Ep #206: Showing Up, Slowing Down, and Taking Care of Yourself

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

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 206. Today we’re going to talk about showing up, slowing down and taking care of yourself. And I am recording this episode from my office but I’m feeling very cozy. I have my Christmas mug and a warm latte, and we’re just going to have a really intimate conversation. Are you ready? Because I have something I want to share with you that’s super vulnerable and I do think it will help a lot of you. But before I do, before we even dive in I have to ask you a favor.

Please do not send me coaching. Do not try to solve me through an Instagram message. Don’t recommend an essential oil. And overall just basically don’t listen to this episode as a coach with solutions for me. Don’t try to energy heal me. I’ve had all of these things happen to me when I share vulnerable things on the podcast. And I was thinking about it. It makes it not fun to share vulnerable things when you just get it used against you in that way.

So listen as a student and just know you don’t have to worry about me. I have a coach. I have a business mastermind. I have peers who coach me. I have friends who coach me who are incredible. And I am that friend who uses it with no limitations. I don’t worry about how often I message people for help. Even my friends who are my clients are like, “Don’t even check in with them and what’s happening with them.” I’m like, “Here’s what’s going on with me, I need your help.”

I’ve called my friend Lindsay Dotzlaf, actually this morning, it was an hour before our Two Million Dollar Group call. And l went, “Listen, I know we’ve both got to get ready for Two Million Dollar Group, but I need help with some mom stuff.” And she’s a great mom resource. So I do that. I have help. I need you to know that and never ever, ever worry about me. I also have myself and I am such a bawler when it comes to self-coaching and working through things.

So I’m never worried about me, so you don’t need to be worried about me. But I am also human, and I still have human experiences that you all have, and I still have to work through them. And so I want to be able to share those things with you especially as I’m living in breakthrough. Right now I’m in the middle of what I am calling my $30 million reinvention. I’m in the middle of becoming a mom, being a mom. I am reading this book about this idea of becoming a mother is an actual transformation and thing that no one talks about in the world.

And my friend, Lindsey Mango actually recommended it to me. And it’s so powerful. So I’m having just massive transformations in my life. I actually think it’s the most beautiful thing for you all when I get to bring you in on those because you learn so much from not just what I learn and the transformations I have but how I operate within them as well. And so that’s kind of this episode is how I’m operating within a transformation in my own self-concept that I’m working through.

So that’s kind of my caveat is don’t try to solve me and use this episode against me in that way to sell me something of you, of your offer. But also if you have kind words, and support, and love, feel free to send those my way. I’ll take those all day every day. I just want to offer that I don’t even do that. When someone tells me they’re suffering, maybe I know them, I will always reach out to them with love and kindness, and thoughts that I’m thinking of them. I don’t ever offer to coach them on it or, “Hey, did you know 200K could solve this for you?” I don’t do that.

So that’s all I’m asking is you don’t do that as well, that we play by the same rules of just human love and kindness and we don’t get in our heads about I could solve this, let me make an offer. So save your expertise and your offers but feel free if you ever want to send kind words and support and love, do so.

Okay, so that’s my ask but today we’re going to talk about showing up, slowing down and taking care of yourself. So I have a lot of coaches who I work with who face life circumstances as all of us do, you’re about to find out for me, I have lots of life circumstances coming at me because this is real life. We are in a real human experience, and we happen to be entrepreneurs together. And so what happens is these coaches that I work with have life circumstances that happen, and it causes them to not be able to circumstantially go at full capacity.

And what I mean by that is there’s an illness, or they have a loss in their family, or in their friendships, or a child that is going through something that is a big thing. There’s just something in their life that is not just a thought they’re having. And I’m going to give you guys some examples of mine because I recently had one that I was having a lot of drama about. It was my ability to manage my mind around, it was not great, and I was using that against myself instead of just really having compassion for myself for a life circumstance that came at me that was difficult.

And being okay with me not being perfect in that difficult circumstance. So we’re just going to say circumstances that prevent you from going at full capacity. And my clients often think that they should and myself think that we should be going at full capacity because we’re life coaches. And because we have these tools we should be going at full capacity regardless. And that our effectiveness as a coach and at self-coaching and our potential for growth depends on this ability to be able to self-coach ourselves and just be at full capacity through these giant life circumstances.

It’s just this thought of we should be able to persevere no matter what because we’re life coaches. And because of this should there’s a lot of all or nothing thinking around it. So what happens, I find my clients do this is they either stuff down what’s happening and avoid it and kind of burrow through their life circumstances and their business. And ultimately they discount their own emotional needs or even physical needs to give to other people in need.

And then typically what happens, it’s an either and or situation after they have done this for a significant amount of time, and they can no longer keep it up they quit altogether. Because the middle ground is just so difficult to see I think, especially for us as coaches. And no one is really talking about the middle ground. The conversation, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, the conversation seems to be limited. And I really do hope that this podcast helps with that.

So I was thinking when I wrote this about my situations and also a lot of things I’ve coached my 200K or my Two Million Dollar Groups students on just this year. I have used those situations to think about this episode but for this episode I’m going to talk about my specific ones just because it’s easier for me to talk about those. But whatever your situations are, I want you to insert yours. So I’ve been struggling a lot recently with several things.

Number one, just being a new mom can be really overwhelming at times. For the most part I think this experience has been way above my expectation, everything I ever wanted and dreamed of, and such a fulfilling, beautiful, amazing, loving experience. Literally just rarely do I imagine something, and it meet my expectations, or beyond, and this for sure has been it for me. I love being a mom and it can be really overwhelming at times figuring out how to fit a human that is completely dependent on you into your life that wasn’t there before.

And coming back to work, I’ve talked about that on the podcast. I am definitely the mom who wants to be with my kid all of the time. My nanny always says that, she’s like, “You really love your kid. You just want to be with him all the time.” In an extreme scenario, if he could just cuddle in my bed with me I would let him if I didn’t have anxiety. We’ll talk about that, but I would just let him be with me 100% of the time and never ever give myself time if I could. I’m just obsessed with him.

