Ep #186: How to Make 100k – Interviews with Katrina, Corrine, Stacey, Brenda, and Jody

Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it’s all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.

Well hello, my friends. Today I have a very exciting podcast for you called How to Make 100K. I have asked some of my students who have made 100K, this is not all of my students that have made 100K, and if you weren't selected for this, it's not because you're not equally awesome.

I just - this is already going to be a super long podcast, so I asked Katrina, Corinne, Stacey, Brenda, and Jody to share their recent success in making 100K and beyond, and give any advice to new coaches or new entrepreneurs that are trying to do the same.

So please enjoy this podcast, I had so much fun recording it, and I look forward to answering any questions that you guys have. If you are in Scholars, of course, you can go to the Ask Brooke, give me any comments or questions you have about the entrepreneur piece of that program. Okay my friends, here we go.

Okay, we're going to start with Corinne for my first interview, and let me just read to you her intro. She is - first of all, I love Corinne because we have almost the exact same hair, and I love that she's from the South and I just love her. She's so awesome. She's a master weight and life coach to The Life Coach School, she's the owner of Fitandfat.com.

After 30 years of obesity, she lost 100 pounds and has successfully maintained the loss. The last ten years she's worked with hundreds of women, coaching them to lose weight in her private online community, and no BS weight loss program. Her philosophy is lose weight the way you will live it. You can find out more information about her at Fitandfat.com, and you can listen to her podcast called Losing 100 Pounds with Fitandfat.

I loved this interview with Corinne, I love Corinne's story. When I first met her, she couldn't even imagine - I think she was charging like $10 for her program. She couldn't even imagine how possible it was for her to make 100K, and she made it so quickly because she was willing to overcome those fears. So please enjoy this conversation with Corinne Crabtree.

Brooke: Hey Corinne.

Corinne: Hello.

Brooke: Alright, so we're just going to start in. I'm going to start firing questions at you, you are a coach. One of my coaches, making 100K, yes?

Corinne: Yes, definitely.

Brooke: So, I'm going to ask you a question, I want you to try and answer this question in like two sentences because there are so many people wondering it. Ready?

Corinne: Yes.

Brooke: How do you make 100K as an entrepreneur?

Corinne: Oh gosh, two sentences. The first is you plan every single day. You do not go in thinking that you're going to just get stuff done, and then the next thing is make a butt ton of mistakes.

Brooke: Be willing to, right?

Corinne: Yes, I mean, I joke with my team all the time that if they haven't learned anything working with me is that everything we do is open to total failure and we'll just recover and we'll fix it and it'll be better next time. I mean, you can't stay in the - like the sludge of a mistake. You got to get out of it.

Brooke: It's so true. It's so true, and I see so many people that have asked that same question, "How do you make 100K as an entrepreneur?" and I think those are the same people that don't - they want to know the secret steps, they don't want to hear you say you have to fail. What they want to hear you say is, first, you get a domain name.

Corinne: Right. It's just not like step one, step two, step three, step four, 100K. It's really about like every day looking at your business, what do you need to change. Everything is - I think that first 100K is about not having anything other than I want to make 100K as the plan. Everything else is like, I'm figuring it out all the way there, because what you think it's going to take is never what it's going to take.

Brooke: Right, that's so true. And I love your idea, it's like have a plan but then be willing - I love the way you said it, like be open to failure. Like have a plan and be willing for your plan not to work and then make another plan.

Corinne: Yes, and I like - I mean, I think for me, one of the important things has been like, just making sure - it's so easy when you're first getting started for your days to just get away from you, where you feel like you're just doing so much but you're not really doing anything that gets you closer to 100K. Like, you need to account for your time so at the end of the day you can go to bed feeling like, okay, I'm getting closer, I'm getting closer. Otherwise, I just - I know that in the very, very beginning, I just hustled and worked and - it was like machine gun fire working, and then when I got more like, alright, how about we just split up a target, and try to snipe off some stuff, you know, you hit the target a lot more often.

Brooke: Yes, love it. Okay, what were your doubts about making 100K?

Corinne: I'd never done it before, like, I mean, that was probably the biggest thing. Well, and I will say probably when I first started, I was like, I couldn't even dream about it. Like, I think when I first started, it was just like, I'm just going to make some money and hope that that happens. And then when I really started out - and that was when I started working well with you is when I started thinking, "Oh my gosh, like 100K, like how do you do this?" it was more like, "Do I know enough?" Like, I really doubted that - like I didn't have any doubt that I could do a lot of work, because I'm a hard worker. I mean, I have always worked hard but I didn’t know if I was smart enough to get there.

Brooke: Oh, that's interesting. Because only smart people make 100K?
Corinne: Right. Educated, smart, just people who were - I don't know, it's like, you know, somebody who went to school would make 100K. I mean, I had a big hang up on was I the kind of person that could do that, and I had to work through it.

Brooke: I think - let's talk about that a little bit more because I think there are - I talk to so many students that feel that way. They don't feel like they have the right education, or they feel like they're educated in the wrong field, or they feel like because they've only ever made 50K, or they've only ever made part-time salary, they can't even imagine being able to be the person that makes that. So was there a shift in your thinking do you remember?

Corinne: You know, I think for me, it was more just like - I started realizing that my education level and stuff didn't have really anything to do with it. It was more of like, I looked back at the areas when I was successful, so when I was successful when I had a job, it was because I showed up every day, and I worked hard, and I was on time, you know like, that had nothing to do with education because I never even went to college.

Brooke: Right.

Corinne: And then I started changing my mindset around from it's not that I'm not smart enough, it's that I am very smart because look at what all I've done so far. I started like looking more for evidence of you know, what skill sets do you have that will get you there, and a lot of mine came back to like the willingness to go back into the failure thing. You know, I was always successful because I was just willing to just be booboo the fool, make mistakes and get back up, you know?

Brooke: Yes, and you know, I actually think sometimes when you're scrappy like that, like when I'm hiring people sometimes I'm like I don't really care if you have a college degree or not, like that's not as important to me because I think a lot of times, because you know, I have a college degree, and I did really well in school, and what that sometimes means is that I'm really focused on getting the A or the B and haven't had maybe to deal with the failures or the shortcomings, right? And that's what being an entrepreneur is all about.

Corinne: Yes, and I think one of the things I learned was because I wasn't always going for As and Bs, you know, my thing was if I wanted to eat and have a house and all this other stuff, I had to be willing to show up at work every day and not indulge in my insecurities and stuff. Like my bosses didn't have time for me to be insecure. They weren't going to pay me to do that, and I think you have to - it's almost like you have to have a dual role when you're wanting to make 100K, you have to be a boss of yourself that says, "We don’t have time for these things, we don't pay you to do that. What we do pay you to do is you know, make us money at the bottom line, get your work done, you know, you show up when you don't feel like it." There's plenty of times you just don't feel like doing the work because it's hard.

Brooke: So that's kind of an interesting thing too, is how has your work changed since you made 100K in your business, and I know that you're well beyond 100K, you're on your way to the two comma club now but this podcast, I just want to talk about the 100K, so did your work change once you got there or did a lot of things change once you made 100K?

Corinne: Not a ton changed at 100, I would say when I went from one to two it did. Once I crested 100, that's when I had to start evaluating what could I keep this pace up, and one of my strength is I have an immense capacity for pace, but it's at the sacrifice of everything around me, and I did not want to sacrifice everything around me anymore, so I started with plugging in systems and not just rapid fire responding to everything, like allocating my time more. That's one of the skillsets that if I had changed anything, like if I was going to tell somebody who's starting from zero and going to 100 is be serious about allocating your time. It keeps you out of overwhelm, it keeps you out of just the loop cycles of you can't do this. The more that you can allocate your time and just work, and be focused, the less drama time you have. It's that open space is when you know, soap operas in your head get started.

Brooke: That is so true. And that's why I've been teaching a lot in Scholars this idea of when you plan your time, plan for results and not activities, because it's when you plan for activity, that's when drama times. You don't even realize that's what you're doing.

Corinne: Right.

Brooke: Okay, so what would you go back - so my question is, what didn't you know that you know now? Like what would you tell yourself that you didn't know that you know now?

Corinne: I would be way more disciplined with my time for sure. I would also probably start keeping like a thought process of am I doing something that just sounds good right now, or am I thinking about what's going to sound good at 100K? I think sometimes you get so desperate to start making the money and stuff that you do desperate things to get there, and you don't think about the long term, like is this going to be sustainable, is this going to please my clients at 100K and things like that. Like discounting, I got into a bad habit of discounting all the time, feeling bad for people, then everybody had different pay and I was - I finally had to just like cut the cord on that and do my own work around like this is what I'm worth, and this is what we're charging, and no more - it's just business.

Brooke: So let's talk about that. What - do you think you were discounting because you wanted to make more money, you wanted them to buy and you were worried that they couldn't afford it?

Corinne: Part of it was worried they couldn't afford it, part of it was - a bit piece of it, in the beginning, I would say was more my own self-doubt of my own self-worth, and so it was mirroring in how I was charging people. You know, I knew - I always knew that I could help people and I always knew that I had a great product and stuff, but I just couldn't believe that people were willing to pay for it, and until I got to the point to where I cultivated that belief, it - I just kept discounting, and then sometimes - "Well, she's got a hard story, I feel bad for her" and that's just no way to run a business. You know, one of the most important things about getting to 100K is consistency. It's consistency in your time, consistency in your decisions, consistency in what you charge, those kinds of things. You just got to practice consistency.

Brooke: So now what do you do when you have someone who tells you that they can't afford it or they have a sad story or something like that? How do you approach that?

Corinne: I send them to my website where I have free blogs designed specifically for people - I mean, I literally do this every single day because the more money you make and the more reach you have, the more people are going to want your help. And the way I look at it personally so that I feel really good about it is I do an immense amount of good quality free product. I have a podcast, I have my blog, I do Facebook lives. If someone wants the help, they can listen to those. Are they getting personally guided? No, but that's part of the exchange. That's why you would work with me, right? So I feel really good about that side, and I just tell them, that's where you go for that stuff. I had a lady the other day say something about - she said, I'm sure you're worth it or something in an email, and I just wrote her back and I said, "Yes, I am worth every penny. That's why I charge what I charge, and here's where my free stuff is."

Brooke: That's - and I think that's just a huge shift in being willing to let the people that aren't your people go. One of the things I teach all the time to all of my students is you have to pick the people who are going to be your customers, and the people that are going to be your customers need to be able to afford you, right? They need to be willing to invest in their mental health and in your case, into their own weight loss and focused on that, and if they aren't, then that isn't your target market.

Corinne: Right, and I think that for a long time I almost felt - and I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through this, you almost - when you've always worked for someone and now you're going to like work for yourself, you almost feel skeedy charging people, like there's this weird stage and I had to really do some work on that too and just think, there's nothing wrong with charging it. I told somebody the other day, I have a love affair with electricity and water. That's why I charge people.

Brooke: You know, that's so funny that you say it like that because I was - I'm teaching in my entrepreneur class is like, you want to be someone that people love to pay. Like, so you're one of my customers, right, you love to pay because you know if you pay me money you're going to get tenfold back on the money that you pay, right? And we both love to pay for electricity, and we want to be someone - like if your electric company came to you and said, "You can't pay us anymore", we'd be like, "No, please, let us" - like, we would beg the electricity company to let us pay them so we would have electricity, right?

Corinne: Exactly.

Brooke: So I don't think - sometimes we forget that we can be that to someone, right? Where we love to pay our phone bill, our iPhone bills, we love to pay for our cars, we love to pay - and people don't think about it that way, but they would as soon as we took away the opportunity to pay for something like that.

Corinne: Exactly.

Brooke: I don't want to pay electricity, but are you sure?

Corinne: Right, and I think a lot of times too like when I do have people that I'm not the right fit for, I just - that's literally the thought that I have is like, they're just not the right fit for me and I'm not the right fit for them. But my people like, I want my - I want to design my business in a way that when my person finds me, they are like, hallelujah, let's just get married.

Brooke: Exactly, it's like you're their electricity, right? You're like, I got to pay for this, people say that to me when they're in Scholars. So like, I pay you monthly because that's like my personal trainer for my mind. I know that I'm going to stay fit by paying that and they love to pay that money, and I have people that I love paying money to, like my coach Frank Hearn.

Corinne: Yes.

Brooke: He's like, yes, come spend a day with me, it's 18 grand. I'm like, where do I sign?

Corinne: That's like - ever since I started working with you, like you know, I like tell my husband I'm going to you know, spend the money, and even he is like, yes. Even to him you're electricity.

Brooke: Right? And if somebody - this is what we say - like, for example, if somebody wants to cancel their membership in Scholars, we're like, bye, because we don’t want you paying us if you're not all in. Now, if you're struggling, then we will help you in the sense that like we'll get you up to speed and make sure you're not overwhelmed and stuff like that, but I think that's a really important point to new coaches, anyone who's a new entrepreneur that's trying to get to that level, you want to be someone that people love to pay, and then you won't feel that icky feeling of asking for money from people.

Corinne: And I think it's such a guidepost too when you think about it, like you know, I want to be the kind of person that somebody says, "You are my no-brainer money for the month." It helps you show up for them in such a better way because like, you're always thinking about how can I best serve you? You're not thinking about, I'm taking your money. Like, I never think about I'm taking people's money. I always think about what am I doing for my clients? What are we doing today for the clients? How are they feeling? I mean - and that's what I teach, like I'm a baby in the grand scheme of growing now, but now that I have like just a few little team members, I drill it into their head all the time. It's like, our girls, like they are what we do. We live and breathe them, and as long as we're serving them, then everything that we design and we plan, it will all make sense. So even though - it's like you always say, it's about like how are you giving that value? Give it ahead of time whether they're paying you right now or you're doing your free content, how are you giving your value ahead of time?

