Jasmine Womack worked in education as a literature teacher for over 10 years but she didn’t want to be a teacher forever. Jasmine’s goal was to one day leave the classroom and become an academic coach, and eventually, an assistant principal.
But when she wrote and released a book at the top of her 11th year of teaching, things started to shift for her. She realized that she had created a product and if she could learn how to effectively brand herself, market, and sell it, she had the power to create the income she wanted to make.
Virtual Workshops
To fill her knowledge gap she turned to free virtual workshops. “I found them so valuable that I wanted to create my own,” she says. “I turned my book into a 21-day workshop that was called the Get Your HOUSE In Order Challenge and 400 people registered in about two weeks. I was floored.”
The challenge was a huge success. A few months later, people started asking her to host it again. She did. But this time, she charged a $10 fee for it. 30 people registered. She made $300 from something she’d already created and didn’t have to leave her house.
Jasmine realized she was on to something. However, she wasn’t ready to walk away from teaching— she enjoyed her career. That is until she experienced workplace harassment from her evaluating supervisor a year later.
Jasmine says she knew at that time that she had some serious decisions to make, but one thing that comforted her was that she had something to fall back on. In her side hustle, which eventually evolved to executive coaching and writing consultancy, she had perfected a system. She knew how to get clients, ensure results, and obtain quarterly cycles, and she had the work ethic to maintain it all. A year in, she was already making close to five figures per month on top of her teaching salary.
“That year ended up being my last year [in teaching] and it was one of the toughest decisions I made. I didn’t want to leave the way I was leaving – upset, angry, slightly bitter, and feeling like I was done wrong. But two months after the school year ended, I finally crossed the five-figure per month milestone and it was no looking back.”
How Jasmine Womack Transitioned
While Jasmine already had a working system, an entrepreneur’s mindset, and a strong work ethic before stepping into it full-time, the transition period wasn’t flawless. She still had to learn how to set a daily schedule, stay on schedule, and eliminate distractions.
“The biggest lesson came when I felt like I could do things when and how I wanted and as a result, I found myself struggling to balance [my] kids, who were at home during summer break, and staying up all night to work because I wasted the morning. It was this that helped me understand that the same systems and schedules in my career were established for a reason – and that if I wanted to continue to have success, I needed to establish these same daily routines and schedules in my business.”
Jamine’s Resillience
With that realization, Jasmine committed to doing what she needed to keep moving forward.
When I ask her to share some tips for setting goals, a schedule, and staying on task for first-time entrepreneurs she says, “Plan backwards. Determine the goals you want to reach by the end of the year. To accomplish the annual goal, understand the metrics you need to meet quarterly, then monthly (so you can reach the quarterly goals), then weekly (so you can hit the monthly goals), and then daily (to help you reach your weekly goal). Now, you know what you need to do each day, week, month, and quarter so that you can reach your goal by the end of the year.”
She also recommends time blocking your calendar. She suggests putting everything in your life and business on your calendar to ensure you are making time for it. Jasmine Womack includes vacations, content planning, and time off in hers.
Challenges & Success
“Success is filled with mountains and valleys,” Jasmine says when the conversation shifts.
While on the outside it may seem like her entrepreneurial journey didn’t have any major hiccups, she assures me that she had her fair share of challenges although she makes it a point not to complain.
One of the biggest challenges she says she had to overcome was herself. “Imposter Syndrome,” she says. “Online is a smokescreen and if you are not careful, you will find yourself looking at other people’s curated content and at times feeling like you don’t measure up. I’ve felt like this before, and even felt as if I wasn’t ‘doing enough’ but I had to quickly self-check. I committed to focusing on my stuff more than anyone else’s. I don’t look at other people, especially others in my industry.”
Work-Life Balance
Making time for her family and her health also got tricky while scaling a quickly growing business. “There was a point in time where my kids complained about how much I was on my phone and my husband felt like I compromised our marriage for the sake of building a business. And then there was my health, I gained over 40 lbs, primarily from dealing with the stress. I fixed this by having set starting and stop working times, communicating with my family if I had to work outside of those designated work periods, and outsourcing home responsibilities (cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping).”
When it comes to more nitty-gritty business challenges like learning about messaging, standing out above others in her industry, and pricing her products and services, she says those challenges don’t disappear on their own. As a coach herself, she believes in coaching and has hired coaches to help her with her messaging, and mindset around pricing in particular when she gets stuck.
Final Words
Jasmine’s final words for others looking to follow in her footsteps are: “Set your goal, pray about it, and go after it with all your heart. Don’t take your eye off the goal.”
Jasmine provides full step-by-step strategies and systems to her clients so they can duplicate her results with writing, launching, marketing, branding, and sales strategies.
If you’re trying to grow a business Join her text community and get free access to the Start Your Business Bundle.
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Source: Baucemagazine.com
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