Ep #352: MVP: Shedding Hot Mess Identity

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.

Today, we’re going to be talking about shedding hot mess identity.

What? I cannot believe it has taken me this long to talk about this topic. What? So many of us struggle with this. I think especially us women tend to fall into this. I don’t know. I’ve just not talked to a lot of men who tell me that they think they’re a hot mess. Maybe that’s happening, but I do feel like it’s pretty chronic for us women. So I feel like we need to talk about it.

Here’s what I want to do. I want to share this not necessarily as the expert of all experts in which I’ve done lots and lots and lots of research. I just want to tell you guys my story, my experience, how it showed up for me, how I worked through it, and whatever pieces of it for you that are applicable, great. Perfect.

And if this was triggering in any way, that’s okay. I’m not calling you out, I promise. This is not me telling you need to get your stuff together from one ex-hot-messy to another. That’s not what this is about. This is if you know that I used to struggle with this identity, and you currently struggle, and you want to get out of it. I’m just going to tell you my story and how I got out of it, and let this be an inspiration to you or a path for you, an example for you. But by no means, this is not meant to be a call-out episode in any way. So if you were like, oh my God, Stacey’s talking directly to me, it’s not because of something I’ve seen or some judgment I have.

I was just coaching someone recently in 2k about this, and I commented on her post, and then I kind of thought about it and I was like, how have I never done an episode on this? So that’s where we are.

So the hot mess identity, first of all, if you don’t have hot mess identity, good for you. This episode still might be helpful in other ways because I’m going to talk about different ways it shows up, and you may not refer to yourself as a hot mess, but you still might be doing some of these things. But if you don’t do any of these things, good for you. You’re winning. For those of us who do these things, this episode is for you. But I think that the hot mess identity is rooted in victim mentality.

It showed up for me—this is again, my story, my example—it showed up for me like, I’m a hot mess, and it’s because of things that happened in the world or other people. I’m going to talk about my own unworthiness issues, but for the most part, a lot of the time, the way that it showed up, it would always be me blaming other things in the outside world for my messiness. Like, I don’t want to be a mess. I’m a mess because I can’t help it because of all these things happening around me. Okay?

So the way that it showed up for me was really just delegating my personal responsibility and my power to other things and other people. And they are the cause of and the result of the messiness, right? It’s because of them. And sometimes it would show up as I’m just a messy person as a total inner attack on me. I just can’t keep up with the world. I’m not good enough for the world. I’m unable to show up as other people do in the world. But I will say that typically for me, that always still ended up in because of other people or other circumstances or the outside world.

So here were some actual tangible, measurable things that showed up as examples of the hot mess identity. I was, as a coach, I’m just going to use this as a reference to my life coaching business. I was late to a lot of calls or I would be taking calls while I was driving, while I was packing, showing up on videos having just gotten out of the shower, forgetting calls, forgetting consults, forgetting things, places I was supposed to be, being again late to places that I was supposed to be, always having excuses.

That was the biggest indicator for me, or the biggest way that the identity of being a hot mess showed up, is I was just full of excuses that would describe the reason for the messiness, right? I’m going to give some examples of this, but I always had excuses. I always had an explanation. I was always explaining away my behavior.

Things would always happen, and it just was like, I don’t know how to describe this other than to say I was a walking example of attracting crazy circumstances. That I will tell you, we’re going to talk about this, but they would later all be fixed. All of these circumstances, they would always still be there, but they would be fixed by planning. So I’m going to talk about that in how I got out of the hot mess identity.

But I want to just give you a few scenarios. Like those are common ways that it showed up for me, but here are some actual stories and scenarios. So I remember I got asked to teach at the Life Coach School’s coach training. This was years ago. I was, I think at the time, either I think it was right before I entered Master Coach training. I just remember a scenario where I had ordered food to the room because I was going to be working on lunch. Like, there was an open session, then you had lunch, and then we met in small groups, and I was instructing a small group. So I had ordered food to the room and was going to eat in between, and the food didn’t show up. And because I had scheduled every minute to be working, I think I actually had a call or something. I ended up not eating. And so I had to have food delivered to the session. I’m not someone that can go without eating. I don’t know about you, but that’s not how I roll. I don’t just miss lunch.

So I remember, actually, this is what I think what happened is I ended up going to a colleague’s room, and she had like cheese and eggs, and apples in her fridge, and she was like, “Go up to my room and raid my refrigerator.” And I did. And so I’m like eating in the session. Because I was a new coach at the time, there was another coach in the room with me, watching this go down.