So there’s that and then I’m nursing, I’m being his sole, basically his sole food source. We have now started supplementing because well, the next thing is I have been sick five times in the last seven months. So it started with COVID a month before I had him and then I’ve had COVID. I’ve had the flu. I have had a virus that lasted four weeks that we don’t know what it was, just some cold that lasted four weeks.

I have been sick many times and the first several times I was able to get my milk supply up. And I think that my mind was just so strong, it was so committed, and I think this last time my mind finally gave. And I was like, “Okay, my kid is hungry, I don’t have it in me to wake up every two hours in the middle of the night again and so let’s use formula.” So that’s what we’re doing. I don’t need any judgment or thoughts around that either.

And then I also have postpartum anxiety. I’ve been talking about that a lot more recently because I don’t think a lot of people have been talking about it. And I’ve read up about it and I basically have textbook postpartum anxiety, very, very strong intrusive thoughts on a regular basis, some of them to which I can’t even say out loud, and I’m astonished that my brain offers them to me. And some of them I do say out loud to my husband or my nanny and they’re like, “What is happening in your brain?” It’s really bad.

I have stopped flying private because I can’t function flying in a small plane anymore. I’ve got to be on a giant plane and very distracted. The anxiety is just beyond my capability to coach on it when it comes to horrible things that could possibly happen to my son, it’s out of control. So I’m navigating that and I’m navigating how I want to approach postpartum anxiety. So, again do not offer me things please. I have a team of support and friends. And I feel really great about it. It’s just it’s there.

And I think that it’s important to say it’s there because so many of my clients are now popping out babies too. And if you have it and you’re running a business, it’s a lot. I just needed you to know that it’s a lot and I’m going through it. And I will help you through it in every way that I possibly can even if that’s just pure support and love and talking about it myself.

And then on top of all of that, because of the anxiety, I’m not getting enough sleep. And that’s gotten a lot better, my husband is now, I’m not nursing in the middle of the night anymore. And my husband is feeding my son and so I am getting more sleep now but still the postpartum loves to creep up in the middle of the night.

For those of you who have experienced it, you know nighttime when the baby is sleeping, especially if you have fears about SIDS is chronic. So I always tell myself I’m a really big girl, if I make it through the night without obsessively looking at the monitor or going up to his room and checking on him. I will say I do have him sleeping out of my room. That was a six and a half month transformation. He is finally now out of the SNOO, in his crib.

One of my good friends, Katrina Ubell was a pediatrician before she became a multimillion dollar coach and I text her all of the time about all of my things and she just walks me down from them. But one of them was, “Girl, you’ve got to get that baby sleeping out of your room.” And so I feel really proud of myself for that. So the sleep is happening, it’s becoming, it’s getting better, we’re on our way.

And then men, just close your ears because I’m going to be super vulnerable with this. I’m going to talk about it because I have literally had the thought at least 30 times in the last three days, why the eff is no one talking about this. The first period after your baby, what the hell is going on? It is awful, pure awfulness that I can’t even explain. So with all of this going on, all of these circumstance, when I wake up with this experience I just felt, my thought was, I’m drowning, I’m literally drowning.

And over the course of having the baby and where I am now seven months, actually I would say from the beginning of getting pregnant, let’s just start there. From the beginning of getting pregnant I had hyperemesis, I was sick my entire pregnancy without letup from the very beginning. I went from a person in August of 2021 who always gets her tasks done on time, and always delivers, and makes it to everything, and goes above and beyond, and honors her word for everything, and is never ever sick.

And is just full capacity all the time in her business, full focus, has no kids to someone who is very often not getting her tasks done on time. And to knowing, going to the person knowing that my team was waiting on me for these things. I became this person who my thought is, my team is always waiting on me for things and I can’t get to them. So that’s the thought, my team is waiting on me for things and I can’t get to them. And because I need to be in bed resting or because I am overwhelmed today with being a mom or because whatever the reason.

One of those six reasons I just gave you, because I’m so physically depleted, or emotionally depleted, or in such a strong anxiety situation right now. And this has been an incredible adjustment in my brain, and I think that I have always been really amazing at taking care of myself for the most part, for the most part, asterisk. I’m going to talk about when I was not. But I think the new me, I know when I say I have always been, I mean the new version of me, the millionaire version of me.

Because when I went through master coach training and hit my first $2 million, because I didn’t have a million dollar year, I just went straight to $2 million. That’s why I love the Two Million Dollar Group. But when I did that, when I went through master coach training that year. And master coach training, I want to say, just beat out the flake out of me.

We were talking recently about Monday Hour One which is a concept that the Life Coach School teaches in calendaring where you break down every single task, you put it on your calendar and your honor it. And I had to do that and master that to get my master certification. I had to actually show sufficiency in that, that’s not mastery of that as part of my project. They gave us all personal things, like this is what we see is holding you back the most. And so that was it for me is showing up and showing mastery level of being able to honor my calendar.

And so I was telling my team, “Yeah, I’m a master at that. And I’m in a new stage of life where I’m really struggling with it at a whole new level.” I was a master at it for that life and that person I was. And now I’m learning how to find a new normal for that now. And also I just have to tell you, one of the most powerful thoughts I have is this too shall pass. This is not going to be forever. I spend a lot of time in my brain showing myself how things are getting better and how things are getting easier.

I told my husband the other day, we were giving Jackson a bath. And I said, “Do you remember when we first had him, we were terrified to give him a bath?” I don’t even know when we first gave him a bath. But I remember when we had our interview with Jackie, our nanny, she was like, “So have you given him a bath?” And I don’t think we had. We were just so scared, just he felt so fragile. He was only 6 pounds 7 ounces, so little. Now he’s huge. He’s going to be, I don’t even know, an athlete for sure, maybe a football player, or a basketball player.

He’s so long, it’s crazy how big he is now. Anyways, I was telling him, “Can you imagine how much different baby number two is going to be?” I know it will be hard and there will be new challenges and the baby will be a new baby. And also we will not be new parents again. Just going from zero to one, holy hell. That was difficult for me, and I had no idea. I mean Jackie was telling me that when she first did our interview she was like, “You just looked like a deer in headlights.” And that is how I felt.

