Ep #376: Quit or Breakthrough with Chris Donohoe

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: Hi coaches, welcome to episode 376. I have the most fun and also deeply important topic to talk about today. I have one of my clients, Chris Donohoe, on the episode to interview on a topic that I’ve been thinking about for quite a while in my own personal journey, but then when Chris wrote me an email with the subject line, “Quit or Breakthrough?” it really has had me like nonstop thinking about this idea and the line between quitting and breaking through.

So I’ve asked Chris to come on the podcast today. Say hello, everyone. Chris.

Chris: Hello, everybody. 

Stacey: Welcome to the podcast. So here’s how we’re going to start. This is what I’ve shared with Chris behind the scenes, and what I’ll share with you. We’re going to start by I’m going to read some of the email exchange that Chris and I had when he sent me this message, “Quit or Breakthrough,” and then we’re going to talk about the aftermath, which, spoiler alert, is really amazing. Really good.

Chris is in a great spot since this email, which is also why he’s being so generous and allowing us to kind of see the inside of his brain when he was in this place of quitting or breaking through. And I think what you’re going to hear is going to resonate so deeply with experiences that maybe you have had that have made you feel like you’re at your breaking point.

And I want this podcast, my intention is that it lives on forever for every coach who is in a moment where they are either breaking down or breaking through, where they can come back to this episode and use Chris, use my story, use this exchange, use this conversation to propel them into the breakthrough and keep them from quitting. So this is my goal with this episode. It’s a lofty goal.

Okay, so let’s dive in. I have to now find the emails. There, here we are. Okay. So I’m just going to read them. Is that cool, Chris?

Chris: Yeah, go for it.

Stacey: And then we’ll just dive in and we’ll talk. Okay. Perfect. Before I do that, let’s introduce you first. Give them some context, actually, before I read them. Give them some context of like your where you were when you joined 2 Million Dollar Group, kind of like where your business was, what your hopes and excitements were, what you, what you coach people on. Like give them a good like this is where you were starting, and then these emails are I was cracking up. I was rereading these. And the email I’m like, we’re only three months in. There’s still nine months to go. Like it cracks me up so much because it almost feels like the feeling you had were like you were nine months in, right? Like it felt like you were deep in it. But I want to kind of like set the tone of where you were kind of coming in before we get to these emails.

Chris: That’s perfect. So Chris Donohoe, reporting live. And I when I signed up, I was my second round of 2 Million Dollar Group. The first round was very much like a transition. I had been running a business as a consultant. I was shutting down a lot of my consulting revenue and replacing it with coaching revenue.

Stacey: Which is such a big deal, by the way, just to start with.

Chris: Yeah, I look back on that, I’m like, that was a real when I was doing it, I was like, “Yeah, I’ll just shut down this half of my business and reopen another half and it’ll all work.” And it did, but that was a lot of work. 

Stacey: Yeah. And that round was only six months, right? We had I hadn’t transitioned it to a year yet.

Chris: Yeah, that was six months.

Stacey: That was a lot in six months.

Chris: That was a lot. And also, I came into 2 Million Dollar Group having not done 200k or 2k. So I was new to your universe, but I had been a listener for years. And I always told myself, from now looking back, I’m like, “What a ridiculous ego.” I was like, “I’m only working with Stacey once I’m ready to do the 2 Million Dollar room and I’ve hit the income requirements.” So that was the first time I engaged you. Looking back, I’m like, “Just start early.” I could have saved myself a lot of headache by working with you a lot sooner. Neither here nor there.

So we go into the second round, which was your first year-long program. And you were also launching, I think you had done Served in the Entrepreneur Series. You would also done Capacity Work. And Capacity Work really started drumming up in me a lot of blind spots that I had around where I was defending, like a limited sense of capacity in myself.

Well, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. Who I am is I had an idea of who I thought I was. And then in the process of starting to scale my business, which ended up being a lot harder than I anticipated. I was a little naive coming into it. It was harder than I thought it was going to be. Took a lot more mental and emotional strength and regulation than I realized was required.

And so all of that started coming into my consciousness, where I was like, “Oh my God, I have to become.” I started seeing what was really going to be required of me in terms of personal growth and who I would need to become in order to deliver a million dollar business. And I started just thinking, “I can’t do this. I’m not that person. I don’t have that within me.” So that’s the context at which I that’s the moment at which I sent you the email and I can fill in anything else.

Stacey: Yeah, I think if I could add, and you tell me if you think this is accurate, but just from the coaching that we had done. First of all, I also want to just say you also like had to do so much work to get your scalable offer to where it was and to get the messaging down. Like I remember there was a six-month period where we were working so hard on the right client because there was kind of two different types of clients that you were going to sell to, and it kind of sent the messaging in two different directions. And so then it sent the program in two different directions. And I don’t think people anticipate having to think through and talk through all of those things when we’re talking.

It’s easy to sell someone like you could sell mixed messaging to people when you’re at a multiple six-figure level and you’re getting on the phone with people because ultimately once you get on the phone with them, you can just say, “I’m going to tailor what I offer to exactly what you’re looking for,” right? That’s super easy. But when you’re on a webinar, you have to nail the bridging the gap. You have to nail what you’re helping them with and what their problem is, because you’re not getting on the phone with them.

And so then it becomes really important that it’s the right type of client with the right messaging, with the right solution, and your program delivers helps them get all the way there. It becomes like we spent a lot of time on that. And so I do think that maybe you didn’t expect that. I think most people don’t expect to have to like think through it at that level.

