Ep #196: Protecting the Asset

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 196. Today I have another new mom inspired episode, sort of. So, if you are not a new mom, or not a mom, or even a woman at all, don’t turn it off. This ‘new mom’ experience just piqued my awareness to something I already do in a way that I already think that I know will be very valuable to you. Something that I think I do exceptionally well, that really has to do with my self-concept and the way that I view myself within my family, and my business, and the world.

And that is that I consider myself the asset, my brain, my body, my total overall being is the asset. I consider myself an extremely valuable asset. So, think about what you do with and how you care for a valuable asset. You take care of it. You are careful with it.  You protect it. I want you to think about how our country takes care of our presidents. We protect our asset for our country. Okay, I just said we, assuming all of you are from the United States and probably 75% of you are not. Sorry about that.

Let’s just say, how your country takes care of your president or how the US takes care of their president. In the US we protect our asset for our country. So, they fly on Air Force 1, they have Secret Service, you get the idea. There are a lot of resources that go into protecting a president. There are a lot of resources that go into protecting a president.

And the reason I wanted to do this episode is when I’m talking to clients, a lot of time what I know the way that I think and the way that they aren’t thinking is they maybe feel bad, or shameful, or hesitant, or resistant, or it’s a bother, or it will be bother on other people. Or they don’t feel like it’s a wise use of their resources to protect themselves in some way. And we’re going to talk about all of the ways. But just the idea that they would never consider putting a lot of resources into protecting themselves as the asset. So that’s the conversation today.

So, I want you to think for a second, answer the question, do you think about yourself and see yourself as an asset, and maybe even the asset of your family and your business? And if you did, how would you treat your time and your self-care? How would you spend your money? How would you arrange your life?

And if you don’t consider yourself with this level of importance that I’m talking about right now if you don’t consider that. If you hear, I am the asset and don’t feel that in your bones for that to be true, I want you to consider when you’re not believing that about yourself how you treat your time, your self-care, and your spending decisions. And how do you arrange your life? How do you prioritize your needs? So, I was very good at this before I had my baby. This has been something I’ve worked on for many years.

But after having my baby I feel like I have really, like I have a new understanding of how moms could easily put themselves last and slip into things that I’ve heard moms literally say to me, whether it’s friends or family, or whatever. But not having showered for several days, eating cold food, not having shaved their legs, or what, what’s a manicure? Not having had one for months if not years. And I can look  back even when I think about, because I used to just sell general life coaching, and I coached exclusively women.

I look back on those early consults and I see especially the women I coached that were stay at home moms how they would feel like they couldn’t invest in themselves, or they needed permission to invest in themselves, especially from a spouse that might be working. And for sure how they would think about their desires, they were the last things on the list to get accomplished. So, I could see now as a mom, how easy that would be. You have this new life.

And for me, oh my God, just sitting in front of me this sweet, just innocent face, it would be, it is, could be, is so easy for me to get absorbed in his needs and ignore all of mine completely and be okay with it. This is, yes, this is my intention, just to ignore myself completely and just obsess over you all the time. I could very easily do that. I don’t let myself. And for some of you that are moms, you probably get it. It’s hard not to.

But I had this thought the other day. I was getting ready to get my nails done which I do every two weeks roughly. But I didn’t particularly this day have the time to do it. And my husband had a lot going on, and we didn’t have the nanny with us that day. But both my husband and I were like, “No, but you have to go get them done.” Because I had clients coming to my house and we were going to be filming a course for 2K. And I just can’t/won’t and/or won’t show up looking unput together because I’m the asset.

So, then it was occurring to me that everyone in my life moves around me or accommodates me and also works to protect me as the asset, my husband, my nanny, our house cleaner, my COO, my EA. I’m the money maker, so if I need to sleep for example, an extra few hours in the morning because I have calls that day, someone else takes care of Jackson while I sleep so that I’m refreshed and mentally prepared to go to work. When I wake up breakfast and coffee are made for me so that I can feed Jackson, shower, and get to work.

We set up our lives to where the flow is always working in my favor because I’m the asset. Or on my days off I rest. We just had this whole conversation about I’m not folding the sheets. If I have 30 minutes to not be working and not be nursing Jackson, I’m either going to spend time with him or I’m going to take rest for myself. I’m going to go out and self-coach, or journal, or read a book, or just take a walk. I’m going to do something that is rest.

I’m not spending my day off doing chores, and running myself into the ground because I need to be rested in my brain and my body for my next workday. I need my brain to be rested for creating content and serving our clients and selling more coaching. So even as a new mom, I’m getting baths and sleep mostly. Some of it’s unavoidable, four months sleep regression, you all, that is a real thing. All of a sudden things are going great, he’s sleeping through the night and now it’s like he’s a newborn again waking up every 45 minutes to an hour, so good.

