Ep #127: Thoughts About Debt

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 127. So today I have a really fun episode for you. I used to have a podcast called the Diva Business School podcast, and we have that podcast located inside our member portal for our 2K students.

So when you join, you have access to all 64 episodes, some of which I recorded after I created 2K for 2K, but before I had launched Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast and there is some really good content in there. Our students post about this podcast all the time and I had asked them what their favorite episode was so that I could play it for you who maybe haven’t been following me for that long and didn’t get to hear these episodes and the gems from these episodes.

By far, hands down, the number one favorite episode that everyone said they still listen to over and over and over is the episode on thoughts about debt. Because I have a few that are different than a lot of other people’s thoughts about debt. And a lot of coaches have a lot of debt.

So this is going to be a really fun short episode. But what was more fun is while I was listening to the episode, and if I remembered it correctly being as great of an episode as I had remembered, it was, I was like, I love it, I definitely think my audience should hear this, but what was so fun for me was realizing how much I’ve grown from that moment.

That my stance hasn’t changed, the principles remain the same, except to see the monumental growth that was the result of this thinking from this episode that I’m going to share with you. So I’m going to play the episode, and then I’m going to give you an update so that you can see truly how powerful my thoughts about debt have served me in my business and can serve you as well.

Now, one of the things I want to say before we dive in, as I was listening, I gave an example about a house loan. And I realized it sounded a little bit confusing so I talk about how I only put 10% down on my original house loan, and then I talk about I added up the amount of interest we would pay if we didn’t put the 20% down.

And that number was the difference. We had to pay an extra percent for not putting a full 20% down. Not the amount on the entire house loan. Because I also talk about later on how I realized that you end up paying double for your house if you have a full 30-year loan.

So the number I am going to refer to in this episode is the extra percent I would have paid on top of that for not having put the full 20% down. And even then, who knows? My math could have been a little off, but the message and the story is still the same.

Alright, so enjoy everyone’s favorite episode from the Diva Business School podcast, Thoughts About Debt, and stay on to hear the update. It’s a juicy one. Alright, let’s dive in.

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Okay, let’s do this. So, episode 60, we’re going to talk about something that I feel like coaches are always coming to me asking me about, especially when they join my 2K program, I actually have a money mindset course like, built in that, as like, a bonus course. But they’re always like, “I really want help on my money mindset.”

And because I coach on how to overcome objections and raise your conversion rates and close clients because it’s the fastest way to making money and helping people, I think that the way that I think about money is – needs to be taught, needs to be heard, and so I really want to share – I want to spend an episode sharing with you the way that I think about money and the way that I think about debt and how all of this ties in to the way that you will show up in the world for yourself and in the way that you will be able to walk other people through showing up in the world for themselves.

Okay, so I also just want to give a little caveat before I dive in that this message is not for everyone. Some of you may be triggered when I talk about this, but it also might be a total game-changer for you as well. So just keep an open mind, listen, and see if it makes sense to you. Really like, hear what I say and spend some time mulling it over, and you might just find that it changes your life.

Okay, so first let’s start with just defining what money is. Money to me is just an exchange of value. You have this value I want, I’m willing to trade money for it. Fact, just before we move on, we all have money. And fact, we exchange it for things we want and need, although I feel like I could do a whole ‘nother podcast about want versus need because I have had some very mixed up definitions of those in my own life and from my experience of working with hundreds of women – actually, no, humans, over the last three years, I can tell you that most people who are broke, like when I was, have these definitions of want versus need confused.

And that might trigger you, but I bet it’s true. It was for me when I got super willing to be super honest about it. So I’ll just take a second and we can look at what common things people exchange money for. So some examples of needs, although I still think these are highly subjective, I would say most of us would agree we need food, shelter, and clothing. Maybe throw in some toothpaste and toilet paper, and medical care.

And then we can also look at things that are not so much needs and more like wants, like vacations, extracurricular activities for your kids, private schooling, cars – what? Yes. Cars don’t fall under needs. A new rug for your bedroom, organic food from Whole Foods, that one might even make you go, “Wait, but that’s a need.” It’s not. You could survive on non-organic food. New shoes. Haircuts. All of these things are wants. iPhone, it’s a want. A computer, a want. Starbucks, want. Date night, want.

