Ep #105: Loving Your Way to a Million Dollars with Simone Seol

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.

Stacey: Alright, coaches. Welcome to episode 105. I have my client and good friend Simone – okay, I’m going to say your name right this time – it’s Seol, right?

Simone: Correct.

Stacey: I always say it wrong and you never correct me. And I heard you say it the other day and I was like, “Oh my god, I’m so embarrassed.” And I texted Lindsey and I was like, “What’s happening? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” Anyways, we have Simone Seol on the podcast today. Simone just crossed – tell them…

Simone: The million-dollar mark.

Stacey: The million-dollar mark. And I wanted to have her on the podcast today to tell you all of the things. This is such a celebration on so many levels. We’re going to talk about all the levels that it’s a celebration. You’re my first client to make a million dollars, so I feel very, just all the feels about it. And you know as a coach as well, because you coach people to make money, coaches to make money as well, so you probably understand that feeling of you’re holding space, you know it’s going to happen. It’s done in your brain but it hasn’t happened yet. And it’s just so fun when you’ve been holding that space and you know that it’s coming.

And now, it’s like you made a million. I think Juliana’s made a million. And there are so many others that are going to come after you. And so, it’s just such an exciting moment. So, I first have to just acknowledge you and congratulate you for making a million dollars. That is, like, not – there are not a lot of coaches doing that. It’s like top 5% of the industry type of results. So, congratulations. And we want to just hear all of the things about making a million dollars.

But also, I have to just give the other acknowledgments as well. So, you were also certified with the Life Coach School and you are the first – how did you say it?

Simone: Non-white coach.

Stacey: The first non-white coach at LCS to make a million dollars, which I think is super-awesome. And I want to dive into your story too because this is not like – it looks like you’re an overnight success, but you’ve been at it for a while. And I think that that’s a big deal too, like 10 years, right?

Simone: Yeah.

Stacey: After 10 years, you crossed the million-dollar mark. And, of course, a lot of it has been very quick. But I just think there are so many amazing things about this accomplishment for you and I just want to celebrate it and talk about it and all of the things on this podcast.

Simone: Thank you so much. You know, I am so excited to be – I’m beyond honored. It just makes me tear up to think that I am your number one student to reach a million because I really want to be the walking advertisement for the Stacey Boehman brand.

Stacey: You are. Done. That made me tear up too. Not what you just last said, but when you said it, it made me tear up. And yeah, it’s an emotional thing to be the first one.

Simone: Because a lot of people make a million dollars in lots of industries, and even within the coaching space. But everything that I’m so proud of in my business, aside from the money, it’s like Stacey Boehman’s making, you know. Every day, I think about that and my business is so full of life, and the fact that my life is so amazing, the fact that I have so much time off.

Stacey: It’s the best byproduct of making a million dollars. People think it’s the other way around.

Simone: And I had a lot of time off getting here too. And the fact that what I’m known for is the results people get from not just being my paying clients, but just from being in my world. People get results from just being in my world. And everything that I just said, it’s like, you taught me how to do that. There are a million people out there teaching you how to hustle and work your butt off and just make the money, push, push, push, make the money. But I don’t see many other people doing it the way we do, the way you teach me.

And so, everybody looks at my life and my business and is envious. And it’s not the money. There are a lot of rich people. But it’s like, no, it’s all the intangibles. And nobody teaches it the way you do. And I’m just like following in your footsteps and hope to transmit that to my students too. Like, Stacey Boehman, everybody.

Stacey: Yeah, that’s how I feel about Brooke. Like, I love having that experience. I often say I don’t know how, but I definitely won the lottery, the fact that I got in and I got started when I did and made the money that I made and then got invited to Million Dollar Mentoring. I had that same experience and I love what you said when you were saying how you posted in 200K and you were – I actually posted that in Million Dollar Mentoring, how you were talking about we’re the pioneers of the coaching industry and we are the first ones. And so, of course, we’re all coaching each other because we’re all honing our craft and using it on each other to become better to spread it to more people…

Simone: Before we take over the world.

Stacey: Yeah, before we take over the world. And I really feel that. I felt that trickle down from Brooke. I know that that trickled down there with you. And I am so confident because I hear – there are so many 2K students who work with you and they rave about working with you. So, I know that that is now being trickled down to your students as well and it’s really fun to think about how the result of money can be created and lived in from the work that we’re doing. It’s not just about the hustle. It’s really about you can make a lot of money and in a little time.

we were just coaching in 200K about that. It’s not scaling unless you make more money with less time. You can’t double your workload to double your money. That’s not really what scaling is. So, to be able to have the lifestyle and the time freedom and then the mind management on top of the money is like, what is happening?

Simone: It’s the holy grail. We’ve got it.

Stacey: Okay, so tell everyone – everyone wants to know first of all what it’s like when you make the million dollars. Like, what has been your experience? How long has it been since you crossed the line? Not too long. And then what has been the experience. What was it like in the very beginning, after it sank in? Kind of talk a little bit about that.

Simone: The shocking thing is that I have the exact same brain as before. Like, it turns out, the amount of money you make does not create your thoughts. And your brain creates your thought, and the Cs just keep changing.

And I have wanted it for so long. And when I first realized, it snuck up on me too. I realized a few days after I crossed the mark that I had in fact crossed the mark. And when my CFO confirmed it for me, I was over the moon. And actually, the morning I found out was the morning that I was guest teaching for another coach’s group and we actually just turned that whole class into a private party to celebrate my million dollars.

