SDH 160: Building a Business That Fulfills You with Tonya Dalton, founder of inkWELL Press
What are the things in life that give you fulfillment? Passion? Could you meld this into a business or a product? Where and when do you begin to connect these dots?
Tonya Dalton, found her passions in life were teaching, organizing and empowering business owners and other women. This inspired her to create inkWELL Press, a company centered around productivity, designed to help and educate women to prioritize; set up an organizational flow and system that works the best for their lives. InkWell Press uses its products such as weekly planners, meal planners, organizational notepads and other items to help with productivity, education and organization. They even have videos on how to streamline customer's organizational process on their website!
Tonya found, the majority of the time, the most organized people aren't actually productive and use organization as a procrastination technique. With inkWELL Press, she hoped women and female business owners could reach productivity first and have organization follow naturally.
However, finding her passions didn't come easily. It took hours of "Brain Dump"and "Mind Mapping" exercises to narrow down the things that fulfilled her. She discovered her greatest fulfillments came from her time as a former teacher and investment banker, and through her organizational exercises she figured out how to link them to create a business and product, as well as a mission statement for her brand.
Once she was able to develop an overall message and direction for her brand, she created an entire roadmap of how to get her business off the ground. She set up her business development plan in mini milestones, with each end goal representing hurdles that she would have to overcome, and detailed how she would solve them, with a timeline for when they needed to be accomplished.
One of her biggest milestones was how to budget her family's finances, survive six months without an income as her and her husband shut down their jewelry business and developed inkWELL Press. But because they knew they were chasing her big dream and ultimate purpose, they found saying no to the little splurges in life was challenging, but easy when they looked toward the big picture.
They developed a marketing and advertising strategy on Facebook with lead magnets to find their target consumer and generate excitement around their brand. By giving out free downloads of the it productivity and organizational videos and programs in exchange for emails, as well as teasers on the product, they launched with 500 orders!
Learn more about what made Tonya want to be an entrepreneur and her joint journey with her husband going into business for themselves!
In this episode you will...
Know how to gain control of your life and priorities by starting a business
Find out when and how to walk away from a business endeavor when passion is absent
Figure out your action plan in getting your business off the ground
Learn how to find your business's mission statement
Understand how to budget your income while starting your business
Begin to prioritize your hurdles and solve them one at a time
INSIGHTS
"When you're figuring out your end, that's where you start. Because when I decided what my personal mission statement was, I built on that to create the mission behind Inkwell Press...I already knew it needed to be tied to something that made me feel fulfilled and that I would be passionate about" -Tonya Dalton
"Every time you say 'yes' you're saying 'no' to something else. My 'yes' was starting this business, so my 'noes' were so much easier." -Tonya Dalton
"It's not about being organized, it's about having a productive life. Productivity, to me, is not about doing more things faster, it's about having a life that you love and really focusing in on your priorities and getting those things done." -Tonya Dalton
"Failing is the best way to learn. When everything is sunshine and lollipops you're not really growing. It's those things that were really kind of painful...but looking back at have made the biggest difference." -Tonya Dalton
RESOURCES
