Ep #239: Am I Really Going For It?

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 239. Today we’re going to answer the question, am I really going for it? So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and having a lot of struggle in my own brain for the last six months. And I was coaching someone recently in my new 25K group where we just focus on making their first $25,000 in a 12 month period or $25,000 in a six month period. And we really prepare them to be in the 200K room and have a really amazing experience and do really, really well, to emotionally mature them up to take that journey towards 200K.

And I was coaching a student, I’ve coached on this a lot in the 2K for 2K room as well. But I was coaching a student who I was telling her, it’s very clear that what she’s doing is every time she tries to go sell her in her business, she kind of pulls herself back before the finish line. If she does a launch, by the time she goes to get towards the end, she kind of quits on herself. And there was lots of conversations about not having time, being a stay at home mom and not having time to do her business.

And when she wants to go do her business, something maybe comes up or it’s hard to delegate time and find time or to bring in help. And we had this whole conversation about her bringing her husband in and talking to her husband about her dreams. And is she going to keep investing in her business if she’s not 100% all in. And we had this conversation. And I’ve been doing this work myself in my own business.

And so I’m going to kind of update you on my $30 million goal because I feel like I talked about it and then haven’t really brought it up since. And mostly it’s been because I’ve been in this exact same drama, the exact same things. And so I’ve been really thinking about those of you who are wanting to start your business and wanting to be a life coach and wanting desperately to make money as a life coach and feeling so stuck in committing and actually going for it.

And the results that I see that typically happen is extraordinary amounts of time going by where you feel like you’re working your business and you feel like you’re putting out effort. But it’s all uncommitted effort because you haven’t decided in your mind 100% to really go for it, as if you’re playing poker and you’ve got a hand that you’re not 100% sure is going to win, but you go all in anyways. I don’t actually play poker. It’s just the analogy I’ve been thinking about.

I actually, in my own business at the $10 million level at the eight figure level, we’re going to talk about this. But I recently had a conversation with my team and one of the things that one of my executives asked me is, “What is causing”, I’ve been working a lot lately, more than I want, more than my three days a week. And he was saying, “What exactly about the growth that you want to do is taking you out of your three day work week?” And when I got really honest with it, it was a lot of drama.

It was a lot of taking action from not being committed and not being in belief. And it just keeps tying back to, and I keep thinking about my 2K students, my 25K students who keep energetically putting themselves forward, but at the same time of energetically pulling themselves back. It’s like you take two steps forward and then you feel like you fall two steps back or more. And this can go on for a lot of time.

So I’m just going to kind of walk you through what I’ve been going through in my mind and let you apply it to where you are. And the way I am thinking about the person who I’m thinking about and doing this episode for really is the people who are not fully committed to launching their business and getting it off the ground, no matter what, meaning you would find childcare, you would find the time and commit to it and actually use that time. And it’s like Tony Robbins calls it, burning the boats. Where you go to the island and you burn the boats, you’re like, “I’m not coming back.”

That mentality of approach in going after your business, whereas what I see a lot in the industry is we can just keep spending money to go to life coaching events and to consume life coaching and business coaching and entrepreneurship coaching without actually, that consumption makes us feel like we’re moving forward without actually having to burn the boats and commit and do the work in our lives and our schedules on our calendars.

Do the actual work of meeting people, telling them you’re a coach, offering to help them, getting clients. We can do that for extended periods of time. So I want you to think about that, if that’s you. But if you’ve made a lot more money than that, because I’m at the $10 million level, you can also apply that to maybe going all in if you’re a 200K student and you’ve not made the commitment. You’ve already made 200K, 300K, 400K, but you have not committed to make $1 million.

I want you to use this work and think about, then I’m going to walk you through some of the questions that I’ve been asking myself. It’s not really a process. I’ve asked myself lots of questions over the last six months and I’ve been really answering them on another level in the last couple of weeks. So I wanted to just kind of impart my process for you or my questions that I’ve been asking myself.

So just to kind of give you an update on my $30 million goal. I have been really struggling, which is why I’ve not been talking about it. I have really been in a deep struggle with this desire. It’s like the desire to go after a $30 million goal and a desire to keep my business at 10 million and just coast, really. Serve my clients really, really well but take all of the time that I would spend having to coach myself to a $30 million goal, believing I could achieve that and manage that kind of money and run that size of a business.