Brooke: Yes, and I think that's the last point there is like, when you are caught up in asking for money, or you're caught up in what it feels like for you, you are way too focused on yourself. No matter what business you're in, because there may be some people listening to this podcast that aren't coaches right, that are in different industries, you have to think about your customer and what is the value that you're delivering them, and then you will feel so excited. And this is what I say too, it's like, selling your Mercedes for $10, and somebody's like no thanks, you're not, no, really, it's a Mercedes, and it's $10. If you feel like your value is that good that when people - selling will just be easy. You're just like, oh my gosh, it's the most amazing thing in the whole world. But I do think that's a huge hurdle for people when they've always worked for someone else, to get to the position when you have to be asking for money because you're going to risk someone saying no.

Corinne: Exactly. Well, I talk to like people in my field and stuff all the time who are starting out, and I tell them like, if you're not willing to feel risk every day, then you are in the wrong field. Entrepreneurs are like excited to feel risk, they're excited to make mistakes, you're willing to feel uncomfortable. Like you embrace it, and if you're pushing against it, then you need to work on that because you picked - it's just like you've picked the wrong place to be if that's the feelings you don't like to feel.

Brooke: Yes, that's so true. And I think people that look at - and I always say people always compare their beginning to my end, and so I think a lot of times people look at me or anyone who's making a really good living as an entrepreneur, and they think, that looks easy, that looks fun, they get to work from home. And in so many ways it is, and it's just uncomfortable in the way - being an entrepreneur is uncomfortable in the ways that working for someone else isn't, right? So the comfort you get from working for someone else is they're taking all the risk, but then you have to do what they say. That's the tradeoff that you make, right? But when you're an entrepreneur, you take all the risk but then you get to do what you want in the way that you want it. So I think it's absolutely worth it. Alright, what is your advice? You kind of already answered this, but if you were going to sum up your advice to someone who's like, "Oh my gosh I wish I were you", like you're living - this is crazy to think about Corinne. Think about you're living someone else's dream right now.

Corinne: I know, and I almost welled up when you said it. I knew what was going to come out your mouth.

Brooke: Right? Someone else wants to be able to do what you're doing right now. Be an entrepreneur, making well over a hundred thousand dollars a year. What is your advice to them?

Corinne: Oh my gosh. It's so woo-woo but it really - it's really got to believe in yourself even when you don't want to believe in yourself. You know, every day that you just don't, you just be like, you know, today I'm working on the ability to believe in myself.

Brooke: I don't quite believe in myself, right.

Corinne: Right. Today I get to work on that. But it really is, I think that just always being in the mindset of being willing to work on your belief in your own abilities, your intelligence, your - just you can do it, you can make it. Like there are days you're tired, like that first 100K is a lot of hustling. You don’t have staff. You don't - you know, I know it's easy for people to say like, "You get to farm stuff out now and everything", it's like, yes, but there are years I didn't, you know? But I showed up anyway, and I think it's just you have to have that belief, and that's probably - you can't indulge in the idea of stopping because you don’t believe in yourself. You have to just keep going.

Brooke: Yes, and that is the hardest thing to do. It sounds like an easy thing to do, believe in yourself, like everyone's like, "That sounds like a great idea", but like when you really think about it, like how hard is that to really believe that you have what it takes to build a business that is what your business is right now.

Corinne: Yes, and I think a lot of people don't - especially if you've never done it, because I'd never started a business when I started mine. I didn't just step in with like, I'm fixing to build this big business. I stepped in and was just like, I'm getting started because I have a passion to help people. And every day I'm just going to like show up for that, and the more you show up and the more you just keep doing the next thing, you get good at that. And when you get good at that, you start believing more. Like, the feeling of belief becomes easier as you don't quit. If you quit, you will never believe in you. But if you just keep going no matter what, it strengthens. And then one day you just - it's just like - it's crazy because I tell you this all the time, it's like one day you just wake up, you do believe in yourself. Like, when did this happen? It's like, I don't know, it just happened. But there were so many days that there was just doubt. Especially - I lost money in the beginning. So like, there was a lot of non-believability.

Brooke: Well yes, and that's where that part of failing comes in, right? It's just like, are you going to decide this doesn't work, I can't do this, or this is just part of the process, right?

Corinne: Right.

Brooke: So my last question is, and I know that we've talked about this before, but I'd love to share it with people that listen, is you've lost 100 pounds, right? You've made 100K. Seems like those are very different things, right? But they're not. Tell me how losing 100 pounds and going through that process really helped you in building your business.

Corinne: I mean, it's the same thing. When I first started losing weight, I didn't believe that - like first, I had no idea I'd lose 100 pounds, here's what I did know. That I was going to get started just like I got started with my business, I knew that I could figure things out, and I was willing to get up each day and figure out the next best step, and that was how I ended up losing 100 pounds. I didn't have a magic plan or a magic pill or anything, and there was tons of weeks that I didn't lose any weight, and I just had to keep going just like there had been tons of years where I didn't necessarily make money and I just had to keep going because I had like a faith that this is the path that I want to be on. If I want to be on this path, I take all of it. Like I take the ups and the downs and all the routes. And probably that - probably the biggest thing was is that when I lost my 100 pounds, the one thing that I did different than I did any other diet was I didn't look for there to be a plan all the way to 100. I quit focusing on losing 100 pounds and I started focusing on what's going on right now? What can I affect and change and show up for today and then make a better plan for tomorrow, and that's the same kind of thing that I did that first 100K, is just really dialing in to my day-to-day small activities. What were the little things that weren't helping, what were the things that I can plug in basics that I can do that will get me there? Like showing up for a blog, like I blog eight years almost every single day. I can't tell you how many people I know who won't blog at all, and there wasn't hardly anybody reading my blog all those years, but I did it anyway because I was showing up for the three or four people that would read it.

Brooke: That is so true, and I think what you talk about is so important because we talk about - it's funny for me to even hear you say, "Well my first 100K", you know, because I met you when you hadn't even made it and that seemed like such a big goal and so far away. So I think that a lot of people are like, "I'd just like to make a thousand dollars in my business. I'd like to make two thousand dollars in my business." So I think that's a really - "I'd just like to lose three pounds." And so I think sometimes when you look at how far away 100K is or how far away your weight loss goal is, that can be you know, so defeating. You don't want to lose sight of that goal, but your advice to just come back like, can you lose half a pound? Can you make one dollar?

Corinne: It's that focus. I think that - and I learned this totally from you, that idea of when you're looking way back, you're usually sitting there comparing yourself to either your mistakes or where you were and where you're not now, and during all of that comparison time is time not spent on doing any work. And then when you start looking way off down the road, most of the time, especially in weight loss, people are thinking about how far they have to go and how hard it's going to be, and if I only knew; again, there's no work going on right now, and it's like, be dialed in to today and you know, all the yogis always say how you do one thing is how you do anything. Whether you're losing weight or you're starting a business or whatever it is, you really have to be dialed into today. Even at this level, where I'm making more than 100K, I go to bed every night with a plan for the next day. I just - it's just the way it is.

Brooke: And you've lost 100 pounds.

Corinne: Yes, like I do my food prep every week, I have a plan for the week, and a lot of times it changes, but it's - that plan is there and all I have to do is look at it and be like, "Okay, I just need to adapt it." It's not like I'm going to blow it up or whatever, and I'm really good about you know, the integrity of the plan. You know, change it when it needs to be changed, and know when you're changing it because you just don't want to. I think...

Brooke: Right, when you're going off the plan completely. And I think that's the other misconception that a lot of other people have is that, "I'll lose 100 pounds and then I'll be able to relax and chill out and lay on the couch more" or "I'll make 100K and then I'll be so happy and I'll be able to... - right? The truth is how you get there is how you keep staying there. And so that's why when people are in a hurry to get to that destination, to get to that point, they're missing that this is the whole journey that never changes. It never changes. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Awesome, well I am so proud of you girl, thank you so much for being on the podcast and sharing and if you guys want to find out more about Corinne, go to Fitandfat.com. Do you want to spell that out? Does it have those little slashes in it?

Corinne: It does, but they can actually do P as in Paul, N as in No, P as in Paul, so like PNP411.com, and that also will take them there. It's so much easier to say.

Brooke: PNP411, you can find out all about Corinne and her business. She's one of my master coaches, she's amazing. She teaches in Scholars, everybody loves her. Typically has a different colored hair.

Corinne: Yes, I'm back to my fall blonde.

Brooke: You'll have to check her out there. So thank you so much, darling. Love you.

Corinne: Thank you.

Okay my friends, next we have my interview with Katrina. Katrina is one of my students who went through my Life Coach program, my Weight Coach program, and was a client in my Weight Master Class. She now is killing it in her business, she made 100K - more than 100K in her first year of business. I'm so proud of her. She's an MD and a pediatrician turned certified life and weight loss coach. She helps busy women physicians permanently end their weight struggle through coaching and the latest weight loss research.

She also hosts the podcast weight loss for busy physicians. She lost 50 pounds herself utilizing the tools she teaches, and now weighs less than she did in 9th grade. I'm in love with Katrina, she is such an example of what is possible. You'll love this conversation that we had right before we started recording. She was like freaking out of what she's going through growing pains, and so it was really fun to be able to talk about that. So please enjoy this conversation with me and Katrina.

Brooke: Hey Katrina, welcome to the podcast, to the hundred thousand dollar podcast because you are the hundred thousand dollar woman. You are - I think you're one of three of my coaches who made six figures in their first year, so congratulations on that.

Katrina: Awesome. Honestly, multiple six figures in their first year.

Brooke: Well, alright then. Let's just be clear. Okay, so I've had hundreds of coaches, I've had hundreds of people that I've coached that have wanted to make six figures that I think believed that it's absolutely impossible, especially as a life coach. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Did you believe that that would happen for you and why do you think you did create that for yourself?

Katrina: I really did think that that was possible. I think it was just kind of this idea of, "That's not that much money" when you kind of do the math and you start breaking it all down, I think I could do that. It was the multiple six figures that I thought for sure would blow my mind, like had no - literally no idea. You may recall I asked you, "How?" and you said, "You don't need to know how." And I came back to, "How?" So the first hundred thousand I felt like I could see the how, like it was literally just breaking it down, finding the clients, really changing my thinking to believe that I could create clients, that I didn't need to wait for them to come to me, that I could go out and find them, and if I really felt like what I had to offer was really valuable, especially to my niche client, and I really believed that once she got that information and learned about what I had to offer, she would want it. So I think taking your very good advice to really, really be specific in my niche was huge.

Brooke: Okay, wait. So I want to talk about both those things. The first thing I want to talk about was your comment where I said to you, "You don't need to know how", and here's - I want to describe why that is. To those of you who have listened to the podcast, you understand why that is, but the idea of believing something, believing in an idea and feeling that belief be true for you is so important before you understand the how because most people won't believe something until they know the how. And the reason why that's a problem is because if the only reason that you believe you can make six figures is because you know how to make six figures, then when you start doing that how and that how inevitably won't work, because there are all sorts of ways to get there, when you - the reason you believe in it is because of that certain how and that how doesn't work, then you lose the belief and you quit. And so when I was talking to Katrina and coaching her for a couple years now, the idea is you believe in that idea and you believe that you can make six figures no matter what, and then there are several hows in how to get there.

Katrina: My original how that I thought was not at all how it ended up happening.

Brooke: That's so interesting, isn't it, right? So had you believed okay, the reason why I can make multiple six figures is because of A plus B equals C and then you go in and A plus B does not equal C, then you give up, and I think that's what happens to so many of my students. I was just thinking about this. We're having a pool put in right now and they're like halfway through, and it's such a mess. Like there is stuff everywhere and it doesn't look like anything's coming together, it doesn't look like we're ever going to have a pool, and I was sitting there thinking, I'm like, "Someday this will be a pool. Like we will get into this pool." But right now I just want to give up. I really do. I'm like, "This is never going to work. How is this ever going to be a pool?" And I was thinking, "Oh my god, this is exactly how" - because the mason's supposed to come and then the plumber is going to come and then the plumber is missing a part and then the mason's wife is ill and there are all these things that make it so that pool is never going to happen, and I think about that. I'm like, "If I didn't truly believe in pools..."

Katrina: I don't know if a pool can happen for me.

Brooke: Right? I would really genuinely give up on this pool right now. So - anyway, I think that that's what's true for - since we're building our businesses right, there's so many reasons to quit, and so believing in the end result without knowing the exact how I think is so, so key.

Katrina: And I mean, I really had to take a leap of faith on your advice on that. even my husband came to me after I'd created this you know, big goal for myself a couple times and said, "Are you sure that's a good idea?" I was like, "Stop talking to me about it. It's the goal."

Brooke: You're like, "Look, I'm trying to believe in myself." And I think that that is the magic of our work, right? So you work with physicians who are wanting to lose weight, and it's the exact same process, right? So someone will come to you and they'll say, "Listen, I've tried everything to lose weight, I can't lose weight" and it's the same belief system that they have to adopt as we do when we're trying to make money, right? It's like a hundred thousand dollars, I mean, I remember when I told Frank, my coach, that I wanted to make a million dollars, you know, I might as well have said I want to be a pink unicorn that flies at night. It's like, it doesn't even make any sense. How do you make a million dollars? That seems like so astronomical. And you know, he just came back and said, "You know, that's about 83,000 dollars a month." That was his answer to me. It was just like, it's just math.

Katrina: It's only math, yes.

Brooke: It just totally works, and so when you believe in something, then you start going about the how, and the how doesn't matter as much. And then the second thing that you had said was about your niche and how important it is to niche down. So let's talk a little bit about your niche journey.