And so I am spending a lot of time working on, these things are not going to be things forever. And I know that because of who I am. I’m not a person who has life circumstances always happening to me. I used to be that person. There was a time in my life at the beginning of hiring a coach where my ongoing story is that a circumstance was always happening, and it was always dictating my life, and it was always preventing me from showing up.

And it was always the reason I couldn’t do the things and always the center of my blame. That’s not who I am now. I’m going to talk about that distinction in a minute. I really do feel very certain that these things will pass. And I’m giving myself grace for they’re all new things. I know I’m going to master them but it’s very hard now. So recently the other day just kind of had this experience where it just felt like I was drowning, that was my thought. And I reached out and got lots of coaching and this episode came to me, the need to share this with you all and how I’m navigating this.

I ended up meeting with my assistant and my COO, we cut a ton of things off my calendar. And I’ve just been working through what is my new work life going to look like moving forward and how am I going to be with myself moving forward and just right now while I’m in the thick of it? So I have just been thinking a lot about you all too and your thoughts about it when you have a circumstance that happens. And your ability to take time off, or your feeling about taking time off, or resting, or missing a deadline. That was for me the biggest occupation.

It really has not affected our clients at all, all of this which is so crazy. I’ll talk about that in a second. But it really has affected my team and it’s really just disrupted the self-concept of I am someone who always hits deadlines, and it’s caused me a lot of grief to not be hitting the deadlines. So when you have a circumstance that disrupts your plan, let’s just say that. And you are at a crossroads of wanting to not show up but feeling like you should. That’s sort of the conversation I want to have is this is really how I have been navigating it.

The first thing that I think is really important to ask yourself is do I show up? Do I have a track record for honoring my word, getting things done and being there, showing up, is that my track record? Or do I have a record of flaking, and quitting, and not completing things, and not honoring my word and my calendar, and quitting every circumstance almost every time? These are really powerful questions to ask yourself when you’re feeling any shoulding in your business in conjunction with having life circumstances happen and maybe needing to not show up, very powerful questions.

Again, there was a time in my life where the answer was I tend to be late, if I were being honest, I tend to be late. I tend to miss deadlines. I tend to not honor my word. I tend to forget. I tend to not be reliable. And then there is now, and I truly have the best story for this example. I have so many lessons from this situation that I may share at some point, I may not.

But I recently got asked to speak at Life Coach Live which was an event for The Life Coach School with my coach, Brooke. I got asked to speak for 60 minutes on creating wealth and abundance by creating new beliefs. And this event had, I think, 3,000 attendees between in person and virtual. When it was presented to me it was just an immediate yes. I almost always say yes to The Life Coach School. I feel so grateful and indebted to them and my experience with them has been so positive and amazing that I always want to sell them.

I was just like, “Yeah.” Literally I’m like, “Listen, I’m going to just get up there and sell the shit out of coach training for you.” And have so much fun doing it. Was nothing about an opportunity for me and just everything about how fun will it be to go to Phoenix and just sell my face off for coach training. I even said on stage, “I’m not getting an affiliate fee for this. Nothing will happen for me if you sign up, but I really think you should.” So I decided to go and made my speech.

And I was creating my speech the week of our 200K launch. And if you listened to last week you heard that there was a tech issue, a human error issue with our launch, and it did not go according to plan. So we’re redoing the launch, we’re doing that the second week of December, reopening. So the launch is happening at the same time that I’m writing my speech. And I’m trying to troubleshoot what’s happening in the launch while also writing the speech.

And so I get it done but my producer ended up asking him to help. And we were working on it literally until the last minute, my slides, and my presentation until the last minute. And we finally get it done and I have one day before I’m supposed to leave for Phoenix and I’m feeling so amazing. The relief of completing this and knowing what happened with the 200K launch, and how we’re moving forward, I just feel incredible. So we get on a plane and I’m really working on my thoughts about it being amazing.

And so we fly from Louisville to Denver and then Denver to Phoenix. And Michelle, my COO finds us this incredible Amex lounge which I am dying laughing because I’d never been in an Amex lounge because I don’t fly commercial. And so we were laughing about it being the first time I’ve been in the Amex lounge. And it was amazing, and we were taking photos of Jackson in this boujie Amex lounge experience and just having a great time.

And them we get on the plane, and we had a three hour layover, so it was already a long way over. And then we get on the plane, and something happens, and something else happens, and something else happens. And we ended up being on the plane for almost two hours before we take off. And Jackson’s now not being so great obviously. He’s just been stuck on a plane for two hours and so he’s fussing, and the travel day becomes a very long travel day. It was a long travel day to begin with, but it turned in from nine hours to 13 or 14 hours.

We land in Phoenix and 40 minutes of standing and waiting for our baggage, we’re like, “What is actually going on? Nothing about this makes sense.” So we realized that after talking with United and blah, blah, blah, long story short, my luggage was stolen. Stolen, not lost, stolen, and all of Jackson’s things were stolen. All of my things for speaking were stolen, my outfit, everything for the trip, my maternity bras, just all of the things of a nursing mom, all of the things gone.

It’s now been a 14 hour travel day, whatever it was. And I’m in the airport and we have nothing. And luckily I do not speak until Sunday, that was tough. I did not handle that so well. And so after that very long travel day, I send Jackie and Jackson to the hotel and then I go shopping at Target to buy our most basic necessities, or to try to buy our most basic necessities. And then we get back to the hotel. The hotel was not set up to be the way that we planned on using it, it wasn’t going to work for us.

We didn’t pack any of Jackson’s food. We planned on having room service pureed food. They don’t do that. It was just a whole thing. So we ended up needing to switch hotels as well. So I washed my clothes in the tub and dried them and we’re like, “We’re going to go to bed. We’ll figure everything out tomorrow.” And so the entire weekend became me having to figure out all of the obstacles in the way. It was like a masterclass in adversity.

And we had Neil the next day, we had him do a FaceTime to go through our closet and me pick out new clothes for me to speak on stage. And new clothes for me to have in Arizona, new clothes for Jackson to have in Arizona and then overnight it to us. He paid $500 to overnight it. It was guaranteed for Saturday delivery at 11:30. 11:30am on Saturday I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to get my luggage. I’m going to work on my speech and then we’re going to go do something fun and try to wash off this experience.”