So we have money, and we exchange it for things we want and need. This is super neutral. It’s just like, that is what it is. There are things that we have to have to live, and then there are things that we want to live better. Now, sometimes I may want this value so much that I am willing to pay for money in order to have the money to exchange for that value. That is what debt is.

Debt is buying money in order to exchange it for value. So many of my clients are afraid of debt. So many humans are afraid of debt. Fearing getting themselves into it and what it will mean about them, fearing they won’t be able to get themselves out of it and what that will mean about them, and fearing how they will feel being in it.

And because they think this way about money and feel this way about money, anyone who comes to them with the same story and same feeling, they will agree with. And this is the number one reason coaches don’t close clients. They are in their client’s story, having an opinion about their client’s money situation based on their own feelings, or inability to feel feelings.

And this is all very emotional and money conversations almost always lead back to the fear of not having it is all about our self-worth or self-status or the way that we fit in in society, which I guess would be self-status, but it’s all very tied into – it’s just what we make it mean. The way that we feel about money is the way that we think about it, which is the way that we make it mean about us or in association with the world.

And the way that I think about money is in a super logical, transactional way because I think of it like that, I have a lot of it, and I’m able to help my clients have a lot of it too. So you really want to think about money logically because when emotions are high, intelligence is low. And when I say intelligence, mostly I just mean like, decision-making power is low. And you want to be, any time you’re making a money decision, powerful and clear when you think about and make decisions with your money.

So when you are thinking logically, here is how debt is buying money and how I make decisions regarding it. So let’s take my recent house purchase because it doesn’t matter how much money you have. Eventually, you can still get yourself into debt, right? I don’t mind being super transparent, so I actively chose to put 10% down on my house instead of society’s standard of 20%. And I spoke with my mortgage lender, and with a higher tax percentage, over the 30 years of my loan, it will cost me a little over $30,000 in interest over the loan of the 30 years to only put 10% down.

So $30,000 on top of the interest I would already pay. But I would keep an extra $65,000 in my pocket. So technically, I bought an extra $65,000, which is the money I just get to keep, for $30,000, which will be the interest I’ll end up paying over 30 years. Now, that might seem very expensive, except my last launch I made an $8000 investment in Facebook ads for myself and I made $65,000. So if we take that return rate and multiply the investment and the return by eight, if I had invested $65,000, I would make $520,000.

So now I’m paying $30,000 not for $65,000, but for $520,000. Are you following me here? It’s amazing. If not, there are show notes. You can go see this all written down in the show notes on the website. Staceyboehman.com/podcast.

So I’ll give you another example. So when I got certified at The Life Coach School, to pay the $6000 tuition, which was, I mean, at the time, very long time ago it seems now, I cashed in my IRA that I had a penalty of $1250 and I only have $5000 in my IRA at the time. So I literally got $5000, I was going to have to pay $1250 for it. And I put money on my credit card as well and I ended up paying $3000 of interest on that credit card plus the money to go.

So I paid $6000 for the actual training, but it ended up costing me a little over $10,250. Since then, I have made $1,175,000 dollars in three years. Let me say it again. I paid $4200 to buy $6000, which might seem crazy, but I used that investment to make over a million dollars. Society has taught us to fear money, to feel lacking around money and to definitely fear debt, but money to me, is just a tool.

What we fear is how we will feel dealing with it, either the transaction itself or the aftermath. But what we feel comes from what we think. Learning this important lesson on debt, I’m telling you, and money has made my brain sharp when it comes to topics around money, especially when I’m making my own investments, and then when I’m helping my clients determine theirs.

And this is why I really truly believe I am a boss at overcoming money objections because I think of money in such a clean way. And I really teach my clients how to do this well, and the first lesson is their initial investment for some of them. For some of them, they’re totally good, but let’s just say it costs $2000 to join my program, my 2K for 2K program, and they have to borrow the money, so they end up paying 4K for the program. And by the way, this is where coaches, I see on social media all the time will scream, “You should never advise a client to put money on a credit card.” We’re just going to tell all those coaches to be quiet for a minute.

So the program costs $2000, they pay $4000, but then they make $10,000. What should they do? Should they buy $2000 and pay $4000 total to make $10,000? Is that a good idea? You tell me what you think about it. What should they do? I’m not even good at math y’all, and I already know the answer. That is still a $6000 profit, and that is just the beginning. I literally just said it again. This is just the beginning.

