Hello Mid-June Printable + My Life Lately + NEW LIFE BINDER NEWS




I really enjoy creating these posts for you where I just take some pictures from the last 30 days of my life and tell you what has been going on lately and how I am taking 100% responsibility for my life. You don't see too many blogs these days where the blogger just shares the "real life" stuff and I just try to write the kind of blog I would want to read. I kind of like to break all the rules of what it means to have a successful blog now-a-days and still find my own version of success. I hope it resonates with you. :)


First on the list, I've moved! Half way across the world, but from one island to another. I am now on the island of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. This is my home base while I continue to work on my business. One of the big benefits of being here is being closer to the people and events that are becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life.

Getting off of Guam to go anywhere can easily cost a couple thousand dollars. Now I am able to fly for much less, which is a good thing because I am going to Chicago in July, Spain in September, and Nashville in November - all for different business conferences and retreats. 

I used to travel just once a year. Now I can see myself getting on a plane every month. Follow me on Instagram here and I'll take you along for the adventure. :)


Before I left Guam, I co-hosted a blogging workshop with my Mastermind partners - my mom and Holly. It was a great way to say goodbye to Guam and move forward to my next adventure. :)


I don't share enough pictures of ME, so here is on on the night before I left Guam with my fiance and best friend.


Can you see the ocean? This is St. Croix.



I've been eating fruit off the tree every day since I got here. On the note of "taking 100% responsibility for my life," I've definitely been focusing on my health. My diet is a lot cleaner now (no more daily runs for sugary lattes here) and for the first time ever, I've been exercising every day without fail. Exercise is something I've always struggled with, but I've decided to just embrace getting sweaty (LOL) for a season of my life. 

What has been working for me is Fitness Blender from YouTube. I've mentioned them before, but I decided to move on from their free workouts on YouTube to their paid programs in which they actually curate the videos for you. This way I don't have to think at all, I just press play and I know I'm working out in as smart a way as possible.

This fitness journey has shown me how taking 100% responsibility for our life in all areas is a cycle that we go around and around, higher and higher. What worked before, won't work today and we have to keep asking ourselves "Is this working?" and we have to keep tweaking to be at an optimal level of performance - whether it's in our financial health or physical health.


Look at that cute thing. I've minimized to an A5 size version of my Life Binder. I still have the regular 8.5 by 11 size that I've used for years, but it is full of printables that I only have to revisit a couple time a month. This little one is something that I crack open constantly throughout the day and am able to carry in a bag much more easily.

My future dream is to create physical Life Binder kits to sell in my Etsy store - complete with pretty dividers, tabs, stickers, and printables. I currently only sell the digital downloads, but I know there are people who would love something that they could buy ready-made like this. And I enjoy working with physical products so hopefully by next year, I can have this be a part of my store.



What I'm listening to right now. Like literally, right now. :) You're welcome.


I've been planning like a beast lately - for the last few months actually. My room here has white poster paper wherever I could tape it up and I am mapping out everything. I have big goals and it's time to make it all happen. My biggest goal right now is to upgrade my SOS Club to a 12 month program that is designed to REALLY help people take 100% responsibility for their life.

I remember when I started this journey 6 or 7 years ago. I got tired of the rut I was in and I took evening a week to address my life. To add direction and structure, I purchased a 12 month program by Jim Rohn called "Your Best Year" or something like that. It sent me something to focus and work on every week. I really like that it was 12 months, because it was about turning your LIFE around. I want to do that for other people - help them have a mindset revolution and be with them on a journey for 12 months. I'm really excited and am putting the pieces together every day.


Here is a pic from the inside of my little life binder. One of the things I am working on right now is THE 4TH EDITION OF THE LIFE BINDER! Every year at this time, I launch a new and improved version of the Life Binder - which I give for FREE to everyone who has purchase a previous edition of the Life Binder from my Etsy store in the past.

Throughout the month of July, I send the updated version to all my Life Binder customers via their Etsy inbox. It's a rather tedious process because I can't message everyone all at once - I have to do it one by one and it could take a few days. But it's worth it! :) I have an idea that will make it easier moving forward - I'm going to create a Life Binder hub of sorts so that Etsy customers can log in to get the new edition every year instead of me having to message everyone one by one.




