Something I’m so grateful for in my childhood was the fostering of make-believe. The magic and excitement of make-believe figures like Santa and the tooth fairy were a huge part of the most formative years of my life, and it’s had more of an impact than you might think.
As life coaches, we get paid to make-believe and to believe impossible things can be possible. Whether it’s fairytale magic, or the magic of creating big things in our businesses and for our clients, it all comes from the same place of holding a vision that feels so out of reach, and at the same time, knowing that it’s guaranteed.
Join me this week to discover how believing in magic affects your business and your ability to help clients get results. I’m showing you why we fear imagining what we can’t see or what hasn’t happened yet, how detrimental this can be to you and your clients, and the power of magic that is all around if you let yourself lean into it.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
- My thoughts on make-believe and the magic of believing impossible things.
- Why it’s worth examining our stance on make-believe and fantastical thinking.
- How my childhood impacted my ability to believe in the impossible.
- Why so many of my clients struggle to create belief.
- The biggest reason we don’t let ourselves go to the place of make-believe, especially as adults.
- How not holding space for an impossible vision is showing up in your business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
- 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.
- Follow me on Instagram!
- Will by Will Smith
- The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
- Cruella
- King Richard
Full Episode Transcript:
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 156. And Merry Christmas week for those of you who celebrate. Happy holidays for those of you who celebrate other traditions. I wanted to do an episode today about believing in magic. And this is just a free flowing non-organized, non-drafted podcast based on a group that I’m in and a conversation that happened. So I’m in this baby group. And having all the conversations about all the baby products and learning all of the things. I mean it’s just, it’s kind of overwhelming is my thought.
But I am proactive on asking questions. I’m saving threads and I’m being such a type A person about it. It’s fantastic. So I’m learning all the things about all the baby products and all the baby stuff. And in this group someone asked about Santa and whether or not the women in the group or the people, I think it’s all women. The women in the group teach their kids about Santa. And if they allow their kids to believe in Santa. And if they don’t, what their reasons are.
The poster, the original poster said she thinks that she should be honest with her kids. And it’s a lie to let them make-believe in Santa. And her husband is like, “No, that’s the magic of being a kid.” And the thread was just hundreds of comments long, hundreds. And about 20% of the people were like, “I was devastated and so angry at my parents to find out Santa wasn’t real.” And then most of the people were like, “What? I can’t even believe this is a thread.” So I fall in that boat, I can’t even believe this is a thing. I do believe it’s a thing.
But I have very strong opinions about this. Now, this is not the whole point of the podcast but I’m going to use it as an example, and also talk through some examples. And talk to you about how it applies to your business, and your ability to achieve goals and help your clients get results, and how it affects you promising results and believing you can get results. And overpromising on offers that you make. And your ability to really lean into what hasn’t happened yet, what isn’t possible yet to what is possible. And to literally be able to make-believe.
Okay, so I’m going to talk about that. But first I’ve got to give you guys, I think, some context and just kind of work through it in my mind and let you know my thoughts. Now, listen, if your thoughts are different than my thoughts about the Santa issue, or the tooth fairy, or any of the make-believe things, that’s okay. I promise if you keep listening there will still be lots of goodness for you when it comes to your business. But I do also want to offer, because I’m thinking about this as becoming a mom, my stance on this.
And this thread helped me solidify an intentionality that I want to have for my children and why and how it impacted me. And it’s made me so grateful for my parents, which I don’t often talk about. I talk about having a lot of trauma from my childhood, which I did. But looking back this is one thing that I can say was so great about my childhood that I see showing up now in retrospect in my life. And I’ve heard it from other people recently as well. So I want to talk to you about my thoughts about it. And then I’m going to talk to you about how it applies to your business.