So I don’t think about debt as scary. I mean, I really don’t think it is, and I don’t think about how much it will cost me to buy it. I mean, I definitely look at that, but what I look at, I take it a step further and I look at how much it will cost me not to buy it, especially in the beginning. I don’t really have to do that anymore except for my house, but I really looked at that early on, like, how much is it going to cost me not to?

And that number for me, I totally underestimated. I was just thinking of if I could learn to make six figures, I was like, $100,000 – if I end up spending 10K to make 100K, I mean, I’m in good shape. But that number for me was one million dollars, and this is just the beginning. There it is again. I’m going to make like, 100 million dollars over my career. I’ve literally figured it out. If it takes me even four or five years to get to 10 million dollars a year and then I just maintained 10 million dollars for even 10 more years, which would put me in my mid-40s, which obviously I’ll still be working, I’ll have made 100 million dollars because of that investment.

This is how I think about money. This is like, all about the future and how much it will cost you not to get the money you need, to get the things that you need. And I really want you to think about what would be that number for you. So you have to think of the transaction you’re doing. That’s really what it is, and the result you are committed to creating. And I love the word committed here. The result you are committed to creating.

And if you did in fact create that result, would it be worth the highest possible fee for buying the money you would need to buy, to make the invest, to help you get that result? I’m saying this kind of slowly because it’s kind of tricky. I’m going to say that one again.

So I’m going to say those two sentences again. So if you think of the transaction that you’re going to be doing and the result you are committed to creating, so you basically look at like, how much would be the worst-case scenario that I would pay, and then what’s the result I’m committed to creating, and if you did in fact create that result, would it be worth the highest possible fee for buying the money you would need to buy to make the investment, to get that result?

You really need to do the math for yourself, especially if you’re going to put an investment on a credit card. What is the fee if you don’t pay it off in a year? In two years? Three years even? Take it to like, the max of the worst-case scenario. You know, on a 10K credit card investment, if you use a credit card to put 10K on your credit card to make an investment in your business, maybe it would be like 30% would be the highest interest rate you would pay. I think that’s pretty standard, the highest you could ever pay. And let’s just say it takes you three years to pay it off, your interest would be $9000 on the $10,000.

So if you pay $9000 to have $10,000 money that you just didn’t have in the first place, so it cost you $19,000 to buy something that’s $10,000, imagine if that were the case, but then you made 100K. Would it be worth it? And you have to do the math for yourself, but for me, it’s a definite yes. If I pay $19,000 because at the time 10 grand wasn’t available to me and so I paid double for it but then I make 10 times more than that investment, I’m good. We’re good.

Now, I want to be super clear that this is how you feel about your money. That’s what we’re talking about. This is how I feel about my money. I’m not telling you that you should think this way about your money. I’m saying this is the way that I think about my money and then, there’s also this other little added element. When you’re actually coaching clients and you’re on consultations, there is how your client feels about their money and how they think and feel about their money is none of your business.

You don’t get to decide how they should think, or what they should exchange their money for, or what they should or shouldn’t do to get that money. You just need to be super clear on yours, on your feelings and thoughts about money, and then you can help them get clear on theirs for their sake.

Now, at this point, this is where you might be thinking, “I don’t sell anything with a financial return. I sell weight loss or relationship coaching,” but remember that money is just an exchange of value. Many people buy money for the exchange of furniture or a car, a house. Let’s just go with this because I didn’t know this, but a standard house loan, the average person will pay double the cost of the house in interest.

So a $500,000 house will cost one million dollars total over 30 years. Stop it. So many people are willing to buy $500,000 for $500,000 just to call themselves homeowners. People will put vacations on credit cards, dinners out, movies, they will spend their money more on wants than needs. That is actually like, a fact. And if you don’t believe me, get your credit card statement out or your bank statement out and highlight everything that you could technically live without, even that cable.

Everything. Literally if you could live and breathe and keep surviving without it, highlight it, and that will show you how much money you’re spending with your wants versus your needs. And there’s no judgment on any of this. I have zero judgment about money. This is just a logical conversation about it and like, really unwinding it.

