How She Built a full-Time Income with 5-10 Hours a Week (No Ads, One Platform) | Tracy Beavers

This episode is really about why your email list is the one piece of your business built to survive unpredictability, because the platforms we depend on can lock us out without even a warning, the same way our energy kind of sometimes does. Many of us have built a whole marketing system around a platform that has no idea what a flare day or an emergency even is. It doesn't pause for you. It doesn't warn you before it changes the rules. Tracy Beavers built her business alongside a demanding 25-year corporate sales career and teenagers playing every sport with a ball. She'd carve out 5 to 10 hours a week to make it work, and then in the middle of an actual launch, Facebook locked her out of her own DMs. If the tool she was depending on could disappear on her without warning, was the business ever really hers or just borrowed? You already know what it feels like to have something outside of your control decide what you're capable of. Today, listen for 3 things. One, exactly what happened when Facebook locked her out mid-launch and the one email that got her out of it. 2, why she built her email list before she needed it and how that decision saved her business twice. 3, how to build a marketing rhythm that doesn't collapse the moment a platform disappears on you or your energy does. If you've ever needed proof that you can build something steady, even while the ground underneath you keeps shifting, this episode is for you. Stay tuned and be sure to join our free community in the show notes.

Are you tired of hearing business advice that completely ignores what real life looks like when you're navigating chronic illness, autoimmune disorders, flare-ups, medical appointments, and just life? Lifing. Business with Chronic Illness is for entrepreneurs who know they're capable of building something meaningful but need a way to do it that actually works with their body, not against it. This podcast brings you honest conversations with founders, CEOs, and other bosses sharing their strategies, adaptations, and lessons they've learned while building businesses alongside chronic illness, including what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they had done differently before burnout forced the lesson. I'm your host, Nikita Williams, a globally ranked podcast host and entrepreneur who's built my business while navigating chronic illness and helping others do the same without sacrificing themselves. I created this show to open up the conversations most business spaces avoid. The promise of Business with Chronic Illness is simple: to show you that you can build a thriving business with chronic illness and autoimmune disorders without sacrificing your health, your peace, or your profit. You're not behind, you're building differently, and you're in the right place.

Welcome, Tracy. I'm so glad you're here. I can't wait to dive into your story and all that you have to share with us, including how to be visible in this 2026 world that we're living in and how to keep that within our capacity and growing and flowing. So welcome to the show.

Thanks so much. I'm so excited to be here.

Yeah, me too. I'm so glad you're here. I think when we were first chatting, we kind of connected in Entrepreneursa. I've been shouting Entrepreneursa out because. They have such a great community of entrepreneur women, CEOs, founders doing all kinds of businesses, y'all, all kinds. And we connected there. And please tell us a little bit about how you one found where you are today and about yourself.

Yeah. Thanks so much. So I am a business and sales coach from Little Rock, Arkansas, and what I focus on for my audience. They are online course creators, coaches, and service providers. I help them take the visibility they already have because most people have enough visibility and enough content. Now, the problem is, yeah, there's not enough strategy behind it for it to really work for them in terms of organic list growth and organic leads.. And I teach that you do not have to be online 24/7 exhausting yourself, and you do not have to run paid ads in order to have a very great income that sustains, you know, your life and allows you to do your business full-time, because that's what I did.

Yeah. And you did it with varying circumstances. I love to share with everybody, you know, everybody comes to my to this world, this community in different boats. So some of us have chronic illnesses. Some of us have, I call it capacity, limited capacity of a situation that's quote unquote chronic, but it's just life. Right. And it's just life happening. And when we were talking, I was like, well, this is just life, chronic life happening. Like this is life that's happening and having to figure out how to move through it and make what you're building work for your life and for your family and for how you work. So share with us a little bit about your background, because This is definitely for the folks out there that are corporate baddies who are doing the thing and also doing side hustling. So tell us a little bit about how that worked for you.