And all of the things that would have to change operationally in our business to get there, I could even make less money and my brain likes to tell me I would just be so much happier. For the last six months, the growth of what has to change operationally in our business and what has to change in my mind and the way that I operate as a CEO. The way I sell, the way I think about my programs, the way I think about the attention I give to different ones, so much has to change.

And it’s been really difficult and my belief has been at an all-time low, I think because the challenges have been at an all-time high. And then on top of that, my commitment has not been holding that up. It’s been really back and forth. I’ve been wondering if I really want to do it, I really desire to have a bigger business. And if I even believe I can do it from believing it will take so much more of me to do it and not wanting to have to work hard and be in the growth.

And just I feel like I’ve been camped, working extraordinarily hard in my business and in my mind while sitting on the fence the entire time, which has been so extraordinarily painful. And it’s really just been a push and pull and so many of you will understand this of being a new mom and not wanting to miss a second of my child’s life. It goes back to when I joined my reinvention mastermind and my coach asked me, “What’s the most painful thought you have right now in your business?” And that it’s that it would take me away from my son.

And I remember her saying, “Well, we also don’t want your son to grow up being a weirdo. So, we want you to have some sort of independence from him.” Because I just want to be with him all of the time, all of the time. And I don’t feel that same way now. I definitely have more independence. I’ve now traveled without him. And I have gotten back into really enjoying running my business and in certain aspects, the easy parts, the easy parts to be clear. The coaching my clients, actively being on calls with them, the recording of this podcast, things like that.

But it’s still painful for me to see my nanny take my son off for the day to go swim or go to the splash pad or go to the library or do a craft or an activity and I don’t get to be a part of it. And then even I was talking to my husband the other day, “Can I just take a week off and just be a stay at home mom and just see what that’s like?” To take my son to the store. I don’t grocery shop, I haven’t in a year, two years, three years. I don’t even know how long. Don’t remember the last time I’ve been in charge of grocery shopping.

But what would it be like to just take my son to run errands and go to the grocery and do those kind of mundane things? Sometimes I ache for those things. And so the way I imagine it would be if I just decided not to grow for the next five years and just run a $10 million business, I could easily work three days a week. I would not have a lot on my plate mentally. There would not be this push and pull and things would definitely be much, much easier.

I could live my life in a really extraordinary fashion that would have a lot of calm and peace and not a lot of cognitive dissonance, what you come up against when you set a really big goal. And there’s a part of you that believes you can achieve it and desires to achieve it. And then there’s another part of you that doesn’t believe you can achieve it, questions if you can achieve it and is not up for all the work that it would take in order to do it.

And so again, I have been living in this fantasy of what it would be like a little bit over the last six months and really I would say the last year is to just to run a $10 million business, be super present for my clients when they’re working with me. Only work with the best of the best of the best and call it a day. I could do that just like you could not become a life coach. And you could live your life the way you’ve been living it but on purpose and know it was a choice and a decision, work your corporate job and love it, be a stay at home mom and love it and go all in with it.

And completely just let go of the desire for growth, either for now or permanently, the desire to do the thing, become a life coach, make $30 million, maybe make your first million dollars. You don’t have to go after. And it would be so much easier to not go after it. It would be so simple to not go after it. Sometimes I fantasize about the people who don’t have goals. What’s that like? What’s it like? I have this thought too, the other day I was driving. I have just anxiety, I have always had an anxious mind.

But I’m the person who’s always aware of what could go wrong in any given moment. Now, I will also say I do think it makes me much more aware in general of everything. It makes me more aware of my brain. Makes me more aware of my emotions. Makes me more aware of what’s happening in the world when I’m in crowds, just everything, just I’m always so much more aware. I was like, “What would it be like to just be one of the people who is not aware, who doesn’t know that they have thoughts and doesn’t know that they have emotions and is just living life?

What would it be like to just check out for a while and not have goals and what would that be like? I fantasize about it sometimes if I’m being really honest with you, this is a very honest episode. I fantasize a lot about just not growing. And this is what I’ve come to. It’s such a small moment but I’ve really been back and forth internally in my mind. And I answer my questions, all the things that have gotten me to where I feel like I’m at now.

