Ep #293: Cash Grabs, Sales Shaming, and Keeping Yourself Small

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 293. I’m so excited to talk to you today. I am in the middle of mastermind week for 200K and the Two Million Group and I have to say I had some thoughts that I worked on very hard before I marketed this offer. But I knew I was not going to be doing live events anymore and I created mastermind week with the intention of having an energetic start, an energetic container that really kicks us off in a powerful way. And I had thoughts like can it be as powerful as a live event?

And I have to tell you, I just got off one of the calls. I think we’re on day three and I had one of my one-on-one coaches message me and say, “You’re coaching this week. I have seen you coach and this week it’s so good.” And I really think it’s being surrounded by my family at home with plenty of time for my brain to rest and to also be in my life doing physical things and physical activities.

So typically, either in the morning or in the afternoon after I’m completely done coaching or before I’ve started, I take my child and we go do something fun, whether it’s the park or a walk or a class or whatever we do. It gets me in my life and gives my brain a lot of mental rest and I just feel like I have seriously up-leveled. And also, I have just been going through a lot of breakthroughs in my own life. So, I think it’s really showing through.

My clients are just on the receiving end of two years of really hard work on my brain to take it back after postpartum anxiety and all sorts of things in my business. And I was telling my husband last night at bedtime for my son, I said, ”The one thing you’ll always be able to say about your wife is this has been a hard couple of years, and I have not given up.” I have not. I just recently really, truly broke free on a lot of thoughts that have been holding me back personally with motherhood and work and balance and feeling so sad when I’m away from my child.

I’ve let go of a lot of heaviness that I encountered when I got my first batch of online hate. And I’ve just really worked very hard to reclaim myself, post baby and it’s just paying off like crazy. And I’m in the zone and I’m coaching better. I mean, it’s just so good. I’m texting my production team, I’m like, “You’ve got to pull this sound bite out and you’ve got to pull this out, I want to talk about this.” It’s just so good.

And I also think I do believe this, I think that coaching is a collaborative experience. So, when clients show up extremely coachable, extremely excited, very grateful, just ready to go, willing to go deep. I just think when you show up 100% as a client, you get 100% of the coach. And when you show up as 100% for you, no matter how your client shows up, you get more out of the client, you get 100% of the client. And when you both show up at your 100%, fireworks happen. And this is what’s happening with mastermind week. This is how I’m feeling.

So, today’s episode, I feel is a very important conversation I want to have with you all and is based off of a couple of conversations I’ve had with students in both of my rooms this week that have come up in a couple of different ways. So, I want to give you the scenarios that came up and touch on some of the coaching I gave my clients. But then also I want to open up a broader conversation and lead a little bit in this area.

So, I want to talk about cash grabs and sales shaming. And just in general on this line, things that you will maybe hear about yourself or think about yourself that will keep you small and keep you from showing up and keep you from serving your people.

So, one of the conversations I had was with this very educated, extremely smart, very talented and incredibly successful woman who has an enormous ability to tap into a network that she’s a part of. And she gets invited to speak a lot. And the people who invite her to speak obviously find value in what she has to offer, but she was saying, “They don’t really like it if I’m ever selling. They don’t want any part of me selling. And so, I don’t want to sell in any capacity, not just at the events I get to speak at. But I just want to be really careful because my people will have thoughts about me selling. I won’t get invited back places.”

And then the same exact day I am coaching a student and she says, “I have this offer that I’m really excited to offer.” And she has one offer and she’s like, “I’ve thought of the second offer.” And this first offer is taking a lot of work for me to figure out how to sell because it’s a newer offer as well.

And she was like, “While I figure this out, I’ve decided this is another offer that I feel really good about offering. I think it will be easy to sell. I think it will be healthy for me to deliver. I realized when I deliver things in this way I feel good about myself and I stay in a good mental space just in general. It’ll bring an influx of cash into my business and pay my business expenses for the next several months. And really get me interacting with my clients in a way that just lights me up and I love. And I think it will be so valuable for them and I’m really excited about it.”