*If you have already bought a Life Binder from me in the past (including the retired 3rd edition not pictured above), then don't worry, you are on my list to get the latest edition as usual. :)

Till next time!


Hello Mid-May :: Free Printable :: 29 Things I've Learned





2 big things happened this month. I turned 29 years old and I got engaged. :)

In this post I share 29 tidbits of advice and lessons learned:


1

Separate your business and personal finances.

If you have a business, immediately open a checking and savings account that are just for your business and separate your business finances from your personal finances. This makes accounting smarter and easier.


2

Pay yourself out of your business.

Don't see your businesses' money as your own. Pay yourself a "paycheck" from your business. One thing that this really helps with is the ability to create your personal budget with a "paycheck" that doesn't fluctuate.

3

Start working with a tax professional. 

Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can just do it by yourself and don't feel intimidated about working with a professional. Part of taking personal responsibility for an area of your life is by working with people are professionals in that area.

4

"You can help 1000 people, but you can't carry one on your back." 

Regularly and consciously audit your relationships. Are you "carrying" people by helping them in a way that hurts your own progress? The best way to help others is always to help yourself. The best way to lead others is always to lead yourself. Let people choose to follow or fall behind. Les Brown says that when two people walk together, one person will ALWAYS speed up or slow down to match the speed of the other person. Have you "slowed down" for someone?

5

Overcome your patterns.

Overcome your patterns by becoming engaged in something that is going to specifically help you in that area. If you know that you're bad with money, enroll in a course on taking control of your finances and do the action steps it provides. If you know that you keep sabotaging your health, invest in working one on one with a professional who will coach you and hold you accountable. If you know you keep putting off your goal, tell your friend that you will pay them a $100 if you don't complete your goal by the end of the month. We carry around negative patterns for so long because we don't do something deliberately to break them. That changes...NOW.

6

There's ALWAYS a silver lining.

If something doesn't go the way you planned, ask yourself, "How can I make this work out in my favor?" See life as something that happens FOR you and not TO you and you will find that you are always one mindset shift away from the silver lining of any obstacle or setback.

(pic: An Airbnb I stayed at in France during a trip that I basically booked a YEAR in advance. I didn't know how it was all going to work out, but I made THE DECISION anyway.)

7

Make decisions immediately. 

Let's say you want to take a trip to Spain in September, but there are so may variables and "what-if's" that you suspend your decision until you have it all more "figured out." Stop doing that to yourself and go ahead and make the decision that you are going to go to Spain in September. Why? Because your brain can't go to work for you until you make a decision. Solutions and opportunities will pass you by as long as you are in decision-free-la-la-land. My attitude is "I don't know exactly how it'll work out, but I am going." And if something DOES pop up later that keeps me from being able to leave or do exactly what I planned, then I switch gears and make a NEW decision. I go from decision to decision to decision. Not making a decision because you're waiting on clarity is its own kind of mental agony.

8

It takes 18 months.

My life is so much better than it used to be. Just a few years ago, I spent all day running around cleaning houses and babysitting so that I could pay bills and then would work all night till 1, 2, 3 am on my other businesses. This went on for 2 straight years. I had no life, no free time and no lifestyle. I bought my financial freedom with those 2 years of sacrifice. It takes at least 18 months to see the fruit of a decision that you consistently act upon. Don't throw the towel in early.

9

Know what season of life you are in.

We don't make perfect progress in every area of our life all the time. We have to tap in to the season that we are in at the moment. Right now, I am in a season of setting the foundation for growth in my personal life and in my business. I'm getting my finances in pristine order, setting up workflows and systems, mapping out the rest of the year in actionable detail, and paying for coaches to help me uplevel. A few months ago I was in a season of dramatically eradicating distractions from my life and making more money. One season, properly tended to, sets the foundation for the next. What season of life can you sense calling to you right now?

(my desk - I've even minimized down from having a desk at this point! Now I just work at a small table  or on my laptop away from home.)

10

Batch your work.

Our brains are exhausted from flipping back and forth between a hundred unrelated things every day. I get so tired of it, and I know you do too! We need to take charge of our mental energy by creating boundaries around what we choose to focus on. For instance, I realized that a regularly recurring project that I would give myself a whole month to complete actually just takes me one day if I focus on it. Sure it can get a little tedious pushing through, but the peace of mind I feel throughout the rest of the MONTH because I no longer have to even think about that project is worth it. It creates a snowball effect because now I have even more time and energy to batch the next project.

