Make Money as a Life Coach® with Stacey Boehman | Creating a 200K Self-Concept

This week, I’ve asked five of my 200K mastermind students who have made at least 200K in the last 12 months to talk about creating their self-concept. This is one of the things we spend the most time on in the mastermind, and whether you’re currently trying to make your first 2K, or whether you’re shooting for your first million dollars, our self-concept is truly what creates the space for us to achieve our goals.

My own self-concept is something I’ve had to evolve, from when I first started to where I am now, and it is crucial in leveling up your business. These students come into the mastermind and have to start thinking of themselves as great thought leaders who can be seven or eight-figure earners – this deep work is unavoidable.

Join us today as I invite my 200K mastermind students Andrea, Kristen, Melanie, Devon, and Mara to share their experience of growing their self-concept and how transformational it has been for them. Doing this work has cemented not only a higher level of their own self-concept but more money and more clients than they could have ever imagined.

If you want to start making serious money as a coach, you need to check out 2K for 2K. Click here to join!

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • The biggest shift in my own self-concept.
  • Why examining our self-concept at every level is so important.
  • The difference between belief in ourselves versus our self-concept.
  • How my students got into coaching.
  • What my students’ most pivotal growth of their self-concept looked like and what their experience has been like on the other side.
  • Why challenging your self-concept is meant to feel uncomfortable.
  • How much money my students were making before they joined the mastermind and how much they’re earning now.
  • What they believe is possible for every single coach.
  • One thought from each of my students that you can adopt to help grow your self-concept.
  • Why you don’t have to be realistic about your self-concept.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

Female Announcer: Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® Podcast where sales expert and life coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Stacey: Hey, coaches welcome to episode 97. So, today I asked five of my students to come on that have made 200K in either this year or in the last 12 months to talk about self-concept. It is one of the things that we spend the most time on in the 200K Mastermind and it’s something that I think whether you’re in 2K and you’re going for your first 2K or you’re going for your first 25K, your first 100K or if you’re at 800K going for your first million or two million our self-concepts are what hold that together and create space for us to achieve what we’re trying to achieve or have us hustling and hold us back.

I really experienced this at every level of my journey. So much of my self-concept had to change when I first started my business and became an entrepreneur. I felt like that was the biggest leap I ever in my self-concept was just believing that people would ever hire me as a coach and my belief about myself and being an example of what’s possible or being worthy of calling myself a coach, there was so much of that. We spend a lot of time working on that in 2K. It’s just the self-concept of I am a life coach and I can help you.

But going in further I noticed a huge, for me, a big piece of it was when I went to scale my business and go the year that I was around – the year that I did $860,000 that was the year I did master coach training and, for me, master coach training it felt like just a bomb blew up in my self-concept and I had to really look at all of it to step into I’m not just going to be multiple six-figure earner, but I’m going to be a thought leader in this industry. I’m going to make millions of dollars and I’m going to lead thousands and thousands of coaches on this journey of building businesses for themselves and so much had to shift for me.

I want to tell you briefly before I bring on my students – I want to tell you briefly what the biggest shift for me in my self-concept was at that level and I also want to take a second now to differentiate belief in ourselves from our self-concept. So, we work a lot as coaches on just individual beliefs that we have about ourselves. The way that I think about our self-concept, my self-concept is it’s the way that I see the world interacting with me and the way that I see myself interacting in the world.

It’s not just one belief, but it’s the entire concept of who I am and the way that I belief people perceive me and interact with me and then the way that my self-perception then creates every single way I interact in the world as well. So, for example, when I was in master coach training – I’m going to tell you guys a little story, I went to this event. This was about three months into master coach training and I got invited to go to my coach, Brooke, created this program called the 100K Mastermind or something like that. It was something about building your first 100K.

Because I’m so amazing at sales I was able to blow past a lot of what she teaches at that level and make money without it, without the website, without a lot of – I didn’t have a coaching process, I didn’t have a coaching philosophy. I didn’t have to spend any time working on any of that. So, I got invited to come and participate even though I was six, seven, eight times more than the people there and it was the most transformational week of my life to be in an environment where we were 18 hours a day – I think I’ve told this story before, but 18 hours a day in this room just working.

I was doing master coach training at the same time and I had master coach training projects due. I think I was even working on a launch. It was so much crazy stuff going on. At that event I had a back spasm, like a shoulder spasm. I’ve had shoulder issues for years and while everybody was doing – we did working lunches like every day of that week and while everybody was doing working lunch, I was in so much pain I was thinking, “I have to get out of here and get to the chiropractor. I have to get this fixed.” I was in so much pain I was literally in tears.

I had this thought in my brain like, “Here you go, hot mess. This doesn’t happen to anybody else. It only happens to you. You’re the only one leaving at lunch. Look at you. Everybody’s going to judge you. Everybody’s going to see that you’re not committed because you’re taking a break and leaving the hotel.” I noticed it for the first time that even physical pain I was attaching to this concept I had of myself of I’m a hot mess.

I really started thinking about how much that was playing out. I was seeing that concept of myself believing that I’m a hot mess. It was showing in my results that I was creating. So, being late, always showing up to my calls not really prepared. I remember working on trying to just get to calls on time with hair and make-up done and clothes on. That was a thing. Sometimes I would do my mastermind calls in my yoga clothes with no make-up.

So, there was like so many results that came from believing I was a hot mess that would reinforce this idea of, “Here it is, see?” I would try so hard to create different results and get – be on time, all the things. But no matter how hard I tried I would find myself in these moments where things that I felt like were an example of hot messness were still showing up.

I remember walking towards the elevator to leave and having all this shame and then realizing that it’s not just enough to change the actual behaviors that I might not think are representative of a million-dollar business, it wasn’t enough to just change those if I didn’t actually change my belief about being a hot mess. Nothing was going to shift. I wasn’t going to get permanent results and in changing that belief about myself of being a hot mess it wasn’t just about believing that I wasn’t a hot mess and creating results that exemplified that, but it was also about when I was in a life circumstance that wasn’t what I would have preferred – it wasn’t what I would have chosen to treat myself with respect in that moment.

I can’t keep saying, “This is an example of being a hot mess.” If I weren’t a hot mess how would I treat myself? I thought about like if Brooke had to leave in the middle of the day to go to the doctor because she was in pain no one would say anything. No one would be judging her. Everyone would be like, “Girl, go get help. We need you. You’re so valuable. Take care of yourself.”

I thought, “That’s the way that I have to react.” It can’t just be that I change the thought, but I have to change the way I engage in the circumstances as well because those will always continue to come up and so how am I going to treat myself in that moment? I’m going to decide to respect I am a respectable coach, I’m a respectable business owner. I’m going to have such self-regard that if I’m in pain or I’m sick I’m going to take care of myself and I’m not going to label that as hot messness.

Even if I’m late to a call or if I’m whatever it is I’m going to start changing the way I frame even those situations and the way I treat myself and I’m not going to – not only am I no longer going to be open to calling myself a hot mess or seeing that everywhere that I go and every result I have in my life, but I’m not going to be open for other people to call me that as well. I’m not going to be open for any of that energy to be in my space.

I did something similar with shame. I remember a time where I just decided I was no longer open to shame and I stopped shaming myself. The moment I stopped shaming myself I no longer allowed it from anyone else. It was like a boundary of I don’t receive shame from other people. So, I created that same boundary for myself. I don’t receive anybody believing I’m a hot mess either. If there’s something that happens that looks like a result of that it must be for a good reason or I’m working on it with self-compassion, but either way it doesn’t mean I’m a hot mess.

Everything from that moment shifted. Now, it feels like all those things that felt like – I laugh about it now and you all will agree. You’ll have those moments for yourself, too. But I laugh about it now of how difficult it used to be for me to just get on a call dressed, on-time, looking like a professional. Ever since that moment at the elevator none of that was difficult anymore. It was like just who I am, it’s what I do. It was that last little bit of just saying even if I don’t, I still won’t reinforce the hot messness and I’m not going to fuel that concept anymore.

