Ep #19: Belief Plans

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 lovies, welcome to episode 19. I’m so excited to chat with you today. We’re going to be talking about belief plans; super fun. But first, before we dive in, I just want to give a shout-out to Miss Sherry Price. She just posted in our 2K for 2K.

She said, “Stacey, I joined your program less than two weeks ago and within one week of joining I sold three clients and made $7500. So excited to be telling my clients that I can help them. I made it simple by telling them that I could help them. I stopped getting in my own way with all these extra words I was using; such an easier way to communicate. I didn’t realize I was making it so complicated. Thank you #lovecoaching.”

This is why we do what we do. Making money is so simple. And in fact, what you think is that it’s complicated and there’s something missing from what you’re learning, what you know, to make it simple or for you to like know the answer.  But really, it’s just that you overcomplicate it to the point where it is not understandable and not easy and very confusing, but not because it isn’t or that it is confusing; it’s because your brain makes it that way.

Making money is super simple. Sherry, you’ve got it. I’m so happy for you. You go, girl. Go serve those clients. And listen, if you’re not in the 2K for 2K, join. Let’s make money and let’s make it in a simple way; so fun.

Okay, so we’re going to dive in and we’re going to talk about belief plans because it’s one of the things I’ve been coaching my clients and teaching them in my 200K mastermind, this concept of belief plans. It’s this concept I created.

We spend so much time on to-do lists, and that’s what I’m finding that they’re doing, is like focusing on all the actions, all the things they think they need to be doing to make money in their business. And then they schedule their to-dos and they spend all this time asking questions about how they should do something and exactly what they should be doing and does this work and does that work? And all of this time and energy goes into the actions they’re taking.

But our thoughts create our results. So instead of creating an action plan or focusing on what we need to do or making a to-do list, what I’ve been having my clients do for the last six weeks in my 200K mastermind is create what I call the belief plan instead of their to-do list. And I think this is especially important at the beginning of your business so that you can plan everything that you are actually going to do around why you would even do it from the place of being in the belief of the person who already has the result you want when you’re taking the actions that you’re taking.

When you’re growing your business, I just find from my clients, what they do is focus on staying busy so they can feel productive and good instead of focusing on what really matters, which is becoming a life coach in their identity. That is all that matters.

If you truly embody being a life coach and that is your actual identity, like you just are a coach, not a baby coach, not you’re trying to become a coach, not you’re trying to build a coaching business, like you’re just a coach. That’s who you are and you take yourself with you everywhere you go. If you do that, it doesn’t matter what you do at all, clients will come to you. Really, that’s it.

So, I want you to think about, like, some of you think about I need to write 100 blogs or I need to live stream every day, or I’ve got to get my website done, or I’ve got to figure out my niche or what my program is or I’ve got to plan out my program. I want you to think about right now what you focus on in your to-do list that you think matters to making money. I want you to think about it right now for you. What do you think it is that you need to do to go out and make money?

What’s on your to-do list today? What will be on your to-do list tomorrow? What’s been this nagging thing, like your website, like I’ve got to get that done?

And maybe you do, like, I want to say – sometimes people think that I’m saying that you shouldn’t have a niche and you shouldn’t have a website and all these things; that’s never actually my message. What I’m saying is don’t use it as an excuse to not make money, okay. Let’s clear that up for a second. But I want you to think about it, what is it for you that you spend time thinking you need to do and you spend a lot of time doing that isn’t time spend believing you’re a coach?

All of that time that you spend, it’s basically wasted. It really is. It’s like spending effort that you don’t actually have to spend or it’s like, focusing just in the complete wrong direction. It’s like driving your car. You want to go to Target and you drive for like five miles in the opposite direction. And that’s why so many coaches get burnt out and frustrated and overwhelmed and anxious, like it’s never going to happen, because they’ve just been driving in the wrong direction for five miles.

Like, that’s super frustrating. When you find out you’ve gone the wrong way, especially for a long time, like, I used to drive around the country for a living when I was pitching and the stores sometimes were eight hours away. So I would drive to Missouri from Louisville and it’s like eight hours away. And there would be times when I would go the wrong way. This is before maybe GPS, whatever.

But there are times where I’ve gotten lost and I will cry. It’s the most frustrating. Actually, depending on my mood, if I miss an exit and the next exit is six miles away, I might cry.  But literally, that’s what it is when you’re focusing on all those things that you think you need to do to make money. It’s as if you missed the exit and you just, like, the next one is 20 miles away.

And then you have to take that now 40-mile detour to come back to the right exit. The exit you want to get off on is the one of belief where you’re a life coach and like really fully embodying that, and it’s the fastest way to get where you’re going.