Yeah, thanks. So, you know, I don't have a chronic illness, but when you and I connected and we started talking about capacity of time and capacity of energy, and I thought to myself, you know, it's like I teach my students, even if they're not working a full-time job like I was when I first started out, We all have our version of a full-time job or a capacity thing that keeps us from being able to literally sit at our desk and build this business 24/7. I mean, some of us have little kids at home and we're homeschooling. Some of us have aging parents and we're taking care of them. Some of us have chronic illness. You know, there's just so many things to navigate in life. And so I built this business alongside my corporate job out of necessity. So long story short, I had an over 25-year award-winning sales career in corporate. And Nikita, I honestly never thought I'd leave. I was going to rise up the ranks and be like, I don't know what, vice president of all things important or something like that. And along the way, this was about, let me think, 7, no, I can't do math in my head. Anyway, it was around 2019, 7 years ago, I guess that is. About that. Yeah. And I was working for a CEO that wanted to monkey around with the commission structure, like, regularly, just when us in the sales department were starting to gain traction and start to— he just thought we were making too much money. And I was like, oh, hold on, sir. Hold on a minute.

Yeah.

And so, you know, that's when I realized, I'm like, oh my gosh, I thought that— I knew I didn't have any control over my time because it's corporate, you know, it's 8 to 5, whatever, 1-hour lunch. You get only so much PTO and vacation and blah, blah, blah. But I thought with the sales structure, salary and commission, you know, print your own money, right?

Yeah.

Well, not if you're going to work for somebody that wants to control the printer.

Yeah. Can change the line, can change all the stuff, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So I was like, wow, I never saw that coming. And I really had to kind of— it kind of took me by surprise. And I was like, okay, now what do we do? I knew I couldn't continue to work for him.. And I was really struggling because my dad was an entrepreneur. My dad worked for himself and he made it look awful. He worked nonstop and was stressed out all the time. Now come to realize in my later years, I'm like, oh, that was just his personality. You know, he loved to work. So that's what he did. But I was like, ooh, I don't think I want to do that. And, but some really good friends of mine pointed out, that coaching was getting started, coaching was a thing, and that I was really good in sales. I just thought, you know, when you're really good at something, you think everybody else is really good at it too. Mm-hmm. And I just thought sales was easy. And they were like, uh, no, it's not. You know, and they reminded me that people were always coming to me asking, how are you growing these businesses? How are you gaining so much market share? How did you grow that company 86% the first year you were there? And I'm just over here going, You build relationships and you go out and sell stuff and make connections. And they're like, "You don't know how to do that." So anyway, I started building this business alongside that corporate job. And that was my capacity issue that we were talking about because at the time our kids were in high school and middle school. They played what felt like every sport that had a ball, and we were busy. And also my husband is a very proud W-2 company man. He loves the company he works for. And when I told him what I wanted to do, he was like, "Wait a minute. This sounds risky. This sounds like— mm-hmm." He's like, "You're going to do what?" And so I promised him that I was not going to leave the corporate job until I had proof of concept. And I also promised him I was not going to derail our retirement because we had worked really hard to have the life we have, but also fund you know, retirement. And so little by little, I started growing this business. And the capacity issue was really around time, but also in hindsight around energy, because I was tired, girl. I mean, I'd go work that corporate job, and then we'd go to a ball practice, and then it was dinner. And did everybody do their homework? All right, let's go again, you know. And then I was like, how am I going to do this? So I just had to really I had to figure out how much time did I have every week.

Yeah.

And I had to be very intentional about that, like looking week to week. Okay, what's going on this week? Where can I work in some work hours? Where can I see a client or two? And as my business started to grow, I took a step-down approach to corporate because I was— I had kind of an all-or-nothing mentality about it. I thought I either have the job or I don't have the job, but I didn't need to have that all-or-nothing mentality because I could grow this as a side hustle and in the time that I had. And then as this grew and my income started to come in, I was able to take lesser and lesser corporate roles where eventually my business— it allowed me to have more time in my business. But yeah, those, those first— it took me about a year and a half for to fully exit corporate and You know, it was, gosh, in the beginning, 5 to maybe 10 hours a week I had time to work on it, but it grew. And here I am, you know, it worked.

Yeah.

Tracy, you said so many things just in that that I think we kind of— I want to kind of sparse out for a minute. I think when we hear stories about— I always tell people, you don't hear the little, the steps that happened before, right? Like, you didn't hear the work You didn't, you didn't see the meal planning before you ate, right? You just, you showed up to the table and you eat and you're like, this is great.

Right.

And I think in entrepreneurship and beginning a business, we kind of take that for granted because of social media. We see everything and it's all pretty and it looks like it's all perfect and it's great. But your point of like, it took me little by little to figure out, even though you were really good at what you did in corporate, figuring out what that looks like in like your own lane, your own world.

Yeah.

How do you feel like you set up— did you set up some systems for you to be like, okay, this is what I'm going to be doing to translate those skill sets from what I was doing in corporate to now while managing the other life things that you, you have to, you know, manage?