So here are my thoughts about it and this is what I actually said on the comment. I sometimes participate in these groups when I feel compelled. And I said, “Not wanting your kid to believe in Santa, I think for the most part comes”, and every person that commented it was from this place. There are of course, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, or you celebrate Christmas in a different way religiously, that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about if you do celebrate Christmas and you would use Santa with your children, but you don’t for the reason of when they find out they will feel lied to. They will be disappointed. It will hurt our relationship. These are the comments that were coming through, this would be the reason not to. And what fascinated me is that they all boiled down to I wouldn’t let my kid believe in Santa because I don’t want them to feel lied to and feel disappointed.
And my comment was, “So you would just disappoint them ahead of time? You would take away the magic, you would take away the fun, you would take away the excitement, you would take away the dream, the magical dreaming qualities of Santa or any make-believe figure, the tooth fairy, Disney characters.” One lady said, “Oh, we go all out. We dress up as the Disney princesses. We go to Disney to see the princesses and they believe that that’s the actual princess.” And that comment struck me the most of she was so detailed about how much make-believe they do in their house.
And it reminded me of how much make-believe that we did in my house as a kid. My dad was so into make-believe. He loved watching cartoons with us and even just like we would do horseback rides. He would get on all fours and take me and my sister. And we would pretend that he was a horse, and we would ride through the house. And he was so into it. He would be the horse. And Santa was always a really big deal at our house. And it was just everything was fostered in such a way to promote make-believe.
And I think back, I remember when I found – vaguely remembering, realizing Santa wasn’t real. And to me I think it felt more just like, I’m clued in on the adult world now. I found out the secret. It felt more proud of myself for figuring it out. But anyhow, also PS, I thought it was really interesting.
I saw one post and said, “I’m a psychotherapist and I’ve never, ever, ever had an adult in my office who was traumatized, and their issue was that their parents led them to believe Santa was real.” And she said, “More often what I get is adults in my office whose parents were very overbearing and overcontrolling in this way.” And I thought that was really interesting too because of all the things that I feel didn’t go right in my childhood, and my parents were very, very strict. This was the one area where they weren’t.
And now this is also a comment I made is, “Now I get paid to make-believe.” Now I get paid to believe impossible things can be possible. And the only way I’m able to do that is because my brain was fostered at such a small age to believe that impossible things happen, that magic lives in the universe. And whether that is fairytale magic or if that’s magic of creating big things, impossible things. I think comes from the same place.
I wonder if I would have – I always talk to my husband because he doesn’t – I’m going to talk to him about it tonight actually, what the role of Santa played in their family and other make-believe things. Because he always says he struggles to imagine things. He can’t even watch anything that isn’t real TV. He can’t watch Batman movies and he can’t watch cartoons. And anything that has any element that makes you suspend your disbelief he’s like, “I’m out.” He always says, “I have no imagination and I don’t enjoy it.” And I always feel so sad for him.
And then people say about me, they say I’m the worst movie critic because I can watch anything and be like, “It was so great, I loved it.” Because I have such a strong ability to suspend belief. I can be in theater and get engrossed with people on stage knowing they are real, they’re literally in front of me acting. And I can do that. I can also, I used to act so I could immerse myself in a character role and believe that so deeply.
And I’m actually reading Will Smith’s book. I’m going to do a whole podcast about some of the gems that he’s dropped in his book. But I’m reading it and one of the things that he talks about is his childhood imagination and how his parents also fostered that with him. And him and his mom had this game where he would go to camp. And he would come back, and he would be like, “Oh my God, mom, it was amazing. There was a live jazz band. And they were all dressed up in black tie and they sang, and we danced all night long.”
And his mom and her friend would be looking at each other like, there’s no way that happened at a school camp in Philly. And so his mom and him would play this game where he would tell her some fantastical story that he believed so deeply. His sister was like, “No, that didn’t happen, it was a jukebox and he just stared it at all day. He didn’t even swim in the pool. He just stared at the jukebox make believing all day.” And so his mom would try to pull out, what are the parts of the story that aren’t real and test him on it and figure out if it was a real story or not.
