Who is Gina? And Why Do You Care?

Two years after my husband and I uprooted our lives and moved cross country, I found myself closing a big chapter of my life. Failure, pain and crippling fear were as present in my day as my morning coffee. My business wasn’t working, debt was piling up and change needed to happen. I was working 2-4 part-time and temp jobs at any given time while still trying to save my business.

These soul sucking and back breaking jobs weren’t helping much. Aside from bills piling up, dealing with the pain of losing another business, the crushing feeling of failure was stronger than ever before. Yes, I failed again. My wonderful yet tired husband had the burden of being the only breadwinner. And here I was 43 having to reinvent myself in a new state. It was a disgusting feeling. 20 years in one industry… Now what?

Yes, I failed, but…

Before realizing my holistic health business (Vibrant Sexy Health) was at the brink of extinction, I did an Online Summit. You know those educational online “telesummits” where you sign up to learn from experts in your field of interest? One of those. No, it wasn’t enough to save my biz, but it was successful. I did all the back end work myself with zero experience on all the tech behind it and man that was hard.

But why am I telling you this? This “online summit” thing was the start of it all. The start behind today’s Gina. One of the side hustle jobs I’d started, was helping other entrepreneurs with their summits, their videos and their email marketing. The difference between this side hustle and those other part-time and temp jobs? I was loving this gig and I was good at it! The answer, I shift my focus and go all in as a marketing virtual assistant.

Do you ever overcompensate? For lost time, for failed attempts, regrets….

Though things were looking up, I was trying to do too much at once. Learn every platform there is, perfect my copywriting skills, network to market myself, deliver high quality client work, and everything else a new business requires you to do. Overcompensate much? Yeah! I quickly found myself working crazy hours, spending entirely too much time writing proposals and giving away too much free advice. Without being able to invest in the business either by outsourcing or finding a way to increase my rates this wasn’t going to work either.

Fortunately I didn’t come into this new passion with zero marketing experience. After 20 years of being a serial entrepreneur in the fitness and health industry, I knew a thing or two about marketing and sales. As a former gym owner way before Facebook ads and Google analytics were a thing, I had to master the art of direct response marketing and developed my own “copywriting” gene (one of my favorite power tools today).

I realized to win at this new game, I needed to tap into all my successes and loses (ouch). I needed strategy. And so did my clients! The solution; create a highly customized Done-4-You Marketing Systems program to meet businesses exactly where they’re at and only provide them the strategies that yield the biggest return on their investment.

New problem; new solution

It was a natural progression for me to attract and work with entrepreneurs and coaches in the wellness and holistic health industry. I knew their language and wholeheartedly understood their pain of not attracting enough or the right clients. The new problem, my ideal client was in a very similar position I was when I started this business, they didn’t have the funds to afford my highly customized service. The second problem, these clients lacked the foundation of having a strong, compelling marketing message. Now I needed to help them help themselves while figuring out a way to still get paid and take care of myself.

My new plan; simplify! Help my clients craft irresistible marketing messages that will attract more clients to them. Create a simpler version of my customized service that focuses on providing business with only what they need for their marketing at any given time. I created my Marketing Roadmap Intensive an affordable and super simple way to simplify marketing for my clients. What happened next, I doubled my income as a marketing strategist and copywriter, and I’m now ready to scale my business. It didn’t happen overnight and I worked my booty off marketing it, but it happened.

Again, why do you care? Because I did it and you can too!

Getting up after failed businesses, reinventing myself in my 40s, gaining an unstoppable confidence in my current path and the lessons learned in the past five years is all priceless. But that doesn’t compare to being able to impact the lives of many. My clients, most of them in the business of healing bodies and empowering lives, now have the means to reach more people, impact more lives and make their mark. How cool is that?

What is your story? What can you take from mine? How can you make “it” happen for you?