And everybody asked me questions about it and I answered and we all cried together. And I was like, I’ve never met these people before but this is amazing. And that day felt like church because I was able to be with those people and it felt like a celebration of not just the money, but who I have become as a person and the amount of impact I’ve been able to have on the world, like what that million dollars means.

Because my day-to-day life does not change very much. It’s like, moments where I confirm the difference that my work has made in the world that really blew my mind. And what the symbolism of my success meant to so many other coaches, not a perfect person. Everyone who follows me can see that I’m not a perfect – I’m very free with sharing my humanity and my imperfections and I’m very open about the fact that I’ve struggled with ADHD and depression for a long time, and all these things about me where people think, “Oh she can do it. Maybe I can do it too. Like, what an example of what’s possible and she doesn’t even live in the western world and she still made it happen.”

There are so many things that my success symbolizes that I didn’t even know until people started mirroring it back to me. So, those things were really overwhelming in the first week or so. And then, I settled into my new reality and it’s just fascinating watching my brain. Because right up until my mastermind call today, I was in such a storm of mind drama of believing – I was doing a thought download yesterday and I was like, “I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no idea why anybody should buy my thing.”

Stacey: I do feel like after a million, that happened to me as well. Once you get into the millions, it’s almost like nothing really has changed but your brain starts telling you this, like, I have so much responsibility. And it just becomes aware of how many people are watching you, how many people you’re impacting, how big the work has gotten. And it just feels like – for me, I felt like I just realized it all of a sudden. I mean, it’s not a helpful thought…

Simone: Totally, people are like, “You’re a fancy coach.” I’m like, “What’s a fancy coach.” Like, “You are one.” I’m like, “Okay…”

Stacey: Top 5%, baby.

Simone: I’m just Simone.

Stacey: I love it though. I really do think that – I was thinking about all of the two-million-dollar group that I think I’m very confident that everyone, or almost everyone in that group will make a million dollars next year. And some of them will make it very soon. And I was really thinking about, like, I’ve been watching the coaching industry for the last six years, seven years, and I haven’t seen a lot of new millionaires on the scene.

And it started with, at one point, there was only Corinne who had made a million with the Life Coach School. And then Jody did it and then Katrina did it and then Kara did it and then I did it. And all of a sudden, it’s like all these people – I think Dave Moreno just did it. There are a lot of people now starting to make a million dollars and now it’s happening here too in my business. And it’s like we’re seeing just what feels like this next wave of million-dollar coaches, and then there’s going to be that next wave of eight-figure coaches and we’re like the new class. From Saved by the Bell, the new class.

Simone: But it’s so amazing being in your mastermind and the women that I’ve been growing with for a few rounds in a row…

Stacey: You guys are like sisters now.

Simone: Yeah, we’re like sisters. And we just went together from being like, “Oh my gosh, we’re actually making 200K. What? Oh my god, you are it, we are 200K.”

Stacey: You guys were like stars at 200K.

Simone: We thought we were stars, I mean.

Stacey: You were.

Simone: Yeah, and then we just, in less than a year, we went from, “Oh my god, we are 200K,” to, “Oh my god, we are two million.” When you look at each other, it’s not like, “Oh my god, I hope. Wouldn’t that be so amazing?” No, it’s done. Nobody doubts, in our million-dollar group, nobody doubts that we’re all going to get there super-soon. It’s just math. And it’s like, “Are you going to do it a month before me or after?” It does not matter. And that inevitability, we created that together with the way we pump each other up.

And I will never stop talking about this. One of the most moving things for me after I hit the million-dollar mark is I was thinking about how lonely it would be if you did not have the kind of most excellent community that I have where your friends are almost more excited for you than you are. And everybody’s like counting down the dollars with you. And I think the reason that everybody was genuinely able to be so happy for me without any weird mind drama – or maybe there was, I don’t know. All I saw was genuine happiness.

I think part of it is because no one has any doubt that we’re all headed in the exact same destination, sooner or later, actually really sooner. I just happened to be the one that got there first. That’s why it was a celebration and not a scarcity comparison thing.

Stacey: Yeah, compare and despair, for sure, you only experience that when you don’t think you will get somewhere, 100%.

Simone: There’s no scarcity in our group. It’s so amazing. I think about how many other people have that.

Stacey: So, I think this is interesting to talk about, is what your experience is like. Because when people come into 200K, I promote so much about making money that sometimes people have a misconception where they think they’re going to come into the mastermind and 10X their income the first round.

Simone: In one day…

Stacey: And then they can’t believe they learn the advanced selling process and they’re like, “Wait a minute, I have to slow down. This is terrible.” And so, now that you’re on the other side, you’ve really mastered the advanced selling process. You’ve done the slowing down. You’ve done the – really, what I think 200K is, is getting your business ready to be able to scale. It’s the preparation for the scaling, and the byproduct of the preparation of scaling is making 200K, which is super-fun, or 400K or 500K.

But now that you’ve done the slowing down and you’ve made the million, tell everybody why that’s so important to get your business ready for scaling instead of just hustling to get to that million? What has that been like for you?

Simone: It’s going to be the biggest challenge for your brain because you have to learn to think in a completely new way. Because there was a moment when I was considering, like when I was applying for 200K when I was like, “But do I really need a mastermind to scale? I don’t know. I’m already making money. I’m pretty sure I can get there on my own.”

And then something about the sales page convinced me that there’s a whole host of things that I don’t even know exist yet because it’s just not in my view. And I was so lucky that I applied and got in three rounds ago and now I know all about it.