And then I think I see this happen with everyone, not just you, but I think that the extra added layer of brain drama is when you see these capacity issues, your brain, everyone’s brain, likes to go to solving actions quickly, so that I don’t have to deal with the identity stuff. So if I can just like quickly throw out another sales page, if I can just quickly do another webinar, I can, you know, cover up that failure, and I can move on to thi,s and I don’t I can outrun this like sense of everything about me has to change in order to become a millionaire. So I think that was happening too, but I’m curious what your thoughts were.

Chris: Oh, big time. I was like just efforting my way through. I didn’t know how to not effort my way through it. I couldn’t grasp that like I was just like, “No, I’ll just do it more and different, and I’ll keep going.” And so there was a lot of work. I was working the most I’d worked in many years, but it also was, I was failing in a lot of ways. And then in my unregulated emotion, I would burn down the whole thing I’d built and then rebuild the whole thing month after month after month.

Stacey: I know, I would like do your I would do like an audit of your work like, “Wait, hold on, this is completely different than it was last month.” And even at my in my in my business, my COO often, I’ll have like a bunch of ideas. I had for this new opening of 2 Million Dollar Group, I had two big ideas that I and I wanted to do them both. I was like, “Here’s this grand plan.” And my COO was like, “This is amazing, but we might want to implement one at a time because we won’t know which one worked or didn’t work if we don’t do them separately.”

And I remember thinking back, you were moving so fast. It was hard to be like, “What’s actually working here and what’s not working here,” and try to like get you to slow down. But I also think that this is the process. Like, I don’t think people realize this is the process, but this is the process.

Chris: Yeah. And on one level, I love that part of me that was just like, “I’ll just keep swinging.”

Stacey: Yeah, of course.

Chris: Awesome about it. But also, it’s funny because looking back, I’m like, “It’s shocking that I couldn’t hear.” You were reflecting this to me, and one of my besties is a 2k lifer who hopefully will not be a 2k lifer for long, but she was reflecting it to me, too. She’s like, “I think you’re changing too much. I think you’re changing too much.” It was like, “No, I just need to keep going.” I just like I couldn’t accept it until it just got to a point where I truly couldn’t keep doing what I was doing.

And then on top of that, we were in capacity work, and I started seeing like a lot of just areas where I was kind of phoning it in, a little entitled, a little like thinking it should be easy or thinking it should be happening. Like I had a lot of expectations that I think added, it became the perfect storm of like a pressure cooker.

Stacey: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let’s start there. Let’s start with the pressure cooker. Okay, I’m going to read some of these emails, and I’m going to try to do it quickly, but I do think that the conversation is so good here. It’s so good. Okay.

So let’s see. So we’re at the pressure cooker in this moment, changing lots of things. So I get an email. My team says, “Hey, Stacey, you might want to see this email.” It says, “Breakthrough or Quit?” And it’s a very short email, actually. That’s what’s so interesting when I think back, but I’m only going to read like one sentence.

You just said, “I’m finding it harder and harder to talk myself into staying in the Mastermind. The expense is high, the effort is high, and the return on my scalable offer is low. My belief in getting the results is also low. What do I do in this situation? I hate being that client. But alas, here I am.” And then you said, “I wouldn’t reach out if I weren’t feeling pretty desperate and at my wits’ end.” And I just feel like this email could be anyone writing in for any program ever. Like any student, I feel like so many people would be like, “Oh, I’ve gotten this email from clients.” Like, I know this email.

Okay. So this is what I wrote. And what’s so fascinating is I wrote you a book based on a very little information, but just knowing you and knowing that the title of the email, “Breakthrough or Quit.”

Okay, so here’s what I said. “Chris, here is what I see. In the first round, you were in creation mode. You had hope, faith, belief, and innocence. You got to think of people buying this and making loads of money without having to go into the failure. And then you went to sell it, and the innocence is gone. And now you know it’s hard. Now you know it’s way harder than you imagined.

You have two options, and you really need to think about this moment because it’s a big one. You can regulate yourself and remember that you are still on track to make the same amount as last year in your one-on-one offer, even if you didn’t grow at all and didn’t sell a single spot of your scalable offer. And you can relax into that. And from a place of enoughness, decide to give yourself the year to figuring it out.

Give yourself the spaciousness to be in a room supporting you at the highest level while you trial and error and you figure it out. From a place of leadership, connecting to your people, knowing that the same way you’re feeling about this is the way they’re feeling about going out on their own. And from this place, my guess is you start selling. We are three months into the year. There is still nine months of learning and growth and trial and error to go. And it’s a lot of time when you are calm and sufficient.

Right now, you are selling as if it’s life and death for you to get these sales. These sales have to come in for you to believe you can do it, for you to feel okay, for you to honor your word to yourself in this mastermind, for you to not quit on yourself, for you to be committed, for you to enjoy your business and yourself. It’s a lot you need from your clients of this offer to feel okay. And they aren’t going to give it to you when you need it this bad. This is the truth.

The second option is you quit, but I would really contemplate this because I don’t think quitting is easier. I think it’s harder. You’re either quitting on this dream, and you will always know that, or you’re quitting on the mastermind, and you’re trying to do it on your own without help or support. I know you’ve heard me say this many times, that it’s actually harder to quit than to figure it out, but now it’s you. So I would contemplate this for yourself.

For me, this is what keeps me from quitting when it’s really, really hard. And I have met this a lot in 10 years. But what I see is stuck areas or blind spots in leadership. So if I don’t figure it out, I can’t help my clients on it. You may not have coached people yet who get stuck and are having a hard time and want to quit, but you will. And the only way to get them through it is having gone through it and succeeded yourself. So this, to me, is more than just a simple decision. You have to remember who you are.”