As soon as I stopped saying that it was like everything just became easier. Nothing actually changed about my behavior. It was just everything got easier. It felt like instead of running uphill I was running flat and I think that’s what a lot of people experience about their beliefs within themselves in this – we group our beliefs about ourselves into this one identity of this is who I am. It’s my personality, it’s just the way I am, and really, it’s just a set of beliefs we’ve developed into a concept of ourselves and then gone and proved over and over and over.

So, I wanted to tell you my experience of this and that’s just one little story I feel like in my work towards changing the way that I interact with the world and then the way that I perceive the world interacting with me. But I wanted to bring my students who have all made 200K either in the last year or this year or even in the last 6 months. I want to talk about self-concept from your point of view because my 200K students are always going through massive – I feel like self-revolutions in the mastermind.

The group of women that we interact with are so just unbelievably talented and amazing and in their greatness that it’s impossible – I think you can’t – in 200K you can’t survive, you can’t make it if you’re not willing to work on your concept of your own greatness because you’re just – it’s like in your face every day, all day, all of the greatness. So, everything about your concept that doesn’t matter, I am greatness, I am a thought leader, I am a multiple six-figure, seven-figure earner, anything that doesn’t match that immediately is going to come up to the surface and it has to be worked on because of the level of the room that we’re in.

So, I’m excited to have this conversation. Here’s what I want to do. I just want to go around, we’ll just one at a time, we’ll start with Kristen here at the top. Introduce yourself. I would love for you to just tell everybody briefly how you got into coaching. Kind of what your story that brought you to coaching and then if you want to talk about either your most pivotal or your most recent experience with a massive growth in your self-concept and what that work looked like and what it has been like on the other side and what your experience has been.

I would just love to hear from each of you and if you forget any of those I’ll remind you, but I would love to hear your experience with that. All right, so Kristen Boss.

Kristen: Hi. Okay, so I am a coach for network marketers in the social selling industry. I was a hair stylist, a celebrity hair stylist for 15 years, so –

Stacey: What?

Kristen: Yeah. So, I like to say –

Stacey: That’s so cool.

Kristen: Yes, so I like to say that that was my first coaching job. I’ve been coaching women forever and I realized I needed to leverage my best gifts and talents and I had a real – I was really good at sales and marketing. Just making that pivot just made a lot of sense and I was coaching people for free.

I was always the person that people were, “Can I call you? Pick your brain?” I’m like, “You know, maybe this is a thing.” A huge pivotal moment which is so interesting because it’s actually almost a year ago from now I really sat down and worked on my self-concept and I was thinking about becoming a high ticket coach and really treating it as a multiple six-figure business because I was a six-figure earner as a hair stylist, but now I had to shift that self-concept, so I remember sitting down to work on that exactly a year ago and I was actually traveling with my family and I remember thinking, “Okay, I know what a six-figure hair stylist version of me does, what does the multiple six-figure coach version of me do?”

I was out on a trip and I booked aboard the conference boardroom at 5am every morning. I’m like, “No, I’m not going to just work in my hotel room, I’m going to go sit in that board room because that’s what a multi-six-figure earner does.” I got dressed. I am not a morning person. My former self-concept would always choose sleep, but I’m like, “No, I choose my future first.”

At that time I was like, “Okay, what else does this version of myself do?” I invested in a coach and literally, everything blew up for me after that. It’s been crazy where now I’m working on my newer self-concept of okay, multi-million-dollar version of myself.

Stacey: Yeah, and you’ve been working a lot in 200K with – because you made money. Tell them how fast you made money because I think this is very interesting. A lot of people think, especially because the first 2K and the first 25K are just – they take time and it’s hard, it’s the hardest part and then we start to believe that all money will take that long, so I loved telling stories of people who have made money quickly. So, tell them how much money you’ve made and how quick you’ve made it.

Kristen: Yes, so one year ago I was not even making high ticket offers. I did not have an offer. I was doing maybe $99 an hour calls here and there. December 1st is when I decided to launch a high ticket offer for coaching, a six-month offer and –

Stacey: What do you consider a high ticket offer when you say that?

Kristen: It was $5,000. It was $5,000 for 6 months.

Stacey: Okay.

Kristen: So, that month I went from literally – I think I had a $1,000 sale prior to that and I went from that to a 25K month in December and I am now sitting at – I just checked my numbers yesterday and sat in awe, $485,000.

Stacey: $485,000 since last December or just this year?

Kristen: Since December 1st.

Stacey: So, since December 1st, and how much money had you made – how much did you make in November?

Kristen: $2,000 maybe.

Stacey: So crazy.

Kristen: It is crazy.

Stacey: And now you’re working – so we worked a lot at the live event and in the beginning of the mastermind of this money not being a fluke. It’s something you 100% created so could you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that that is – it’s like we finally build our self-concept up enough to believe that we can make money to make money and then we like fuck ourselves over and tell ourselves it was a fluke.

We’re like, “Oh no, no, I didn’t actually do that. Nope, it wasn’t me. It was the universe. It was a trick. I won the lottery.” I’m like, “What? You just did all that work to grow your belief in yourself. Why would you just throw it in the trash in that way?” So, can you talk a little bit about that?

Kristen: Yeah, that is literally what happened. My brain was like, “This was an accident. There’s no way, you’re never going to be able to recreate that,” and I never – and I repeated it again and again and again and again and then the 200K mastermind came up and I remember at that point I had made $125,000 and I was like, “Okay this is a little scary.”

But I remember thinking that if I didn’t invest in the 200K mastermind that I would be in agreement with the thought, “This is a fluke.” I knew that investing –

Stacey: Well, how so?

Kristen: Just because I think the fear came up was like, “Okay, well what if I invest and it was a fluke and it all falls apart and I lose all the money and it all goes away?” Because my brain was still just thinking, “This isn’t real. This isn’t real.” Me investing in the 200K was like, “No, of course this is real. I’m going to do this again and I’m going to – “ I viewed investing in the 200K as cementing that self-concept and being like, “It’s not a fluke because if it was a fluke, I wouldn’t invest in this and I’m going to ensure that I’m going to continue this trajectory.” Then my monthly revenue doubled with that.

Stacey: Because I see this happen a lot, the six-figure mark is where everybody finally feels like they arrived. They think from where they are before they make 100K they think 100K will mean that they’ve arrive. Then they get there and almost always they’re in, “It’s a fluke” or some version of, “I will not be able to repeat this.”

Six-figure earners are actually the most common coaches that I have seen who are unwilling to invest in themselves. When you’re at like 25K, my underdogs, they’re so willing to risk everything because they have nothing in their business. They don’t have massive – nothing that they feel like substantially they will lose so they’re so much willing to spend money on themselves, but it’s like that 100K mark where you start to feel like, “But I could lose something so I better hold on tight,” which is the opposite of what they should be doing, and then they keep themselves at that range much longer than they need to.

They miss the opportunity to totally blow past 200K and 300K and go to that mark. They really just want to just hold tight and buckle down and they’re so afraid of losing money at that point and it’s just the absolute worst thing you can do is make any decisions for your business when you’re afraid of losing money.

So, I’m curious for you to tell everyone what made you keep going even when you were afraid it was a fluke? What kept you moving forward? Even if it was a little bit of hustle, what kept you moving forward instead of hunkering down and holding on to what you have?

Kristen: I think what kept me moving forward was realizing I was the creator of my own beliefs and therefore the creator of my own results. So, I’m like, “Well, it’s only going to be a fluke if I allow it to be, so what if I just don’t even allow it and don’t even entertain that?” That kind of kept me going.

Stacey: Yeah, I love it. Now you have to work on another self-concept.

Kristen: Oh yeah, we’re in that right now.

