to think about where are you in your life right now, in your business, where you have a problem, right? You haven't— you're struggling to make an income. You have no income from this business that you want to start, but yet you have been trying all of these things. Have you lost your purpose and your mission and who you are in trying to figure out how to make an income? Is it time to stop Signing up for all the things, trying to learn and be a skillful master at every single skill. Is it time to stop that and really get back connected with what am I good at? Who am I? What are my strengths? What is my unique story? For those of you who have a health— the health situation, like, what does my body actually feel like not on this stuff? I'm not recommending you get off stuff if you don't need to. For me, it worked. I got off of everything because I literally was like mad, like literally mad of like not knowing how my body felt. I felt so completely numb. I could not describe any type of pain or discomfort because it just felt so numbing, even though the pain was there. I was in pain. I was still in discomfort. I still did not know and did not have— I still didn't feel good even with all of these things. And yet I was still saying yes. To all of these other recommendations of doing things, but I couldn't answer a simple question of like, on a scale of 1 to 10, where do you feel this? And I couldn't tell them. I couldn't feel to tell them. I couldn't describe the words, right? So when you think about your business and you think about your approach to starting— so if you're just starting a business, I get it, it is so easy to go down the rabbit hole of Google, Google, of Google and YouTube University and Instagram University and Facebook University and Facebook groups to find why you quote unquote aren't doing something right or why you need to be doing something more, whatever the case may be, right? Why you're trying it all, you're trying to do it all. Okay, you're trying to learn and become a skillful master at all of these different techniques while living with multiple chronic illnesses and other life things happening. Okay, how's that working for you? This is another reason why you might be struggling to make an income. Okay, so if all of these things are happening, I want to give you a simple answer to how to solve it, and it's what I coined is a framework that I call the Power of One, and it's very simple. It is very simple. One, you need to close and shut down a lot of this noise, a lot of the noise, a lot of other people's thoughts, a lot of other people's strategies.

Shut it down.

Decide on the one thing. Once you are shut it down and you can kind of feel and hear yourself and kind of lean into your strengths and identify what those are, it is now time to decide on one thing, one strategy, one offer, and the reason why you do what you're doing and who you want to do it for. And when I say who, I know we are in a world where we don't market— most of us don't market anymore just based on demographics. We market based on psychology, we market based on similar challenges, similar, similar things that are not necessarily challenges, but things that we agree on or rely on. So our values— there's lots of different ways of marketing, but who do you want to help?

Who?