So I want you to think about that, like how much effort and time you spend doing anything that isn’t believing you’re a life coach, and then I want you to ask yourself, is there anything that you did today that did grow your belief, truly that grew your belief? And maybe that is you went to a networking event, and going into that networking event and you told 20 people that you’re a life coach. That’s growing your belief.

That’s something you’re doing, but it’s growing your belief. Maybe you did a live stream today and your belief shifted. You got off that live stream and you’re like, holy crap, I can do this. There are times when you do things and nothing shifts and no growth happens, and there’s times where you do something and it changes your life and you become a different person.

I get these comments in my 2K group, people will comment like oh my gosh I did my first live stream, it wasn’t that big of a deal, I can’t believe it, I’m totally all on board. Or they’re like, oh my gosh, you’re right, Stacey, I went to five networking events this week, I’m like a different human being, I’m on top of the world, I’m a life coach, I’ve been telling people I’m a life coach, I really believe I’m a life coach. Like, that’s an activity that grew your belief.

And that really is, by the way, why I say to go out and meet as many people as possible and tell them you’re a life coach, make offers to help them. It’s like you’re doing these things but you’re intentionally thinking about shifting your identity, and that’s really the whole purpose. You could go to a million networking events and never grow your business if you never grow your identity and who you think you are.

So the real purpose is to go out and take actions to create beliefs and help you embody a new identity as a coach. That’s your goal. That’s why I want you to get out and meet as many people as possible and tell everybody you meet you’re a life coach and talk about life coaching, explain what a life coach is, and how a life coach works with a client. Like, all of that getting out there and doing that is just to shift your identity.

So the more people you get out and meet that you don’t know at all, you introduce yourself as a coach and they receive you that way, the more you start to believe it. And when you’re always showing up to help people and making offers to help people and being in service to everyone around you, even if that isn’t to coach them, maybe it’s just to help – literally it could be just to connect with them or give them value, you really start to embody what it means to be a coach, and that’s shifting your belief.

So it doesn’t matter if you’re getting out there in person or on Facebook, let me be clear. People are always asking me, like, well does it have to be in person, could it be on Facebook? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you change how you see yourself.

So I want you to really think about this to-do list and look at it and say, is this to-do list going to change how I see myself? Maybe it is, but maybe it’s not.

So I was coaching my 200K mastermind and I realized that they were staying really busy and they were feeling awfully proud of their accomplishments, but they weren’t actually producing anything. So why is that? Because actions don’t create results; beliefs do.

And you can take the actions that you need to take, like put yourself out there as who you currently are through willpower, commitment, like if you’re motivated and determined and courageous and bold, like you can drum up emotions and go take actions, but if you’re the same person in your brain when you take those actions, you’ll spend all of your time focusing on what you’re doing and you’ll do a whole lot and you’ll never make any money. And that happens because money doesn’t come until you shift into the person who gets paid to work with clients, period.

It doesn’t come until you become someone different. And then you go out and do what the new version of you would do. People are always like, oh you’re just telling me to sit around and manifest through my thinking. I’m like, no that’s not what I’m saying, you’ve just got to go out and do things that the person who believes would do and do them the way that they would approach them.

So you have to be the paid life coach and then take action as the paid life coach to get paid as a coach. And you won’t do that sitting behind your computer working on that website, especially as who you currently are, the person who’s not getting paid. Like, working on your website when you don’t have clients is awful. Working on your website when you have a ton of clients and you know exactly what your message is, super fun.

And you also won’t make money sitting around passively consuming coaching; interacting a lot but not actually doing the work. And trust me, there is a difference between the client who watches everything, all the modules, like when I’m thinking about my 2K program right now and does nothing beyond that. They’re basically in school, versus the client who uses the material and applies it, all of it, every single bit, they answer all of the questions, they self-coach themselves, they investigate their thinking, they try on new thoughts, and then they go out and they trial these things, being a different person with these new beliefs that they’ve gotten from the coaching that they’ve gotten, and then they come into this new version of themselves and they get clients from it and they start making money.

So I came up with this concept of the belief plan to help my 200K masterminders – is that a word, by the way, masterminders? I might be – to help them focus on what really matters, who they are becoming, and the beliefs that fuel that shift in identity. So, again, think of your to-do list. It’s all the things that you need to do to get what you want, while the belief plan is all the things you need to think to create what you want.

And you could literally throw your to-do list away and never look at it again and follow the belief plan instead and you would actually get greater results. So the belief plan is just a to-do list for your brain. A to-believe list. Thoughts to believe. This is my to-do list from here on out.

So instead of writing, for my to-do list, I need to post on social media and I need to sign up for five networking events, I need to finish my website, I need to get coaching on my niche, and I need to write five blogs, and I need to create my freebie, and I need to create my business cards, instead, what if you wrote a list of what you needed to believe to make money today?