Stacey: I love it. So, why don’t you tell everybody about that. I think it’ll be fun.

Kristen: Oh my gosh. So, I am exactly where I was investing in the 200K about the 2 mil. I am literally thinking, “Oh but what if this all was just a fluke? Why don’t we just stay in 200K and just make sure that we’re okay? Why don’t we just stay there?” I actually got really mad where you did your Peloton episode when you went in the beginner class and then you went back into intermediate and I was like, “No, no, she’s saying that about me if I stay in the 200K.” Realizing I just never thought that 200K would be where I would want to go hide and that’s what’s coming up.

I’m like, “Okay, I cannot be in agreement with my thought about my progress being a fluke and I refuse to be in agreement. I’m not going to allow that.” So, that’s what’s going on right now.

Stacey: Who do you think – I want you to imagine what your best-case scenario is for $2 million group for just next. For just one year your best-case scenario, what would that be?

Kristen: My best scenario? I hit $1 million next year.

Stacey: Okay, what if you did that?

Kristen: Yeah, what if I did that? My brain’s also like, “What?”

Stacey: I want you to think about – your homework from this podcast is to think about who you’re going to be at $1 million and the way that you would interact with investments because at $1 million 50K is nothing.

Kristen: And that’s the conversation I keep revisiting in my mind. I’m like, “If it’s done, if this is what’s happening for me then why is this a question?”

Stacey: Yeah. I think it’s so powerful for everybody to think about in this moment right now, everyone listening, to think about – what we do is like, “What if it doesn’t work?” And it might not work and I might not get there. Instead of just deciding 100% that’s where I’m going, it’s happening. I’m just getting there. Of course, I’m getting there. What about yourself makes you believe that you wouldn’t? For everybody, think about that.

What about you do you think would be like there would be any chance that you wouldn’t get there? Even if you fell short, if you made like 800K like I did, you’d be pretty happy, right?

Kristen: Yes, I’d be thrilled.

Stacey: Even if you made 500K again two years in a row, even if you didn’t grow it would still be like, “Yep, this is just who I am. I make 500K a year. It’s done all the time.”

Kristen: Yep, I’ve coached on that, too. I’ve coached myself around that. I’ve coached myself on all the outcomes and being like, “What room do you want to be in? No matter the outcome, what room?”

Stacey: Yeah, you want to be in the room that grows your self-concept 100%. You want to be in the room that makes you be like, “What the fuck? How did I end up here?

Stacey: [inaudible] the episode.

Kristen: Yeah and I honestly think part of my self-concept I’ve been really working is like – part of my self-concept is I make my investment back all the time. It’s always worth it. I never have drama about it. That is who I am. I’m the girl that invests big but also plays big and wins big so it’s not a big deal.

Stacey: That’s my goal for the entire industry. I want to create that concept for every coach that interacts with me that they just are the person who invests and always gets a return. Because then you never have to fear investing. Even in small stuff – we’ll move on, but I just want to tell this little story, I talked about it on I think the last podcast where we invested $40,000 in the boxes that we send out for the virtual event, $40,000.

Michelle actually is the one that brought the idea to me so I have to give her credit and I was like, “This is a lot of money for boxes.” I remember being out to dinner with Neal and I was telling him about it and his face, he was like, “What? You are crazy.” I was like thinking about it, I’m just – every time we spend money on stuff it always works out even if I’m investing in something that doesn’t have a hard return, for example like a Facebook ad or coaching where I’m actually going to invest money to become a bigger earner, a higher earner it always works out.

Of course, that’s 100% what happened is the social media insanity from people getting the boxes which we didn’t even think about or plan, we made so much money in 2K. It was crazy. It was like $400,000 that month. It was insane. So, I’m like, “I’m always just that person,” and I love breeding that idea for everybody I come in contact with. I love it. Thank you, Kristen.

Kristen: Yeah.

Stacey: All right, Miss Melanie, you have a really fun story, too. Let’s hear it.

Melanie: Hey, I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Stacey: Yeah. Wait, tell everybody who you are, Melanie.

Melanie: So, I’m Melanie Childers. I am a coach for badass feminists who are getting patriarchy-smashing shit done.

Stacey: That’s so fun. What kind of shit are they getting done?

Melanie: Girl, they are writing books, they are launching courses, they are getting elected. I have a couple of folks who are running for office right now and a lot of them are working on their businesses and making a fuck ton of money and we’re just having a blast.

Stacey: I love it. So, you’re like where politics and coaching meet together a little bit?

Melanie: Indeed, yeah.

Stacey: I love it. So good. Okay, so tell everybody your story. You’re also, by the way, I have to just give you an acknowledgement, you’re one of our newer 2K instructors and Melanie just did a call for 2K this week and people were blowing the page up saying how much they loved her and how calm your energy is in coaching people. I haven’t gotten to watch the call yet, but the feedback has been insane, so I just have to give you a little acknowledgement there.

Melanie: Thanks, that was so fun and looking back I’m like, “Oh yeah, of course.” But of course, beforehand I’m coaching the hell out of myself like, “Ahh.”

Stacey: Then you’re like, “Wait, oh, they’re trying to make their first 2K it’s fine.”

Melanie: Yeah, oh yeah, “It’s fine.”

Stacey: “I’ve got this. I’ve got that 100 times over.”

Melanie: Exactly.

Stacey: All right, so tell us your story. How did you get into coaching?

Melanie: So, I came to coaching from a really transformative life experience. I had breast cancer in 2011-12, and there was a lot of personal fallout from that. I had a hard time working, I couldn’t – a lot of brain fog, a lot of PTSD, quit a job, went bankrupt, got divorced all in like this six-month period of time, and I felt like my whole world was falling apart.

I was really distraught and depressed so I sought out how do I get myself out of this emotional hole? It feels terrible. I don’t want to feel like this. I want to do something with my life. I know I’m here for a really good reason. I don’t know what that reason, but help. I was like drowning.

I grabbed all of the self-help books. Jen Sincero had just launched You Are a Badass and she launched a group coaching program. I was like, “That’s like 50 bucks, I have maybe 5,000 to my name. I’m on my best friend’s couch with no car. Okay, maybe that will help. It will help me at least get a job or something.”

Stacey: That’s the best thing about when your life kind of falls apart and your self-concept has been blown your life concept has been blown up you are so much more willing to take risks. I think it’s the best. People are like – resist being in that moment, but I think that’s the best moment. It’s where all the growth happens.

Melanie: It really is, and I ended up taking the money that I had and joining a life coach training program. So, I joined Martha Beck’s program. I couldn’t even afford the whole payment. I was like, “I have five, will five work for now? I’ll figure out the rest?” I think it was like $8,000 at the time.

So, they let me make payments and even then it took me – I ended up getting a job and it took me a long time to make money. That was – I got certified at the end of 2013, 2016 I made $4,000. The next year I made $8,000, 2018 I made $20,000. My thinking was, “Well, if I just make – if I just double-ish every year eventually I’ll get where I want to go.”

Stacey: Yeah, 20 years from now you’ll be making 200K.

Melanie: Someday.

Stacey: Thank God that we didn’t keep that thought

Melanie: I know, I know, but yeah then – I guess you started the 200K mastermind in the beginning of 2019 so this is my 4th round. I’ve been in since the beginning.

Stacey: Did you do 2K first or did you just go straight into 200K?

Melanie: Nope, I went straight to 200K.

Stacey: Okay, and how much were you making when you joined 200K? How much did you make?

Melanie: I made $20,000 before 200K.

Stacey: I love it. Okay, total or the year before you joined?

Melanie: The year before, so then total like 35 in 3 years.

Stacey: Okay, all right, so you joined 200K and what happened?

Melanie: Then in 2019 I made 100.

Stacey: What shifted for you? To go from like it took me 3 years to make 35K to 1 year to 100K, what was that shift for you?

