Ep #113: Belief Practices with Dr. Sonia Wright

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. In honor of Black History Month, I have invited my first four Black students who have crossed $100,000 in revenue to guest host each episode this month. They are history-makers right now. They have used the 2K and the 200K process to create incredible results. They have come from the medical field, corporate America, they have doctorates, kids at home, and kids in college.

What I love is that none of these coaches are business coaches. So their success is not that of a unicorn or because they sell coaching that offers a financial return. They did the work to start and grow a business. They did the work of creating value, learning how to sell, and becoming influential with the people they meet and within their communities and the entire coaching industry.

They are leading the way. Not just for Black coaches in our industry, but for all BIPOCs who feel underrepresented in the coaching industry and all coaches wanting to make 100K as a life coach. I am so honored to have their knowledge and experience to share with you today. Let’s dive in.

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Hello everyone. I’m Dr. Sonia Wright. I am the midlife sex coach for women. I’m a medical doctor, a sexual counselor and a life coach and I’m today’s guest host on the Make Money as a Life Coach podcast. I’m so excited to be here.

You know, I’m really excited to be here because we are celebrating February, which is Black History Month, and I stand here as a testament as to what is possible for all coaches and especially for Black coaches. I’m mainly going to be talking about the concept of belief and how it impacted my business in the year 2020.

But first, let me give you some background history and kind of a timeline as to what has been happening for me. So I certified at The Life Coach School in December of 2018 and enrolled in Stacey’s first 200K mastermind, which started at the beginning of 2019. And you know what, I had made zero dollars at that point as a life coach.

I’d made no money in 2018, so it was a really big up-level for me to be entering her 200K mastermind. And actually, I was only able to stay in her mastermind for one cycle due to constraints around my full-time radiology job and the fact that I was working about 50 to 60 hours a week and I couldn’t necessarily make all the meetings that we had.

And so because of that, I was actually only able to be in her first mastermind, which I was extremely grateful for being in that. And after I left that 200K mastermind, I had some sporadic success and I ended 2019 with a revenue of about 22K.

Let’s talk about 2020. So the beginning of 2020 was kind of a strange time for me. I felt like my business was in the ICU, in the intensive care unit, on life support. I had not really taken the time in 2019 to create a well-organized business with systems that were in place.

I was juggling coaching and my radiology career and kind of trying to stick my coaching clients in in any free moment that I had. And I felt like I was constantly putting out fires and kind of honestly making stuff up as I went. Really, I didn’t have any systems.

I would really describe it as contained chaos and I’m actually being kind to myself when I say contained. There was mainly just a lot of chaos going on. So by the end of 2019, I could no longer tolerate the chaos and I made the decision to completely reconstruct my business.

I actually stopped taking new clients and I hired a one-on-one business coach and I decided to go back to the drawing board and rebuild from the ground level up, putting in place those systems and structures that I needed. I actually rebranded as the passionate physician coach and my plan at the time, at the beginning of 2020 was to focus on private clients and growing a high-end exclusive private and group coaching practice specifically for doctors around the area of sexuality.

And you know, I worked really hard at this and I was ready to relaunch my business at the beginning of March. And we all know what happened at the beginning of March of 2020. Just about that time when COVID-19 hit.

And you may actually not know that but there was a lot of financial uncertainty within the physician community at that time. A lot of doctors were either being furloughed, or they were losing their jobs, or they were at least getting a significant pay cut.

And it was really not the best time to be launching private sex coaching business for physicians. Honestly, the last thing that they had on their mind was sex. Most physicians were worried about if they even had a job, how to protect themselves from COVID while they’re on the frontlines with minimal PPE at that time.

There were worried they would get COVID and what that would mean for their families and they wanted to protect their families and they wanted to protect their finances. That was the main thing that they were focused on at that time.

And in fact, the private clients that I did have, I spent a lot of my time coaching around the issue of COVID-19 and not specifically coaching anything to do with sex. And honestly, I lost my belief. I lost the belief in my sex coaching practice. I lost the belief in my ability to make money.

I was really not in a good place. I did have a little teeny part of me that still believed that there was a need for a sex coach, even if the majority of me believed that it was all over. That it was done and finished.

Part of me did think that even if they didn’t want sex coaching now, that they were going to need it soon enough. Since they were all sheltering in place, so that either meant that they were home alone without their partners because they were single, or they were stuck in the house with their partners.