And so he just talks about his whole life, how he would dramatize things and make things grand in his mind through his imagination and how that has been such a big reason why he was able to believe huge things were possible for him, to believe that he could become a rapper, and that he could become a television star, that he could become a movie star. And then his ability to take on those roles came from his ability to make-believe and to have imagination.
And so I’ve been thinking about that so strongly, reading this post, and reading the thread, and just thinking – I think it’s something to question. It’s something worth examining, if we don’t allow our children to make-believe, if we don’t allow ourselves to make-believe simply because we don’t want to handle the emotion that comes with the ‘crash to reality’ if there is one.
So for example, in your business, I want you to think about the same reason you might not let your child believe in Santa might be the same reason, or if your parents didn’t let you make-believe and believe in fantastical things. Might also be the same reason that you can’t believe for your goal and for your clients’ goals. And even if you believed in Santa when you were little or you were able to make-believe, just think about now. What’s the reason you can’t make-believe, that you can’t literally make-believe is create belief.
The reason that so many of my clients struggle with not being able to create belief is because of the fear ahead of time, of the disappointment that may come if that belief isn’t made, if that result isn’t made. So what our answer to that in society as we become more enlightened, I feel this is just the best example of when we use enlightenment against ourselves to take the fun out of life. We’re like, “Well, we’re so much more educated now.” We’re so much more, yeah, enlightened, some of the people on the thread used woke. But we’re so correct.
We’re so mentally correct now. And in trying to prevent mental harm we create it. We say, “No, no, no, we don’t want you to feel disappointed, brain.” We tell ourselves that, I don’t want you to feel disappointed. I don’t want you to believe some unrealistic thing that you could ever be a millionaire. That’s not really possible for you. So let’s just never let yourself go there. And we just feel the disappointment ahead of time.
Not believing that you can make a million dollars. If you want to and then you tell yourself, no, but that’s not realistic. All you’re saying is feel disappointed now at your outlandish goal, versus go after your outlandish goal with all of your heart and all of your mind and be willing to feel disappointed later. Or decide never to feel disappointed because you just never give up on that. Our brain and society’s unwillingness for us to feel disappointment is also the reason that we fear overpromising results on consults.
I have so many 2K students who come in and they’ll say, “I feel very uncomfortable at guaranteeing that my clients can get results. I feel very uncomfortable promising that they can make X amount of money or lose X amount of weight or mend their marriage by this date.” Or I’ve coached someone promising that someone could get married or find a partner to get married within six months. And this fear of I could never promise that result because maybe it’s not possible. Or it might not be possible for everyone. So you just don’t, you don’t promise big things.
In fact I see a lot of coaches trying to prevent disappointment for themselves and their clients ahead of time by saying things like, “No results are promised. I can’t guarantee you any results. The work is up to you. I’ll show up and I’ll do my best but then really it’s up to you and you’ve got to do the rest of the work. And we can just do the best we can.” It’s some form of that line, I just want you to notice if you ever say that to your clients or yourself, that you can’t guarantee a result that it’s just like you’re going to show up and you’re going to coach the best you can.
You’re going to coach them and you’re going to offer them tools, and thoughts, and concepts and then they have to do the work. What is that about? Why can’t you just say, “You can make your first $2,000 in 30 days or less. I believe that for you. I know that that’s possible. Really think about that. Why can’t you make-believe for yourself and for your clients, what’s the harm? The only harm is – the same reason you wouldn’t promise your client can get a result is the same reason some of these parents didn’t want to let their kids believe in Santa.
Because you might coach someone for six months and they might not get the result and then they might be mad at you. So in order to prevent that possibility you also prevent the possibility of belief. If you don’t hold enough space for your client you don’t believe enough for them, you don’t create the space in the relationship for them to believe enough for themselves. I feel so many times my clients will tell me, “I can just feel your belief in me. So much so that it makes me feel safe to believe in me too.”