There’s been a lot leading up to it, but there was one tiny thing, one insignificant thing recently that happened that made me realize why I keep going for the growth. And do I want to keep going for the growth and do I want to keep experiencing the dissonance and the pain and the drama of going for growth? I’m going to speed you up to the end and then I’m going to come back and walk you through all the questions in the middle that got me to this moment. And I don’t think there’s a right or wrong by the way.

I’ve really been sitting in because I originally experienced a lot of shame that came up from what would you all think of me being a business coach if I just decided I didn’t want to grow for the next five or six years, until my kids go off to actual school, school? Would you think less of me as a business coach? Would I lose my authority in the industry, if I’m just coasting? I’ve thought about that a lot. It feels like this is just a thought, a thought I have is that it’s extraordinarily important for me in what I teach to always be growing.

So I’ve experimented a lot with it but anyways I’m going to tell you the middle part, but first I’m just going to tell you the end. I was driving recently. I started going back to the trainer and I love driving to the trainer in the morning in the summer on a warm day, top down. Doing my training session for an hour, focused on me. I drive back home the slow way. I go to Starbucks, I get me a reward latte. And I’m just enjoying the warm air on my face as I drive home.

And I was listening to Imagine Dragons, this is one of my favorite groups to listen to while I drive top down on a beautiful day. And one of the songs, it just ignites something in me, that they ignite the growth in me. And there is a song called Whatever it Takes. And when I hear that song, it hits some piece of my soul that just, it’s like a knowing, an awareness. There’s something that’s been inside of me my entire life that has been this desire for expansion. I can’t describe it. I did not grow up in a family that was personal growth oriented.

I did not grow up in a life situation that fueled personal growth, financial growth, career growth. I did not grow up in that environment. It feels like something I was just born with. There was some fire inside of me that knew I wanted to achieve big things. And I was dreaming about it from the time I was a little girl and there were so many different ways.

I remember being 17 and buying into a multi-level marketing business and going to the big conferences and getting lifted up and charged up and wanting that financial freedom, that time freedom, wanting an expansive life. Being addicted to the growth that I experienced and being in a growth environment felt so alive for me. And so I’ve always wanted it. And so when I listen to that song, there’s just something, it feels like a pilot that is lit inside of me all of the time.

So I was driving recently and I was listening to that song in particular and it just all clicked for me, that that is my reason why. That is my reason why I want to keep moving forward even when it’s hard. It’s not about the money. I think people think often that it is about the money, that the only reason you would go for something bigger than where you’re at now is because you’re money obsessed and because you don’t think what you have is enough. And I have said this so many times and I just can’t say it enough.

Sometimes people get in business because they want more money. I do love money and I do want more of it but when it comes down to taking time away from my child and going through the extraordinary pain and drama of trying to figure out how to triple my results in my brain. I’m taking myself to a place in my brain that it just doesn’t believe is possible to something that really is impossible. And it’s so extraordinarily, it just comes with so much dissonance, so much fight.

And at a time in my life where it would be so easy to not do it. Our house is paid off. We’re investing money. We take all of the vacations we could ever take. I could take more vacations. I feel like I could live on the road. my husband not so much. So I’m already taking all of the fancy vacations that my husband will allot and I don’t like to travel without him. And my closet is full of bags. There’s no more bags that can be bought. There’s literally no space for them. I get talked about a lot about how many bags I buy. I haven’t bought a bag in a year.

So there’s just a place, there is a level that you reach where you just can’t take any more vacations. You can’t buy any more bags. You can’t do any of the things. And yet the pilot light is still lit and that, I think, is important to know where is it coming from? And I think when it’s not money related, it’s so much harder. It’s so much harder because that isn’t the immediate reward and the immediate payoff. I used to get a thrill when I would launch and make $3 million in one day. That used to blow my mind and give me the most extraordinary dopamine hit.

That doesn’t happen for me anymore and not because I’m ungrateful. It’s just happened so many times and there just is a level where you reach. I genuinely believe this and wish I could communicate it to you, that the money just can’t push you forward. And so then it makes it even harder. But sometimes I think also when you guys are so attached to the money, that it also makes it hard for you because then it’s hard to see anything but that. But this is the first question I asked myself that I think is super important to ask yourself is what are your reasons?

And there’s no judgment around what they are. So it can be money. It can also not be money. I’ve been thinking about, in the last two years, how many times people have said about me or to me, actually to me that I’m just here for the money grab. And that’s all they see for me is just grabbing money, grabbing money, grabbing money and I’m just money obsessed. And I’m like, “Oh, my God, if you only knew.” They think the $30 million goal is about money obsession.