Yeah, absolutely. I had to decide what did I want this business to look like? What are the pieces I had to have? To make money? What are the pieces that were nice to have but not necessary when you're first getting started? Because when you first get started, you think everything's important and you're looking at your competitors and you're looking at other people in the online space and comparing yourself to them. I was, and I had to stop that because those people didn't have a corporate job. This was their full-time job. Yeah. You know, even though they might've been taking care of family and everything else, they had more time than I did. And then some of those people also had a team and I didn't have that either. So I had to just get really honest with myself and put my blinders on. So as I mentioned, week to week, I would look and see what were my available pockets of time. And so it looked like sometimes on a Monday night I could work for 2 hours, on a Wednesday night I could work for 2 hours, on a Saturday morning because the kids were teenagers, they'd sleep till noon if they could. And so I had time on Saturday morning before anybody needed me or on a Sunday afternoon. And I had to hold my nose and do it anyway sometimes because I was tired and because I had that doubt creeping in about what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Why are you— because there were some things that I missed with the kids. Now, I didn't, I didn't ever miss an actual game, but I missed some practices, you know. Or I would miss the carpool or whatever because I needed to work on my business. But they understood and they knew what I was building. So it, it first, it was a very honest discussion with myself about, okay, are you really maximizing your time? Because if you're going to do this, you need to do that. And whether you feel like it or not, then I had to decide, okay, with regard to social media, if I'm going to build an online business, I've got to be on social media. But did I need to be on all the platforms?

No.

And I help my clients and students to this day understand that you do not have to be on all the platforms to be successful. I'm a prime example. So I had to, had to say, I had an honest discussion with myself. Okay, Tracy, don't go crazy. What platform do you want to build on? Well, I didn't know anything about Instagram. I wasn't on it, didn't know anything about it. So I wasn't going to go there. And LinkedIn was a place to go get a job back then. It's not this.— it's not a social—

not what it is now, right?

Yeah, for sure. So, and I didn't need a job because I had one. So I chose Facebook because that's the platform I understood. That's the platform that felt the best to me. And I knew that my clients were there. Turns out it's still the number one platform and all of our clients are there. And so I decided, okay, I'm going to go with Facebook. And then I had to decide, all right, what are the pieces and parts that I need every week to gain visibility and grow my list? I knew I needed to grow a list because I wanted to create some courses and you can't sell to nobody. You have to have an audience.

You got to have people.

Got to have the people. So I said, okay, I need one regular piece of weekly content, which for me, I decided I was going to go live every Thursday at 11:30, whether I felt like it or not. Truly, whether I felt like it or not. And then I would take— and this is before AI came along. Now my job's a lot easier creating content. But I would take that script that I wrote that I was going to teach live, and I would— like, if I gave 4 tips for list growth in that live training, I would pull pull 2 of them out and make a social media post, pull the other 2, make a social media post. And then I would, if I had time, I would repurpose it into a blog. And then, then I would email my list about it and I'd say, this is what I'm talking about live this week. You know, here's some juicy tidbits of what I'm going to say and why you need to be there. And that was it for me. That was all I had time for because I also needed to create some free lead magnets and I also needed to create an offer.

Right?

Yeah.

So I was like, okay, that's the minimal viable option. Is that what they call it? What's the bottom—

the MVP? Yes.

The least amount of content that I need to have so that I can just get it out there and get it done. And again, it was whether I felt like it or not.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, it is something to lean into. I think oftentimes when we are creating for creating sake versus creating for intentional capacity and time, right? It's a very different mindset. And what you're sharing with— for you, for you, you could be like, on Thursday at 11, I'm going to be there whether I want to or not. I do— I know, just for context of our audience, it's not always just because we want to or not. You might want to and you literally cannot do that thing. And so, right, it is about finding the way to do that thing before. And I think for me— for you was live, for me it was podcasting. I knew I could always have an episode out because I could build that over time and it would be going out on this day. So it can look a lot of different ways. It's just about that decision of intention. And I think you're sharing that so well here. It's like, for my circumstances, this is what I could do, and I focus there. It seems like you focus your attention in that one area versus It's so hard, especially now. I don't know if anybody's listening in this time of age. AI is really a big shiny object for your brain. Like you just think you can do everything, right? Right. And it is about finding that focus of where you're going. And so in your journey, Tracy, it sounds like you found that angle. Also, it sounds like your corporate understanding that you need to have a list of people you can send information to outside of Facebook. Um, I still don't understand why people are so hesitant to start email lists these days. They think their social media is theirs. It is not yours. It does not belong to you. They could care less. It's almost like I was thinking about this when we were talking about your boss. I'm like, hey, social media is kind of like that boss. They're moving the mark 24/7, changing the game all the time. You're like, sometimes it's broken and you can't even open the app.