But what if I was like, “Well, I don’t know if you can make 25K back. I don’t know if you can make your 2K back.” It’s like I’ll give you the process, but you might not be able to do it. If that was the energy that I had when I was selling or coaching, whether I said it or I just believed it a little bit deep down, if I just had a little bit of doubt, yeah, you might not be able to do it. That would carry into every way that I coach my client. That would carry into every conversation into my energy, into what they feel from me, the experience they have of being around me.
They might be like, “I don’t know that she’s sure either. And if she’s not sure I definitely can’t be sure.” One of the things that Will Smith’s dad apparently always said to him, I’m going to mess it up because I don’t have the book in front of me. But one of them was like if two people are in charge. It was a military idea, but it was like, if two people are in charge everybody dies. The idea was that only one person can be in charge. And the way I was thinking about is, if both people don’t believe, everybody dies metaphorically, the dream dies.
If the coach and the client don’t believe, and I think that the coach’s job is 90% of that belief. You bring 90% of the belief and then your client brings the extra 10%. And yeah, you can’t make them believe, you can’t make them bring that 10%. But you know what? It’s a whole hell of a lot easier for them to bring the extra 10% if you’re bringing 90. That ability to make-believe is so important. I don’t know if I said this yet or not because this is a little bit of a rant.
But I genuinely believe, one of the things that people always tell me is that my live events are so extraordinary, or my marketing and my launches are just, they just blow them away. And they can’t believe the level of creativity and the imagination that I bring to it in many different ways. They say this to me in many different forms. But it’s always that kind of idea of one of my greatest skillsets is my ability to have a vision and execute it. And I really believe that goes back to my parents allowing me to make-believe.
During my most formative years, as we’re developing from the time we’re born to the time we’re seven years old, that’s when the most growth in our brain happens, the most formative growth in our deep subconscious happens. That’s the time where we allow the make-believe. I was thinking about my child on his way here. And I was thinking I want to foster every ounce of make-believe that I can with him. I want to hold his belief of the universe being magical and fantastical for as long as possible, well beyond seven.
I really truly want to be the facilitator of his imagination in this world and help him explore it in 1,000 different ways. It’s also something, Randy, I’m going to mispronounce his last name, Randy Pausch maybe, the guy that did the last – oh my God, what was it called? The last speech. Why is this escaping me now? You guys know what I’m talking about though. He died, I think of cancer, and he gave this speech at his college. And one of the things he talks about in his book was his parents and their constant allowance of his imagination.
And how they let him draw on his walls. And he could put paint or draw or whatever, anything on his walls. And they would let him do whatever that he wanted in his room. And how they just always stood for his imagination, and his visions, and his ability to make-believe. And so when I think about some of the most successful people on the planet, I think about it’s always their ability to think ahead, to see what other people don’t see, to see things that haven’t happened yet, to believe in them happening, to imagine them happening, to have imagination.
Why do we want to take this from our kids? It literally doesn’t make sense to me unless it’s something religious or you just don’t celebrate the holiday. I just don’t see any reason to do that. Why would we take it from them? What’s happening here? These are of course just my thoughts. Feel free not to use them.
But I do also think the way that we grow up and our brain and society’s telling us not to make-believe, to be realistic. Another way this shows up is when we start to give up when it’s not looking good and it’s not looking like we’re going to hit our goal. Or we give a finite time period, time allotment to a goal. We’re like, “I will believe for this amount of time and then if it doesn’t happen I’m going to stop believing.”
I was just coaching a client on this today. She has a lot of work to do on her consults at a much bigger level. She’s making hundreds of thousands of dollars. But she’s at a cap where she’s reached this cap in what she can charge in her offer in her mind. And it’s showing up in her consults. And so she has this whole list of things that she wants to work on for her consults. And a month later we talked, and she was like, “Well, I implemented these things, and they didn’t work. I just can’t sell them.”