And I’m like, “If you all only knew how much I go up against in my brain of not needing or wanting the money and not wanting to work.” And what I’m doing in my every day is trying to convince myself to work and trying to find back to my reasons for why I want to do anything other than coast and other than be with my baby. I almost sometimes, I’m like, “Gosh, literally, how do they get there to that assumption? It just feels so far from the truth.” So I digress.

Whatever your reasons are, you’ve got to know what they are. And I had to get really clear because I don’t feel compelled by the money right now. I do in some way, I recognize there will be a huge, huge financial shift that happens in me, in our lifestyle if we were to triple our business in a way that feels very tangible and real, but not real enough to get me up and out of fed in the morning. Okay, so it can be the money. There have been times where it has been the money. It has been if I can make 100K it would drastically change my life. If I can make $1 million it would drastically change my life, so it can be that.

What are your reasons? For me it was recognizing when I was driving that pilot light inside of me that’s going to be there no matter what my profit is, no matter what my revenue is, no matter what my lifestyle is, no matter what it is. No matter how hard it is that pilot light is going to be there, understanding that that’s true. That no matter what, that pilot light is not going anywhere. It’s in me, it’s been in me since I was little, since I can ever remember. It’s a feeling ignited in me that I love and I want to honor. I want to keep the expansion alive in my body.

I want to pass that expansion on to my son. If that’s in him, I want him to be able to access it by seeing me access it. And I do want to expand his opportunities and my family’s opportunities. I want to open up more time freedom for us. I want to open up more financial freedom for us. I do recognize that there is another level in life that is available when I break through this next ceiling for me, a whole another level that’s available.

I remember when I was selling mops in Walmart and then when I made a certain amount of money, I don’t even remember what it was but I remember there being a shift where I felt like I was living a different life as a different person in the same lifetime. And the idea that we could do that blew my mind. And I wanted to do that over and over and over again to see how many different lives I can feel like I’ve lived in this lifetime. And if you’ve followed me for a very long time, that is in my Diva Business School podcasts, which you can access in 2K for 2K as a bonus.

I talk about it even then. So it was some time way before I made a $1 million that I felt that and I’ve believed that to be true over and over and over. And I want to bring my family along with that. Even if it’s not happening inside of them, I can do that circumstantially for them. I want to know what’s possible in one lifetime. And can I get as much out of what’s possible in one lifetime? Can I push it to the max? When I listen to that song, Whatever it Takes, it talks about breaking the chains and the whole thing is about pushing to the max.

And not from a place of scarcity but can we expand to the maximum possible? And I don’t really have a desire to become this enlightened, I don’t even know what the version would be. But my goal is not to become Eckhart Tolle, for example. But can I expand from where I was born to the furthest links of possible? Can I create so much value and such a huge legacy? Can I leave this lifetime feeling like I used all of it up? That feels like what’s the pilot light that’s burning.

And I also feel very compelled to help as many students do that as possible. There’s some thrill for me, a deep thrill for me. Recently a client said that she made $11,000 all of last year in 2022. And she just made $11,000 in one day. When that happens for my clients, that to me feels changing lifetimes, changing your life in your same lifetime, doing things like that.

It’s so funny, I just had a conversation, I went on a mastermind retreat in San Francisco and I had my executives fly out with me. And so I was masterminding during the day and in the morning. At night I was meeting with my team to execute decisions we were making and do some operational things. And on the morning after the first day of mastermind meeting, I literally had just a breakdown. And I was crying my eyes out in my robe, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I just don’t want to grow.”

I called my COO to my room, who’s been working with me for so many years and I just let it all out. I just told her how I was feeling and then after I processed all those emotions and got back into my commitment through some other questions I’m about to share with you. The next Monday, I came to the meeting and I was like, “Here’s a grand idea I have. And this is going to help my students so much. And I want to do this and I want to do this.”

And they were a little shell shocked like, “Wait, what?” So when I go back to what are my reasons, I can’t stop thinking different ways to help my clients because I want them to do it too. I want to bring as many people as possible with me. I have no desire to do it alone. I have no desire to be the only one expanding. I talk about that all the time too. I don’t even have a desire really to run my business by myself. I treat my executives like thought partners in the business because I don’t want to do it alone.