And any issues around sexuality that had been ignored for a period of time I knew was going to come to the forefront at some point pretty soon. And I had set a goal at the beginning of 2020 before all this COVID stuff happened. I had set a goal that I was going to make 100K that year. And I knew in my heart that sex coaching was the way that I wanted to make that 100K. I wanted to serve my clients and be there for them.

But I also know that something had to change. My actions needed to change, but really more importantly, my belief needed to change. And so I decided to utilize the coaching tools in order to help me figure this all out.

So for those of you who trained at The Life Coach School, you may be pretty familiar with the model. So I decided to use the model to find my belief and make my 100K. So basically, when we talk about the model, we talk about a circumstance that is neutral. And then you have some thoughts around that situation or that circumstance, and those thoughts create your feelings, which in turn dictates your actions, and leads to a certain result.

If my current circumstance was running a coaching business during a pandemic, and specifically running a sex coaching business during a pandemic, and if I decided that that was neutral and was not going to change, and my result at this point in time was that I had made no money.

So we’re talking the beginning of 2020, I have made no money. But I knew that I actually wanted my future result to be 100K. Then I thought, all I have to do is figure out what’s in between the circumstance and the result, which is the thoughts, the feelings, and the actions.

So my current model looks something like this. Growing a sex coaching business during a pandemic, that was my C. Right now, my thought was this is not possible because no one wants to deal with their sex problems right now. I was feeling pretty defeated. And the actions that I wanted to take because of feeling defeated was I wanted to hide.

I kind of wanted to wait for the pandemic to be over. I wanted to go back to my radiology job. I wanted to stop coaching. And as a result of all that, I had not made any money. So I was clear as to what my model was, but I also realized that had to change.

So if I wanted my model to produce 100K and my circumstance, the fact that I was growing a sex coaching business during a pandemic was not going to change, that all I had to do was just identify those thoughts, those feelings, and that action and I would make the 100K.

So I decided that I was going to focus my thoughts and create new ones. I figured I had to think new thoughts and somehow believe that I could do it and that I could make this 100K. So Abraham Hicks says that a belief is just a thought that we think again and again.

So somehow, I was going to have to think a thought again and again and again until it became a new belief for me. I basically needed to believe something new. So you might be asking, why is a belief so important in achieving your financial goals?

It’s important because belief is the foundation for everything that you create. Basically everything started with a thought, a belief. The lightbulb, the iPhone, a Tesla, a medical career, becoming an amazing financially independent life coach, all of it starts with a belief.

Whatever the goal is, it starts with a repeated thought that eventually becomes an established belief. But you know what, believing is not something that somebody else can give you. What I’ve really learned is that belief needs to come from within. It has to grow within you before it can be manifested outwardly.

I basically realized that I had to get real with my belief. I needed to do a full belief overhaul on what I was believing about my business. So I evaluated how my beliefs needed to change to help me achieve my goals and in what way they needed to change.

I realized I needed to believe that I could make a difference, that I could earn money, that I could serve my clients all at the same time. And I knew that the first step towards creating these beliefs was to act from a mindset as someone who had already accomplished the 100K.

But my thought was like, where do I find this? Where do I get this mindset? So I decided I’m going to find a mentor. I wanted to find a Black woman mentor, someone who would understand what it was like to be a woman and to be a person of color in this country.

Someone I would not have to explain my reality to. Somebody that would just be able to accept what was going on in my life and be able to help and mentor me towards my future. And someone who had already done it. But who would that be? Someone who knew me and knew what kind of support that I needed, and also someone who had already done it, had already made that 100K.

So I came up with the best mentor. My future self. In fact, I kind of called her my super self. So my future Sonia who had already made 100K. So I went to that place where it was already done. And I had a conversation with her about her life. What her life was life after she had made that 100K.

I asked her what she was feeling, what she was thinking, what she was experiencing. And this is what she told me. She said she felt proud in terms of what she had accomplished in her business, she had 100% belief in herself and her business, and she was continuously up-leveling and focusing on delivering for her clients.

She had a sense of commitment towards continuing to make a difference in her clients’ lives, and she was having fun. She was having fun while she was doing it. So in summary, she had put an emphasis on the level of her belief and her efforts to serve her clients.