That’s not exactly what she said but in the way that I picked it out in her coaching was like she said, “I just can’t sell them.” And I was telling her that the statement, I can’t do it in any form is coming from this finite mindset. You’ve allotted one month and when it didn’t happen it’s an all or nothing, I either could do it or I can’t do it, or I can do it or I can’t do it versus I haven’t done it yet, I’m still working on it. And I was talking to her about being willing to be infinitely working on it, to be infinitely believing in it’s possible, to be infinitely believing that the result is guaranteed no matter what.
So I want you to consider, the only reason that we don’t do that, the only reason we can’t hold the belief all the way through to the very end, whether it’s for our client. For example in 200K there are a couple of first rounders, especially if they are underdogs and they come in right at 25K. It might take them a whole six months to make their 25K back. We have four or five people every round. And I want you to think about, what if I in month four was like, “Well, they can’t do it. They’re not going to do it. It’s not going to happen.”
Versus me believing all the way to the very, very end that they can do it. And even then if they don’t do it, I still believe they’re going to do it. I’m like, “Oh, maybe it’s going to take you one more month. Who cares?” The same with the 25K and 30 day challenge. I teach them, if it’s your first challenge and you don’t do it, you just don’t stop the challenge. So at the 30 day mark you don’t say, “Okay, I didn’t do it. Start over.” No, you keep going and you see, did it take you 35 days? Did it take you 45 days? Did it take you 90 days?
And whatever amount of time it takes you’re like, “Okay, so it took me 90 days this time. Next time I’m going to shoot for 45 days. And then next time I’m going to shoot for 30 days.” It’s all about decreasing the amount of time it takes to make a certain amount of money. But that is an infinite mindset coming from a willingness to believe that that result is inevitable for as long as it takes, to make-believe the entire time.
And I do think for those of you who don’t enjoy creating new beliefs, for those of you who feel like it’s very painful to believe something that hasn’t happened yet. The only reason you don’t have joy in the process of creating big goals, I feel so much joy when I think about making $20 million, or $30 million, or $100 million, or $200 million over X amount of years. When I think about these big goals, when I think about getting 200 people to $200,000, when I think about these goals I feel so excited. And I have so much joy in the process even though the result hasn’t happened yet.
But because I’m enjoying make believing, I’m enjoying believing in magic, in the magical possibility of helping 200 coaches make $200,000, of thinking of making these 200K earners, $2 million earners. Thinking of that level of magic in the world, that level of happening gets me so fueled up that the process, every day that I’m not at that result it’s a failure, ‘technically’ I don’t have what I want. But I’m having so much fun with it and I see my clients being so miserable with it.
And the only difference is I’m willing to allow the feeling of disappointment. I do still have it along the way. I’m just willing to allow it and the more I’m willing to allow it, the less I’m afraid of it. The less I’m afraid of it the more willing I am to lean into the belief, to lean into the possibility of magic in the universe. I do believe that there is a magical component to the universe. I believe there is something floating in the world that if you put an intention out there and you believe it strongly enough that the universe will come and collaborate with you to make it happen, conspire with you to make it happen.
One of the things that we’re coaching on in 200K for the last couple of weeks, and normally we do in our 200K calls, it’s a lot of strategy coaching. I teach them when you come into 200K through the member portal in our process and the advanced selling book. And I teach the philosophy which is the mindset behind all of the strategy I teach. So you learn strategy and then all of the mindset behind it. So you know every single thing I tell you to do in your business and you know exactly why I’m telling you to do it. And so we learn that. We go through that at the 200K event.
We really coach everyone through all of the decisions that need to be made for their business and all of the belief that needs to happen for that. And so most of our calls are strategy calls where we’re looking at someone’s business. And we’re coaching them on the strategy and then the mindset to support that strategy, that’s most of our calls.
But I mixed it up recently and we have done two calls where I asked my students this question because I was with my coach, Brooke Castillo in Austin, I got to have dinner with her. And which she’s said this many times, but it just really landed with me, at $50 million a year. She said, “In every room that I’m in, most of the time”, I’m adlibbing what she said.