And later on, I ended up joining Master Coach training, and the same coach was one of my teachers in master coach training, and she was in charge of doing intro calls where she told people, this is what we want you to work on in Master Coach training. This is what we see as your before and after, the transformation you need to go to develop mastery in coaching. And one of the things that she said to me is, “In that coach training, I told Brooke, I never knew if you were going to show up or not. And if you were going to show up, what condition would you be in?” And it was a really big moment for me, a kind of metaphorical shaking of my body, of, oh, this isn’t just my experience, this is other people’s experience.

So that was one example is creating that environment where people would think I wasn’t going to show up, or if I did, I might be eating and doing other things. And I also want to say, along with that, that I think that if you had a scenario like that, that I just explained, it could seem benign, and it’s not that big of a deal. Your food didn’t show up. Of course, you need to eat, eat in the session, whatever. It might not ordinarily be a big deal, but this was always the story for me. This was always happening. It was just circumstances like that always happened for me. Lunch doesn’t show up, this doesn’t happen, this… It was a pattern, right?

And when it’s a pattern for you, people start to see it as a pattern. They start to see something is always happening with her. There’s always a situation. She’s just a walking situation. There’s always some drama. And so, regardless of if you created intentional drama, intentional messiness, or you just attract a lot of unintentional messiness, it’s all still messiness, right?

That for me, just knowing that, hearing that, thinking of it that way was hugely helpful. This is the part where I think some of you might feel a little triggered by it, but just remember, I’m not calling you out at all. I have no judgment about your behavior. I truly, I hope you hear it in my voice. I’m not recording this episode coming from that place. I am recording it for those of you who are struggling with this and it is affecting you, and you do want to get out of it.

So what was the most helpful thing for me to hear is whether or not it’s intentional messiness or unintentional messiness, it’s all still messiness. And what I’m going to tell you is the way I got out of it was solving for the unintentional messiness, taking power and responsibility and control over that.

But first, let’s talk about the thoughts that I had about myself and the world at the time because I think that the hot mess story is always about ourselves in relation to the world. It’s just the way we interact with the world, the way we see the world interacting with us.

So things that I would say about myself often is “I’m a hot mess.” And sometimes that would be a joke, sometimes that would be a frustration, sometimes that would be an observation that felt neutral. It was just like that is who I am. I’m a little bit of a hot mess. And you might have friends who even, you guys kind of band together and joke, or it’s this thing about being a hot mess that’s kind of funny, and that you guys talk about. And so you might be even surrounded with people who acknowledge that within themselves as well and within you, and there’s just a group identity around that. I had some of that going on.

Things were always happening to me. I’ve talked about that, but that was really truly how I felt, is things are just always coming at me. Circumstances are always coming at me. Life is always coming at me, and I’m just doing the best I can with all this craziness that keeps coming at me because it was never my fault. Never. “It’s not my fault.” I can’t tell you the amount of times that was uttered out of my mouth or the amount of times I thought it. It’s someone else’s fault. And I always had specific people to blame in every scenario. I would find the person whose fault it was instead of it being my fault. It was always, if there was a miscommunication, it was always on them, it was never on me. If there was always a relationship that didn’t work out, it was always on them, it was not on me.

I would always think I was being blamed for things. Any of the messiness that would happen, I’m being blamed. That’s how I would feel if anyone would kind of call it out, or if I was late, or if they would make a big deal if I was late, it was just like, “Oh, you’re blaming me.” But it was this other messiness outside of me.

And then the internal stuff was I’m inadequate, I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy. I’m unimportant. I’ve noticed that come up a lot. I’m unimportant. People don’t think I’m important. So when I had that thought, what I would do is be late or make a really big deal of things and kind of overreact to show my level of importance.

I think about this a lot when people, the term that people use with the Karens of the world, not all situations, but I do think a lot of those situations, that’s what’s happening. They feel unimportant, and then the way that they try to self-important themselves is in that kind of way that’s really off-putting to other people. Again, not in every situation, the situations where you see people overreact in a really big way in a public space that doesn’t measure the degree of the situation. Typically that’s someone doesn’t feel important, so they’re trying to create importance.

Or if it feels like, if you’ve ever had that experience of someone that comes in, maybe they’re coming to meet you at lunch, or they’re coming into your house, and it feels like they brought a tornado behind them. There’s all these things. It’s just a trailing amount of drama. It’s that, I don’t know how exactly how to say it, but that was a lot of what was going on with me is just I need everyone to know the messiness that I have to deal with and the way that life isn’t kind of treating me at a level of importance that I should be being treated at.

