What's Needed to Make Money with Chronic Illness?

What do you need in your life and your business living with chronic illness in order to make money? What do you need to start and grow in order to make money in your business living with chronic illness?

Welcome to Crafted to Thrive, the globally ranked podcast for entrepreneurs living with chronic illness. 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 up 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.

Hello and welcome to Crafted to The podcast for entrepreneurs living with chronic illness. If you are watching the video, I'm in my new office slash husband's office and it looks a mess and we're getting, getting this together hopefully in the next couple of weeks. We moved and then life totally happened. So for all of you who have been thinking about this question, I wanted to talk to you guys about it, which is What do you need in your life and your business living with chronic illness in order to make money? What do you need to start and grow in order to make money in your business living with chronic illness? For a little back history on what I'm going to share with you today, this past couple of months has been a huge transition for me. We sold our house, we were supposed to buy another house, and then we ended up renting renting an apartment. We had some deaths in our close friends group, and then I had another death in my family that I consider like my chosen family, very unexpected. And I went out of town to Jacksonville to be with my, my, my spiritual but very much so sister. And then I got COVID for the first time. And all of you who are like, dang, Nikita, you just getting COVID? Yes, I just got COVID for the first time in January of 2024, and It was horrendous. And for all of you who live with chronic illness, you know one of the biggest fears that I have probably had ever since the whole pandemic is what is it gonna look like when I get COVID? Because I don't, I never thought I would never get it. It was just always a matter of when was I going to get the COVID right? And you all might be still wondering like, Nikita, what does this have to do about how, like what do you need to start and grow your business? In order to make money living with chronic illness. I'm going to get to this, okay? And during the crazy 3 weeks, cuz it was about a week and a half I was really sick, for the like about 4 days I probably would have went to the hospital if it weren't the fact that I have had so many reasons not to go, and I knew what to expect, and I knew they wouldn't help me. So I stuck it out in our Airbnb in Jacksonville with my girl who also had COVID and some other friends who miraculously did not get COVID, never tested positive, and took care of us so well. I couldn't have asked to be with the most perfect people to like go through grieving, go through sadness, and still be going through it and also living with like getting diagnosed with chronic illness while living with chronic illness while like going through COVID. What it did do was give me a lot of time to think and reset. I had not thought of my word for this year or my phrase for this year. I had a thought kind of swirling in my head and I hadn't really thought of anything at the, at the moment. And so what I thought about while I was not sleeping for a couple of days and when I could finally like get my brain off of the pain, I started thinking about you all. I started thinking about my clients. I started thinking about my business. I started thinking about things I was so grateful for. And like, what did I want people most to know who often ask me in sales calls and even clients, like, what do you need in order to start and grow your business while living with chronic illness? Because life doesn't stop lifing just because you have chronic illness. There are other things that happen, like other life things happen., right? And I like to tell clients who don't have chronic illness, like, you are still having unexpected things happening in your life. So the more in alignment that you can be with what you're doing in your business and how it's serving your life, the less stressed you will be when life keeps lifing. Okay? And while I was thinking about this, I'm so thankful for the business that I've started. For the last almost 10 years now. I'm so thankful for the systems and the approach that I've done it. But what I'm most thankful for, y'all, is a thing that I believe most of us take for granted when it comes to having what you need in order to start and grow your business living with chronic illness. And the first and foremost thing is your why, your goals, your values, your mission. I think it's not good for you not to have these things very clear and the reason why you're doing what you're doing, right? So a lot of clients come to me wanting to start a business because they want to make money and they think that's enough of a why. Y'all heard me say that a lot of you think a, a, a good enough why is that you want to make money so that you can not work a 9 to 5, so that you can contribute to your household. All of these different things, those are all true. Those are all great reasons, a reason to, to do what you do, but it's not the reason why you will stick this entrepreneurship out until it actually creates what you want. A sustainable growing business. So what you really need to start and grow a business is a very connected reason to your why. There's a lot of different ways to make money and make a livable income that doesn't have to be entrepreneurship. I'm gonna say that again, it doesn't have to be entrepreneurship. And I'm about to throw some some tough love, if you will, some tough real Nikita love to you for a second. And I think there is a misconnection between thinking that starting a business is easy and you can design it to be 100% easy than working a 9 to 5. It not— it is not necessarily true. But what it does give you, and this is something I talk about with my clients all of the time, is that having your own business gives you the space and capacity to create the type of work that you are able to do, and able to do even when it's hard. In a 9 to 5, in a W-2, you don't have an option. You don't have necessarily the option of outsourcing or delegating. You don't have the option of like calling Coach to be like, come on in here and help me figure this out. You don't have that option. You get what you get. You gotta do what you gotta do. You gotta push how you gotta