But basically, “In the rooms where I’m consistently the highest earner in the room I’m always telling people, the only reason I make more money than them is because I’m willing to feel any emotion. I’m willing to feel more feelings than them. That’s the only reason.” And she says that frequently, “The only thing different between you and I is I’m willing to feel it all.” And I genuinely believe that. I genuinely believe that for her.
I see the hardest decisions for me that will make the mot money are always prolonged by my willingness to number one, generate an emotion to make that decision and allow an emotion to make that decision. So I have to allow it. And I should have transversed those. So you have to allow an emotion first to make a big decision and then you have to generate one.
So I was asking my students, I did an entire two calls where I said, “What is the emotion that you need to allow in your business right now to get you much further than where you are right now? What’s the emotion that’s holding you back the most that you need to allow? And what’s the emotion you need to generate?” So I teach them also high value and low value cycles. So if you join you’ll learn all about this.
But they’re very, very in tune with what their high value and their low value cycles are, what they’re doing in their A-lines that make them the most money and what produce the least money and the least results for their clients. And so the way I had framed it for them is, “What do you need to allow to stay in a high value cycle? And what do you need to generate in order to stay in one?” And so we’ve been having this talk for the last two weeks about emotions. And for so many of them it’s disappointment.
So for me the question I wanted to ask you all is, what if you were willing to allow disappointment 100% of the time for yourself and for others around you? This also goes back to boundary work. The only reason we’re afraid to uphold boundaries or be honest and tell our truth and make decisions based on our truth is because of how we imagine other people will feel and us wanting to control their emotions and their experience of us. So what if you are willing to feel and allow the emotion of disappointment always in your life?
And what if you purposely generated the emotion of magic? Whatever that might be, so for me it feels like awe, it feels like – I don’t know if this is a word but when you’re mesmerized, that feeling of – so I wrote mesmerization. I don’t know if that’s a word, joy. This is more of a thought, but just unbridled freedom just to believe anything just because, just for joy and fun. What if those were the only two things that you spent the next year working on?
A lot of you choose at the end of the year, a word for the next year. What if you chose emotions, and you chose to allow disappointment and to generate joy, and magic, and make-believe, and awe, and mesmerization. The feeling of being a child, make believing, that feeling. And even if you didn’t have that as a child, can you find that as an adult?
I just watched the movie, Cruella for the first time. I can’t believe it took me so long because 101 Dalmatians was my favorite movie as a little girl. I was obsessed with 101 Dalmatians. I had their bedsheets. I had this whole 101 Dalmatians sweat pant outfit. I loved the 101 Dalmatians. And also my favorite theater show is Wicked, my favorite musical ever is Wicked. And I loved the Wizard of Oz and so watching Wicked was such a joy for me as an adult. And Cruella felt like the Wicked version of 101 Dalmatians.
And the fashion, and it is so just fantastical. And I loved experiencing that as an adult. I loved the feeling like I was the 101 Dalmatian version for adults. And there was one dress, I won’t ruin it if you haven’t seen it but there was just one dress that was the most fantastical and imaginative. And it was displayed really in a surprising way, and I just still think about how I felt when that dress unraveled.
That’s all I’ll say, when that dress unraveled how I felt. And I just felt like it was really truly the best feeling ever. It’s the delight, maybe that’s another one, the feeling of delight that I feel when my clients tell me they’ve made their first 100K, or they signed their client, or they hit $1 million, or when I think of them doing that. I feel so much delight in thinking of all of us creating results. Why would I not allow that just out of not wanting to feel the opposite of delight, which is disappointment?
I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want you to feel it. So we’ll just feel it ahead of time by smashing all of our dreams and all of our belief in what’s possible for you. No, we’re life coaches. It’s in our DNA. And if it isn’t, you’ve got to create it. You’ve got to create it to be in your DNA. We are the OG make-believers. We are the original make-believers, folks. That’s what we do. We make-believe for ourselves to create results and our clients to create results. So why wouldn’t we? The only reason is we don’t want to allow disappointment, that’s it.