I know. Or sometimes you get banned or blocked or whatever. Like, I was in This is so funny. Couple weeks ago, prime example of why I love having a list. I'll give you two examples. One is when I was in a launch, I think it was last October, I ended up in Facebook DM jail, direct messages, where you couldn't send any more DMs.

Oh goodness.

And so I emailed my list and I said, hey, I'm in DM jail. And DM jail happens when you're trying to send a lot of DMs, which I was because I wanted people to come attend my live masterclass. So I was DMing people that were in my free Facebook group, not a cold spammy DM. These people know me and they're warm to me. Just want to make that clear to the listeners.

I'm not spamming nobody.

I'm not spamming anybody. And so I was trying to DM them. And but if you don't have enough interaction back in a certain time period, then it automatically thinks you're a bot and it just shuts you down.

Oh yeah.

Well, I was like, okay, well, this is terrible. I need people to reply back in a hurry. And so I emailed my list and the subject line was, I'm in jail. With a little flame on it. To this day, it is the most opened email I've ever written in my life. And they thought it was hysterical. I was like, look, look, y'all, your girl is in launch. They knew I was in launch because they know me. Your girl's in launch. Your girl is also in Facebook jail. Please do me a favor. Hop over into the DMs. Here's my link. Just send me something. And you could send me something that says, hey there, jailbird. I don't care what you say. Just say something to me. And so, and so it worked, though. My list busted me out of Facebook jail. And then also, a couple weeks ago— talk about rented land— a couple weeks ago, I got into comment restriction. I was banned from commenting for 7 days. I get this message and it says, you, you're restricted on commenting until Thursday, February whatever, at 7:10 PM Central. And I'm like, okay, first of all, that time is Oddly specific. I'm like, 7:10 PM Central. I'm like, what?

That is so strange.

Yeah, it was so dumb. But I could still post. I could still DM. I just couldn't comment on anybody's stuff. And the funny part was my audience thought it was hysterical because I posted in my Facebook group. I'm like, I'm in comment jail. I feel like I have tape over my mouth. You know, I feel like I did in first grade when the teacher would say, You're talking too much in class. Oh, you know.

Oh, well, hey, these algorithms, you know, these.

Yeah.

Oh, goodness.

Yeah. So, I mean, once again, I had a list and I could just email them something funny like, hey, guess what? Your girl's in comment jail. It's not that I don't love you. Just can't comment till Thursday at 7:10 PM Central.

So interesting. That's a— I haven't heard. I haven't heard about the comment jail one. I've heard all the other ones, but not the comment one yet. Yeah. Oh, goodness. Right.

Yeah, no, we don't own these things. And I, and I also, I still am flabbergasted when I meet an online entrepreneur or actually Nikita, any business owner that does not have an email list.

I don't care if it's brick and mortar, in person, you need to have, yeah, you need to have an email list.

You need to have an email list. Yeah, for sure. Because like a couple of years ago, Facebook and Instagram went totally dark for like 36 hours. And that was really scary. I'm in the Meta Leaders Network Facebook group. And when the lights came back on and we were all able to get back on, there were so many business owners. That had lost thousands and thousands of dollars. Oh yeah, because they didn't have a list. And so I was just like, wow.

I mean, this topic alone is really important, especially if you're further along in business. I think you should start this at the very beginning of any business. It's the most important thing. But what this really is talking about, and this is part of what I, I think you and I have talked about in, in our previous conversations, how relationships are the heart of your business. And if you aren't keeping track of those relationships outside of tools that you you use, AKA social media, AKA even AI things, then you lose the connection that you have with another human. And so it's so important that we— yes, we can use these tools, they're obviously amazing because, you know, they make it easy for us to connect with people, right? But at the end of the day, you need to be able to connect with them outside of those tools. And I think that's your—

your—

just to your point, like, you could reach out and send an email and be funny and be real, and they're not gonna like run away and think you're some imposter, they're going to be like, yep, sounds about right, that totally worked today. Like, you know, it's, it's not a scary thing. So I, I appreciate you sharing that because I do think we all take email for granted. I think it's— for those with chronic illness specifically, it is, to me, is your number one thing you focus on when you're starting your business because you need a place to be able to, one, communicate, connect, share value, and nurture, and sell. And you can do that every day in email if you want to, but you can't do that on social media because somebody might put you in jail sometimes.

