Ep #78: Resourcefulness

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. Now, before we dive into today’s lesson, I have two things that I have to pat myself on the back for and shoutout my clients for. Number one, we made $4 million in the last 12 months. What? That’s insane. I feel closer to my $10 million goal than ever before.

And I just found it out. I wasn’t even trying to create $4 million in the last 12 months. I was very much focused on other things in my business. But I just happened to check my Stripe account and there’s a button that allows you to look at the last 12 months and I accidentally clicked that and it showed up and I was like, “What?” $4 million. That’s amazing.

So, that’s the first thing. Super proud of that. The second thing is, 2K people, I am so proud of the community we have created. I was scrolling looking for testimonials to shoutout on Instagram. You know, like, “I made my 2K back,” or, “I made 10K this month,” like achievements that I like to shout my clients out for.

I was searching the Facebook for them and it wasn’t hard to find – one three to five-minute scroll will find, like, 10 people shouting out that they made their money back or signed another client or had the biggest month ever. It is such a fun thing to be a part of. It’s so fun to be on the page, the energy, the excitement, the contribution that all of you are giving to each other and the way that you jump in and help each other out and the thoughtful responses you give when people ask for coaching.

I really genuinely feel like we have the best community ever and the more highest-level money-making life coaching, health coaching, wealth coaching, business coaching conversations ever and it’s so fun. I’m extremely proud of you 2Kers for showing up to the community and creating that and I’m super-proud of myself for creating the space for that.

And I’ve worked over the last year – actually, I would say the last, specifically, six months, I’ve really worked on creating the space I want the 2K Facebook community to be. Like, we created rules. I hired community managers to go in there and enforce those rules and make sure people aren’t selling and make sure when people are posting, they have to be up for coaching. You can’t post something and then not be willing to be coached on it by anyone, not just me.

And so, I really spent a lot of time harnessing the right energy to make this group so incredible to be a part of. And for a while, it felt kind of clunky and we were getting a lot of stuff that just wasn’t quite how I envisioned the community being. And now it’s like amazing. You could get lost for days in it.

We have to actually tell our VA, who pulls stuff from the page for us to use, we have to tell her to set a timer and get in and get out because you can get so lost in the incredible high-level conversations happening and the excitement of the celebrations and all of the things.

So, I just have to say, I’m so proud of the work my team has done, I have done, and my students have done to make our community so extremely powerful. Okay, so those are the two pats on the back; four million, 12 months, 10 million here we come. And 2Kers, you’re fucking killing it. Love you all.

Okay, so today, we’re going to talk about resourcefulness. I think this is the most underdeveloped skillset in human beings in the world today. Although information is at an all-time high and it’s never been easier to get answers to problems, the motivation and the determination to get that information is at an all-time low. Which I think is so interesting.

It really is, like, we don’t have to use the muscle anymore of thinking for ourselves. You can just scroll on Facebook and take everybody else’s thoughts. You can just Google things. You can read the news and you don’t have to do a lot of thinking on your own, which we would think is an amazing technological innovation to have. It’s truly, truly not.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about my students lately, the ones who are the most successful. And they all have one thing in common; their resourcefulness. We recently launched the 200K mastermind and when you join, I always give you the challenge to make your money back before you start the program. So, we usually enroll three to four months out.

So, there is a lot of time to do that. And I don’t give any tools or resources ahead of time to do that. This is what most people think is required of resourcefulness, is resources. But we don’t give any materials ahead of time.

I challenge you to make your money back without adding to your resources, without changing anything except your thinking, using your mind to figure out, how can I make an extra 25K right now? Without learning or having anything different, without changing your circumstance.

That way, you can come to the mastermind not even thinking about your investment, not worried about that, not trying to hustle to make money to make up for that. Now, does everyone do this? No. But a lot of them do. And I find it super-fascinating.

We have a lot of students, this round in particular – I love that they’ve been posting in 2K about it. So, those of you who are in 2K who might be in a little bit of fear about that big of an investment, you can see people doing it and start to believe that you could do it too, that it might actually be easier than you might be making it out to be, especially without even having the mastermind materials yet.

Like, a lot of you think that you won’t be able to make 25K until you get in and learn advanced selling techniques. But 25K is available to you always at any given moment.

My students who were making their money back before the mastermind, they’re not doing it because I gave them additional resources. They’re doing it because they have the skill of resourcefulness.

