Denise Duffield-Thomas's Blog, page 27

Since joining, I've consistently had 5 figure months every month

MONEY BOOTCAMP REVIEW
Carla Marie-Lett

Business Coach and CEO of My Bump 2 Baby Ltd
Lancashire, UK
Member since January 2022

 

What was your money situation when you joined Money Bootcamp?

I was working 25+ hours per week and earning around 5k per month.

 

What is your money situation like now?

Since joining Money Bootcamp I have consistently had 5 figure months every month.

 

Why did you decide to join Money Bootcamp?

I listened to Denise's books and knew I had money blocks and limiting beliefs to work through.

 

What's the biggest lesson you've learned from Money Bootcamp

Earning more doesn't have to mean working harder. My business now regularly generates 5 figures each month and I work a maximum of 10 hours per month.

 

What are your top 3 wins since joining Money Bootcamp?

Having consistent 5 figure months
Working less but earning more
Increasing my prices

 

How would you describe the Money Bootcamp community and Facebook group?

I love it, the community is a great place to hang out, be inspired and watch people grow before your eyes. I love looking back at my posts from when I started and seeing the difference in only a few months.

 

What's your advice to someone considering joining Money Bootcamp?

Joining Money Bootcamp is the best investment I have made and it paid itself off in the first month for me.

 
Anything else you want to add or share?

When I started my business my goal was to reach a point in my business where I could walk in to my favorite store and buy whatever I wanted without worrying about the financial impact, I now do that regularly.

 

What's next for you?

I am currently working on a blogging masterclass for those that want to learn to blog for success, my business began as a blog and is now the UK's leading pregnancy - pre-school platform generating a regular passive income stream for me and my family and I want to share my knowledge.

 

Ready for a Money Breakthrough?
This could be you too!

With the right mindset training and mentor you can break through your income plateau, and elevate your business to next level success!

Money Bootcamp is THE proven and practical comprehensive money mindset training, with an awesome private community of entrepreneurs.

Click here to find out how you can transform your relationship with money and move towards financial freedom for you and your family.

 

    

Challenges & Successes From My Second Year In Business (& How I Doubled My Income)

I’m thrilled at all the comments and discussions around the first instalment of this series. It’s awesome to meet SO many entrepreneurs!

Click here if you missed it: Behind the Curtains of My First Year in Business

I’m doing this series because honestly – I love sharing stuff. I’ve always been a bit of a know it all – and I really love deconstructing success.

But first…

Let’s address the COMPARISON thing

Remember – success is completely subjective. I told you in the first post that I made 60k in my first year. Some people would be intimidated by that. Others would think “Is that all?!”

Let’s get this out of the way. In my second year, I made around $146k. You might not think that’s possible or typical, but at least I’ll be honest about how I did it.

The only reason I’m telling you this is because NOBODY EVER TALKS ABOUT IT. If you’re feeling deflated by my honesty – remember this is YOUR JOURNEY.

It doesn’t matter about the time frame. Maybe you need to hustle more. Maybe you’re in the wrong business (it’s totally ok to quit, even if you put HEAPS of time and effort into it). Maybe your time is just around the corner. Maybe it’s something practical like a branding or communications issue or you need a bigger list. Maybe you’re EXACTLY where you need to be.

I really stopped comparing myself to others, or even READING about my competition in my second year and it made a WORLD of difference.

It’s a GOOD thing to be triggered by others – I’ve often used it to fuel my fire. Remember, my journey is my journey. Yours will look completely different.

Let’s get onto my second year of business (for me, this was 2012)…

Challenges in my second year of business

I think this was my busiest, often most stressful and definitely the biggest learning curve time. Here’s what I struggled with the most:

Shiny object syndrome

Should I do this… or that?

What is the ONE THING I should do now? (hint – there isn’t usually one thing – it’s usually several things repeated several times over)

Personal development conferences took up a LOT of time and income. I travelled from Australia to the States five times in 2012, mainly because I didn’t want to miss out on an amazing conference.

Were they all amazing? Hmmm – mostly, but I spent more than $20,000 on travel and expenses alone.

(For those of you who don’t know the distance, you’re looking at a 17 hour flight just to LAX, then wait times and transfers. A typical Economy flight is between $1800-$2500)

I felt like I had to do EVERYTHING – create a mastermind, no-wait – maybe I should offer retreats…? I think I need to write another 5 books…  make a zombie film (for real).

I also spent HOURS (literally hundreds of hours) and thousands of dollars in a recording studio, doing the audio versions of both my books plus a complete manifesting program. None of these have seen the light of day. Never.

I spent more than $4000 on a virtually finished book about manifesting your soul mate and decided to kill it (that was actually a great decision).

For the first part of the year, I probably spent more time being distracted by what other people were doing, or what new course I should do, than really buckling down to work. But it was FUN!!!

Spend, spend and SPEND some more

Omg, I’m making heaps of money – what should I buy?

I’m not talking about STUFF, although I bought some nicer clothes and handbags.

I spend a SHIT TONNE on courses and programs. I kind of went wild on spending – courses, conferences, coaching sessions, tools and various things that I never used.

Some was incredibly helpful (see the Investments section below), some was literally just because I had the money. I justified it because it was for my business = tax deductible.

I spent at least $25k on personal development, coaching and courses. For SURE most of it was useful, but it wasn’t necessarily the best use of my cashola!

I wasn’t putting any money away for tax (and suddenly I was paying GST too). So, even though I was earning good money, I was having major cash flow issues. My payments for my mastermind bounced more than once!

My book-keeper would say “So, you didn’t make any profit this month“, and I was thinking “Wow – I’m so clever to have spent it all – less tax to pay!” (See the problem with that?)

It wasn’t all big things – I spent $150 in one day on Fiverr. On kind of weird things, just because. I was going to do a whole video on Fiverr fails and then I got bored and thought of something else.

I spent $5 on this…

I think some of it was just getting it out of my system – wow, I finally have some CASH. Some of it was a money block – I’m earning too much – I must get rid of it quickly. I was definitely having fun, but I was creating my own FEAST and FAMINE cycles…

An entrepreneur’s work is NEVER done (work/life balance)

You that feeling when you’ve ticked off your To-Do list but you still feel vaguely naughty, like you SHOULD be doing more?

Being an entrepreneur isn’t like studying. You finish an assignment, you’re done. You hand in your project at work and you’re done.

But when you’re an entrepreneur, there is always MORE you can do.

I really suffered from that in my second year. It meant that I worked REALLY LONG HOURS – from 6am in the morning, I’d be at my desk and I’d finish around 9 at night. I worked most weekends when I could. My work-life balance really suffered – even more than my first year.

I procrastinated doing my launches, which meant I had to pull several all-nighters. I once finished a sales page at 4am, but decided to stay up because I had a US-based mastermind call at 5:30am, then I had my own teleseminar at 8am, followed by a day of back to back coaching appointments. NOT GOOD FOR YOUR BODY.

Some of this is just being in business, but honestly, I was creating the extra workload because either I was procrastinating during the day, or spent time on non-income producing activities that I thought were important.

I often got a crazy new idea and just HAD TO LAUNCH IT NOW. Lots of adrenaline and new ideas all the time.

Suddenly, I had a LOT more clients, which was great, but I felt like I had to be working ALL the time. My husband was working long hours too, so I could get away with it and I didn’t really have any friends in our town (been there a year by that point). The only people I knew were clients because I spent so much time doing events and networking!

I started dreaming about work. Not like, nightmare scenarios, but really mundane dreams like filling in spreadsheets, proof-reading articles and even coaching in my sleep. This reached a peak towards the end of the year, when I started to reduce my client load and focus on doing group programs instead of so much 1:1 coaching.

Client boundaries

The biggest boundary problem I experienced in my second year, was clients wanting to contact me all the time in between sessions or asking questions over email.

I didn’t know how to handle it or say no. They’d email, Skype and FB message me, “Hey, just a quick question“. But of course, when you have 20 regular clients, it’s a nightmare, because you can never switch off.

After stressing ALL night one time, I told a few clients. “Hey – just to let you know that unlimited support in between sessions isn’t offered in your package. You’re welcome to email me your questions, but I’ll wait and answer them in our weekly session. Oh and keep them to email rather than Skype and FB message so they can be in one place“.

