Rachel Jimenez has harbored a long-standing aspiration to become a college professor, a career path she’s passionate about. However, her apprehension about accumulating debt deterred her from pursuing this dream, as she knew that the field often doesn’t offer competitive salaries, despite the multiple degrees it demands.
Instead, as a 35-year-old mother, she ventured down the business path, eventually establishing an Etsy store in 2019. Her store primarily features printables, such as an Elf on a Shelf game that customers can purchase and print at home. In 2022, this venture generated more than $110,000 in passive income, marking the second consecutive year it achieved a six-figure income.
With her Etsy store thriving and Jimenez dedicating only two to ten hours per week to its maintenance, she decided to take the plunge into her lifelong teaching interest in January 2022. She introduced an online course, leveraging her expertise in positive organizational psychology, a field she studied at Claremont Graduate University. Positive organizational psychology focuses on enhancing workplace experiences and their impact on the quality of professional life. Jimenez’s course, titled “Optimize Your Life Academy,” draws from her knowledge of positive psychology to foster personal success.
Currently, Jimenez charges $297 for enrollment in the course. Since launching “Optimize Your Life Academy” in January 2023, it has generated just over $10,000 in revenue.
Here’s an insight into how Jimenez developed her new venture and her future plans for it.
Jimenez has consistently found positive psychology to be a potent tool for shaping her own perspective on life. Positive psychology, as described in Psychology Today, centers on identifying individuals’ character strengths and recommends practices like gratitude exercises.
In her words, “When you maintain a positive mindset, you’re more inclined to take proactive steps, and taking action increases your likelihood of achieving positive outcomes.”
She explains that her course delves into strategies and tools that many people are unfamiliar with because they haven’t delved into the realm of positive psychology. “Optimize Your Life Academy” encompasses a collection of video modules covering topics like defining success and effective time management. Additionally, it includes a 70-page workbook filled with exercises related to goal setting, stress management, and other aspects of personal development.
Up to this point, around 30 individuals have enrolled in the course, and Rachel Jimenez has gleaned some valuable insights. The most significant realization is that she might have taken on too ambitious a subject – the course’s subtitle boldly claims to teach “how to achieve happiness and success.” One of her course participants candidly expressed, “I enjoyed your course, I liked it. But it just feels like the promise statement is so big.”
While Jimenez firmly believes that the concepts she’s learned have contributed to her own attainment of happiness and success, she grapples with the challenge of measuring these outcomes for her students and determining when and how to do so. She acknowledges that when it comes to what she can guarantee, making grand claims like “it will change your life” can lead to disappointment if expectations aren’t met.
Jimenez is contemplating making adjustments to her course based on student feedback, or she might even create an entirely new course. Regardless of the path she chooses, her aim is to introduce the revised or new product by January 2024.
Simultaneously, she has embarked on another educational venture. In June, she commenced teaching a course on initiating and managing a home-based business as an adjunct professor at Mt. San Antonio College.
Reflecting on her entrepreneurial journey, she observes, “I’ve come to realize that it’s all about trial and error. Sometimes, an endeavor may seem like a failure or not perform as well as anticipated, but in those moments, you still gain valuable insights.”
Source: cnbc.com
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