So, the definition of resourcefulness is the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. And I would add, the ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties and create results, and create outcomes that you desire. This is the skillset of entrepreneurship.

When you have a job, your job often tells you how the company often wants you to overcome obstacles and solve problems. But when you own your own business, it doesn’t come with an instruction manual. You have to create it.

And many of you don’t want to do this, for example, with, like, finding clients. You want someone else to tell you exactly how to do it, where to find them, what to say to them, how to get them to buy. You want a step by step manual.

Now, what’s fascinating is I actually give that to my 2K students, and yet still, some make their money back faster than others. Some are confused and have lots of questions. And some just get to it and never have any questions.

So, the ability to overcome obstacles or find solutions doesn’t actually come from having the answer. If it did, everyone would succeed immediately as soon as you had the answer. What I think is really fascinating is some answers are just out there and we don’t even think to go look for them. Because the ability to actually either find the answer or create the answer comes from the intangible; the mind.

The ability to solve problems and overcome obstacles and create outcomes you want comes from how you use your mind. In that specific thought process is the willingness to solve the problem with the information you do have, the resources you do have right now.

Because what also happens is, because we have so many answers out in the world right now in such a tangible way to look them up right at our fingertips on our phone is we become dependent on outside information. So, it’s either we don’t go for the information, or we become dependent on the information and we have stopped building the ability to think for ourselves.

So, for example, if you haven’t signed up for 2K because you don’t have 2K, your level of resourcefulness in your mind will determine if you go out and solve this problem for yourself or not. The same is true for your clients. They will want to work with you and not have the money, and their willingness to figure out how to solve that problem will determine if they do or not. Like, I didn’t have money to coach when I found out about coaching. What I did have, though, was resourcefulness.

My coach didn’t have to brainstorm ways for me to come up with the money. I asked myself that question. I brainstormed. I worked very hard to figure that out. I sold furniture. I cashed in my IRA. I worked extra hours. I spent less money. I got credits. I did all of those things.

I was willing to grab at any little solution and all the little solutions to come up with a bigger overall solution. The answer wasn’t immediately obvious. I had to work all the time for it, to find it. I was on payment plans and it was like, every month, I was becoming more and more and more resourceful to make that payment.

And at one point, I didn’t even pay my other bills. My car payment got two payments behind. And that wasn’t irresponsibility. It was resourcefulness; thinking bigger than now to create later.

Now, I’m using this example only because when you don’t exercise consistently your ability to solve your own problems, what’s going to happen is you will not be able to help other people solve their own problems. If you can’t come up with the money for coaching, you’re not going to be able to coach someone else on coming up with the money for coaching with you. It will be a blind spot for you and you will get stuck every single time.

Now, you may not have any issues coming up with money to pay for coaching. But you still might get stuck helping other people be resourceful because you are struggling in other areas. You might be struggling with time.

Any time you’re on the same wavelength of lack of resourcefulness with your clients, you will not sign them because you can’t solve their problem with the mind that has the same problem. You won’t even see it as a problem. You’ll just see it as the truth.

If you believe that you don’t have enough time and someone tells you that they don’t have enough money, those are both resources. You’ll be like, “Yeah, of course, there are limited resources.”

Okay, so, how you know what area that you’re not being resourceful in is what area do you feel would change, the outcome would change if you only had more resources? If you only had more money, more time, more support, better internet, if you lived in a bigger city, if you had better technological skills, if you had more education, if you didn’t have children, if you had a bigger house, an office, anything. What tangible thing do you think, if you had, it would make creating the solution you want easier?

A lot of you think, if you weren’t working fulltime, finding clients and dedicating time to your business would give you the resources you needed to make money. But you’re wrong. In this moment, all that’s happening is you’re being anti-resourceful, or unresourceful, or non-resourceful, however the proper way that you say it is.

Like, I actually looked it up and couldn’t find anything, and it just said that the opposite of resourceful is unimaginative, which I also thought was fantastic because that really is what I think my special skillset has always been when trying to solve problems and what makes me a master at it is I am imaginative.

I am willing to think and explore all the options for solving the problem instead of focusing on the problem and telling myself it can’t be solved. That is actually what keeps you from resourcefulness; focusing on the problem. And I think, in three specific ways.

So, focusing on yourself as the problem, being in the problem, so you’re shaming yourself, you’re pitying yourself, you’re being a victim of anything outside of you. You’re telling yourself, “I don’t have enough credentials. I don’t have enough experience.”