Katrina: Yes, well I went to coach training really having no idea what I was going to choose. I had thought since I'm a pediatrician I thought maybe I'd want to work with parents or some sort of parenting kind of a thing, but then as we had the day where we were choosing, I was really interesting in doing the weight loss because I wanted to lose weight myself and I'd signed up for stop overeating master class, so I thought, well, this kind of would make sense because I'm going to learn a lot of things. And so I can you know, teach those to these physicians and I thought, I really like the idea that it was more peer kind of related. I thought that if I came as the pediatrician to the parents then it might still be sort of this you know, I'm in charge kind of you know, dynamic, and I didn't really like that too much. So I decided to do that and then you told us you're not allowed to switch for a year, and I believed you, and so I said, "Okay, well until September of 2017 like for sure this is what I have to do." And so then when things seemed like they were a terrible idea, I just followed my promise to you in my head to not switch.

Brooke: Well, and I want to be clear too because I think a lot of people that listen to this podcast are my students, they are coaching students that want to make six figures that are probably listening to this episode. You thought - you were like, "I got my niche, I'm going to work with physicians, I'm going to work with people that want to lose weight" and then even then we - you would present ideas to me, like for example, the name of your podcast was going to be what?

Katrina: I think it was going to be something like healthy life and healthcare or something like that.

Brooke: Healthy life and healthcare.

Katrina: Brooke was like that’s the worst name I've ever heard.

Brooke: I'm like, "No, you are working with physicians who want to lose weight" and you know, we really narrowed it down, like you're only working with physicians that are currently practicing, like really having to turn a lot of people away that want to work with you...

Katrina: And that was uncomfortable. That really was uncomfortable to really just go...

Brooke: So what would you say to my students who are like, "I don't want to limit myself" because I really impressed upon you that you needed to limit that.

Katrina: I mean, I really truly believe that saying when you're talking to everybody you're talking to nobody. Like your work and what you're saying will not resonate with anybody unless you're speaking to a specific person. Now, in my podcast, I'm very specifically talking to women physicians who are in clinical practice in a certain age group who have weight issues, and I get emails and comments from people who are men, and who are not physicians at all, and who are loving what I'm offering and they've lost a bunch of weight, so that's great, right? Like more power to them, that's totally fine, but if I were trying to create content to help all of those people, it was dilute all of it and it wouldn't resonate with anybody. So I really - what I find so interesting is I have podcast listeners who tell me, "I feel like you're in my head, I feel like you're saying all the things that I think on a regular basis and I feel like you're talking directly to me, straight to me" and the thing is, I kind of am. Like when I'm talking to them on the podcast, like I'm thinking of one person who's struggling with this issue, and that makes them so badly want to work with you because you can really help them and their specific issue, and there's enough of them that I can - more than enough people that I can work with who are having...

Brooke: I think we should talk about that just briefly, because I think that I have the same issue in my head that most of my students have is that there's just not enough people to work with us because when we first start out we don't have any clients, so we think that there's no one in the world. And so I started running Facebook ads and running them to my self-coaching 101 book and like a hundred people were buying it a day, and I kept saying to my Facebook guys, I'm like, "Where are these people coming from?" And they were laughing, they were like, "No, you don't understand, like some people do thousands a day. Like thousands and thousands a day." And so I think we're so limited in our mind which is ironic, right? So we're so limited in our mind we think we have to include the whole universe in order to get any clients, and the opposite is true. The more focused, the more we eliminate, the more people we have because you have tons of doctors that want to work with you, the reason they want to work with you is because they're practicing right now and you speak their language.

Katrina: And they know that I can help them with their very specific challenges. There are a million weight loss programs out there, right? I mean, any number that they could pick from, so why should they pick mine? Because I have the solution to the challenges that they always come up against. I help them with all their challenges with time and stress and you know, crazy schedules and things like that where you just don't get that anywhere else. So if I were trying to talk to lawyers too, I wouldn't really focus on helping them with that issue. I mean, and I know what their issues are because that was me.

Brooke: That's exactly right.

Katrina: I literally had Google searched weight loss for doctors and couldn't find anything. It was all medical weight loss, that wasn't what I wanted and so I figured, well, there's probably some other people out there who would like the solution, you know...

Brooke: That's such a good point because you could have said, you know, professionals, high income earning professionals, which would have included lawyers, which would have included like high-end executives, right, so you could have opened that up more and you would have lost so much of your traction because yes, you could probably help an attorney, I mean I helped you, you're a doctor, right? But if there was an option between choosing me and general weight or choosing to work with someone that was specific to doctors, of course, you're going to pick the person that's specific to doctors. So I can't emphasize that enough. I get so much pushback on wanting to narrow, and your brain just can't understand that less is more. Like it just really can't.

Katrina: It's like it does not compute. It's like an error message.

Brooke: It's so good. So most of the people that I'm going to interview on this podcast are into - they've already made a hundred thousand, they're into two, three hundred thousand, but let's talk about that first hundred thousand. What do you think is the most important thing to remember when you're building a business and you're in that phase?

Katrina: It's going to be super uncomfortable. Really is going to be uncomfortable, and you're not going to believe - I was actually just talking about this to my husband, because I had heard the first hundred thousand was the hardest, and it really is because you don't have the audience yet, and you still don't know for sure that people really want what you're offering. You're still working so hard to just offer value, you're offering value like crazy right and left and you're maybe getting a little bite or a little nibble here and there, and you just have to keep going. It's so uncomfortable, I mean one thing that I did that was so uncomfortable was I pitched myself to the local MPR station for an interview; oh my god, I was so worked up over the whole thing and ended up being a wonderful thing to do for my business. And it just helped give me evidence for myself, I can do this. Look what I just did, I just did that. I got a paying client out of it, gave me legitimacy in my business, it was one of the best things I could do but my brain the entire time was like, "Run away the other direction for sure. That is the worst thing you've ever come up with." So you just have to keep going and going and going and going and believing in the overall big picture and all of a sudden - I mean, for me, you remember, it took off like wildfire, I mean, to the point where within a month probably, maybe six weeks, I was like, I'm way too busy, what is happening, how did this happen so fast? I was...

Brooke: But you had been building...

Katrina: I was used to that though because in medical practice it's the same thing that happens. You need more and more patients and all of a sudden you have too many, so I was like, "Oh, this is just like that. Okay, I understand."

Brooke: Well what about people that'll say - I think this is an interesting thing for us to make note of because I think people will say, "Well, she's a doctor, so it's easier for her to build credibility with her clients and so she's a special snowflake, I won't be like her."

Katrina: Yes, I mean, it wasn't any easier for me. I mean, I will say, my clients have money, that helps. You should choose a niche where the people want to pay money to solve their problem.

Brooke: That's a good idea.

Katrina: That is a really good idea, and so I chose one of those niches. So that was good.

Brooke: I mean, let's talk about how you know, your big fear which is so interesting, right, because some people say, "Well, you're a doctor, so you already have credibility, easy to work with them." But you have to remember that Katrina, I don't know if you even remember this. It's like you have doctors and you're a doctor turned life coach. Right? This was a problem in your brain, right? And I was like - kept saying, "This is not a problem, this is not a problem, this is the best thing ever." But I think for some people, they think, if you have - if you're certified or if you have this special thing behind your name then, of course, you're going to be able to be more successful, which is such BS, because you had to overcome that whole issue of...

Katrina: I was really pretty intimidated by my niche clients.

Brooke: Right?

Katrina: Like, really, really intimidated. I really had to work through that and it didn't help by having someone who was pretty negative about what I was offering on the internet, really early on. In hindsight, that was a great thing that happened because it offered me the possibility to narrow my niche even more and to get really, really specific about what I was offering. Basically, somebody was saying that I was offering bariatric help, you know, making it very medical, and that's not at all what I'm offering, so it helped me to get very clear on that. How is this different than seeing a weight loss physician? You know, it's completely different and these are the reasons why. And so that was really helpful for me to just go, okay, well this is what I'm going to offer, and then I just kept going. I still kept going with the idea that there's got to be doctors out there. This happened before I even had one physician client. So I never worked with my ideal client even once, and there was already some pushback. But once I started working with some you know, just a couple people who were physicians who were my ideal client, who absolutely wanted what I had to offer, were getting great results, they were so happy, I felt like I was learning and doing a good job. I was like, okay, there's always going to be those people out there, and these are the people I want to work with. I don’t want to work with someone who thinks that what I'm offering isn't good, right? Then they're not my person, right? I want to work with the people who go, "Yes, this is amazing, I've always been into this stuff and I'd love to apply it to my weight loss struggle."

Brooke: Yes, and I think too, I think your market is so brilliant because I think physicians are so undertrained, right, when it comes to weight loss. I've had so many clients go to physicians for weight loss that give them the worst, most terrible advice, right? So I love that you can - I think physicians - many physicians feel inadequate in that way because they aren't able to help their clients lose weight because they're overweight themselves. So I think going to someone who can totally relate to that, because you've lost a bunch of weight yourself, you've gone through the process yourself, you understand that journey, I think is just - I think it's just made that marriage between you and your ideal client so brilliant.

Katrina: There's a lot of shame in giving advice about something that you struggle with yourself.

Brooke: Yes, of course.

Katrina: My patients ask me every day how they can lose weight and I don't even know what to tell them because I tried all of it too and none of it works, and so that - I mean, that's a terrible place to live in, you know? You know, all of us think that we're the special snowflake, we're the only ones who have a certain problem, and when I work with them, especially in group settings and they see how, oh my gosh, and she has that too and she has that too, I'm not the only one; that just helps them so much, not even with the weight stuff, because as you know, it's not even really about the food, it's about all the other stresses in their lives, trying to be this high achiever, trying to be amazing as a doctor, and also amazing at home with all their family responsibilities, feeling like they're failing at both, they feel terrible, and so then they eat because that's what we do, right?

Brooke: Right, and they don't want to talk to anyone about it, right?

Katrina: Because who can really understand? Well, another physician, and that's where I come into play.

Brooke: So good. Okay, let's talk business models. So we have a structure that we set up at The Life Coach School for how people can start building their business, and we have them start with the one-on-one coaching, so can you talk a little bit about how you started with the one-on-one coaching and then what you've grown into now?

Katrina: Yes, so I started with one-on-one, and that was all I was offering, and that was going great, and I would work with - even though I was marketing to physicians, I would take whoever wanted to pay me money. So I worked with all kinds of people, so you know, people - even people who are not in healthcare at all, they liked what I was offering and they wanted some help and so I definitely let them hire me and we worked together and that was great and really fun.

Brooke: Wait, let me just pause you there because the reason why that worked in that position is because you were working one-on-one. So you're marketing to physicians, but in the beginning, because you were working one-on-one, you would take anyone because it was the one-on-one. You weren't creating a group where physicians would want to be working with each other, which has changed, where you are now. But I think it's a really good distinction that people understand, like just because you're marketing to a very specific market doesn't mean in the beginning that you won't work with whoever will let you coach them.

Katrina: Exactly. I was like, great, let's do it. What are you? It doesn't matter what your background is. So I coached all of them and then what ended up happening was I started a podcast, and the podcast, through word of mouth mostly, really took flame basically and all of a sudden there were all these physicians who were learning about what I had to offer and they were all really, really interested. So what I found was that all of a sudden, very quickly, a lot of people were interested in have mini session calls, so like a sales call with me, and I was booking out months and months for those, and pretty much every person who was getting on a call with me wanted to sign up. So I pretty rapidly found that I just - there was just no way that I could help all these people, and even a wait list would have been too long because most of the people who still hadn't lost weight wanted to continue on with me. I didn't offer a program that was six or eight or twelve weeks and then that was the end. They wanted to continue until they had all the weight off. So that's when I basically...

Brooke: Stop there for just a second because I just want to slow down for people who are brand new. So basically, the way that we sell and the way that I teach at the school is you sell a program. So you would get a one-on-one person to sign up with you, and then they would coach with you. What was your program? Six weeks?

Katrina: I think at first I started with six weeks just to try to get anybody to just sign up.

Brooke: So they would make a commitment for six weeks and you got to the point where you had so many one-on-one clients that your day was filled with coaching one-on-ones, right? All day, and then you were getting a waiting list. Now, a lot of people come to me and they will come to you and see your business model now, and they'll say, "I like your membership business model, I think I'll do that" or "I like your group coaching model, I think I'll do that" and what I always say and this is to all of you who are coaches, whether you've gone through my school or not, you are not ready for group coaching and you are not ready for a membership site until you are maxed out on your one-to-ones. So that's right where you were, you had plenty one-on-ones. Now, what's great about the model and the way that you did it is all that one-on-one is such good practice.

Katrina: Totally.

Brooke: Right? You're coaching all day every day, and at that point, once you get to the point where you can't accommodate everything, everyone, there's two options. You either raise your prices until they're extremely high, which people will still pay for and you give them that very high-end service, and that's a beautiful business model for a lot of people, and you still work one-on-one, or you move into the group coaching, which is what you did. So let's talk about that.

Katrina: Yes, so I really had to work through the structure of it first. I really didn't see how groups would work for my target client because of their schedules being so opposite of one another and so - this is why everybody should hire a coach. Brooke said to me, "Why don't you just do it all online?" And it was like, "Oh, I could do that? I didn't know that that was a possibility. I thought you had to have weekly calls." And so that's what I did, and I marketed it and it was not difficult to get a good chunk of people together and I started with a couple of groups to start off with, and that was really, really good to start on a smaller scale because it gave me a lot more experience in coaching people together as a group, and it was great because within a couple of weeks I felt super confident, comfortable, it was like - felt like I had been doing it all along, but it didn't feel like something super overwhelming, and I've loved that. I've loved being able to just basically maximize my time and effort and help - you know, when you coach people one-on-one, and you have this really big breakthrough, you wish that other people who had the same problem could hear that too, because it would really help them too and that's exactly what we do in a group. You know, I don't need to coach 20 people on the same issue, I can coach one person on it and all other 19 people are getting just as much value out of it.