Okay, the rest of these tips are going to be a lot shorter to read. :)

11

Dave Ramsey's EveryDollar app IS the best personal budgeting app out there.

12

We should look and wear our best all the time, even at home.

(a casual pic of my tiny apartment)

13

Minimalism to me means that everything that I own supports the person that I want to become - nothing detracts or distracts.

(This pic is outside my 5 star hotel balcony this past April when I and my small mastermind group booked a fancy stay-cation to reflect on our wins and set goals for the next quarter).

14

Do something every quarter of the year to reflect on the last 3 months and celebrate wins - even better if you do this with your mastermind group.

15

You always get what you focus on. Keep checking in with yourself to make sure that you're focused on the GOOD stuff and your amazing future.

(pic: I'm always dreaming of the home I want. I have a Pinterest board with hundreds of home style pins.)

16

Life gives you what you picture in your mind's eye. You are always either recreating your current reality or manifesting your vision.

17

Long to-do lists are a sign that you need to batch tasks, systemize, delegate, or eliminate.

18

Turn time driving or cleaning into time spent listening to personal development audio books or podcasts.

19

If you have a hard time minimizing or letting go, look at each belonging and ask yourself, "If I did not already own this, would I go out and buy it?"

20

Keep a running list of ideas for how you can get better at making money, saving money, and managing money.

21

Remember that simplicity happens on purpose. Complexity is easy. Simplicity is hard...but worth achieving in all areas of life.

22

Choose quality over quantity always and you will spend less money over the long haul.

23

Drink more water. You will feel better, look better, and think more clearly.

24

Do one really courageous thing every month. See tip number 25 for help.

25

Start a $100 Dollar Mastermind in which you and an accountability partner must complete your own specific, scary goal or end up forfeiting $100 to the other person. Get some skin in the game and watch your productivity spike!

26

Have one planner system. Don't spread your schedule across multiple tools. Whether it's paper or digital, just use one.

27

Keep a running list of purchases that you really want to make - a nice, new laptop bag, a pair of leather ballet flats - and hold out until you save up to buy exactly what you want instead of squandering your money settling for less. For months I wore out a canvas tote bag until I had the extra money to buy the really nice, quality laptop bag I've always wanted. I could have settled for a cheaper version "in the meantime," but by doing without, I was constantly reminded of what I REALLY wanted.

28

Don't be afraid to invest in yourself. Successful people invest in themselves.

29

Remember that taking the time to PLAN - plan your week, your life, your business, your leisure - SAVES you so much time that would have been squandered without a plan. Get in the habit of starting your week with a plan.

How I Made Over $30,000 Selling Printables on Etsy


I have a story for you and it is not about how I suddenly woke up, decided I wanted to make a bunch of money on Etsy selling printables and became an overnight success. This is a story of how I sloowwwwlllllyyyyyy came to the realization that success on Etsy as a "Printables girl" was POSSIBLE for me. Once I got to THAT point, then yes, things took off from there. But, let's start at the beginning...

In December of 2013, I opened my Etsy store and listed my first printable - a simple weekly planner that I still use and sell to this day. I had been patching together my own printables and sharing them with friends and on this blog for some time, and I had finally mustered up the gumption to try to start selling them.

That first month, I made $3. My friend Carrie bought the printable. I remember being so excited by the sale.


However, because I did not have any clear goals for my store and definitely didn't treat it like a business, it did not make a lot of money. I was okay with that at the time because I had a lot of other things going on. I had just closed down a coffee shop business and was launching a cleaning and babysitting business. That kept me busy during the day and then at night, I'd work on my graphic design business serving clients and tinkering with this blog.

Every once in a while I'd add a new printable to my store - just single page downloads that I actually hobbled together with Picmonkey. Creating printables in Picmonkey was painstakingly slow work since it's really supposed to be used for graphic editing and creation, but at the time, Picmonkey was the only program I knew. *Fun fact, I'm a self-taught graphic designer and all I use is Picmonkey! 

(Picture: A printable a put together in Picmonkey. Now, I would use Google Docs or Apple Pages to create the same type of layout much more quickly.)

