Case Study: denise wilbanks
Build Your Online Business with the Power of Community
One voice – the right voice – speaking into your business can be a powerful force for growth.
With all the noise online, and all the gurus teaching you how to find success, sometimes it’s hard to decipher what direction is best.
This was Denise Wilbanks’ problem. She bought dozens of online courses and software that online business gurus convinced her would move her business forward. BUT… no matter what she did, her business wasn’t making any money for her.
“I was literally DIYing everything myself, and I was just so tired and completely burnt out of being pulled in so many different directions. I was always left with gathering all these different strategies from all these different resources, but then I was left trying to integrate all of those individual methods into some kind of cohesive strategy.
It sort of felt like I was trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, but instead of using the pieces from one box, it was like I was taking 10 different jigsaw puzzles, and from each box, I was pulling pieces and then trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle – so you can imagine what the result looked like – nothing fit together. It was just not working. It was totally frustrating.”
Denise Wilbanks focuses on simple living and minimalist lifestyle coaching through her business, This is My Everybody. She helps women to simplify their life, their home, and their business.
The problem Denise ran into was that even though these experts knew what they were talking about, they didn’t know her or her unique situation – so their advice was completely out of touch with her needs and distracted her from what she really needed to focus on.
“I was just so literally hungry for someone to clearly and simply mentor me in building the successful business that I knew I was capable of creating. I wasn't afraid of the hard work, but as I was growing my business and creating an overall business strategy, I wanted to be able to lay a foundation from element to element, naturally and organically. I sort of felt like I was looking for a unicorn.”
That’s when Denise discovered Startup Society, and she realized the membership WAS the unicorn she had been looking for all along – personalized feedback and guidance from someone who understood the unique challenges she was facing to grow her business.
“Hands down, the community of Startup Society was the thing that surprised me the most of all, along with those monthly, weekly, even daily support options that you have within Startup Society.”
Good advice is informed and tailored. It comes from someone with relevant experience and is based on the individual’s situation and unique challenges.
Finding advice like this starts with finding the right people – people who have been in your place and navigated to your desired destination. You can also get helpful feedback from people who fully understand your situation, even if they don’t have a lot of personal experience or aren’t any further along than you. And, of course, the very best type of advice comes from someone who fills both of these roles – understanding the subject matter AND your situation.
That’s what Startup Society did for Denise. She gained a community of other entrepreneurs who can give her helpful feedback because they fully understand her situation, and she also receives personalized advice from Gillian and her success coaches because they understand both her business and her needs.
If I had never joined Startup Society (this is a dark part of the conversation because I hate to even think about it, honestly), I believe I would be considering just throwing in the towel on building my business completely. And I know that what I do has great value for an audience out there that it could help them improve their lives.
So basically, by me thinking that if I'd not joined Startup Society, if I'd gotten to the point that I was throwing in the towel on my business, I would be saying NO to myself: ‘Denise, you can't do the work that you love to do,’ AND I would also be saying NO to all of those people out there: ‘I'm sorry, you can't have that great value that I can offer you.’ … all because my business was not working as a business.”
Denise says she doesn’t want anyone else to make the same mistakes she did:
… Spending a full year creating free content in a niche she was passionate about with no real business plan
… Coasting on the hope that eventually it would catch on
… Waiting to see what happened before getting the personalized help she desperately needed.
“Then I joined Startup Society, and I began to learn the principles of what it means to create a successful online business, element by element. This helped me to refine that previous business idea I had into the new business that I now offer, which is still fueled by that same passion, but it now has a strategic business plan that partners with it, which serves both to support my audience and me as a business owner. And, with that balance, my business became a business! It all started with my decision to join Startup Society.”
Denise continues to be impressed by the care Gillian and her team put into enhancing the Startup Success curriculum and community experience.
“Even at this high quality, they're looking at, ‘How can I take it even higher?’ I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I hear within our weekly co-working sessions, the impact this level of high-quality community experience has on building our businesses and the experience we have often isolated as online entrepreneurs alone in an office most of the time.”