That’s why I put so much stake in what my mentors say to me, because I don’t want to do it alone. And I think that’s true for not wanting to run my own business alone but also not wanting to go in expansion alone. I want to bring people with me. It’s so weird because I’m such an introvert, but I want to bring all the people with me. So those are my very strong, compelling reasons to attack the dissonance, to really go for it, to go through the pain, to experience the drama.

And I just think knowing I’m always going to want to do that, making peace with that is really who I am. Maybe I won’t entertain the back and forth as much anymore. That to me has been a really interesting thing to think about is can I make peace with the fact that I am someone who deeply wants to be with my children all the time? I have this motherly quality that I did not expect to come out of me.

And I have the pilot light of expansion that needs to come out of me as well and can I just make peace with that’s who I am in this lifetime? I keep saying in this lifetime, I don’t know that I believe in other lifetimes. I’m just saying in my one lifetime.

Okay so the next question I’ve asked myself is what’s my biggest fear? What is my biggest fear in achieving $30 million? And it’s that I will have to work five days a week and be really distracted on vacations and time off. I’ll miss my child’s life. Ultimately, that I’ll look back five or ten years from now and regret how much I worked. That’s the thought I have. The second thought I have is that my company will grow so big that I won’t like it. That liking it will almost be out of my control or the decisions in the growth and once we’re there, will be out of my control. They’ll be beyond me and it will no longer feel mine.

What’s interesting is I realize that that thought’s been playing for a while in a lot of areas of my life, even in my home life, where I feel like I don’t get to make the decisions. And then from that thought, I delegate the decisions. I noticed I said something to one of my executives the other day that was like, “I don’t think this is a good idea. I don’t think it’s going to work the way that you think it is.” I caught myself and I go, “Wait a minute, if I think that, we’re just not doing it. I’m the CEO. I make the decisions. It’s done. We’re not doing it.”

But I’ve been in that kind of thought process for a while from the thought. I love when our thoughts just prove themselves in the result lines. If you think you’re going to end up somewhere where you don’t like, you’re going to delegate your decisions and end up in a place that you don’t like, that will happen.

So those are my two biggest fears. That I’ll just end up in a business I won’t like from not being able to make the decisions that will create liking my business when it’s bigger. And that I will ultimately look back five, ten years, 20 years from now and feel like I wished I hadn’t worked as much.

I watched this documentary with Wolfgang Puck and he doesn’t say that at all, but my takeaway from watching his life was how sad it was that he missed in order to become the world’s most famous or one of the most famous chefs in the world, he lost his marriage. And he didn’t have a relationship with his children until they were grown adults. He wasn’t really actively in their life. And he’s not saying he regrets that. I’m sure he has the pilot light too.

I’m recognizing that I have the power to direct the pilot light, turn the fire on or to simmer it down. And while I’m doing either of those, I’m always in control and can make the decisions I want to make. So just knowing what your fears are, I think immediately helps you take your power back and where can I take charge of this? The fear is that is out of our control, so where can I take the control back?

The other question I’ve asked myself, and my mastermind colleagues really help me see this is how can you check in, change up and create trust with yourself rather than diminish it? How can you check in with yourself and other people? How can you change things up? How can you create trust with yourself rather than diminish it? And so one of the things I have answered for myself is I can do that one step at a time, I can always reevaluate.

The thing it requires, I’m reevaluating some of my decisions now and the only thing that requires, if you never want to end up a place that you won’t like, the only thing it requires is that you’re willing to feel the uncomfortableness to make the decision to change and to tell other people about it. And if you’re willing to feel uncomfortable with that and do it anyways, you’ll never be stuck somewhere you don’t like. And then the other thing that I think I can do to create trust with myself rather than diminish it is to not compromise, to require the growth to match my desires.

I had that conversation with my executive, where I was telling him that I feel the way they want to grow is so much faster than I feel I can keep up with. And he said, “What about what we’re wanting to do is making you work more? Because really, it’s us working more, we are doing the work. You should be hiring us to do the work, it shouldn’t be you.” Which I’m very lucky that I’m at that point where I do have people.

Some of you may not be there where you may have to be doing it. So you have to make the decision. This is the coaching I was giving my client is, “Decide how many hours you’re going to work ahead of time and just honor those hours. You always get to decide. And then communicate with your family what those hours are going to be and talk about that.” And we’re going to talk about that in a second.