The printables I was adding to my store at that time were very inexpensive - I charged $3 at most. Throughout the month, I'd make a sale here and there. My phone had the Etsy Seller app downloaded onto it and the app would notify me of a sale by making an AMAZING "cha-ching!!" sound. I loved it even though I only made enough to pay for my fancy lattes here and there.

A year passed. 2014 was drawing to a close and I had made a whopping total of...$186.00 Then, in December of 2014, I decided to put together something that was a little more exciting than a single page printable. I created what I called the "Plan, Do, Review" kit. It was super simple but useful, and yes - assembled painstakingly with Picmonkey. (Pssst! I no longer sell that kit in my Etsy store, but you can get it here for free with this secret link ;) >> Click HERE for the Plan, Do, Review kit.)

(Pic: A snapshot of some of the pages in my Plan, Do, Review kit that helped me start earning somewhat bigger bucks. :)

I priced the Plan, Do, Review kit at $10 - much more than any printable price I had listed before. This was a significant baby step because I was learning that a comprehensive collection of printables was something that I could not only charge MORE for, but it was also something that would SELL BETTER. As that kit started to sell more than any of my other "cheap" printables, I realized that people were a lot more excited to buy my $10 product than they were to buy my $2 or $3 products. Somehow I thought that my cheaper stuff would sell faster. I was wrong and in December 2014, because of that $10 kit, I made $254.50 in sales in that one month, which was so exciting for me since I had only made $186.00 the previous 12 months combined!

Haha. Trust me. I was no overnight success.

So my eyes were a little bit more open from this experience as I entered into 2015. At this point, I was transitioning out of my cleaning and babysitting business and starting to work full time as a graphic designer. My Picmonkey skills were becoming legit! LOL 

My Plan, Do, Review kit continued to sell, but I had another collection of useful templates bubbling in my mind. Before I had even ever started this blog, I had been using a system called the Ultimate Life Binder as a way to keep track of my life. It was my central hub for setting goals, measuring my progress, and generally just being aware of where I was, where I was going, and what I was working on a day to day basis. It was comprised of life-management printables that I had printed out from my findings on the web and some that I had created myself to suit me even more personally. 

(Pic: My Life Binder back in the day before I turned the system into a printable kit that people could buy.)

Here and there I shared my Life Binder process on this blog. It truly was the cornerstone of how I was taking 100% responsibility for my life - a life philosophy that this blog is all about. My audience showed a lot of interest in it and I had friends constantly asking me to help them put together their own Life Binders. However, as with anything that we're really good at, I didn't consider turning it into something that other people could buy and use because, well, "it's so easy, anybody can make their own." Hahaha. *Business tip: If you ever find yourself saying that about something that you're good at, please turn it into a product. It could make you a millionaire and make a lot of people's lives better.

The real kick in the backside came as I approached the middle of the year. I was getting closer and closer to the Fall season - a time when I knew that I had two big trips coming up - one to Europe and one to the States. I'm a traveling girl. I get on the plane at least once a year. However, this time, I was ready to write a slightly different story for myself. I was ready to feel differently about myself. I had a picture in my mind and in it, I was sitting in a cafe in Paris drinking a latte and feeling successful, feeling at peace because I had a business that was making money even while I was on vacation.

I wanted to be that girl. Even though I had achieved my first dream at that point where I was able to make all my money online as a virtual assistant basically, I was still trading hours for dollars. I knew that my finances would take a hit as a result of taking a vacation. I did NOT want to feel like my money was running out while I was traveling. I did NOT want to come home broke.

I wanted to experience what it felt like to be skipping around Europe with a business that had money coming IN on its own. I wanted to come home financially BETTER than I was when I left!

I knew the answer was passive income. Fortunately, I also knew I had in my hands the power to create it. Up to that point, May 2015, my Etsy store had been open for 18 months and I had almost reached $1000 in sales. It was time to take the next step.

I started working on turning my Life Binder system into a digital product that other people could buy. I graduated from creating printables in Picmonkey to creating them in Google Docs and that is the program I used to create the whole thing. Google Docs! Not fancy Adobe InDesign or Illustrator. Google Docs.