Brooke: Can totally benefit. Yes, so I think it's funny that you said it wasn't hard at all to get the group, because this is what I want to remind you of, and this is so good for you to kind of look back and see, that's easy now because now I can do it, but when you're learning something, when you're going through it the first time, it's challenging because you don't know, right? You don't know what you're...

Katrina: I had no idea people would sign up.

Brooke: Will people sign up, and so one of the things that we did, I mean, we had the benefit of you and I were working very closely together at the time, so Katrina signed up with me for my coach training and my stop overeating master class, which was huge investment, but because I was coaching with her on the weight at the time, I was able to help her also with some of her sales letters and with the way she communicated and with the way that she did the mini calls. So even though she's saying it's easy, the way that she did that was very calculated, very planned, she got a lot of feedback from me, she went through all the due diligence and then she did mini calls with all of those people, which is what we call our sales calls, right? So she's on the phone, talking to each one of those people and accepting them in there, so I think a lot of people would not say that was easy.

Katrina: Yes, that's a good point actually, because I sort of forgot about that part. I didn't have to actually sell each one of them on the group.

You're like, that's easy now that it's done.

Katrina: Everybody just paid me money and signed up, that's not how it went.

Brooke: Right, I mean, that was tough for you at the time, and I think it was delightful because you got such a great result, and a lot of times, we don't on our first round. Like, you could have done all of that work and not had a great result, but...

Katrina: It was super fun but it was also really scary. Like, oh my gosh, now I've got all these people, I need to help them. Like, okay, how am I going to do that? Oh my gosh, they're all looking at me like baby birds, what do I do?

Brooke: Right, but so that was great because all of a sudden, instead of your time being just one off time, you were able to leverage your time, and that is not - I've had a lot of coaches that want to start there, and it's very challenging to start there. You have to have such a demand for your work to be able to accommodate the group and be able to charge them a price that makes sense on both sides, right?

Katrina: I mean, everybody really wants in. You know, you're not like just kind of dragging some people in or trying to convince your friend or something. They really want to be there, the energy of the group is so great. They're really supporting each other, they're all in, it really - it creates such a great experience for them when everybody - I mean, they're like, "Great, I would love to work with you one-on-one, but if all you're offering is group, then I'll take it." I mean, with you, I would have loved to work with you one-on-one, but you weren't offering it, so okay, I guess I have to join this group. I mean, that's just what was offered so.

Brooke: And it is so much more powerful as a participant, you don't realize that until you're in the group seeing someone else coach. So I just want to end with talking about before we started recording we were talking - Katrina and I talk on the phone, I coach her sometimes about what's going on in her business, and one of the things that I think people think, and there's probably many people that are thinking, "If I could just make a hundred thousand dollars", "If I could just be at my goal weight", right? So you're pretty much doing both, right? You're at your goal weight, you've lost all your weight, you're at that hundred thousand dollars, and so when we get on the phone, it should just be rainbows and daisies, you know that.

Katrina: I should just be like, "Brooke, thank you so much for making my life so ridiculously amazing."

Brooke: You should just be like, "Hello, it's another beautiful day in paradise." That is not what happens. That is not what happens with me, that's not what happens with you. So talk just briefly about what your biggest challenge is now.

Katrina: Right now, it's managing my mind. Isn't it always about that?

Brooke: Isn't it fascinating?

Katrina: It's about managing my mind. I've had a big sort of growth in my business and it's been wonderful, and yes, my brain wants to freak out, and it is actively doing that and it's really one of those change kinds of things. It's easy to keep doing what you've always done because you already know how to do it. Here I am creating something new that I haven't created before, I'm making mistakes, I am realizing that I'm doing things that I don't probably like the result of, and so now I'm needed to figure out how to get myself onto the path that I want and the solution to that is changing my thinking, as is the solution to any problem.

Brooke: Everything. Well, and it's so fun because I'm going to start working with a group of coaches that have gone through The Life Coach School that are making a hundred thousand dollars or more, we're going to start masterminding together, and I really want to share my experience with - because when I teach my students that are brand new, going to a hundred thousand, what I teach is so different than what I teach when I'm teaching someone to go from a hundred thousand to a million because you can't - and I'm always telling my students, you have to hustle your way to a 100K, but you can't hustle your way to a million. And so your brain freaks out - listen, there is no point where your brain stops freaking out, so that is the bad news. It will just always freak out, even with tremendous success it freaks out. I'm in a space right now that I couldn't even have imagined, and my brain is freaking out. So that's just really important to remember, that that's something that you don't get to ever get rid of. It's the good news and the bad news I think, but also that you have to get to a point where you do genuinely work smarter and you plan more carefully. All the tools that - I was just telling this to Katrina, I'm like, "All the tools that I've taught you are even more important now." And your brain is very clever, and it's very sophisticated, right? It'll tell you, "No, this is different"...

Katrina: This is the one exception. This is why for three years after I first learned the model, I thought that all my problems were the one exception until I went to coach training and it was like, actually it's not true.

Brooke: Everything applies, right? So I mean, I love your story of success, I think it's so fantastic and I love even more that when we went to get on to record this call you were like - I'm like, "Perfect, this is so great because" - and then I go to my coach and what's so great about my coach is he doesn't know the model or any of this stuff, but he just thinks in math, so when I freak out to him, he's like, "Well it sounds like we should add another something, something, something to make that 83,000 or whatever." He's just like so - so I'm like, every business problem is just a math problem. Everything else is just thought drama.

Katrina: It totally is.

Brooke: Just remember that.

Katrina: You know, one other thing I just want to point out to the people who have kids who think - even young kids, who think that they can't get their business going because of their kids, you know, I have three kids, I work when they're in school and it's totally possible to do all of this while you're still mom-ing, running carpool, doing the after school activities, all of it.

Brooke: So good. It's so good. You're about to leave right now to...

Katrina: I literally have to go right now and go get my kids, yes.

Brooke: Alright, well thank you so much Katrina, I really appreciate it.

Katrina: You're so welcome, thanks for having me Brooke.

Brooke: Do that thought work my friend.

Katrina: I will, it's happening.

Brooke: Alright, talk to you soon.

Okay, next we have Stacey Smith. Stacey's story is so good, I'm not going to tell you here because we talk about it in our conversation, but she is such a gem. I love, love, love her story and how she just bet on herself and it's paying off so well. She's adorable and amazing.

Stacey graduated in 2015 from The Life Coach School, feeling ready to coach and having no idea where her first clients were coming from, having a small network and knowing nothing about business. Through her eventual mastery in building relationships, her past background of sales and marketing and her commitment to getting coached, Stacey hustled for 12 months and hit six figures as a coach in her first year, and went on to create her signature program, Diva Business School.

She believes your net worth is created by your self-worth, changed everything for her and her business. She also recently did her first six figure program launch of her newest life coach mastermind, The Six Figure Society, and was featured on an eight page spread in the Global Luxury magazine, MilliOnAir, for her recent mega retreat, Midnight in Paris in Michigan.

She's currently in production of her very own podcast, The Diva Business School Podcast, and is launching her fourth class of Diva Business School. Please enjoy this conversation I have with Stacey Smith.

Brooke: Hello Stacey.

Stacey: Hello.

Brooke: So this is so funny because right before I hit record, I just told Stacey, "Hey, I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions and you have no idea what they're going to be, are you ready?" She said, "As long as you'll edit it", I said, "No, no editing." So I just want - I don't think I said that in the other interviews, like these are complete - like, there has been no prep, no warning, you have no idea what's coming, you're all in, I love it. So Stacey, I love your story, and I want to tell your story and I mean your story with me. Not your story of your life. Your story as it pertains to your relationship with me I just think - it's like one of my most favorite stories. So tell everybody how you found me and how that worked out, and I will interject.

Stacey: Oh my gosh, okay, yes, you want me to start from when I found you?

Brooke: Yes.

Stacey: Okay, well I didn't find you. Nicole Castille found you. She's my bestie, and then she messaged me like besties do, and said, "Oh my god, I'm driving from Florida and I found this podcast called The Life Coach School, and I'm on episode 11 and you have to listen to it right now." So I did.

Brooke: Perfect. And then...

Stacey: Well, and then we listened to it together for quite some time. We would drive all over the country for our job and we would...

Brooke: Okay, wait, you have to tell what your job was.

Stacey: Okay, I was a pitch artist, so I would do live infomercials in department stores all over the country, and we would caravan together, we worked together, and so we would be in different cars following each other across the United States, listening to your podcast.

Brooke: Oh my god, I can't believe you just called yourself a pitch artist. That is so fantastic. So you would go into department stores and you would sell things live to people walking through the department store?

Stacey: I would actually gather a crowd and I would have 20 minutes to sell the entire crowd all at once on the product.

Brooke: Okay, give me an example of something that you sold.

Stacey: My favorite thing to sell was like a kitchen mandolin, like a slicer, those that chefs use. It was my favorite.

Brooke: I love it, so you were like a live infomercial.

Stacey: Yes.

Brooke: So you were like hustling and bustling all over the country, driving around, listening to the podcast. Okay, and then what happened?

Stacey: Yes, building my business from whatever store I was in. So then we decided - you made a podcast about The Life Coach School training, and she called - I literally remember the like - we were driving to Missouri and she called me and she was like, "We've got to go. We have to go." Like we do have to go, oh my god. So we applied together, and you guys accepted us both.

Brooke: I still remember when you guys signed up, I was still doing calls with everyone that joined. I remember, I was at my mom's house - isn't this funny, like the things you remember? I remember being in my mom's house talking to you guys about your job and you were so excited. That's what made it like - because you really couldn't afford it. Let's talk about that.

Stacey: No. I could not.

Brooke: Like, can we make 17 payments?

Stacey: Yes, I think I did make 17 payments. Maybe more.

Brooke: Which is so fascinating, right? Considering where you are now, but at the time, you were - I mean, and I think a lot of people that are applying, or that have applied are in that same position, where they think, "I can't afford to do this", so what made you do it even though you...

Stacey: I said they can't afford not to do it.

Brooke: Right, isn't that crazy? Don’t encourage them, we seriously - we've already sold out 2018, it's crazy right now. But we're going to have our building in 2019.

Stacey: I'm so excited about that.

Brooke: So talk about that. You didn't have enough money, but you were sure you wanted to go. The two of you were like totally committed, and then what?

Stacey: Well, I have a very like, take action first and figure it out later mentality, which...

Brooke: I love that about you.

Stacey: Well, that's an entrepreneur, but yes, we were on 100% commission, and the thing that's amazing and that's the same thing about entrepreneurship is that in any given moment, you have the opportunity for something amazing to happen, so we used to think, "We're just going to do some really good stores and we're going to make the money happen." Like, that was the plan, and that worked for a little bit. I think for about half of my payments that worked.

Brooke: Half of your 17 payments, I love it.

Stacey: But then I came right back from The Life Coach School and my company lost our biggest contract that we had and it was like where I was making all of my money, and I couldn't even work in my state. I had to drive six hours to another state to work every other week. So my income dropped and then...

Brooke: And you're trying to build your business.

Stacey: Yes, the issues with the payments.

Brooke: You had issues with the payments? I didn't know that. So you're trying to make payments, your business, you're trying to work your current job and build up your business as an entrepreneur. Like you had every reason in the world to quit and go work for corporate. Why didn't you?

Stacey: God, that's a really good question. This is also a good thing to do as an entrepreneur, sometimes you just - you're so far in that like, there's just no other way, you can't turn around. It's just like, you're just going all in, like you're too far down the path.

Brooke: I love that, but a lot of people don't think that way though.

Stacey: Yes. That was for sure, but also I was really unhappy in my job, like super unhappy. I was crying every day in my car for years. And it wasn't an awful job, I was very good at it, I was the best in the company, it was just not fulfilling. So I just knew. I knew.

Brooke: So you started building your business, how in the world did you build it to six figures? Because you know, that's impossible if you're a life coach.

Stacey: That is really what it feels like. You know, I did it old school. I went to a million networking events, I drove anywhere and everywhere, up to six hours sometimes for networking events. Two hours, three hours, I just got in front of as many people as possible and - I mean, anything anyone invited me to, I just networked my ass off.

Brooke: I love that. So I think that's one of the skillsets that you have that has really helped you, so let's talk about that. I think the fact that you're a pitch artist, I want to be a pitch artist. That's so fantastic. So what did you learn from that job and from being so good at it that you have brought into this industry that may help other coaches that are trying to - because everybody you know, quits along their way for their own reason, and you didn't quit, and you kept going out there even though it must - a lot of people must have told you no?

Stacey: Yes, they did. Actually, I think my sales rate is probably lower than most people, like my rejection rate is probably lower, but getting in front of the people was the challenge for me. That was my biggest challenge.

Brooke: So why is your sales rate lower than most people?

Stacey: Because that's what I did for seven years, I was good at it. I understand human behavior.

Brooke: So tell us. Tell us some secrets, tell us some tips.

Stacey: Okay, well, I always say if people don't buy then there's like a triangle - I'll try to explain this the best way possible. There is a triangle in sales, and the triangle has to like - if you imagine three different sides, it has to be connected and all of the points have to be hit in order for someone to buy. So you have to be connected to what you're offering to people.

Brooke: You as the seller, as the coach?

Stacey: Yes, so you have to believe in life coaching. And I had had massive transformation life coaching, like massive. So I believed in it, and then you have to be connected to the person in front of you. Like, there are times I get on the phone as a coach and I don’t feel that connection and I don't offer coaching to that person. I just don't feel it for whatever reason.