It was just a lot of I’m the victim here. I’m doing the best I can. I’m being wronged, or the world has it wrong. The world has me wrong. There was always, “I can’t do that. Here’s my special reason why.” That was my favorite. I could not possibly show up to your standards, or arrive on time, or not be messy because of all my special reasons. And then sometimes it was, “Their, other people, or the world’s expectations are just too high of me.”

So, another example I have of this is I remember when I first started coaching for the Life Coach School, someone had a conversation with me about my office needing to look more professional and me needing to dress more professional. I don’t know if that was their language. I just remember that’s the conversation in my brain. And I was so mad. How dare anyone, right?

But really, I remember, I’m thinking back to a very specific call where I showed up super just hot and sweaty. I think maybe I’d been walking my dog, and I was dressed very casually, and just treated the whole call very casually instead of this is important. And that just an example, an experience of me being in my hot mess identity.

A couple other examples of this that come to mind, I remember one time flying to Dallas for my Million Dollar Mastermind meeting, and I had flown on the earliest morning flight. The meeting started at 9:00 a.m. And I think I left Louisville at 6:00 a.m., arrived at 8:00 a.m., and had one hour to get from the airport to Plano, Texas, for the meeting. And I flew so early that I just had on my yoga clothes, no makeup. I had plans to get my bag and then get ready there. But I guess I had checked my bag. So I had an hour to get my bag out of baggage claim and then get in the Uber or car service, whatever, get there, change in the bathroom, put makeup on, show up to the meeting. Okay?

They lost my luggage. So I ended up being so late to the meeting, like I think two, three hours late to the meeting because not only did I have to get my luggage, but I had to get ready. And I remember thinking, Stacey, why didn’t you fly in early? If you weren’t going to fly in early, at least have your makeup on and be dressed, and be ready to go. But also, I didn’t account for any obstacles, any lateness by airlines, any loss. I accounted for anything outside occurring.

I would do this a lot when I was driving places. I would leave if it said it’ll take 20 minutes to get there, I would leave with 18 minutes to get there. And my brain was always, “Oh, I’ll make up the time in traffic,” not, there could be a traffic jam, there could be an accident, there could be construction, it may take you 25 minutes to get there. You’re going to have to push yourself and be really crazed in your mind trying to get there on time, right? It was just things like that.

And it was really just created this overall sense of my life is so hard, things are just so crazy. Things are always happening to me. I’m wronged. It’s unjust. I can’t help all the misfortunes that come my way. People have no idea about my life and the craziness. I’m so busy. That was probably one of the reasons I flew in the morning instead of the day before was just, “I’m just so busy.”

And when I think back to this experience and hopefully the way I’ve kind of described it—I know it’s somewhat vague, just it’s been a while, and it may not be exactly how your hot mess shows up for you. But I hope the way I’ve described it creates a sort of tense feeling in your chest or your body a little bit. That is the experience. That’s how you know, right? That hot messiness is affecting your life. Like when you hear it, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, it just sounds like a mess.” And my internal feelings when all of this was happening was a lot of defensiveness, a lot of shame, a lot of inadequacy, a lot of anger, inferiority, so much resistance. And this is really interesting for those of you that experienced this, righteousness.

The righteousness was very interesting when I thought back to this, but I think it was always there to protect me. I was always in the right. The messiness was happening to me, and so that protected me from having to take responsibility or feel bad that and just look at like, “This is my fault. I’m creating these circumstances.”

Now, if you’re listening to me and you’re like, “No, but these are like…” If you’re in the hot mess identity, for those of you that aren’t, you’re going to be like, “Oh yeah, you should totally clean all that up.” But for those of you that are in it, you might be like, “No, but these are just life things that happen.”

I wrote down thirteen things that helped me break the hot mess identity. And I think when I walk you through them, when I teach you the plan and how I overcame all of the outside things happening to me, I think it will be much clearer what I mean by the power and the responsibility that we have to not be hot messes. How much power we really have over that, and not letting messiness from the outside world or other people affect us and be the determinant of whether we show up messy to the world. It’s going to be really eye-opening and lightning.

So, breaking the hot mess story for me were these thirteen things. Number one, I no longer ever allowed myself to use outside circumstances as an excuse for being late, not showing up, showing up with lots of drama and the tornado behind me, having difficulties, being less powerful, less resourceful, or playing at the same level as my peers or the level that I wanted to play at. I just didn’t let anything be an excuse. Literally, I didn’t allow myself to give an excuse to another human being. I couldn’t just show up and be like, “Well, I’m late because of all of these reasons.” That was number one. If you just couldn’t let yourself give an excuse to another human being for any reason ever.