Anyways, other than that, some things are unavoidable. But even in the beginning my nanny was night nursing for us so we did get a lot of sleep even in the beginning. So, I get the sleep most of the time, baths, walks, quiet work time without anyone bothering me. Even for some of you, just that statement, quiet work time without anyone bothering me. No one’s coming and knocking on my door asking me to find things. No one’s coming to ask me to do things, none of it.

My office is on the main floor, and everyone knows when these office doors are shut, no one’s on the main floor. No one’s talking on the main floor. No TV’s on, on the main floor. There is nothing happening, it’s pure silence. And when it comes to spending money, if I tell my husband that I need to spend $50,000 to get my brain coached, he’s like, “Okay.” He might take a deep breath but he’s going to say, “Okay.”

Now, I want to offer, I’m just giving you some examples, protecting the asset for me as a $10 million earner is likely going to look different than if you are just starting out and you’re wanting to make your first 2K or you’re working towards your first 200K, or your first two million. If you don’t have a team and you haven’t retired your spouse, or maybe they just don’t want that role. I just have to say as a caveat, my husband loves running the household, taking care of all of the things, and cooking, and grocery.

He will literally not do Instacart. He’s like, “No, you don’t understand. I pick through all the berries to find the perfect batch. I don’t care how long other people have to wait for me to find my berries.” He’s so meticulous about everything. The flowers that we have at the house, presentation is one of his greatest values. So, he just loves that. He’s in his wheelhouse, things that I don’t love. It was literally like he was built to protect the asset. That’s his greatest value is being a protector of assets.

I think he would have been a great Secret service agent. I’m glad that he is not but that’s his wheelhouse. Okay, so anyways, you don’t have to be like us. It’s not about what I do, it’s about how I think. And I’ve noticed that I take myself a lot more seriously than most people around me. I treat myself and my time with a higher level of importance. Now, not that I am better than others, not that at all. But understanding that it is important for me to get what I need in order to operate at my highest level because I am the money maker. I am the asset.

So, it’s half how I teach other people to treat me, and set up my life with people to support me. But half how I treat myself, actually I would say fully how I treat myself and think of meeting my needs on a daily basis. My thoughts about treating myself and the importance of myself and meeting my needs. Those thoughts are then how I just operate in the world. And I always say our energy and the way we operate in the world, and the way we treat ourselves, and how we think about ourselves is how we teach other people to think about us.

So, it happens naturally. I’m not going around telling other people what to do and how to be around me in this really bossy, domineering kind of way. I am just thinking of myself with importance. So, because of that and the way I carry myself, other people treat me that way as well. So, I think for many of you, what I was thinking about as I was putting makeup on, getting ready to go get my nails done. Is that I think that many of you consider the things that I would consider as necessities. You consider them as luxuries.

I see this with my friends, we’ll have conversations and they’ll kind of laugh about how high maintenance I am or how much the people around me take care of me. And how little I do as far as the layman things to do. That’s not maybe the right term, but the average everyday person. My husband is always telling people at the dry cleaners. They’ll ask questions and he’ll be like, “You’ll never see my wife. Don’t ever count on that.”

Or the people at Wholefoods, “She’ll never come here.” Or the bank people he’ll be like, “She’s never going to answer your call, just call me, she’ll never answer it.” And I think that a lot of people, a lot of my close friends or family members will poke fun at that. But that is a very intentional thing that I’m actually very proud of, that I don’t consider as egotistical things or luxurious things, I consider them as necessities, necessities to protect the asset.

So, if you do consider maybe the things I’ve mentioned on this episode or maybe things that you’ve heard me say in the past or whatever, if you consider the things when I talk about the way that I go about the world, if you consider them luxuries. I just want you to question why, even if you’re just starting out and you haven’t made a lot of money. What would be different about how you create your day and care for yourself if you did consider some of the things I’ve mentioned, or things like this as necessities instead of luxuries.

How would you treat spending money on yourself? And I’m not even talking about investments, I’m talking about for clothes, on your hair, on your appearance. As a CEO I see a lot of entrepreneurs, and I’m not calling anyone out, I promise. None of you are in my mind as a specific example. But I do see, if I happen to scroll online late at night, I do see a lot of entrepreneurs, whether they’re on Instagram or Facebook, whether it’s a Facebook Live, or a post, or whatever.