Brooke: Interesting, okay.

Stacey: And then - so you have to be connected to them, you have to be connected to what they're offering, and then they also have to be connected to both you and what you're offering.

Brooke: Love it, okay, good.

Stacey: So there are things that can go wrong in that triangle, and when you know that there are - like when I get off the phone with a client, I know whether it was a missed connection, because if you don't feel the connection, they don't either. And sometimes you try to force that, and you can't force that. And then there are times where you know, for me, when I'm on the phone with a client, and I believe in life coaching more than anything, then they come with a problem, I know that I can solve it for them. So I'm not afraid to go through all of their objections about why they can't do it. Like, I know if they really want it, I can help them get it because I know I have the tools to do that.

Brooke: Yes, and you know what's so interesting is I teach this obviously all the time, and people that are brand new coaches that don't have sales experience - a lot of my coaches don't have any sales experience so they don't understand that, they get so caught up in themselves, right? They get so caught up in their head and what they're offering and what their program is that they forget, "Can I help this person? And do I want to offer them my help?" And that - like, it's exactly what you just said. You're like, if I'm talking to someone and I know I can help them, like we just become like a dog with a bone, right? We're like, no listen, seriously, I can help you.

Stacey: Yes.

Brooke: It is worth so much more than any amount of money you're ever going to give me, and when you genuinely know that that's true, then it's such a - it ends up being an easy sale, yes?

Stacey: Yes.

Brooke: That's so good. So do you think that that's one of the main reasons why you were so successful or have been? What are the other things? Tell us, what else do we need to know if we're trying to make 100K as a coach?

Stacey: Oh gosh...

Brooke: So you can't give up, we know that. Like you said, I'm just too deep in there, right? You have to be committed in your sales and understand sales. What else has made you successful?

Stacey: I think my willingness to think outside the box. I would think that's the biggest thing because I got really caught up in how you know, you need to build your business as a life coach, like I got very stuck in the sales, just the email list and the website and all that stuff, like I got stuck there. Like it was like my ending point. I couldn't afford someone to build my website, and I didn't - I tried hours and hours and hours, I couldn’t figure out how to build it myself, and I was literally stuck there. And so I think that yes, I could have kept managing my mind through that and gotten through it with mind, but I think that if there's an objection in front of you, you can either overcome that objection and it just not be one, or you can go around it. So I just assumed the truth of I'm not going to be able to build my business, having a website and a blog and an email list, like that's not working for me right now, so what are my alternatives? And I got really, really creative.

Brooke: Yes, that's so interesting. That's - one of my other students Kris Placky, that was the same thing she did. She couldn't figure out the online stuff, couldn't figure out the details of that, and so she just decided to go the networking route. But you guys always come back to us online people, because then you want to scale.

Stacey: Yes, for sure, you've got to do that. And you know, the other thing though is that some people master the online stuff but they can't like - I have people that come to me now because they aren't - they see me being so charismatic on, I do a lot of Facebook lives, I'm on social media a lot, and they can't break out of that thing that I'm so effortless at because I did it for seven years. I was performing in front of crowds all day long every day, so something that's effortless for me is not necessarily effortless for everybody else. So that obstacle, that thing is different for everybody.

Brooke: I love it. I love it, it's so good. So let's talk about you want to go on, right? You are beyond 100K, right? This podcast is 100K, and almost everyone I've interviewed has already gone there and beyond. What is the most challenging - well tell me this. What was the difference once you've made a hundred thousand dollars in your business, did you notice a difference in making more after that? Was anything different?

Stacey: Yes.

Brooke: Okay, tell me.

Stacey: I think for me, a hundred thousand feels like - that's the point where it's real. That's what it feels like, it's like this is a business. So...

Brooke: Yes, it's no longer a jobbie.

Stacey: Yes, it's no longer like, "I think I'm going to make this work." It's like, this is serious.

Brooke: Working.

Stacey: Yes.

Brooke: So then what happened in your head? Anything? Was it - making two hundred, was that easy after that or what? Tell me the difference.

Stacey: Yes, I think it happened - I mean, it happened really quick because from - so in 2016, from January until July, I was only generating about 20,000 dollars in my business. So that's about two thousand-something dollars a month. And then between July and August, I signed a ton of clients and I generated 120,000 dollars in my business.

Brooke: Look at you. Love it.

Stacey: It was when Facebook live started, that was like my thing. I didn't have to like drive anywhere to network with people. And then from there it just grew, because by the time I got to mastermind in May of the following year, I was at 200,000. And then between then and now, September, I'm at three.

Brooke: Which is so great. So I feel like that first 100K, there are so many unknowns, and your brain is like losing it. It's like, "This is horrible, you should not do tis, this is never going to work." Right? But then once you've got 100K under your belt, I kind of feel like you can tell your brain to simmer down. Like, it's almost like you have some authority over it, you're like - like you just said, this is legit.

Stacey: I feel like sometimes I feel that way, and then sometimes I'm like, literally last night I was like, "It's all going to hell."

Brooke: Yes, let's just become hostesses.

Stacey: My brain - like all my clients are quitting, it's going too far backwards, I'm not going to survive, like, just, five-hour cloud of it's all just doom and gloom.

Brooke: But see, I was just talking to Katrina about this, who's also going to be on this podcast, and one of the things we were just talking about is like, she got on the phone with me, she's killing it in her business, she got on the phone, she's like, "Oh my god, I got this, and I got this, and I'm freaking out" and I'm like, but you know, we have this idea that as soon as we get to this certain point in our business, then everything will just be chill, right? Then we'll just be enjoying the good life, and that is not what happens.

Stacey: No, that is not what happens.

Brooke: Yes, you still have to manage everything that's going on in your brain, and then you have to deal with this new kind of level of success, and enjoying it and being present with it without you know - I think for sure, I want to spend time in gratitude for it and appreciating it, but also not slowing down in a good way. Like, being fuelled by really high energy positivity to take it to the next level, because for me, I'm all about wanting to be an example of what's possible, so I want to just blow the lid off of what people think is possible for a life coach. What is it at this point that's driving you?

Stacey: The same thing. I cannot tell you - like you've been such an example to me, how many times I say I want to be an example of what's possible, and that is why. I feel like if I push myself and my girls, the girls that are in my programs, mastermind, if they see me doing it, it gives them hope, like when I did my - I just did a six-figure program launch, and one of my clients is like, "I'm doing one now. That's my goal now." So I'm paving the way for them to see what's possible in the world, so I push myself a lot in that way.

Brooke: Yes, and so a lot of times - and I talk to my coach, Frank, about this too. At some point, it's not about the money in the sense of spending the money, right? I think you know, there's a certain point of where we want to get to financially so we can afford to pay the bills, and you know, go out to nice dinners and buy a nice car, whatever, whatever your thing is that you want to spend money there comes a point, but then after that, it really is that money is the least driving factor. The amount of money is for me, what it represents in terms of accomplishment and blowing of that glass ceiling and really just showing what is possible in the world. And so I think a lot of times when we talk about business in terms of making 100K, 200K, a million, people can misunderstand and think that, "Oh gosh, all they care about is money." But that's just the measuring stick in terms of...

Stacey: I got a lot of pushback as my business grew for - like I called my mastermind the Six Figure Society, and people were like - like, I got a lot of pushback when raising my pricing, like I had a lot - I had to do a lot of work to make sure - you know, like, "Why is this coming up for me? Why are so many people questioning my money beliefs?" But talking to mastermind, I loved when you said like, it is just a marker for success. It's just - that's how you know you're killing it.

Brooke: Yes, and I think too, this whole idea that if you want to make money, if you have money goals that somehow you're greedy and that you're going to hurt people. I mean, really I think there's this general like, if you're rich, you're hurting the planet. If you're rich, you're hurting - and I think that is one of the reasons why so many of my clients and my students don't make the money that they want to make because of these belief systems that are somehow if you're making money, other people are making less. This zero-sum game, which is the complete opposite, right? So if you think about your business, when you're selling in department stores, you weren't creating the value that you're now creating, right? So when you decided to start your business, you created value that was not there before, and people are paying you for that value. So in my perception, the world is more valuable because you are an entrepreneur, and the more you create a value and the more you charge for that value, the more value there will be total in the world. And when you look at life that way, it's just tremendous abundance compounded by the more entrepreneurs that become successful, instead of, "Oh my gosh, there's going to become so many entrepreneurs that they're just going to go round and take money from people." They're missing the point where no, entrepreneurs don't go around taking money from people, entrepreneurs create value. Every single business was started with an entrepreneur. So I think for me, I like to talk about money and I like to talk about six figures and seven figures, I like to talk about it like that in a way that - I like to tell people I love money because I think it freaks them out and jars their belief system about it, that somehow it's wrong to want to make a lot of money. And so when you're an entrepreneur, the greatest way of looking at it I think is in order for you to make a lot of money, you have to create a lot of value. And I want to see how much value I can create for the world. I really genuinely do, and so that - I mean, it sounds like you kind of had that same mission, like how much value can I create and leave as a legacy too, right?

Stacey: I mean, I will tell you value is the thing that blew my business up like 100%. My first program that I offered was a six-week program, I had 20 - I networked 20 girls into my program and it was just six like calls that they got with me as the group, and I created a page for them where they could interact, but then I went in and for every - so every week had like a topic, a theme, and then within that week, I would go and film a 30 minute video every single day for six weeks to supplement like more content for that week's topic so that they could dive even deeper and that fuelled a lot of my future success moving forward. I just gave them so much value they couldn't not coach with me.

Brooke: Right? And that's the thing that I think is so interesting about - like when I talk to people about like - it's so funny, so I have fresh flowers delivers to the house every day - not everyday...

Stacey: That's amazing.

Brooke: Not every day. Every week. So the guy that delivers our flowers asked my assistant, so I'm just curious, what does Mr. Castillo do? Right? And she's like, "I couldn't help myself." She's like, "He works for his wife", which of course he doesn't. He's my business partner, but she was just like making her point to him, and I just think it's so interesting. I get a lot of like, "Well, what do you mean you're a life coach? What do you mean you support your family being a life coach?" And kind of all of these, I don't know, seems like derogatory comments to me, that I am just so delighted by. I'm so like - I love when people underestimate the potential of what I can create and what we as women and what we as life coaches can create and do, so I'm all about it. Like, I want - if I can make a hundred million dollars, I'm going to make a hundred million dollars, and I'm going to be like, "Hell yes." I'm not going to apologize to anyone and feel like, "Oh my gosh, I took something away from" - and that is what I want to teach to everyone that's like, keeping themselves in a place of scarcity. Okay, I want you to give one piece of advice to any new coach that's listening to this that maybe they struggle to pay for their certification, whether it was through The Life Coach School or wherever else, and they're wondering, "Can I really be successful at this? Can I really make this happen?" What would you tell them?

Stacey: Well, first of all, yes, 100%, they can do it. Just self-belief, but I think I would tell them that I really am a firm believer in you have to - that saying, you have to do something you've never done if you want something you've never had. Well, I had a client tell me once that you have to invest more than you believe you can because then you're challenging what you believe is possible for you to make.

Brooke: Interesting, so you mean invest in your business?

Stacey: Yes, like invest as if your life really did depend on it. Like, if you're really all in - that's the thing. You got to be honest with yourself. Are you all in? And if you are, like, what would you do if you could have literally everything you ever wanted? Everything you ever wanted. Like I tell people if I could just give you a genie bottle, like give it to you, like a lamp that had a genie in it, if I could give that to you and it would have everything you ever wanted, everything, and all you had to do was come up with ten grand to give it to me, would you come up with the ten grand? And every time they say yes.

Brooke: Of course.

Stacey: So then you have to start thinking like, everything is on the other side of every single action you take.

Brooke: Yes, and I think that's really interesting. Frank and I, my coach, were talking about this, like I think people are very willing to invest in education. Like I think, because it's passive, right? So you're willing to - I think a lot of people are willing to invest the ten grand with maybe going to college or going to a certification program or going - or an online course, whatever. But I think - I love what you said about investing in your business because I think a lot of people are afraid, like when I watch them invest in Facebook ads or invest in building a website or something like that, that feels so much more committal to what you are doing personally. If I am paying for a college to teach me something, I feel like I'm paying the college, but when you invest in yourself, that's when you really put money on black for yourself, right? And that is the secret. I think that's fantastic advice. We were just talking about this with - we were talking about investing money, we were talking about putting money - where do you want to invest your money? Do you want to put it in stocks? Do you want to put it in mutual funds? And I was telling the guy, the financial guys, I'm like, "I want to put it on me." I want to put it on my business. I go, "I'd much rather invest in my business that Coke's business, I think I'm going to do a better job." Like, honestly. And when you start thinking like that, if I have ten grand to invest, where do I want to invest it? I know exactly, I want to invest it in creating more value for my customers.

Stacey: I asked my girls the other day what would they rather, have the money and not know where to invest it, or nowhere to invest it and not have the money. What would be your answer, Brooke?

Brooke: Interesting, I don't know. Let me think about it. Okay, would I rather have the money and not know where to invest it, I would rather - well, I don't think my answer's fair, but I think I'd rather not have the money and nowhere to invest it because I can get the money.

Stacey: Yes.

Brooke: Is that your answer too?

Stacey: Yes.

Brooke: I'm like, "But I really like money."

Stacey: But it's like the question of whether you want to make a million dollars or win it.

Brooke: Yes, no, got to make it.

Stacey: I would rather know. I invest - I commit to investments all the time not knowing where the money's going to come from and not having it right that second. But I know that's the investment I make, and then I just go to work to make it happen. Just tell me the amount of money I need to create and I'll go create it, but I'd rather know where I'd want to put it.