Number two, I no longer allowed myself to speak to myself in a way that minimized my needs or put myself down. Another hot mess story that I kind of had about myself or identity I had about myself was I’m really needy. I need lots of things to, I don’t know how to explain this one either, but it’s like I need lots of things to happen in order to be taken care of.

I’ll give you examples because it’s the only way I can think about it is I have to sleep in a soft bed and I have to eat healthy foods and my skin’s super sensitive, so if the hotel sheets are washed and something, probably going to break out and that’s going to be a whole thing that’s going to cause me to be late. And things like that. I’m really high maintenance in a negative way, and it would have me judging myself and minimizing that and dramatizing that instead of just solving for those things.

The two stories I’m remembering about this are number one, I was at some Life Coach School event. I love how the Life Coach School events always become these insane events of self-reflection. That’s probably true at my events too for my students, but I remember being an event. This was all around the time where I was just working through this like crazy. I was in Million Dollar Mentoring, Master Coach training, and a 100k coaching group.

And I think I’ve even told the story on the podcast, there was twelve-hour workdays that were so crazy. We were just getting so much done in seven straight days. But my back, because of sitting on the hotel chairs that are so hard, my back spasmed. And I needed to go to a chiropractor and get some relief. But I was having so much judgment about that because when you have a lot of hot mess things happening, when you actually need to take care of yourself, it kind of gets lumped in to all of the other hot mess things happening.

So I was like, of course, I’m the only one that’s back’s out because of the chairs because I’m so high maintenance and needy because I’m such a hot mess. Of course these things happened to me, instead of I’m an important person for myself. I’m just important. I’m valuable. I have needs that are important and not dramatized, that don’t need to be minimized. I need to take care of myself, and what I need right now is to go to the chiropractor. I had the thought, if Brooke needed to go to the chiropractor, would I judge her? Would she stay judging herself, or would she just go? I’m like, “She would just go.” I don’t actually know, but my guess was she would just go take care of herself, right?

So I didn’t let myself put myself down anymore and tell myself I’m a hot mess and minimize my needs ever again from that moment out. Another thing that we do is instead of just making myself feel bad about the fact that I need to sleep on a soft bed, if I sleep on a hard bed, I will wake up with a giant kink in my neck and won’t be able to move for a week. We bought this Tempur-Pedic mattress topper, and we just ship that thing. It’s $500 every time I travel, we just ship it to the hotel, and they install it on the bed, and I just always know from here on out at every hotel, every time I go, that I will have a good night’s sleep. I don’t have to worry about it. I don’t have to worry about showing up anywhere unrested because I will be rested because I’ve solved for that.

Do you guys see what I mean here? When you just start solving for all of your things, whether they’re, whatever they are, you just solve for anything that would have you showing up messy, then you stop showing up messy.

Number three, I no longer shamed myself. I stopped shaming myself or inviting people in to shame me, allowing that to happen. I can’t control other people, but I can just say I’m not open to that. I’m not receiving that. It’s one of my favorite things to say in my brain. “I see that you’re trying to shame me and I’m not receiving that,” as a habit.

This is really powerful because my family, I love them so dearly, but because I was late all the time for so many years, as in I would say I would tell them I was going to be there at a certain time. My family lives a few hours away. So I would say, “I’m going to be there at say 10:00 a.m.” and then I would show up at like 2:00 p.m. And after years and years and years of this behavior, they would really give me a hard time for it. Like, really give me a hard time. And one of the things I recently decided with my husband, within the last few years, was I’m never giving them an arrival time. What? Brilliant.

Because I’m always the one driving up there. They’ve rarely—once I had a baby, they’ve been so great. They’ve been coming down here so much, but rarely did they ever come to where I lived. I was always driving up to them, hauling my dogs and all the things up to visit them. It was always me making the two- to three-hour drive. So I just decided I’ll get there when I get there. That’s it. I’m just not giving you an arrival time.

If I did have an arrival time for any reason, if we were going to a party or there was Christmas or whatever it was, if I was late, or if I was not late. Like if they would, I remember one time, someone in my family met us out there, and they’re like, “Ooh, early. I’m so impressed,” and like made this whole thing. And I just kept walking. I didn’t even acknowledge it. And my husband was like, “Oh my God, that was a transformation just watching you. You just unsubscribed.”