And 11:30 arrives and I get a call from FedEx and they’re like, “We don’t know what happened, but the luggage just never went on the plane and it’s still in Louisville.” I’m like, “Okay, awesome, great.” So now we’re at plan B, I’m going to go shop and try to buy all the things including a stage outfit in a city that I am not familiar with. So that was our weekend. And we had prescriptions that had gotten stolen. So it was just a lot of driving around a city trying to look for things in a very stressful way, feeling very stressed and anxious.

And it was something about my baby’s things being stolen that really triggered my anxiety in a really big way. And then we just had so many issues with Walgreens, getting the prescriptions. And there was the moment where we had rehearsal for our speeches, it was a Friday night, it was after day one, we rehearsed, the people who were speaking. I was an hour and a half late to rehearsal. And I was literally just sitting in my car bawling my eyes out thinking I can’t do this.

And I cleaned my face off, I walk in, and I can feel everyone’s energy is so amazing and mine feels like I have literally been tied to the back of a car and dragged for miles. That’s how I felt. I remember looking at Corinne Crabtree and being like, “Oh my God, our energies are very far apart.” Bless her heart, she really was there for me that night. But I felt really bad. I was like, “God, I’m just bringing all this craziness to this event.” And I kept just thinking, I’m going to show up. I’m going to show up. I’m going to show up. I’m going to do this.

And my nanny had even asked me, “Have you ever just considered going home. This has been the craziest experience. Would Brooke be okay if you just flew home? “And I was like, “Listen, Brooke will always be okay, no matter what happens in her business always and I’m not doing that. I would never do that. I will not do that, just I’m showing up.”

And so after this crazy event, the craziest experience, I showed up. The morning came Sunday morning, I’m speaking. I got four hours of sleep the night before. And got up, got my hair and makeup, arrived, and did my speech for 3,000 people and fucking rocked it. Rocked it. I had so much fun. If you were there, I guarantee you had no idea that I had had that kind of weekend. So I was really thinking about this when I was going through this experience of feeling like I was drowning and letting my team down and never showing up.

And that day I had so many things on my calendar, and I really just needed to be in bed and was getting lots of coaching about just how I was handling it and how I was thinking about it. And is it okay for me to be in bed? Is it okay for me to be sick and not feeling well for the sixth time and all of the things? And I just kept thinking about the story of Arizona and my luggage getting stolen.

It was the worst weekend in probably, I wouldn’t say of my life necessarily, but I would definitely say, my husband was like, “This is probably the worst travel experience you’ve ever had.” And I was like, “For sure.” I don’t know that anything meets it. And everyone’s been like, “Wait, your luggage was actually stolen?” Just to be clear, yes, never fly United. I rarely do this, but I am just throwing them all under the bus. Do not fly United ever, ever, ever, ever. Apparently it is a massive problem with them.

Even though we were first class, and our bags were labeled ‘priority,’ they put them on a flight that left before ours to make room on the plane. Then when we weren’t there, it just went round and round on the carousel, the agents didn’t take it off in a timely fashion. When they did, they put it in front of the office, not in the office and they didn’t require someone to show them a tag when they just walked up and took my bag.

So the police actually showed me on the camera, the two girls walking into airport, watching my bag go round and round and then following it over when they took it and then walking off. And they, right before they walked out the doors they looked over their shoulders three times each and then walked right out. So now, listen, I’ve also gotten a lecture from Michelle on not having my bag locked and not having air tags in it which we have now changed.

But listen, I’m so used to flying private, I’m like, “I don’t know what’s going on with commercial flights but now I do.” I’ve gotten a hard crash course in what’s happening with commercial flights, do not fly United. They also did not send one of my bags home with me. So we got to Louisville on the way home and one of them was gone. We did get that one back two days later but what the eff is going on in the airline industry?

So anyways I have been thinking about this story and to me there is not another story. There is not another situation of perseverance that has ever happened in my life that I can possibly think of where everything has literally been up against me. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. And I still showed up and I still rocked it. And so this is something that I think is so important for all of you to think about is do you have those stories for yourself? Are you showing up or are you not? I’m going to give you what to do either way, I’ve been both.

So it doesn’t matter which one you are right now. I want you to be able to show up when you want to show up and not show up when you need to not show up and be okay. And take care of yourself when you need to take care of yourself and not use shoulding to not take care of yourself. So this is my example of my thought is I always show up, I always deliver. I would never not show up when it counts. Those are my three predominant self-concepts.

So when my brain wants to offer me that I’m dropping balls everywhere and not doing a good job I’ve been working on this idea, this concept of the checklist, the showing up checklist. I’m going to just rattle mine off for you. But I will encourage you to create your own.

So number one is I have done all the calls I committed to doing for my Mastermind, and 2K for 2K, and Two Million Dollar Group. Even if I missed a call because I was sick and had to have someone so fill in, then if there was another call where a guest instructor was scheduled, I asked if they would mind if I just did the call instead so that I could make up. Because I actually want to coach my students. I want to be there for my students.

That’s another thought or another question that you should think about when you’re making your checklist or you’re thinking about your self-concept around showing up. It’s like, I want to show up, that’s just who I am. When my nanny was asking me, “Would you ever just consider going home?” It’s like, I just don’t want to go home. Maybe if I wanted to go home I would have entertained it. But despite, no matter what was happening I wanted to speak at Life Coach Live. I wanted to be there. It was the most fun experience ever.

I had such an amazing time and so many transformations for myself, it was the best. So I wanted to be there. I want to show up for my clients. I never not want to show up for my clients. So I’ve done all the calls I’m committed to doing.

Number two is I created since my baby the best live event content and executed the best live event for my 200K Mastermind that I’ve ever created, ever. And I’ve pre-created the next version of that for this next round. I’m so excited about the live event content. I know people are going to go and think that it’s not possible, that I can top the live event content and what I’m going to teach them from this past round. And then I’m going to do it anyways on this next one. I know it. I feel it in my whole body.