It’s another part of the process is bringing other people in, but can you just make a decision, can I stick to the three days a week, no matter what? And then keep the goal, put both of those in the result line, $30 million in three days a week. And just notice if I’m compromising that, it’s not because of other people or the goal. It’s because of the way I’m thinking about it. What are you willing to do temporarily? This is a question I’ve asked myself. Temporarily I am willing to work more than three days a week.

And here’s the rub, the difference is there are things that have to be fixed operationally for us to grow or to even be doing $10 million well, that have to change. And I would rather do those things quickly than prolong that, especially if it’s anything that compromises my customer experience or my customers’ results.

We’ve identified some things that are circumstances that if we change them could really help our clients interact better and faster with the materials. A lot of technology upgrades we can make. That I think if we could just do them quicker, I would rather be in the river of misery around those operational things less and less time. I’d rather just swim faster and get across to the other side and rest and take a break. That, I don’t necessarily want to prolong that.

Or I’m willing to do it when I didn’t accomplish what I needed to do. There’s been some times, there’s been some days where I didn’t get done on my calendar what I needed to get done because it was a beautiful day and I took my kid to the splash pad instead. Or he needed me that day because he wasn’t feeling well and I laid around with him. And so I’m always for those reasons going to be willing to work at night or to pick up a couple of hours during his naps on days I don’t normally work.

And I’m also going to be willing to push back sales initiatives in the beginning, temporarily, even though the goal is 30 million. I am going to be willing temporarily to take things off my plate that would produce income in order to maintain my three days a week when I need to, when that’s the thing that’s right for me. So it’s not a black and white all or nothing thing. I’m hoping that at the end of this, you’ll see that. There’s always room for what’s the best thing for me right now along this goal.

Sometimes it’s going to be to work five days a week and some days it’s going to be to push back work so I only work three days a week. But if you go back to what can I do to create trust with myself rather than diminish it? It’s one step at a time and reevaluate. It’s me being in charge of those decisions always every single time, no one else.

Another question I asked myself that’s been really powerful is what are you willing to leave off the table, just take completely off the table? And I’ve really gotten to the point with where I’m at right now in this moment, in this stage of my business, any millions that can’t be made in three days a week for the most part. Again, if there’s a situational thing, I wanted to film the Two Million Dollar Group content. I filmed for eight days doing that content and it took two full work weeks of five days a week. That’s a small example.

But I was willing to do that, to just get that work done, to get it recorded and have my clients benefit from that for years and years and years to follow. But if 30 million or 50 million or 100 million would require a permanent five day a week work week, I don’t want to make it, at least not right now. And just knowing that is a powerful thing to tell myself, that I don’t have to do that. I can stop at any point and reevaluate.

Okay, so a couple more questions. What hard things are you willing to do to increase your happiness in this painful time? What? What hard things are you willing to do to increase your happiness? I know that this sounds a little weird. Why would I have to do hard things to increase my happiness? But when I asked the question of myself, there were things that I needed to change in my business immediately that I knew right away. It was hard for me, it was very difficult for me to have an open conversation with my team. I was really kind of taking the growth off the table for a second.

I talked to both of my executives separately and said, “I don’t know that I want to do this anymore.” That was my biggest truth in the moment, I don’t know that I want to do this anymore. I don’t know that I want to go to 30 million. And what that meant for one of my executives, he’s told me over and over, “If you don’t want to do this then take me off the roster because I’m an expensive line item and it only makes sense to have me here if we’re going to grow.”

And so I had to have this honest conversation with him that might have ended, it felt almost like a possible breakup. It might have ended in us going our separate ways if I didn’t want to grow. And so just being open and being willing to have that tough conversation, to say the hard things to myself and to my team, to say the hard thing of, “Actually what’s been costing you a lot of the work is just being on the fence and being in the dissonance and being in the drama.”

And maybe you need to talk to other people in your life, your spouse, your partner. I asked my client, “Have you talked to your husband about this? Have you just said, “I don’t know if I can make money at this yet?”” “I think I can because so far I’ve made”, I think she had made $26,000 in her business. And I was like, “If you can make 26, you can make 50. And then once you get to 50, if you can make 50 you can make 100.