I see their overall image as a little bit frumpy, a little bit like just I’ve even seen backgrounds that are insanely messy. I remember one, this is I promise is no one in my community, this was not. I just remember maybe a year ago or so, I saw this online person who was marketing themselves as helping people make millions of dollars with funnels. But she was, the lives she was doing was from a dorm looking bedroom with no baseboard for the bed. It was on the floor. The sheets were all messy. And it looked like a dude’s college house room. It was not appealing in any way, shape, or form.

And the thing that I thought was there’s zero chance that person is actually making that level of money and helping other people do that as well. It just felt so incongruent to me. And when I think about my mentor, Brooke, one of the things that when I first signed on with her. I just remember thinking, wow, this woman takes immaculate care of herself. And that blew my mind. It upleveled my state of being just watching her take immaculate care of herself. And for me I often think about, I will just tell you all, listen. Are you ready?

At the $10 million level I spend probably upwards, and I would say conservatively upwards of $300,000 a year on my wardrobe, on the way that I look, my shoes, everything, jewelry, whatever it is. I always think, the thought I have is, Kim K, how much do you think she puts into her, I mean now at this point, she probably gets clothes for free. But do you think she thinks, I probably shouldn’t spend money on this Balenciaga outfit.

No, she’s like, “This is my brand. This is how the world sees me.” If I’m going to lead in this, I’m going to say industry, but if I want to lead in this realm of wherever, you know, she has now a clothing company. And I’m going to be a celebrity or whatever. I’ve got to present myself that way. So are you, and you don’t have to spend $300,000 a year on clothes, but are you taking your appearance, the way that you show up and the clothes you put on your body, and the way your hair looks, and the way it’s cared for.

Are you taking that time in whatever that would look like for you. It does not mean you have to dress like me. It doesn’t mean you have to dress like Kim K. It doesn’t mean you need very expensive clothes. I’m just asking you to think about, are you showing up for yourself with the appearance of a CEO? Thinking of yourself and taking yourself that seriously, as a CEO, would I, if I were running a $10 million business would I get dressed this way?

Now, maybe you’re like a Mark Zuckerberg and you would wear just t-shirt and jeans, fine, okay. But I just want you to question it, let me just say you could also wear a t-shirt and jeans and look very put together. I’m thinking of Jennifer Aniston. Every time I see her she’s wearing t-shirt, and jeans, and boots, and maybe a long sweater. And every time she’s just looking so put together and amazing. So don’t get caught up on me telling you that you have to look a certain way to succeed.

I just want to spend some time on it because I do see a lot of people, their backgrounds are crazy and chaotic when they’re on Zoom. And they’re not put together in any way, shape or form and I just wonder are they taking themselves seriously? And then if you look at how I am taking myself seriously in the way that I show up, it’s very well-manicured, very well put together with high quality clothing.

There is a Life Coach School Master Certified Coach, Judith Gaton, and she has a style masterclass, and she talks about throw the panties that have holes in them, throw them out. Take yourself seriously enough to buy yourself new panties. Yes, that’s what we’re talking about here. Do you take yourself at the level of importance that you have new panties, girlfriend, or boyfriend? Are you wearing things that make you feel good, things that you would wear when you are considering yourself very important?

So that’s my rant. I could have done that as a whole episode. I’ll move on but are you treating yourself, thinking of your appearance as a CEO as a necessity for your business, and your brand, and your leadership. And a necessity for and part of how you help your clients get results. Because when I think about how Brooke took care of herself and the way that she looked, and smelled, and all the things. I was just so blown away. I was like, “This woman to me feels so luxurious.”

That was transformational for me. I’d never clothed myself in that way, or considered myself, I would just roll out of bed, not having showered, throw some yoga pants on and some flipflops and go. I hadn’t considered myself with that level of importance. So also, I’m just going to move on, I could go on forever.

For investments, do you consider investments of any kind, necessities for you as the asset, especially on your brain and your business? We were just talking about, with my CFO, how much money we had invested in the market this year and how much we’d invested in our business. We invested almost $4 million back into our businesses, not almost, we invested $4.3 million back into our business this year as of the time of this recording in September.

And he was talking about, I don’t remember the conversation but essentially it was like, “Well, obviously you would put more money into your business than the market because your business is the asset.” I was like, “Yes. Yes.” So, do you consider investments in your business and yourself as a necessity? Your wellbeing, on food, on taking care of yourself, maybe it’s a trainer, or a Peloton, or a smoothie, or I don’t know, whatever it is. But do you think that your overall health is the greatest level of importance?