(Pic: A snapshot of designing the Ultimate Life Binder in Google Docs)

And so, in June 2015, I released my Life Binder product to the world - meaning I listed it on Etsy and told my email list about it. Then...my phone started "cha-chinging" more than it ever had before! By the end of the month, I had reached $1000 in sales! That blew my mind. I had made more in one month with one product than I had in the last 18 months! 

At the end of that month, I was at a turning point again. I had made $1000 in passive income, yes, but I knew it was mostly due to marketing to my list. How was I going to continue to make that amount in sales? I knew I couldn't keep marketing the same product to my same list month after month. At that moment, I was at a fork in the road where I almost went down the path of "Oh, maybe I'll create something new and sell that next." Luckily, I remembered a piece of advice that prevented me from doing that. I remembered Denise Duffield-Thomas (the Get Rich Lucky Bit#h lady) talking about how women have a tendency to keep creating something new over and over instead of sticking to one core, amazing product and finding endless ways of selling the SAME thing.

In that moment, I realized that if I really believed that I had created something amazing, something that I knew would help people, then I had to stick to it. I knew that there was probably a million more people out there who would LOVE my Life Binder as much as the 50+ people who had bought it in the last 30 days, but it was MY job to make sure they knew about it.

(Pic: The original Ultimate Life Binder. I've since created a new edition every year, but I still sell the original in my Etsy store. :)

This is where Pinterest came in. I decided that I was going to use Pinterest as my marketing platform. I wasn't going to spread myself thin across multiple social media arenas. I was going to focus on one, and I knew that Pinterest was the right one for me because it was where I went when I was hungry for printables, so I was familiar with how I could leverage it for my own. Also, Pinterest has this magic fairy dust that is great for businesses - it puts its users in a take-action/shopping frame of mind. When people are on Pinterest, they are typically there because they want to improve some aspect of their life. They are looking for solutions, which often results in a purchase. 

I took off my "printable-creator" hat and put on my "printable-marketing" hat. :) What I found was that marketing demanded as much creativity as actually creating a product, especially when you're marketing on Pinterest. My whole strategy was VERY simple and EXTREMELY effective - I set a goal to create at least one tall graphic every day presenting my Life Binder product. You might be wondering how I was able to keep coming up with ideas. Well, one cool idea I had was to take each page of the Life Binder and create a whole pinnable graphic around that one page. That alone gave me 27 pins to create. 

Some days, when I felt too lazy to create a new graphic, I would just re-pin old ones, which is actually a solid strategy too as doing so will boost exposer.

I stayed consistent at this and eventually I created a pin that went viral. You can see it HERE, if you'd like.

(Pic: a screenshot of my Etsy shop as it is now.)

What were my results from all this pinning? My sales stayed consistent. I continued to make $1000 a month. Then after a couple of months as my pins started to get re-pinned more and more, taking on a life and momentum of their own, I stopped creating new pins for the product and the number of sales kept growing. 

November came along (5 months after I had launched the Life Binder) and I was packing my bags for Europe. The "cha-ching" sound from the Etsy app on my phone was a part of my daily life now...and life was good. As a single lady with not a lot of expenses, making even $1000 a month in passive income was a game changer. I was able to make better decisions in my business because I was not longer stressed out by money. In fact, I was working less and less, but making more and more.

Whilst traveling for two whole months, my store went from $1000 a month to $2000 a month. Then in January of 2016, it passed $4000 in sales in a single month! This was all 99% due to a single product - my Ultimate Life Binder. 

Since then, my Etsy store continues to generate $2000 a month on average for me and I continue to foucs on my Ultimate Life Binder. My misssion is still to help a million woman with this system I've crafted to help people take 100% responsibility for their life.

And guess what? My dream totally came true. I found myself in Paris, sipping a latte, with a business that kept making money even though I wasn't working and I totally returned home wealthier than I was when I had left. 


So the moral of the story is that success takes time and it's all in your head. In my first 18 months on Etsy, I made less than $1000. In my second 18 months on Etsy, I made $30,000. What changed? I did. Now, looking back over this whole experience, I've taken inventory of the mindset shifts, the skills, the resources, and the knowledge that has helped me get to this point and I've created an online, self-paced course called Passive Income with Printables. It contains everything I would have LOVED to know when I started.