Yeah. Or, or you know what, a small percentage— it feels like when we post online, my students tell me this, and, and they feel like they're standing on the front yard of their ideal client's house with a bullhorn going, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. And I'm like, that's not what's happening. Now, if you're hitting their inbox every day. That is what's happening. But when you post online, there's a small percentage of people that actually see every single thing you do. And that's why we've got to be consistent with our content every week to keep it out there, keep it front and center, and then have enough of it that people will see it. But then, to your point, we've got to pull them. So what, what I love to teach is how to use the online space to get off of the online space. Pull people to the inbox or pull people into the DMs. Now I know DMs are still in the online space, but at least it's a place where you can have a conversation.

Exactly.

And build that relationship. And businesses this year in 2026, businesses that take the time to get to know their people and, and they— I know the people in my Facebook group. I know the ladies that are in Entrepreneista. I have taken the time to build those relationships and they've taken the time to get to know me. And so when I come to sell something, it's not weird. It's like, oh yeah, Tracy's got a business. Okay, cool. Do they want my thing? I don't know. That's up for them, for them to decide, but they don't get their nose out of joint when I'm in launch and sharing, you know, about my program.

Yeah.

Yeah. So how have you structured your system for being visible and amplifying that? I know, especially on social media, we are talking about social media with the goal of using that tool to get people to where you want to nurture, connect with them consistently, more so. How does, how's that look for you? How have you made this easy? No-brainer.

Yeah, I do everything in the most simple way possible that gives me the most effectiveness. I like to build with ease. Tech's not my love language. I am not a person that is going to teach you how to do an automation and a crazy funnel. Not happening. I'm going to do whatever I need to do. I'm going to do it the easiest way possible. And that includes my weekly content. Like, we kind of touched on that a little bit ago. So one of the things that I help my students and my clients do is it's— I call it Social Media Made Easy, and it's really— I should call it Weekly Content Made Easy now that I think about it. Probably should rename the darn thing.

It would help, especially right now with how the market's doing, with very niche content. That actually would do really well. Yeah. Sorry, I had to go into my strategy brain there for you. I was like, yes, do that.

Yeah, no, I think I— yeah, I'm going to add that to my list. So we start with what do you want your regular piece of weekly content to be? Now, to your point and to your audience that has chronic illness, I want them to pick— live was the best thing for me. And if you can go live on the same day and time every week, That's awesome because your audience will start to expect you. But if you can't, it's okay. It doesn't mean you're not going to be successful. You get to pick when it's best for you. But if live is not something you can guarantee, like one of my students the other day, she said, Tracy, I would love to do that, but we travel so much, I never know where I'm going to be. And I said, okay, then let's talk about a podcast that you can batch, or let's talk about a blog. You know, I'm not sure that blogs have the same impact anymore because when instead of finding your— really?

Because now, because of AI, because AI is pulling from that and people are using AI as a searchable, and now they're pulling blog, full blog articles into AI. It's actually having a resurgence of blogs doing really well.

So good, thank you for that, because I was worried because every time I Google something, I get AI information first. Yeah. And I'm not actually seeing any of the blogs down below, but hopefully it's coming back around. So anyway, we help them pick the thing that fits their capacity, their time, their energy, their mental load, whatever it is. And so I want them to pick one of those three things. Now, I love video. I love live video because the algorithm loves it. Lives and reels are the only way to reach past the people that are currently connected to you and following you to attract brand new strangers that are— that will become followers or friends. And connect with you. So that's why I love it so much. But a prerecorded video is, is still, still good. And that is something people could batch as well, or the podcast or a blog. So what we do first is we do map out in less than 30 minutes. I want to mapping out 90 days of social media content topics, and it involves just brain dumping and visualizing your clients. What do they want? What do they need? What can you give them? What are the words they're using? And then you brain dump a list of topics that you could teach on that you know would help them. And so then you put one topic per week, try to get to 12 if you can, because 12 weeks is 90 days. So for the next 90 days, you know, okay, these are the topics I'm going to talk about. And that way, when the energy is low or when the time is limited, you can just look at that topic. Write that live blog or podcast script, then now you can take that and throw that into AI and say, hey, I'm going to do this live training or this recorded video. I need 2 to 3 social media posts about this. I need— if you— if I write out a live, I can have it help me write the blog, right? Or podcast. I have mine help me write SEO-rich show notes and my YouTube description notes and all that stuff. And then you want to have an email, preferably emailing your, your list once a week. But again, I have students that are like, Tracy, that's too much for me. I'm like, okay, what can you do consistently, right?

