This blog is going to be just a little bit different. Instead of my normal coaching blog, this is going to be a little bit more behind-the-scenes, kinda shedding some light on where I’m at, the process of building my YouTube channel, and for those of you that have noticed, why I have been slowing down on both my blog and video creation and what my plans are in the future for my channel.

Watch here or read below.

MY HUMBLE BEGINNINGS WITH YOUTUBE

I have been building my Youtube channel for about seven months, six months worth of content, and there’s a few months before that where I was just learning the ropes, doing my research, and getting everything ready to go so that I could start. I started building the channel at the beginning of September with two videos a week (and two blogs a week), minus about five weeks in the middle of that over the holidays and as I was launching my website.

(If you haven’t had a chance to go through the site yet, check it out because it’s beautiful, and I can take very little credit for that. That was all Neverland Studio and Positively Creative Incwho designed and built this out.)

I made the decision to start building a YouTube channel as a primary means of connecting with my audience in June of 2018. There was a couple of months of just learning and getting ready before I started launching content.

To be honest, I had no idea what it was going to take to build a channel.

This is a little embarrassing, but my goal going into it was that I would launch the beginning of September, and by September of this year, my goal was 100,000 subscribers. Yeah, it’s the beginning of April. I’m sitting right around 2,000 right now.

Y’all, it’s harder than it looks.

I’ve been doing a couple of different strategies, both keyword optimization and also recommended video optimization just in the past month experimenting with them. It’s way harder than I expected, and what I really didn’t expect was the amount of time and energy that goes into using YouTube as your main social media outlet or your main content outlet.

I massively underestimated the amount of time it would take me to build a channel as well as just how difficult it actually is to get your videos out in front of the right people.

YouTube in and of itself could be a full-time job. And yet, I already run a multiple six-figure business.

I have private customers that I’m supporting. I have a team of essential oil educators that I’m training, coaching, and supporting. I have coaching clients that I am working with. At the same time, I am trying to create, develop, and launch a course around my belief breakthrough work all while trying to do a really, really good job on YouTube.

AND SERIOUSLY, THANK YOU

I have to say, first of all, for those of you that have found me so far and that are watching and liking and commenting and engaging (and of course reading these blogs), THANK YOU SO MUCH, because your words of encouragement seriously mean the world to me.

This is really challenging work, especially when you’re putting your all into it but you haven’t quite cracked the nut on how to really make it successful and how to get yourself out there.

I’ve absolutely loved every single one of you that are tagging along through this journey. Thank you so much because every time you share, every time you comment, every time you give me feedback saying, “Your channel’s so amazing. Why don’t you have more subscribers?” it just makes me feel so good.

Legit, THANK YOU for that encouragement.

WHY I CHOSE YOUTUBE IN THE FIRST PLACE

I chose YouTube because I love video. I love being on video. I think that my personality and my message comes through much better on video.

I also love the fact that it’s a search engine. When people are actually looking for me, they can find me, but, not only that, not only is it a search engine, YouTube actually recommends content to people as well.

It really makes sense to me on a business standpoint, but, again, what I didn’t realize was the amount of time and effort that goes into it.

BUT HERE’S WHY I’M SLOWING DOWN

Now, the reason that I have been slowing down my own goals, which let me just say was painful, I’m a very goal-oriented person, and I used to set a lot of goals and not keep them. For me to choose to slow down a goal, it really felt a lot like breaking a promise to myself, and I really had to do a lot of mindset work and a lot of processing around just taking the pressure off of myself because, “Hi, my name is Tara, and I’m a workaholic,” but it was a necessary decision because of so many things going on.

It finally came to a head, and I had one of my coaches talk me through this and point out all of the logical reasons why slowing down from two videos a week to one video a week is not that big of a deal.

I’m sure you’re reading this thinking, “Duh. It’s not that big of a deal,” but when you have something stuck in your head (I’m sure you guys all have been there), sometimes things just seem a lot bigger when you’re in the thick of them than when you can kinda see them through someone else’s perspective.

This is why I love working with my coaches and why my clients love working with me because we can’t see our own blind spots right?