Okay, I have one last example for you guys and then I will send you on your way to celebrate all the Christmas things. And hopefully you’ll be able to create and generate a little more magic in your heart this year, especially I know a lot of times with family it’s hard, a lot of the holidays can be really hard for people for varying reasons. So this is an opportunity, no matter what the circumstance is if you want, if you choose to generate. So to allow some emotions and to generate some.
But I also just watched – I’m on a Will Smith kick, I’ll tell you guys more about my Will Smith insane obsession throughout my entire life spanning from when I was a little girl. This is why I like my imagination. I was so always connected to him. My whole family knows Stacey’s obsession with Will Smith. It goes back all the way to The Fresh Prince days.
But I just also watched the movie, King Richard, I always want to say King Charles, that’s not right, King Richard. So it was the story of Serena and Venus Williams, so phenomenal. If you guys haven’t watched it, it just came out but so incredibly phenomenal. I cried through the whole thing. I was just so mesmerized. And one of the things I said, there was a part of the movie, and I don’t know if it was real or not, but I do think most of it was, there wasn’t that much that was embellished. We looked up a couple of things that might have been.
But it was when Venus was playing her first pro match and she hasn’t actually been in a match for three years, I think, or nine years. I don’t know, it was some ridiculous amount of time. And then she goes into this pro match, and she kills the first person, it’s not even close. And I was telling Neil, I’m like, “I have such a hard time believing that’s possible. What? That can’t be real.” I caught myself saying, “That can’t be real.” And I caught myself and I remember thinking, no, it’s just that seemed so impossible until it wasn’t. it was possible for her. She was that amazing.
She was that talented that she had that level of skill. And then Neil is really into tennis, so he knows a lot about Venus and Serena because he has watched them. And I was asking because most of the movie is about Venus. And I was like, “What about Serena?” And he said, “Well, she really blew up in her early 20s. She came on the pro tour and then just blew up in such an incredible way at an older age. She developed later, something.” The way he explains it makes sense.
But I was just thinking how fantastical to me the odds of that. The odds of their story felt so fantastical to me. That they could – and looking back, their dad I think made such good decisions for them. Through the whole movie you’re like, “What are you doing?” I felt so much anxiety, I just wanted them to get to the success very quickly. But their dad made very solid decisions for them in retrospect. In my opinion having watched the movie I’m like, “That was a pretty solid choice for his kids.”
But he kept them out of being in competition and the normal path to success that most young kids went through. He wouldn’t let them compete for a really long time in what they call juniors. And all the experts were telling him, “This is such a bad idea. You’re going to blow their chance. They have to be competing in juniors.” And so the fact, I look back and think like so many people were telling him he was doing it wrong. So many professionals who had helped so many people succeed.
And then the fact that they did, to me there’s just – which Neil always says, “There’s just no denying.” And he has a friend that was in the NFL, and we always talk about travel sports. And his friend that was in the NFL was like, “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. You either have it or you don’t. At the pro level there’s no amount of being in travel sports forever.” And people have different opinions about that. Some people are like, “But that’s not true. The professional soccer players, they all play travel sports”, whatever.
So Neil thinks, his standpoint was they were always going to be the best no matter, if none of those things happened for them they still would have ended up on the pro tour because they were that gifted and talented. So his thought is, there’s some part of it that you’re born with. But for me it still felt like there was this magical. I don’t know, you just have to watch the movie. But it felt like there was this magical element to it. The universe was just pushing them and meeting them at their belief.
There was an interview that Venus did where she was 13 or something, 12, I don’t know. And she was like, “Yeah, I’m going to be the best in the world. Yes, I’m going to beat the champion, of course I am because I’m going to do it.” She just met them with so much belief. And I think the universe came in and conspired to support that. So I tell you this story to say that if you watch the movie one of the things that just struck me so much is how much their dad made belief for them, how much he held the belief for them, and their mom too.