And then as she’s talking to me, she was like, “But also I have thoughts about cash grab and stuff.” And I was like, “Wait, what?” So, I’ve got to rewind. What do you mean, cash grab? And I was like, “Do you think other people will think that because you’re creating a new offer?” And she was like, “Well, yeah.” And so, I have thoughts about this that I want to share with you all.

So, the first thing that I told my group today, I thought about it overnight and I was like, “I really feel like this message is so important.” Number one, I know the pain of when someone close to you or someone that respects you or someone that you respect ties you, selling to something that creates this idea that it’s shameful. Or creates you selling to be something that is inherently bad or coming from a negative place. It can feel humiliating, mortifying. You can feel grief, sadness, anger, defensiveness, all of the negative emotions come up.

So, I was telling my students, I thought about it overnight, and I came to day three and I was telling them, “I remember when I first started my business.” So, I had been life coaching for a year, changed my whole life and then got a promotion with my company with two other people, two other women and we were going to run a coaching program within our company.

And then after we spent weeks preparing the content and coming up with an incredible training for the entire leadership team in our company that we were going to deliver in Florida over a couple of days. The vice president who had hired us and given us these promotions, we were going to be introduced and our promotions were going to be introduced company wide right at that event. And right as that happened, the vice president got fired and two dudes came in and basically discredited everything we were doing, took over.

And then because we had turned our presentation into them for review because at the time they technically had higher positions than us, they made us sit there for several days while they taught our work. And it was very, very hurtful and disappointing and just all of the things. But then the worst thing was right after that I decided I’m going to become a coach, an entrepreneur, and I’m going to start my own business. And so, I started my own business.

And I remember the first time I saw a Facebook post that was making fun of me, when I was working for the company. I wasn’t outwardly marketing. I was a coach for my sales force, for the people on the team. But when I decided to become an entrepreneur, I went out and I started marketing and offering things to the world because I’m like, “I’ve got to get clients on social media, in person.” I was going to in-person networking events. So, I remember the first time someone on the team made fun of me online and it was awful.

I maybe have even told this story before, but it was something like, “I’m so grateful that I have so many grateful things and so much gratitude in my life. It’s just all gravy, gratitude”, or something. It was something where she used the word gratitude and grateful so many times. I’m so grateful that I’m grateful that I teach gratitude or something. It was something like that. I remember just seeing the post. It was a wash of shame over my body. It felt humiliating.

And there was a moment where I could have decided I’m not going to do offers anymore because people are making fun of me. And I knew who she hung out with in the group. I knew then that everybody was making fun of me and especially on the comments on it and it was very obvious. And at the time this was the thing that caused the most shame is that finding gratitude at that point in my life was a full-time job. It was so incredibly hard to see my life from the lens of feeling grateful.

I had just been in such victim mentality my whole life. I had felt so down and out, felt so far behind in life, been through so many traumatic things. I was carrying so much trauma and sadness and grief in my body. It was an everyday fight to find gratitude for my life. So, to see that then, it was such a vulnerable act to actively feel grateful and then go talk about it online to other people. And then encourage other people to start a practice because it was transforming me so much and then to see that being made fun of online was horribly traumatic for me. It was awful.

And I remember it like it happened yesterday so, I do know this feeling. And one of the things I thought about in that moment is, this person isn’t my person. And if I don’t show up, someone like me isn’t going to get this message and they’re not going to get help. And I used that to really fuel me. We’re going to talk more about this, but here’s what I was thinking about overnight is, I was thinking if those people that were laughing behind my back in my company, my sales company, if those people, and I’m sure many of them, do see where I’m at now, I bet they’re not laughing.

They were laughing in the beginning because it was an easy target. I hadn’t developed my confidence yet. I hadn’t proven myself yet. And I was doing something very contrary to what everybody else was doing, look at her, look how she thinks she’s going to have a business as a life coach, what a joke. And at the time, I had also had things happen where I was the top salesperson and I was a trainer for the company. And I’ve always been a stickler for precision. It’s what made me such a good trainer. It’s what makes me such a good coach. It’s what makes me such a good business person.

And we used to have standards for how the demo booth had to be set up, the sponge to clean off the counter had to be in a certain spot and had to be a certain type of sponge. And the strainer had to go in the water a certain way. And there were so many exact things. And I would go into markets and I would be the person that would say kind of, “You’re doing it all wrong. This has to be done this way, and here’s why we do it this way.” Kind of standard control.