Yeah.

Just because Tracy Beavers does it once a week every week doesn't mean that if you don't do that, you're not going to be successful.

Yeah.

And so they'll say, okay, I think, I think I'll start with once a month. I'm like, perfect, let's do that. Let's get you consistent with that. And then as you have the bandwidth and the energy, or you, it starts to feel easier, then let's add on another one until you can work up to once a week. But I have some students that are just like, nope, I'm going to stick with twice a month. I'm like, okay, cool. You know, we all have to find our own road. So you write that one regular piece of weekly content. On that topic for that week. Then you let AI help you write social media stuff, social media posts. And then I want my students promoting at least one free lead magnet every week and a post about a paid offer every week, because people can't opt in for what they don't know you have, and people can't buy what they can't see. And we forget about that stuff. And so, yeah, so we wrote the one thing And from that one thing, now we have 2 to 3 social media posts. We have throw on a lead magnet, throw on a paid offer post, and look at all the content you've got for the week. And you wrote one thing. And then you could email your list, and especially if you're emailing the list once a week, you could say, hey, here's the top performing podcasts. Here's a curated podcast list just for you on this specific topic. Yeah. Or, you know, something funny like I would write, can't believe this podcast topic took off. Didn't see that coming. You know what I mean? Something like that. So you just use what you've created. And then the cool thing about this is at the end of 90 days, go back and look at week 1, topic 1. What performed well? What didn't? Pull the topic, zhuzh it up a little bit, change it up, change it, tweak it just a little bit. Throw that stuff back out there because I don't remember what I posted 90 days ago.

Yeah.

You know? Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, nope, I, if people are paying that much attention to me, that's a little frightening.

Yeah.

I mean, and not, and you know, people to your point, I think as creators, that's, as an entrepreneur, as a creator, that's something we are worried about. We're like, you know, it's kind of like, did I wear that outfit last week? And did somebody see me? And like, Do I like— we are so— but guess what? Your, your audience is in the same brain. They are not thinking that much about you to even be paying attention to that. So I think we have to give ourselves so much permission. I think a lot of people worry about, I'm going to repeat myself. Actually, that's good. Keep repeating yourself so you become known for a particular thing. Like, that's a good thing. And if you want to figure out how to say the same thing differently, you just keep talking about it differently. Look at it at different angles. And so whatever— what I love your system because it is simple. It is focused on one— it's actually focused on one thing that's just being built out in different ways. And that's what, you know, it helps you not feel like you're all over the place.

Yeah.

If you are having trouble right now in the world of AI, and I still recommend— to your point, you can still create that same result with what's happening now, so much faster though, so much faster with AI being a support, you know, for you. But it doesn't have to be complicated, and it can look how you need it to look like for you to work. Yes. I've coached clients myself on being like, when you are doing a podcast, if you can't sit and do a 15-minute, you know, or 30-minute thing, do 5 minutes and then record and snip them together. Like, put them together. I mean, there's so many different ways of doing— just don't judge yourself, don't get in your head about doing it this way or that way. It all can work if you just commit to doing that work, you know?

Yes, exactly. We just have to put the pieces of the puzzle together for our puzzle.

Yes. Our— ooh, our puzzle. Love that. Tracy, when you were doing this for yourself, when you were building this for yourself and you started to create, you started seeing results, what were some of the things that for you kind of held you back? A little bit from being like, oh, you know, going all in? What were some of the fears that you had that came up for you?