We have so much going on right now. The biggest piece of the puzzle for me is my own health. I don’t talk about this a lot, but I actually live with a disability and kind of teetering on autoimmune disorders that my functional medicine team is helping me to try to mitigate and steer away from. Ultimately, I live with chronic pain, chronic inflammation, and chronic fatigue. I will have good days, and I will have bad days.

The amount of work that I put on my plate and the amount of pressure that I put on my heart, it really is going to determine how I’m feeling and where my stress levels are at or, obviously, where my mind is going to be and where my body is going to be. When I chose to start slowing down, the biggest piece of it was just choosing to honor my body and the pace that I’m going at and adjusting my goals accordingly.

I HAVE A REALLY BIG VISION FOR WHAT I WANT TO BE DOING IN THIS LIFETIME AND WITH THIS WORK.

It’s huge, y‘all, but I really have to trust the process and understand that it doesn’t have to happen in a certain amount of time, and I need to be in a good place, both physically, mentally, and emotionally, in order to do this work.

My habits, the things that I get to work on, really revolve around those types of things.

So this past year of relaunching and really taking it in this new direction, I have gotten to do so much of my own belief breakthrough work, so much work on my health, on just foundational pieces in our life.

Every single thing in our life has been brought into light, because when you set a really big vision or when you commit to a really big vision, everything that is going to influence that vision has to be adjusted.

I feel like the universe was like, “All right, girl. Are you ready for this? Here you go,” and just plopped it all on my plate.

So literally, every relationship, every self-care habit, every health goal, our finances, our day to day schedules, everything is being fine-tuned and brought into this light so that we can do this work. But again, it’s a lot of work.

On top of all of that, we’ve gone through a lot of things in the past six months, from my mom’s surgery and going out there for her, to some health issues and scares that we had come up that we’re not quite ready to talk about yet, to our son moving out, to now making a huge big (one of the biggest decisions of our life) to leave our now grown son in Florida and move back to our hometown of Las Vegas to be with family whose health is suffering.

EMBRACING SLOWING DOWN

Basically, I had all of these things happen all at once, and I am deliberating in the back of my mind this goal that I had set for myself and this deep desire that I have to do the work that I’m doing to the fullest of my capacity with all of these foundational pieces that need to be addressed, with these major life changes.

It was a painful aha moment, and it was a slow aha moment.

You know, aha moments usually are like light bulb. This one was like dimmer switch.

I just didn’t want to see it, you guys. It took me so long to admit that I get to slow down. I get to choose a different pace. I get to trust the process, and I get to trust that everything is still happening according to the way that it should happen.

I am not sacrificing anything. I’m not putting off my vision. I am not NOT doing it. I’m just focusing on some other things while I do it.

So big ego hit to me, but let me tell you, when you make a pros and cons list and the only cons are it might slow you down a little bit (but it might not because you’re going to have more time to actually promote what you’re creating) and then the only other con is, “But I don’t want to. I set my goals. I don’t want to not do it.” It was just an ego thing.

Yes, not all decisions are clear. Not all decisions are easy, but most of the time, not always, but most of the time, it’s more because of our own resistance and less because of the circumstances. Except for making the choice to make that move; that was seriously so challenging, no clarity.

In fact, I’m going to be making a blog probably right after this one, but you might not see it for a couple of weeks, on how to make a big decision like that when you are legit stuck between a rock and a hard place and none of your options are ideal, but you are at a crossroads and have to make that choice.

ANYWAY, THIS WAS A LONG, MEANDERING BLOG TO SHOW A LITTLE BIT OF WHAT THIS PROCESS HAS BEEN LIKE OVER THE PAST  7 MONTHS, AND WHAT’S TO COME AND MY PROCESS THROUGH IT.

WHAT ABOUT YOU, BOSS LADY?

I hope this was helpful. If you guys have questions or you’d like to see more things like this, let me know if things like this would be useful or if you’d like to see more like it or if you have other questions that I can maybe answer in the comments or in another blog.

What “failures” have you faced down and overcome? (Or which are you facing now?)

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