push. And it's interesting that I have found that in a lot of my sales calls and sometimes even with my clients, it's like, there's this perception that having a business is the solution if it's only easy. And this is, and this is one of those things that's kind of like a pet peeve of mine when I hear people say it's effortless to do such and such and such and such. First of all, as chronic illness warriors, nothing is really effortless. It, it takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of thought. It takes a lot of working on yourself, your, to even function living with chronic illness, right? There are multiple decisions. There are a lot of hard things that we all have to do in order to be able to function in a world that's really not designed for those of us with invisible chronic illnesses or even visible disabilities. Okay? So it never was going to be easy. It was never going to be effortless. However, when you decide that you're going to start and grow your business, it was going to be less hard. Less hard because you are the person who gets to decide how you are going to be in the hard, how you are going to show up when things are difficult. You don't have to check in with manager or company or whoever. You are that person. And that is where the capacity and energy to me is more of a return on how you can start and grow a business living with chronic illness is having the knowledge that being clear on your, on your why, embracing that, embracing that. It's not that I just get to make money, it's that I get to have the choice on how to have the capacity and how to use my energy in a way that it best serves the result that I want to see. Be when it comes to my money, right? Because when you work a 9 to 5, there's a certain point where I no longer can literally do this job. And if I no longer can do this job, if I no longer can show up, I am like treading water, which is to me is adding more stress and giving me less capacity to deal with other things in my life that life outside of my chronic illness, right? So you got, you got your family, you, you got yourself, like, like outside of being sick, you got like your own mindset drama, your own like friendships, your own relationships, your mama, your daddy, your husband, your, you know, your best friend, all of these different people you are trying to do. If, if you're like some of my friends who are volunteers and deeply into their volunteer work, We've got that, you know, we've got all these other little things that are not so little that affect our capacity on top of trying to show up for a job who isn't flexible forever in how my body needs the capacity and flexibility it needs to function every day. So when you are getting ready to start your business and you're living with chronic illness, you have to decide your reason for why you're doing this. Because on days when it feels like you want to go back to a 9-to-5, that why will keep you on track on, yeah, but today is a heart I get to choose versus today is a heart that could have been one I had no choice in. Okay. And that why is so important. It also ties to so many different things, your values, your mission. And when I work with my clients, this is something I work with my clients to figure out because oftentimes we have tabletop, what I like to call tabletop whys, and they're not strong enough. They're not legs for that table for when the hard does come, because there is hard in entrepreneurship. There is hard in running a business. Ask anybody who's able-bodied and still running a business. It is not easy. But it is a beautiful vehicle for you getting to where you want to go by being able to have more choices of flexibility and having the capacity to do the thing that you want to do. So beyond your why, you also need to be very clear on what it is that you want to bring and offer into the world. That can be easy and flexible for you to deliver systematically and automatically and for scaling, right? You want to be able to do those 3 things. No one in a business can do it for themselves forever, and especially as chronic illness warriors, it's just not a thing. Okay, it's just not a thing. So outside of your why, being really clear on what your why is, there are two things you really need in order to really start a business living with chronic illness, or if you have a business, in order to grow your business living with chronic illness with more ease. Okay, what, what is that? Well, there are two things you need. You need an offer you can sell automatic and in your sleep, and you need systems in order to deliver and onboard those people that come your way. Now, this looks different, you know, this is going to look different for every client. I have worked with different types of clients. So I've worked with coaches and consultants, I've worked with photographers and artists, and I've worked for all these different types of businesses. But still, I believe, just like people say, you need to have your money working for you. Your business needs to be working for you when you're asleep, when you are not quote unquote on. In order to automate some things. So one of the first things I like to talk with my clients and help them to figure out is how you have to be able to market what you sell. And honestly, to me, one of the easiest ways to do this, to be able to have an offer that you can sell in your sleep, is to use long-form content. Long-form content is a beautiful way to create a funnel or a line of leads to your offers while you're asleep. Why? Why, Nikita Williams? A long-form content strategy, a thing because you can be marketing and selling while you're asleep, while you're not on. So likely if you're listening to this episode, I recorded this just a couple of days ago, or whenever you might be listening to this, like a year or 2 years from now, you might be listening to this episode and I'm on my merry way in some other place, in some other country. I might be at Pilates, I might be asleep. This is an automation of selling and marketing and creating answers and solving problems for you for free, as my coach would say, in my sleep, quote unquote. It is being done for me. Why? Because most likely you Googled, or AI found a way to show you, hey, there's this person over here that's talking about growing a business with chronic illness that you were looking for, or maybe you were looking for like, what are the main things that I need in my business to get my business to grow while living with