How long is the show? Let me get my list out. Well, the biggest thing that comes to mind for me is tech is not my love language. And I think I came into the online space a little bit big for my britches because I had an award-winning sales career, right? I was knocking it out of the park. And I come into this and I'm used to mastering things quickly and I'm used to being a producer and I'm coming into this and I'm like, what language are you people speaking? Kajabi, funnel, landing page, lead magnet. I'm like, I just want to help people. I just, I don't care if people Venmo me. I want to make money. I want them to pay me and I want PayPal me. I don't care. But no, you got to set up Stripe and you got to set up this and you And you got to set up that and then you got to tag people in automations. And I was like, oh my God. And so I had this feeling of, first of all, oh crap, what have I done? I so don't have this. And what am I going to do about it now? And so that was jamming through my head mixed with, oh, when you decide you're going to leave corporate, you're it. Tag your it, because when you get a corporate job, you get a desk, a computer, name tags, business cards, steady paycheck, job description, benchmarks for success. So you know exactly what you need to do every day. Sometimes you get a corporate credit card and sometimes you get a parking space.

Yeah. And a team, like a whole department, departments you can reach out to for support if you need that.

Uh-huh. I had, I had an IT the only person I could call when the tech went south, you know. So that realization was like, oh my gosh, I could really screw this up. Like, I mean, I could really just drive this thing off into a ditch, right, if left unsupervised. And so I had all of that stuff going through my head. And honestly, Nikita Williams, there are days I still feel it. You know, what irritates me is I don't think there's enough conversation in the online space about how hard it is to build an online business and about how much time it takes and effort and saying the same thing like you're talking about over, over and over again till you sound like a broken record and you just want to puke. I'm like, if I have to talk about visibility one more time, I'm like, do people not understand they need an email list? We still have to talk about it? I've been talking about it for 6 years. You know, so all of that stuff is monkeying around in my head. And I just had to, I really had to have a talking to with myself, a lot of, okay, you coach people on how to overcome this stuff. What, what would you say to yourself? You know, like, and then really just putting on my CEO pants and doing and doing hard things and thinking, okay, I'm going to I'm going to take this a step at a time. I'm going to find people that can help me learn it. And I'll do B+ work if I have to. So, I think I just word salad-ed all over the place.

No, that was so, that was so good. I have a question, a follow-up question for you though, Tracy, because with that fear and not even fear, just with that, like, oh my gosh, this is a lot. Have you found like in, and I, you know, I'm a big proponent for business is personal. Business, how what's happening in our personal, personal life can bleed into how we're showing up in our business subconsciously or not, like consciously or subconsciously it's happening. And you're in that space of being like, I have to, you know, get with myself, be with myself. Were there times in your, in your journey with this where you're like, oh, this is actually showing up in other areas of my life, the way I'm thinking about myself. And my ability, and it's really just coming into my business and I need to fix it happening in my life first before it can really affect my business. Has that ever happened or you've ever noticed that for you?

Yeah, it's specifically with an all— having an all or nothing mentality about things. You know, it's like personally, I like to go out when I go out for a walk to walk the dog, I like to do 3 miles. And I would say, well, I don't have enough time to do 3 miles. I'm just not going to go. Well, okay, 1 mile is better than 0 miles.

It's true.

Don't have an all or nothing mentality. But I would have the same mentality about my work. It's like, well, if I can't make this lead magnet perfect and I can't get this automation perfect, I'm just not going to do it. Well, come on now. You know, nothing's ever going to be perfect. Just do the thing, get it out into the world and see how it performs and don't have an all or nothing mentality about it. You know, but yeah, I've had those times too. And also, you know, personally having confidence if I was doing something personal, whether it's, you know, being with our family and leading the family in something or, you know, like my— a couple years ago, my father passed away. And I do have siblings, but— thank you. I do have siblings, but they're not anywhere near. And so really, I was it for my mom. And I would have times where I had an all-or-nothing mentality about stuff with her, or I really just found myself in my head about, is this the best decision? Are you sure you're the best person to lead her? Are you sure you're the best person to help her decide where she's going to invest her money? Is she going to sell the house? If so, what's the price point? When does she move to be closer to us? You know, it was just all that stuff. So, you know, it's kind of like back when I was raising my kids, we don't ever tell the kids this, but we didn't really know what we were doing.

Yeah. I mean, do we really? Like, do we, do you really? I mean, do we? It's, I think that's like in so many things in life, we, we have this thing that we think we should know, but we don't know until you're actually in it. And then usually it's hindsight 20/20. You're like, oh. Yeah, I probably won't do that again. I would do that different, you know, like, yeah, yeah.

It's like, I'm like, ooh, dodged a bullet there. Okay.

Yeah. And I think in entrepreneurship too, Tracy, I think we have this idea that we're going to go in it and we somehow know how we're going to be or how we're going to show up when circumstances happen, when we fail, how we're going to feel and what we're going to do. I'm like, literally that is That's like the exercise of like the human brain and capacity of growth. We are learning how to grow in that space. And when you're growing, you don't necessarily know what's happening. You're just rolling with it.