I think the way that you have to think to scale successfully is the opposite of the way that you probably had been thinking your entire life. Like, you intentionally sometimes have to decide to make less money. You intentionally have to decide to turn money away and to slow down and to grow slower. It feels like growing slower, but it’s not actually, right?

Stacey: I know, we’re so spoiled in the coaching industry. It’s like not slow at all. It’s relative.

Simone: Yeah, and you have to just totally reprogram your hustle brain and reprogram your short-term thinking brain and it takes a lot of mental maturity. And I think, for example, how much mental maturity mind management does it take to say, “I’m not going to increase my goal. I’m going to make the same amount of money. I’m not going to allow myself that dopamine hit of I made more, I doubled my whatever.” That’s what we’ve thrived on, most of us, up until whatever that point.

Can you plan your business and do your business without those dopamine hits, like dopamine spark, dopamine spark, achievement, achievement… and you’re the one who really woke me up to how much I was relying on that to keep me going. It’s almost like you have to wean yourself off of it and develop a different motivation and fuel for the energy that you work on in your business. So, if you’re not chasing dopamine, what are you using? What’s your fuel? And it has to be your commitment to a long-term vision.

Stacey: Yeah, 100% because if you are addicted to that dopamine hit and you have to have that to enjoy your business, that is where you find people who are making seven figures, multiple seven figures, but they don’t know how to turn off at night, they don’t have boundaries in their business, they’re constantly throwing out offers all of the time, which every offer that you have is an additional business. I have the 2K business, I have the 200K business, I now have the two-million-dollar group business.

And I always tell people, you have to learn how to make a million dollars in one business before you make a million dollars in another business and then another business. But there are coaches out there that have eight offers that they’re all trying to make millions of dollars with because they’re just so addicted to that dopamine hit and they just want to make more and more money, more and more sales. And it’s just this hustle into the ground.

And you hear it in the most subtle ways, if you’re listening to podcasts or whatever. You can hear it when someone says they work 18 hours a day, when someone says that they’re struggling to keep up with other areas of their life, when any of that kind of byproduct, really, of just overworking, you see it a lot.

And I really love the idea that you can make millions of dollars in three days a week. The first time that that concept was presented to me, I’m like, wait a minute. Now, it took me a while to get there, but that to me is so profound because one of the biggest reasons that kept me from wanting to make money was, I won’t be able to have a home life. I won’t be able to have time with my family. I won’t be able to be a good mom. And we’re seeing that pop off in the 200K like crazy, everyone being like, “Wait a minute, you mean I can have babies and make a lot of money, I can be a great mom and make a lot of money?”

And I think it all goes bac to being willing to do that, to rewire your brain, to get off the dopamine hit of selling and making money and create that inner compulsion and desire to work. And I use compulsion and compelling, that idea, as a positive thing. I like to be compelled to work because I’m so pulled to help people, right?

Simone: You’re pulled in by your commitment.

Stacey: That’s what I mean by compulsion. Not like I don’t have control over that compulsion, but I’m creating it. But to be fueled by something that isn’t the Stripe account going up, the PayPal account going up, I just sold out an offer, I just did a launch.

Because I think so much of my work this year, we did six million dollars. I think we’ll end at like 6.4. But most of my work was not the dopamine hit of doing a launch or selling. It was the work of serving my students and creating content for them and solving problems for them and thinking at a higher level for them and coaching them and coaching myself to have the highest brain to meet the coaching that they need.

Simone: That’s exactly what my past year felt like. I want everybody to hear this. I also spent very little time thinking about money and wanting to make more money. I kept my head down and managed my mind and served my people. Like, that’s really what it was

Stacey: That’s how it felt like for me too, that exact experience, head down, in your own lane serving your people.

Simone: Can I tell you what I’m most proud of in myself right now? I just coached my mind through this, or I came to this realization. So, next year, we’re going to talk about my goals, right, in our two million mentoring group. I was thinking and I realized, if Stacey tells me, for whatever reason, that I shouldn’t grow next year and my goal should be to do a million again – and you would never do this. But I don’t know, if for some weird reason you told me to do less than a million…

Stacey: Yeah, I would never do that…

Simone: You would never do that, but just theoretically, for some reason, if I were to do less than, I realized that I would be totally onboard. Like, not make more money next year, repeat the same amount of money, cool, I’m in.

Stacey: That’s so good. Actually, I have a caveat. I could potentially do that. If someone were – this is the only scenario where I would tell someone to make less money, is if they had – this happens every once in a while. People make a lot of money because they’re good at selling and they have an identity crisis of this isn’t what I want to be doing, and then they want to completely blank-slate their business and rip everything apart and start completely over and I’m like, “Yeah, maybe not make your goal a million dollars from the ground up.”

I was actually just having this conversation with a friend who wants to change her business from the ground up and I said – we were investigating it and I asked her, what do you want more, the million-dollar business and the million-dollar result, or do you want this new business and are you willing to make the same amount three years in a row? Are you willing to do that and be happy and okay? That’s the caveat. There are very few instances, but usually it’s when you’re starting something from the ground up, you want to focus on the foundation. So, what are the thoughts you have that make you on board with this?

And before you answer, I’m going to say the reason why I’m asking this. I want everyone to listen before she answers. This is the number one thing I coach 200K people on. They come in and they have goals and they want to go from like 100K to a million, or 30K to 300K. Now, a lot of those people, if you do apply, you usually don’t get in if your goal is that big. But there are people that come in, and I spend a lot of time coaching on this idea of not growing because they have results in their business that we don’t want to grow. So, I always say whatever negative results you are experiencing in your business, if you add money on top of that, you will just add exponential magnifying of that problem.

