Reflecting on 2022, Find Calm Here's Year in the Review
The end of the year sparks emotions about my experience. Like so many of my colleagues, I find it an extraordinary time to share celebrations about accomplishments and reflect on challenges I’ve overcome. In this article, I’ll share milestones and challenges I’ve experienced. I want to start by saying that as someone who’s worked to live more mindfully and develop a sense of purpose, I struggled with that this year.
New Beginnings
In January, I was focused on my business in its second year. At the beginning of the year, I put my business first and my challenges in the background. The word I chose for 2023 was abundance, and I hope it will bring financial and personal growth. The Find Calm Here Community was buzzing with new members, and I was on a “high” with so many clients that I was struggling with hiring support to help me navigate this burst of work. I spent the new year in Florida celebrating my work building this business and community.
My goals for the first quarter included creating a standard operating procedure and process for the business. I rebranded the Find Calm Here Podcast to the Community Strategy Podcast for better alignment with the listeners and audience I was working to build. I joined a mastermind group to grow this podcast and obtain sponsorships. At the time, I’d hired a podcast editor and had asked her if she was interested in stepping up her role to become a podcast producer. She agreed, and we began working together to create a process for the podcast production. At the time, I was getting so many clients that I needed to develop better ways to work with clients, and I spent much of my time building sales pages and redesigning my website to align with my new offerings.
I met someone at the very end of December with whom I started working at the beginning of January. At the time, I thought this person would be a valuable client, and I was thrilled to develop my business skills while learning from him. The experience quickly became traumatic. I went from thinking I’d be working with him to telling him we weren’t a good fit. I recognized this after the person told me to change everything about my business, Find Calm Here, including the name, logo, and mission statement.
He told me that if I wanted to be successful as a consultant and community builder, I’d have to change everything I was doing to focus on working with companies instead of individuals because “that is where the money is,” but what it meant to me was that he didn’t like who I was and therefore wanted to change me to fit his client work. That was when I walked away from a potential business opportunity that could’ve helped me reach my financial goals. Looking back at this experience, I learned I needed to stand up for myself. This was the first of many times I learned this the hard way.
From buzzing to a slow fade
My client inquiries dropped in February, and engagement in the Find Calm Here Community slowed down. I had just started to build a streamlined system for clients, and then in February, March, and April, there weren’t clients to use this new system I’d made. The Find Calm Here Community was turning into a space that was no longer bringing people back repeatedly, as it had in 2021. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong, so instead of pausing, I pushed. This was one of the biggest mistakes I made this year. I should have done what I recommend my clients do to see what the next step aligns with the business and community strategy BEFORE doing it.
I wasn’t sure where to go or how to market my services in my business. There started to be conflicts in the community I was showing up in and where I was getting most of my clients from. I spoke with the founder of the Community Leaders Institute, who invited me to fly to Memphis and meet others in the community industry. I was thrilled to represent my new business at a conference and meet many industry professionals I’d been networking with virtually over the past two years. Although I didn’t have clients then, I landed one client from that trip.
The Find Calm Here community strategy kept changing, and when I was at the conference, I met someone who introduced me to building a community around a live internet talk show. I signed up for the boot camp they offered to learn how to launch this within the Find Calm Here Community. My next community strategy was to build relationships while building the podcast’s audience. I was finally aligning what I was doing in my business with the community strategy. This is what I tell clients, but I didn’t see a path for me; it wasn’t clear until this new opportunity showed up; it felt like a significant next step. But the challenges of running a business without reoccurring income started hitting me at this point. My community members would show up when they could but didn’t have time for the community.
Summer Soul Searching
As I noticed this drop in community members and clients, I might need a better income to support myself. In the truest sense of the word, I was “spending like money was abundant,” which it wasn’t. I kept telling myself that when I spent money, it would come back to me tenfold. It didn’t.
As I started to think about different ways to earn a living, I wanted to get out of my house, which I’d spent so much time in over the past few months. I’m thankful that I started solo camping in 2021 and continued to do so in 2022. I managed to hike at 22 Pennsylvania State Parks. A goal I’d had for myself was to get back to nature and away from my laptop. You can read about my travel experiences on my blog, CaptureMyBestLife.com, and view my photography at DebSchell.com.
The Find Calm Here Community celebrated its 2nd anniversary in June with a wellness retreat. I’m proud of my work and thankful for the fantastic members who joined to share their experiences. The retreat was aired on the Community Strategy Podcast and can be found on the Find Calm Here blog.