Brooke: Yes, and I think for what that really represents and what's you're saying is like you believe in yourself. I had a student recently say to me in coach training, she was just saying, you know, "I really value my security." And I said, "Yes, I value my security too. Where does yours come from?" And she said, "My job, where they pay me 50,000 dollars a year." And I said, "What are you talking about? Your security is a feeling that you create for yourself, and where my security comes from is knowing that I can go anywhere and lose all my money, go anywhere and make a living, because first of all, I'm willing to work hard, and willing to work smart, and I have the ability and brain to do that." That's where security comes from, right? If you get your security from something outside of you, think about which is more reliable. So I'm sitting with my client who just said to me, "I get my security from my employer who pays me 50,000 dollars a year" and I say, "I get my security from my life, from my ability, from my brain, from what I'm willing and capable to do." Who's more secure, right? She - all she has - that boss could fire her at any second. He could go out of business at any second.

Stacey: Yes, you have no control. When we lost that contract with our company, there was no control, that was not me getting fired, that was the largest retail chain in the world saying, "No more." What do you do?

Brooke: And so, I mean, that's what I taught her. I said, "I want you to get security from your ability to create whatever it is you want to do in your life." And what's what we teach, right? That's all our thought work and everything, but I just love when my students go out there and like, have no reason - like this is what I love about you. Like, you have no business making a hundred thousand dollars, right? You were like struggling, you had no cash, you didn't have money to invest, you couldn't figure out your website, you were like, "Hell no, I'm going to find a way to do this" and you went and...

Stacey: I had money to invest, I just had to get creative. I sold furniture, I cashed in an IRA, like I just made it happen. I did everything.

Brooke: But don't you think that's a huge reason why your business is successful is you just put it all on black, right? You just went all in. Like I don't think everybody has to necessarily do that financially or you know, put their house up for sale or whatever. But I want people to consider that you are worth that though. Like, if you want to have your own business and you have a huge dream for yourself, be willing to invest in that business. Be willing to invest in yourself because that's where your security should come from for sure.

Stacey: Yes, 100%.

Brooke: Alright mama, you're amazing.

Next, we have my very own Jody Moore. I like to call her mine because she works with me and for me, and she's been with me from the beginning and I am obsessively in love with her and she knows it.

Jody Moore is the owner and lead coach at Bold New Mom, where she helps women with LDS values and prove their relationships, their confidence, and their lives. She believes that if you want to impact the world, the most effective entry point is women. I totally agree.

She's honored to work with adult women as well as young girls, helping them become the next version of themselves. Jody has a Masters degree in Adult Education and Training, and she is a certified coach through The Life Coach School, where she also works part-time, helping new coaches achieve their business goals.

Prior to becoming a full-time coach, Jody worked in a corporate setting as a leadership coach and corporate trainer. She currently resides in Washington State with her husband and four young children.

I'm obsessed with Jody, I'm in love with her, I love that she works for me, I love that her business is killing it, and this is such a great conversation. Please enjoy.

Jody: I'm excited to be on your podcast, by the way, thanks for interviewing me.

Brooke: Good, welcome to my podcast. I would prefer if you didn't reveal your name or your website. This is not about exposure for you, Jody Moore at BoldNewMom.com. Right? We're recording. Okay, I've already introduced you, so let's just jump in to making money. You ready?

Jody: Let's do it.

Brooke: So I'm interviewing five other people for the podcast, I've already interviewed three of them and we've covered a lot of topics. But one of the topics that I was thinking about because you're on your way, you're going to end up making a million dollars in a year, which is pretty rare for really anyone on the planet. So what I want to talk about is how do you reconcile making a lot of money? What are your thoughts about money and making a lot of money? Because there's a lot of money beliefs out there, and you know, I hear a lot of them from my clients, and I think those thoughts prevent them from making money. What do you think is a difference with you?

Jody: I just like to steal your thoughts on money mostly.

Brooke: So did you always have - what were your thoughts before you went through coach training and were exposed to my thoughts on money?

Jody: Yes, it's interesting because I don't know if you remember when I went through coach training, money is one of the things you coached me on, and I shared with you my belief at that time was that I'm just not good with money, and my husband and I both shared that belief that we're just not very good with money. And I told myself that story for a long time and also shopping is my buffer, spending money is my buffer, and so at that point in my life, I was pretty good at just not opening bills because I didn't want to see what was due and not ever looking at the bank account because that would be painful.

Brooke: Right, it's like not getting on the scale, right? It's like, if I don't get on there, I'm not fat. I don't look at my checking account, I'm not broke, right?

Jody: Yes. Anyway, so one of the things that you pointed out to me was that I am good with money. Money is just simple math. Addition and subtraction really is all it is.

Brooke: You're just better at subtracting.

Jody: Exactly, I'm very good at the subtraction part. But you know, I was like, "I don't understand a mortgage and all this is so confusing" and you said to me, "Well, you can just get on Google and probably figure that out in about 30 minutes", right? So anyway, once I kind of tried on that mindset, and then the other thing that really helped me is that I learned to remove the shame I had around money. So I used to feel really bad that I had overdrawn my account or something, or that I was spending money and when I realized like, it doesn't need to be shameful, it's just math again. I owed this much money to this place, the end, and the whole story I was telling myself about "I'm so irresponsible, and I should know this by now and I'm not a real adult", I just decided to let go of all of that and even own with pride like, "Yes I bought this stuff, and I like this stuff that I bought." And then one other thing that shifted it for me too was somebody I knew who was really good at business, who described that the most success business people often have to go through a time when they fly the plane as low to the ground as they can without crashing in order to really take off, and I started that - trying on again, this removed the shame for me, that like, maybe it's strategic at times to even go into debt, and that it doesn't need to be shameful, it's just math, and if I want to be strategic about money, I totally could. So anyway, today I am very confident about money and I love money. I also love having money in the bank more than I like the stuff, which is a big change for me.

Brooke: That's so important I think, and I teach that a lot, but I think it's easy for me to say and teach that - and it's harder for people to learn when they feel like they don't have as much money. But the more money I make, we were in Target the other day, I was with my younger son Connor, and I was like, it's just an amazing feeling to know that I can buy anything I want in this store. Like there's nothing in this store I can't legally afford. It's Target, right? We're not in Tiffany's. We're in Target, I could buy anything, and we walked out of that store and we didn't buy anything. Right? And it's just that abundant, fascinating feeling. It's like, the more confident, the more money I have, the more confident I feel about money, the less I need to spend it all of the time, right? So I think it's because I have this abundance mentality is why I have so much money and that the less need that I have to spend it to like, buffer with myself. So I think that's huge. So you talked a little bit about spending. What are your thoughts about earning money and what are your thoughts about - I mean, you're earning multiple six figures now, let's talk about what your mindset is around that, how you feel about that, thoughts?

Jody: I feel really proud of that because it wasn't easy to get to that point, but I do feel like the value that I'm putting out into the world, I try to exceed even like what my clients are paying me. So I try to charge a price that I think is the right price, and there's a lot of things that go into determining that, but then I try to over-deliver on that, and so I definitely feel you know, that the value is there and that I'm earning the money that I bring in. I do also agree with what you teach around money does not equal hours or amount of hustle. It just doesn't. It's a value add.

Brooke: Right, and that’s so apparent. So I didn’t say this in the intro but you’ve been with me at The Life Coach School from pretty much the beginning of selling coach training in person the way that we’ve done it. And we’ve kind of built, I feel like, that certification program and the sales process for that together. And I feel like when it was much less expensive and there were fewer people, we worked like five times as hard to sell that program. And now that we’ve put in that time and that understanding, now we work much less to create an even better program that’s a lot more expensive. I think people have this idea, and I’d love for you to speak to this, that – because I say to people all the time, they’ll say, “Oh it’s so nice that you make good money, I just don’t have any desire to do that. I don’t want to work that hard,” is what people will say to me. And I kind of feel inside, like you work so much harder than me.

Jody: Yes.

Brooke: Right? But people associate making a lot of money with working hard. So what do you think about that?

Jody: Well I love how with you, you’re not afraid to raise your prices, but we always then have the conversation of like, let’s make sure the added value is there. Even if the added value is just that you’ve done it enough times that you’re way better at it than you were the first time. And so I think that you have to recognize that, that if you are passionate about what you’re doing and you’re really invested in learning and getting better and improving yourself, then that alone increases the value. And why not add as much value as you can into the world, I think. That, to me, is like exciting and makes me feel fulfilled and look forward to what I’m doing. I want to add as much value as possible. There’s going to be a return for that.

Brooke: Yes, and so what are your thoughts about people who think that people in your tax bracket, people making this much money, that it’s unnecessary, that you’re greedy, that you’re just money hungry, that’s all you care about is the money, that sort of thing, what are your thoughts on that?

Jody: Well I think that can be the case sometimes, but most of the time I don’t think that’s true, actually. I don’t see that very often except in the movies, right. I think that’s where we get that idea mostly. But no, I feel like generosity is important to me, but I love that the amount of money that I make now has provided so much freedom and options to my family. You know, my husband is working in my business now, we get to create this life that we want. We are able to do so much more for, yes our family, but also for whatever else we want to do in the world. And I don’t mean that we give a lot of money away to people, I just mean I’ve created something where I can ire people on to work for me and I can be generous and giving. Because my own needs are met, so I don’t have to worry about that, so I personally think having more money makes you more able to serve in whatever way you choose to in the world. In most cases, I don’t think it becomes greedy, selfish, whatever. I think that’s – that, of course, can happen, but I don’t honestly see that very often.

Brooke: Yeah, I don’t either. And one of the things that I learned from my coach, Frank Hearn is he just has no apology at all for how much money he makes. It’s a ridiculous amount of money, and he just doesn’t feel like he has to justify it or compensate or anything. He’s just like, “Yeah, I kick ass, I make a lot of money.” And just watching him just own that in such an amazing way and know that it adds more value to the world instead of taking away from the world. We talked about this when I was talking to Stacy, the idea that in order to make, say for him, $6 million, he had to have created $6 million worth of value in the world that wouldn’t have been created had he not become an entrepreneur. That is amazing, and he feels so – like you were saying, you feel so proud of that, it’s such an amazing feeling. So what would you say to someone who doesn’t think – so even just yesterday we were coaching a group of our coaches and one of them said, “I think you’re both unicorns. I don’t think this is possible for me.” What are your thoughts? And what would you say to – I mean I know she’s not the only one, there’s lots of people listening to this podcast that believe like, “Oh you guys can do that because you have wings,” Or whatever. But what is the truth, do you think, about that?

Jody: Well I do think that you have to change like your internal thermostat, if you will, about money. So I think this comes from that book The Big Leap, but the idea that we all have this picture of how much money we make or that we need to live off of. It’s like your thermostat if it’s set at 70 degrees, right. And if we drop below, if we lose a job or something, then we’re going to probably hustle and get really working until we get back to that range. But also, if we make a lot, if we get a big lump of money that comes in or something, then we either like ease off the gas now or we maybe spend that money quickly until we come back down to 70 degrees. So I do think it’s not that we’re unicorns, anyone can do it, but I think you have to pay attention to where is my mindset in terms of how much money I make and what are my beliefs about that. Does that make me greedy or bad? And how do I picture myself in my life when it comes to money? And I have done a lot of work and I continue to do work in that area of, “I’m a person who makes this amount of money.” And I want to keep raising that thermostat.

Brooke: Yeah, love it. So one of the things that you do for The Life Coach School is you handle all the sales for the certification. You have a background in sales and obviously you do sales in your own business. What do you think the money mindset – how do you think it correlates to your ability to sell?

Jody: I think that I am pretty clear that everybody has their own mindset. One of the things that I think other salespeople do is they try to talk you out of your belief. So it doesn’t matter if I’m selling like a $49 course or a $25,000 course, there will still always be someone who says, “That’s a lot of money, I don’t have that money.” And so I just allow people to keep that belief; I don’t try to talk them out of it. I’ll say, “Yeah, it is a lot of money.” That’s always my response when somebody says, “That’s a lot of money; I don’t have that kind of money.” I’ll say, “It is a lot of money,” because to them it is. In their mind, it is.

Brooke: Right.

Jody: But then I do try to connect the dots on the value. What would be the value for you? Is it valuable or is there another option? Is there another way that you can get what you’re trying to get in your life, whether it’s too feel better or whatever they’re trying to get, that won’t cost you so much money-? Because there’s probably not something as valuable out there; if there is I want them to go there, to be honest. Usually, there’s not. This is the solution and I want them to weigh out in their mind, is the value there? So I think, just knowing that everybody’s in their own place when it comes to money and I’m not going to try to change that, I’m just going to help them see the value difference.

Brooke: Yeah, and I think one of the things that’s different about our company that makes selling more fun, that we try to teach all of our students as well, is like we never ever try to convince anyone to give us their money that they don’t want to give us, right. And I think a lot of people associate – see being an entrepreneur for me is the ticket to freedom, because you just get paid for your value; the more value you create, the more you get paid. Whereas in corporations as an employee, that isn’t always the case. Like you could provide a tremendous amount of value and not make any more additional money, right? So I think for training entrepreneurs, it’s so important for them to understand and have an abundant mindset so they’re not in that needy creepy, “Give me your money please, I need it to pay my bills,” kind of way, right. Because we’re selling from this place where we don’t want or need anyone’s money that isn’t excited to pay for it, and that’s what I’ve been teaching a lot lately, that I only want people paying me that are like super excited to pay me.