Melanie: Honestly, I’m so glad that you talk about being a hot mess because I really identified with that deeply.

Stacey: I think a lot of women do. I think that’s a concept that the – you could say the patriarchy is fueling and then we, as women, are fueling that as well. We’re like, “Yep, I’ll take that on and I’ll embody that.” I’ll also talk to myself that way and it’s like a thing with women that I hope we can just work on eradicating.

Melanie: Yeah, well then it all just comes from self-doubt from all of the messages that we hear about ourselves and who the hell do we think we are?

Stacey: Yeah.

Melanie: But what truly helped me and the thing that I had to adopt was managing my thinking, my self-concept, my thinking about myself. I had this idea that every stumble, every time someone didn’t click like on a post or didn’t comment meant that I was failing. So, every time I would go to take action, it was like every other day, I would get really excited and go take a bunch of action and then nothing would happen. No response, and the very next day my brain would be like, “Okay, fuck it. I give up. This is clearly, obviously not going to work. I’m never going to make it,” was like my story.

I would ride this rollercoaster every day of super high, totally crashing the next day, super high, totally crashing. The way that I sort of evened out was adopting the belief that everything that I do fills the value bank. Everything that I do works and I don’t get to know when it’s going to work, I just have to trust myself that I’m going to keep showing up.

Stacey: Yeah, so it’s literally shifting like – I think I want everyone to kind of see that, it’s shifting from my self-concept is dependent on interaction I get from other people and validation outside of me versus my self-concept is that I am valuable. That is already true. That is proven in every action I take. It’s the truth no matter what the result is and also, that value is on its way back to me because I am value.

That right there is the biggest concept shift that will change everything. Is when it’s like – I remember having no money, my bank account literally in the red. People were always like, “How did you focus on service when you were in that situation?” It really was just that of I am valuable. I’ve already done the work, the result just isn’t here yet, but that doesn’t stop me from going out and giving value all of the time and I’m just going to keep doing that until it – I fill that bank up and it starts overflowing. I don’t need to wait for it to overflow to believe these things about myself.

Melanie: Yeah, and now I have a sticky note that’s on my monitor all the time that says, “My time is valuable,” and I have the belief that one hour with me gets them $10,000 worth of results in their lifetime. So, my sticky note says, “My time is valuable at $10,000 an hour,” and so I see myself completely differently and I am almost at 200K this year.

Stacey: That’s so amazing. So, what are the things that you think show up now for you and how you interact with the world? Because our self-concept is what we believe the world – how we believe the world sees us and then how we interact with the world. What do you believe – what has shown up for you in your behavior in the way that you’re interacting with the world when you believe that your time is valuable and every call with your students or your clients whatever you call them is worth $10,000 in their life, what have you noticed has been different about how you show up?

Melanie: Wow, it’s so different. I think initially I – my brain was so focused on people who were exhausted, people who were tired of politics and always at this place of, “I just have to survive 2020. I just have to get through this year. Oh my God, everything’s a shit show.” Once I realized, hold on a minute, I actually I had to remind myself, I work with leaders, I work with powerful people. I am in the rooms with them. I get invited to talk to them. Oh yeah, I talk to leaders. I talk to people who are impacting massive, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people all the time.

Once I shifted into clicking into that place more often it was like, “Oh yeah, I just need to go talk to them. I just forgot, they’re not tired.” Kristen helped me with this last week. They’re not tired, they’re energized. That doesn’t mean that there’s not a part of them that’s tired, but they see everything that happens as like, “Okay, it’s time to get the fuck to work. Let’s go. This is a reason to keep going, not a reason to give up.”

Stacey: Yeah. So, when you shifted that your time was valuable that’s when you started really getting out there and talking to people?

Melanie: Yeah, and it changed the way that I think about myself in the world of politics and the way that I think about myself even in my local community because my brain loves to forget. I’ve made a difference already. People know me. My brain’s like, “No one knows me. I’m just this girl over here,” and it’s like, “No, no, no, no.” They come up to you and they know you. Even in my local community and I work with people internationally.

Stacey: I love that. I love it.

Melanie: It’s super fun.

Stacey: So fun, yeah.

Melanie: It’s way more fun than all of the giving up all the time.

Stacey: Right, like one post I’m out. It’s over, it’s done. We have to have thicker skin as coaches. We can’t give up when someone doesn’t comment on our posts.

Melanie: And definitely not when someone disagrees.

Stacey: Yeah, oh my gosh, 100%. I think when you really start putting your workout in the world that’s like maybe even contrary to the main narrative that’s been out there, you have to be – your self-concept has to be there. You have to be like, “This is what I’m doing. I’m here to do it. I’m the perfect person to do it.” It requires a very strong inner self-acceptance and validation to be able to do that.

Melanie: yeah.

Stacey: I love it. All right, thank you, Melanie.

Melanie: Thank you.

Stacey: All right, Miss Devon. Tell us who you are and how you got into coaching and about your self-concept.

Devon: Sure. Well, thank you so much for inviting me to be here today. It’s such an amazing honor.

Stacey: Oh, and how much you’ve made in the last 12 months or this year.

Devon: Yeah, let’s talk about all of that. My name is Devon Gimbel and I coach women physicians. I do predominantly one-on-one general life coaching so all the issues, all the problems, anything they need help with, women physicians. I got into coaching as someone who trained as a doctor. I don’t think there’s very many of us who decide we want to go to medical school to become doctors so then we can become life coaches after that. That was not something that was even on my radar the first 25 years of my life.

I found coaching because I finally went through all of that training, I came out of it and was really ready to then just do the thing I had spent my whole life really educating to do and within about five years of being in my first grown-up real full-time job outside of training I was miserable and it made no sense to me and I was so confused because this was the only thing I had ever wanted to do and I couldn’t figure out why I was as unhappy as I was. I had so much shame about it because I had on the outside so many things that it looked like I should have been grateful and that I had accomplished.

I had sort of this like identity crisis of what the heck is going on and why can’t I fix it? I’m smart, why can’t I figure out why I’m so unhappy in this profession that actually I still am absolutely in love with but I just don’t like what I’m doing. That’s how I actually fell into finding a coach for myself.

The transformation and experience that I had was so significant that it really made me realize, “What a minute, how is it possible that after literally 25 years of an incredible educational experience no one ever taught me these very simple and very powerful tools?” I looked around in my community of physicians and particularly women physicians and saw how many people were having a really similar experience.

It just occurred to me that my community, my professional community really, really needs these tools and no one right now is really sharing these. That’s what really inspired me to get certified as a coach and even initially I thought, “Okay, I’ll do this a little bit on the side.” I sort of came to terms with I was feeling about my career, got into a much better place with it and just thought, “This will be a fun extra thing.” Probably within about six or eight months realized I don’t want this to be the extra thing. I want this to be the thing.

So, I actually stepped away from my full-time medical practice in August of last year, so August of 2019 and that’s when I decided, “No, I’m actually going to pursue this as my primary full-time profession.”

Stacey: That’s so good. I feel that is one of the hardest self-concepts for people to break is when they have a career and a profession, especially that of like a doctor, a lawyer, a psychiatrist where they have self-identified as a professional for so long and gone to school for so long and invested so much in that career to step into, “I’m going to start all over and it’s going to be a completely different arena that I’m going to play in.” Although it’s really a lot of the same, too.

I can see why doctors would be so drawn to coaching because it’s all about health, right? So, I think that’s so great. I’m going to ask you what you think was the shift in being willing to leave – what coaching you had to do to leave the doctor realm and step into coaching full-time. So, be thinking about that, but I do want to just say, I have to point out to everybody listening, it’s so interesting that what made you reach out for a coach was just the way you explained it the most basic emotional unrest, right?

Just being in a space where something felt off and maybe a lot of things felt off and then you hire a coach and now you’re a general life coach. People always like – they think, “I have to have a specialty,” and I’m like, “No, there are so many people in the world who have emotional unrest.”