Just didn’t show up for any… Whether it’s applauding me or criticizing me for being late or on time, I just stopped subscribing to it. It was like, “Oh, I’m just not doing that anymore.” That is so huge in changing your relationship and your identity with yourself. When you stop doing that… I also think a lot of the hot messiness comes from how we talk to ourselves. We talk to ourselves into such low energy and such low power and responsibility that it really is very challenging for us to show up to life in a really powerful way. And so then the result is all this messiness.

So the fourth thing that I did to break the hot mess identity was I slowed down. I slowed down in my business. I slowed down in my life, and I planned for the unintentional things that made me messy. I’m going to give you some examples of this.

I have two internet sources. I would have three if we had three carriers in our area, but we have two internet carriers in our area. I have them both. I have both on Wi-Fi and I have one on hardwire. You can only, I guess, have one from your office, but I have one on hardwire. So I have two Wi-Fi settings and a hardwire connection. That way, I never have any issues with my internet being out and not being able to deliver calls or trainings. I restart my computer and do all updates before every training call I’m going to do or every coaching call that I will be coming on to Zoom for.

When I fly now, I fly a full day, two or even three days early. So if I’m going to come to a 200k Live event, I’m going to be there two to three days ahead of time. If the time zone changes, that’s where the two or three days because the travel day is always exhausting, so I don’t want to have to perform the next day. Then I also have to regulate to the new time. So typically it’s three days ahead of time, especially if I’m flying. I also bloat when I fly, I get really dehydrated when I fly. So I want days to acclimate.

I want you to just consider that. If you’re coming to something like, I remember… I don’t remember which 200K Live event this was, but it was in the pandemic. The airlines are still struggling, but this was a really bad moment for the airline industry. Everybody’s flights were either delayed or canceled, and so many people either almost missed our welcome event or missed the welcome event, or had to run in their sweats into the welcome event.

And I remember thinking—again, this is not a blame or a call out in any way, but I remember thinking—this is why I fly in so early. I just don’t want to have to ever even for my own coaching things. I don’t want to have to miss something. So I’ve started planning for other people’s factors.

Just an FYI for all of you, if you’re not flying a lot, the airline industry has lost their damn minds. They don’t know what’s going on at all. You have got to prepare for that. If you fly commercial, you must, must, must get there a few days early because there is a chance that you will be delayed or whatever. And listen, I still say it’s worth it. It’s worth it for me. If I get there early, I’m either going to vacation or I’m going to work in a really awesome elevated environment, and either are going to be super valuable for me.

The other thing I do is like when I coach for someone else, I take that super seriously, and I will log in and test hours early, take it very seriously, and I give myself buffer before and after coaching for someone else. The other thing I do in the planning for unintentional things to be messy is I confirm everything we plan with other people. So if we have dinner plans, if we have whatever it is, if we do schedule a podcast interview, my team or myself, we always are confirming. “Hey, I just want to confirm this is happening on this date.” When I schedule something, I always put it in my calendar in front of the person we’re scheduling with.

So I’m going to give you a really fun example. It’s just like when I go get my haircut and my stylist is really hard to get into. And so when we schedule, we schedule six months out. So the next six haircuts, I get them done every four weeks. I have crazy hair. We schedule them six months out, and I literally input it in my calendar, and I make sure there’s no mistakes, and then I read it back to them. That is a level of confirmation and planning that will allow you to unwind these messy things just happened to me.

One of the other things is, we have a nanny right now for our child, and so I have to factor in, our nanny has three kids, right? What if she’s late? What if she misses? What is our backup plan going to be? How am I still going to arrive on time, get places on time, do the things I need to do?

So that’s super useful, especially if you hustle a lot in your business, you hustle to make money, and you have a hard time slowing down, and it’s just sell, sell, sell. This is a really big one. I decided that I’m only willing and going to make money that I can also have enough time to plan and highly execute it. That became a value for my company is I’m well-planned and I’m highly executed. And the money I make has to fall in within those things.

Number five is I plan for other people to be messy or to have unintentional things come up for them that might affect me. So I’m going to give you a really great example of this. Today, actually, I taught in a free training that I created called Offer Week. It’s the second time I’ve done this training. It’s a five-day training or a five-day challenge to everyone in my audience. And I also had a physical with my concierge doctor. So I have a concierge doctor that comes, which is so great, comes to my house. And I had a physical planned at 10:00 a.m. Okay?

I scheduled intentionally, knowing I had that, Offer Week to be at 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon. That gave me hours of time. So from 10:00 to 11:00, I figured that the physical would take 30 minutes, but I gave myself an hour. And then I also gave myself an hour for lunch and to get ready and all of that. I just gave myself buffer time, extraordinary amounts of buffer time. Well, guess what? We had a crazy thing happen on the interstate where there was a semi that was taking up the whole interstate, broken down, and then insane construction on one of the other ways to get to our house. And my doctor ended up being in traffic for an hour. He was an hour late.