Then I also sent you this, and I wondered if we should actually read this or not, but I really just like feel like this is so important to your story, and I think it will help connect other people to hard things they have done as well. But I know that Chris is a New Yorker. I know that he is in Brooklyn, and he has been there for many I can consider you like you are a New Yorker, not a transplant. You are a New Yorker.

And so I said, “Chris, I also want to tell you a story and remind you of something.” This is a second email I sent you. “I told this story recently on How to Sell Life Coaching. My second mother, Madre, is a 75-year-old Jewish lifelong New Yorker from Queens. She’s tough. And one time I got lost years ago and ended up in Tribeca.”

I wondered if you laughed at this story because you really get it. “I ended up in Tribeca instead of where her apartment is in Columbus Circle. I was fresh, new to New York, sweet 29-year-old Midwesterner. It was traumatic. I tried to ask people for help, but they hurriedly gave me directions in a way I couldn’t understand. What’s uptown? What’s downtown? What’s the street subway entrance? What line to what line? For hours I wandered the streets, my cell phone dead, not knowing my Madre’s number by heart. I finally figured it out somehow and arrived at her apartment, crying my eyes out, expecting a hug, expecting consoling.

She opened the door and said, ‘Dry your tears. You got to toughen up, girl, or this city’s going to eat you alive.’ It felt so harsh at the time, but it worked. I stopped feeling pity and scared, and I got to work to figure it out. Years later, my husband and I were leaving Mason Premiere in Brooklyn, and one of the trains we needed had closed, and they had posted this like insane list of reroutes to get back to Manhattan. And we’d both been drinking absinthe cocktails all night. And I told him, like in my drunken state, ‘I’ve got this.’ I got us home because I knew the city, but because Madre didn’t let me stay overwhelmed and incapable.

You made it in New York. If you can make it in this city, you’ve heard the saying, ‘You can make it anywhere.’ Right now, you’re feeling like the 20-something Midwesterner new to the big city and not knowing how to use the trains, overwhelmed by the fast talkers and the movers and the harshness of city life. Don’t leave. As you know, it gets really great when you truly know and love NYC and how to navigate it. It’s the best place on Earth, but it takes a lot of toughness to acclimate.”

You responded, and this was like my favorite response ever. I actually want to read your PS first. You said, “In terms of NYC, I arrived in 2009 with only $600 in my bank account after my family had disowned me. I was sleeping on a hardwood floor in Brooklyn and working hourly under the table. I won’t say where, stamping out expiration dates on expired bags of frozen hot chocolate. I knew the whole time that I would do whatever it took to make it here. I’ve got to find that part of myself again.” So that was your PS.

But then you said, “I’m taking everything in you’re saying seriously with deep consideration. The thing that’s creating fear and dread is that I don’t currently relate to myself as someone who can become the type of leader you’ve been describing because currently I am willing to give up.” I thought this was so fucking radically honest. It made me fall in love with you, Chris.

“I am willing to give up. I am looking for the path of least resistance. I am entitled. I do complain. I do gossip. I am impatient. I’m graspy, and I’m desperate. These are aspects of my shadow that I’ve learned to live with and even move through the world with them with grace for the most part. But I have a strong suspicion that I have to let go of them to become this next version. And I can’t actually figure out how to let go. I can’t even imagine who I am outside of these things, and that’s terrifying for me.

It’s the true experience of dread that the person I know myself to be will cease to exist. It’s a death. It’s like I don’t believe I have access to this new way of being that you’ve been calling us into. I see the standard, and I can’t actually picture how I could ever become him. It feels unavailable, off the map, not in range. I see it in you, I see it in others, but then I look inward, and I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t have that,’ and I also don’t have the capacity to get it. Like a tulip can’t become an ardvark. That’s how I feel. It’s so wild as an experience, which is scaring the shit out of me. But I will keep showing up. I’m still in this.”

And then you said, “Let me clear my head tonight.” And then you wrote back, and you said, “I’m in. I’m staying in. The breakdown was black and white thinking. Everything was getting filtered through extremes. Win, lose, live, die, in, out, works, doesn’t. A lot was impossible from that place, including my ability to be a flawed person and a great leader. The breakthrough has two parts.” I think this is really brilliant too.

“First is luxury. 2 Million Dollar Group is a luxury experience, not a necessity. Scaling is a luxury, not a necessity. Learning to sell online is a luxury, not a necessity. And the second is tolerance, and I mean it in the true sense of the word, like pain tolerance. I am bankrupting my tolerance for quitting, for impatience, for beating the shit out of myself, and I’m practicing more tolerance for contradiction, nuance, delayed gratification. I promise I will keep myself in this group until January, and I always keep my promise to myself. I trust my promise more than my fear and my smallness. Thanks for trusting me to get here.” 

Okay, I love this so much, and I wrote another one, but I think we can stop here. I think this is so brilliant. Like how you just walked yourself through this. So as I reread those and reflected that back to you, what is coming up for you now?

Chris: Oh my gosh, I’m like full body response because it’s like first hearing you read it, I don’t know, hearing it in your voice, it’s like it lands again and even just more as deeply as it did the first time. So it’s so meaningful to hear it. And I really do, you said earlier, it’s like I was truly breaking down. It did not feel in the moment; I did not have the belief. And then it was just there was something in me that was like, “I have to, I want this. I really want this, but I’ve got to I can’t keep thinking about it the way that I’m thinking about it.”

And I remember at the time also, so like Capacity Work was going on, and I had posted something in Capacity Work where I was like, you know, one of the qualities I was seeing in myself was like, I had designed my life around being kind of like water in the cracks. Like, wherever the crack was, I could always just find it, and the water moves with the crack. So you always have a path forward. But that’s very different than like putting a big goal out, declaring the goal, and saying, “I’m going to create this result no matter what and no matter what it takes. I will create the crack.”