And then on top of that, I’m also the top salesperson. And people couldn’t ever figure out how I was the top person all of the time, week after week, month after month, year after year. And it was surprising to me when I started becoming a traveling trainer, how many people would prepare the people in that market when they knew I was coming by telling them how terrible of a person I was, saying things. They didn’t even know me, but they would be like, “Oh, she’s such a diva. Just wait, such a diva. Everything has to be her way. She’s going to throw a fit.”

It wasn’t even necessarily to do with my behavior, it was just, look out. And that was also such a terrible experience. I would go and know that people hated me immediately. And this thought really served me that I’m going to offer you is, I can worry about what they think about me or I can make money. Which one do I want? Because their thoughts, their opinion of me isn’t paying my bills, and I know that you’ve heard that saying before. Their thoughts about you are not fulfilling your dreams. They’re not fulfilling your potential. They’re not helping your vision for your future. They are not serving your people.

So, I started thinking about this idea of cash grabs and I was talking about this with my husband. I remember the first time he said this to me, I had no idea what it even meant. He was talking about when athletes go, when they’re on a really popular team, and then they get paid more to go to a less good team. And so, people say, “Oh, it’s a cash grab.” And I’m like, “Yeah, why not? Why wouldn’t you do that?” It’s your career, they have such a limited time to play.If someone’s going to offer them more money and they’re going to go and take their experience to a team that’s not doing as well, this is literally the job I used to do.

I used to go into markets that were the worst markets in the country and I would leave and they would be the best markets in the country and I would make a lot of money doing it, not always, but a lot of the times. And I would get to train people. And I would get a percentage of what they sold as well. And when I would leave the market would be standardized and they would be selling and making lots of money and it would be one of the top markets in the country every time. That’s what I did.

And so, I was telling him, “Why wouldn’t they do that?” Why wouldn’t they take their talent, beef up another team, try to make that team an award winning team. And even if they don’t, why wouldn’t they take that money for themselves? They earned it. They were offered that for their skill that they developed. And maybe some athletes would say, “I’d rather win than get paid more”, but it just depends. And why is either a problem? And I remember having this conversation with him so long ago before this term kind of made it into the industry.

And one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last 24 hours since I coached my clients on this is, I told my husband this. I said, “My dad was a blue collar worker.” He worked in a factory as a maintenance man, had a refrigeration license. So, any of the big machines that broke, they would call him in. And my dad would work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. He would work all of the overtime that was available for him to work he worked. So, he took this job that would have probably paid standard maybe 30,000 a year and turned it into a $65,000 a year plus job.

That then took care of his entire family and he stayed at the same company and did the same thing for his whole life since he was 19. He’s in his upper 60s now, same company the whole time, working that schedule to take care of his family. And I was like, “No one would call him a cash grab.” No one would say that he’s cash grabbing. They would say he was providing. And so, I said, “No one would say, single mom working three jobs, no one would call her a cash grab.” So, people say this.

And then another place you see this said a lot is celebrities who endorse products, you see them on a commercial like Jennifer Lopez doing the apple cider gummies. It’s a cash grab, clearly needs some cash. I think this is a term that is designed to shame people who have money or make money. You can’t ever possibly know someone’s intentions or what they want. And it doesn’t even matter because we would never say someone in a lower or middle class situation is cash grabbing by getting another job.

I have a student who messaged me and said, “I just want you to know I want to do 200K so bad. I don’t want to put stress on my consults or my clients, so I want to come up with the money in other ways. So, I’ve picked up driving Uber at night while I build my business.” You would never say that’s cash grabbing. We would only say that, someone would only say that to you in an attempt to shame you, unless they think it’s protective. They’re protecting other people by saying you’re cash grabbing.

Because I looked up the definition of this, I was really interested, I was like “What does it actually mean?” And it’s a derogatory term, so you just have to know if you’re being called this, someone has intentionally called you something derogatory. That means more about them than you. But it’s a product designed primarily or solely with the intent of generating profits or money. So, here’s what’s interesting about this. I think there’s two sides.