chronic illness? Whatever the case may be, you found me here, right? Or you're a wonderful listener who has been loyal listening forever, but you are listening to this at a time that I'm not on live, and you will probably listen to this over and over again. I have many clients that actually do that before they like book a sales call with me. They're like, Nikita Williams, like listen to this episode and this episode like so many times, and then I was like, I gotta book a call with you. This is an offer. I often talk about working with me one-to-one in my coaching program. I talk about that all the time when I'm using this content medium. For me, long form in a podcast form that leads to people making an easy step into my system of onboarding new potential clients. So this is why you need a system in place. You need not only a system for the functioning of offering and delivering your business, your offer, but you also need a holistic life and mindset system. This is something that often I don't hear a lot of business coaches talking about, but for chronic illness warriors, this is crucial. This is why I often implement a conversation the first couple minutes of our calls of how are you, where are you physically, how are you feeling physically, emotionally? I will ask this question like, where are you? What do you need more of? What are you worried about? How is this showing up in your body? How is this showing up in your thoughts about what you're thinking about for your life and your business? Because believe it, it is affecting your business.. And if you are showing up with pain and frustration, how clear can you be to actually make a decision about business things? So you need a system that helps you at least find some harmony or some flow with living with chronic pain, chronic anxiety, brain fog. Chronic coughing, chronic whatever the things you've got going on, to still be able to do some of the hard things I was mentioning at the very beginning of this episode to create the result you want to see. So you need an actual business sales system that can be automated, and then you need a life system. You need a holistic life system to help you cope manage, reduce any pain emotionally, mentally, or physically in your body, that will also show up in how you do things in your business. And for me, one of the best ways to do this is through breath, through really taking a moment to connect with your body. Where are you feeling tension? Where are you feeling resistance? Where are you feeling tightness or butterflies or gas or air or pressure? I often feel pressure. Where are you feeling all those things? Do you have something that can help you release some of that energy, some of that resistance, some of that frustration? For my clients, I use something called EFT, which is Emotional Freedom Tapping. It's kind of like acupuncture with your fingers. And it's a beautiful way of helping you regulate or calm or put in flow your nervous system. The thing that helps you react in fear or stress or in relax and digesting time, like it's the thing that helps your whole body system to move and flow. And we use this technique, EFT, to regulate that along with aromatherapy in order to help you find a way to do the hard things, even though you're already doing hard things, but doing some things that are hard sometimes in your business so that you can build and have the flexibility of having the capacity to receive what you're looking for, which is just to grow your business. For some of you, it's just to start it. So if you don't have those two things in place, if you don't have an offer that you can sell in your sleep, so to speak, meaning you can sell through long-form content in a podcast or a blog or a YouTube channel or through email, or even a blog could be live content on social platforms that you have out there for people to find because everything is searchable, then you are going to have a hard time growing your business. And if you don't have a system for taking those people who find you and feel like you are helping them and creating results for them to go through a process to get to a phone call with you or even a video contact information where you can go back and forth, you are not going to be able to start and grow your business. And if you also don't have a system in place for you you, the person living with chronic illness, a way to regulate the ebbs and flows of living with chronic illness. If you do not have a toolbox to support you through those different things of having good days, having bad days, having bad hours, having a few minutes that are horrible, it's going to be really hard to grow your business. And so I'm going to go back to what I was saying about my lovely adventure of having COVID while grieving and while planning and supporting family through getting together for arrangements for the, the death of someone we truly love so much, right? And so I was thinking, it's— that's hard. It's hard to try to show up and be a person during that time, right? But then add on COVID for the first time and starting to recover, and then I tested negative, and then I had to on instantly, right? For, for arrangements. And trust me when I say this, I don't say this to like complain or anything. I really truly believe I was exactly where I needed to be with the right people for the right amount of time to be in such a hard place and yet still feel completely at peace. Is for a couple reasons. One, my spiritual foundation, solid, kept me so calm. Second, I had an offer that I could sell in my sleep. Third, I had systems that were able to funnel people from that marketing and that content into email systems and, and a way for people to book a call with me when I was available in the future for sales, I was able to onboard a new client. And also, also bonus, the other hard thing I was able to do was to show up occasionally live, fresh. And I don't want to say fresh because it wasn't really fresh because I was still recovering, but I was, I was able to show up a little bit because I had a system to support me through doing the hard thing physically, right? Oftentimes we're waiting until we feel 100% perfect and our circumstances in life are working out and everything is in place, but life does not operate like that, y'all. We have to stop chasing that phantom. It doesn't happen like that. Are there times where it seems like everything is moving great and wonderful? Yes. But the reason why it's hard for many of you, especially