OMG – I felt like the BIGGEST BITCH in the world. But it cut down on my workload, got my clients to think a bit more for themselves and to value my time more. (They weren’t going to waste their valuable coaching hour on something they could Google themselves, but were happy to ask me over Skype, especially when I kept enabling that behaviour with a 5 minute response time).

Think VERY carefully about adding unlimited email support into your coaching packages. It’s rarely worth it and teaches your clients to rely on you for EVERYTHING. I find that new coaches especially want to do this – because they think it’s being really generous for their clients, but it doesn’t always work out too well. You have to believe in the value of your face time and pad it out with unnecessary extras. If you don’t believe me, try it and see for yourself 

Fear of being visible

I was starting to get a name for myself but  honestly, it was kind of painful sometimes.

Most people don’t believe me, but I’m a total introvert. I love working at home by myself all day. I don’t like nightclubs or noisy restaurants and I’m really happy with a small group of friends. I would always rather sit and read a book than virtually ANYTHING else.

But I LOVE my business. I love helping other people. Just doing it so publicly could feel overwhelming at times.

Me showing off my Cleo magazine spread

 

I got a few traditional media interviews, but I felt really self-conscious. One part of it was feeling like a fraud – thinking that traditional media didn’t understand my business (they don’t really) and the other part was not wanting to be visible.

So paradoxically, as I was looking to increase my social media presence, it felt good from a business point of view, but hard personally. I also felt immense pressure to be this perfect, happy-go-lucky, sunny and pretty person. I was also starting to put on weight and worried about what people would think of me. Surely I have a PERFECT life?!

Nope. Sometimes I’m a grumpy bitch who nags my husband because he stacked the dishwasher wrong. (I’m not even going to put quote marks on the “wrong” – it just is). I don’t have all the answers. I get scared about my business too and wonder if I’m doing the right thing.

By the end of the year, I started feeling less self-conscious and just put more boundaries around my social media / public presence.

For example – I don’t always Instagram while I’m out. I’ll take pictures, but might post them hours or even days later. Although I’m happy to talk numbers and tell stories from my business, I only share what I’m comfortable sharing.

Fear of making mistakes

This might sound REALLY f-cking dumb, but when anyone bought anything from me, it would make me physically sick. Like, WHY WOULD YOU BUY THIS? You’re going to see all my mistakes! The weirdest thing is that I KNEW there were mistakes – like broken links on my website or things that didn’t work, but I felt completely PARALYSED to do anything about them. SO WEIRD.

I think anyone who finishes their sales page a minute before they launch, or creates their course as they go feels the same way. We think that everyone else has it all together, but guess what? I’ve even heard the same thing from MY million dollar coaches! They still sometimes do things last minute! They feel like they’re making it up too!

Who knew, right? 

 
THINGS I DID GREAT IN MY SECOND YEAR
List building

This was a big focus. I started the year with 1826 people on my list and ended with 5275.

This made a HUGE difference to my income, especially when I started running group programs (more on that in a second)

What really worked for me (in order of results)

Running regular free teleseminars on different topics
Weekly blog posts (really trying to avoid writing generic content)
Guest posts (but being REALLY picky about choosing popular blogs)
Participating a LOT in forums (particularly, Marie Forleo’s Rich, Happy & Hot B-school and Gabby Bernstein’s Her Future)
Doing interviews galore (sometimes with really random people)

I didn’t do ezine article marketing, any paid advertising or SEO. I only started doing Facebook advertising in my third year.

I tracked my list building numbers every month:

(By the way, this is minus unsubscribes. I go through and delete anyone who has unsubscribed each month, just to keep my list clean)

My website traffic definitely increased from the year before (again, those spikes are blog posts – SO important to be consistent with your content)

Blue line is first year of business, orange is the second year.

I increased my prices regularly

To be honest, I started pricing out some of the time-wasters because I started the year with some random clients.

In my first year, I started out at $75 a session, then increased to $97, then $149, then $249. In the second year, I went to $330 for a while, and then to $550 for a package of a one hour session and 30 minute follow up.

If you’re curious on HOW I increased my prices, I have an Ultimate Guide to Pricing that has all the scripts and psychology behind it. Access it here (it’s free)

I also offered several special packages, for 6 or 12 sessions at a discount. Every time I increased my prices, I’d lose some clients, but overall my workload remained the same.

I’d usually see about 15 clients a week in a good week. Some were on weekly packages, others on bi-weekly.

Here was a fairly typical client load for me 

I couldn’t really do more without feeling burnt out. I’m definitely not the kind of coach who can speak to people back to back all day long.

That’s why increasing your prices as you get better is SO IMPORTANT. It means that you don’t just have to keep working harder and harder.

I also started phasing out of coaching towards the end of the year. It’s a brilliant way to make money and serve people, but honestly, I can’t handle the repetitive conversations. After two years of coaching, I got the same problems over and over again, which made me really frustrated and wasn’t good for my clients.

I also realised that I was actually better at teaching and consulting, than coaching. I just didn’t have the patience to work with people over the long haul. I knew that I wasn’t doing people any favours by continuing to offer coaching, so I stopped doing it altogether in my third year (more on that in the next instalment).

HOWEVER – don’t jump out too soon, unless you have a growing newsletter list or you’re prepared to offer something high priced enough to warrant a tiny workload. If you’re sick of coaching 1:1 – that’s cool – but come up with your back up plan.

I got REALLY picky with my clients

I started saying no to people who weren’t a great fit.

Definitely started saying no to male clients, or people who didn’t have businesses.

The male clients was a super personal thing. First, I didn’t feel like my coaching style really worked with the masculine energy. Secondly, you’re having quite intimate conversations with your coach – often telling them things that you’re not telling your friends and sometimes even your partner. I felt like it was an inappropriate “relationship” to have as a married woman. It didn’t work for ME.

Most of my regular clients, I absolutely LOVED working with, but I’d still get a few randoms, even at the $550 price point. I didn’t feel like I could really help them change their entire business in 90 minutes, but their expectations were REALLY high for the cost of the coaching and they couldn’t afford to invest in a longer term program.

I definitely got the best results with people who committed for 3-6 months, and were willing to put the work in over time. Successful businesses aren’t built in a month, and I found it stressful dealing with people with unrealistic expectations. I decided to start working with people who had already started making money – rather than people who were desperate for their first client.

Remember – you don’t have to help EVERYONE – you can choose not only the type of client, but their life stage as well. You might specialise in start-ups, or you might work best with people already earning a certain amount of money.

I also started being clearer with my hours. I took Monday off coaching (and eventually Friday as well) and instead of giving clients pick of a million different appointment times from 6am-6pm, I gave them only a few choices. (You can set this up easily using TimeTrade, a great online scheduler).

Again – something really interesting here about when you’re TOO generous. One of my clients saw that she could have a pick of roughly 40-60 time-slots and told herself “Oh, Denise mustn’t be that successful“.

So, trying to be TOO accommodating, had a negatively perceived affect, even though I had maxed out my preferred client load. Interesting, right?!

I ran regular group programs

This really kicked up my income and was mainly responsible for taking me from 60k to $146k in one year.

I knew I didn’t want to take on more 1:1 clients because my workload was enough for me and I didn’t feel like I wanted to increase my prices from $550 to the next price point. It didn’t feel energetically “right”.

I told you that in my first year, I ran the Inspired Life Formula course – a kind of generic “improve your life” course.

In my second year, I started running a few different ones. The least successful was my “Manifest Your Soul Mate” course in May, which I think had 14 women on it (it was really cheap, maybe $97).

Remember, the shiny object syndrome. I WAS NOT AN EXPERT ON SOUL MATES. I wasn’t even particularly interested in the conversation, but I thought it would be a good idea. Total distraction!

In July, I also created a cheap product, a $50 video course, which also included a copy of my book, Lucky Bitch. This was always intended as a placeholder product for something better along the track, but it was nice extra income. It was a no brainer price and it paid for some of my regular business expenses. Over the year, it amounted to $3750. Not bad for a “place-holder” program that I never really advertised much. I just put it on my thank you pages for my freebies.

LESSON: Don’t wait to put together a program – do it quickly!

The most successful was my “Lucky Bitch Money Bootcamp“. It sold for $1,000 for a six week live course, and I offered a $750 “early bird” rate. The first few times, the videos were done at home, on my iPad and me in my PJs. It still sold well, but in September, I upgraded to a video day to make them more professional. (I’ll probably update and re-record that course every two years to keep it looking good).