Number one, that is capitalism and entrepreneurship. You design a product to make money. That’s what entrepreneurship is. Now, a lot of people, if you watch Shark Tank, I’m a religious Shark Tank watcher, I’ve seen all the seasons. What you also find is that every person that comes through there also has a passion behind what they created. It changed their life. They had a concept that they thought would be life changing for the world and they feel deeply passionate about it.

So, I think you have to think about as you see this term thrown around in this industry, it’s made it to this industry. You may hear it thrown around. It may be thrown your way, is, what do you believe about coaches? I can tell you that I’ve been in the industry almost a decade. I’ve been in tons of masterminds and programs. I’ve worked with lots of coaches and I’ve coached thousands of coaches, probably upwards of close to 7,000 coaches between all of my programs.

And my deepest belief truly with all of my being, I do not believe there are coaches out there who do not love their clients and want the best for their clients. I do not believe that coaches do not want good things for their clients and do not intend to serve them at the highest. Now, they might have some misses. They might have programs they don’t execute as well on. They might have clients who don’t get the same results other clients of theirs get. They might go through a rough period of time in their life where they’re not as the hot mess life.

I heard of a coach once that she would always sell stuff and then her clients would go to enter into the member portal or whatever it was, and it wouldn’t be ready yet. And I never thought that’s because she doesn’t care about her clients. I was like, “Oh, bless her heart.” I get that. It’s the hot mess thing kind of follows with you. Operations in a business are hard. That’s my thought.

Now, obviously I have an interpretation on that. I’m giving the lens of, I trust, I just don’t know why any coach would ever enter this industry not wanting to help people, not caring if people get help. It doesn’t make any sense for how you get into the industry. There’s no argument you’ll ever be able to show me that tells me, that could prove to me how you would ever end up in the coaching industry and ever design an offer or a product primarily or solely for money and not for service.

Every single person I talk to has a transformation story and a passion to help other people. You’re never going to convince me otherwise, and I hope I convince you. I don’t think the industry is a scary place. I don’t think it’s full of bad people. And even the coaches in the industry that are kind of tearing other coaches down right now, especially really successful ones, I believe they care about their clients, I do. And I think they justify it by thinking they are protecting consumers.

Even if the hate or the derogatory comment, even if the derogatory comment was directed at me, I don’t have a thought that they must be a terrible coach, they don’t care about their clients. I genuinely believe all of us do. So then how could it ever be true? Now, on the flipside of this, I said the whole point of entrepreneurship, as you create a product for profit. Unless you’re a non-profit, every company is for profit.

There’s something that I think I do really well that is my contribution to the coaching industry that coaches have a hard time with, which is putting on the entrepreneur hat. We have our coach hat or our coach brain and then we have our entrepreneur brain or our entrepreneur hat. And I think a lot of people have trouble being in both and integrating both. And the part that we have a hard time with, with entrepreneurship that we tend to shame ourselves and call ourselves a cash grab.

When I coach people on this and they’re feeling shameful about selling when they need money or selling something that could be a quick win for both people, for both parties. This kind of falls right in line with hustle shame too. I’ll talk about that in just a second if I can remember and gather all my thoughts, but it’s very similar to hustle shame, which is, if I’m overworking in a way that I know is overworking, then I tell myself I’m a terrible person.

An entrepreneur knows you have to protect the profit. You have to bring in revenue so that you get paid and maybe even your employees or contractors get paid and so that you can continue to serve other people. And that’s real grown-up stuff and there will be times especially as you make more money or you will have a launch that doesn’t deliver the way that you thought, maybe it’s a launch zero. And you have employees to pay and you have to find a creative way to bring in cash and serve your people at the same time.

Because the way that I think about offers, any offer and the way I hear other coaches talk about offers is always, I think this offer could solve this problem for my people and I’m really excited to offer it. And I may happen to need money, that’s all coaches, when they first enter the industry. The one thing about my programs that you will never ever experience, is someone shaming you for having a normal human experience while trying to figure out how to make money and be an entrepreneur. So, in the beginning, you will feel desperate for a yes, that’s a normal human experience.