The story’s not about her as much but she plays such a big role. They both made such huge sacrifices for something they had no guarantee would happen. And from the very beginning, I don’t know if this is true, but he makes a comment in the movie about how he heard how much tennis people could make and then he told his wife, “We’ve got to have two more kids. We’re creating tennis stars.” And they made a life plan for them and just stuck to it and never ever deviated.
And how much belief he held that they would be, every day his life revolved around them becoming tennis stars and then he would go to work at night. So this is just what I wanted to leave you all with is first of all, if you’re parents, my take for my own future child is going to be to foster make-believe as much as possible because I see where it’s taken me in my life. So that’s my stance there, take it or leave it.
But also you’re a ‘parent figure’, you are an authority figure for so many of your clients that I want you to just first of all, watch King Richard and ask yourself if you believe enough for your clients like you did for his girls. What? And do you believe at that level? I do. I feel confident that the answer is yes, especially in 200K and Two Million Dollar group I don’t generally ever take people who I don’t. If I look at your application and I’m like, “I just can’t get there yet.” I give you more time to work on things to where we are both there because I want to be fair on my end too.
But for the most part it takes a lot for me not to believe someone can do it, a lot. Because I just hold such deep belief, I make the plan just like King Richard. I don’t even know why it’s called King Richard, just like their dad. I make the plan and I believe it with all of my heart through the very end until it comes to fruition forever and ever for always. So watch the movie, this is your homework, watch that movie. And see if you believe in your clients as much as he does in his daughters. Allow yourself to lean in to make-believe, believe in magic, look for it everywhere.
Even if you didn’t have it as a child, you can develop it now by looking for it every day, turning your brain on to finding evidence of magic everywhere. There are plenty of Facebook videos you can watch and IG things you can watch of magical stories in the universe. There are all kinds of places you can find it in other people’s stories. But find it, generate it, generate that feeling of joy, and awe, and allow disappointment, really work on that in the coming year. Now and for all of 2022, work on that willingness. Build the muscle.
I want you to imagine that disappointment is just 100 pound weight. And all you have to do is start with two pounds, and then go to five, and then go to 10, and then go to 12, and then go to 15, and then go to 20, and then 25. And you’re just building that muscle to be able to allow more, and more, and more disappointment. And the more disappointment you allow the more things you’re going to do, the bigger decisions you’re going to make, the more you will believe for people.
And the more you believe for your clients, you get to that 90% belief for your clients, I promise you it will be very few people who don’t come the other 10%.
We were just talking, actually I met with my CFO in my business, and I asked them how many refunds we had had all year for 2K. Are you ready for this number? It’s fucking ridiculous. Are you ready? Thirteen out of almost 1400 people just for this year, but over 35, I don’t know, lifetime maybe 3200 something people, not all of them are in the Facebook group so the number’s always a little bit off. But we have over 3,000 in our Facebook group. So out of that many people, 13 refunds because you get lifetime access.
So whether you bought it two years ago or whenever, 13, it’s the most ridiculous number ever. We both laughed. So even at the 2K level I hold so much belief at 90% that it makes it very easy for my clients to come the extra 10%. The same with 200K. I forgot to ask him about our refunds, but those numbers are also small, we have a couple each round, that’s it. I feel very confident in saying less than 10 for the entirety of the program. What? Now, that’s because my product is really good. But my product is really good because of the 90% belief I bring because I’m so willing to lean into the magic.
So, listen, that’s my rant today, take it or leave it, I mean no offence to anyone. I’m sure there are many reasons to not celebrate Santa Claus, mainly it might be religious, or you don’t celebrate Christmas. I know people who don’t. But if you do and your reason is because you don’t want your kids to feel disappointed, I want you to question it on my behalf, but you don’t have to. I’m not telling you how to parent. I am telling you though how to believe for the sake of your business.
Okay, Merry Christmas, happy holidays. I love you all so much.
Hey, if you’re 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 using my simple 5 step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.