Over that year, I sold 128, mostly all at the early bird rate. I had a handful of refunds, not very many, but I was TERRIBLE at chasing people whose payment plans defaulted. I really had to start putting together some more sophisticated policies but I was “too busy”.

In my third year of business, I made this a home study course because after running it live four times, I got bored answering the same questions over again and realised that I didn’t NEED to do it like that to give people the benefit of the course. I had to get over a bit of guilt and a feeling of “this is too easy” to be able to do that (more on that in a future post).

Here’s the interesting thing… (and why it’s SO important to grow your list)

Each time I ran the program, I had approximately 1% or less of my entire list sign up to do the course. Let’s take a look at the numbers….

I definitely improved my sales page between May and August, but I still only sold it to 1.21% of my entire list. I also got better at sending out emails promoting the courses. I sent WAY more than I was comfortable with, and realised that most people wait for the deadline to sign up, but you get scared to send a reminder email (or two), they’ll never remember to sign up.

I see people get discouraged about not filling their programs, when literally the numbers don’t work out.

It doesn’t mean that it’s not good. That doesn’t mean you CAN’T sell a program with a small list size, it just means that you’ll have to do more high-touch marketing, for example, getting people on the phone and selling them 1:1 – and that’s only worth it for a high end program.

I starting saying NO THANK YOU to random stuff

Speaking at my old dance school!

At the beginning of the year, I started to get some really weird speaking requests – like government team days, charity events, even my old High School.

I spoke at the local University on networking, the local business club about writing a book and even did motivational gigs as a favour to my awesome dance teacher, talking about personal development for the dancers. “Denise, is that you on the trophy wall who won ‘Best Dancer’ in 1992? I wasn’t even BORN yet“.

It was awesome for my ego to get paid for speaking, even the free ones were exciting. Telling people I had a speaking gig just felt SO COOL! I felt like I was a serious business lady.

By the way – if you’re ever unsure about what to charge for speaking – just simply ask what their budget is. They’d say “Our budget is around $500” and I’d say “Well, that’s a happy coincidence because that’s exactly my speaking fee!“. (You say that no matter what figure they mention)

After a while, the novelty of speaking wore off, especially since I felt like I had to constantly mould myself to a different topic every week.

Could you speak about time management?  SURE I CAN.

Could you come and speak at my real estate office?  NO PROBLEMO.

Can you talk to our students why they should study harder?  I DON’T SEE WHY THE F-CK NOT?

I actually started saying NO, just to see what it felt like.

Then I’d say “You know what, that’s not really my speciality – can I recommend someone for you?”.

Do you know how HARD it was admitting that I wasn’t good at something? (Especially for a Virgo?!) I was used to being the Jill of All Trades – and if I had to stay up all night researching a topic, I would do it. Because I was getting involved in so many corporate clients, I also started feeling like I couldn’t really be myself. I couldn’t swear and be silly. I had to dress up reasonably nicely and be on my best behaviour.

Boring.

So, I started saying NO to every request that wasn’t in my zone of genius. I actually even started saying no to speaking gigs in my town. I figured that I could find clients online, I didn’t need to sh-t where I slept (so to speak). It also felt nice having my town as my home, instead of my place of business.

The lesson really – is that business gets so much better when you do the things you like. Your business, your choice.

BUSINESS INVESTMENTS I MADE IN MY SECOND YEAR

I already mentioned, that I spent a SH-T tonne of money on courses, travel for conferences and personal development.

To be honest, I joined a mastermind that probably wasn’t the best investment at the time. Again, it required quarterly travel to the States (effectively doubling the cost of the mastermind itself), the calls were at an ungodly hour for my timezone and it wasn’t the best cultural fit. That was probably a $25k investment that wasn’t the best (not totally worthless, because I DEFINITELY got new insights, it just wasn’t really what I needed for the year).

Staff / Contractors

One thing I realised about myself in my second year is that I’m a total introvert who likes to work largely by myself.

I HATE MANAGING PEOPLE. Always have. All of my jobs have been largely individual. I never liked working with others… no wonder then that I struggled to work with employees!

I went the Indian V.A route and it really didn’t work out. I had two different people working for me part time each, for about $1200 a month. But I just wasn’t ready to have two part time staff and I found myself giving them really random instructions, because I didn’t know what else to give them and also the language barrier was sometimes a problem. I’d be like “um, can you find me 200 quotes on finding your soul mate” but the result would be kind of random and not the voice I was looking for.

My best staffing hire was towards the end of the year when I worked with an Online Business Manager, who helped me systemise processes. She basically got me organised, helped me prioritise projects when I said I was going to launch 5 things in one month and was a valuable sounding board to help me when I was having a challenging week.

Other things I contracted out: graphic design, recording and editing audio, a video day re-recording my money bootcamp, (with a guy who also edited them) and a book project manager (more on that in a sec). I also changed accountants from using one of my best friends to a local guy who came recommended from a business friend.

I don’t think I’ll ever be someone with a large full time team. I really like to streamline and hire people when I need them. I always prefer contractors over full time staff.

Went PRO in some of my systems

I moved from 1ShoppingCart to Infusionsoft to deal with my newsletters and opt-ins. It was a big learning curve, but it was a great time to do it.

Started using DropBox to back up all my files (it sounds like a small thing, but losing data is a bitch).

My website was still on Typepad and I was tempted to move over to WordPress several times but it felt like too big a project (I ended up changing over in my third year – should have done it sooner).

Good photos

This makes SUCH a difference. Truly, you can get away with crappy branding if you have good pictures. That’s all anyone will notice.

In my opinion, good photos will be more useful to your business than a logo (I STILL don’t have a logo!). It also has a crazy effect that people think you’re more credible and well-put together.

Seriously, this is a good investment. I didn’t spend thousands, I spent a couple of hundred bucks and it was so much better than I was using before. I noticed a big leap in my income and confidence from having them, because even if I was working at home wearing no bra, people had a good public impression of me 

I ended up with several hundred really good pics, that I’ve used over and over again. I only wish that I’d changed clothes a few more times in my session. I got super lazy, so I’m just wearing the same thing in virtually every picture.

Oh well, it’s good consistency! By the way – have you ever noticed why I post SO many pictures of myself all over my website? It’s a brainwashing thing…

Made a HUGE lifestyle upgrade

This became my new office view.

One of the BEST things I did in my second year of business was to drastically increase our standard of living. We were still living in a small apartment, even though we both had six figure incomes. Mainly because I was stressing about how to afford a big house deposit and how to get a mortgage considering that we were both new to the country (I am Australian but spent all of  my twenties living in London).

I was reading a book by Chris Guillebeau and he said “You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.” 

He also spoke about how he rents instead of being locked into a mortgage. It was like a light went on in my head.

I turned to Mark and said – “Let’s rent somewhere SPECTACULAR!”

Literally, within the next six weeks, we were living in a waterside penthouse apartment. That moved made a HUGE increase in my income. I felt WAY more abundant with my life and the energy trickled down to my clients. I had MORE people who wanted to work with me.

I remember we were looking around the new apartment with the estate agent. Mark was looking at me, mouthing “Don’t even THINK about it”. But we did the numbers and it was doable. I just knew how many more coaching clients I needed, which made me hugely more motivated in my business.

Seriously – I know this isn’t a BUSINESS investment because it was a personal cost, but it completely upgraded my business too.

Invested in writing a second book!

This was the BEST investment I made all year. But not for the reason you think…

Books in general aren’t the best source of income. For me in my second year of business, it was worth almost $4000 in income. This is pretty typical for an author, (self-published or not) unless it’s a runaway success.

Books are a business card and a marketing tool. They give you credibility. They get you speaking gigs. They introduce your work to a new audience. But you need to have a money making strategy off the back end of  your book. Ie. People buy your book, they come to your website to get an exclusive freebie, you nurture them and build a relationship, and then they’ll become a client in another (more lucrative) way.

Here’s how much I made from selling my book on Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble (online) and the Diesel e-reader store. Kindle was the most popular, followed by paperback on Amazon – honestly the rest were negligible and not worth the effort.

I make on average, about $4 per book.

Not exactly a full time income, is it? Yes, it all adds to the pot, but that’s the point – you need other things in the pot to make good money.

You will find this though – to your friends and family, your book IS your business. So they’ll ask you “How’s your book going?“, when it fact, it’s just a tiny marketing strategy out of the whole mix.