So you exchange your money for value and your clients do the same. And how do you know that they won’t be willing to buy $10,000 of money that will cost them $10,000, which would then be a $20,000 cost so they can lose 50 pounds for the rest of their life? Or they can save their marriage or save the relationship they have with their kids. Or find a higher paying job, even if that higher paying job pays them $10,000 more a year, for the next 10 years, even if they paid $20,000, 10K to you and 10K to the bank in interest but they made 100 grand more over a 10 year period, is it worth it for them?

This is the question you have to ask them. This is the question you have to ask yourself when you’re making these decisions. Maybe even would they be willing to pay $20,000 to feel happy for the rest of their life? Like, not just like, to only feel happy, that’s not what I mean, but like, to feel better, to learn how to like, handle their emotions and let go of their anger and have better relationships in their life, or to stop overdrinking.

Whatever it is that you offer your client, whatever that result is, just think about it. Would someone be willing to buy $10,000 and your job is not to assume whether they would or not, but to just ask them when they say, “I don’t know, I’m going to have to think about it, I just don’t have the money,” you’ve got to like, ask them about this stuff. And you don’t necessarily say like – I’m not saying go right into the debt conversation when they say they can’t afford it, but just have the conversation with them.

It’s not your job to decide for them by deciding debt is bad and they shouldn’t do it or deciding they shouldn’t pull money out of stocks or retirement. Let them decide based on how valuable the result is that you’re offering to them. Like, how valuable it is to them. Period. And try this line of thinking on for yourself too.

I was just coaching my clients in my 2K program and I posed this question to them. I said, “If someone said they were going to work with you, if they were going to work with you, they would have to pull money out of retirement to do it and it was all the money they had and they wouldn’t have any more once they did so, how would you feel?”

And many of them – a couple of them, not many – a couple of them said excited, and then some of them felt scared, and I said, because this actually did happen recently to me when I was on a phone with a potential client thinking about joining my mastermind. She said those exact words to me, and I felt neutral. And then I asked her what she thought about that and would it be worth it to her to learn how to make 100K with that 10K investment, and she said yes. It’s not your job to decide.

Now, if you or your client feel scared about this, just get logical. Do the math. This is always the best way to get out of your emotions is just do the math. Ask them if they got the result and they got to live the rest of their lives with that result, would they exchange their money for it? That helps you and them figure out how bad they really want it, and what their priority is, and all of that again, is judgment free and totally neutral.

Do this for you in your life and in all of your decisions around money, and I promise you, you can do it for every potential client that comes your way. I hope this is super helpful. I think this changed the game for me when I learned to look at money this way, and I think this could change the game for you in your life, but also, for your clients and their lives when they come to you and they, I guarantee, aren’t thinking about money this way, but you could help them think about it this way.

And it may not influence their decision. They may say, it’s not worth it to me, but you’re going to get a lot further in the conversation if you’re willing to have it, and you’ll be more willing to have it if you’re having it with yourself. Alright, have a beautiful week.

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Okay, I hope you enjoyed that episode on thoughts about debt. Now, let’s do the really fun part. Let’s talk about the update. So this episode was originally released about two and a half years ago. That’s when we bought our house, it was around that time when I recorded the episode and had done the math and had really done my thought work around putting the money down on our house and how much we would put down and saving the extra money to go towards scaling my business. Are you ready?

So since then, number one, we paid off our house completely 100%. It’s ours, in just two and a half years. What? So crazy. Number two, we have made 14 million dollars in our business and approximately 13 million of that since the recording of that episode. I have serious chills.

And third and last, and this one feels like truly the big one is we have a 200 million dollar business goal that I remember years ago when I said it, I had such a hard time believing that that could be true, and now I see it as inevitable. 200 million dollars over the next 10 years.

And we have a 600 million dollar portfolio goal. Oh my god, say that five times fast, which we will reach at the rate that we have plans to invest for the next 30 years, which feels so fun. Let’s just think about that for a second.

We get so caught up in I might pay $3000 of interest and we miss that what’s available when we invest in our brains and ourselves, when we invest in our businesses, and we take risks that are outside of the norm of society, what’s on the table y’all is 800 million dollars. What?

Listen, if I only made 14 million and that was it forever, would have been worth it. You guys, hear me. You can do this. Whether you do it with or without debt, you have the ability to grow substantial wealth if you drop the fear and the resistance around your debt.

Alright, have an amazing week, I’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

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