Jody: Right, and what I do, if I’m trying to fill a class or a group or something is I just get out a spreadsheet and I put a number of however many people I want in that class, and then I just know that those people are going to come and they’re going to bring me my money. And when I have – the hard thing about sales is the up and down, the rollercoaster and the disappointment and then the success and then it burns people out, if you will. What I try to do is stay right in the middle. If somebody signs up, I’m not super excited, I’m just like, yeah that’s awesome for them, and they’re bringing me this piece of my money. And if somebody doesn’t, I’m like, “Oh, I thought they were going to be number three on my spreadsheet, but I guess not. I wonder who it’s going to be.” Like I’m just constantly curious and trying to be open about what is the way that my money is going to come o me, but I know this money is because I know I’m creating that much value. That belief alone takes away that desperate needy, “I really need this client.” I’m like, “I thought that person was going to be my client, I guess they’re not. I wonder who it’s going to be.”

Brooke: I love it. And here’s the thing that I’ve been teaching and thinking about lately, especially within Scholars, is this idea that you want people in your world that love paying you and would be sad if they couldn’t. and so I was talking about like your electric bill. Like if you’re, you know, I don’t know who does your electric bill, but if they came to you and said, “Yeah we’re no longer going to provide you with electricity.” You’d be like, “No, no I want to pay you. And they’re like, “No, we’re feeling kind of bad about the money you’ve been spending, we feel like it’s a little much. You probably can’t afford it. We’re not going to provide you with electricity.” You’re like, “No, really, I will pay you double. I want electricity, I’m happy to pay you for that and I would be very upset of I couldn’t.” And so many of my students feel that way. They’re so happy to pay me, they’d be upset if they couldn’t. and when you create a relationship with your customers where it’s like that, where you are their electricity, right, then…

Jody: Yes, I heard you give that analogy recently, and I was thinking also it’s such a great example of how – when I was living in California, our electric bill got pretty high. We moved from one city to another and it like doubled. So it’s not that we didn’t notice that, we were like, “Wow, that’s a lot more money. Here you go…” The value is still there. Like yes, I would prefer to pay the lower amount, but I’m still going to pay it because of the value of it. And that’s what you’re looking for, people that need what you have. When you need it, and I remember a time even going through some therapy because of some things I was going through and thinking, “I can’t afford this but I’m just going to have to figure out a way because I have to take care of this. I have to figure this out.” So even though it’s a lot of money, I need to figure out the way. So you’re looking for those people that need what you offer and so much that they’re going to figure out a way. You don’t have to figure out the money for them, you just need to illustrate the value and help them believe in themselves and then they will figure out the money piece.

Brooke: Yeah, it’s so good. I mean, that’s so true. When you figure out your money stuff, then it’s like you let your customers figure out their money stuff. It’s almost like it’s not your business. You’re just like, hey, here’s a Mercedes for $10 if you want it. That’s how I feel like I’m constantly selling, and I’m always surprised when people don’t want it. Like, “What, that’s weird, how can you not like a Mercedes? It’s so fantastic, right?” But it’s just a fun way to go through life. And I think the other piece of this that I think is different with entrepreneurship – because you’ve worked for corporate too? What do you think is the big difference between making your own money, quote unquote; it’s your money anyway, right? But starting from the ground up, does that feel different to you than corporate, and what is that about?

Jody: So much more fun, now, although much harder to get to this point. That’s the tradeoff of course, that at corporate somebody just – you sit down in the chair at the computer and everything’s there and you do what they tell you, and you should be able to make the money. Whereas starting from scratch is ten times harder because you’re IT and graphic design and figuring it all out. But once you get through that first year or so and you cross that first hurdle, I think even making your first $50K is a great hurdle, and then you realize, “Wait a second, it’s up to me. I get to choose. If I decide…” My husband and I just put in a new yard in our new house, and I could come up with that money through my business, but I’m like, wouldn’t it be more fun if I didn’t even touch any of that. I was like, “Why don’t I go speak somewhere and see if I can sell 60 tickets and pay for my back yard?”

Brooke: Yes.

Jody: So much fun, but I do always think of it like an experiment too, that keeps the drama a little bit lower for me. If you look at it like an experiment, let’s see if this works, and not make it mean that if it doesn’t work, not make it mean all kinds of things about myself and my business. But I love to experiment and I have that freedom now to experiment, it’s fantastic.

Brooke: That’s so good. Okay, so how I want to end here is I think you and I have a very unique perspective because we have so many areas that we work in. so you work in your own business, I work in my own business in terms of building it up, and then we work together in selling it. And then we also work with students that are starting from the very ground up, and we’ve watched literally hundreds of students that have come in to start businesses, and one of the things that we notice, and we tell them this, we warn them about this, is that in the beginning, everybody believes that it’s possible. They’ve seen us do it, they come with that belief of, “Oh my gosh, I could be a life coach, I can make six figures, I can work from home, I can work three days a week, I know this is possible for me.” And then they start doing the work of building the business, and we always say that first year is the hardest year and if you make it through that year then you’re pretty golden, but so many people struggle so intensely in that first year, and what it looks like is changing my mind 700 times and confusing myself about everything that I’m supposed to do. So what do you think is going on there and what would be your succinct advice to anyone? And this isn’t just life coaches, this is anyone starting their first business the first year?

Jody: Yeah, I think that we want to spend too much time on the how-to part of building your business. Like, “What should my ads say and how do I get this part working?” The how-to, right, which we do need to be thinking about, but I think that’s where we think we should be spending most of our time, and I think most people spend little to no time on the what is happening in your brain, what you’re believing about your business and what you’re believing about yourself and your own abilities. And I think if it’s probably – for people at least that are trained through The Life Coach School, I know we tell them to coach yourself over and over again and we try to coach them and show them how to coach themselves. But I still think it’s 80/20, we’re spending 80% of the time on how to do it and maybe 20% of the time in coaching. And then if we flip flop that to 20/80 or at least 50/50, that they would see much more success. And sometimes it’s hard to see your own brain. The self-coaching is not always easy, but I just sometimes remind myself, when my brain wants to get caught up in how, I like to remind myself, “Oh, of course, I don’t know how.” The how is none of my business. Why don’t I just get out of that? Why don’t I focus more on my own belief, because as soon as I believe, this is as good as done. This is going to happen, whether it’s solving a problem or filling a class or hitting a benchmark in my business. If I just focus on the belief and remind that part of my brain, “But you don’t know how,” I tell it, “Of course I don’t know how.” It’s none of my business how, I just know it’s as good as done and then I get busy working. I think that is really where I see the success tipping point for people.

Brooke: Yeah, that’s so good. Katrina and I talked about that too, about how people want to believe only after they have the formula to create it. It’s like they, “Oh I’ll believe that that math problem can be solved if you give me the answer first.” It’s like turning to the back, “Oh there is an answer, it’s the even number. So good, there’s an answer and it’s able to be solved,” right. And when you understand like, “I am going to get this result in my life, no matter what.” And there are 17 hows, 17 different hows to get there. And that way, when the first how doesn’t work, I don’t make it mean that the math problem can’t be solved; so I think that’s also…

Jody: Totally, and that is a change that happened for me when I started working for you in your business, because like you said, I have a background in corporate, and in corporate it doesn’t work that way. They want projections, they want to know what you think you’re going to hit this month so they can plan ahead. And so you look backwards at what you’ve done so far, maybe what’s in your pipeline, and then you make a projection and then that’s probably where you land. Whereas with you, I remember in the beginning when I was filling something of yours and I said to you, “I don’t think I’m going to get there. I just want to give you a heads up; I think I’m going to come in short. And you were like, “What are you talking about? Your only job right now is to believe that you will.” And I remember thinking like, “What?” Because again, in corporate, they want accurate projections, that is your job is to tell exactly what you can expect, and your whole approach is so different that no, you don’t need to project, you need t just believe in the end goal, and it kind of gave me permission to just believe it, even though I had no idea how. And that’s really when I saw everything shift for me.

Brooke: That’s so good, that’s such good advice. And I think if we could – I mean that’s what we’d have to teach, right? I mean that’s what we tell people and they hear us say, and we want – I feel like we get all these baby birds that are so believing in us and in themselves, and the you start to get dirty, you start to fall down. You’re like, “Wait, why am I falling? Why am I falling? You know, I want to be able to be great at this from the beginning,” and if you are willing to suck at it your first entire year, there’s no limit to what you can make. Because we keep saying, the first 100 grand is, for sure, the hardest, holy cow.

Jody: For sure.

Brooke: Wouldn’t it be better if like the fifth, like 500 grand was the hardest? Because then you’d at least have all this stuff under your belt, you’d be like, “Okay I can handle this.” But I mean it does prevent a lot of people from saturating our market I guess.

Jody: Yeah.

But also, the heartbreaking part, I think for both of us, is we see so many fantastic coaches that don’t put their work out into the world because they give up on themselves too soon. So we’re not unicorns, we’re just making it through that first year; for sure.

Jody: Right? We are amazing, but not unicorns. Everyone’s amazing…

Brooke: So are you, right? It’s like we are amazing, but so are you, and that’s like genuine… People are like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” it’s like, “No, really, that is really the case and that is really true.” Alright momma, thank you so much. If you guys want to find out more about Jody, you can check her out at BoldNewMom.com. She has a membership site over there. She will only work with you if you’re Mormon. I’m just kidding, she will work with you, she’s an amazing coach; you guys should check her out. Alright momma, thank you so much and talk to you soon.

Jody: Thanks, Brooke.

Brooke: Bye.

And finally, I have for you Brenda Lomeli, and her story is awesome, and I’m not going to tell it to you here because we talk about it in the conversation, but let me give you an intro. Brenda Lomeli is a woman’s weight loss expert for the last stubborn pounds. Most importantly, however, she is a woman who truly understands the frustration and exhaustion of the weight struggle.

At her heaviest, she weighed up to 197 pounds and rode the diet rollercoaster for over eighteen years, but she always believed that there had to be a better way and was determined to find it. Through her own personal struggles, education, professional training, and now the work she does daily with her clients, she has discovered the formula to not only lose the weight but to do it deprivation free and keep it off with ease.

The inspiration to write her book came from her complete dedication to give women everything they need; the correct nutritional information, expert strategies, and practical tools to finally stop struggling with weight. She’s the author of How To Lose Your Last Ten Pounds, Simple, Permanent, Deprivation Free. A host of The Last Ten Pounds Podcast and creator of the Last Ten Pounds System.

Please enjoy this conversation with me and Brenda.

Brooke: Okay Brenda, are you ready for this?

Brenda: I am so ready, I’m excited. I’m really pumped.

Brooke: Alright, let’s talk about it. So you are one of my favorite success stories because – and let’s just tell them a little bit about this story of you getting into master coach training because that will be kind of fun. So you’re one of my students who got certified who decided that you wanted to be in master coach training right away, right? You’d only been certified for how long?

Brenda: Maybe like two months.

Brooke: Yeah, like two months. You came and you said, “Please let me get into master coach training.” You applied; I came back and said what?

Brenda: No. Well, you said – actually it was nicer than that. It was an email that said, “Thanks for your application; it was really hard to make a decision, but no, not at this time.”

Brooke: Yeah, I don’t think you’re ready, and I didn’t think you were ready, right. You were brand new; you still had a job, right. What were you doing?

Brenda: So I’m also a licensed occupational therapist, so I was working full time as an occupational therapist.

Brooke: Right, okay.

Brenda: That’s what I was doing, yeah.

Brooke: So I said no. Now, most people at that point would have just gone back to their full-time job and just kept working. Tell everyone what you did.

Brenda: So okay, I had been actually having this vision of where I wanted to be today, I would say since 2009. I remember, it was my birthday 2009, I was like, “This is what I want to create.” I didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but I knew I wanted to like have my own business where I coached women and I really helped them end their struggle. So I’ve been on this for a while. So when I got certified as a life coach and then when I went to mastermind and you presented this, I was like, “I need to be in that group. Like this is the year it’s going to happen, I’m going to make it happen.” So when you replied no, I had already put the dates we were going to meet in my calendar – you don’t even know this…

Brooke: I love it.

Brenda: Like the dates that we were going to have our in-person trainings for the master coach, I had already wrote them in my calendar, like it was already part of my plan. So when you said that I wasn’t ready or whatever, I was like, “No, this is not possible. I really need to make this happen.” So I just decided to respond to you and really basically convince you, or like share with you, why I was going to be your best client, you best student. And yeah, that’s what I responded. And I mean I really did believe everything I wrote in there, that this is part of my plan, I needed this. I was going to be committed and all of that.

Brooke: Yeah, and not only that, you wrote back and said, “I’m totally committed, I’m all in and I want to pay more…”

Brenda: Oh yeah, that part…

Brooke: Right, I want to pay you more for it. And it really made me think about when I signed up with my coach, Frank Hearn, and I remember thinking, I’m not as successful as all these other guys that have signed up. All the people I signed up with were making so much more money than me and they were so much more successful than me, but I remember thinking, “I am going to be the most improved student. That is my goal and that is what I’m going to do.” And so when I got that message from you and you said that you would pay more, I was like, “Alright, let’s do it.” And so I accepted your money that was more than what the tuition was, and I knew for sure, you know, that you were going to be committed and you were going to go for it and deliver. But it wasn’t quite that easy though, right? We had some…

Brenda: Yeah, and I just want to add onto that, for your listeners, I did, I made that offer to pay even more, and I didn’t even have that money. But it didn’t matter because I was so determined; I knew I was going to figure it out. So it wasn’t like I had all this money sitting there and I was just going to pay for this class and it was easy. No, it was hard, it was scary, but I knew I was determined to do it.