It kind of deflates them when you say, “Well, I only make a few hundred a month out of my book, but I made $10,000 last month on my info product!“. They just don’t understand, so it’s easier to say “Great. The book is doing great!”.

The second book….

Was done VERY differently to my first one. This is my book about money – Get Rich, Lucky Bitch!

I wanted to write a second book, because I knew that I wanted to shift my focus exclusively to money and wanted a low cost entry point into working with me. But I was procrastinating.

The first one, I sat down and wrote it like a college assignment – stressed and last minute. I obsessed over the word count and it really was a HUGE pain.

This time, I partnered with a local editor and book writing team. I sent them about 500 pages of transcripts from when I first ran the money bootcamp, and they trimmed and edited it down to about 180 pages. I then went through it, added additional stories and material (about 40 pages extra), and then sent it back to them for a final proof read. SO MUCH EASIER than starting from scratch.

Between the book editing team, the cover, the formatting, etc – the book cost me about $6000 to produce.

Here’s though where it’s SO important to have a marketing plan for your book. I knew that I’d only need to sell 6 full price money bootcamps to break even.

Even though the book was essentially finished at the end of my second year in business, I then actually launched this in my third year  – because predictably, I got distracted on something else! (More on that in the third instalment.)

I was thinking that I could write a few books every year but to be honest, it’s a BIG project. One or two books is enough for credibility and to get your name out there. Focus the rest of your energy on getting clients, creating info products or group coaching programs.

Where did my income come from?

The majority of my income came from my Money Bootcamp, followed by private coaching, then affiliate income and then a random assortment of book and speaking income.

And this is how it played out throughout the year… most of the income came in the last few months – this is where I started running regular group programs.

(These are the running totals that I kept throughout the year – my “official” figures from my book-keeper might look a bit different, but it’s a good rough estimate)

The affiliate income came mostly from promoting Marie Forleo’s, Rich, Happy & Hot B-School which was a $1000 commission. Because that experience was so good, I realised that it probably takes just as much work to make $1000 commission as it does to make $5 promoting someone’s ebook. So it’s a business decision for me now to be REALLY picky about who I promote as an affiliate. It has to be a great fit and it has to be worth it. Otherwise, I’d just rather promote something I believe in, without bothering with the commission.

So in summary…

My second year in business was one of MAJOR turning points. A lot of experimentation, sometimes a frenzy of random activity, but that’s pretty normal. It was a thrill to be making six figures in my second year, but honestly, try not to spend it all like I did 

It’s okay to try things and then realise that it doesn’t work. It’s okay to quit things, even if you spent time and money on them.

Boundaries with clients will make your life SO much easier (and they won’t think you’re a bitch)

Create your first info product (even if it’s a small thing, like my $50 course), it makes the transition easier if you decide that 1:1 service isn’t for you and gives you some leverage.

Try and hire your first employee. It’s a great learning curve and you’ll get the hang of it eventually.

Keep hustling, keep trying and DON’T GIVE UP.

Being in business for myself has been better than I ever imagined. It’s literally a dream come true to get up every day and choose how I’ll change the world.

It’s there waiting for you and you can do it too!

xx

Denise

Launch debrief (pt. 2): Sales breakdown, unsubscribes, refund rates and ad spend

Welcome back to part two of the debrief from the recent PLF-style launch of our new business course. 

If you missed part one covering the background, schedule and sales results, you can read it here.

Today we’ll be sharing STATS! 

Stats, stats, and more stats from behind the scenes of one of our most complex and successful launches. 

I love sharing the REAL numbers and Mark loves pulling together these launch debriefs. 

We're taking you behind the scenes of our marketing campaign so you can find just one thing to improve your next launch - whether it's your first or tenth launch and whatever stage of business you're at.

As I’ve said before, there are people doing much bigger and better launches than us - we make mistakes EVERY launch but we share this to help learn to launch in your own way. 

Later this month, you’ll also have the opportunity to learn “how to launch” from my mentor and launch expert, Jeff Walker. Jeff will be running a 3-day live Launch Masterclass starting Friday 28 October - click here to join my notification list to hear when Jeff releases more details.

Now let’s get started with part 2 of our launch debrief… if you like stats, this one is for you! 

40% of sales in 48 hours! 

From past experience and from learning Product Launch Formula from Jeff we know that the final 48 hours often make or break a launch.

This is the time to leave it all on the field, increase our ad spend, and deploy our final strategies to drive sales.

40% (340) of our sales came in the final two days of the launch. Here’s how we made both the 14th and 15th September $200,000 days for us in terms of overall revenue:

Announcing a new longer-term payment plan with a $111 per month price point to remove the cost barrier to people joining
Using individual sales messages and ads for each Archetype
Sending casual video messages to each Archetype about the offer closing and encouraging them to join
Driving conversion throughout Close Cart day with regular and varied emails
Using the payment plan, testimonials, and the money-back guarantee more prominently in ads and emails
Adding a larger, bolder, and red-colored countdown timer to the sales page
Investing more time in the Messenger inbox and our sell-by-chat initiative

The priority for the end of the sales period is maximizing the number of people who are still engaged with the launch and getting as many as possible to see the sales page. This gives you the best chance of converting all of the previous good work from your launch. 

This chart shows when people joined - sales started as soon as we began the promotion, then spiked on Webinar day and in the final 48 hours of the launch.

During this launch, we tracked as much data as possible regarding which of the 8 Money Archetypes engaged and when.

We tracked leads, sales, and Archetype breakdown daily and monitored which Archetypes converted most and best.

We saw some patterns in terms of when each Archetype decided to join:

Mavericks started very strong, with more than half of Maverick sales in the Early Enrolment and Webinar periods.
Celebrity, Nurturer, and Romantic sales started slowly - these Archetypes sometimes have challenges with spending and money boundaries and may have needed to leave their purchase to the last moment.
Celebrities and Romantics likely didn't watch the webinar live or stay on the call until the end, so sales from these Archetypes from the call were lower.
The majority of Nurturers and Connectors purchased in the final 48 hours.
Mavericks were less likely to join in the final 48 hours because they hate anything that’s too popular and hate feeling like they're going with the crowd. Mavericks are less influenced by FOMO and a deadline.

If you know more about your customer or the type of customers you want to attract, you can tailor your launch and know what to expect in terms of buyer behavior.

Sales by Archetype

The most common Archetypes amongst our leads were Accumulator and Nurturer, accounting for 18% and 17% of our launch leads, respectively.

But we saw some big differences in the Conversion Rate across the Archetypes with Celebrity and Romantic being top performers with conversion rates over 5%.

Accumulators, Rulers, and Nurturers generated the most sales, and despite the high conversion rate, Celebrities had the lowest number of sales.

We were surprised not to see more sales from Alchemists and Mavericks, especially because Mavericks started very strong with early sales.

Which payment option did each Archetype prefer?

Over three-quarters of Accumulators preferred to pay in full and avoid finance charges.
Compared to only a third of Celebrities and about 40% of Romantics who paid the larger upfront amount.
Spreading the cost of enrolment with either the 4Pay or 11Pay option was most popular with the Celebrity, Nurturer, Romantic and Ruler Archetypes.
The long-term payment plan released in the final 48 hours was also most popular with Celebrities, Nurturers, and Rulers and was a factor in getting these people to join in the final few hours. 

Again, if you’re goal is to attract a certain type of customer, you can choose a payment plan option that will suit them.

Launch Ad Spend

This launch generated in excess of $1.5m AUD in revenue, with $873,000 of this being received upfront during the launch.

Our expenses are normally around 20% of launch revenue, including ad spend, team, production and web design. But the complexity and production value we wanted for this launch and the level of styling and staging involved meant the cost of this launch was much higher.

I’ve got a separate post coming breaking down what we spent in detail, but here’s a look at our biggest expense, which as you’d expect, was advertising.

We spent $117,000 on ads and ad management, which is about 8% of total revenue, but for future launches we’ll aim to spend closer to 10% and increase spending on increasing consumption of the pre-launch content - getting more people to actually watch videos 2-4 of the workshop.

List growth and unsubscribes

One of the main long-term benefits of a launch and investment in lead generation is growing your email list for future launches.

We added 19,000 new leads to our list during this launch (yay!), but a little over 5,000 of these new leads then went on to unsubscribe during the launch (boo!).

This is high but expected with a quiz launch - these 5,000 people most likely just discovered Denise, started the quiz, maybe didn’t complete it, or unsubscribed due to the large volume of launch emails.

