When I started my blog, I have to be honest and say that it was out of necessity. I say that only because, in the fashion industry as a boutique owner and stylist, it is fashion suicide if you don’t have different vehicles of feeding your businesses and blogging is one of them. But once I got into blogging and linking up with other people in the industry, I realized that I really loved it. I enjoyed attending events and being able to write stories from my point of view and not worrying about conventional journalism. FREEDOM.

Not only am I growing my fashion blog, but I am also launching Dinjii Boutique online and my new eyewear line, Dinjii Eyewear. For 22 years, I have been working in Corporate America and haven’t really had the chance to dedicate the time that I have wanted to my blog or my businesses. Well, things have changed (no more Corporate America) and so has my life and my focus.  I was compelled to just share my story with my audience hoping that someone can relate to me and be honest. 

I am now able to take my BRAND to the place that I have always dreamed of. I am still learning and will continue to learn so much about social influence, documenting content, collaborations, etc. on this journey to rising blogger/entrepreneur excellence.

 

1. Gotta Fully Commit

One thing I have learned about blogging is that you have to be disciplined. Really really disciplined. You have to set deadlines for yourself and have some type of order in your life. I would only blog when I was in a certain head space. If you want to be successful in this industry, commitment is key. Either I’m going to treat it like a business or a hobby.  Well, this is about building my brand and my PAPER (money), and entrepreneurship is my way of doing that. 

2.  Dedicate time to learning your blog platform, piece by piece. 

I am not the most “techy” person by no means, but I’m finding myself learning how to do things on WordPress on my own. I don’t have the budget to hire a web guru anytime I need to do updates so I have to do it myself and it’s quite rewarding. You have to remind yourself that you won’t learn everything all at once and it takes time. So I try to be patience and utilize all of my resources such as my tribe at H.A.A.B (Houston African-American Bloggers) and my all-time go-to, YouTube. 

3. Have your ‘up-and-down’ moment.

Some days I would wake up so motivated ready to take on the world and inspired by the vision that I have for my blog and fashion brand. Then there are those days where I can hardly get out of the bed and saying to myself that things are not moving at all. So when both of those moments happen, I just try to be ‘present’. I allow myself to feel everything and then I pray and I vent to the 2 people I normally vent to. Oh, and I watch a million (not really a million) inspirational videos of those people who started at the bottom and ended up winning. One of my favorite virtual mentors is Gary Vaynerchuk. He is raw, honest and transparent and most of the time I need that. 

4. Choose blogger conferences and entrepreneurial workshops wisely. 

I am a big advocate of empowering yourself with information and networking with like-minded people. However, I have learned that there a such thing of ‘doing too much of a good thing’. What do I mean by that? Anytime I would get an invite or saw an entrepreneurial event going on in the city, I would sign up, pay my registration fee and go. Now they were always great experiences because I would get a chance to meet people like myself. Then after the 5th or 6th one, I had to ask myself:

“Why am I attending all of these workshops and conferences, spending money and hearing the same thing?”

I had to change my strategy and know that the events that I needed to attend were the ones that were going to be able to speak to where I was in my business and not get ahead of myself. 

5. Don’t Create. Document. 

Some of your may or may not agree with me on this one, but hear me out. There would be long periods of time where I wouldn’t and couldn’t write one blog post. I would stare at my computer like ‘Now what?’ It would be hard to cover what may be trending because I wouldn’t be inspired by those things. So I have just started to document my life, interests, experiences and motivations. It’s much easier to communicate the things that are already going on in my life than creating content of what’s going on in other people’s lives. 

I hope these 5 things help you like they are helping me in achieving my dream and vision of being an entrepreneur. 

Until next time….

Stay Dinjii!