those of you who have businesses, you have attached your thoughts to the fact that business can only grow if I feel good, if I'm 100%. And that is not true. Most of my clients will tell you, like, they implement the 5% rule. They know all they need is 5%. They only need 5% of themselves. Of their 100, they usually give 110. They only need 5% of the 100 in order to create a result for themselves in their business. And why do I say this? Because if you were working, and if you are currently working in a 9-to-5, you have to do more than 5%. You do. You have to, right? So this is why having a business might be hard sometimes. You might not get the results you want to see right away, but it gives you the capacity to show up in the way that you can best show up. And receive the results that you want to see and still be able to see them because you got to choose how and what hard you were going to do. So what you need to make money in your business living with chronic illness is really 3 things. I said 2 earlier, but it's really 3. You need an offer you can sell in your sleep, meaning you can market today and it can serve you for over and over again. You can repurpose that content. There's so many things you need. A long-form marketing system. You need a backend system in order to bring in those people, tell them where they need to do, tell them what happens next, have them go through a funnel, if you will, or a, a path to get to a conversation with you or an easy click and buy and go. And you need a system, a holistic you system to take care of your mental, physical, and emotional needs for finding more flow during the good times and the bad times, the hard times and the not so hard times. You need those three things in order to grow your business, and that is something I help my clients do. I actually talk about this in a lot of different ways. You guys will hear me talking about it, but really what I'm talking about in this specific episode of helping you realize is that you have to embrace the fact that running a business is gonna have some hard stuff. But look, here's the thing to keep in mind: you already know how to do hard. We do it every day. And growing a business is— trust me— is not as hard as fighting for your life. It's not. It really isn't. And that's ultimately how I have found showing up on social media not hard. If I don't feel that great, I can put a filter on. I can say, this is something I want to talk about, whatever. I can post a link. I can type, text something out. I can record my voice. This isn't hard. What's hard is sitting in the hospital in the middle of the night asking for pain medicine when people are thinking you are just seeking pain medicine because you're a Black woman. That's hard. That's my life. I'm fighting for my life. That's hard. Advocating for myself. You, my dear, you, my beautiful person listening to this episode, you already know how to do hard in the worst circumstances. Why not choose to do hard for the business you actually want, for the result you actually want? To make a livable income, to support yourself. Maybe it's just to have some extra cash. It's the— it's literally the strategic decision to do the hard thing that Eh, in comparison, isn't. What you have to offer, people want. There wouldn't be an industry all around it that people are buying if that wasn't the case. So connect to your why and remember those 3 things. You need a system that can sell. You need an offer that can sell in your sleep. Using long-form content. You need a system that automates for how people get from that long-form content to a purchase with you. And then thirdly, you need a system mindset-wise, body-wise to help you find flow and some comfort to be able to show up the 5% of you in order to do and see the result you want to see. And if that's something you want to hear about, if you want to be like, Nikita, how do we do this? Like, what is the system? How can we get this in place? What are some things I need to know? You can book a call with me. I want to see you create the result that you want to see. I want you to feel like you're contributing to your household. I want you to not feel burnt out and like tired because you trying everybody's way of doing something who is not considering the fact that you live with multiple chronic illnesses and you You ain't got all day to be trying everything under the sun. So it's been a while. It's been a while since I've been on here and done a solo episode. Please let me know how this landed for you. What are your thoughts about this? What kind of questions came up for you thinking about, man, this is all I need? These 3 things is all I need? Really, Nikita? Like, stop playing with me. I'm serious, y'all. I'm serious. I'm serious. Let me know what other questions you guys have about living with chronic illness and growing a business with ease. Starting and growing one, it doesn't, it, it doesn't have to be something you do by yourself. Okay? And there is a unique way, and I've seen with my clients in honoring what it's like living with chronic illness and still doing the hard things that don't add stress to your body, that don't add— so learn more and book a call with me. The link is in the show notes. You just book a call, you'll get some questions answered and all of that jazz, and I'll be asking you questions and seeing where you are and all of that. So on our next episode, our guest is Danielle Banyard Jackson, who is coming on to the podcast on Friday. And she is actually going to be talking to us about friendships and how to do that when you live with chronic illness. I don't know about you, but that has and will continue to be something I work on is like trying to build these really meaningful relationships, not just in business, but in my life living with chronic illness. And Danielle is the expert in all stats and all education around having friendships, girlfriend friendships, and like how to make it actually meaningful and how to actually do it in this world that we live in. So be sure to come back on Friday to listen to Danielle Bernard Jackson as she talks about her book that's coming up and all the things about how to make meaningful relationships with women around you, right? How to build that. And I can't wait to hear what you think about that episode. 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 a holistic business and life. Check out our website at craftedittothrive.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.