Our overall unsubscribe rate was about 10% - which is high, and this sort of unsubscribe level would be unsustainable every month without a major ad spend. This was exaggerated by people who just wanted to take the quiz and get the result e.g. people sharing the quiz with their customers or family. 

Normally we average around 0.5% unsubscribe rate per newsletter email we send (this is pretty low), so given the volume of launch emails and the 4 podcast episodes released during the launch, this overall level of unsubscribes is high but not a disaster.

We do two launches a year and spend the rest of the year list-building and providing valuable free content to build a strong relationship with our list.

We will, however, review the number of emails during the next launch to look for ways to reduce this unsubscribe rate.

The truth is – every time you send an email, you’ll get people leaving your list. And although you’ll want to grab hold of their ankles as they walk away and scream…

WHY ARE YOU LEAVING MEEEEEEEEEE……..?

The best thing for you (and your dignity) is to let them go. It’s not personal.

There are many reasons why someone unsubscribes during a launch…

They are annoyed at the number of emails you’re sending

They don’t want what you’re buying

They are SHOCKED, DISAPPOINTED and even ANGRY that you’re selling them something. Yep - be prepared for some really pissed-off emails.

They’re just not that into you.

Either way, it’s not really your business. It’s totally okay for someone to decide that they’re not a fit for you anymore and declutter your emails out of their inbox.

Also, don’t stress when people don’t read your emails. Our open rates during the launch ranged from 28-40%. When they are ready, people will read your emails and click your links - the stats play out, and even with more than 50% of our list not opening our emails our launch was still a big success.

You can read more about my approach and mindset regarding unsubscribes here.

Refunds

As well as unsubscribes, another thing that’s inevitable about launching and being in business is refunds.

Refunds suck, but there are lots of reasons why someone may request one - it could be you, it could be them or just a money thing.

We try to reduce our refund rate by providing lots of value and support in the first 14-days, by having a clear refund process, and by connecting with everyone who asks for a refund.

But we’re also not triggered or stressed by refunds. They happen, and we give people their money back if their not happy or decide the course is not for them.

We use our refund policy in our marketing as a guarantee and reassurance for people who join, and we don’t fight people over refunds - if you request one during the 14-days, you’ll get your money back.

During this launch, we had 56 refund requests. Once again, this sounds like a lot, and in dollar terms, it is - over $80,000 in money refunded.

But a higher than normal refund rate is to be expected in a launch with a deadline and longer-term payment plan - people often get buyer's remorse or have other financial challenges pop up, which means they request a refund.

A refund rate of 5-6% is in line with our other launches, so we know what to expect. Of course, I would love to have a 3% or 0% refund rate, but if we didn’t offer the generous refund policy, we may have lower upfront sales.

We also survey people to find out why they want a refund and send a survey to our launch list to find out why they didn’t buy, so that we can work on increasing conversions and lowering refunds next time.

If you have 100 people join your next course launch, expect for 5 refunds, and if you get fewer, than you’re doing great.

Offering two payment plans and a longer-term payment plan for people who could not afford the first option could also have contributed to a higher refund rate.

The refund rate for people who paid in full was 20% lower than for people on payment plans.

We also saw the highest refund rate amongst Accumulators, who often find investing in themselves a challenge and suffer buyer's remorse.

Mavericks also refunded at a higher-than-average rate as the course became more popular, and they likely wanted to rebel against being involved or doing the work.

There’s more!

Honestly, Mark has charts coming out of his ears! There’s a lot more we can share about this launch and everything we’ve learned from over a decade of launching.

Check out the blog for our launch lessons, and we wish you the absolute best as you work towards your next and best launch.

Launching has created a lot of abundance for our family, and it’s so worth it to push past your blocks and resistance.

People need what you offer! YOU CAN DO IT!

xx Denise & Mark

P.S. HAPPENING SOON >> A special opportunity to learn from my launch mentor, Jeff Walker.

Next week we'll share details of a new training from our launch mentor, Jeff Walker.

We have studied and implemented Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula in our business over the last six years, including attending conferences and masterminds with Jeff – I'm not exaggerating when I say he has changed our business and life.

Using the Product Launch Formula (PLF), we've generated over $10m in revenue from product launches, and we're now one of the top affiliate partners who work with Jeff on his annual launch.

Click here to join the PLF Waitlist and be first to hear about Jeff’s Live Launch Masterclass and his Product Launch Formula Coaching Program.

This is an incredibly valuable opportunity to learn from the guy who invented launches and get insight into the latest trends and strategies that are working in launching.

 

Part 1 // Launch debrief: Real $ results revealed from our recent launch

Once a year, I pull back the curtain on how I run my product launches by sharing what's working right now in my business.

I love sharing the REAL numbers, our wins, and our mistakes. Plus, the challenges and changes I'm seeing in the online marketing space.

Cos - trust me, we're not perfect either!

Over the next few weeks, along with my launch manager (and hubby) Mark, we'll share a lot of launch content with you - reviews, free training, and honest articles.

We'll take you behind the scenes of our marketing campaigns so you can find just one thing to improve your next launch - whether it's your first or tenth launch and whatever stage of business you're at.

Even if you've never launched, don't have a business yet or if you hate the idea of launching, stay tuned because I want you to know that it's possible to launch in your way - with integrity and without sleazy marketing techniques.

The world needs YOU to show up, and trust me when I say that learning how to launch can take you to the next level so you can help more people.

To kick off one of my favorite topics (and certainly Mark's fave), I want to share a breakdown of my most recent launch.

This is hot off the press - the launch of our Sacred Money Archetypes® business course was only completed a few weeks ago, and we're delivering the course right now.

Mark has put together this "Part 1" debrief to share a summary of our results from our most complex (and fun) launch ever.  

We don't share these numbers to gloat - there are so many more people doing bigger and better launches than us, we're trying to remove some of the smokescreen from launching.

My goal is that by the end of this month, you feel a little more informed, inspired, and excited to try a launch or achieve your best month in business. 

So let's get into this… dive in below.

 

Background

We first launched Sacred Money Archetypes® in 2017 and then had a small annual promotion for a few years after that.

Honestly, it was always kind of disappointing. 

I love the SMA framework; it has been a game-changer for my business and relationship. I know it has helped hundreds of our members, but we never quite got the messaging, promise, or pricing right. There was always something that tripped up our previous efforts to launch this course, and I was fired up to see SMA fulfill its potential. 

So I started again from scratch. I went all in because I had a big vision about what this launch and course could be. 

My creative juices were flowing, and I got to work re-designing and re-writing the course, re-creating all videos and materials, and completely changing the branding and marketing. 

I realized that all my previous efforts to market this course were based on my own Archetype, the Ruler, so I created eight different marketing funnels with different messages, videos, and looks to speak to each of the 8 Money Archetypes. 

We invested heavily in staging, styling, video production, and social media - I really want this to be a game-changer launch where I could showcase the power of using the Archetypes in your marketing and getting some fun and creativity back in my marketing. 

This meant eight different launches - 8 sets of pre-launch videos, eight sales videos, and eight versions of the course - it was a lot for my team and me. It's kinda traumatic to think back about how much work and time we've put into this. 

So to say I was heavily invested in the outcome of this launch was an understatement. 

I've never done such a complex and involved launch as this, and I REALLY wanted it to go well - which of course, brought up plenty of my own blocks and fears. 

You can see more detail from behind-the-scenes and how this launch was styled and produced here, including an extended interview with me about our approach to this launch. 

I also recorded a podcast episode here about how I nearly sabotaged this launch before it started! 

 

The goal

We wanted to launch SMA in a way befitting just how good the new course is and how much we believe in this work.

So we invested heavily in upgrading the pre-launch content, marketing, and branding, and we devoted six months to prepare for this launch. 

This meant we had an ambitious goal for this launch - we needed at least 300 sales to cover our costs, and 500 was our initial goal. 

I love having a big goal for launches and a project to get excited about (usually a property for us). For example, we just bought an old bank to renovate as an Airbnb, and a big chunk of the profits from this launch was earmarked for that project. 

Our big stretch goal was one thousand sales and $1m of revenue. 

We wrote "$1m+ SMA" on our shower screen daily and used it as our passwords and phone backgrounds. 

Given the $997 price, we knew that hitting 7-figures was a big stretch that would require a lot of leads. 

Previous SMA launches had low conversion rates between 0.3% - 1.2%, and this is why we wanted to redo and improve the course. 