For me, I had a very similar experience to Melanie where my life kind of exploded all at once in a different way and I remember thinking, “All of these things about my self-concept – “ I graduated with a 3.5 grade point average in four years with two years, I speak two languages, I was the top of my industry, and I couldn’t figure out how I ended up on a beach in Puerto Rico cheating on my partner of seven years and getting robbed at gunpoint. I was like, “This doesn’t match my self-concept. What’s going on here? Something has happened that I’ve not been aware of. We need to do a deep dive investigation in how I ended up in this moment. I’m confused.”

That’s what happens with a lot of people. They have just emotional unrest, their life implodes and they can’t figure out how they got there and they’re not looking for one specific type of person. They’re like, “Can I get someone that’s going to just help me with this mess? With all of this stuff? Someone that’s going to help me just feel better in my day.”

You’re such a perfect example of that, of just – I just want to champion general life coaching because I think so many people need it and when we don’t sell it so many people are going to miss out on getting the experience, you guys. So, I don’t know if you want to speak to that just for a second and then also jump into the self-concept of how you transitioned from being a doctor to a coach.

Devon: Yeah, absolutely. I 100% agree with you because I think, for me, too part of my experience that I do think is really common among other professionals or people who are kind of trained in the same type of system that doctors are is that part of our educational culture and training is that yeah, it’s really hard. We’re so conditioned to that so then when we do get out or we do experience of just feeling like, “I don’t know what’s wrong,” our educational conditioning is, “Great, keep going.”

We are not really taught how to advocate for ourselves and how to seek help for ourselves and that’s what happened to me that I was actually kind of miserable for three years and I was just thinking, “No, just keep your head down. Keep going. This is what you’re trained to do.” If there’s anything that I love about working now with other physicians is really normalizing that you do not have to tolerate that sense of just things feel wrong and I don’t know why and I don’t know what to do about it for years before you reach out.

Stacey: Or your whole life, right?

Devon: Yeah, exactly, exactly and so that is the thing that I do really love about general life coaching is that you come you bring it all. It’s your time, your hour every single week where you bring anything, you bring the cat barfed on the rug and you’re ticked. You bring, “I don’t know if I want to walk away from medicine at a really early non-traditional retirement age.” You bring it all and we work on it all. That, to me, is just the absolute beauty of general life coaching and speaking about that identity shift that did have to happen for me, it actually did not happen when I transitioned out of medicine.

Because at that time my thought was, “Well, I can see what happens. I can always go back. I can kind of get my foot back into it if I really want to or need to.” So, for me, the actual identity shift that really happened between, I’m a doctor who kind of does some life coaching but I’m a life coach and I happen to have a medical degree and serve physicians. That actually occurred for me in this mastermind.

That happened for me right after our initial – that group call in May that you had where then we were informed the next day if we’d been accepted to the program or not and I’m looking back at my –

Stacey: Yeah, the Hunger Games call.

Devon: Yes, and I was the very, very last person you called on. It was like 62 minutes into the call so I already had been in complete adrenal failure secreting all of my cortisol for 60 minutes waiting to get called on and then you finally did and I was about to just die, but the good news the next day I got the email, “You’ve been accepted,” and I’m looking back at my numbers now and this is how these two things tie together is that last – so this year from January to May 7th, the day before we had our call, I had made – created $47,000 in my business.

So, I was accepted in the mastermind on May 8th. May 8th to June 2nd I made $47,500. When I was looking back and questioning what was that shift, for me, that was the time when I stopped thinking about myself as a doctor who happened to really love coaching and to do some coaching to saying, “No, I’m a coach who’s really proud of what they’ve done educationally, but I don’t do that anymore.”

For me, that was the shift. It didn’t happen when I decided, “Okay, I’m going to step into coaching.” For me, that was a self-concept that this mastermind – that was the first massive shift that this mastermind really allowed me to have.

Stacey: Before we even started?

Devon: Before we even started, right. I remember getting that email thinking, “Okay, I’m making my money back before we start.” So, I did, in spades. I made almost $50,000 that first month. Since I’ve been in this mastermind, so I count that May call as sort of my mastermind birthday. Since I’ve been in the mastermind I’ve created $155,000 on top of the $47,000 that I had already created in the beginning of the year.

Stacey: That’s so incredible. So, what are you at for the year so far?

Devon: For my year I’m at $202,627.

Stacey: That’s so great.

Devon: Isn’t it? Yeah.

Stacey: That’s so amazing. I love that so much. That is fantastic. I get told that a lot that that Hunger Games call changes everything for people. Even if they don’t get in they have a massive shift of, “What just happened?” I think it’s really where we start with like it’s the first time you’re on a call – just let me give everybody a background really quick.

So, you apply for the mastermind. You have to send in a 3-minute video and then you get invited to the call. You get no notice for the call, so you have to like – we like to see who’s willing to move their schedule to get on there. You get on there and there’s hundreds of people on. We get so many applications every time.

I just call – I start calling people at random and I don’t sell you all on the mastermind. I’m like, “This is your chance to sell me on getting in,” and I ask really hard questions. I challenge people on their plan and what they’re willing to work on and it’s so – it’s like the first time you have exposure to like, whoa. This is not a joke. This is what I really think is stepping into the big leagues of coaching. Is that what the experience was for you? What was it that really being on that call made you go, “No, I’m a coach now, this is what I do and I happen to be a doctor as well”?

Devon: Yeah, well you had made it pretty clear that for this round of the mastermind this was really for people for whom coaching was their profession. This is what you do full-time. Even though, like I said, I had stepped away from my clinical job last year, so that was already true for me, I think it was that identity piece. I remember thinking right after that call – this is a thought that serves me really well is that Stacey doesn’t make mistakes. So, I was like, “If I was invited to be in this room – “

Stacey: There will be a day where that doesn’t serve, but I’ll let you have it for now.

Devon: I know, but I’m like, “Right now it’s working so I’m going to hang on to it for dear life.” This is what I think is the beauty of coaching –

Stacey: In this context I think it’s good.

Devon: Yeah. It’s that sometimes we – it allows us to borrow a belief that maybe we don’t have in ourselves in that moment. My thought of, “Okay, well Stacey, she’s not joking around with her business in this group.” So, if I’m invited to join this group it’s because she already sees me as a 200K earner, 200K business CEO, and for me it was really an invitation and a challenge of, “Okay, what does she already know about me that I need to figure or I need to find or look for in myself?” Because it’s there.

Stacey: What?

Devon: Yeah, that for me was the shift and I was like, “Okay.” Because I knew I could make 200K as a doctor. For me, it wasn’t can I make 200K? Yes or no. It was is this my actual path? Is this what I’m going to commit to for myself and for the clients that I serve now instead of being one foot in each world.

Stacey: Yeah. Oh my God, that is such a brilliant question. Say it again. Do you remember exactly how you said it?

Devon: No, I have no clue. I think it was something along the lines of if Stacey already sees me as a 200K CEO how is that already true? What does she already see in me that I have the opportunity and the challenge to now see in myself?

Stacey: Yes. Oh my God, that is the most brilliant thing ever. You’re jogging in my memory I think I used some version of that. I had a ton of drama when I first started million-dollar mentoring and the drama that I had was like, “Brooke doesn’t want me. She’s so annoyed by having to coach me. I’m so much work. I’m such a hot mess.” All of that.

I would constantly have to be like, “But then why did she invite me?” She invited me, right? She clearly wants me to be here and I had to always remind that that was true. I do think that that’s something that I really want everyone to take away and hear. Something that I love about having my guarantee. You either make 25K or I give you your 25K back.

To me, that is like I don’t play around with that. That’s like $25,000 of my money. Once someone signs up that’s my money and I put that on the line and I don’t do that joking around, just for fun, out of hustle. In order to make that deal I’ve had to coach myself so strongly on creating a standard for who can be in the mastermind and why that is and selecting with a lot of discernment.