Stacey: Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

Chris: And I was seeing myself as like, “I don’t do that. My whole life is like find the path of least resistance. What’s the path that actually makes sense given where you are right now and then making the most of that?” That was the game I had played, and that’s how I had built my business up until a certain point. 

Stacey: It’s a very scrappy way of being, which I totally get because I was like that as well.

Chris: Yes, scrappy, resilient, saying it’s like a lot of like improving and dancing in the moment, saying yes. And when I saw that, like that strategy was not going to work for scaling, I was like, “Oh, shit.”

I mean, this is behind the scenes. I mean, I also was just looking at like how I was spending my free time, who I was spending my free time with, even little things like I was like, “I don’t think I should be drinking.” I quit drinking in the process of all of this. I lost 20 pounds. I mean, like I really I saw like once I started becoming that new version, the ripple effects were, it was as big as what I was seeing. It’s just I didn’t believe I could do it. I had to get that belief. And that moment was when I generated it.

Stacey: That’s so crazy. When you said it’s like a tulip becoming an ardvark, I thought about that a lot. And I’m like, “It really does feel like that.” Like, I even see that now for my like really big goals that I have. I’m like, “Sometimes I look at that, and I’m like, do I have that in me? Is that like I don’t know that I have that. I don’t know that I’m capable of that.”

Like one example that I think is like just for me to, you know, work through in my own coaching. But when I see like huge revenue numbers, like 15 million, 20 million, 30 million, I’m like, “I don’t know that I even like want to work that hard.” Like, I’m not like, I am a human design projector. I love my time off. I love to be like so I don’t know I’m like, “Do I want my business to be my whole entire life?” And I see that I have like this belief that number one, it would be, but also that I couldn’t just excel at a level at that level, like that I would like be tired or whatever it is. And I think about that a lot. I’m like, “It really does sometimes feel like tulip and ardvark.”

And when I was shedding my hot mess identity, it very much felt like that. I remember like it’s almost like when my million dollar experience was I’m the tulip and everybody else is the ardvark. And so I can tell. I can see that they’re all making it. I can see that they’re all like killing it, that they have the business structure right. They have their offer set. They have their ideal client. They have their client acquisition strategy. Like it’s all where they have a team. They were talking about KPIs, and I’m like, “I don’t even know what that means.” Like they have all the things.

And here I am like this scrappy person that has been the exact what you described it, like I can just find the cracks and move in the way that I’m supposed to make the multiple six figures, and, you know, at this point, I think I was at like 800-something thousand, so it was like very close to a million. But that extra like gap of 160,000 to get to the million, like you just can’t, like I remember Brooke used to say this over and over. It’s like, “You cannot, you will not be able to outwork your goals.” Like, you will not be able to just keep working and keep producing hundreds of thousands of dollars. There will be a cap to which your identity has to shift in order for you to get to the next level. And it really does like you will come up against like this is impossible for me.

Chris: 100%. And you said something that still every time I read it or you say it, it lands. You’re like, “And now it’s you.” It is so easy to see it in other people. We’re like, “Oh no, but you can.” And but then when it’s you and it’s your drama, you’re like, “No, but this is realer than anything. This is worse than anything. My reasons are harder than anyone else’s.”

And I had to just be like, “Wait, wait, wait. I have I’ve lived this a million times. I’ve seen a million other people go through it. It’s just that now I can’t believe, I can’t be bought into the idea that I am stuck in this identity or that this is my moment of impossibility. This cannot be the moment of impossibility for me, no matter how real it feels, there’s another way.”

And then I remember thinking, “I either get to keep my limitations, or I get to have a million-dollar business. I either get to keep beating the shit out of myself or I can have a million-dollar business, but I can’t have both. I can only take one forward.” And that’s that was the journey of like realizing, I started paying attention to the true, the millionaires in the room and I was like, “How do they think? How do they talk? What do they say? How do they bring challenges? How do they talk about what’s going on in their business?” And then I wouldn’t beat myself up if I noticed gaps.

Like things that I would want to complain about or feel small about or be bought into if I noticed that they were not bought into it as a problem, I was like, “They see something different that I don’t see yet.” And then I started watching you and how you would coach. I was like, “I want to be able to predict how Stacey’s going to coach this so that I can see how she’s already thinking. And if I can start thinking the way she’s thinking, I’ll know based on if I would say something similar if I can hear what she can hear when she’s coaching.” So I was just holding myself to this standard that was quite high, but there’s no way to do that if you’re also beating yourself up when you see the.

Stacey: Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. And it’s like I’m actually curious what you, if you can remember specific things of what you saw them reacting to. Like what felt different about the millionaires in the room that you were seeing and you weren’t seeing for you?

Chris: Okay, I won’t say names because I don’t want to like blow up anybody’s spot, but there’s another gentleman in the room and he one day, actually, another coach in the room asked him like, “How are you thinking? Like, what do you think that I don’t think? Stacey says we’re supposed to think like millionaires.” And he’s kind of like, “I don’t know, just start watching.” And you were like, “I’ll just start watching.” So I started watching.

And I remember one day he came in and he was like, “Yeah, like this isn’t really working.” And so I’m thinking like, “I really want people to feel so excited about this bonus. And I just want them when I announce it to be so excited by it.” And I was like, and I noticed my own thoughts being like, “What is wrong with these idiots that they’re not excited about my bonus? Or what’s the right bonus that if I would be like, I don’t get why they wouldn’t just like this doesn’t even work.”