You’ll push someone to be a yes when they really are a no. You might sign a client or two that really should never have been your client. And I will be the one person that never shames you for that. If you are working way more hours than you want and thinking about work all the time and not able to be present with your family and hustling so hard and offering 500 offers and feeling overwhelmed. But you’re afraid the money will dry up if you stop or the visibility will dry up, you will never ever be shamed by me.

I do not believe in that because I believe it’s the human experience and also we are entrepreneurs and coaches. Unless you decide to go work for someone else, you could do that, but if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re working for yourself, you are going to have to always be holding two things. Serving your people and bringing in cash for the business. We are for profit businesses. And because you are human, every once in a while those things could be out of balance.

And it is my deepest belief that there is no coach who sells things and doesn’t care to show up. And maybe there are anecdotal evidences of that happening, but I don’t think it’s the whole story of even that person, if someone were to sell something and then not show up like they intended.

I had someone tell me once about a coach, something went terribly wrong. I actually don’t even know what it was, but they ended up, I guess, refunding people and making people sign an NDA, and it was this whole dramatic thing. But I also know this person is extremely successful. So clearly that’s not the case all of the time. There’s something that happened there. Well, I don’t know what it was. I don’t go down the rabbit hole of these things.

But even in isolated things that I know, maybe all of you can think, well, I took this program and it wasn’t good or it didn’t give me what I promised from this person. And so, it could feel sensitive to you if you’re in the consumer space and you’re thinking of yourself as the consumer in the coaching industry instead of the coach in the industry. I know that this topic could even be triggering for you or upset you.

But it doesn’t change my deep belief, which is I really, genuinely believe all coaches are in this for the right reasons and want to serve their people. Want to take care of their people. Want their people to have an amazing experience, and we’re human beings. And we have to protect the profit because the people who might try to shame you about this are not going to pay your contractors, your employees, your bills for you. They’re not going to do that, so don’t let them comment on how you do it. Don’t let them hold you back from offering something that you want to offer.

Don’t let them hold you back from making offers. That is how a business runs. You have to make offers as a business, you have to make them frequently. The other thing that’s really interesting is not everybody is hustling just because you see them on the internet all the time. I have lots of friends who have big businesses who literally work all the time, but they love it. It’s their whole world and they love it. That’s not me.

And listen, I was thinking about this, never use my teaching of the simple offer and having foundational offers and having only a few offers or only having one offer. That was never created to shame you. I was telling this to someone in mastermind week too because they were having a little bit of that. And I said, “Listen, have as many offers as you feel like you have bandwidth and you are excited about.”

I have less offers because I am a new mom and because I am an essentialist and because that’s the way my brain works and my body operates best. It’s the way I move. I need less offers so I can focus more deeply on each of those offers. That’s been my MO. It’s how I work best. But I have friends who have lots of offers and they love it and I’m always laughing and telling them they’re crazy but in a funny friend way, like, “You guys are so crazy.” And I love it. I love it for them. It doesn’t mean they’re hustling.

It doesn’t mean you’re hustling if you have five offers. It’s what you have the bandwidth for. So don’t use my simple offer against you. Don’t use it as, I’m not judging you, if you don’t. For a while I had a filter where you had to be willing to come down on offers but that was when I was guaranteeing my 200K Mastermind. And so, I had to look at what I know I can control if my money is on the line too. Since I removed the guarantee I get to be a little bit more loose about it because I don’t have to put my money on the line. So, I give my people a lot more autonomy, authority.

And I used to tell them even when I guaranteed it, “Listen.” This would usually be around application time if they came in and they had five offers we’d be like, “Hey, listen, how much do you care about the guarantee? If you don’t care about it, that’s cool and we’ll still let you in. If it’s a selling point for you, would you be willing to go down to two or three offers?” And typically, they’d be like, “I don’t care about the guarantee at all, that’s not why I’m joining.” Or they’d be like, “Absolutely, this is why I’m joining, I need to go down on offers.”

But none of that is ever to shame you for having lots of offers, that is not a thing. Coaching is also a creative process within the person. And I’m in this place now where for the last, I don’t know how many weeks, but a long time, I feel like this whole year I have been having clients because I’ve been working with so many people that are asking for things that aren’t really part of my mainstay programs. And my brain has been really lighting up with content and I’ve had this desire.