(You can read about the mistakes we made in our worst SMA launch here) 

We knew we could improve the conversion rate and engagement but hitting $1m even with a 2%+ conversion rate would require 50,000 leads. 

We had doubts about whether we had the reach and advertising budget to generate enough leads to hit our target.

This is why it's essential to know your numbers and work backward from your revenue/sales target to know how many leads you need and what you'll need to spend on ads or via affiliate partnerships. 

Do you know the number of leads and sales you need to hit your launch goal? 

Our main launch targets were:

20-25,000 leads 
3-4% conversion rate (this is about the CR for our Bootcamp launches, but we'd never got close to this in the past with SMA)
800-1000 sales
$1m+ revenue 

 

The schedule

We originally planned to do this launch in April, then at the start of August, and both times we had to push back. There were production delays, team members getting sick with Covid, and we were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work required to get eight different pre-launch workshops and courses ready. 

We eventually run the launch for three weeks from 25 August - two weeks of generating leads followed by a week-long sales push as follows: 

25 August - 6 September - Lead generation

We needed an extended pre-launch period because we had six pieces of content with the quiz, the four videos, and all of the BTS content. Plus, we had a big leads goal, so we felt we needed extra time to engage both warm and cold audiences. 

6 September - Live call/sales webinar 

7-14 Sept - Main sales period

14 September - Close cart day

15 Sept - 30 Oct - Live course 

For the first time, we made early enrolment in the course available immediately, so people could join as soon as they had done the quiz or workshop. We had 270 people join / 28% of sales come in before the webinar. 

We did this because some Archetypes love instant gratification and hate waiting to buy - they'd rather jump straight in and take action quickly. 

 

The results

Although sales started slow, we had a really strong final 36 hours, averaging $10,000 per hour in revenue. 

Our final numbers were:

952 new members 
$1.55m AUD / $1.04m USD
57% of the money was received upfront, contributing to September being our highest-ever cash-received month. 

Five hundred eight sales at the pay in full $997 price, and 180 people, chose the four pay price option. Two-hundred and sixty four took advantage of the extended 11-month payment plan when it was announced in the final two days of the launch - this was undoubtedly one of the reasons 40% of sales came in the last two days. 

We hit our $1m revenue target and got close to our stretch target of 1,000 sales. 

We threw all of our Law of Attraction manifesting techniques at this goal, and despite being exhausted, we were thrilled with these numbers. 

25,682 people opted into the launch by taking the quiz or registering for the video workshop and webinar. 

So 952 sales represented a 3.7% conversion of total leads - close to our 4% target. 

We tracked leads and sales by Archetype and recorded when, each Archetype decided to join, and we'll reveal more of this in part 2 of this launch debrief. 

The conversation rates for the various Archetypes varied from 2.4% to 6%, so next year we'll aim to attract more of the highest converting customer groups. 

Overall, we TRIPLED our previous best conversation rate for an SMA launch. 

 

Here are three factors that contributed to our 3x improvement in launch conversions…

1. Clear promise

We created new training modules and focused the marketing message on "leverage your strengths and make more money." 

This clarity worked well in our biggest customer groups - Accumulators and Rulers - and clarified why people should join the course. 

We added secondary messages tailored to each Archetype based on research we had done about what each Archetype looks for in a course and sales process. 

2. Creative marketing

Advertising is becoming harder to track and more expensive, plus organic reach is declining. So because we had a significant reach and leads goal, we needed to get creative in our marketing. 

We doubled down on fun, eye-catching social media content and videos and tailored marketing to the 8 Archetypes. 

This drove this launch's engagement, energy, and excitement to a new level. 

You don't need to create eight versions of marketing content or a music video, but how can you bring your personality into your marketing, so you stand out and get people talking? 

3. Incremental improvement across the board

Your final conversion rate is influenced by many factors. A slight improvement - even a tenth of a percent - in many different areas can significantly affect the overall conversion rate. 

We invested in improving the performance of ad targeting, ad copy, click-through rates, email copywriting, SEO, re-designing our sales page, improving video consumption, abandon cart rates etc. 

One of the most significant improvements compared to our January launch was achieving a much lower cost per lead with the quiz and better ad targeting. We'll share more about our ad spend in future debriefs because we were getting new leads between $1-$4. 

Small tweaks make a big difference when you uplevel copy, messaging, and performance across a whole funnel. This was only possible because Denise advocated for her vision for the launch and made SMA a priority for six months across the company. 

This bet on SMA paid off and has created a new multi-million dollar asset for our company. 

Despite the results, there are still so many areas where we can improve and fix things that didn't go well - webinar show-up rate, pre-launch video consumption, early refunds, and better use of testimonial videos, to name a few. 

Did you play along with the launch? Did you join SMA this year? 

What stood out to you as better or different with this launch? What should we do differently? 

 

Debrief part 2 is coming soon…

In part two of this launch review, we'll share more on how much this launch cost (a lot), our major expenses, and things we will do differently for next year's launch. 

With so much complexity in this launch and the extra workload of creating the course at the same time as running the launch, we were so grateful to have the PLF framework to fall back on. 

The Product Launch Formula course gave us templates for video scripts and checklists for precisely what to include in crucial emails and videos.

Without PLF, this type of complicated launch would not have been possible. Having Jeff in our corner as a mentor and point of reference is the only way we stay sane and don't sabotage our big launches.

Make sure you check out Jeff's free live launch masterclass when it's available later this month. Click here to join my PLF waitlist here.

xx Denise and Mark 

P.S. HAPPENING SOON >> A special opportunity to learn from my launch mentor, Jeff Walker.

Over the next few weeks, we'll share a new training from our launch mentor, Jeff Walker. 

We have studied and implemented Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula in our business over the last six years, including attending conferences and masterminds with Jeff – I'm not exaggerating when I say he has changed our business and life.

Using the Product Launch Formula (PLF), we've generated over $10m in revenue from product launches, and we're now one of the top affiliate partners who work with Jeff on his annual launch.

Join the PLF Waitlist!

In late October, Jeff will run a free Live Launch Masterclass and open enrolment for this Product Launch Formula Coaching Program. 

This is an incredibly valuable opportunity to learn from the guy who invented launches and get insight into the latest trends and strategies that are working in launching. Click here to join my PLF waitlist list, and I'll send you details about the Masterclass soon!

I am also a proud affiliate partner with Jeff, and I support Product Launch Formula each year by offering an epic free bonus and launch training. To be the first to find out about the 2022 enrolment and my behind-the-scenes bonus, join my PLF notification list here.

Sacred Money Archetypes® is a registered trademark of Heart of Success, Inc. and licensed by Lucky B Pty Ltd. Copyright 2022 Kendall SummerHawk.

3 signs you need to work on your mindset around pricing

Pricing’s tricky right?

When you go into business for yourself it's like you have to put a value on yourself. Urgh!

You might have some mindset stuff around wanting to be accessible and affordable for everyone. 

So, if you are struggling with prices right now, here are a couple of different ways it could be showing up for you. 

#1. You hide. You don't tell people about what you do. You procrastinate posting, launching or publishing. It’s so normal to get into analysis paralysis. 

#2. You think someone else must know better than you. You might canvas for prices on business forums or with your friends and family. Big mistake.

#3. You believe there's a critic-proof price. There’s no perfect price. There’s no price that will make everyone say yes.

Click here to listen to my latest episode and you’ll learn:

Being in business is NOT about getting everything right
How to avoid other people’s money blocks when setting your price
That you may lose some clients and that’s ok
The EXACT thing that’s holding you back      
What happens energetically when you get paid well

Know this: you can't help people if you burn yourself out.

If you have to have a job that you hate to subsidize your business you’re not going to be able to bring your best self. 

It's okay to charge for your work.

You serve, you deserve.                                                        

I’d love to hear from you what mindset issues are coming up for you with pricing. Reach out at @denisedt

It’s your time and you’re ready for the next step,

xx Denise
P.S. Don't forget I have a free pricing ebook for you - it’s my ultimate guide to all things pricing including ALL the scripts you need in it for setting and increasing your prices. Snag your copy at denisedt.com/pricing

I almost sabotaged this launch… here’s how to make sure you don’t

 

There are only a few days left, so let’s go even further behind the scenes of my current launch.

You know how I love sharing so you’re gonna get the good, the bad, and the ugly! 

The truth is that me or my launch manager/hubby Mark sabotage our launches almost every time (it’s usually ‘cos of our archetypes).