So if you have any interest in creating printables, whether you want to use them to enrich your own life, share with your audience, or make passive income, check out my course. I think you'll like it. :)




Hello March Printable + My Review of February


HEALTH

I amped up "taking 100% responsibility" for my health by doing more research into taking an even more personalized approach to health and fitness after I stumbled across a Youtube video about the meal plans and training regimens that are specific to different body types: mesomorphs, endomorphs, and ectomorphs. 

Pic: My attempt at making sauerkraut. It wasn't successful. LOL. But I'll try again.

As I watched the video, everything started to click and knowing how I need to eat and exercise as an endomorph body type has been pivotal. I feel a lot more satisfied after eating and I'm getting better results with my exercise. As an endomorph, I need to eat mostly protein and veggies, avoid white starch and sugar like the plague and do high-intensity interval training (HIIT). I've now graduated from walking for exercise to now alternating between doing either 40 minutes of yoga or 30-40 minutes of HIIT. The Health section of my Ultimate Life Binder has been growing as I've added grocery list printables and information I've found on Pinterest about the endomorph body type.

I've come to really enjoy using Fitness Blender on Youtube. They have nearly 4 million subscribers for their workout videos! It seems that people love them because they keep their videos free of distracting music and they just walk you through the exercise without yelling at you for "motivation." Haha. Oh, and they wear normal, modest workout clothes.

I also started checking in daily with an exercise accountability partner via Facebook messenger and we report our fitness activity to each other.

TAKE-AWAY QUESTIONS
  • Do I know what type of meal plan and exercise works best for me and my body type?
  • Do I know someone who takes health and fitness seriously who can be my accountability partner?
CAREER

So here's a little story for you. At the beginning of February, I had a little blogger mastermind get-together with my friend Holly. We talked about everything we wanted to start doing for our blog...and the things we were stalling on - creating our courses! Holly had been working on a course about grant writing and I wanted to create a course about how to create passive income with printables.

"Right!" I said. "Let's make a pact right now that we are both going to finish our courses THIS MONTH, or we owe the other person $100."

Pic: My course creation set-up

And so, now that we both had some skin in the game, we set to work overcoming the resistance. What is the resistance? It's that thorny feeling that makes you put off doing what you know you need to do. I had been wanting to create a course on how I make money selling printables on Etsy for a year and I kept putting it off. I can't really explain why. I think when it comes to creating and offering our best to the world from our zone of genius...we meet resistance. If you want to hear me talk about my course-creation resistance (amongst other entrepreneurial-journey-things), listen to my interview on the She Means Business Podcast with Carrie Green here. :) 

But we need to take that resistance as a sign that we are on the right track and that our best life is on the other side.

So, yes, I had to wrestle with myself at times and force myself to sit down and do the work, but the more I focused on it, the easier it became and by the end of the month, Holly and I were celebrating! We both achieved our goals...and didn't have to dish out $100 to the other person. :)
Pic: The view from where we held our mastermind meet up.

This experience gave me an idea for something that I want to carry forward: The $100 Mastermind. The concept is for at least two people to meet once a month and have a discussion around identifying the ONE THING that would make the BIGGEST DIFFERENCE if completed that month. It has to be 100% in your power to achieve it; you just have to overcome the resistance...or forfeit $100 to the other person. Maybe you should try it. It worked wonders for Holly and me. My course is now live and is doing extremely well!

Let me tell you, the most rewarding feeling has been knowing that I DID IT. I have the power to create something out of nothing that gives value to other people. I have the power to overcome the resistance. I have the power to be 10x more productive than I was the month before. 

Holly and I are meeting again this Saturday to set the next goal and $100 bet. :)

TAKE-AWAY QUESTIONS
  • What one goal would make the biggest difference in my career if I achieved it this month?
  • Who can lock arms with me in a $100 Mastermind so that I can break free of the resistance and lift my life to another level?

PERSONAL GROWTH

This month, I was pushed outside of my comfort zone by being interviewed on two huge online summits. One was for the launch of Carrie's book She Means Business! Her book includes my story as an entrepreneur so I've been having fun going along for the ride of being able to share how I went from working in a little cafe knowing hardly anything about the internet biz world to now owning a successful online business. People really loved the online summit - which Carrie actually called an Online Extravaganza! :) - and I got to be interviewed by Carrie along with author Gabrielle Bernstein, Carrie's sister Samantha from Little Green, and Nikki Elledge Brown from Naptime Empires. Wow!!!