I call my 2K for 2K offer my foundational offer, but I’m having a calling to have some offers that are shorter in time and super power punch packed with value in a short amount of time for a much smaller price. So that my clients who already work with me, who want to experience coaching on topics that aren’t in my programs. and for new people who just haven’t made the jump and want a bridge between the podcast and 2K for 2K. I’ve been coming up with ideas for that and getting really excited. Like for the same offers for six years.

I’m feeling so good about my bodies of work and I’m like, “Okay, now my brain’s offering me a lot more things.” But for me it took six years to feel these offers are in a good place and I still have things I’m going to add to them as well. I have a note section that’s hundreds of notes long of all of the ideas of all the things I want to teach. And just because I offer, I did one years ago called higher converting consults and it was $97. That’s not a cash grab.

There’s an actual strategy as an entrepreneur to give people the opportunity to buy in at a much less of a big price than what maybe your standard packages are. When I was first starting out, my one-on-one was $5,000 and I remember doing this group that was six weeks and it was $100. And I’m so crazy, in a way that I joke with my friends who have a million offers. I sold this for $100 and I told them for every person they refer, they got $25 off.

And it was a call a week back before Zoom was created, a call a week on the free conference call for six weeks. But then I recorded a 30 to 40 minute video every single day for six straight weeks, even on Saturday and Sunday. I just wanted to give them so much value so that they knew if they paid me $5,000, they were going to get that level of treatment. This is what I also think people think is the lower the price, the less effort you put into it but that has not been true for me.

I put so much effort into all of my offers because if I offer something for $200 or $500 or $1,000, I always think if they don’t feel like they got way more than that, they’re never paying me again. If they don’t feel they got what they came for, the whole reason to offer a lower offer has now been negated. I feel I have to pull out the big freaking guns. Because I feel this way, I also believe other people feel this way. I have such strong beliefs and maybe that is just because of how much I pour into my stuff that other people do this.

And I know that you all think I’m crazy when I say this, but I have not purchased a program where I have had a truly terrible experience ever. I have one program, ever that I didn’t do and I did not ask for a refund because I didn’t do it because the coaching was a little, and I’ve said this before on the podcast, but it’s the last coaches left in the industry and we’re the only ones surviving. But listen, the actual content there was every single step that I would have needed to figure out how to create ads was in there.

And I believed I got my transformation because I realized, I’m going to do a 100K launch with organic marketing. I’m not going to do any of this. And I’m going to believe that I could sell, I don’t remember if it was 20 people at 5,000 or I think it was that, I can’t remember at this point. But I just knew it was a $100,000 launch and I just decided to do organic marketing and really worked on my belief that that was possible, that there were enough people in my audience to see this offer and buy from me without doing big fancy things. Which is now one of the cornerstone things that I teach in all of my masterminds.

But I have never had the experience where I didn’t think a coach cared about me as the client. And I also just don’t choose those types of thoughts. But I also know how hard I work to show up and I know the conversations I have with my 7,000 coaches over three programs. And I’ve never had any of them tell me that they just want to do something quick and bring a lot of cash and they don’t really care about the people or if it’s effective or anything like that. I don’t experience that.

So, I really want to offer, if someone offers their derogatory thinking and that’s not me having an opinion, that’s literally the definition, is a derogatory term. So, if they offer you their derogatory opinion about your work, take a breath. If you experience shame, ask yourself why. Are you stepping into their beliefs about you or is there any part of you that agrees? And if there’s a part of you that agrees, which part is it? Are you just afraid of being perceived that way?

Of all of the people I coach and talk to, it’s usually, I’m afraid, of being perceived that way. But you can’t control other people’s perceptions. You only know what’s in your heart and your effort and what is your integrity. If you’re judging yourself because you do happen to need the money, you have this offer and this idea to come up with the money. I really want you to borrow what I believe is just healthy, masculine entrepreneurship energy that I exude, healthy entrepreneur energy. just happens to be a little masculine too.