My archetype is Ruler-Maverick, and my sabotages are trying to do all the things at once, overlapping projects, and not giving myself time off. 

For this launch, I had serious shiny object syndrome – I filled my house with stuff for each archetype. We had clothing racks everywhere, and everything was a big, old mess.

So, there are eight archetypes, and my aim was to film each one in two hours. That’s four costume changes and one complete set change for each. No problemo! 

Rulers think that time and space don't apply to them, and Mavericks think that the rules of physics don't apply to them, so it was all cool, right?

On the first day, I realized my mistake. 

It didn't take two hours per archetype. It took at least double; I was frantically changing outfits, earrings, bracelets, rings, and shoes!

We started at 7am for hair and makeup and finished at midnight that night. We'd done two archetypes. I panicked.

Of course, we did it – my amazing videographer is an Accumulator, and we totally made it happen over the next week.

But I’ve learned lessons…

Click here to listen to my latest episode   and you’ll learn:

How I screw up almost all my launches (how NOT to launch!)
What each archetype needs to know before they’ll purchase
The secret to discovering your ideal customer
How to avoid cookie-cutter launches
EXACTLY what happened when I broke through my sabotages

This launch is next level!

I usually always film barefoot, but this time I chose shoes to match the energy of each archetype! From snakeskin cowboy boots to silver platforms – go to denisedt.com/bts to see every outfit that I wore.

I can’t wait to share it with you - hit reply and let me know your favorite outfit combo!

xx Denise

P.S. Enrollment for my new Sacred Money Archetypes® business course is closing soon. 

We’ll be spending six weeks working on leveraging your Money Archetype and tweaking your business model, marketing, and passive income to earn more.  

Click here to find out all the details, read the reviews and join us for live coaching and business training tailored to your Money Archetype. 

How Rulers can use Sacred Money Archetypes® to make more money

I recently had the opportunity to interview an incredible group of Ruler entrepreneurs and alumni in my Sacred Money Archetypes® course. In this fascinating roundtable, we talked about the strengths and challenges these entrepreneurs experience as Rulers and how they have learned to use their Money Archetype in their business. 

Here's a summary of our discussion and please read the individual member's case studies and course reviews to find out more.

Our Ruler Roundtable Guests

 

How did it feel when you found out you were a Ruler? 

Anne Bruce
(Click here to read Anne's full review)

When I heard about the Ruler and watched the videos about it, it just hit home so hard. I was like, "Oh, yeah. That's what I am and that's what I'm all about.

 

Tara-Nicholle Kirke
(Click here to read Tara's full review)

Well, it was like my whole entire life made sense. Stories my mom told about me as a kid made sense. I had just done preschool tours with my four year... Well, then she was two and all the other parents were asking about curriculum and I was asking how many kids there were in the school and doing the math on what the school's annual revenues likely were and was like, "Wow, y'all are great business women." It just is who I am.

 

Charlotte Pardy
(Click here to read Charlotte's full review)

So for me, it was a complete surprise that I was a Ruler. I thought being in such a caring profession and everything else, I would naturally come out as a Nurturer. I really did think that that was the way that I was heading, but I think obviously, Nurturers are mother-type figures and what do mothers do? They rule their little empires, don't they? And I think really, for me, that's what came through, as well as having that nurturing half of me. There's still the half that counts the pennies, make sure there's food in the cupboard, keeps building on ideas, keeps helping people growing and keeps bringing those ideas coming through. So it was a surprise, but when I did look and read through it did make perfect sense for that matriarch figure for me. So that's been something that I've connected with quite a lot and it's been really a revelation for me because it's allowed me to empower myself and it also balances out a little bit of that nurture tendency to overgive because I think that there's a sense in all mothers, at some point, that you get a little frustrated with your kids and you're like, "I'm sick of tying your shoelaces for you. You need to tie them for yourself", kind of thing. So I think that's where that balance and that tension between the two can fit quite well together.

 

Kerin Monaco
(Click here to read Kerin's full review)

My reaction to being a Ruler, I think the reaction was just like, "Oh, this is why everything is so hard because I'm skiving so out of alignment with who I am on an energetic level. So it was eye opening, it was heart opening and it was transformational. My life is so different now. My business is designed completely different and it was a result of that learning about the Ruler, the Alchemist and the Connector as well.

 

Rifa Thorpe-Tracey
(Click here to read Rifa's full review)

My reaction to the archetypes was I was in denial about being a Ruler at first and did the test a few times and thought, "Okay, I've identified as an Accumulator. Definitely. I was like, "Yes, that sounds like me. I loved to stash away my coins and think about where I'm going to make more money and found it really hard to spend money on myself. Sometimes I felt really guilty about that. And then my second, the Accumulator and Nurturer were about the same and then the next one after that is Celebrity. So it felt a bit like they're all fighting around each other, the wanting to be more of a Ruler and a Nurture. And I think of thinking about real life, people like Beyonce was probably a Ruler and building your empire and being that person and not always being liked as well. That was all part of money bootcamp as well. That understanding that you have to be your true self, I think, was really important, I think.

 

Sandra Hoffman
(Click here to read Sandra's full review)

It made so much sense. Ruler and Romantic are quite close. So sometimes I thought I'm rather a Romantic because I like luxury a lot and I like to... I always think I earned this, so I deserve it. I deserve it. That's it. I deserve it, so that's what I think a lot, but then when I read the Ruler one, it was so clear. That's totally me. I'm always thinking, "Okay, I could can make this as a business, maybe, or this as a business, maybe." And if other people tell me their ideas, I say, "Okay, so we're going to do this and you can make a business out of this." So it's like all the time, I'm thinking a lot how to make money out of everything.

 

Jess Keating
(Click here to read Jess' full review)

I love that I'm last here in this, because I am pretty much on the other end of the spectrum where I think the lowest scores for me were Connector and Nurturer, and then it's Ruler, Maverick and Accumulator. Honestly, the thing that hit me first, it was like, "Yep, that's me." And I think you have, Denise, somewhere... You mentioned, "I wanted an Oprah-type business being a Ruler." And I remember being like, "Oh, scene", and there was so many interesting little parts to that because I didn't realize... Maybe with just Rulers in particular, but maybe it's everybody, the thing about my Ruler was I didn't realize that I had been partially holding that back a little bit. It was a part of me that it needed permission that I didn't realize needed permission just to be like, this is who I am.

And the second part of that was when we did the sacred money archetypes quiz, people are sharing their answers and all of these lovely women that I know were like, "Oh, I'm a Connector, I'm a Nurturer, and I'm a whatever." And I was just like, "Am I a jerk?" And I remember you, Denise, saying, "I'm a Ruler", and actually, I distinctly remember this. I'm paraphrasing here, but you were like, "I love the people I work with in Money Bootcamp. I love all those people, but I'm not going to hold your hand. That's just not me." I think your Connector was not your top either and I remember just being like, "Oh, it's okay. I'm allowed to be this way and it's not even a fault. It's just something that is just who I am and I can outsource this, this and this in my business and it doesn't need to be this character defect."

Like Sarah was saying, there's nothing wrong with me. It's just when we lean into what makes us us, what lights us up and what lights me up is that idea of that word empire. It's just like, "Ah, shit. Yes." And the other stuff, once I got over that initial hit of shame, of, "I don't really have..." It was two or something, but that Connector and Nurture vibe is just not there, but it doesn't mean I'm not caring. It doesn't mean I don't care about what I do or the people I work with, but really allowing myself to embody that fully and in particular, see models like you, Denise, who it is who you are and you don't make apologies for it. You're just like, "Oh, so then I do this, I outsource this or I try to angle my marketing towards these types of people", for example.

Those insights, they were so incredibly helpful because like I said, you don't realize that there's this tiny part of you or maybe a big part that is seeking that permission and then once you get that from you see it reflected in somebody else, or you get this on the quiz or whatever, you're like, "Oh, I didn't realize how much of myself I was holding back." And once you do that, that's where the power comes from. Once you can enable yourself to be fully whole without apology, that is, of course, when things start to happen, but I was not surprised at all and I have to mention, when I was talking to my husband about this and we were watching Hamilton at the time and there were two lines in Hamilton, there was one where it's like, "Why do you write you're running out of time?"