So I was like, okay, belief, effort, belief, this is the important part. So I kind of stepped back from that place. I stepped away from that conversation with my super self, with my future self, and I kind of went back to the present. But I brought all those feelings with me. All those thoughts that my super self had told me. I kind of brought them back with me.

And I held on to those feelings. The feelings of conviction, of pride, of commitment, and of fun. And I knew that these feelings would allow me to focus on what I needed to do in order to create that 100K. But I wanted to be focused. And I felt in order to be focused, I had to choose one feeling. Not the four different feelings of conviction, pride, commitment, and fun, but one feeling.

I knew too many feelings would kind of distract me from my goal. So I was like, one feeling, I need one feeling to rule them all. That one feeling that would help me choose my one dominant ruling thought. And that feeling for me was commitment.

So if we go back to my model, the model that I started with, I had the circumstance, which still had not changed, which was growing a sex coaching business during a pandemic. And now I had a feeling, and the feeling was commitment. So I could put that in the model as well.

And then I knew I had a result, and my result was the 100K. The 100K that I had earned. But I realized I was still missing my thought and I was still missing my actions. But at least I was getting somewhere, at least I had some parts of this model.

So it got to that point where it was time for me to choose my thought, and I went back to that conversation that I had with my mentor, my super self, and I remembered that she put the emphasis on her level of belief and the effort that she was using to serve her clients.

And I had also been doing some work on believing in an abundant universe and shifting towards abundance in a way from scarcity. So I kind of decided to combine those thoughts and bring them all together into one ruling thought or belief.

So my main belief became the abundant universe rises up to meet my level of belief and my level of effort in order to make 100K. So going back to my model, I had just about everything at this point. I had my circumstance, which was growing my sex coaching business during a pandemic, I had my thought about the abundant universe and my belief and my efforts and rising up to meet it.

I had my feeling, which was still going to be commitment, and I had my action – no, didn’t quite have the action but I knew the result that I wanted was 100K. So the only thing missing was my actions. I just needed my actions, so it was time to brainstorm about my actions.

And I asked myself, so how can I serve more people? And how can I make sure it’s affordable? So I decided to create a product. A product that gave a lot of value but was at a price point that the majority of people would be able to comfortably afford, even in this uncertain time.

And I didn’t want people to feel like they couldn’t get the help that they needed, and I knew they were going to be needing that help sooner or later when it came to the sex issues because they’re all sheltering in place and by this time, we had been sheltering in place for more than a month and I knew the issues around sex and sexuality were going to be coming up.

And at the same time, I rebranded again. And I rebranded back to my original brand as the midlife sex coach for women. I wanted to help as many women as I could, and I love women in midlife. It just felt like a good fit to me. It just felt like that was my group that I wanted to help.

So there I had it. I had all the parts that I needed. I had the circumstance, which was still growing a sex coaching business during a pandemic, I had the thoughts, I had the feelings, and then I brainstormed and came up with the actions in order to make the result, which was going to be 100K.

So I created a 12-week group coaching program called Own Your Sexuality Now. Within a six-week period of time I created this course. And I went on as many podcasts and Facebook Live groups as I could to promote the program and then I did an average of three to five consultations every day for about a month while I was still working full-time in my radiology job.

I was just putting it in night and day and afternoon, anywhere that I could fit it in I was fitting in the consultations. And you know what? I was committed. That was my feeling. I was committed and I was going to do this. But you know, I also reached out to make sure that I had the support from my friends and fellow coaches so that I could be able to have the mindset the way that I needed to get through this process.

And as a result of all this, between May and August of 2020, I made my 100K, which is really amazing and fabulous and wonderful. And please note that each one of you, you’re going to have your own way of getting there. This was my path. But it’s not necessarily your path. But there are some general things to be aware of.

One is to choose a goal. Choose a financial goal. Then find out what your main belief, your main thought was going to be to get you through that. And then talk to your best mentor, your super self. Talk to your future self and find out what she has to tell you or what he has to tell you.

Figure out how you want to feel during this whole process. For me, it was commitment. For you it might be something else, right? Choose that one thought that’s going to get you through, that’s going to help you through this whole process.

Take massive action. Don’t quit. And recognize that there’s going to be failures in there. And then you’ll get to that place where you’re achieving your results. But before I leave you, I want to talk a little bit more about belief.