Imagine if I had decided that I was going to put Offer Week back-to-back. That’s what I mean by slowing down, planning for unintentional things, and also planning for other people to have unintentional things happening to them. I was right on time to Offer Week. I had lunch. I was great. He was so stressed about being late. This is what I have found is now that I’ve done this work, other people get very, very, very stressed and worked up if they’re running late. But because of the way I plan in my calendar, I’m generally like easy peasy. I’m like, listen, take a deep breath. It’s not a problem. I’ve got plenty of time.

 

Like literally, I have a multi-multi-million-dollar company and I’m always telling other people, don’t stress. It’s okay. I’ve got time. What? When I do podcast interviews, I have time open before the podcast interview, and I always have a full hour after the podcast interview in case we go over, in case there are tech issues that have happened before, where we’ve had Zoom issues that we have to troubleshoot that take 20 or 30 minutes. So I always have plenty of time. I account for about 30 minutes of tech issues and 30 minutes of going over if we’re in a really juicy conversation.

So I’m at the multimillion-dollar level always asking my podcast interviewees if we’re going to go over like, “Hey, what’s your calendar like? Are you good? We can end it now or we can keep this conversation going. What works for you?” versus my schedule at the multimillion-dollar level is so jam-packed that I can’t account for anything outside of what I’ve currently planned. It’s so freeing to do that. It makes you the calmest person in the room, by the way. And when you’re the calmest person in the room, there’s no room for an identity of I’m a hot mess and messy things happened to me or because of me or around me. I can accommodate for other people’s messiness, and it’s just not a problem.

The next thing I do, number six, is I give myself time to be on time, respecting other people’s time as much as I respect my own, and respecting other people’s processes as much as I respect my own. And this is something I also do on the reverse. So I always tell my team we don’t fit into other people’s models. We stand firm in our models, right?

So we have, for example, processes for bringing new coaches in, and they have to do test calls and they have to do certain things. I actually don’t know what the process fully is, but if they can’t do that, they just can’t instruct until they’re able to do that. It’s not even a problem. It’s just if you’re going to instruct for us, these are the things we require, and we have a process, and people have to adhere to that because they’re walking into our model, right? We’re not walking into them.

This happens with event planners, too. We have done so many events at the Omni in Louisville, and we’ve kind of gotten away from doing events there because they want us to operate in their model, and their model is hugely messy.

They want to set up the morning of, for 2 Million Dollar Group, for example. They’ll try to set up the morning of, and we’re like, “No, we set up the night before because the morning of, here are the list of things that could go wrong and that’s not going to affect our clients. We don’t want that.” So we really work really hard to teach vendors how to show up for us, or to teach students how to show up for us, or to teach clients how to show up for us, or whatever it is. I have now taken on the belief that I can teach other people how to show up for me in business so that I’m not at the mercy of other people.

And in the past, I have even removed instructors from… Like, we have 200k instructors if you join that mastermind for small groups. We do large group coaching, I do teaching and coaching on stage, we do small group sessions throughout the mastermind. And we bring instructors in. Sometimes they’re 200K students, sometimes they’re 2 Million Dollar Group students.

And either way, I have removed people either if they’re hard to communicate with and not responsive, or if they chronically forget that they’ve committed to… We send them the schedule six months in advance. We say, “Put these calls on your calendar as an instructor,” and then we give them reminders, confirmation. We confirm with them a couple of days before the call as well. And I’ve had instructors in the past who would be like, “Oops, my bad, forgot, can’t do it,” and kind of be even flipping about it.

And either way, no matter what their reaction is, multiple offenses of it, we just remove them as instructors. We love them. We send them our love. We still want to work with them. I still want to coach them, but they just can’t be instructors.

And I have noticed when I coach my clients a lot, sometimes they’ll let that be in the control of other people instead of being owning that. Your business doesn’t need to be messy, even if people working for you or people instructing for you, coaching for you, clients working with you, anything, your business doesn’t have to be messy. You get to decide.

How will I plan for other people’s un-messiness? How will I give myself plenty of time, and how will I hold other people to my standards, and how I’ve decided not to be messy on my own. So, for example, if you have one-on-one clients who show up late to the call, you just tell them, “Listen, it’s totally fine if you show up late, I just can’t go past the hour.”