So you’ve proven yourself, but if you haven’t, if you haven’t proven that you can make any money, have you talked to your partner, your financial and time partner and said, “Listen, I don’t even know if I can do this, but there is a pilot light inside of me that is going to constantly be in turmoil if I don’t fully try. And what that looks like is I need x amount of hours dedicated just to actually getting to work, not getting coaching, not learning, but getting to work.

And I also need hours to be coached and to learn and to develop skills. These are the hours that I need, how do we make this work? Or, I need this money, I need this money to make this dream happen.”” And just putting it all on the line, I’m never going to let go of this dream. And so I don’t want any more years to go by without letting this dream be realized or giving it my 100% full commitment. I want to do this. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m leaving my job tomorrow but I’m going to need to do this.

I’m going to need to go to this conference instead of going on this vacation. I’m going to need to spend an hour here instead of making dinner for the kids. Just have you had the conversation? Are you willing to have the uncomfortable conversation to increase your happiness in this time?

And then another thing I’ve said a couple of times, but it’s just worth actually asking yourself the question and exploring how can you take your power back in this situation. The power of your business is not signing your first client. making your first 2K, making 25K, it’s not in people buying from you. How can you be in charge of your power in any given situation? It’s not your spouse supporting you.

For me the answer was, I can give it my all in three days a week. I’ve been going back and forth about this and fearing I’m going to have to work more. But what if I just said, “Okay, but what if I just gave it my all in the three days I do a week?” And in the three days I do work. And I do feel I want to say to give myself credit because sometimes in your drama you don’t see it all. There has been a lot of that in the last six months, which is why we are still making so much money and why we have grown so much.

It feels like more of an iceberg where there’s been so much foundation we’ve laid underneath the surface that no one would ever see. And my brain doesn’t like to see it either, that we have done a lot of work towards that goal. And I have worked really hard in many weeks, only three days a week and giving it my all in those three days. But I can be more cognizant of it. I can have more boundaries around it.

I also think I can take my power back in this situation by noticing when my drama is creating the overwork, not the work. When my thoughts about the work are creating the overworking, not the work, so many of you are doing that, so many of you. If you are a 2K student, for sure you’re doing that. Your thoughts about the work cause you to overwork. And I can take my power back by not making it take longer and make myself more miserable by not fully committing, by not understanding the pilot light is going to be there no matter what.

That has been so powerful for me to see, it really is the three days a week and just staying at 10 million and kind of coasting and just living my life and having no stress is almost a little bit of a lie that I’m telling myself because the pilot light would be there nudging me every single time, you want to grow, you want to expand and you want to do it now. It’s nudging you every single time. It’s going to be there. So I’ll have a different level of discomfort. I’ll have the discomfort of not having growth.

And listen, for those of you listening, I take lots of time off. That’s not the thing. Where I’m at is not the place where I have not experimented with not growing. I’ve had many non-growth years. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’ve had several non-growth years and that feels lovely and wonderful but that was the growth for me at the time. That was actually the thing. So that’s not what this is.

Okay, so the next question is, how can you calm your nervous system? I got this question from one of my colleagues. How can you calm your nervous system right now? It’s very triggered by this growth, by this impossible goal that your brain is coming up against, by the dissonance you’re experiencing, by all of the fails that I’m having in going after this. In all of the things that are breaking that have to be fixed in going after this, how can I calm my nervous system?

And my fight or flight really sometimes gets ignited by just having to go to work and my son’s crying for me. So I can calm my nervous system by having compassion for being a new mama. I can calm my nervous system by creating boundaries around my time. One of the things I noticed, I told my husband last night on a walk is when I work really hard, there are days where I really do. I get so much accomplished in one day. And at the end of the day I find those days harder to turn off because my brain is so driven and I’m just so pumped up, I have more energy, not less.

So what I sometimes do with that energy is I just stay on my phone all night and I’m responding to Slacks and responding to clients. It’s just like I have excess energy that I don’t know what do with. And instead I’ve been putting my phone in a drawer and being very present with my family. I’m like, “Okay, I have a lot of energy, can we go take a walk? I have a lot of energy, can we go drive and get some ice cream? Can we go do this? Can we go do that?”