You’re focusing on you not having particular resources, either time or money or opportunity or status, or focusing on other people as the problem, “My coach isn’t clear enough, doesn’t respond enough. My husband isn’t supportive enough. My kids take up all my time. My boss is demanding. My mother needs care. My clients don’t have any money. No one wants coaching,” right? Anything that has to do with other people.

Or, the third one, the universe is the problem, “I’m not lucky. Life is hard for me. I haven’t been given the opportunity.” The best way to explain this one is it’s the opposite of believing the universe has your back. Like, anything that is contrary to the universe has your back is you putting the problem on the universe not delivering a resource for you.

Or it’s also believing the answer is outside of you, in more resources, in better luck with other people. Or an interesting one that I find a lot is with God or spirit or source or intuition. Like, one of those has the answer, meaning, “I’m going to pray, think, or feel into it. I don’t immediately have the ability to make a decision or take action right now already inside of me.”

Now, I’m not saying this is wrong. It just keeps you from having the power to solve your own problems and come up with your own solutions and create outcomes for yourself within you right now in this exact moment.

Now, I’m not super-religious, but if you have the ability to make decisions – because we talk about this is a lot in 2K, people are always presenting that their client had, we call it the God objection, and it’s that they have an objection that they can’t make a decision without praying on it and recieving the answer from a higher power.

And here’s the way I think about it. I could be totally wrong, so don’t take offense. This is just genuinely the way that I think about it that I think serves me really well is that, if we have the ability to make decisions, and we are created by God, then God had to have created every decision we’re able to make.

Like, if he’s almighty and made the world perfectly, then he created all decisions and all possibilities in the world. He didn’t create any accidents. He created resourcefulness. That’s how I choose to look at it.

Now, you get to decide for you and you can totally disagree with me. I don’t feel attached to that in any way. I understand that religion and spirituality is very personal. And there might even be holes in my argument. But just look into it for yourself and find, is this you? Where do you use God or spirit or source or a higher power as a reason to not be resourceful, to not have the power to make your own decision right now in this moment to create an outcome or solve a problem for yourself?

Again, I’m not super-religious, but I used the universe and God as a reason to not be resourceful for a very long time. I used to think that the universe or God was against me, that I was, like, not a chosen one or a lucky one or I wasn’t loved, that that’s why I couldn’t have the life I wanted. It’s really sad when I think about it now that I was just delegating all of it outside of me.

So then, every attempt I tried to solve my problems were always thwarted by this deeper belief that, like, I wasn’t the lucky or the chosen one. So, just look, where are you using anything woo, or any kind of non-physical entity to delegate your ability to solve problems, create results or outcomes that you desire.

If you want to be a super-successful entrepreneur, you just want to stack the cards as much in your power and control as possible. You want to learn to develop the skill of resourcefulness, solving problems and getting creative with options within you by you. And you want to just question every resource you think you need to be successful.

I think, if you’re broke and you start a business, you are often much better off than those who aren’t because it requires you to dig deep and to be as resourceful as possible because you don’t have resources.

Like, when you have money and time and all the resources that you could ever need in the world to succeed, it’s often the hardest to succeed because you use those resources to try to solve for your problem instead of your mind and imagination and your own critical thinking. And when you do that, what happens is eventually your problems will become bigger than your resources and you will run out of resources, trying to use your resources to solve your problems.

Eventually, you will run out of money. Y’all know, I watch Shark Tank a lot, and they always say that. There will be people that have used their resources to build their business, they’ve dumped millions of dollars in the business, and then they reach a level where they can no longer use their resources, they’re out of money, then they have to sell pieces of their business to try to get help.

And if the sharks are willing to even buy pieces of their business, because sometimes they don’t feel like they have the right mindset to take on a partnership with them because they haven’t learned how to solve problems within them instead of just buying themselves out of the problems or raising money to get out of the problem.

They always say, like, sometimes Ivy League-educated entrepreneurs will come in there and they’ll tell them that their education has worked against them. People who raise a lot of money with venture capitalists, they’ll say that often works against them. When they’re independently wealthy – any time they’re able to solve problems with money and time instead of their thinking, it works against them.

It doesn’t have to, but when you solve problems with resources, you lose the ability to solve problems or you don’t exercise the muscle of solving problems by evolving to become more resourceful. Having nothing requires you to dig deep right away.

I used to feel very victimy to my friends who were building businesses and had greater resources than me. And I had no idea at the time that developing this mindset of resourcefulness would actually make me a master objection crusher. Because I know the possibility and the resourcefulness that we all possess now because of my own willingness to be resourceful.

