September has been a breakthrough month - I’ve had my first ever red belt month.
The cluster that’s has taken off in September is my Thought Leaders Mentor cluster. We're holding the Million Dollar Expert Program in a few days in Melbourne, and we’ve had a great response.
Early on in my White Belt to Black Belt in 365 Days Challenge I came up against my fear of failure … public failure in particular. What would happen if I didn’t pull it off? What would it be like if I was still a yellow belt in 12 months? And I have to say that fear was quite motivating, not wanting to fail publicly.
Now that I’m actually ahead of the curve, I’m coming up against what it means to win the game. I never thought I had a fear of success, but it's been in my face. Strangely enough I’ve also had to come to terms with making decent money.
My parents are both in helping professions - my mum’s a doctor and my dad was a teacher. There is no real history of entrepreneurship in our family. For a long time I have been almost apologetic about being in business. I ran a coaching business called Love Your Business, with an idealistic vision of creating a more loving world through helping business owners create businesses that they love, their staff love and their clients love.
At some level I was telling myself it’s OK to be in business because really I’m still trying to make a difference, and make the world a better place. I’m not just out to make money. And at the same time I’ve done a lot of things to raise money for The Hunger Project, done pro bono work and sat on the board of charities.
It’s been a long journey to get to the point where I’m OK in my bones about making money, and really going for the money. To really embrace the game of business.
What I love about the Thought Leaders model is that the thinking comes first, then the commercialisation. I’ve done a lot of thinking, and developed a lot of great stuff. Now when I go hard at sales and go hard at the money, there is an integrity to it for me. I am still out to make a difference to people, and make the world a better place. I’m doing that by delivering really cool programs and being commercial about it.
One of the things that has enabled me to move quickly through the belts is the years of work I’ve done on myself while a white belt to get to the point where I don’t have any internal conflict between making money and making a difference. I’m now ready to be commercial, and ready in myself to be successful.
Having said that, it's still confronting for me doing this all publicly. But I am enjoying the journey.
Love to know what work you have done or need to do on yourself to be OK to make a lot of money in your practice. I'd love to hear your thoughts, you can leave them below.