I love that – I don’t always get the chance to say this is why I chose you and I don’t even like to do that because I want you to do that work. I want you to figure out why would Stacey put her money on the line for me? Why would she do that? Why would she give me the spot? Why would she risk the 25K along with me? And really truly why would I risk it? Because you guys don’t risk it, right?

So, it’s like why would she do that? I want everyone to do that with any coach they work with, but definitely if you join 200K is what in me does she see that I don’t? That’s such a brilliant question. I love that so much. And you were right we don’t let people have side hustles in 200K.

I love it. Okay, so you’ve made – did we say how much you’ve made this year? Like 200K?

Devon: Yeah, $202,627.

Stacey: I love it so much. That is freaking brilliant. Thank you so much.

Devon: The one thing that when I looked at this number I had this thought, so I created that in 10 months. I remember thinking back, “That’s so interesting because it took me 4 years of medical school for which I went almost $300,000 in student loan debt for, 3 years of residency, 1 year of fellowship, and an entire as an attending outside of my training before I made $200,000 for the very first time as a doctor.” That blows my mind.

Stacey: Damn, that just gave me chills.

Devon: Yeah, and I really, truly believe that is possible for every single coach.

Stacey: That’s so good.

Devon: So, thank you, Stacey because you made that possible for me and I’m so grateful.

Stacey: You are so welcome, but I think you made it possible for you. You took that Hunger Games call and made it worth $50,000 and you hadn’t even been accepted yet. I think that is brilliant. I love it.

Devon: Thank you for setting the example for all of us.

Stacey: You’re so welcome. All right, Miss Andrea, tell us who you are, how much money you’ve made, and let’s hear about how you got into coaching and your self-concept.

Andrea: Okay, so I am Andrea Liebross and I, kind of like Devon, I help women in business. So, I call myself a business life coach. My clients are entrepreneurs, professionals, corporate climbers. They’re just women who are driven and determined to make money.

Stacey: Love it.

Andrea: But they are feeling overwhelmed with all the things and they are attempting to be committed to their own personal and professional growth, but they keep having what I call little quits or they’re staying stuck or they’re spinning in confusion and like you to say, they’re in the river of misery. So, we work together to really help them stay committed by being more deliberate with their thinking and their actions. So, they can have success – whatever that looks like to them at home or at work.

Stacey: Yeah, I love it. So, how did you get into coaching?

Andrea: So, 10 years before I started my coaching business for those 10 years I worked for a company whose business was to sell clothing directly to customers in a showroom setting. So, it wasn’t party time, but it was a showroom and I started as one of those people and then moved into more of a corporate role where I was doing the recruiting and hiring and training.

After 10 years I had had it because they would tell me, “That is such a good idea,” those corporate people.

Stacey: And they never used it?

Andrea: Then nothing would happen with my great idea. So, a friend and I had a joke, if they tell me one more time, “That’s such a great idea, I’m quitting.” So, I quit.

Stacey: Oh my God, that’s fantastic. You’re like, “Listen, I’m taking all of my ideas and I’m out of here.”

Andrea: Right, “I’m out of here. Like, I have better places to put my ideas. I’m done with you people.”

Stacey: There is no better place to put your ideas than your own business that’s fantastic. Okay, I love it.

Andrea: Yeah, so I hired a coach because I didn’t know what to do. I just knew I was out of there, and that was my first coach ever and as we went through what she called – and I still use this concept sometimes with my clients, my skills and my wills and we figured out where they overlapped –

Stacey: Fun, okay.

Andrea: There was coaching and I said, “That was a crazy idea.” I was not going to become a coach, no way Jose, and then it probably took me a good six months to kind of get my head wrapped around it and go for it. So, then once I decided I got certified so I was official, but she pointed out to me that what I had been doing for 10 years was coaching, kind of like Kristen.

What was I doing? I was either coaching my clients or I was coaching these people I had just hired. So, I had a lot of experience coaching before I even technically called myself a coach.

Stacey: All right, I love it and how much money have you made this year?

Andrea: This year to date I have made $238,000.

Stacey: Damn, and how did you make last year?

Andrea: So last calendar year or 12 months, I made $141,000.

Stacey: I love it, so you’re going to double your income this year. A little more than double, right?

Andrea: I hope so, I don’t know. We’ll see where I get, but it’s at least – it’s probably going to be 150 more than last year.

Stacey: So fun, I love it. Were you in 2K or did you come straight into 200K, too?

Andrea: I skipped 200K, don’t tell anyone.

Stacey: You skipped 2K.

Andrea: Oh, 2K, right, right, I skipped 2K but I did go in there –

Stacey: Listen, what’s going on here? We didn’t vet these people right.

Andrea: I listened to probably every podcast three times, but somehow –

Stacey: Kristen, you didn’t do 2K either? Listen, out of here. I’m just kidding, all right. So, you went straight into 200K and then what do you think has been – in all of your journey, 200K or before, what do you think has been the biggest self-concept shift for you and the way that you’re interacting with yourself and believing in yourself interacting with the world?

Andrea: So, I think the biggest shift was that I stopped running from the truth that I wanted to help thousands of women and make money in the process.

Stacey: Oh yeah. What was coming up for that made you not be able to put those two together?

Andrea: I think because when I had little kids I stepped away from my master’s degree in speech pathology and stopped doing that and stayed home with my kids for a couple of years. Then, I started to work for the company I just talked about, but I always kind of thought of it as like, “Oh, I’m just doing this on the side.”

My comment was, “We’re not going to live in a trailer tomorrow if whatever my side gig doesn’t work out.” We were going to be okay, so I never really put the making money part as a priority mixed in with the helping of other people.

Stacey: Why do you think that is?

Andrea: I think because it wasn’t necessary. We were, gratefully, in a situation financially where I didn’t have to make that money so I just never connected them. But yet, inside me I was – I’m super ambitious, but I was doing it with apology like being guilty if I wanted to go after that career, that making money or just even helping more and more people. It was kind of like, I like to say it was jobby. I think I borrowed that from Jody Moore at one point. It was a jobby, all these things I had been doing.

Stacey: Yeah, why do you think that is? Why do you think that you didn’t you could go or didn’t want – what was that that was keeping you from just going out of the jobby and into this is like a big deal. I know you didn’t have to have the money, but was there another thing that –

Andrea: I think what I noticed, actually, in these women that I was training – this is actually why I had had enough after 10 years. So, what was happening is they all had the desire, the ambition to do whatever they had just been recruited or hired to do. But kind of when the going got tough and you really had to put your pedal to the metal and do hard things and be uncomfortable they started to waiver and their commitment kind of faded. They weren’t 100% committed.

Stacey: Well, it’s like if you don’t have to have the money and then here we are with a giant, negative emotion experience you’re going to be like, “No, thanks.”

Andrea: Yes. So, when I decided to go for coaching my husband said to me, he said, “Think about all those people that you worked with that used to really frustrate you and you used to get kind of pissy at them because they weren’t 100% committed. You, if you wanted this to work you have to be 100% committed.

So, that was a changing point. In terms of self-concept I think – I like to say now, I am unapologetically ambitious. I’m not apologizing for it anymore. That was a shift and that –

Stacey: That’s what I was going to ask you was what do you think you were – why do you think you thought you had to apologize before? That was something I wanted to ask you earlier.

Andrea: I think it kind of goes back to that. I didn’t have to be doing this, I didn’t have to be ambitious.

Stacey: So, you only be – your brain was like, “You should only be ambitious if you have to”?

Andrea: To a point, only up to a threshold. If it’s going to start interfering with other things in your life then forget it. It was like a threshold and I had to cross over that and just say –

Stacey: And really your self-concept was like, “I am a person who has things interrupting and getting in the way of and making it difficult to succeed,” right?