Yeah. Flying by the seat of my pants. I'm, I am known for that. Like when I share something with my audience that I've decided to do and I say something, you know, flying by the seat of my pants, they're like, well, that tracks for Tracy. She does that a lot. But I mean, I think we just need to all admit that we all— even these people that you see on social media and you think, oh, well, they've got their stuff together. You know, everything they touch turns to gold. I've said that about some people, but I think we just need to have more conversations like we're having now where we don't have it all figured out. And The first time you do something, it may not be a success, you know, and that's okay.

Yeah.

Because we're all figuring it out together.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, so good. If there is one thing you thought was true before you started your business that you're like, girl, this is true, I know it black and white, I know this is the facts, and now you're looking back and being like, that was such a lie, I don't know what I was believing. What was that thing? I've been asking people this question and I love the answers.

That is so funny. That is not the question I was expecting. That's hysterical. I think that it was, if I throw enough money at it, it'll work. You know, like if I hire that coach for $6,000, surely I'll be successful.

Ooh, Tracy, that's spicy.

That hurt. Man, that hurt because she was not good. And then the first time I ran paid ads, probably wasted $3,000 because I thought, well, I'll just throw a bunch of money at it. Well, I didn't have anything that was converting. Why did I think that was going to work?

Yeah.

You know?

Oh, yeah. Oh, that first one, though, Tracy. That first one. Oh, oh, oh.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is true. We do think we can throw money at things and think it solves all our problems. I think, I mean, in what ways, Tracy, did you like, outside of what did you really need in order for the thing to work? That's really the follow-up question. Like, what is the thing that you needed actually to be successful in the container, even though that coach wasn't the coach?

Hmm. That's a good question. I think I needed to have enough faith in myself that I could figure stuff out and network and make the connections where I had business besties and we could lean on each other. And yeah, yeah. Instead of thinking that, oh, this person's going to solve all my problems and they're going to make me successful.

Mm.

So I'm going to throw a bunch of money at her and That's that right there.

Yeah.

I think we do.

I think sometimes when we're throwing money at things, we're trying to like, it's almost like we're trying to trust someone else other than our own intuition. Like we're trying to, we're trying to foster trust, but it's not really trust. It's like fake. It's like a fake thought of, I trust you and not, no, really what you're saying is you didn't trust a part of your intuition and part of your thoughts and a part of what you've already created or built. And so you're hoping someone else can fill in that gap. In reality, that's never going to happen, right? Unless you do it for yourself and in that way. Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyway, that was such a good answer and spicy. I love— that's why I love that question. Thank you so much for being on. If someone wants to come and like get into Tracy's world, where can they find you? Where they can— we're going to have for sure in your show notes, the link to your We might have a new name for it, but yes, for your social media, how to get visible and do that with the easy way, but share how we can connect with you. Yeah.

So I have a podcast also, and I'm excited you're going to be on it soon. It's called Create Online Business Success. So that's the, the fastest way to find me, but then another great thing to do, cause I love Facebook. I have an awesome Facebook group right now. We have over 4,100 online entrepreneurs in the group. You are allowed to promote your offers a couple of times a week. You are encouraged to send friend requests and have DM conversations and network and build relationships because it is a beautiful community and I'm really proud of it. The members in our group are just amazing people and I treat them to a couple of free events that I do each month because I love them so much. I offer a free networking session. So it's the first Friday of every month. We usually have about 40 people in the room. It's so fun. Thanks. And then I do a live Q&A, ask me anything on a certain topic each month, just to kind of give back to the members that want to give me their time and spend time in the community.

Oh, I love that.

Well, we'll have it. It's called Be a Confident Entrepreneur. Let me give you the name of the group.

Yes, we'll have it in the, in the show notes for sure so that they can easily find it. But thank you so much for being on and being a guest, and your wisdom and your stories are fully appreciated. Thank you.

Thanks. Thank you for having me.

No problem.

That's a wrap for this episode of Business with Chronic Illness. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review. It helps more entrepreneurs living with chronic illness and autoimmune disorders find these conversations. You can check the show notes for links, resources, and ways to stay connected. And if you have a question or story you'd like to share, visit craftedtouthrive.com to leave a voice message for the podcast. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, remember, you can build a thriving business without sacrificing your health, your peace, or your profit.