Number four is I have never missed a podcast deadline. Okay, I’ve missed a couple of deadlines. I’ve never missed a podcast going out. I just pay extra for them to rush it. I’ve had a lot of those, but I’ve never, never not had a podcast not go out on Wednesday. Every time you expect a podcast to go out, it’s there. I’ve also wrote all new emails for my 200K and my Two Million Dollar Group program. All new sales emails for both launches. I did that since I have my baby. And I created two brand new sales pages. And I go in and coach in my 2K community and my 200K community.

I recorded, this is something I’ve been wanting to do for 18 months, and I got it done almost right around when I came back from maternity leave, that I recorded a panel discussion. I think it was an eight hour panel discussion, with some of my Black coaches who are leaders in my 2K community and my 200K community, who have been coaching with me for years. We recorded a panel discussion for our 2K for 2K students of how to become a really successful Black coach in our industry.

I’m really excited to release that. It’s in the editing process. And we’re going to be releasing that for 2K for 2K students and our 200K students. Of course everyone if you’re a student of ours you’ll get access to it. We’ll be releasing that at the beginning of the next year.

And I also have made major headway on leadership plans for next year. I’ve met with some of my leaders. I’m about to meet with some of my next round of leadership meetings this next week. So we’re taking really proactive action in our hiring, training, onboarding process in our company organization. And then I also wrote that 60 minute speech for The Life Coach School for Life Coach Live. There is 10 things right there. I show up for my business.

I encourage you to make your own checklist, your own list of when have you shown up? How are you showing up in a way that allows you to have that self-concept of I show up for my business? Now, if you don’t tend to show up, two things. Number one, you’ve got to work on that. And sometimes that means showing up when you really think you can’t, really, really think you can’t. I’ve coached so many people. I remember two people in particular that I coached or two situations.

I actually don’t remember who I coached on this, but I remember the situation where I had clients coming to me and they were, every time I want to set a big goal, every time something happens, and some life circumstance happens that prevents me from being able to achieve the goal. And I told them, “Then you have to figure out how to achieve it with a life circumstance. You can’t keep pretending that isn’t going to happen. You needs to figure out how to show up even when that happens. You need to figure out how to make money even when happens it happens.”

So if you are someone like me where you might be in the beginning of your journey of life coaching and still working on how to overcome life circumstances through your thinking. And if that’s you and you’re someone who’s always struggling to not show up, your biggest transformation will be to show up even when you think you can’t. And that’s challenging, I get it, trust me.

And number two, sometimes it will also mean not showing up. So just hear me on this. I could do a whole podcast just on this if you don’t show up. But this one is more of just an overview of all of it. Because you need to know that sometimes you might not be showing up when you really can because of your brain and sometimes even though that hasn’t been fully worked out, yet you still don’t want to learn to show up by making yourself work when you really need to take care of yourself.

That’s not how you want to learn to show up all the time is that you just make yourself work sick. That’s not what I’m saying. Recognizing the difference between not showing up with an excuse caused by resistance to an emotion and not wanting to feel an emotion versus I need to not show up to take care of your yourself. I think that’s the first start to becoming someone who shows up.

Because when you have it all mixed up and you’re showing up when you need to be grieving, for example. Or when you’re sick because you have so much judgment around the times you didn’t show up because you were playing small in your mind and making excuses because of your emotions, that leads you to build up so much resistance to showing up because you’re now not meeting your needs, that then you don’t show up at a time where you really could out of defiance. So teasing these two out makes a huge difference.

So I’ll give you an example of that. There was a time where I was not showing up. I was late to everything. I always had an excuse for why I was late, why I couldn’t do something, why I missed a deadline, why things were difficult. A circumstance was always dictating my life. When I started to work on letting go of the self-concept that I’m a hot mess.

I remember I was in master coach training, I was at an event. And everyone was working through lunch, and I had a thrown my back out. And I had the opportunity to go to a chiropractor on lunch, but everybody was working through lunch. So I would have to leave and have everyone see me leave to go take care of myself while everyone else was working. And it was an opportunity for my brain to say, “See, this is what happens, you’re a hot mess.” And instead I said, “No, I need to take care of myself. I’m not a hot mess. This is a need that needs to be met. I’m going to take care of myself.”

And the example of not being a hot mess is someone who takes care of themself. And that was a defining moment and a shift for me, it’s one of the major reasons I actually do show up so much today. I always think back to that moment where I wanted to tell myself I was a hot mess for needing to go to the chiropractor and instead I honored myself instead. So that’s maybe the first step. You need to really be able to just work on differentiating when do I really need to show up when I think I can’t and when do I need to take care of myself when I think I shouldn’t?

Those are the two biggest distinctions you need to make. Now, if you do show up and you just need to give yourself permission to not show up, do the checklist, check what you’re believing about yourself but also know these five things.

Number one, know that there could still be consequences and people not happy and it’s okay. This requires a high level of sufficiency, self-trust, and self-love. It takes having a self-concept of I show up and that not getting rocked when you don’t, it requires treating yourself like an asset, taking yourself seriously, choosing yourself first and there still might be clients who are unhappy.

Because most of you when you come to me and you get coached say in 200K or Two Million Dollar Group, your biggest fear is that your clients will be unhappy. That’s the reason you wouldn’t take time off to go to a funeral and cancel coaching calls. That’s the reason you would work sick. But trust me, you do not want to make decisions and build a business that is built with the foundation of the clients that will be unhappy when you take care of you. So any time they leave because you chose you over them, be happy about that. That’s a good thing. That’s okay. It’s not a problem.

They might not be happy, and I will say this, there will be clients that will be unhappy and there will be clients who are totally inspired, and you changed their life because you chose to show up for you. That will happen and you want to focus on those people.

Because, number two, you are the example of what’s possible, you. You are the example of what’s possible. You taking care of you shows other people what that looks like. I was recently on Instagram and my coach, Brooke, has an Instagram account now. I think it’s the real Brooke Castillo. And she’s doing 50 life lessons for her 50^th birthday. and one of her life lessons recently I read it to my husband, it was so good. We were both like, “What? It’s so good.” It said, “If anyone is going to be unhappy with your life it shouldn’t be you.” What?