Borrow my energy and my beliefs and my thoughts, which is yes, that is a business. A business has to think about these things. If you read Onward by Howard Schultz, he talks about when the company’s stock was going down. We’ve got to come up with some new products to generate interest again in the company. And one was a total fail. They put so much time and money into this. And even though you could have said, “Howard’s doing a cash grab.”

No. He went to Italy so many times, he sourced the perfect products. He found the perfect, everything was so precise and had so much love and passion into it. And he also knew as an entrepreneur that he had to infuse interest and cash back into the business and it failed miserably. Something called sorbetto or something. But then he also talks about an initiative that they spent 20 years or maybe it was even longer. The person who developed it died before I actually think it made it to market but they reinvented instant coffee. You have to read the book. It’s so good.

They reinvented instant coffee, the Starbucks packets that you see in the store, that was the result of Howard turning the company around. You could call that a cash grab if you wanted to look at it negatively. Or you could say he innovated, he innovated at a time where he needed to save his business. He was a healthy example of healthy entrepreneurship, healthy capitalism, whatever you want to call it, a for profit company. That was a healthy thing for them to do and people still buy that to this day and still get value from it.

If you read the book, you’ll see, they literally spent 20 something years developing this product. They went through hundreds, if not thousands, of different prototypes. And they refused to give in to anything that wouldn’t be way better than the normal instant coffee you buy in the stores. So even if it is a product to infuse excitement and energy back into the business, it doesn’t mean it’s a cash grab. It’s innovation. And listen, here’s what I will tell you, if you take this on, you will stop innovating.

And if you pass this on in the form of judgment of other people, you will stop innovating because the shame you offer to other people you often offer to yourself we’re just passing on shame. And we really don’t have time for that. We all have a very strong purpose, a very strong mission. We all have visions that we are creating of the world and the people that we can help. And holding back that offer because you’re afraid of what anyone will think about you because it’s not a simple offer or because someone might call you a cash grab or because you saw someone else getting called a cash grab somewhere else.

Just so you all know, I was telling this to someone the other day. I have a firm rule. If I am in a conversation with people in person and it turns negative towards talking about someone else. I always excuse myself or change the topic. I always tell myself if I wasn’t there, I have no idea what the real story was, so I just leave. I don’t think it’s a good vibe. It’s not the energy I want to be in when I think about exuding what a life coach is. I’m one of those peace, love and happiness coaches. I live what I do.

And if it’s online, I unfollow. I unfollow every coach that has anti-coach marketing. If I see any anti-coach marketing, I found this person a couple of weeks ago and I almost hired them because what they were offering I thought would be so good for me, and a certain strategy I wanted to implement in my business. But their entire marketing funnel was slamming another really big coach that I happen to have a lot of familiarity with. I’ve bought their programs, freaking loved it, have their books, love them.

And then on top of that, I happen to be friends with a couple of people that are very close friends with them, so, it humanizes me to this person. And I remember thinking, what if that was my name in their marketing funnel. And I was like, “I don’t think I want, no matter what value you have to offer me, if you are putting other people down in your marketing, if you are doing anti-coach marketing, I don’t think I want to learn from you because it’s just not my vibe.” It’s not the plane in which I live on. I want to stay thinking big.

I want to always stay in love with the coaching industry. I always want to stay thinking about things that are expansive for my clients. I want to stay serving them. The other thing I was telling one of my clients is, I said, “Listen, I don’t even understand all of this constant online hating criticism and all the shaming and trying to keep coaches down and silence them and all the things.” I was like, “I just have zero time to think about what other people are doing.” Because the list of self-improvements that I can do is very long.

And I spend so much time in my lane fixing my things and thinking how to expand my business and new things to serve my people. I have some really great stuff, by the way, coming up for 2K for 2K. I’m so freaking excited. I have so many ideas, I have so many things I’m working on. I also have four books that are in my queue, just reading on having a toddler. We’re in the tantrum phase and I am determined to really be the most supportive of him, as possible.

So, between myself and my family, I have no time to think about how other people should modify their behavior and you really want to think about that for yourself, if it’s co-workers, if it’s friends, sort of, family members, people on the internet. What do they call them? The laptop warriors, the keyboard warriors. They never show their face. They just love to leave mean comments online. All of those people, it’s very easy to not look inside and fix the things inside of you.

