When I started my vegetarian recipe blog ‘Vegetarijanska Kuhinja‘ in 2011. I couldn’t have imagined the ripple effect and the positive impact that decision would have in years to come. In the beginning, I barely had 100 followers and my blog posts 50-ish views, but I kept on posting helpful content regularly. My schedule was very tight, so I decided that I would stop watching television, so that I could carve out the time for blogging. 

Two years after, thanks to the popularity of my recipes and the articles about vegetarian diet that I was writing for the Croatian online web magazine Kreni Zdravo, my blog went ‘viral’ in 2013. I became a ‘famous vegetarian blogger’ in the region, and I started getting a lot of media features and TV appearances. Thanks to the success of my blog and the popularity of the articles that I was writing for Kreni Zdravo, I got an opportunity to start earning as a freelance writer for different magazines before I even graduated from Journalism college. 

In 2015., after working for two and half years as a freelance writer, I decided to pursue my ‘dream job’ and become a life coach. As I witnessed prior while growing my blog the power of collaboration with media outlets and web portals in sharing my message, I decided to use the same approach for growing my coaching practice. I started sharing the advice on self development and personal growth on my own blog, and then writing for different web portals and magazines in my native language and in English. I’ve been blessed over the years to become a columnist for the magazines I love reading, and I once dreamed about writing for while I was in Journalism college – such as COSMOPOLITAN, Sensa, and LJEPOTA&ZDRAVLJE. Reading the promotional words for one of my articles by Serbian edition of COSMOPOLITAN magazine in July 2016. stating: “If you want to live your dreams and not just dream them, Danijela Jokic Vaislay Life Coach has some excellent advice for you” – felt surreal!

Over the years, I wrote 550+ articles, out of which more than 350 were on the topic of personal growth, I published a book, and I was also privileged to be interviewed for many popular magazines internationally (two ears ago, I was even interviewed for the beautiful South Ko*ean women’s magazine POPOPO!). 

Once I started doing live and online workshops, corporate workshops, workshops in schools, and later on motivational speeches, I realized that speaking was another impactful way to reach large groups of people (my first speech was to a group of 50, and over the time my audience grew to 5000).

My advice on success, life transformation, confidence building, and strengthening self worth has been featured in numerous magazines and web portals over the years – COSMOPOLITAN, Sensa, LJEPOTA&ZDRALJVE, Lepa&Srećna, THE HUFF POST, BOSSBABE.INC (yeah, @bossbabe.inc !), Tiny Buddha, Mike Dooley’s blog TUT.com, The Ladies Coach, and many other magazines and web portals who have large audience (f.e. 80 000 subscribers for print edition, 200 000/ 2 million visitors per month online, 2.5 million/ 3.5 million/ 6 million audience across their social media platforms, 1 million subscribers on their e-mail list…) which made it possible for me to reach est. 1 million+ people internationally with my work and my message, even without having 1M+ audience on my own.

Note: (While estimating the number of people reached over the last 12 years, I calculated the exact number of people listening my speeches/attending my live and online workshops, number of visitors on my own platforms – both of my blogs and web magazine, exact number of paid subscribers/ average sales of print magazines with my articles and interviews published, and for the web platforms I took a conservative estimate of my articles/posts/columns being read by 5% of their overall social media audience, monthly visitors, and e-mail subscribers – not taking in account TV appearances, many of my articles being reshared on other magazines and blogs with a smaller audience + translated in Spanish and other languages – as those are difficult to track, lol, and the share count numbers for my articles, which on platforms like TUT.com used to be 1.2K and +).

Besides being able to reach million+ of people and make a positive impact with my knowledge and insights, while doing what I genuinely love (writing + sharing personal growth advice), I was also able to achieve success as a life coach in a way that felt aligned, fulfilling, and meaningful to me. Many of my clients signed up to work with me after reading (one of) my articles in COSMOPOLITAN and other magazines, but what I was not expecting was that people would be ‘discovering’ me and deciding to hire me, enrol in my online programs, or buy my book – after reading an article that I wrote 5 or 7 years ago! Not to mention that people are still reaching out to me saying how much my (‘old’) articles have helped them to turn their life around, get better paying jobs, make career transitions, advance in their careers, build confidence, etc. 

I reached and impacted 1M+ people with my message, without having a million followers, a lot of money, stunning visuals, ‘high end’ websites, or a big team.

What I did have was:

Desire to help others

I created a Facebook page, blog, co-founded an online magazine, and wrote hundreds of articles, in order to share the information that can help, inspire, educate, motivate, and add value to other people’s lives.

Courage

To get myself out there. To dream big. To start a blog. To start an online magazine (!) with zero funds as a college student. To be more visible. To speak in front of audiences and TV cameras. To talk about the topics that matter that were not talked about a lot or at all. To create trends, instead of following the trend.

Passion and resilience

To keep on creating content regularly even though I was having very few likes, clicks, and views in the beginning. To regularly blog and write articles even though I wasn’t getting paid a $ for it (for the first 2 years), or getting ‘noticed’ much.

I am a living proof that you CAN impact millions of people even if you start from zero and with nothing.

Of course, if I had a big team, stunning visuals, high-end tech solutions, and a lot of money – I might have achieved everything that I did much faster and easier. But, I didn’t.

If you have a desire to make a positive impact in your community/ country/ the world, there was never a better time to do that. You can start with a FREE social media account. All you need is a passion/ mission, ressilliance, and courage.

But, most of the people quit before they ever build the momentum and see any results. The question is, do you have solid self leadership to stay consistent, and keep on posting/ speaking/ sharing your message even while ‘no one is watching’/ reading / listening in the first few months/ years?

I shared insights and tips on impacting millions of people, mindset shifts required to do it, and increasing confidence to be more visible in the ‘IMPACT MILLIONS’ masterclass, that I recently hosted via Zoom. If you’d like to learn more about my story and get some more valuable insights on impacting millions of people with your work and your message, you can access the masterclass recording here.

If you want to read more posts on the topics of success, mindset mastery, and self mastery, click here to subscribe to receive new blog post notifications in your e-mail inbox.