That was a good one, that was a mic drop one. “If anyone is going to be unhappy with your life it shouldn’t be you.” If anyone’s going to be unhappy with your choices for your business it shouldn’t be you. I also had a conversation with one of my friends when I was talking to them about this. I was talking about my mind drama about missing deadlines and missing another day of work, needing to be in bed because my cramps were just so unbelievable. And I was so sick, fatigued, nauseous, couldn’t eat, just all of the things.

And one of the things that she said to me was, “We become entrepreneurs to have a business that works for our life, where we get to choose. That’s the whole point, don’t miss it.” You’ve got to do the things that work for your life, this is your business. So just remember, if anyone’s going to be unhappy about your business, and your life, and your choices it shouldn’t be you.

And number three is where is your idea of what a CEO should be doing coming from? So something else that my good friends were coaching me on is I was talking about no one cares about what’s happening with Jeff Bezos, they still expect their packages on time. And I think that’s for me, that has been a very useful thing to think about, about creating a business that is really dependable but sometimes I use that against myself.

And my friend said, “Do you think Jeff Bezos never misses deadlines? And do you think he gives a shit if someone’s package is more than two days late or is a day late or whatever? Isn’t on the Prime delivery or whatever, do you think he even knows about that?” And then one of them sent me an article about, maybe it was Tesla, or Elon Musk missing deadlines, I don’t know. But I was like, “That is so transformational for me to think about.” I think especially as women we are so hard on ourselves.

And I’m like, “Men miss deadlines all the time.” They just don’t make it about them and their hot mess-ness and their self-concept. And they don’t do the same things I think that us women do to ourselves. And so just check what your idea is and don’t use me against yourself ever please. If you think I am perfect at something, please ask me. Please ask me if you are experiencing a challenge that you think I haven’t been challenged with.

I promise you, the only difference between where you are and where I am is I’ve already experienced that challenge many times and moved through it. That’s the only difference. It’s not what our brains like to tell us is that I just don’t have the challenges you have. I promise that’s not true. Don’t use me against you, I am not perfect in any way. I miss deadlines, I get sick when it’s inconvenient. I have had clients mad at me before. I have had all the things I’m telling you prepare to yourself for. I’ve lost clients because I’ve missed things.

I have, actually this is a great story, it’s been a great story, it’s a shitty story but I will tell you really quick so that you understand what I’m saying of what, adjusting your idea of what a CEO should be doing. I recently talked about bad publicity that I had gotten in my business and there was a lot of things that happened with it but the big I think thing that kind of caused a chain reaction for it is I had a Two Million Dollar Group meeting before I went on maternity leave this April. And the morning of the meeting I tested positive for COVID.

And I didn’t just test positive for COVID, I woke up feeling really sick. I remember putting my makeup on and looking in the mirror and saying, “I’ve never felt this sick in my whole life.” I have worked sick a lot of times or worked really tired. I didn’t sleep all that night and so I thought I was really tired. And I thought it was because I was 36 weeks pregnant. You wake up, you didn’t sleep well, you feel terrible and you’re like, “Yeah, I’m 36 weeks pregnant, seems about right.”

But I looked in the mirror and I remember telling my husband, “I just feel like this is the one time where I almost feel like I don’t think I can do it.” I just feel that bad that I’m like, “I don’t know that I can do this.” But I didn’t think there was anything really wrong with me, so I just kept moving forward. And then we had made everybody test before we went into the room. And so I was doing my test at home, and it was kind of an afterthought. It was just sitting on the counter, and I had my handbag, my Gucci handbag in my hand, fully dressed walking out the door.

And I walked by my test, and I took a double take because it still had a couple of minutes left. And I looked at it and I called my husband in the room and I said, “Oh my God, it’s positive, I have COVID.” And that day, it just immediately progressively got worse. I had had a lot of postnasal drainage in the night which is why I didn’t sleep well. And I was like, “Oh the dogs are stinky.” None of it hit me as this is possibly COVID, so I was so shocked.

But one of the things that I remember talking, I had a good friend who was pregnant at the same time with me. And one of the things that she told me when she got COVID while she was pregnant was, “Do not push yourself.” Because she ended up almost being hospitalized. She was very, very, very ill. And she said, the biggest thing was she pushed herself beyond what she should have. She thought she could keep going because she had things, she’s pregnant, she’s got lots of things going on.

She just thought she could do more than she could, and not work. She wasn’t in person with people, but she could work from home. That was one of the things I remember thinking. And the other thing I knew is that, I don’t know if it’s still the case now but at the time COVID was the number one reason for stillbirth in the United States. So those two things I just immediately was like, “I’m going to bed, that’s what’s happening.” And everybody was already here, my team, all the students, everything.

And so I just had them meet and half of the room thought it was the most amazing transformational day. And they left saying how grateful they were to be in the room and how grateful they were for the example I showed, and taking care of themselves, how lifechanging it was for them. And got everything they needed that they came for her and went on to make a million dollars and half of them were really upset with me. And that was really a hard experience for me to rationalize, to understand.

And one of the things, it happened a couple of weeks after I started getting emails, threatening lawsuits and that, they were hiring lawyers and demanding money back. And one of the things that one of the people said to me was I’m a fraud and that I purposely misled them and all these things. And I just remember thinking to myself that is not true. It was a thought that could have made me feel very devastated. And I was like, “That’s just not true at all.”

I told my husband I was like, “I’ve been doing 200K and Two Million Dollar Group for a long time but even before that I did live events, live retreats with all of my masterminds. So I would do at least four or five a year plus I would sell retreats as well. And I’ve never missed any of them, not one, not one 200K event, not one Two Million Dollar Group meeting. And we meet four times a year before that. And in fact, the first two meetings of 200K, creating them took so much of my energy that my back would just spasm right before the meeting or the three day event.

And so the first two, you’ll see it when you’re in 200K, they’re still in the portal, I’m literally coaching for three days straight in a back spasm and unable to hardly move my neck. So I fucking show up. That’s who I am, I do that, that is what I do. So when I think about my idea of what a CEO is. A CEO does show up. And also a CEO is not going to work with COVID. A CEO is going to still go get their kid if someone’s bullying them at school. A CEO is still going to push a deadline back if they have the flu.