But directing that energy back to my family and what I want to be doing has actually helped me decompress at the end of the day and sleep better at night. So creating boundaries around honoring my work schedule. The other thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about is right now we want to have a lot of upgrades in our technology in our business and we have to come up with the money for that. And that was one of my biggest things that was fueling, I feel like I have to work a lot harder is I have to come up with all this money to pay for all these tech upgrades.

And we looked at also you can get the money from other areas of the budget that don’t involve me selling. So I’ve been looking at the things that we do spend money with in our programs. And do they align with the result we’re trying to create as the most important thing? And then are they more important than the tech upgrades that we know, the software that we can create to serve our clients and help them in their businesses, are they as valuable? And we’re working through that.

We’re literally teasing through, it goes down to at our live events, we are spending $190,000 at our events on lighting and having multiple screens for me to look at when I’m working through my slideshow. And I’m like, “I could spend $190,000 on tech for our member portals and our learning systems and software to help my students in their businesses for years to come or I could have a second monitor that helps me know what the next slide is coming up and better lighting at the event.” What?

And my CTO said, “You just need to decide, are you putting on the Oscar ceremony or are you helping people make 200K?” And I was like, “Damn, I am not putting on an Oscar ceremony. I’m helping people make 200K. Let’s move towards that.” Yes, that immediately calmed my nervous system is I don’t have to produce more sales. We just have to be smarter about how we’re spending our money? What? So good, calmed my nervous system down instantly.

Okay, so having worked through all of this process and thinking through this over the last six months for myself, I want you to answer those questions for yourself if you’re in this space. But I also wanted to just leave you with my advice, having done this before, but also being in it now, being in the river of misery with you right now, being in the in between is harder.

Just like my coach told me last October, it’s harder to not believe than to believe. And this statement feels very similar, being in the in between, being not committed fully, being half in, dipping your toe in the water is actually harder than being all in and figuring out how to make it work. Not committing is where a lot of the pain comes from, where the dissonance comes from. I want to make it but I might not make it. I want to make it but I might not make it versus I’m figuring out how to make it, no matter what we’re not turning back. I want this and I’m going for it.

No ifs, ands or buts, we’re burning the boats. I want this and I’m afraid to commit to it. That’s where all the pain comes from. My other piece of advice is that you can always change your mind on anything you do, always and forever. I’ve decided to give myself 12 months of the advice I have just given you, full out, playing hard, burning the boats within the boundaries that I’m going to set for myself.

And if I don’t like where I end up in 12 months, I can always have the easy street, $10 million business and just work with only the best of the best clients, make even harder filters for my programs, take less people. I could do that. I don’t have to put myself in this fight or flight growth. I don’t have to do the harder thing. I don’t have to grow, but I want to. So let’s just see what 12 months could be like with me setting the boundaries and me setting the pace and me making the decisions and me being in charge.

So that’s the next piece of advice is you are in charge, you create the pace. Go big in the hours you give yourself and be honest about your hours. What? Hear that one again, go big in the hours you give yourself, be honest about your hours. Communicate to yourself and everyone around you. It is hard, so you have to know the why you want the hard and what it’s going to give you.

You also have to know that this is not a take situation. Your business, your dream is not taking from you. It’s your dream. Your dream can never take from you, it can only give to you. If you take anything from this episode, take that. Nothing’s being taken from you, wanting to become a life coach is not taking from you, wanting to become a millionaire is not taking from you. It’s your dream. It’s impossible, it can only give to you. So what’s it giving? And is that honestly enough for you for what you have to give up, is it?

What you’re going to get, is that enough, yes or no? Be honest about it. And then take it one fully committed day at a time.

The final thing I want to leave you with is the uncommitted days are okay too. Nothing has gone wrong. If it takes you six months or a year to get on board and get off the damn fence that’s okay, it did me too. And I make $10 million a year as an entrepreneur and a life coach. So with mastery understanding of this, it can still happen. It’s okay, nothing’s gone wrong. You are right on track, it’s just how long do you want to stay in the river? And if you commit, you will be in it less time.

Alright, I hope this was so helpful. I hope it encourages some of you to finally decide to become a life coach. I hope it helps you go all in, if you’re in 2K and actually do the work and get out there meeting people with full commitment. I hope if you’re in 200K it helps you decide to make $1 million and get into the million dollar room. Whatever it is, wherever you’re on the fence, I hope this helps you go all in or choose not to and have peace with that decision. Alright, have an amazing, beautiful week. I love you all so much, bye 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.