And I noticed I was like, “Okay, this guy is like, I want to delight and surprise my people. I want to create a winning the lottery experience.” And I’m Chris Donohoe over here being like, “What is wrong with all my idiot people in my webinar?” I’m like, “Very clear difference.” And I was like oh my gosh, we’ve got to shift, and at first…

Stacey: Okay, hold on. That is so interesting because I have noticed, and I want to get back to I have something else I want to ask you about too, but I have noticed this because I coach selling so much, right? And there’s something about at the multiple six-figure level, and I think this happens everywhere, but I just see it a lot at this level where you’re used to winning so much that when you’re used to winning and you’re making loads of money, when that is your perception and your context, then you’re like super happy with your audience, right? Because you’re making so much money and they’re doing all the things they’re supposed to be doing.

But then, when you try to go to the million-dollar level, it suddenly feels like you’re failing because now it’s like the multiple six figures is not good enough because it’s supposed to be seven figures, right? And then there’s this big gap. And in the big gap, you make an enemy with your audience. You’re like, “They’re the reason I’m not there. They’re the problem.”

Especially when you create an offer, if you’ve been used to selling $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 one-on-one packages, and then you’re selling a $2,000 offer or a $3,000 or $5,000 offer, and you’re like, “Don’t they realize this is the cheapest way they could ever work with me? And why aren’t they just jumping on it? And then this bonus is so amazing. Why aren’t they?”

There’s something about the like where the gap is big for the income you want to make that it starts, your brain, unchecked, can start to turn into it’s me against the audience. But when you are like the gentlemen that you’re speaking of, actually, I’m having him on the podcast, but when he’s in this like success cycle right now, right? Going from 3 million to 5 million.

And when you’re in a success cycle where you’re making way more money than you anticipated, then suddenly it’s like, “Oh my God, my audience is doing everything they’re supposed to be doing. Of course, I want to surprise and delight them.” But you could be thinking that at any level, right? I want to surprise and delight them, and they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and I’m so grateful for them. But it does require, I think, in some situations, you have to push your brain to do that. 

Chris: Oh my gosh, it was so much intentional thought creation on a level that I did not realize how much. I would, it got to a point where any time there was like not, I don’t, it’s not like I was positively, it wasn’t like just a positivity pep talk. It was like if I saw myself going into negative thoughts, like, “Well, the whole industry and how people used to buy, they don’t buy that way. And so no one’s going to buy this.”

I would go into like the industry and then I would get an ad from someone who’s like, “The reason your business is because the industry is collapsing and you’re in the wrong thing. You need to be doing” and I’d be like, “It’s true and I shouldn’t be doing this and why am I spending money?” And it just became a lot of negativity, and I realized, “I cannot hold this and show up at the level required. It has to go.”

Stacey: So good. Okay, so let me ask you this. If you had quit, let’s like explore this a little bit. When you were in that place, and your brain was like, “You should just quit,” what did it imagine would happen? Like, if you could just like release, you know, you don’t have to make the payments for 2 Million Dollar Group anymore. You don’t have to try to scale to a million. You can go back to sort of like I think our brain offers this as a desire to reset. Like, let’s just reset everything. So I’m curious, like what was your brain fantasizing about? I think that’s like the best way to describe it. It’s like, what was it fantasizing about if you had quit?

Chris: The fantasy was, okay, I know five corporations right now where I could go in and make $200,000, and I could be a consultant. And yeah, fine, I’d have to just like make PowerPoints for a living. But whatever, I’ll make my PowerPoint money. And then, lik,e I’ll be at the beach, and I’ll go to the gym, and I’ll just like have I’ll have enough money to be happy and like and I won’t have to worry about all of this. It was like this fantasy that like choosing something easier or like choosing the old familiar path would somehow be great.

But then like I took the assignment very seriously. You’ve given this assignment many times where you’re like, “Anytime I have a big decision, I play it all the way out in both directions. What if I stay? What if I buy the house or don’t buy the house? Invest or don’t invest?” So I did the exercise all in, and I was like, “Don’t don’t fantasize.” I started noticing this fantasy of it’ll be so great. But I was like, “But I’ve already lived that. There’s a reason I wanted out of it. What was it actually like to have that? What were the…”

Stacey: And what was it actually like?

Chris: A nonstop feeling that there was something more I could be doing, a nonstop listening to the Stacey Boehman podcast being like, “I could be like Stacey. I bet I could do that. I bet I could do what Stacey’s doing. I bet I could like I could be launching. Yes, like, oh yeah, I could have an offer suite. I could have an ascension model.” Like just listening and watching and talking about in my head about how I could do all of these things, or you can actually go out and do it. It’s like the and I just remember always feeling like I had this, you would, an episode years ago about like the light inside and how it’s like always burning.

And I was like, “I have a light that is always burning. It’s always going to be there. And as long as that light is there, I can substitute other stuff. I can feed myself artificial sweetener all day long and try to call it sugar, but it’s not real sugar.” And so I knew the real sugar for me was in being a coach, being a leader and in growing a practice on my own terms to serve my people at the highest level and to become the version of myself who could do that. I knew it deep back somewhere. I only questioned it once I realized how hard it actually is. That’s the only reason is once I realized it’s hard.

So then I started looking at a 30-year time horizon. Forget the next nine months. I was like, “I have a 30-year career ahead of me. I’m 38. I’ll be 68 if I retire at 67, 68. I have 30 more years. What do I want to do? Keep designing my life around limitations and going backwards, not forward, and going and finding the crack that seems a little easier and where the payoff is a little bit more immediate or do I actually want to be able to say, ‘I gave this everything I had. I left it all on the court.'”