In fact an entire rollout if it’s dependent on them might not go out if they have the flu. And so just check in with a couple of things but what you think the successful people you follow, how you think they’re problem solving, how you think they’re showing up, what you think they’re doing and not doing. Don’t think I’m perfect for sure. When I’m sick I am sick, and I do take time off. You just need to know that, even when it costs me a million dollars. It could make people mad, and it could cost you money and you’re still worth it. Did you know that? You’re still worth it.

I’m also a CEO that keeps a big enough reserve that I can do that for myself, that I don’t have to sit on a virtual meeting for eight hours when I have COVID and I’m 36 weeks pregnant. I get to go to bed. And the people that aren’t happy with that I get to refund them. The people who are, I get to be an example of what’s motherfucking possible. That’s number two, being an example of what’s possible.

So number four, okay, so for me personally, for my employees I give them unlimited sick and mental health days. And PS, for anyone that listens to this and then is like, “What?” I never find that they abuse that. But I used to work in an environment, so this is actually another piece of my self-concept of I always show up, is I used to work when I was pitching, selling mops and knives in Walmart for seven years.

I used to work in a situation where if you were scheduled a store, you were contacted for that store and if you missed a day of that store you had to pay a $500 fine. Keep in mind, $500 was right around what you might have made a week. So if you missed you would forfeit a week. So this is before COVID where people just worked sick. So I would go in with a fever, I would go in with the flu. I would go in with a sinus infection.

I’d cut a big chunk of my thumb off in one of my shows for a slicer demo in front of the audience and I had my hand bandaged all the way up to my elbow, so I didn’t move. And I was still demoing slicers with my hand bandaged up and sold the store out. I just had to work sick. But now I have a really strong resistance most times to working sick. I will only work sick if I just genuinely want to work sick, I want to do the thing I was scheduled to do and I don’t want to delay it, then I will do it. But otherwise I don’t do it, I just don’t.

And so I don’t expect my employees to either. And so if that’s the case, and I never give them problems for leaving in the middle of the workday because their kids are sick, or they have a home emergency. So if I give them unlimited sick days and them unlimited mental health days, why would I not give that to myself? And yes, I’m at a time in my life where I’m being really challenged because typically unlimited sick days for me and I don’t work when I’m sick. I get to have that as a luxurious thing because before my baby I never got sick.

So it was really easy to give myself off a sick day here or there, to be sick once a year is fine. But when you’re sick five or six times in seven months, I’m not really sick right now, I’m just having really awful period cramps. I think this is day four. To go from that one time a week to almost once a month, it’s a next level challenge in my belief of what do I really believe about giving unlimited sick and mental health days? But if I’m going to honor that for my employees, why wouldn’t I honor that to myself? And I would never want my clients to do that either so why would I want me to do it?

It’s super simple, it’s super basic, it’s very common. You’ll hear it a lot in the coaching industry, “Would you want your clients to do this?” But really truly, would you want your clients to do this?”

And then number five, when you need to give yourself permission to not show up, compassion is required for that permission, I am human. When I got COVID I had to have a lot of compassion for myself, a lot. When people were angry with me for not showing up or not handling it in the way that they wanted me to, and now I’ve learned from that. Next time I would handle it differently, but I handled it with the best thoughts that I had at the time. I did learn from that experience.

But when people were angry with me and even for myself, I was angry I missed that. I was so angry and just mad, of all the times why that morning, for real. I had a lot of resistance to that just in general before anyone was even angry with me. But once they were, sinking into compassion for myself instead of self-hatred, or self-deprecation, or beating myself up, or choosing to think less of myself, I am human. I am human. I am human having a human experience.

And so I’ve been working with that a lot with myself right now because this is triggering all of the pregnancy and the postpartum, and all of that stuff has been really triggering this hot mess self-concept that I used to have. And it’s wanting to creep back in, and my brain is wanting me to believe that but it’s just not true. I’m just a really excellent, really incredible, meticulous CEO who also is a human being and I’m going to have compassion for that.

Now, here’s what I will say is there will be a time for all of you, especially if you work with me where your business will be less and less dependent on you. That is the goal with all of my clients. I really work with my Two Million Dollar Group students especially to unbind themselves from what they think are necessary tasks, to make them unnecessary tasks for them to do to free their time for their highest level, most important task, most joyous task for them. I like to sell, I like to coach, I like to lead and create the vision for the company and execute it. That’s what I love to do.

So I want to spend my time doing that, not unnecessary tasks, or things that I think are necessary and tedious but they’re not those things. But it will always be a working progress as you go. So right now I am working on the result of a $30 million business that operates whether I can show up or not. That’s the result I’m working on. And then there’s where we are now. And the middle ground that I will find that works best for me right now with this particular situation. I won’t always be postpartum but where I’m at now what’s the middle ground that works best for me now?

And I want to offer for all of you that the lack of showing up gives us an opportunity to get closer to where we want to be. Hear me say that again. The lack of showing up gives us an opportunity to get us closer to where we want to be. It helps us unbind from tasks. It helps us think differently about what’s required for a result, how much truly, how much time is truly needed to get things done? How much effort is truly needed to get things done? How much tasks truly need to get done?

It allows us to bring others in for help. It allows us to reinforce not hustling and overworking in order to create a result. So it helps us reinforce that our actions never create our results. Our brain wants to tell us the opposite. If I can’t get my shit together and get more energy I’ll never grow bigger. If I can’t get myself healthy I’ll never make $30 million. Those are my thoughts. But this is the perfect example of this. This week when I’m feeling terrible and need to be in bed I had a meeting with my COO and my assistant.

And because of me not being able to show up this week and the five times that I’ve been sick prior, what we ended up doing is looking at my calendar and figuring out how I never have to show up to the tasks that were on my calendar ever again. I just clear tasks off my calendar forever. I am unbound from them. I now get to focus on other things. What if most of the things on your calendar are not things that you necessarily have to do to create the result you want? They’re just things you think you need to do. It doesn’t mean again that you don’t show up.