Brooke: Yeah, that’s such an amazing lesson to think about, because I think there’s so many people that aren’t willing to go all in on themselves, right. They aren’t willing to risk it. And I was talking to, actually some of Frank’s students. He had me speak at his live event, and one of the things that I say is to my students and to his students is, “What is the worst that can happen?” And in your case, like let’s think about it; what is the worst that could have happened? You make this significant investment into master coach training and you don’t put the time and the effort in, you don’t work hard, you don’t make anything happen. The worst that can happen is that you would be in the exact same space you are now, minus the tuition that you paid for me. And so when I say to people, “Hey, the worst that can happen is what’s happening now,” people are like, “No, because you have less money.” But what they’re not considering is the cost opportunity that they’re missing. So people say, “If I don’t do anything, I’m not losing any money.” Because I’m pretty sure if Brenda hadn’t done it, she would have lost several hundred thousand dollars that she has now made.

Brenda: Yep, yep…

Brooke: But they don’t think about that, right. They’re like, “I don’t want to lose this little bit of tuition.” But really, you have to think about, “What if it does work? How much money am I losing?”

Brenda: Yeah, and also so much time. Like there’s no way that I would be where I’m at right now without the mentorship and guidance and coaching, but also without me raising the bar on my level of commitment. Which is what it really…

Brooke: Yes, all in. There is no – like that’s what Tony Robbins says, he’s like, “You burned the boats, man, you were going and you were going for it.” Right, and the whole time we were in master coach training, I think people think, “Oh when you’re all in, then everything becomes easier.” And it does in a lot of ways because you’re not questioning everything ... so hard, right, because you think about…

Brenda: Oh yeah.

Brooke: You didn’t have any clients; you were still working full time.

Brenda: Yeah.

Brooke: Right, we still needed to change your market. I had to be super tough with you, right. Like, “Come on, target market.” Like, the difference is, you were willing and ready to go, and that I think is what – and let’s talk about this for this for the students that are listening that want to make six figures in their business.

Brenda: Okay.

Brooke: You were making no money, you were a brand new coach, you didn’t have the money to pay tuition, and now you’re making, you know, over $100,000 a year. Like what? How is that even possible?

Brenda: Yeah, actually I emailed Mark this morning; he’s my CFO as well, like my books guy. So he keeps track of my money, and I was like, I want to be able to tell Brooke kind of like where I’m at. And my predicted, if I just keep up the rate that I’m at will be just at $200K, basically.

Brooke: What?

Brenda: But of course, I don’t plan to stay on this track, I plan to just keep…

Brooke: Yes, that’s so mediocre…

Brenda: Yeah, so now – that’s a nice start, but I’m going to keep – you know, it’s just fun to set bigger goals now.

Brooke: It’s so fun. And so tell me what you’ve learned about yourself through this process. I mean, obviously, you’ve learned the lesson that committing and going all in, like really betting on yourself, has been very lucrative to you. Like where else can you invest that amount of money and, you know, make a couple hundred thousand dollars?

Brenda: Yeah, I would say the most amazing thing, and it might even sound clichéd, but it really is just that I know I can truly do anything I want to do. I can truly create anything I want to create, and that just feels – I mean it’s so empowering, it’s also just to me, that feeling of feeling unlimited also just feels very free. Like I don’t know, there’s nothing more amazing than that, I think.

Brooke: Yeah, and you know, one of the things that I think is really important, you know, you went through coach training with 12 other people that had made the same investment, actually a little bit of a lesser investment, and you were a brand new coach, you weren’t even that good of a coach yet, you were still practicing, your marketing was all over the place. But the thing that’s so interesting is that when you go all in and believe in yourself, none of that mattered, because you’re like, “I just got to coach more, I’ve just got to practice more, I just got to get better.” And now you’re at the point because you believed in yourself, your coaching level has skyrocketed. Your marketing levels have skyrocketed, your confidence has skyrocketed because you didn’t let all those reasons – “I need more practice…”

Brenda: Yeah.

Brooke: “I need more money, I need more time,” right. And so I think that is truly an example of what is possible in this industry if you’re willing to do that.

Brenda: Yeah, I mean essentially when you go all in, you just have to step up your game anywhere you need to step up your game.

Brooke: That’s right.

Brenda: No matter how scary it is, like there’s so many – especially the two weeks before I left my job, like for good, I seriously didn’t sleep for like two weeks, and you like coached me on that a little bit, or a lot actually, but it was challenging and it wasn’t easy and it was uncomfortable as hell. But it’s so worth it because it would have been way more expensive for me not to go for it because I would be in this place where the reason I would have stayed there was because I was afraid or didn’t believe in myself.

Brooke: What would you say - I've had a lot - I've been talking to a lot of students lately that are struggling, and some of them are my students that have gone through The Life Coach School, and there's a lot of students in Scholars that have not been certified by me that are still struggling. I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are still struggling. And one of the things they tell themselves is that, "Brooke can do that because Brooke's a special snowflake. Brooke's a special unicorn. Brooke's different than everybody else in the world." Right? And I know that that isn't true because I know how I felt before I started. It's just how they feel too. So what would you say to those people?

Brenda: Well you know, it's funny you say that because one of the thoughts that I kept thinking that actually helped me I think just kind of also - I mean, using the model all throughout for sure, for sure. But one of the thoughts I thought a lot is I would look at you and I'm like, "If she can do it, I can do it. If she can do it, I can do it." But I think from a little bit different place than you're describing, because I think that I saw that it is work for you. But I'm just like, "If she can do it, I can. If she can do that work, I can do that work. If she can coach herself through that, I can coach myself through that. If she can build this business, I can build this business." I don't see it like it was handed to you. You like, you built it. So like, if she can build that, if she can create that, I can build that and create it. And that was...

Brooke: And so much faster too, because I'm telling you how to do it.

Brenda: Yes, I'm not having to totally figure it out on my own. So yes, I definitely thought, "If she can do it, I can do it", but everything else that comes along with it. Not just - I didn't think like - it's almost a little bit of opposite of like Brooke's a special snowflake, it's like, Brooke's a human just like me, I have a brain like she has a brain, like I'm just as capable. But also like, I'm just going to keep going. I'm just going to keep going. It's very...

Brooke: That is the most powerful thought ever because this has been the theme of this podcast that I talked to everyone about, I'm like, "Doesn't it suck that the first year is the hardest? Like, wouldn't it be better if like the fifth year was the hardest because then you would hang in?" But like, the first year is where most people give up. It's so hard, so what are your thoughts about that? Because do you feel like it's getting easier now?

Brenda: It's not getting easier, but I find that - like for example, I just launched my book two days ago, and a few days before my book launch, I paid this guy to build a funnel and I just wanted to pay someone and take care of it because I didn't want to have to learn that whole new skill, whatever. So he sends me the funnel and it looks like a mess, and I just totally go into overwhelm. But the difference is I'm able to see that what I'm doing and to know that it's not helpful, but also know that like, I felt this way before and I got through it. So I think probably the first year might - it probably - a lot of people don't make it through because they don't have evidence yet that they are able to do it.

Brooke: So true.

Brenda: Whereas like now, like you know what, it isn't - and especially when - if you're the kind of person that keeps setting bigger goals, like, "Okay, now I'm making 100K but now I have a bigger goal, so I'm going to keep going." But when I get into these like moments of like something challenging, I actually can look back and be like, "Well, I've done this before. I've figured things out like this before. Maybe it was a little different, but I now have confidence."

Brooke: So much confidence, and it's so interesting to watch because in the beginning, sometimes your confidence isn't as there as you need to be, you have to have more commitment than confidence, right? You're like, "I'm going to do this no matter what and I will build that confidence as I go. I will build that belief in myself." But the commitment is what gets you through, and isn't that true? I mean, your work is all with the last ten pounds with weight loss, right? It's no different. It's the same with our businesses as it is with our weight loss. It's so powerful to know that like, you don't have to be great if you have an undying commitment to something.

Brenda: Yes, I mean, if you keep taking action and you make the decision that you're going to keep taking action until you get there, getting that result is inevitable. It's really just the matter of time.

Brooke: That's right. That's right, and when you believe that, you never let any failure, any hiccup or anything going wrong prevent you from continuing that action, and that is something that - you know, that's no joke. You have to be kind of a badass to do that.

Brenda: Yes. But I think everyone has it in them to be a badass if they want to be, but you know, yes, like you said, being a badass is not - it's not easy. And being a badass sometimes is just crying for ten minutes because your funnel - you know? But actually being like, "Okay, alright, I'm done crying now, now I'm going to email this guy back and we're going to make this amazing." You know, it comes as a package.

Brooke: That's so true. It's so true. And then like you said, it's like, once you get to - so you've like, mastered - it's kind of like you make this commitment, I'm going to make a hundred thousand dollars, and then you make that, and then you're so excited and proud of yourself that you're like, "Wow, what the hell did I do? What else am I capable of?" So much. Like, this seemed like such a far-away goal, and I think that's what I want to let most everybody know, is like, the only reason why making six figures for some of you right now seems so far away is because you haven't normalized it in your brain, and that's the thing that I really wanted to do with this podcast is have five coached on that have normalized it and can talk about it in a way that's just normal now that we make this much money, right? And it can be normal for anyone, and I was telling one of my girlfriends the other day, I'm like, "I get all of these comments from people for being a woman and being a life coach, and working from home and everyone's always asking me what my husband does for a living and all of these things." I never let any of that stuff offend me because I feel so incredibly proud, not only that I'm a woman and a life coach and killing it in business, but also because I have proven to myself exactly what you said, that I'm capable of anything.

Brenda: Yes, and I want to share a little story that I just remembered. It was I think our third in-person training for master coach training - no, I think it was our second, but anyway, at that point, I had total made five thousand dollars, total. So we're like halfway through, that's how much I had made, and I think I kind of raised my hand to ask a question of some sort. Anyway, but you basically said to me - I think I was worried if I would really make back my investment, and you're like, "Brenda, if you don't make back what you invested by the end of master coach training, I'm going to jump off a bridge."

I'm going to kill myself.

Brenda: Yes, looking back at that, that's so like - I mean, it totally makes sense. You were so confident I could do it, but to me, it really - like I had to work so hard on my brain to you know, coach myself to believe that that was possible because it kept wanting to go like, "No, it's not, what if you can't do it? What if you can't do it? What if you can't pay your bills? What if you can't get enough clients?" And now, that's like - I make more than that in one month.

Brooke: Right. Isn't that so exciting?

Brenda: I mean, actually, I've made more than that in a few days.

Brooke: Yes, and I mean, that's the thing I tell my students all the time is I say, "You never look at a baby learning how to walk and doubt that they'll ever be able to do it." You're never like, "I don't know, this one's falling a lot." Right? Never. It never even occurs to you the possibility that that toddler won't learn to walk, and it's the same with all of my students. It's like, if you do what I tell you to do, if you follow this program that I have outlined for you, if you are committed to being uncomfortable, excruciatingly uncomfortable for a significant period of time, it's just math. It's just a matter of time. And so you can see now why I was so confident, right? If you were back in that day talking to yourself it would be the exact same message.

Brenda: Yes, it's funny now.

Brooke: Yes, it's hard to see at that time when you're in it, because all your fears seem so real, right?

Brenda: Totally. It's funny now, and I like, love that it happened and I'm smiling as I'm telling you about it, like I love that story. I love the story of me emailing you and wanting to pay you, like I love all of those things because of what they taught me, what I can take away from that now. And so when I set bigger goals - and now, like actually today, one of my posts on my social media today was, "Set impossible goals" and I love that now. I'm like, I love setting impossible goals because then I just get to make that happen and I would just keep showing myself and my clients - you know, one of the also really valuable things because you asked me like what's one of the most best things about having done - achieved this and done it, I can truly look at any client or any student, you know, you would call your students, in the eye and be like, "You can do that if you wanted. If you really commit all in, you can have that, you can create that." And I truly, truly believe it, and I feel that that really helps people believe in themselves as well.

Brooke: So true. It's so true. You know what I love about you know, the idea of making the impossible happen? If you state it like, "I'm going to go after this impossible goal", it's almost like, it lets your brain settle down. Because if you say, "I'm going to go and I'm going to lose 50 pounds" your brain is like, "No." But if you said it like, "I'm going to approach and accomplish the goal of - the impossible goal of losing 50 pounds", then your brain is like, "It's impossible", you're like, "Yes, I already said that. Thanks." Right? It's like, you give it to your brain. Yes, I know it's impossible but I'm going to do it anyway. And it's almost like this little trip for your brain, and it's something that I've been able to do really powerfully in my life when it comes to making money. So I kind of want to end this whole podcast, Brenda is my last interview, with saying that if you are in a position right now where a hundred thousand dollars seems impossible, go after that impossible goal anyway because what is the worst that can happen? Right? The worst that can happen is that you are sitting right where you are right now. Right? You would have given yourself the opportunity to accomplish something and blow your own damn mind, because it's so fun, right?

Brenda: Yes, it really is fun. I would just totally piggyback on what you just said. If whoever's listening right now is feeling nervous or scared or doubtful, like that's all the more reason to go do it, and it's only going to be that much fun once you achieve the impossible, which you really can. Just decide that you're going to make it happen and go do it.

Brooke: Do it. Go do it. Alright Brenda, thank you so much for taking the time.

Brenda: You're welcome.

Brooke: I'm so proud of you, you're killing it out there. You guys, go check Brenda out. What's your URL?

Brenda: Brendalomeli.com, so that's brendalomeli.com.

Brooke: And especially go there if you want to lose that last ten pounds.

Brenda: Absolutely.

Brooke: Alright my friends, take care, I'll talk to you guys next week.

Okay, my friends, I hope you enjoyed all of those interviews. I know that I did. That's definitely a podcast that you can put on repeat and listen to for inspiration as you are growing your life coach or any other kind of business. I'm so proud of my students and so inspired by their success and I hope you are too. Hope you guys have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self-Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self-Coaching Scholars. See you there.