So, that doesn’t freak me out. Cashing in an IRA doesn’t freak me out. Having a partner mad at me about money I spend doesn’t freak me out. Family being unsupportive doesn’t freak me out. If you have a fulltime job, you’re not going to get any whining past me.

I drove six hours to work. I recorded videos for programs in Super 8 motels on the bed on a laptop. I had to ask all kinds of people, sometimes every store run that I worked, I had to get super-creative on who was going to watch my dog when I couldn’t drive there and I couldn’t travel with him.

I had to get super-resourceful in finding hotels that would allow me to have a dog. I had to figure out how to pay all my bills and keep afloat when I didn’t have all the money.

I lived in a small town with not so many networking events, so I drove hours to go to events. I just started looking up cities that were drivable. I figured it the fuck out. So, if I can do it, you can do it too, for every single thing; signing clients, making money, learning how to coach, scaling to a million.

I have also had some really bad stuff happen in my life while I was building a coaching business. And I didn’t stop because I was heartbroken, because I lost the ability to work in the state that I lived, because someone close to me tried to commit suicide, because I was in a car wreck. I figured it out even when.

This is something I teach my clients; even-when mentality. It’s just the mindset of commitment and resourcefulness combined. Like, even when, you fill in the blank, whatever hardship, whatever lack of resources, I will figure out how to make money in my business.

Okay, so there are two things that will help you be more resourceful and therefore help you coach on resourcefulness, or at the very least help you be clear and strong in talking about money and commitment and creating results with your clients, and have you kind of armed to deal with anything they might say.

So, number one is find where you think if you had more resources, you would succeed. Or how you’re using resources currently to solve your problems. This happens a lot with my clients when they start making six figures. They want to start throwing money at their problems and hiring stuff out.

I’m like, “No, you’ve got to solve that for yourself first.” You have to evolve your brain first before you hire anything out. So, where are you using resources to solve the problem versus solving it with your own imagination and creative thinking? And where are you not using yourself because you believe the problem is a lack of resource? Where are you delegating your power? I’m giving you lots of ways to question this.

And then, number two is how can you keep going and solve for the result or outcome that you want even when, and you constantly fill in that blank? That is how you develop your resourcefulness. And you have to do it in real time right now. It can’t be in the future.

“In the future, I’ll figure out the time and the money. In the future, I’ll hire this thing out now, but in the future, I’ll figure it out for myself.” It has to be right now. So, even when… wherever you’re delegating your power, whatever you think is in the way, whatever lack of resource, right, even when I don’t have the money, I’ll figure out how to invest in my business, right? You’ve got to do both of those; figure out where you’re not being resourceful, and then challenge your resourcefulness all of the time.

Now, the last thing I want to leave you with, you might have a misunderstanding of what coaching is. You might be thinking right now as I’m saying this, “Well then what is the point, if I have to figure it out for myself, of hiring a coach? If those clients make 25K before they join 200K, what’s the reason to join if I have to solve all my problems? Why do I need a coach? Why will my client need a coach if I help them become resourceful on a coaching call or on a consult call?”

Coaching isn’t solving problems for you or solving problems for your client. It’s not about you or me having the answers. It’s one of the things I used to tell myself all the time right before I got on a call, “I don’t have to have all of the answers,” especially if they had a problem that I really didn’t have the answer for, I would just remind myself, I don’t have to have the answers. That’s not what coaching is.

Coaching is about showing you your mind, your energy, your behavior, your results. It’s giving you awareness that you don’t have. It’s questioning to use your brain in ways that you had thought to use your brain. It develops your resourcefulness. It doesn’t replace it.

A lot of you hire a coach and think the coach is now going to handle and deliver your results for you. You think hiring a coach replaces your own responsibility to get results, so you delegate responsibility for your own resourcefulness. You delegate your responsibility to get your own results.

In the example of 2K, you have the ability to be resourceful to come up with 2K to join. Like, you really do. And not by saving up for next year. A lot of y’all message me that. My assistants are like, “So and so said they’re going to sign up as soon as they save the money.” That’s delegating your resourcefulness to money, “When I have more money, I will join.” Instead of, “Even when I don’t have money, I will figure out how to join.”

You have to think about, how will I figure this out? How will I solve this right now? You have the ability today to come up with 2K to join 2K, just like you have the ability today to sign a client and make 2K. How resourceful you are will determine if you do just that.