Not six weeks from now, not by the end of the year, but today, in this exact moment, which might shift from moment to moment. So in the morning, you wake up and you’re like, okay, what do I need to think to go out and sign a client today? It’s possible for me to sign a client today, that there are five people waiting for me to show up and help them, that I’m a life coaching, I love coaching, it helps change people’s lives, people actually like buying life coaching.

Maybe that’s your brain list for the day, your belief plan for the day. So imagine if you spent your time consciously believing those things, and then maybe you do take action, but it might be drastically different in what you do – and here’s another key – how long it takes you. If we think about the website, it takes you a lot less time to do your website when you’re totally confident and in belief as a coach, versus when you’re not.

If you believe in yourself, in the service you provide, in your clients and their desire to make a change, everything’s going to go so much differently than if you don’t. What you do, how you do it, how long it takes you. So I want you to think about this. Whatever we list, we give importance to. So if you make a to-do list, you’re giving importance to the action part of getting results, which is not actually what creates the results. It’s our thoughts.

With the belief plan, I’m suggesting instead of giving importance to what you think you need to do to make money, you give importance to what you need to think to make money. And the one thing that keeps all life coaches from making money is believing they are a life coach who people pay.

So what actually makes you money is your mind and what you think, which is I’m a life coach and people pay me to coach them. Now, here’s the thing with the belief plan. You have to go to work on it as if it’s your action plan. You have to measure your productivity on a day-to-day basis based on whether you developed a stronger belief in yourself or not, whether you can feel it in your body or not.

And when you self-coach or you get coached, you have a plan. These are the beliefs I’m very specifically working on. You are working to believe your very specific thoughts that you’ve intentionally planned to help you be the person who attracts and signs clients.

And I have so many clients that come to me and they’re like, “I could be coached, but I don’t know what to be coached on.” If you do a belief plan every single day instead of a to-do list, you’ll always know what you need to be coached on. And at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself like, did something inside me change today? And if not, you were not productive. Not in the way that will make you money as a coach.

And I think it’s important to notate that your brain likes to tell you you believe something even when you don’t because a lot of clients will be like, “Oh yeah, I worked on that belief, I believe it.” But we have to measure the productivity of our work on our beliefs by measurable results.

So here’s how you know you’re believing and you’re following through on your belief plan is you start getting people reaching out to you. That starts happening, your belief plan is working. If your engagement starts growing, your belief plan is working. If you start showing up more than you ever have, full of energy and life and belief and you feel like you are totally aligned, it’s working. If you feel inspired throughout your day to build your business, like you’re excited and it feels fun, it’s working. And then the most measurable way is if you’re making money, it’s working.

I like to say that money is the best measurement but I just do think you start seeing that things are heading in the right direction way before the money comes. You can start seeing the shifts happening in the way that people respond to you, the way that they engage with you and how many of them, and if they’re reaching out to you for consults.

You see that way before the cash, and I want you to be able to measure that and be like, I see a measurable difference. This week my post had more engagement than they’ve ever had. And how you know it’s not working – let’s talk about that for a second – is if you’re working on the same beliefs day after day and nothing is shifting, and you’re constantly feeling stressed and overwhelmed and stuck and you spin in confusion and doubt and overwhelm and self-pity and judgment or envy, jealousy and compare and despair.

Clients will come to me and say that they don’t know what they should be working on and why they aren’t making money and what – asking me what they need to do to make money, and it’s so simple. Why you aren’t making money is because of your thoughts. They don’t produce money. That goes back to episode four, I think, income-producing thoughts.

And so what you should be working on is figuring out what those thoughts are and what you will need to believe to make money. What is it that’s keeping you from making money and what do you need to believe to make money? And then you have to make that your biggest job you have. The job of belief.

You guys, this is what we do as life coaches. We are in the belief business. It is our job to believe. So you have to make your business plan your belief plan. Start with a few thoughts that you can think today on purpose that will align with making money as a coach.

What could you think today to go out and make money as a life coach right now in this moment? What would you need to think to fuel you into inspiration and excitement and motivation and certainty and ease? That’s another good one. Ease. What will help you feel ease as being a life coach today? And then you need to write them down and you need to keep that paper and you need to look at it every day and that’s what’s on your “agenda” for the day.

Decide a measurable result to prove that you believe those thoughts. So for example, in my 2K group, their first way of measuring that result is $2000. How I know that they’re doing the work and they’re changing their belief and they’re believing they’re a life coach is they will sign their first clients.

And for my 200K people, how they know is they’re setting goals – I have them set them every single month and they’re setting them and they’re achieving them. And they have a long list of what’s working for them, and they know exactly what they need to believe in any given moment.