This happens all the time with my coach. I’m like, “Listen, I’m going to be 15 minutes late, but can we still do 45 minutes of coaching?” If I need to be late for any reason, I respect their time, but I’m like, “Can we still do the 45 minutes?” And she’s always like, “Sure.” Or sometimes I get on and I’m like, “Listen, I need to leave early. Can I get what I need in 30 minutes? Is that cool with you?” I’ll just show up, and I’ll get what I need in 30 minutes. You can do that as the coach, too. You can say, “Listen, if you’re late, it’s not a big deal ever, but I always end on time because I’m not late to my other calls.” That’s how you break out of the hot mess story.

And then responsiveness and reliability. That’s the seventh thing I did. I just decided to think the thought about myself, “People can always count on me.” And I’ve told this story on the podcast where my luggage got stolen, me and my son’s luggage got stolen when I went to speak on stage at my coach, her event, Life Coach Live. It was a huge event in front of 3,000 people. I was invited as a paid speaker, and I had all my luggage stolen. And it was a huge ordeal to recover medications, clothing, find stage-worthy clothes, shoes, bras, underwear, everything, shampoo and conditioner. I mean, all of the things had to be replaced.

And I remember telling myself, and it was so extraordinarily stressful, but I told myself, “Not only am I going to show up, I’m going to be the biggest asset. I’m going to sell the crap out of coach training.” Not that they’ve asked me to, not that’s what they’re paying me to. They were paying me to just offer value to their students. There was no, “Hey, sell this.” But I said, “I’m going to be the biggest asset in that room. They’re going to be so glad they asked me to be on stage. I’m going to sell the crap out of coach training. I’m going to be the most powerful example of what’s possible, and I’m going to do that no matter what’s happening with me behind the scenes. I’m going to be that person.” Like, what? So powerful.

And I was. I showed up, no one had any idea unless I told them that had happened behind the scenes. And I remember even driving all over town. I mean we were driving everywhere trying to get the things that we needed, especially for me to have outfits that were what I felt represented my positioning in my branding to be on stage.

I was driving with Life Coach Live, live-streaming it so that I would still know what was going on even if I wasn’t physically there. I wasn’t required to be there, but I wanted to know what was being said on stage so that I could incorporate that into my talk because I’m going to show up, I’m going to be the biggest asset, I’m going to sell the crap out of this training, and I’m going to be a powerful example of what’s possible.

When those are the things you tell yourself, it’s really hard to create messiness in your life. The other thing I tell myself is I’m always going to be the most improved player. So even if where my business… Right now, my business feels a little messy to me. And I’m talking with someone in the next week to join a mastermind. And I have this thought that I’m going to go in there and they’re going to be like, “Your business is a little messy.” And I’m going to go in there and I’m like, “Yes, but I’m going to be the most improved player.” My business may not be… Now who knows? I might get in there and be like, “I’m a ten steps ahead of everyone.” But I’m going to be the most improved player no matter what.

So even if I am a little bit messy here or there or we’ve got something messy happening, that is always going to get cleaned up. Not only is it going to get cleaned up, I’m going to learn from it times a hundred, and I’m going to end up being a leader and an innovator in the industry because of it. Most improved player, baby.

And then, I think this is number nine, but I honored my word always. You guys, if you take anything from this episode, and you want to change your hot mess identity, honoring your word always, even when there is a special circumstance, will change your life. It will eradicate messiness. I honor my word, what I tell people, even when, no matter what.

And piggybacking off of that, I honor my schedule. That is not as black and white to me, but it is pretty hardcore. Yesterday, I had a really busy day. I taught Offer Week. I taught live in 2k for 2k. I had a coaching call myself, and then I had other things in my business that I had to do in between all those things. And the weather was 76 and beautiful and sunny, and I wanted to play with my kid. And I knew that. I actually check, you guys. This is so… I went from hot mess to I literally check the weather days in advance so that if it is beautiful and I might want to take a walk or play with my child outside, I add that into my schedule.

So I had time already scheduled in days in advance to play with my kid. So I was showing my husband and my nanny, my schedule, and I’m like, “Look, I’ve already got scheduled in this hour to play with Jackson, this time here to play with Jackson, and I’ve got the family walk scheduled at 5:00,” amongst all my other things.

And then that day, I went in and I did all of them. I went and swung on the swings with my child. I went on a walk with him. I went on a family walk later. We played outside on the stoop. And I did all of the things I said I was going to do in my business because I just honored my schedule. That is difficult.