And that question, that’s what got me across the line was being like, “I think this fantasy is not true. I’ve already lived it. I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to suffer with a big dream and to feel like you have so much more in you, but that you’re giving your time and your days to things you’re not actually invested in.” And it didn’t actually look easier when I when I truly evaluated it. And then once I started taking out the self-flagellation and beating the crap out of myself, I was like, “Oh, building this business could be a lot doesn’t have to be as painful. I can show up and do the hard work and not have it destroy me. And I could probably get the results too.”

Stacey: So good. So good. I love it. I feel like you’re speaking for all coaches right now. It’s so great. I did this for myself. I think it’s the most powerful thing you can do when you are in entertaining quitting is to go all the way through and not let yourself just see the fantasy, but see what the reality would be as well.

I had such a strong fantasy when I had Jackson of I’m quitting, and I’m going to retire, whether it’s indefinitely or for a few years. And I really like entertained that. I mean, we really like my husband, and I sat down and like really looked at the numbers and we had conversation after conversation about what it would look like. And I was just I was telling myself all I was taking all of the worst parts of the hard business growth because at the time my business was my revenue was declining, my profit was declining, I was having issues with employees and being canceled online at the same time as I’ve had this baby that I’m in love with.

So obviously it looked so much like more enticing to just stay home and be a stay-at-home mom, and, you know, and then when I’m getting on a call, I can hear my son crying for me out of the door, which is like this other, like most painful thing. And that I hadn’t really been acclimated to yet. And so I really went through it like what would it be like? And I found something very similar to you and I think everyone would find this that has the entrepreneur like bug inside of them is and I said this to someone, I think on an entrepreneur call recently.

I said, “At the end of the day, if you have ambition inside of you and you don’t answer the call to that ambition, then you ignore a part of yourself.” And you have to really think about what is life like when you ignore a part of yourself. If you have a goal and a desire and a dream to be someone bigger than you are now, to create something bigger than you’ve created, to achieve something you haven’t yet achieved, and you convince yourself of the fantasy because it’s so hard to not go after it, then you are living with yourself, which is what like the this is why coaching exists, right? Because everyone in the world is living with an unrealized ambition and telling themselves I’m the tulip and I’ll never be the ardvark. So there’s no way I can I can do this.

And there is a like I’ve been thinking about this idea of acute pain versus dull pain, and I think that dull pain isn’t, obviously it’s not acute, so you don’t have this like but it’s this like low level discomfort and sadness and disappointment that you live with always while you’re not honoring the part of you that has this thing that it wants to do.

And I realized, “Yeah, I’ll be with my kids all the time, but I will be with them with this low-level dull pain of I could have built something incredible that I saw in my head, and I didn’t do it, or I, you know, I couldn’t manage both. And so I’m not I don’t have that part of me anymore. I don’t have the leader in me anymore. I don’t have the coach in me anymore. I’m not contributing, I’m not giving value anymore to, you know, the world. I’m giving value to my children. Obviously, that is worthy, but there’s a piece of me that wants to be giving value to the world and wants to keep doing that.”

And I realized like, yes, the acute pain is going to be like a lot harder temporarily. But if I can get over the hump of the acute pain, then I get, instead of a like dull pain, I get this like low level of brilliance and amazing and pride and gratitude and fulfillment that replaces the dull pain of not doing the thing. And so I’m like, “You got to get you got to just do the acute thing.”

Chris: It’s so true. And I mean, what’s emerged in me in the last eight months or since whatever, whenever that happened, has been anytime I’m in the discom, it’s uncomfortable to be alive. I just believe being on the planet is like it’s just very uncomfortable to be here. Like, there’s always something scary and upsetting. Within yourself, the person next to you, and then collectively, all of us are just constantly uncomfortable. Like, “What are we doing?”

Stacey: Yes, for sure.

Chris: I just I just started looking at like the cost of kind of abandoning this part of myself. I was like, “You know, maybe that’s cute for six months, maybe it’s cute for a year. Maybe I like kind of like float around living in this like I could even keep it up for two years.” But eventually, what I’m going to be 60. I’m going to be 80. I’m going to have to account for the choices that I was making along the way. And I started seeing it, and I was like, “I don’t want the regret of at 70 being like, ‘I really should have gone for it. I really should have just stuck with that longer than what felt reasonable.'”

And I also realized that a lot of the pain that I was creating, there’s like actual pain. It’s like when something bad happens, it’s going to hurt. But then there’s the whole identity that you create around the pain. Like someone flicked me off and that hurt my feelings and it’s because they’re so rude and they’re so bad and this neighborhood is dangerous and I’m in and also I’m a pathetic person and I shouldn’t have even been walking there. What an idiot for me walking there. I shouldn’t have been in their way. I should just shut it all down. It’s like all that extra pain on top of the source injury is so unnecessary. And I could not carry it with me forward.

So the byproduct of opting in and sticking with the breakthrough is that I still experience the pain of the world, but not that second layer of unnecessary pain. And any time that I suspect that it’s there, I’m like, “Is this just me creating an identity around a hard circumstance that is making this harder for me to move forward?” And if I suspect it, I go, “What would that gentleman in the room be thinking? The other guy, what would Stacey, what would Stacey say at this moment?” And then I just become it

 And the more I’ve practiced it, the now is the easier path where I’m like, “Oh, we’re stuck in this impossible line where nothing is functioning. What’s the path forward look like from a place of empowerment and choice versus complaint and I’m out of options?” And my whole life has improved from this. It’s not just my business. I think what one thing I’ll say on results, too, was I think when we were talking about this, you were like, “You made 100 extra thousand.” And it’s actually I made 120 extra thousand. So I want we clarify I was 120, not 100. But the bigger thing is like, and it’s really like I can see how I’m now on a different path of living my life in everyday moments that is so different from the old identity. And now that I’ve got that, I’m like, “I will do anything to keep that.”