Andrea: Yes.

Stacey: So, your brain was like, “I’m that person that has that and it’s not worth it to mess with it.”

Andrea: Yes. Exactly, and I had to get to the point where, yes, it is worth it to mess with it. Yes, I will go through those hard things.

Stacey: It’s so interesting though because I think – I was just talking about this to the Lindsays that she had just announced that she made lots and lots of money on social media and a couple people messaged her, old, old friends and were like, “This is why I never talked – never hear from you anymore.”

We were talking about this idea of like it’s not just the world – it’s not just ourselves, it’s the world, too where we think that in order to be super successful we have to give up all this stuff, we have to go through all this hard stuff, we have to not talk to people anymore, we have to do this and do that. The truth is, that’s not even true, because now we were talking about if we’re not talking to someone it’s just because we choose not to. It’s not because we’re like working ourselves into the ground or just so busy and that’s how a lot of people like to discredit money is like, “I mean, if I’m going to make a lot of money like you then I have to give up things and morally I don’t want to give up those values of family and time off.”

Andrea: Yeah, exactly.

Stacey: It’s like I feel like my self-concept has grown so much from that of like, no, no, no, my self-concept is I’m a fiancé, I have – I’m a dog mom. It’s like my business is not who I am and I don’t give things up in honor of my business or in order to make it work.

It’s like I have so much free time. I’m never busy. It’s so interesting how we can like really have both.

Andrea: It kind of became, what are your priorities?

Stacey: Yeah.

Andrea: My family is totally a priority and –

Stacey: And –

Andrea: There’s an and, and my business is a priority, and the people I’m helping is a priority and my own health and wellness is a priority. It’s not an either or it’s an and. I think the other that kind of just when you were talking occurred to me is that I had to switch from being okay with the status quo to being a problem solver to get my self-concept to the point where it’s okay to be unapologetically ambitious and yes, you belong in that 200K realm. I mean, I can figure this out. I can solve the problems.

Stacey: I love it. I’m unapologetically ambitious. Love it! Thank you.

Andrea: Thank you.

Stacey: All right, Miss Mara.

Mara: Stacey Boehman, it’s such an honor to be here.

Stacey: How are you? I’m so excited to have you.

Mara: I’m doing so well. So, first of all, I coach women who want to get married. My program is called How to Get Married and I know firsthand that the greatest love stories do not happen by accident.

Stacey: Yes. I’m with you, girlfriend. Will and I did not happen by accident.

Mara: Yeah.

Stacey: I would say we were the only two people on Tinder that were interested in an actual relationship.

Mara: I love it. If women could take ownership of this process of finding their partner, like if they knew what to do, if they had a process to follow like they could create that result for themselves, too. But the problem is people don’t teacher anything about this out there. Who has taken a class on relationships or finding love, ever in their lives?

I often say women have invested more time and money in algebra 101 than they have in learning about relationships.

Stacey: I would say all humans, not just women, but all humans.

Mara: Yeah, exactly.

Stacey: But we’re the ones that tend to be like – hang our entire world on finding someone, I find, at least me. I shouldn’t speak for all women, but it was all about like I have to find the guy, the ultimate romance. I’m such a sucker. So, yes, I love it and I actually did some programs, probably not as good as yours.

Mara: I love it. Well, it works.

Stacey: Tell us how you got into coaching because that’s not the first coaching, like that’s not the first – where you landed when you started coaching, right?

Mara: Right. So, many many years ago – we’re talking 2005 I found myself at an absolute rock bottom. So many things were awesome in my life. I was living in New York City, I was making 200K already in my job, I had my dream condo, dream car, all this stuff, okay? But I could not get pregnant and my marriage was falling apart.

My husband started to pull away and I had been outsourcing my worth to those things, to my marriage and to this idea of being a mother. When that didn’t work out, I found myself just an at absolute rock bottom. So, I feel like one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me in my life was I got connected with woman who became my mentor.

This was – I didn’t know anything about coaching. This was like 2005, I knew nothing about coaching. I hadn’t even really even heard of it, but actually this woman was an acupuncturist who was helping with the infertility stuff, but really she was a coach behind-the-scenes. She was a mentor to me and she taught me that I could be happy regardless of my circumstances. That I could tap into a self-worth and a peace separate from my circumstances and it blew my entire mind.

I couldn’t even believe that that was even possible and she opened the door – opened the gates open for me. She just dropped little and I ran with it and was able to heal my whole life, heal myself of years of infertility and return to peace with that and deep self-worth regardless of my marriage and what was falling apart. The last year of that marriage I had the best year of my life.

I was at an absolute peak in my life and I just had this message in me. I was like, “People do not know how to do this.” I just had this thought that I wanted to share this with as many women as possible. I just had this truth in me that I just had to get out. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but I started a blog and that message reached millions of people. I just blogged my brains out on that blog every single day for years and this truth just poured out of me.

I just felt like a conduit for this message and so I did that for years still not knowing what would come next, still not knowing anything about coaching. Not even knowing a single coach or even knowing that that industry –

Stacey: This reminds of Corinne Crabtree’s story. She was very similar just like, “I know I have to help people. I have no idea how. I’m just going to keep getting the message out. For years and years, I’m going to keep doing until eventually it happens.” So, when did you first launch your coaching business?

Mara: Okay, so in the beginning I called it mentoring. I started selling $150 packages and I called it mentoring. So, that really wasn’t – I feel like that was just my first little attempt. Anyway, I wasn’t making any – well, I was making very, very little money. Even with all of this thought leadership that I had done it hadn’t translated into a business. So, my mindset, this is where my mindset went to shit over.

I eventually felt like at some point I needed to be able to earn a living off this and that part was not working out. I had not applied my own mindset skills to entrepreneurship.

Stacey: I feel like all coaches forget when they get into entrepreneurship that all the coaching applies to entrepreneurship. They’re like, “No, no, no, it’s not the same thing. It doesn’t count.

Mara: Exactly, and so I was at a rock bottom, nearly walked away from all of it after years and years of doing this. Then, I found Brooke Castillo and I found you, Stacey, and I gave this whole effort one more go and a big one. I cultivated my belief in myself, my self-concept, I developed that from the desk. I have literally – I had actually put this whole effort on hold for about two years prior to meeting you and Brooke. Just literally, from that level –

Stacey: I love how it just doesn’t leave your soul. Like you can give up on it, but it’s not going to give up on you.

Mara: Yeah, exactly. So, there was still little in me, but I had to literally revive my belief in myself from the dust. That was last year in 2019.

Stacey: And you joined 2K, right? You’re not like these other rebels on the call?

Mara: Yep, I joined 2K May 31st, so June of last year and by the end of that year I had closed 180K, I mean sold, cash 180K cash. Right now, I’m running – I’m at 214K for the last 12 months.

Stacey: I have to say, because this is so important, you weren’t selling How to Get Married last year.

Mara: Exactly.

Stacey: This is something we created in the mastermind which I think is revolutionary and so many people have the capacity to argue with and not like this niche and also, totally love it and think it’s the greatest thing ever. I Think it’s really bold in this world to say that there’s an equation to fall in love and get married. So brilliant, but we just created this so this 200K-plus that you’ve made this year is a brand-new offer that no one has ever done before, ever offered before in this industry.

I just want everyone to know that. Because, to me, it’s like one of the biggest accomplishments to do something uncompletely untested, comply new in the coach realm, offering something that has never been – a result that has never been offered before that is so bold and to go out there and still make over 200K you first year selling it. I just think this is Phenomenal.

Mara: Yeah, I have been riding that wave. This brand was born in 200K, at the mastermind earlier this year in February.

Stacey: In February, oh my gosh.

Mara: I know, right?

Stacey: That’s so insane.