So, I coach people all of the time on having too bigger goals for the results that they have in their business, whether it’s customer-facing or backend-facing, like what they’re doing. And so, I’m curious for you, at a million dollars, what would be the reason for you, the thought that you’re having that would allow you to be totally okay with doing a million next year.

Simone: Yeah, I just know that the number isn’t what gives me juice. I’m not going to be happier because I make five million or three million than if I were to make a million. I know that what I’m most interested in is doing right by my business and what it wants to be in the world and who I need to be in order to serve my business the best, in order to serve the people that I serve the best.

And this is the most important thing is that I love my business so much. And I don’t need my business to be, like, 3Xingm 5Xing, 10Xing every year to love it. I just love it. I will love working on it no matter what.

And by the way, when Stacey says don’t grow for strategic reasons, it’s always for a really good reason. Because you’re not twiddling your thumbs and being mediocre for no reason. No, you’re actively working on backend things. You’re actively working on growing in a particular way so that you can prepare the stage for the next new leap.

And so, I love doing right by my business. That’s what I mean by that. I love putting growth over money. I love putting integrity of who I want to be and how I want to serve over money. And it’s paid off every single time I made that choice. And I just trust that so much. There is no amount of money I can make that’s going to give me that validation and assurance that – I don’t even seek that anymore because I know who I am and I know what my business is. And all I’m interested in is honestly showing up for it every day.

Stacey: I love that. That is 100% how I feel about my business. And it took me a while to get there. I’ve been very open about my hustle journey but I really am there and it feels like deeply, deeply rooted in my bones in this moment in my business. It feels so – the last several months have been so amazing to just sit with six million and feel like it could never change from here on out. I could just stay here for the rest of my career.

Simone: It’s an amazing feeling.

Stacey: I would be happy. I love what I do. I love my students. And because of that, of course, we’re going to make so much money. But you don’t need to make the money, right? It’s so interesting.

So, this might actually help people. I was thinking about this today. This might help people understand what we’re talking about as well. I’m going to talk about this now ad nauseum. I went skiing for a week and I started learning how to ski last year. It was the first time. I did two private lessons and I had been terrified of skiing my whole life. I was like I’ll never ski. And Neil talked me into the slopes last year.

It turns out, it’s kind of amazing to be in the middle of the mountains while the snow is happening in Aspen surrounded by Aspen trees and snow. It’s amazing. So, we skied for the week in Aspen. We just got back. And I worked the second in structure. We spent three days and this is all we worked on. So, everybody listen. All we worked on was learning how to turn. I’m going to tell you why.

Do you ski? Okay, so you’re going to get this then. So, he was saying how, how you slow yourself down when you’re learning to ski and when you ski is by turning up the slope. So, you either turn up right or you turn left. But you have to learn to turn the opposite way that your brain wants you to turn.

So, your brain wants you to put weight on the opposite foot that you actually have to put weight on to turn up and to slow yourself down. And he’s like, the only reason why you fear going really fast and the only reason you would lose control and the only reason you would fall and crash is because you don’t know how to slow yourself down. You don’t understand the mechanics of slowing yourself down.

But when you get the mechanics of slowing yourself down and you can do it – like we did long turns where we would slow down. And then he taught me really, really short ones and how to get – especially if you turn really fast – how to get that second foot, take the weight off of that foot, and then how to get it to go in line with your skis so they don’t cross and you don’t fall over.

So, I spent three days just learning that. Everybody else was just flying past me and I just kept the patience of, “I’m going to learn these turns,” so that I can feel comfortable that no matter how steep the hill is… By the way, I created my own concept for this. I think it’s actually called traversing the mountain, where you go across one way and then go across the other to slow down on a hill. But I was calling it chopping. Like, we’re chopping the hill. We’re chopping the hill. And he was like, “I love that you created a concept and I know what it means. I know exactly what you’re talking about.”

But I’m like, okay, we’re going down this really big mountain. We’re going to chop the hill. We’re going to chop it first. And so, I was able to do these giant – we did a whole big run that was like an hour and it was crazy. It was super-scary. But it was like, the whole time I was focusing on being able to control my speed and I think that that is, the whole time, I kept thinking that this is the art of scaling. If you can learn how to slow yourself down and do it properly, you will never have to worry about growing too fast. You will never grow at a speed which you can’t control.

Which means you won’t have clients not getting results. You won’t have clients having terrible experiences. You won’t be overworking; you won’t be having a terrible experience. Your business and your deliverables won’t be a mess. Your launching won’t be last minute thrown together. That’s what happens when you’re doing that, is you’re flying down the mountain without learning the mechanics of learning how to turn and slow yourself down. And I just think, hopefully that helps people kind of get that. But it’s so important if you’re going to – I think that it’s actually the art of speeding up is learning how to slow down.

Simone: Completely agree. The thing is, when you think – you’re not actually slowing down when you think you’re slowing down. You’re just slowing down the hustle brain. And then everything actually speeds up. Case in point, pointing at myself.

Stacey: Me too. Listen, I tried to hustle to a million. I really tried. If there was anyone that was going to hustle to a million, I thought it was going to be me. And really, what’s so crazy is I didn’t feel like I was hustling to get to a million the year I did 860. Consciously, I was working to slow myself down. Consciously, I was trying to break the habits.