I did that in Master Coach training, worked on honoring my schedule no matter what. And I remember showing up to a coaching call and just literally melting down, tears streaming down my face at how difficult it was to just do what I said I was going to do and not offer excuses when I don’t, and instead offer explanations and accountability. Like, “What?” It was so hard to have someone come to the call and be like, “Okay, tell me why you didn’t do what you said you were going to do,” and to not be able to give an excuse but to take accountability. Ooh. Ouch. It was painful. Okay?

Eleven, this is what I was coaching my student on that made me and inspired me to want to do this episode, because I forgot that this was another piece of it. But I started telling myself—this was specifically in my Million Dollar Mastermind, where I felt really inadequate and like I didn’t belong—I started telling myself, “I am one of them. I am here at the table. I have a seat. I belong. I have value. I’m an asset in this room. I have value to give.”

What I have found is hot mess others us. It others us when it comes to our business, other people, the world, everything. There’s other people and then there’s us being the hot mess. And I just stopped doing that. And I said, “I am one of them. I belong. I have value. I’m an asset.” That dramatically changed my behavior.

And then the last one, this has been the newest challenge of mine, is when I had my baby, all of a sudden, I had this other life to take care of that was kind of interrupting my schedule, especially when I was nursing. I was nursing on demand, right? So there was… Now, for the first three months, I didn’t have a schedule to adhere to at all, but there was a time for another four months, five months, where I was nursing and I was back to work, and I had that happening. And I remember having this thought creep in of, “Well, but I just have a baby, and so I can’t control now all of the things that I used to be able to control.”

And this question, for those of you that are moms and feel that your children are sometimes the things that pull you out of honoring your schedule, your word, things like that, that create the messiness in your life, this question has been immensely helpful for me. And again, I’m not judging you. I’m not telling you should be different, and I’m not calling you out. It’s just if this identity is painful for you and you want to break it, here is my offering. What I asked myself was, “Who would I be as a mom if I didn’t have the story that my kid makes me messy?” What? Or any version of that.

One of those things is I just started nursing on calls. I’d be on a team call with my meeting and be like, “Guys, I’m going to turn my camera off. I’ve got to nurse.” There’d be many times where I was in a full-day meeting with my students, and I would be like, “Hey, is it uncomfortable for anyone if I nurse?” And my nanny would just bring my baby in. And everyone was like, “No. This is an extraordinary example of what’s possible.”

But instead of me saying I’m going to interrupt the entire flow of our meeting to leave every two hours or two and a half hours or however often he was eating, I’m like, “We’re just going to keep going, and I’m going to be focused. I’m going to be present, but I’m going to be nursing.”

And that solution doesn’t have to be your solution, but if you just release the story that there is this other person that I don’t have control over that affects me, this was super freeing for me to help make decisions that didn’t feel messy and felt really good to me in my business, is my kid just doesn’t make me messy. And who am I when I think that’s true, and how do I show up? I hope that’s helpful for you. Again, I’m going to just keep saying it, no judgment, no calling out, truly just if this is a pain story for you, let’s release it today.

Now, this is how I want to end. This might feel like a lot of work, and it is. And also, it’s just a decision. The decision is I’m no longer going to fuel the hot mess story. As I’m working on it, I’m just not going to keep fueling it. Instead, I’m going to fuel the self-concept that I am reliable, resourceful, always well-planned, well-backed up, well-executed. I am valuable. I’m an asset. I belong. I fulfill my own needs when I need them. I get them done without it being dramatic. And for me, it was, “I’m going to prioritize the anti-hot mess story, plan as my greatest self-investment in my life and in my business.” Who will I be, and what money will I make, and what experience will I have in my business if I just never let my life be a hot mess around me?

Because I always tell my students, if you want to double your income, you have to double the most painful parts of you and your business and your experience. So imagine if you don’t let the hot mess story go and you want to make double the money you make now, you’re going to have double the hot messiness, double the messiness. And for me, I didn’t want to take that into my life, especially knowing I was going to be a mom. I wanted to be a calm business owner who was in control of her time so that she could also be in control of the time she spends with her children. That, for me, is the ultimate investment.

So I want to offer this to you as my gift for the week. If this is you, this is your episode. Download the show notes. You can get the transcript, follow this process, listen to this over and over and over, and just know I’m not rooting against you, judging you, or thinking you should be better than you are. I’m totally cheering you on. This was one of my biggest painful, painful things to unwind in my own personal development. And when people are messes around me, I have nothing but support, love, understanding, compassion, empathy. I get it. And if you want help, this is how you do it. All right, have an amazing week, y’all.

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 five-step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to StaceyBoehman.com/2Kfor2K. We’ll see you inside.