Mara: I know and I spent the first, oh my gosh – well, first of all at mastermind my mind was so blown I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t – I just was a firehouse of ideas that just was pouring out of me. I was writing stuff down practically all night and from that day forward I created this program over the next two months.

Stacey: What was the self-concept shift that changed there? Because that’s a bold thing to say, “I’m going to tell women that I’m going to teach them how to get married in six months to a year.” That’s a bold statement. So, what changed for you to be able to make that offer and take that work seriously and create that program?

Mara: Yeah, so actually the program part of it I feel like my self-concept around thought leadership –

Stacey: Was already so strong?

Mara: It was already there –

Stacey: Yeah, and you had gotten married already, right

Mara: Yes.

Stacey: You had gotten remarried and –

Mara: Exactly.

Stacey: So, you knew how to do this. This was like I’m teaching you from mastery?

Mara: I know exactly how to teach someone how to do this. I have so much confidence in that, but what made the shift self-concept-wise in regards to the money was just believing that my success as an entrepreneur was 100% just dependent upon my own beliefs. It wasn’t dependent on any failure –

Stacey: This offer was dependent on your own belief, right?

Mara: Yes, right.

Stacey: It’s not that there is this greater offer out in the world or not, it’s like am I willing to do the really hard work to sell this offer?

Mara: That’s it.

Stacey: And be completely committed to it.

Mara: Yeah, and that my self-concept is a person who could sell this program and who could speak about this program. That part of it – okay, so what I do for that is I tap into this deep love for women and for what they’re trying to create in their lives and this deep belief in women and their capability to do that, okay?

Stacey: I love it. Yeah.

Mara: I know they can do it because I’ve done it. But anyway, I have to tap into this believe that I can sell regardless of anything that happened in the past. Regardless of my previous entrepreneurship journey, right? Because it was 0, 0, 0 for years and years and years.

Stacey: I can sell regardless of my past.

Mara: Yes.

Stacey: Yes.

Mara: And I can show up as an entrepreneur and take money from people and have that exchange and be worth of this professional in this space, like again, the thought leader ship is I have that down, but it was more like –

Stacey: I can charge for it.

Mara: Yeah, like the money part, the entrepreneur part, the I am a successful business owner part. That part is where I was at such a low, low, so I had to create my belief to do that and that belief could not be dependent on any outcome. It could not be dependent on my clients, how many I had, how much money I had yet, whatever money I have in the bank, whatever. My whole thing is I want that belief to just be created from thin air because if I base it on anything else then I know that – it feels like I can lose it. It will feel like maybe that outcome will not be there next month.

Stacey: Yeah, and I want everyone to hear this because this is so important. I think this is the difference of entrepreneurs who can go and have a zero month or even two zero months or three zero months or low-income months and still go on to keep making money. We call it in 200K being able to turn the faucet on and off. Sometimes that happens accidentally because you step out of your self-concept, you forget who you are and you forget what was working, but sometimes you do it intentionally to work on other projects and other areas of your growth and grow a different piece of your business.

To be able to have that belief that’s not dependent on results it means that when you have a zero month your self-concept doesn’t change your belief in your ability to sell your product and make money doesn’t change with a zero month or even two zero months or three zero months. That is really I think what creates the longevity of making money in your business is your ability to believe that about yourself independent of your results.

Mara: 100%, Stacey, and that is what I’m stepping into this year with like a deeper certainty. It’s like I can have my highest month and – I’m to the point where I’m like, “Hey, if I made zero dollars next month, it would not shift. It wouldn’t shake me. It would scare me. It wouldn’t put the fear in me.

I’m just stepping into this deeper belief that what I’m capable of as a business owner has nothing to do with the dollars and the money. I create that completely separately and like I was saying earlier, if I do base it on an outcome the outcomes are always shifting and changing. So, it will never feel secure if I keep doing that.

I need to constantly bring it back and get that belief from within. It’s the same for my clients. This is what I teach my clients too.

Stacey: Yeah, of course. Yes, oh my God. I love it. All right, thank you so much. Does everybody have time? Because we’re a little bit over, but I would love to go around and have everybody share one thought with everyone listening to help them with their self-concept. One concept that you can have of yourself that they can adopt in order to go out and make more money, more impact, and help more people. So, let’s start with you, Kristen.

Kristen: I would say do not look to your present external circumstance to inform you of your present self-concept. You must have your future vision inform your present self-concept.

Stacey: Yes. You have to create it from scratch. You cannot use anything from the past to come along with you unless it’s good. I love it. All right, Melanie, what you got?

Melanie: I think one of my favorite new self-concepts, one of my favorite new thoughts about me is that I just make money faster and faster and faster, all the time. Like, this month is a 50K month for me, and last month was a 30K, the month before was like a 15. It’s like, “Oh this just happens fast and faster.” This is who I am, this is what I do.

Stacey: That’s so good. Oh my God, that’s a good one. All right, Andrea what you got?

Andrea: I’ve got that in order to raise your self-concept you have to decide that you are a decision maker and that every decision you make is the wrong one. Then you have to invest in that position.

Stacey: That’s a good one.

Andrea: Invest in the decision and get a return on it.

Stacey: I feel like y’all are taking everyone to church. This is so good. Yes. I think so many – I always am coaching 2K people on this, that you have to be willing to make a decision and then believe it’s right and then just adjust based on what you learn from the result, but you have to decide, “I am a decision and my decisions are – I can just trust what I think the answer is,” and move forward with that.

It doesn’t mean you never get coaching. It doesn’t mean that you don’t be a part of masterminds or programs or have a one-on-one coach, it doesn’t mean any of that. It just means that you have enough deep inner trust in yourself and you also are willing to take care of yourself enough in the times where you maybe make a decision that you wouldn’t make again. It’s like you trust yourself to be that decision maker and that whatever you decide in the moment is the right decision. That is brilliant.

Andrea: Two decisions at once.

Stacey: Yes.

Andrea: It’s the decision and then it’s a right decision.

Stacey: Yes, so good. All right, Devon, what you got?

Devon: Okay, mine has two parts. The first part is that self-concept or creating a self-concept for yourself is really an invitation to believe something bigger about yourself than you think is even possible or realistic. The second part being that’s only really possible when you understand that you can step in and out of your self-concept as you create it the same way that you step in and out of any belief. So, you don’t have to be realistic with your self-concept because it’s an invitation to grow into something bigger than makes sense to who you are right now.

Stacey: Oh, that’s so good. I love that. All right. That’s a good one. Mara.

Mara: So, I just really believe in fueling your self-concept with love because that is available to every single one of us and when you do that, when you have that love for your client, that love for who you are and all of your past and all that you’ve become, and you have love for your program and what you are offering the world it just shines. It just comes out and it’s like your soul is communing with your client. You are just sharing a truth at such a deeper level when you fuel it with love.

Stacey: I love it. All right, and I’m going to add my own. I think – this is what I want to end it with is that when you challenge your self-concept and when you decide to create something that is much greater than where you’re at now you’re going to feel it in all of your body. It’s going to shake shit up and nothing has gone wrong. Your world is going to feel like something exploded and that is a good thing. That’s what I see happen a lot in 200K is people come in and they’re around all the women, like you all, that have these incredible self-concepts that are making all this money and feel like, “What the hell did I just step into?”

It shakes them to their very core because it’s so different than maybe the concept they were living in and that does not signal that something has gone wrong, it really signals that you’re moving in the right direction. You should put yourself in a room and around the idea of yourself that’s so big that it does make you have a lot of drama. You want that. If it doesn’t have a lot of drama attached to it it’s probably not that much further than where you are now, Kristen.

I love it. All right.

Kristen: Calling me out?

Stacey: I got to. I got to; it’ll help you. All right, thank you all so much for coming on and sharing your 200K wisdom with my audience and with your fellow colleagues and I look forward to seeing you later today on our call. Bye.

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you’re going to make your first $2,000, the hardest part, and then $200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk-free. You either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.

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