Prioritizing Your Peace: Why Bookkeeping is Important with Megan Yelaney

Megan is a marketing expert, business-coaching extraordinaire, and all-around fantastic human being. She’s the host of the #PrettyAwkward Entrepreneur Podcast, which is for, according to her, “the online entrepreneur who wants to build a successful & impactful business that lights them up.” Megan has a ridiculous knack for helping people find their own personal brand and their “unique coach approach.” She is fun, fabulous, and unapologetically herself, and we all have a lot to learn from her—not just why bookkeeping is important, but so much more!

Megan: Thanks, Katie! So, my story starts in 2012, which is when I really got into the business space. But 2014 was when I began to realize that though I’d been at it for a bit, people around me were actually making real money from their work, and I just…wasn’t. Something was missing. I went to my first event, which made me realize that I was sitting on a gold mine. At the time, I was working several jobs while pursuing a career in film, TV and theater. I was cocktail waitressing and doing background work on film and television. And while I’ve loved performing my whole life, that starving artist life just wasn’t working anymore. I didn’t want to stop performing, but I didn’t want to have to rely on that for my income. It was very stressful, and it took the joy from it. So I saw an opportunity with business and decided to run with it. After about a year and a half, I was able to fully quit all of those other side jobs for my network marketing business. But that wasn’t the end of the story.

 

Once I’d been full time for about two years, I started to feel…bored. Anyone who's been in network marketing can attest, it feels very robotic! You're selling the same products over and over, and after a while, I no longer felt challenged by it. I needed something more.

 

At that point, I’d hired coaches myself and been in group programs and took courses, so I was familiar with that world. On top of that, I’d gotten my degree in marketing. That side of business was what I went to school for; I had all of this knowledge and experience, but I couldn’t use it. I was missing out on so much, and it was very limiting.

 

In the end of 2016, my husband actually quit his full-time New York City insurance job, so it was already pretty scary for us to go all-in on his business, and there I was, wanting to do the same. I had to tell him that I wanted to stop doing what I was doing—which was bringing in very consistent income—and moving on to starting my own business. It was a lot of pressure all at once. But once I decided to go all-in on my own business outside of network marketing, in about six months, I replaced that income. Once I’d done that, I quickly realized I was even though I loved helping people in the health and wellness industry (I started out with a health coaching business, actually!), I was really meant to do more business-mindset coaching. And that's what I've been doing in some way, shape or form since 2017.

 

In the last year and a half, I feel like I've really hit my stride. I totally redid my business model, and it’s just kept growing. I wouldn't say my success happened too quickly, because it was many years in the making, but I did have a really quick increase in income. And with that increase came more expenses, more things to worry about, and more of a need for bookkeeping! Back to you, Katie.