During the summer, I was invited to speak at a few different virtual events and was starting to guest on podcasts. It felt good to step into my role as a community expert in a public way. I thought it was a matter of time until I’d get more clients in the door. I started meeting people in person more and quickly joined two local chambers of commerce organizations.
I discovered an opportunity to secure grant funds. I spoke with several people in Cumberland County and found a way to submit a grant application. I had never written a grant. While I wasn’t awarded the grant funds, it taught me much about what I can do. So did camping and hiking alone. I started rediscovering who I wanted to be but couldn’t pinpoint what this meant for my business, career, and life.
Discernment is required for growth to occur
By the fall of 2022, I’d learned some hard lessons about decision-making. In September, I announced that I would close the Find Calm Here Community and later decided to end the Community Strategy Podcast. The decisions were made because of a lack of support and energy. I simply no longer had the endurance to continue the way things were and needed to restructure my entire business.
Thankful for a partnership developed with a colleague, I secured a consistent revenue stream that allowed me to continue building the business instead of giving up and returning to a full-time corporate job, which I was working to avoid at all costs.
It took me all year to realize that I didn’t want a team and that the people I’d brought into my business didn’t have the mindset or drive that I did to do the work. It wasn’t their business, it was mine, and they just wanted to get paid. That’s when I realized community building takes a team of people; it is too much for just one person.
From community building to writing a book
The lessons I’ve learned from helping over 50 community builders have inspired me to write a book about community building. At first, the book would be a workbook based on the content I’d been creating inside the Find Calm Here Community. As I started to write, I realized it needed to include my experience as a blogger and creator for the past ten years.
Before starting to build communities, I had a photography business, and pre-pandemic, I had planned to exhibit more artwork, which I’d done from 2012 – 2018. I had stopped displaying because I was struggling with selling artwork. After taking time off, I realized I enjoyed exhibiting my artwork and wanted to start sharing my photography from my recent traveling. In 2019, I traveled to Mexico for the first time, returned to Colorado, and took my mother to the Grand Canyon.
In 2020, I was gearing up to host an artist reception for my most recent client, a hotel in Camp Hill, previously the Radisson, and now Penn Harris Hotel. The week before the shutdown, I went to the convention center and photographed my artwork, which still hangs there today. Since I shifted to community building that year, I decided to close my photography business to focus on this new endeavor. The challenge of finances returned when I realized how much publishing a book would cost, spurring me to launch a crowdfunding campaign.
Yet another thing I would need to learn. The recession was hitting pretty hard at this point, and I realized that the events of the world gave me the impression that I wouldn’t be able to raise money for the book. But I forged on anyway and am proud to say I’ve done a crowdfunding campaign. Looking back, I wouldn’t recommend anyone doing a campaign of this sort during a recession. On a positive note, I did manage to raise almost $3,400 over four months through marketing on social media, sharing this project with my friends and family, and promoting it on the Community Strategy Podcast.
Being so distracted by money this year, especially in the last few months, I’d put off writing the book. Finally, in November, on a call with a person I’d met in an online community I joined, she suggested I “write” and not think about anything else. That’s when I removed everything from the whiteboard in my office. It now only has ONE WORD: Write. As I close out 2022 and look toward my next business phase, I’m excited to share that I’ll be doing things differently.
What’s next for Find Calm Here?
As I’ve worked with clients, I know so many people struggle with their services and how to express what it means to work with them. I learned that I am great at business development. This will be the focus of my work in 2023, with the YouMap® coaching certification I completed this year, and I intend to find more Ease and joy every day.
In addition to coaching, I became a Laughter Yoga Leader and will be a published author in mid-2023. The book designer signed the contract, and I’m working on self-publishing the Creator to Community Builder book. Closing this year, I’m grateful for every human I interacted with because each interaction was personal, and some significant conversations came from the conversations. In 2023, I’ll be connecting with more people in person, and I’m excited to announce that I’ve booked my first photography gallery show for March of 2023 at the New Cumberland Library. I’m thankful to return to my true passion and showcase my travel photographs.
The Community Strategy Podcast’s final episode, 100 Goes LIVE, is on Sunday, December 25th, and the last day for the crowdfunding campaign is December 31st. My word for 2023 is Ease. I intend to make my experience and those around me easier in 2023.
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