From homemaker to four figure indie hacker
A mum of two, I have been a homemaker most of my life. I always wanted to be a 'working girl,' to be able to do something on my own, earn, and have an identity, but it never happened.
I have always been interested in interior design and wanted to pursue it as a career, but I am not a trained designer. It seemed impossible to start an independent practice as an interior designer.
Then sometime in 2016-2017, I chanced upon an opportunity, and I grabbed it. I came across two new world views that helped me to get started and transform my life -
- Discovering a unique niche
- Leverage the power of Affirmations
Discovering a unique niche
The concept: Find a business opportunity at the intersection of your interests, skills, and market need. Bring together seemingly unrelated interests and skills together.
Having realized that I would not be able to establish myself as an interior designer, I set out to discover a niche where I could use my design skills. I realized that interior designers are not good with gardening and partner with landscapers for their projects. On the other hand, landscapers are neither skilled in creating aesthetically appealing gardens nor accept small projects.
At the same time, I observed the advent of many urban gardening products for small spaces on Amazon.
With these insights, I designed a unique offering that turned out to be a perfect vehicle for my entrepreneurship journey.
I came up with an end-to-end 'designer balcony gardens' service, from design to set up to maintenance.
I quickly learned the science of gardening and started approaching people. The first few orders came from my friends and acquaintances. I designed tiny spaces in metropolitan areas and transformed them into pleasant gardens. The unit economy was incredible, and so was word of mouth. Gradually project size and volume increased, and in two years, the business became a full-service online design cum e-commerce company.
Leverage the power of Affirmations
Affirmations are positive statements about our dreams and goals. Affirmations help us achieve our goals when we repeat them every day.
I have used the power of affirmations to lose weight, become fit and strong, grow my business and learn skills that I never dreamed of being able to do.
However, at first, I didn't receive any benefit from affirmations and thought of them as dogmatic. When I understood that affirmations are part of a larger equation, I started seeing the results.
You see, merely repeating affirmations don't produce any results. But if we repeat affirmations with feelings and take actions, results manifest in no time.
Thus,
Affirmation + Feelings + Actions = Results
I religiously repeated my affirmations multiple times a day, stayed in the feeling of triumph as much as possible, and relentlessly took action.
Things fell in place, my design business grew, and I met some lovely clients, true gems of people who loved my work.
And when the covid pandemic hit, and we had to shut down the gardening business, I used affirmations to attract consulting clients.
Having experienced the power of affirmations and bounced back to comfortable four figures, I have recently made Affirmations Flow, a free chrome extension that lets you add custom affirmations and then shuffle plays them on the chrome new tab all day.
I would love to get your feedback on it. Set it up, add your affirmations and develop unwavering focus on your goals.
And if you are not sure how to create affirmations, here are a few tips to get you started -
- Write down all your goals.
- For each goal, create one affirmation.
- Write positive affirmations as if you are achieving your goals each day. For example - "I am growing my business every day."
- Do not use negative words. Instead of saying "I don't waste time," say "I use my time efficiently."
- Write in the present tense, do not write in the future tense. Instead of writing "I will earn $10000 in July", say "I am earning $10000". Feel as if good things are already happening
That's all.
All the best!