But if you have a habit of hustling for years and years and years, it takes sometimes more than a year to slow that down and to unwind all of it at the subconscious level. So, I had to keep working that process over and over until now I feel like the six-million-dollar year is the year that it sank in my bones. I get it and it’s here to stay permanently. It’s just how I think now. But I do think that takes some unwinding.

Simone: And the thing is, you’re able to unwind it because not only were you doing the work on yourself, but you had a coach pointing out where you’re doing it and you’re not even aware that you’re doing it.

Stacey: Yeah, I’d be like, “I’m going to make this much money but I feel great about it. It’s not hustly at all.” Or, “I’m going to do this offer. I’m totally sold. I know all of the things I’m going to do. I know what I’m going to call it. I know what I’m going to charge. It’s the best idea ever.”

Simone: It’s like, “Hmm, let’s think about that…” This is why you need a coach when you scale, probably Stacey Boehman. Or me. Like, you need a coach to poke into your brain.

Stacey: Yeah, 100%. Okay, so this might be a fun part of the conversation. I’ve been thinking about, as your coach, what I’ve seen that I think is the reason you made a million dollars. So, there are a lot of reasons for sure, and your mindset – I want to say, these are aside from your mindset of understanding how to slow yourself down to scale and what we teach in advanced selling. But these are the three additional things that I feel like really stood out to me that set you apart and made me think, yes, 100% this is why she made a million dollars. So, this should be fun for you, hopefully.

So, I’m going to say the thing and I’m going to have you tell them a little bit about how you get there and if you agree with me. So, actually, I’ll tell you all three now and then we’ll go through them one by one. Okay, so the first one is you’ve had fun. We can’t underestimate that in this conversation. You have to be willing to have fun. The year I made 2.5 million, I was like what would I do if I just had fun and I didn’t focus on the money? That was my entire year, just having fun. So, I want to talk about that.

Service. I think you have deeply spent a lot of time really focused on serving your clients in your unique way. Not Brooke’s way or my way, but your very unique way, which is going to follow along with my third thing, which is being you. I feel like you have really found a great space and I can’t wait for you to tell them how you’ve done this, but how you’ve kind of set yourself apart in the industry and your work really doesn’t look like a carbon copy of someone else’s. And in fact, I feel like you are so different from the mentors you study with and what you’re seeing out there.

So, it’s like, if you don’t have this person to be like, “They’re already doing this,” it can be so hard because you’re blazing the trail, right? You’re doing it. And so, that’s something that I feel like, it’s those three things; fun, service, and being 100% you and not sacrificing that in order to make money.

Simone: Okay, I completely a100% agree and I’m so excited that you just said this because I have been actively thinking about this and I have, not really a concept, but a cluster of ideas around this that I want to share today. Because I was thinking about, yeah, everybody comments on my fun. I think people hire me just to see, “How is she having fun? I don’t understand. I want to see what this is like from the inside. This makes no sense.”

And people hire me because I’m so unique, because I’m so myself, and because I’m so committed to serving my people. It’s exactly those three things. And here’s why I think I am so myself, why I’m so unique, and why I have so much fun, is because I think you know how you always say you are your own best client and your coaching business is going to be like a reflection of how you coach yourself, and my big – I say I’ve been a coach for 10 years. But really, I’ve been getting coached for 10 years.

And just at a personal level, as a human being, as a woman, my biggest journey in coaching has been about healing my own self-shame. Because I had so much shame about being me. I had so much shame about the way my brain works. I just had so much shame about everything.

And me getting coached, me becoming a better and better coach was me healing layers and layers and layers of my own shame. So, for example, ever since I was a little kid, I was really a very hyper child. Like, if I’m in the room, you cannot miss me because I’m bouncing off the walls in everybody’s face being the loudest person in the room.

I had so much shame about it. and growing up – I grew up partly in Korea and partly in the US, but everybody told me, “You’re amazing. You just have to be a little bit less. Please, just be…” People literally told me to be less because I was good but just too much, right?

So, I had a lot of shame about that. I had a lot of shame about just the way my brain worked a little bit differently than other people. I had a lot of shame about my emotions. And I had a lot of shame about the things that I was passionate about because I was so passionate about spirituality and self-development in lots of contexts where that was profoundly not cool. And I just felt like I was broken because I wasn’t able to be interested in the same things that other people, normal cool people seemed to be interested in.

So, I did so much work to stop hating myself, to stop feeling like I was just wrong and broken and defective. And I think when I really started making money was when I felt like I had reached a level of, like, hey, I don’t hate myself anymore. And when I stopped hating myself and started giving myself some grace and appreciation, what happened was that I started trusting myself in exactly the way that I was.

It was like, what if me being a super-ADHD hyper child who’s always super-duper extra is not a shameful thing? What if it’s a thing to be celebrated? What if I celebrate that? And anybody who doesn’t want to celebrate that with me can fuck off. Right?

So, I started doing that every area of my life, where I was like, “No, nobody’s going to be my cheerleader if I’m not going to be my cheerleader.” Everything that I think is wrong about me is probably what’s great about me. And so, I’m going to let everybody see me at like 130%. And everybody who doesn’t like it is going to fuck off on their own. They’re going to opt out of being my friend, being my client, whatever. And I think that was why.

Because when you’re able to let go of your shame of being yourself, people aren’t going to be able to stop you from having fun being yourself. Because without the shame, you can just know what makes you tick. You just know what you enjoy. You’re free to speak your mind. You find the people who love you. Why? Because you’re showing them who you are. And you repel the people who don’t like you so they don’t hang out around you anymore. Because I used to hang out with a lot of people who gossip about me behind my back and say things like she’s great but just needs to be a little bit less. And now, I don’t have those people in my world anymore. Or if they exist, I don’t know who they are because I don’t hear them.