So those of you who struggle with showing up you’re going to be like, “Wait.” This message is not for you right this second. This is for the people, for those of you who are the higher earners, the high achievers who are showing up. That sometimes the obstacle, always the obstacle is the way. What we did is we created processes for what goes on my calendar. We created an order of importance of tasks. We created a clear list of things that I feel strongly can only be done by me. And anything that I don’t feel strongly has to be done by me is getting delegated to someone else forever.

And now moving forward we will make sure that those are the only things on my calendar. When we do this work we get closer to a $30 million business that operates whether I’m sick or not. Now, if I barrel through my own needs I get further from it because I never learn how to organize my business and lead in a way that allows me to naturally walk into that result. I never create the mindset that allows me to think like the person who has a $30 million business that operates without me.

Or here’s what I should say, really with me in a way that I want because I do show up in my business and it doesn’t operate without me. I’m in it a lot. I’m in it way more than most CEOs probably. My level of productivity even though I only work three days a week, my level of productivity I guarantee is much higher than most CEOs. So I get to, what my friend said to me, I get to have a business that works for my life where I choose, and I get that that’s the whole point. I don’t miss it.

The final thing I want to say is a lot of coaches when these situations come up in 200K, when I’m coaching them, or after the fact, or if I don’t even know about them. A lot of them tend to think that the solution is to sit a round out. They have a death in the family, they’re going on maternity leave, they’re coming back from maternity leave. They are struggling with their children at home, they’ve got stuff going on with their kids. They’ve got a parents to take care of. I’m trying to think of all the situations, there’s been a ton over the years.

But they think that the solution is to back off from their business and their coaching because they feel like they can’t keep up and they can’t work their businesses as hard as they were. They think this means to stop, that they can’t perform, it’s literally like I can’t perform for my investment the way that I think I should. If I spent x amount of money I should be able to perform at a certain level that meets my satisfaction for the return that I’m expecting. And they think that the business coaching, especially with business coaching, is for and only for showing up and forward momentum and going hard.

Rather than thinking this is what the investment is for. This is the reason I need to be in this room. Other people might be here to learn to show up and I am here to learn how to take care of myself and edit down and get to what’s essential and minimize. They don’t think they should think that good business coaching is for learning how to not have to show up as much, to go from working all the time to working 15 to 20 hours a week. To run a company and take 26 weeks off.

If you aren’t able to take maternity leave or take off when someone dies or when you are sick, or you not showing up means less money for you in a bad way, sometimes it will cost you money but in a way where it really affects your business and affects you. You need to be in a room that can help you through that. You need the coaching more than ever. This is the time where you really learn that actions don’t create results. I feel very confident that I am leading the way on this and I am living proof.

At $1 million, the first time I made a $1 million was in a six month period. In that period I took a month-long road trip with my dog and my fiancé just for fun. Sometimes you guys think that the circumstance needs to be a difficult one. It can’t be you wanting to do something for you for fun and enjoyment. The year I made $9 million I took six weeks off for my wedding and my honeymoon. And then I ended up having to take 12 weeks off because I had hyperemesis when I first got pregnant. I worked a little here and there but most of the time I was in bed in my cold dark room sleeping.

And then this year I’m going to make well over 10 million and I took three months of maternity leave. I have been spending lots of time with my baby. I am nursing him, and I was sick, this will be my sixth time missing work because of a physical issue or an illness. But it’s not just me making more money and taking more time off. These years we also had more 2K, 200K and $2 million earners than ever before. Let me say this again. These years we also had more 2K, 200K and $2 million earners than ever before. So maybe, especially I’m speaking to all 200K earners.

Maybe instead of I’m here to master my PSPR I’m here to learn to be a completely different entrepreneur. I’m here to learn a completely new way. I am here to find my middle ground. I know this to be true deeply because this time in my life with all the circumstances I told you, all the things happening, my business mastermind, my reinvention, my one-on-one coaching that has never been more important in helping me navigate these wider in a way that feels very empowering and gets me closer to who I want to be and where I want to go, not further, closer.

The obstacle is the way, it’s not a stop sign, it’s a roundabout. I don’t know if that’s the right analogy, but it’s a roundabout. My coaching has never been more important, even on my mat leave, I coached every week with my coach. I didn’t coach on business, I coached on my life. And I still showed up to a lot of my business mastermind call, not all of them but a lot of them because I still had thoughts about my business even on maternity leave. I had lots of thoughts about my business while on maternity leave.

And I signed up for Reinvention, a $50,000 hardcore all in, meet four times a year for two days, requires lots of travel, dd that too. And not because I don’t want to slow down and be with my baby, not because I don’t want to focus more on my baby than my business, but because I do. What? Because I do. And if you work with me I’m going to help you do that too, absolutely promise.

Okay, this is was a long episode. It was a meaty topic, but I really, really think it’s important because it’s something I am constantly coaching my students on. They are chronically shoulding themselves everywhere. I am really seeing my brain trying to do a number on my self-concept with all of these new circumstances. And I’m just not giving in, I’m not, I’m here to stay. This person who shows up, she’s here’s to stay no matter what.

And just a shout out of all my friends and the lovely people in my life, Corinne, Tanya, Kara, Rachel, Lindsay, both Lindsays, everyone in my life, if I didn’t mention you, if you are in my life and you have let me – Katrina, if you have let me lean on you and you have given me coaching, and support, and love, to all of my clients.

The clients who chosen when I’ve chosen myself over my business, have chosen to see that as a transformation, and an example of what’s possible and who have loved me and my work deeper because of that and who have gotten better results because of that. My clients who have sent me love, and support, and uplifted me and seen me as human even when you don’t really have to, it’s not your responsibility, your job. I just want to shout out all of you.

Thank you for being on this journey with me and letting me become a mother and being a part of that journey. And just being in witness to it. You guys are always to have a special place in my heart for being on this lifechanging experience and this reinvention with me. And of course all my actual coaches I pay too. I’m rich off my friends a lot but I also pay a lot of coaches to coach me in those proper containers as well. So shout out to all of you, I love you very much. Let’s all go show up when we want to and it’s important and let’s take care of ourselves when we need to.

Alright, I love you, have an amazing week.

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 $2000, 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.