A virtual conference — I’m presenting at a virtual conference! It’s my first one and I am super nervous-excited. (Yes, nervous-excited — they’re the same thing anyway aren’t they?)

Friday and Saturday, yogipreneur maven Racheal Cook is presenting Branding from the Inside Out as part of the From Yogi to Yogipreneur Virtual Conference series. My workshop is on Finding Confidence in Your Voice, or how to develop your niche a teacher, healer and entrepreneur so you can have a successful, profitable business and career.

When I originally applied to present, I wasn’t very confident my proposal would be accepted. After all, what do I know about branding and marketing a yoga business?

I’ve applied to present at many many conferences, workshops, and events in the past year, only to hear “thanks but no thanks, not this time. We’ve just received so many amazing applications this year. It was hard to choose.”  

Besides, I’ve been teaching yoga for 8 years now, and left my full-time office job to open my own studio in 2008, only to close it 5 years later in 2013, tens of thousands of dollars in debt and completely unsure of what to do next. When I was asked to be a part of this conference, I immediately thought “oh no… what if they find out I failed as a yoga studio owner?!”

I had to make some tea, take a few deep breaths, sit my brain down and remind it that we’ve been over this before. 5 years in business is not a failure — it’s more like 5 years of real life business school. My debt is nothing different than student loan debt.

Furthermore — here’s the ah-ha — I could USE this “failure” story as the jumping off point of this training to help other aspiring yogipreneurs be more strategically, mentally and emotionally prepared and avoid some of the same “rose colored glasses” mistakes I made early on.

Never have I needed to heed my own advice “find confidence in your voice,” more. Even the verb “find” points to a process, a challenge, a quest, obstacles and in the end, hopefully, success!

Learn more about the conference here! Registration closes Thursday 3/11/15 at midnight.

Learn more about my story and how you can differentiate yourself in the marketplace (regardless of what industry you’re in) in my guest blog post at The Yogipreneur!