Stacey: That’s what I try to tell people. I’m like, it’s not just like because at some point, it stops being about the money. It can’t be about the money because you just have so much of it. And I was coaching someone recently on this. She’s like, “I’m very comfortable. We have lots of money.” And she’s like, “Of course we could have more money, but I’m very comfortable.” And I’m like, “Yeah, so it has to become about something more.” And for me, it is about what you just said.

When you are forced into a new identity because you have set a goal so high that it requires you to actually become someone different to achieve it, you get to live with that someone different forever. And I’m always very clear at every income goal that I’m I’m going towards. Even if I never like, if I never make 30 million, I honestly I don’t even know that I care that much. It’s like it’s fine. But when I imagine my $30 million self who’s built a $30 million business, I’m so in love with that version of me.

And so what compels me to like want to even shoot for 30 million or try to get there or 15 million, 20 million, like to get to those upper echelons, I think about, well, there’s the becoming of me, and then there’s the proof that I’ve become that because my results show it, right? Which are two different things. I get to enjoy the becoming of me the whole way through. And then when I actually achieve it, I know, “Oh, I did it.” Like I’ve actually gone all the way through, and now I am that new identity. And for me, it’s more compelling.

Like, I think about the way I’m going to live with my family. Like I just have such a clear vision of the person I am when I meet my I love the tulip and the ardvark. When I see like that completely different version, and then I know I went through the acute pain to become her, and now I can become any version of myself. I don’t know, that feels it doesn’t, it’s just like that’s why we’re here.

Chris: Yes. It’s so I mean, that’s what Alive I think is all about. It’s like fully alive in the life you’ve got. I just feel like I have more choice, like I have more I’m more options available. And even the acute pain doesn’t hurt as bad anymore, somehow. It’s like somehow I’m just

Stacey: Well, because you’re not layering it anymore. Like I used to layer all pain with like the universe spites me, hates me, like I’m not chosen, it doesn’t love me, like really painful thoughts. Like, even if like if it rained on vacation, yeah, I’d be like, “Oh, it only does that on my vacation because the universe doesn’t love me.” Yeah. So painful, right?

And then if you look at someone that’s hugely successful and that you like think about like how are they thinking and it rains on their vacation? They’re like, “Oh, I’ll just extend the vacation or oh, like it was so beautiful. The clouds looked stunning and like it was such a vibe,” or they’re like, “Oh, I’m so grateful. I’m rich. I get to take more than one vacation. Like it’s okay if it rains on this one.”

But they’re not thinking like the universe doesn’t love me, right? That’s a more like such a painful layer on top. And some of that is like I’m just not meant for success or I can’t I’ll never be able to do it or I’m just not I don’t have what it takes. Like those are very painful layers on top of the failing that you’re doing already.

Chris: One of the things I had to let go of, I have two things to say. One was I realized I needed additional supports in this journey. I was like, “You know what? Like I’ve been in therapy for years. I’ve done programs for years, but I need like a new level of like I need a way to emotionally ground myself.” So I started looking for like, what are additional supports to plug in? I was like, “If I’m going to shed this identity, what other supports do I need?”

And I think sometimes as coaches, we I don’t know, we forget that maybe you need another support. It’s really funny. So that was very helpful. I was like, “Okay.” So I hired a new therapist, started working with them, super valuable. And then there was another thing I wanted to say around this. What was the last thing you said? There was, oh, it was the part of that what I started letting go of.

Stacey: Yeah.

Chris: There was this identity I had. You brought it up in the email that you sent to me which was like, “You can’t need this from your clients in order to be okay.” And I just realized that so much of my success in life was built on needing success in order to be lovable. And I could see it. I always saw it, but like I never really had to break up with it at the levels I was playing at. It was like I could just kind of keep doing it and getting the hit, and it was not a really big deal. Something about the scaling journey, it was like very clear. I could no longer need the success in order to be lovable. And then I had to then go back and attend to that piece of me that felt unlovable. And then I had to ask, “What additional supports? What work do I need to do here?” And then take that on with intention and really and then and do what I needed to do to get myself there.

Stacey: That’s so good. When you don’t need people to like you or like your post or engage with you or buy from you, your power just like increases exponentially. And I do think a lot of entrepreneurs have that because I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but a lot, they did like studies and that they found that entrepreneurs, people who are really successful entrepreneurship tend to have trauma in their childhood that they had to overcome. They had to become so resilient in their childhood that they developed those tools that make them then amazing at entrepreneurship. They’re bigger risk takers, they have a higher tolerance for pain, like all of the things. And so part of that wound, right?

If you have that, if you have the childhood trauma is I’m, you know, or it and it could be child like it could be like money trauma, right? I deal with a lot of people who were very poor, and so the Ivy League education, the corporate job, or the, you know, becoming a partner at the law firm or whatever was like this is safety and security for me. And then there are some of us that are like, “Oh, being accepted and loved.”

Like I remember when I got canceled, oh my God, it like it poked at such a deep childhood wound that was like, “You’re not lovable, you’re not good enough. Like you don’t get to, you know, participate in the family things and just like you’re the black sheep,” like all of the things. And you do have to clean that up. Otherwise, it just like it eats you alive at the higher income levels because you need more and more and more people to buy your scalable offer. You need more and more people to be in your audience, and the more you need from them, the less they want to give you. And then you it turns into a vicious cycle.