It’s very easy to instead take that energy and try to modify other people’s behaviors and judge their behaviors and decide you know their behaviors and you know their intent, very easy to do that. It’s much harder to be constantly self-focused on what I can control and the value I can bring and the improvements I can do. And I’m just too busy doing that to even entertain those types of conversations.

So, the last thing I’ll leave you with is, if someone sale shames you in any way, whether it’s the Facebook post making fun of you or a family member minimizing you, the co-worker that you’re fine as a coach. And I even love having coaching conversations with you as long as you don’t make any offers. Two things I will say.

Number one, you have to know your integrity. You have to know what’s inside of you. No one can decide your integrity for you. You know your motivations. You know your intentions. You know your heart. You know your work ethic. You know what you pour into your clients. You know how you genuinely feel, you know all of that. And if you feel, uh, about it, check in with that. What is my intention? What is my integrity? What do I know about myself to be true? That’s the first thing.

And the second thing is, yes, I had a lot of people in my life who loved me in my Diva Business School days and loved me at six figures and thought I was so inspiring to them at six figures. Then I had people who loved me at seven figures and thought I was so inspiring at seven figures and loved that version of me. It was a little bit less than the people at six figures.

But then when I crossed the stage and made $10 million and walked across my coaching school stage and accepted a $10 million award, 35 weeks pregnant, a little less people loved me. A little less people could identify with me. A little less people found me inspiring. And the thing that I have thought as I’ve lost people along the way is, I want to be surrounded by people who either, if they’re close, personal friends or loved ones, they love me unconditionally and only want what’s ever best for me and for them.

They want us all to be expansive and grow. They love every version of me because why wouldn’t they want someone they love to succeed. Or if they’re clients I want to just take the ones that are inspired and see my success as an example of theirs. And I’m not willing to stay with people that would need me to stay small in order to keep the relationship going even when it hurts and it’s so hard and it feels just so terrible and so sad and there’s so much grief. I know it’s so hard.

Anything to do with sales that feels shame, it’s so hard. Shame is one of those really hard emotions, embarrassment, humiliation, whatever word it is for you. I remember when some of the haters came for me and one of the things I was seeing online about me is very specific lies. That were easily, if anyone had just checked in, we could have proved that they weren’t true. But the embarrassment I felt because I realized being precise is a big thing for me. It’s important to me that I am always precise. I always pack value in my programs. I care a lot about my clients.

And I spend more time preparing than anyone I know at my level. People will literally tell me, “Girl, you’ve got to chill.” I put a lot of effort and energy into all of my recorded content, all my live presentations, every time I speak on stage. It’s a ridiculous amount. When I did my $10 million speech, I actually got invited to talk and do a talk to not just an award speech, but actually give content. And that night I was up with my video producer, Matt Care, he can vouch for this, rewriting that speech until 11:00pm pregnant as hell because I wanted it to be perfect.

And he was updating slides literally that morning. I spoke, I think at 9:00am and he was sending me slides. I’m like, “Matt, have you got them, have you got them?” That’s how much I care. I know that about myself. And so, it was so embarrassing to see anything said about me otherwise. And I know that some of you go through that as well, but do not let that embarrassment stop you from being who you’re meant to be and helping who you’re meant to help. Check in, know what is your truth.

But also, even if you need the money, don’t give in to the cash grab shaming. You’re also an entrepreneur who has to protect your profit. If that’s the new exciting offer, do it, please. If it’s just a creative outlet and you’re so excited to do it, do it. If you need to raise your price for demand, do it. You are a for profit business. You have to take your business seriously otherwise these people will walk you straight out of it.

Your co-workers, your family, your friends that want to keep you small, the online haters, the people in passing. They will literally walk you right out of business if you adopt their thinking instead of a strong entrepreneur’s thought process and staying focused, and on your mission and the people that you’re going to help and connected to them and what you have to offer. That’s the deal, you all.

Okay, I have to get off, I’m on my rant because I have another mastermind week call. I’m so excited. Let’s go. Alright, I love you all. Have an amazing week and I will talk to you next week.

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.