Pic: A snapshot of the bonus page for the book.

Pic: Carrie's book!

TAKE-AWAY QUESTIONS:
  • How did I push myself outside of my comfort zone last month?
  • How am I going to push myself outside of my comfort zone just a little bit more this month? 

Well, to wrap up this review of February, I'd like to end with something that I shared with a friend who asked me if I ever had a job I disliked. Here's what I said:

Yes, when I was a waitress and then when I was operating a coffee shop. At the coffee shop, I starting to immerse myself in personal development. I listened to Jim Rohn, Les Brown, Tony Robbins. I particularly remember listening to the audiobook of Jack Canfield's book Success Principles. I got a subscription to audible.com and listened to personal development audio books whenever I was driving or not directly taking care of customers. 

I started to feel a lot better because I knew that where I was physically was temporary and I was outgrowing it mentally every day. I got excited and would spend my nights working on my personal projects whereas before I'd just come home and plop down to sleep. I've done everything from cleaning public restrooms to babysitting baby twins 24 hours a day, but I was always plugged into personal development and I was always working on my side passion/gig whenever I wasn't working to pay bills. And eventually, the side gig got big enough to where I was able to quit everything that I knew was temporary. 

10 years ago I quit waitressing. 8 years ago I quit janitorial work at my college (I also quit college). 4 years ago I quit running the coffee shop. 3 years ago I quit being a nanny. 2 years ago I quit cleaning other people's homes. And when I say "quit," I really mean "outgrew." There's a quote that says, "You pay your bills from 9-5. You make your fortune after 5." It's true! 

I absorb personal development more than ever. I was just listening to Les Brown this morning.
The days can be long, but the years are short. Never give up.

Creating Passive Income with Printables


Hi! I am so happy to announce that my course on how to make passive income with printables is now available! :)

In it, I share everything I've learned as I went from making barely any money on Etsy to making $2000 a month consistently - all with selling printables!

There's no such thing as overnight success, but there IS such a thing as shortening the learning curve and learning from people who are where we want to be in order to avoid months or years of mistakes.

This is the course I wish I had when I started. I am so pleased to be sharing it with you. 



January Review + Free Printable for February



You don't need to subscribe in order to access this printable, but if you DO want to be notified whenever I release another one, CLICK HERE.

January 2017 is already a closed chapter! I made sure to take the time to do a little review of the past month for myself and would like to share what I came up with.
:: MY JANUARY REVIEW ::

(pic: local sweet potato)
HEALTH: Established an exercise routine of walking for one hour between my home and a nearby coffee shop. This allows me to carve out time to listen to my favourite podcasts (right now I've been listening to a lot of Dave Ramsey for financial advice), drink more water, and get moving. I've also started being more intentional about eating local, organic fruit and vegetables.
RELATIONSHIPS: Intentionally spending more time with good, motivated people. I started a blogger get-together so that I can widen my network with like-minded women. 

(pic: the Coloring JoyBook. Take a closer look HERE.)
CAREER: I've created a new product - my Coloring JoyBook and was interviewed on the She Means Business podcast. The episode I recorded with Carrie isn't live yet, but you can subscribe to the podcast HERE
PERSONAL GROWTH: I've been listening to personal development audios and reading every day: Earl Nightingale, The Magic of Thinking Big, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, The Power is Within You by Louise Hay...
HAPPINESS: Taking time to do fun things like going out dancing on salsa night and getting dressed up to have a nice drink in a nice place with friends. I'm also digging deeper into my art hobbies by taking classes on the website SkillShare.

(pic: a mind-map of my day)
SIMPLIFY + ORGANIZE: I've started using Dave Ramsey's free budgeting system called Every Dollar to organize my personal budget and it really is the best system I've ever used and I've tried and spent money on so many other programs. Additionally, I got some work done on my car to get some things fixed - I don't like doing car stuff so this is a big deal. I also withdrew from a commitment as a board member on a non-profit that I can no longer help with. 
(pic: my desk in my studio apartment)
Whew. You know, if I didn't take the time to write this up for myself, then I would have felt like I didn't really do much in January because sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that progress isn't progress unless it's perfect. But that's not true. Progress is progress! 
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