All I hear is, “Simone, I love the way you are.” It’s not because I’m a better person than I was before. It’s because I stopped rejecting myself and so people who reject me don’t get to be I my world anymore, right? I just spread my wings and fly. And everybody claps for me. And that’s how I have fun in my business.

Stacey: Listen, I feel like everyone – because I have tears in my eyes listening to this – is like crying their eyes out. That was such a beautiful moment. Like, I love the way you are. That’s such a beautiful thought to have about yourself. It’s so good.

Simone: Yeah, I had to think that first.

Stacey: Yeah, and it’s so interesting, when you were saying that, what came to me was – and I think it’s important to say – is that I almost feel like a little bit like the opposite of you, where I always felt like I needed to be 130% and I was, like 60%. And I never had enough energy. I wasn’t positive enough. I wasn’t bubbly enough. I wasn’t optimistic enough. I mean, mostly just positive enough. By bran leans very anxious and negative and my biggest hurdle was – I think it’s all connected to self-shame, right? But victim mentality.

I believed the whole world was out to get me and the whole world was holding me down and I had to really work on that. Working on my victim mentality and being willing to be the person that says, you know, I need time off and I need a break and I’m not going to go hang out with you guys at the end of a 200K event day, I’m going to go to bed, and I’m not going to be there 24/7 and I’m going to take care of myself and I’m not going to be all over social media. A lot of my personal time gets protected and we don’t show photos of everything we do. And all of the things I thought I had to be to be a really powerful coach, once I unwound that, it was like owning just what I felt like – I call it grandma energy. I feel like I have a lot of grandma energy and I’m like, it’s okay. I can be in grandma energy and I don’t have to be all over the place all the time and have lots of energy.

I was looking at someone’s post the other day and they’re so, like, everything they do is magical and amazing and enchanting. And their life looks so beautiful and everything is curated. And I don’t think it’s fake. That’s who they are. They take a lot of time to put care into appearances. And I’m like the person who goes skiing and I didn’t shower and didn’t put makeup on and I’m like, I just threw my hat on and I’m like, “Let’s do it.”

So, like, I had to really work on that. So, I just wanted to say that because I think it’s so great for everyone to hear, whether you think you’re operating at 60% or 130%, there is a place for you in this industry and you can make a lot of money the moment you get on board with yourself and how you operate and who you are.

Simone: Like, now that I’m considered a thought leader in my own right, people get so much massive transformation from just hearing me say just what’s true about myself because it gives them permission to feel like, “Hey, I’m not broken either.” Like, I tell people the mind drama that I have.

Like, the other day I was coaching and one of my clients asked me – I suggested they do something and she said, “Do you put that on your calendar?” And I said, “No, I don’t put that on my calendar because I don’t put anything on my calendar except my client calls.” And in that moment, my client’s mind was blown. That reorganized her entire world that it was possible to operate and work and be successful without putting everything on the calendar. And I don’t put everything on the calendar because I have learned a way to honor the way I work and to honor the way my brain works. And I figured that out through trial and error, but leading with my self-trust.

And just things like that where, if you resonate with what I’m saying, if you have shame, if you first tend to that shame and heal it – and I don’t mean it’s healed and it’s done forever and once it’s all healed then you can do… that’s not what I mean. But once you tend to it and once you start forgiving yourself for being who you are, once you start loving yourself, then you just become such a powerful example. You just exude okayness with yourself. And I think, at the end of the day, that’s what we sell as life coaches. All we want is to be okay with ourselves.

And you don’t have to say it out loud, like, “I’m okay with myself.” But if you exude it because you genuinely are, I have seen that people want to buy that to the tune of one million dollars a year. That’s what happened to me.

Stacey: 100% and even if you’re not helping people who want to make money, I think that people do want to be who they are and want to be comfortable like that. And no matter what it is, whether it’s weight coaching or marriage coaching or whatever, when you can give someone that level of peace, getting the results are so much easier.

It’s when we think that the results will create that inner peace, that’s when everything becomes much harder. So, you’ve heard me say all the time that you have to be a product of your product. You have to be what you’re selling. So, if you are selling to someone that you’re going to help them get results and you’re going to help them be more of themselves and experience more of their life, you have to be doing that first. It’s so important.

Simone: Yeah, and it’s going to be communicated wordlessly. Your vibe is just going to communicate it. So, please, do the work on yourself. Get coached. This is the most important thing you can do for marketing and selling, is for you to feel okay in being in your own skin.

Stacey: Yes, and I was actually just thinking of this, that’s so important too, is I think what sometimes keeps us from being able to figure out what is our skin and who we are is all of the rules we don’t realize are rules. So, for example, I remember when I said I don’t go to work until noon, I start work at noon on the mastermind. And someone was like, “Wait? What?” They hadn’t even considered that that was an option.

And I’m like, “Oh yeah. I’m not a morning person. It doesn’t matter what I do. I don’t wake up well. It’s not a pretty sight and it takes me several hours to, if I had my choice, I wouldn’t start life at all until noon.” Then one day I realized, I can do that. There’s just a societal rule that you get up and you start early. But that doesn’t have to be, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, the way that you operate. So, I think it’s like you also have to find all those things that you think you have to be doing, you have to see what those are and notice those and then challenge what you would actually be doing if you weren’t thinking that’s the rule to success. I think that’s super-helpful too.