But when you join, you will get more thoughts to make you more resourceful. You will have your current thoughts examined to be more resourceful. You will have support in that. Like, getting your brain to be resourceful is not something that just happens automatically for everyone.

You have to put energy into making that a habit and you will get resources, like a sales process and learning from others and a community. But you have to be careful that if you, say, join 2K and you think the program is going to give you results, that you get to replace your resourcefulness with having invested in a program, what’s going to happen is when you don’t have a program or a course to sell, when you’re stuck in anti-resourcefulness and you’re thinking that your coach replaces your resourcefulness, then you won’t think you can sell coaching until you have resources, for example a program or a course or homework and worksheets and things like that and modules.

You’ll think you can’t sell coaching until you do because you’ll also think, if I’m responsible in 2K, and I replace your resourcefulness, then you’re going to think you replace your clients’ resourcefulness. And it will put so much more unneeded responsibility on your shoulders and it will actually hurt the client because it will take the responsibility off of them.

Thinking that you are responsible for your clients’ resourcefulness is just a thought error coming from your own anti-resourcefulness and misunderstanding of coaching. Your job is not to be resourceful for your clients. It is to help them practice the habit of resourcefulness. Answering your own questions, taking ownership of your thoughts and feelings and behaviors and not crediting them to outside – accrediting them, is that the word? To outside sources – not delegating them to outside sources. But being willing to trial and error and trial and error and keep going.

I teach an evaluation process that makes you resourceful at identifying your own problems in the consult and fixing them yourself. It’s literally designed to grow your resourcefulness. It’s one of the first things you learn when you join 2K.

So, a lot of coaches come to me in Ask a Coach, when they come to my coaches in Ask a Coach and they want me to explain and make it more clear for them. So, for example, we just got a question this week where the student was saying, you know, you teach about student energy, but then you also teach about expert energy. So, how do you justify teaching both of those? They seem to contradict each other; can you explain that deeper?

And if I am resourceful for you, and I think about that answer and tell you, only my brain gets more developed. Only my skillset grows. I get better. You get more dependent. If I ask you what you think the answer is first for you to think about it and say, “Okay, how are both of those true? Like, if they’re both true, how are they both true and how don’t they contradict each other?”

If I have you just think about that first and even put forth the guess before I tell you, I give you the opportunity to come up with that answer for you. Your brain now gets sharper. You get more resourceful. You grow your value. You grow your ability to use your brain to think and solve your own problems and answer your own questions.

A lot of you think that you have to do the heavy lifting on coaching calls and consult calls, especially when it comes to overcoming objections. And how you know this is you is if you do all of the talking. If the client absorbs all of your thoughts and listens instead of you listening to all of theirs and teaching them how to investigate and search their own brain for answers, how to come up with answers that support the results they want to have in their life.

You don’t have to overcome their objections and convince them and come up with all the ways that they can come up with the money. You just need to ask questions and listen and help them use their own brain to solve their problems if they desire to do that.

They just aren’t used to doing it, so it takes time and effort and patience and a willingness to dig for it and pay attention to it. Your job is just to find out if they want to find a solution to their problem. Your job is to show them if they’re delegating out their ability to solve their problem or make a decision to someone or something else and to show them that there is another option if they want, show them how to navigate their brains to make decisions, show them their own power to be resourceful.

But you can only do this when you are well-practiced in this yourself. So, for those of you who have just signed up for the 200K mastermind and you have already made your money back, well done using your brain. You just got your money’s worth without me teaching you a single advanced selling concept.

You just upped your own value into a 200K coach without even realizing it. and if you’re able to do it with no resources, look out when you have them, when we implement the advanced selling strategies. And for those of you who are planning to join one day, whether it’s 2K or 200K, I want to challenge you to start solving for this problem today instead of one day.

Today is the only time you actually ever have to take action and solve for something. Today is no different than one day. One day, you might save the money. You might figure it out. But today, you could get creative and imaginative and solve the problem and become someone different and evolve your resourcefulness, which will only make you more money with time, instead of waiting on money and time to have the life you want. And when you are waiting on resources often, the only thing you will ever do is continue to wait.

Alright, so, get to answering your own questions, solve for your own resourcefulness, figure out where you’re delegating that resourcefulness, and make money. Alright, I’ll see you next week.

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program, where you’re going to make your first $2000, the hardest part, and then $200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk-free. You either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.