Belief is not necessarily a one and done kind of phenomenon. Belief requires ongoing commitment while you’re growing your business. You must develop what I call a belief practice. I specifically experience belief in different stages and at each stage I have to recommit to believing, to this belief.

And there’s going to be times where the belief is going to be a little shaky and you know what, that’s okay. And it’s okay that your belief is not always 100% there. It can be shaky at times because time is going to pass, you change, your business changes, and new challenges will develop as a result of these changes.

As your business grows, what you believe may also need to change in order for you to accomplish your next level goals. So first of all, embrace that thought that nothing has gone wrong. It’s just time for a belief upgrade. See it as a time to evaluate your thoughts and your beliefs. See which ones are serving you and which ones are not necessarily serving you.

Decide which ones you want to keep and which beliefs you’re willing to let go. For example, if somehow you have acquired the belief that my business is not growing fast enough, evaluate that belief and ask yourself, is it serving you? Continue to remain committed to your belief practice in a sustained way. What I call belief maintenance.

So I’m going to talk a little bit about the three stages of belief as I experienced them, especially going through the year of 2020. So the first stage, I call that internal belief. And that is belief that leads to my inner transformation.

So I became the person that could obtain the goal, that could make the 100K. The belief that I needed to become my future self or my super self, that was my internal belief. That was a belief process that I needed to become that person.

And that underlying belief would be everything happens for me and helps me to evolve into my future self. And that internal belief, I was utilizing that, I would say at the beginning like, March and April, when I was trying to figure it all out, where I was trying to become my super self, where I was talking to my super self, my mentor, and figuring it out.

It was before I actually started creating the course. It was when I had to do that internal work on me. So before the focus on the doing, there is the focus on the being, and that is the internal belief that has to be there.

Then stage two of belief, I consider it the manifesting belief. So the second stage is manifesting. It’s the belief which leads to an outward manifestation. The belief that leads to me creating my Own Your Sexuality Now course. And that belief is the belief that I spoke about, which is the abundant universe rises up to meet the level of my belief and my efforts to make 100K.

So that belief stage, that manifesting stage, that was while I was creating the course and while I was doing the work to enroll people. That was my first coach launch, and I was focused on the abundant universe and my ability to do it, and I was focused on taking the massive action and that is part of the manifesting belief.

And then there’s the stage three, and the stage three, this goes on for an extended period of time, let me tell you. So this stage three is the sustained belief. The belief practice, which leads to ongoing growth and service. It’s the belief practice that allows you to hang in there when you’re in the messy middle, when you’re in that river of misery.

And you know what, about 90% of the time you may feel like you’re in that messy middle or that river of misery, right? You’re going to need this sustained belief. Maybe a launch is not going as expected. Maybe you’re taking a scary leap of faith for going from working as a radiologist to coaching full-time.

Maybe you haven’t met your own expectations or others’ expectations. This is where I say again, nothing has gone wrong and everything is happening for me. And that belief helps me. So sustained belief is for an indeterminate length of time. It can go on for months.

And just for me, sustained belief is something I need as I transition out of radiology and into life coaching and as I go through the messy middle. For you, your sustained belief will come to you during your messy middle time, your river of misery time.

But recognize that there’s different stages here and there’s different types of beliefs that you’ll need at these different stages and that’s okay. So you have your internal belief, you have your manifesting belief, and you have your sustained belief.

There will be times of ups and downs and that’s okay. Nothing has gone wrong here. It’s just the way it is, right? So if we look at the overall process when I’m talking about belief, choose your financial goal. Find the belief. Practice the belief system that’s going to work for you.

Talk to your best mentor, your super self, your future self. Figure out how you want to feel during this process. Choose that one thought that’s going to get you through it all. Take the massive action that you need and achieve your results.

And then don’t forget that it’s not one and done when we’re talking about belief. There’s the internal belief, the manifesting belief, and the sustained belief. And you might cycle back through again as you up-level, as you do another launch, as you create more in your business.

So to all the coaches, especially the BIPOC coaches, just know that you can do this. Believe, believe in yourself, believe in the process, go forth and achieve. Alright, that’s all I have for you right now. I’m Dr. Sonia Wright, I’m the Midlife Sex Coach for Women and I thank you for listening to today’s podcast.

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.