What group or community, or what mission or value are you wanting to attract when it comes to your marketing? Decide on the one area. Right? So if you are a— I'm gonna just think of a couple of different ideas. So if you are a woman living with, let's say, endometriosis, maybe you want to be a coach for women with endometriosis. If you're a creative person, maybe you are an artist and you want to work with couples who are getting married, right? And you want to provide a service specifically for them. Maybe this is couples who are doing small weddings, they call them nuptials or intimate nuptials or elopements or whatever. Maybe you're a holistic nutritionist or a, an aromatherapist like myself, and you're wanting to support a specific group of people like I do. Like, I want to help women who live with multiple chronic illnesses. Your who, the one who, okay? And when I say the one who, the one group of who. And what do you already feel capable and confident in doing? Is it writing? Is it speaking? Is it community? Like, do you do great in networking events online or offline? Pick one of those three things, okay? And then lean into those one things. So the way I did this for myself is literally the way I got my first client and started creating a bit more consistent income into my business when I was struggling and not making an income when I was transitioning from my digital marketing to my coaching business, which was going from done-for-you service to— from done-for-you services to coaching services. I started to focus on what I was really good at because at the time I was recovering from my surgery for my hysterectomy for my endometriosis. And I knew I was great at talking to people. I love talking to people. I love hearing their stories. I love asking questions. All my clients will tell you, I love, I love asking questions. I love asking for clarification. I love for asking the right questions to help you see something that you didn't already see. I just love it. It's fascinating to me. Okay. So that was my one thing. I love that. That's also something that I did really well. And when it came in outside of my business, like in my volunteer work that I did, that I was really good at just having conversations and engaging and asking good questions to get to people's heart of a matter. That was my, that's my sweet spot, my superpower, my number one skill that I already had, that I've already finessed over 30-something years. That was a skill that I had that I continue to grow, but that was a skill that was a strength of mine, even in my chronic illness world, right? Even my doctors would get annoyed with me because I would ask so many specific questions. I would do so much research. That was my thing, being able to solo thinking into one person, one place, or one idea and dig deep, right? And so I took that to, at the time I thought was a blog. Now, if you guys, if you all listen to me often, I'm not a blogger. I don't like to write. So I tried video recording, just connecting with people one-to-one. From bed while recovering from a surgery while living in pain with endometriosis and fibromyalgia. All of that, did that. That was the one thing I did. I focused on connecting with one person. How did I do that? I went to the Instagram streets. I started connecting with one person and in a caption on a page on a group of something on Instagram, and I connected with that one person. Several times over a course of time, okay? And then I invited that one person because I was intrigued by them, I loved their work, I loved who they were, and I asked them if they would be willing to come and interview so I can ask them more about their business, so that they can tell me more about them and how I can get their name out to the world. And that's how my podcast started. That one thing, the power of one, one conversation, the power of my one strength. I have many strengths, and you do too, even though you might not think so. You have so many skills as a chronic illness warrior, but pick one that leads to your business, that supports you and your business, and it will help you stop struggling to make an income. So that one thing led to me having multiple, like, having several one-on-one conversations with people for my podcast. Led to my first 3 clients that I had for my coaching business, and then it grew from there. So if you're just starting a business and you are frustrated and you've been doing quote unquote all of the things, this is really what I want you to think about. How you— how can you become visible in a crowd of one? I'm going to say that again. How can you become visible in a crowd of one. You have to reach out, you have to connect with people, and you have to connect with a person. So for some of you, getting on a video call is not your jazz. Maybe not even on a, on a phone call, it's not your jazz. Maybe it is writing, maybe it is reaching out and connecting with someone. Maybe it's a text message, maybe it's a phone call, maybe it's an email. You have to become visible because people don't know who we are. People know we exist, people don't know what we do. The other thing that I want to help you to do is start collaborating with other people one-to-one. We're in a digital world. If you have the capacity and spoons to connect with someone on IG Live, Facebook Live, if it's not even in a live setting, maybe you want to swap podcast episodes or swap blog posts, do guest blogging, do a collaboration. This is again harnessing your power of one skill, the thing that's your strength, and connecting with that one group or that one person you want to serve and help. Okay, and then offer value, solve problems, connect and share with that person. Give. And it's hard, and it's so hard, and I get it. As chronic illness warriors, we often want to kind of hide in the shadows because we have so many thoughts, right? We have so many thoughts about being seen or being perceived as lazy and all of these different things. But my question is, is do you want those limiting beliefs and those false perceptions of other people to stop you from creating the life that you want, right? And this applies to all of you who have been in business for a while. Maybe you have— you're in a client drought, right? Maybe you're in a client drought, you haven't signed a client in a while. Where can you take what I'm talking about, the power of one, into you going back to the basics? Go back to those clients you first talked to. Go back to that one person who said yes to you by booking a call, but maybe flaked. Maybe it is, it's a follow-up conversation with someone who was interested, but it never got back to you. Maybe it's clients that had wonderful wins and you want to connect back and reach out to them just to connect, not to try to get them to be your client, just to serve them, right? The power of one-to-one conversations. We forget this, and I share this because Literally, it was one phone call that changed my life. It was a friend who reached out to share with me something that was going to be helpful that she was doing in her life just to catch up. And it led me to having so many more resources and tools to live with my chronic illness and to have much more control and power or tools around dealing with my flare-ups and things to heal so many traumas that I didn't even realize that were there. And it was one person in one conversation, and it continues to happen. I, I've connected with so many people one-to-one on Instagram or at events that I've done online or in groups, and it's those one-to-one conversations that always make the difference. It's not the thousands of likes on a post, it's not the thousands of downloads on the post, it's the one person that decides to make a decision to reach out and connect with you, or you connecting to a person. So this is just going back to focus on the power of one. If you're struggling to make an income and you're doing all of the things, simplify. Go back to the basics. Go back to the things that are your strength. Go back to that one strength, that superpower strength that you have, okay? That ability to connect, that ability to be intuitive, that ability to be creative, that ability to solve a problem, be mathy, whatever your thing is. That's the one thing you go back and focus on and serve and give it to others. That one thing. The power of one, y'all. That's how you stop struggling not making an income. That's how you start making income, by focusing on the one, by truly believing in the power of focusing on the one thing, the one person, the one strength. Okay, so I hope this helps you. Many of my clients have found this very helpful. It helps remove a lot of overwhelm. It helps stop, you know, triggering flare-ups from the stress of like, I need to try and learn and be an expert in all these things, and I need to be all these other things. You don't need that, okay? And in our next episode, we're going to talk about overcoming perceptions and the thought of like pushing through. So if you've ever felt that you have been labeled or have this perceived, perceived label put on you that you're lazy because you live with chronic illness, or that you feel like you have to prove that you can do hard work, which might be also a reason why you're trying to do all of the things and still not making an income. But our next episode where we will be talking to Sheryl Crow of Arthritis Life with Sheryl, and we're going to be talking about how she helps people with arthritis thrive. And she's going to be sharing some tips and tools on how to be in more acceptance when it comes to living with a chronic illness. And we talk about how this acceptance can help you grow in your life and in your business. So stay tuned.

That's a wrap, y'all. Thanks for tuning in to Crafted to Thrive, the podcast that helps entrepreneurs with chronic illness to thrive and build holistic business and life. Check out our website at craftedtothrive.com for this episode's show notes and all the gifts and goodies. Connect with me on Instagram @thrivewithnikitawilliams for more tips and behind the scenes and more. Tag me to share what you loved about this episode, and I'll feature you on an upcoming episode. So until next time, remember, yes, you are crafted To thrive.