And then you have to go to work to believe intentionally those thoughts will create that amount of money. Some of you have to believe that. The idea that your thoughts will create money. And then you have to put all of your attention and focus there. Get coaching there, coach yourself there. Make it your job that week to step into those beliefs.

And how you know you did your job is if you have the tangible results to prove it as who you are currently right now about the things that make you who you are and hold you back from who you want to be, but you’re being the person as the coach that you already are, the person that believes these thoughts, so it feels like you’re coaching yourself on the same stuff over and over and over, and you’re not getting a shift, and something’s not clicking and it’s not working.

I think this is why we need coaches. Someone that doesn’t believe that to coach us. Someone that’s outside of our thinking that can give us a different perspective and show us where we’re believing our own stories because we can’t solve a problem with the mind that created it, but if you are coaching yourself, make sure that you’re coaching yourself from the place of who you want to be on the thoughts that you have now that are keeping you from being that person.

I also just want to tell you how you know you’re passively coaching yourself because sometimes my clients are like, “Wait a minute, I coach all the time,” but how you know you’re actually doing it is if you’re stuck in the same beliefs over and over and constantly coaching yourself on the same thing over and over and you’re never letting go of the beliefs. You’re just staying the same over and over and over.

If you get up from coaching yourself as the exact same person who sat down, then you’re not self-coaching yourself in a productive way and you’re not shifting your belief. And so it’s like literally, you’re wasting time. When you’re coaching yourself or you’re getting coached on new beliefs, you should leave feeling inspired and compelled to take action and get going.

You should feel a shift inside of you. And if you do that consistently, you will get results. But I want to say that the belief plan gives you direction in all of that. I think sometimes we sit down to coach ourselves or get coached and we have zero direction. And so what I want you to always have is your belief plan. This is exactly what I need to work on to believe, and once I do, I will make money.

And that is what I spend time doing. I was telling my 200K mastermind like, it just came to me. I’ve been working on believing – first of all, I’ve had phases of belief this year, but first of all I was working on believing that I could make a million dollars in 10 months, and that felt impossible to me in January.

But I really opened my mind up to the possibility that I could believe that and I created a belief plan for it, and I went to work on it and all of a sudden, I’m going to make a million dollars in six months. We’re only $400,000 away and we have two more months and I’m like, oh, for sure, by the first half of the year it’s going to be 100% done.

And I feel really great about it, and then I was like, wait a minute, hold on, we’re going to make two million dollars this year, and then it was like, actually, I bet we make 2.5 with the rate that I always grow, especially in the second half of the year. And then it occurred to me the other day, I’m like, wait a minute, we might do three million this year. What?

And so my brain doesn’t fully believe that yet, that that’s possible and that amount of money is possible, otherwise I’d already have the result now. So now I’ve just been spending time in that belief plan. Like what would I need to belief today to create the result that will make me on track for that?

Going to the place of having made the million dollars, what will I believe then? And then I just write it all down, I’m like okay, these are the thoughts I need to work on now. And when I’m believing those thoughts, what will be the thing that I’m out there doing? How will I feel? What will I be inspired to do? And all of those things, I’m making a whole list of them and I’m adding them into my plan for this year.

But it all starts with instead of thinking about what do I need to be doing and what should I be spending my time on and how should I be saying this post or how should I be – what should my live streams consist of or how should I be doing my call to action, it’s like, instead, what do you need to believe? Make your belief plan.

This is my belief plan for today. I’m just going to focus today on believing these things. And then tomorrow, maybe I keep some of them but maybe tomorrow what I need to believe is different from what I need to believe today, but I always want to be shifting it back to my thoughts create my results so instead of a to-do list, I need a believe list, and that’s going to be my plan of action for the day and everything’s going to be centered around does this fuel my belief or not.

Will doing this change me or not? So it’s actually a simple concept, but I really dove into it because I introduced this idea to my masterminders and they were like, what? What do you mean? I have to have my to-do list. So I thought okay, I need to share with this people. So do me a favor. Try it for a week. Try it for a week where you throw your to-do list away and every day you ask yourself what do I need to believe today, in this moment to make money as a life coach.

Write it down. Focus on like, three. You don’t have to give yourself 10 beliefs. Just pick three ones that motivate you the most and then spend all day putting your focus and attention on the belief of that and the possibility that those thoughts could be true. And spend time feeling into that belief. Believing it so deeply that you feel it in your body, and see what you’re compelled to do and not do and where your focus goes, and how much it shifts.

Maybe you even do the same exact things that you’re already doing but maybe the way you do them feels completely different. That’s what you’re looking for. Alright, so I hope this is super helpful. Throw the to-do list away, write your belief plan, and I’ll see you next 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.