Simone: And if you have so much shame about yourself that you’re not processing, you won’t even notice what rules you’re following and you will never have the courage to dare to buck them and to do it your own way. Whenever people ask me, “Simone, how do you just do things your own way? It’s so admirable. It looks like so much fun.” You have to start with believing that you’re not broken.

Stacey: Yeah 100%. I also think though, it’s so interesting because I hesitate to always give this coaching of, like, follow your inner guidance, your intuition, because I also think a lot of times, people try to buck the rule and rebel as a way of trying to find themselves, but it’s not really them either. So, I just want to caution that in the world. I guess what I’m saying is it’s not 100%, like, you can buck the rules and rebel and you will find yourself. It’s more like this joint exploration of honoring who you are and noticing any time something comes up that makes you feel less than because it doesn’t match what other people are doing and working on those together at the same time.

Simone: Yeah, I actually think that when you don’t shame yourself, when you are honoring yourself, you actually get better at learning from whatever it is. Like with the calendar thing. I’m like famous now for not calendaring. But the thing is, I’m not anti-calendaring. And now, I approach this whole way of operating, way of planning and calendaring from a lot of curiosity about what I can learn from this. And when there is something that I’m trying out, I’m not like automatically anti-that because that makes me feel whatever.

I’m like, no, this exists to serve me because my time is worth it and my energy is worth it and I think it actually makes you more open to learning and trying different things when you affirm yourself. When you’re just rebelling, that’s because you don’t trust yourself as much.

Stacey: 100%. I love it. Okay, so is there anything you feel like we haven’t talked about in this hour that people need to know about making their first 200K or their first million that you think we’ve left out? Anything?

Simone: That hour just flew by. It felt like 10 minutes.

Stacey: It did feel like 10 minutes.

Simone: Okay, so here’s what I want to say. Whatever stage of the business-building journey that you’re in, please find something about where you are right now that you genuinely love. Like, please teach your brain how to love being in the game. And I think some of the things that I did really well, looking back, is at every stage, I found something about that stage that I loved.

When I was first learning how to show up on social media because I was too embarrassed to be myself before, I loved that sort of just affirmations of, like, I’m allowing myself to be seen because I’m losing my shame and I’m okay with myself, even if nobody else is. That’s cool.

And I was in love with that growth. And you have to be in love with your growth. And I’m going to tell you something that’s hopefully going to make it easier for you to love where you are and not get into mind drama, which is that you can never forget that being able to create, work on a coaching business in itself is the greatest privilege of our lives and it is a miracle. Because never in the history of humanity have people just been free to start businesses without any capital, without asking for anybody’s permission, from anywhere in the world basically.

And the opportunity that people have to create money just with their ideas, I think about who else in the history of the world was just like, “Yeah, I can just create money with my ideas.” Literally nobody had that.

Stacey: Yeah, 100%.

Simone: And change lives with those ideas and make money. Like, I want you to take a good hard look at history and the state of the world and the kind of livelihood that people have and think about how freaking rare, what an incredible privilege it is to be able to have the freedom, not just the freedom of the mind but the legal freedom to create something out of nothing based on your own ideas and have it make you money and help people.

We won the geographic lottery, the time lottery. We won every kind of lottery possible, even if all you have is a possibility that this is possible for you and if all you have is this desire to make it possible.

I think about that so often and it keeps me in the miracle. It keeps me in the joy. It keeps me in the love. Even if I were to fail and lose everything and start over, I will never stop marveling at what I have that is possible for me right now because of the world that I love in. This is crazy.

Stacey: I 100% agree. I think it’s the same, when we talk about being genuinely okay with not making more because we love our business so much. I also think people often ask me what enabled me to make money in the beginning of my business and I genuinely think it was the idea that I would do it for free. Like, if you’re just starting your coaching business and you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, “I hope one day I can be like Simone and one day I can be like Stacey,” I think that you have to really think about the energy that will propel you so far is living in the miracle of being able to be a coach and loving coaching.

It can’t just be a business you do. You have to love it so much that what you do on a daily basis, the main activities you do on a daily basis, you have to love them so much that you would do them for free. And you would do them forever for free because you couldn’t help yourself because it’s just who you are. When that is where you’re at – and I do believe that about coaching. I think it is so profound that we have the ability to even have – the fact that we have the ability to have awareness in our mind and change our lives, the fact that it was available to me to live one life and feel like I’m living a completely different life, like I’ve lived multiple lives in this awareness in this lifetime, that feels like a miracle to me.

And when that’s where I’m at, it exudes out of you. It’s that, again, that invisible language that people see, people feel, they experience. And it will take you so much further than, “I don’t have a consult. I’ve got to get consults.” It’s like, it’s got to be living in that miracle. And I’ve had so many people recently, this year, the growth has really been explosive where everybody sees it in just who I am. And I’ve had a lot of people who are not coaches tell me that they got into their line of work because they thought they would be changing lives, they thought they would be saving lives, they thought they would feel like they were truly impacting lives and then they got into that career and it wasn’t quite the freedom to express themselves to change lives and save lives in the way that they deeply wanted to. They feel restricted in some way.

And I truly feel like we have so much, because we’re not a regulated industry, we’re not restricted in any way and we do really have total freedom to change people’s lives and help save lives and do that on our own. I do think that that is such a blessing that we can’t ever forget.

Simone: And if I could just add one more thing, I think part of the reason that I feel so calm and grounded now that I’ve made a million dollars and I’m not freaking out about losing it or I’m not freaking out about not being able to make 10 million is because I think I have a self-concept that’s very grounding, which is that I am a life coach.