And how seriously if you did consider yourself the asset, would you take yourself and your needs? That’s the number one question I want you to answer when you leave this podcast is how seriously would you take yourself and your needs, it’s almost two separate questions, if you considered yourself the asset? So, I coach millionaires in the Two Million Dollar Group as well. And the slower that they truly embrace that they are the asset the harder it is for them to manage their growing business and create their great body of work.

I want you to know this because I think that we think having money and having made lots of money is the reason that we do or don’t treat ourselves this way, but it isn’t. It’s how we think of ourselves. So, I’m going to repeat that. We think having money and having made lots of money is the reason that we do, or will, or won’t treat ourselves this way, but it is not. It’s how we think of ourselves.

Because my students will get to this place where they have made a lot of money and they have a lot of money and they still will not hire the people they need to take care of them, so that so that they can create with greater ease and rest their brains, and only give attention to their most important priorities. They will not treat their time as their greatest asset, their rest as their greatest asset, their energy as their greatest asset, who they spend time with as the greatest importance.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’ve hired such an amazing team and how I surround myself with the best of the best, the best nanny, the best housekeeper, the best everyone. And I think it boils down to how I see myself as the best. So why would I settle for less than the best? Settling for less than the best can never make me the best.

I have one friend in particular who always laughs at how good I am at delegating literally everything and how everyone around me is just so happy to do things for me. And we laugh about it all the time. But really it is because I take myself so seriously. And I might add again without ego which is why people are happy to support me. I don’t see them as less than me. I see them as important too. And they see it as being part of the mission that I’m on.

They’re not thinking they’re waiting on me hand and foot. Personally, I think about it as all contributing, as this is a team effort. I happen to be the one with the skill of selling, and coaching, and creating, the visionary, so I go do that. I give my skill my all. And then I find the best skilled people to surround myself with to fulfill any gaps where my skill isn’t the best. And we all together user our highest skills to grow the business, help people and now take care of the baby, and to help protect the profit which is what we’re going to talk about next week, protecting the profit.

So, if we use the president and the Secret Service analogy, I’m sure although the president is – and I’m just making this up, but is seen as the country’s greatest asset, but I just wonder, I bet that they also have a humbleness when interacting with Secret Service agents knowing that the Secret Service is doing a job they could never do. They’re putting their life literally on the line every day ready to take a bullet to protect their country.

I assume, let’s just say my assumption is right for the sake of this argument, there is respect, and gratitude, and humility, from the president with the Secret Service. With that assumption that is how I feel about the people around me, especially because they aren’t assigned the role, they chose it. So be very careful to not take this concept and run it through the filter of your ego. This concept will not, I promise you, will not create separation for you with employees, your contractors or any of your loved ones.

Seeing yourself as an asset will not create separation for even you within yourself. It’s not going to make you more conceited, or selfish, or arrogant, or self-absorbed, or any of the things you might think. It might make you uncomfortable for sure, we aren’t used to taking ourselves this seriously and likely we haven’t surrounded ourselves on a daily basis in our daily lives with people who take themselves this seriously. So, to lead and go first might feel weird and uncomfortable.

But it I just want you to consider it. Start with answering all of the questions from this episode. You can get the transcript at staceyboehman.com/podcast. You go to episode 196, I almost said 169, 196. And download the transcript. You can answer all these questions. But explore what changes when you consider yourself the asset. I want you to consider when you see yourself as the asset, if you think about a selling perspective that your energy is what sells. If you consider yourself the asset of your business, other people will start to see you as the asset in their lives.

You become the asset to them having the most amazing life. I consider my mentor a huge asset. I consider my one-on-one coach a huge asset. I consider my mastermind I’m in a huge asset. So, when you see yourself as the asset, clients will see you as their asset. What?

Okay, so the final thing I want to offer you is that if you and your spouse both work, or you and your partner both work, if you are both entrepreneurs or you’re both just working. Just imagine yourself as Beyonce and Jay-Z. You being the asset does not have to make your spouse less than an asset. In fact, even if you both don’t work, when I used to think about stay at home moms before I even had a kid, I was like, “What do you mean? You’re the asset of the whole family. Everything falls apart if you’re not there.”

Mom is the asset, so I consider that to be true with my husband. He’s always joking and he’s like, “If you ever divorce me, you’re screwed. No one can make eggs like I can.” And I’m like, “This is true for sure. My husband is the asset. So, whether you both work, you both have businesses, or only one of you works, you both get to be the asset. You being the asset does not make anyone else less of an asset. So don’t approach this with all or nothing thinking. Don’t approach this from what you will do or from your ego.

Start with how you will think, and how you will feel, and how you will make decisions. Okay, have a fantastic week, you all. I will talk to you next week.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2k for 2k program where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part using my simple 5 step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.