We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kamila Gornia. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kamila below.

Kamila, appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

I started my business 10 years ago. Before that I had other side hustles that I was doing on the side in addition to working in a 9 to 5 job or being in college. I think everything worked out the way it was supposed to. The first few years of my business I was still learning a lot, I wasn’t very good at sales and I needed to learn all the “businessy” skills that I was missing from my previous side hustles. Honestly you could have so much life and career experience and it’s still probably not going to be enough for you to feel fully ready to jump into entrepreneurship. You don’t really know what to expect as a business owner until you’re actually owning a business.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started my coaching business over 10 years ago now after having tried a few different side hustles. The funny thing is I didn’t really expect to be an entrepreneur, even though all the actions I took up until that point were very entrepreneurial. I’ve been doing online marketing since 2002, then started a photography business in 2008 that I grew through the online marketing channels, then I started a food blog in 2012 that I ended up growing into a hundred thousand monthly readership website that I ended up selling a few years later, so starting to talk about marketing felt like a natural Next Step. I had already been working in a marketing agency for about a year and a half at that point after graduating college and I wanted to expand my skill set and start helping people. I’ve always been that type of person that when I do something I want to share with others how I do it and what I’m learning so coaching and education online has been a natural fit for me. Initially I was simply talking about the things I knew which was mainly audience building, social media, contact marketing and that worked well for a while, but as time went on there was more competition coming into the industry and I needed to expand my skill set and really start to get even better at marketing myself and identifying what makes me different. The biggest differentiating factor for me now is my story. After having been in business as a coach for about 3 to 4 years I ended up burning out because of everything I was taught by all the other experts that I was learning from. I really loved learning from those experts because they brought me to where I was at that point which was making six figures a year, however it also wasn’t a sustainable model. I was then over the next few years I had to find a better way to connect with my audience and sell my services to them without using the strategies that didn’t feel aligned with my health and values. And that’s what I do now. I am the coach that helps others to sell without sales calls, to grow an audience without posting on social media, and to build true connections and a long-lasting brand what’s sustainable marketing and sales systems.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’m an immigrant, and as immigrants we have always been told that we have to earn our success. So in the first few years of my business I really struggled around making my business feel easier. I actually unconsciously will continue choosing the road that felt harder because it felt like I needed to struggle and I needed to work really hard in order to deserve making money. In fact for a little while I tried to position myself as a lifestyle coach and help people with things that I really didn’t feel like I enjoyed doing. Because I felt like marketing coaching and Consulting was just too easy and that everyone would know it. It took me a little while for me to embrace the fact that business doesn’t have to be hard and that I can choose the road of least resistance. As an immigrant it was difficult to embrace that knowing that my parents have had to work so hard to get to where they are and it almost felt like cheating. And I see that a lot of other people are struggling with the same thing so this is always the first thing I look at when I work with clients, How are they making it harder than it has to be. Is there an easier solution or a simpler solution they can go with that will get them to their outcome.

Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?

My second business was a health food blog, I started that in 2012 and I was posting recipes and fitness and health advice online. I was making money through ad placements and brand sponsorships, this is before the age of the influencer where brand deals were popular. That business was making me just a few extra $1,000 a month, nothing crazy, but when I was ready to go all in on my coaching business because it’s what felt more exciting to me I decided that I needed to let go of all the other side hustles. And this was one of them. However instead of just letting it go and letting it die, I figured why not try to sell it and see what I can do. So what I ended up doing is listing it on a on a website that allows you to sell your own websites and businesses, it’s called Flippa.com. I had it listed there for a while but it was actually quite challenging for people to be interested mainly because the blog was connected to my Persona. And that was the biggest lesson I learned is if you are wanting to sell your business one day, being able to set it up in a way where it doesn’t rely on you and your persona it’s going to be easier for people to then sell it. There are a lot of things that were great about that business, but there are a lot of things that were potentially risky for a buyer. After talking to several different people I finally was able to find a buyer, I didn’t end up making a whole lot of money from that sale I only made maybe 3 months worth of Revenue, but because it was the best deal I got and because it felt so risky for the buyer it was the best I could do and I was truly ready to get rid of it and focus on my coaching business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.heartbehindhustle.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/heartbehindhustle
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@heartbehindhustle