Whether I’m making 10K a year or a million a year or 100 million, whatever, I will never stop being a life coach because it’s what I love. I’m going to die coaching and being coached. I’m going to be on my deathbed being coached. I’m in it for life.

And so, that’s my vocation. So, when I keep my focus on I love the craft of coaching, I’m a coach, it takes all the drama out of it. Who cares about all the rest? Who cares about the trophies when you love the work?

Stacey: So good, 100%. And I do think that that’s available if you’re just getting started and you don’t even have a client yet. You can be in love with your own coaching. You can be in love with – I remember just listening to free Tony Robbins videos and being so enamored by the possibility of that, just the feeling that hits you when you get coached or you listen to a podcast or you hear something that opens your mind for the first time, or opens your mind again. Any time that experience of that breakthrough, that transformation, that was what I fell in love with first.

So, I guess the question that everyone could ask themselves is, what could you fall in love with right now where you’re at? What’s the miracle that you can be in? There are so many opportunities along the way. And I will also say – we can end this here but you can tell your experience as well – is as you grow, you do lose a little bit of the first miracles that you have the opportunities to experience.

So, I don’t have the same miracle anymore. I don’t experience a breakthrough in my mind the same way I did when I was having my first breakthroughs. I don’t experience making money the same way that I used to experience making money. I don’t experience spending my money in the same way. We just took friends to Aspen and it was so exciting to see Aspen from their eyes for the first time because I had done that trip many times. And it’s the same thing as watching you guys make a million.

I don’t get those same highs anymore from my own breakthroughs or my own monumental results that I create. It just doesn’t have the same impact. So, there’s also like every stage that you’re at, you have to look for what is the current miracle that I can be in at this stage?

Simone: What is the current miracle for you now?

Stacey: What’s the current miracle for me now?

Simone: Yeah, I’m curious.

Stacey: Yeah, I think part of it is watching you all succeed. It’s never been at this level, watching so many people do it. We just talked about this on the 200K call, that we have like 23 people make 200K this year, 20-somehting make 100K. You just made a million. We have several people that are either making a million now or they’re getting ready to make a million.

Lindsay Dotzlaf launching her podcast, to me, that has been one of the greatest miracles. I listen every Tuesday, it’s still so exciting to watch her step into that avenue and that brand and really own it and it be perfect for her. So, that’s part of the miracle that I’m living in now. And I think the other part is, for me personally, living in the miracle of not having the main piece of m life be my business anymore.

Simone: That’s so good.

Stacey: Like, it really feels like the main piece of my life is Neil and our puppies and our home and our relationship together. And even myself, in relationship outside of my business, I love to read. I’ve been just binge reading. I think it’s like COVID helped me settle into we don’t travel as much so I have more time with me and more time with my family. So, it feels like really settling into – there’s like, yes, I have this amazing huge business, but I also have this amazing huge life that’s not the same as my business and it feels like that’s the current miracle.

Simone: So good. I feel like I’m looking at the future, like that’s going to be me in a couple of years.

Stacey: And I will say, the last thing is – we were joking about this in Aspen – is the miracle of delegation. I’ve gotten very good at literally delegating everything. We were joking because my friend’s husband – there’s a running joke that I get people to do things for me but unintentionally. Like, I was traveling with Lindsey Mango once and someone knocked on our door and I was like, “Oh, there’s a knock at the door,” And she got up to answer it. And I don’t even realize I’m doing it. I’m just like, I always say I’m in this receiving energy where I’m always willing for the word to work something out for me.

And so, I didn’t notice that everybody was hauling boots. Because Lindsey’s husband Chris was carrying my boots for me and I just got in the car and loaded up. And she’s like, “It’s not like you do it from this place of entitlement. You just walk around like you’re carried and someone always carries you.”

Simone: That’s amazing though. I love that for you.

Stacey: So it feels like I figured that out in my business as well, how to hire people that can really carry me and I can really delegate a lot too. So, I feel like I’m also living in that miracle of delegation…

Simone: Note to self, when you hang out with Stacey, you’re going to be carrying her shit.

Stacey: But totally unintentionally, or opening doors…

Simone: And you’ll be happy doing it.

Stacey: That’s what Lindsey says. She’s like, “But it always feels so great to do it.” It’s like it’s the receiving energy of just open for it.

Simone: Love it.

Stacey: Alright, my friend. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. If people want to – you just launched a new program, Joyful Marketing, if people want to listen to the podcast, if they want to get in your program and learn how to have fun and joy and be genuinely themselves, how do they reach out to you? How do they find you? And you also have a mastermind. So, tell them all the ways they can work with you and all the ways they can find you.

Simone: Okay, so the easiest way to find me is on Instagram. I’m @simone.grace.seol and you can join my lifetime membership community for life coaches who want to love marketing, it’s called Joyful Marketing. You can listen to my podcast, also called Joyful Marketing. And you can be in my mastermind called the 6-Months to Fully Booked Mastermind. We open enrollment in February.

Stacey: So fun. This is the perfect time to do the podcast then.

Simone: I guess so.

Stacey: I love it. So, you can join Joyful Marketing, 6-Months to Fully Booked, or you can listen to the podcast Joyful Marketing and you gave your Instagram handle. Thank you so much for coming on. I am sure I will have you on again for some ridiculous result you’re going to create in the future. I cannot wait.

Simone: Thank you. I love you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

Stacey: I love you too. Bye.

—

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program, where you’re going to make your first $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.