Chris: And then the other part about the scaling journey is you do all of this emotional work while also showing up more than you’ve ever showed up for your clients. You’ve got 15 one-on-ones, three groups going, you’re got your podcast. It’s like your week is packed and…

Stacey: You’re like, “Which webinar title is the best webinar title? Like…”

 

Chris: So it’s like you’re doing the most on every level, but also like releasing more and somehow finding calm and it’s like it’s like doing all of this while also more is being demanded of you. And I once I made peace with that too, I was like, “I guess this is just,” you talk about this, you’re like, “It just becomes your new normal.” And I’m like, “Oh man, I love the version of me that now I can do these things fast, effectively, without drama. I can support other people through the journey. I can show up for increasingly hard things.” It just really has been true, it was truly transformational. I didn’t realize, I mean it was as transformational as becoming a coach for the first time was going through my million-dollar scale. And which I’m continuing on. We’re not there yet, so the transformation continues.

Stacey: So amazing. I am curious. I know we only have a few minutes left. We both have hard outs at the hour. But what does your husband say about all of this? Like has he, we haven’t talked about like his experience of your before and after with your breakthrough.

Chris: My husband is a national treasure. He’s the sweetest man. He must be protected at all costs. He’s like, so he’s like an insurance executive. He’s like a company man through and through. Like, just like has no problem like taking orders, giving orders, falling in line, leading inside of an established company.

And I found him when I was 24. I was like, “I’m a child bride.” I don’t know how I’d like manage that. I don’t know how I had great judgment in one area, and I was a disaster in all these others, but I somehow knew. And the thing that I was attracted to him from the beginning was like he just gives, he just like gets the F out of my way and lets me be me, and always celebrates me, no matter what I’m bringing. So if I said, “You know what, I actually want to become like a professional clown,” he’d be like, “That is going to be so cool for you. I really can’t wait for you to become a professional clown.”

Stacey: Neil is like this too. Neil is also a national treasure.

Chris: It’s like unreal. And so like the other day I’m like, “I wrote this post.” He met me in Mexico. I’m writing this post. We’re poolside, and I’m like, “I’m writing this post. It’s so good.” And I read it to him and it’s like all about like taking your life into your control. And I’m like, “Isn’t that great?” And he goes, “Yeah, I think it could be good. I don’t think I’m really the audience for that.” And he just like goes back to his like his reading. And I’m like, “He’s just so supportive.”

And like I’m a I’m a very, I experience myself as a quite passionate, intense, even somewhat fanatical person at times. And he is just a full-on yes to whatever it is that I’m bringing. And not in a pushover way. Like he’s not like just like, like if I did something ridiculous, he’d be like, “Hey, like, you know, you should talk.” He would do it like this. He’d be like, “Well, what do you think Stacey would say about that?” That’s probably what he’d do. Like, “What do you think Stacey would say? What do you think your therapist would say?” Like, but he’s just an amazing support and just the sweetest man in the world, and I’m very fortunate.

Stacey: I love that so much. I love it so much. Neil is the same way. He’s just like he always says, “Stacey, you have never been more successful today. Like today is your most successful day.” Like he’s just always telling me like, “You’ve never been like in this moment, you’ve never been more successful.” And I’m always thinking like, that’s yeah, we need that. I often heard this, but something like the kite and the kite’s flyer.

Chris: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Stacey: You need that person on the ground like spinning the thing, so the kite can fly as high as possible. And I feel like that’s what it is.

Chris: He and I have been saying for a long time, too, like he because he does well, but he’s kind of like he’s the bond and I’m the stock. It’s just the stock hasn’t paid off yet. I mean, I’m doing well, but like I’m looking to be like a Stacey Boehman blue chip stock. And so…

Stacey: Blue chip stock.

Chris: Yeah, that’s where we’re going. So he’s just so supportive and I’m so grateful to have him. Oh my gosh.

Stacey: Amazing. Okay, we have like 40 seconds.

Chris: Okay.

Stacey: What have we not said yet that you need to tell everyone on this episode if they are in that really hard in between of quitting or breaking through? Putting you on the spot.

Chris: Watch Moana. You got to watch Moana. The little lady, the grandmother comes out there and she’s like, “Moana, listen, do you know who you are?” And you said that in your email. You were actually like, “You have to remember who you are.” And I think if you’ve got the call, these are words from Moana. I didn’t say this. Moana did, but it’s like if the call is in there, it’s in there and you’ve got to honor it. And it’s not going to go away unless you move through. There’s only one way forward, and it’s through, not out. 

Stacey: Oh, so good. By the way, I’m obsessed with Moana. I love that movie. I can’t watch it without crying like all the time. I’m so obsessed with it. But it is, it’s like that’s why it’s connecting to that like there’s something greater, there’s a bigger destiny. Like you have to break through. You just have to. There’s no other option. The other option is a fantasy.

And maybe that’s what we need to leave everyone with is like the quitting is a fantasy. It’s never going to actually give you what you want. The breakthrough is the only way to go. I love this. You like dropped a million gems. I’m so grateful that you were willing to like let me read the emails and for you to like talk about your experience and you’ve just articulated it so beautifully this whole entire episode. So I really appreciate you being here.

Chris: I appreciate you too. Thank you for having me.

Stacey: Yes, you’re so welcome. Okay, how can people follow you really quickly?

Chris: On Instagram, @Chris_Donohoe_. Donohoe is D-O-N-O-H-O with an E at the end.

Stacey: I love it. We will also link this up in the show notes and on social media when we post it. Thank you so much. I know we both have to jet, but I am just giving you the biggest virtual hug.

Chris: Thank you.

Stacey: Alright, bye-bye.

Chris: Bye-bye.

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.