So my husband was like, "That's you?" And I was like, "Oh, yes." And then it was, "You will never be satisfied." He's like, "That is also you", and I was like, "Yeah, I get that." And I think that's the Ruler and Accumulator together. But again, seeing that as not everything is something to be healed. Yes, there's overworking. Yes, there's overdoing and overgiving and hustler and all that stuff, but not everything in me was because of a trauma or a problem. Seeing that is just a strength that not everybody else has and some people would love to lean into, seeing that and being like, "Yes, I have some of that Hamilton energy right there. That's okay." And allowing that to happen was just really, really huge for me.

 

How do your top three Archetypes work together?

Tara-Nicholle Kirke

So as I mentioned, during the pandemic, childcare was in hot mess here and I'm a single mom. The solution I came up with was to join the country club down the street because their kids' club was open. So now I have this amazing workday ritual, she's back in school, but I drive her to school. I pack up her stuff for school and I pack up my stuff for country club and I drive her to school and I go get in the hot tub and steam room and then I work. And I'm actually, funny enough, oddly, organically creating almost like an influencer relationship with the club, because I'm constantly posting stuff there and shooting videos there and that sort of thing, but I find myself working in very luxurious settings all the time.

I tend to my state a lot more than I think an average Ruler might. I spend two hours in the morning doing my own daily ritual practice before she even gets up. I don't do meetings till 10 o'clock because I need to get there, get myself to that place of really intense flow, but I do that almost in service of my radical fruitfulness. I still do way more stuff, way more actual output, but I tell you, I can no longer do it in that productivity fetish way. For me, it's really matured in large part, thanks to the archetype work. I've literally am creating a program for companies called Radically Fruitful. So leave productivity, this thing where I can't with spreadsheets, I have one accumulator, one accumulator point in my body.

In fact, what you're saying is hilarious to me because the thing about Romantics and accumulators getting married, because I actually surround myself with accumulators, because I feel like I don't know what would happen if there is no accumulator in this household. And my kiddo, I think probably has mostly the same architects as me. Maybe she's got some high alchemist somewhere in there too, but between us, we just go around the world manifesting stuff, thinking it, people handing it to us. I sat down the other day in the lobby at a hotel nearby and the hotel manager came and just set two glasses of champagne down on the table. He didn't say anything. That's how we roll. So we do flow energy and just flow beautiful things and need beautiful things. I need everything that is in on or around my body to be beautiful. But some of that, again, it's in service of, or it's I think of it. I tell myself the story that it's this virtuous cycle with my radical fruitfulness and just radical ability to answer my callings, which I think are very secret.

 

Rifa Thorpe-Tracey

I think I'm probably still in that shiny object syndrome mentality that I really still find it difficult to say no to people when they say there's some interesting project, there's maybe no money in it, but it's going to take up loads of time. I was doing a radio show every two hours every week. Absolutely loved doing it and it was lots of good learnings, but hardly anyone was probably listening to it, but it was so much fun for me to do and I will beat myself up over thinking I'm spending lots of time doing fun projects when I could be doing more on my business and making more money and doing more launches. I think there's sometimes the part of me that... I can't remember which one it is now. I think it's celebrities. Wanting to have pleasure and allowing yourself to have pleasure is the thing that I fluctuate with.

Well, the accumulator doesn't want you to have fun and it wants you to just be thinking about your business all the time, but actually, you can have some fun. I try and do time audits every so often and cut out things that aren't fun, but it's taken me a while to say no to things or doing that thing of what you were saying about being good at things, not over-planning as well. So if there's something, I just need to show up and do the thing and go and not do all the stress thinking about it or the over-planning or creating the most beautiful slides possible for something that doesn't require it and basically passing all of that on to my clients now and realizing that a lot of people who are attracted to the work that I do are perfectionist or are stopping themselves because they're not feeling worthy when they have so much to give and they're already at the top of their game and they're just working out how to leave a legacy rather than building any other business or another thing that they think they need to do.

But one big thing I think is one of the status symbols of success is to have a fancy house and I manifested so that Alchemist is there somewhere in my...I thought I'd be an Alchemist and a Connector because I do events and all this stuff, but I'd already manifested this house that I have in Brighton out thin air because people think I was flaky when I was even buying property, that I was able to do it myself and I was a real control freak about it and it's a house that's similar to the house that I grew up in and it's like now I realize that's not even that important to me. What's more important is clearing debts and being mortgage free in the UK is amazing. It's unheard of to be able to do this. So anyway, it's okay to change your goals. It's like, "Oh, we can have different goals." Anyway, It's just learning about yourself. It's even difficult sometimes to admit things to yourself.

Kerin Monaco

I was surprised that the Alchemist was second because I felt so aligned with that, the problem solving, the ideas, never being... That I could just sell sessions and be an idea person, that just resonated. I struggle with my Connector. I'm an introvert, mostly because I think the world has made me feel like my extroverted side is too much. So the introvert, I would prefer to have minimal contact. I don't necessarily want to be out there connecting people or having constant interaction with others. So at times, I think my connector, I need to focus on the connector a little bit more and nurture that side of me because I know it's in there. I know that the world has shut it. I've been guided to shut it down. I think that the Alchemist and the Ruler complement one another quite beautifully, but that Connector, it's like I would rather that not hear that message. I would rather not that be there sometimes.

 

How does your Ruler sabotage you in business?

Tara-Nicholle Kirke

Business was all I'd thought about. I used to be a lawyer a long time ago. I have an old set of kids and I call them the old kids and a little one and I remember an incident when my now 29-year-old was probably five or six and he was just standing in front of me and stammering like little kids do, "Mom, mom, mom, mom", and I was an hourly billing attorney at the time and I remember in my mind thinking, "This is costing me $75, $100." Business was all I thought about and I had this real pride that I used to tell people, "You can drop me anywhere in the planet and I will have a profitable business. Give me 90 days. I don't need to speak the language. It's good." But my businesses, I was never really giving them the chance to mature and I was never really giving myself the chance to mature into my businesses because I would burn through people. I would burn through myself. I was frustrated easily when something wasn't super successful, so I'd just make a new thing and then the Maverick in me really wanted to make a new thing. I wanted to reinvent every wheel. So there were some real self-hindering patterns that I was able to spot pretty quickly.

 

Anne Bruce

Asking for help is still so hard because I can do it all, but I've also learned delegating and outsourcing and just also canceling things that I really don't have to do there really isn't a need to do it all, so that's been a huge one for me. And I've also been feeling guilty about being the show pony and not doing all the work and not being there all the time to help all the others and in a way, controlling everything. So that's been hard for me to just sit back and relax and let things be, really, because in my business, I've built a really successful model where I can just not be there and I know that the things will work, but it's been hard. It's been really hard.

 

Jess Keating

Yeah. I was going through the course earlier today and one of the things that came up was that you want a Ruler for that gentle butt-kicking and I was like, "Yep, that's okay." And I can recognize a lot of my sabotages around being a Ruler. I don't actually think that the traits of the Rulerness were the sabotage. It was my own sense of shame over them, if that makes sense. It was the feeling of like, "Oh, I need to be more connectory, I need to be more nurturing or whatever", and not truly allowing myself to lean into my strengths there. The minute I hired out somebody to do the nitty gritty tech stuff, that was just a huge, huge level-up for me, just being able to do that. I think you also say we tend to do things the hard way or find the harder way to do things.

And there's a line that you mentioned in it as well that was, "Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should", and that, for me, I have a real love of learning. I love to know, "Oh, how does this work? How does this work?" And I really had to say to myself, "Okay, you know if you spent a few hours, you could figure this out." I could figure out how to set this up tech-wise, or I could figure out how to dig into this person's personality and figure how to sell them or whatever. But I had to ask myself, "Do I want to get good at this task?" And if it wasn't something that actually appealed to me, I had to give myself permission to just either outsource it or nine times out of 10, you could just not do that thing and your business is going to be fine.

And in terms of business models, it's funny, as I was going over them, all of the teacher model options for the Ruler are things that I had inadvertently done over the course of my couple careers. I've had a few careers now. So I've been the speaker, I've been the author, I've been the coach, but it's only in the context of, "I want to run a big group empire and dip in coaching call-wise rather than one-to-one. And one of the things that beforehand I struggled with that was definitely a sabotage was I was listening to... As I got into more of a coaching or mentoring perspective with soil work and neuroscience, I knew what I wanted. My Ruler was like, "I envision this to be a massive global group community ecosystem where everybody's bringing their energy", and I could picture this thing to a T, but all of the advice out there was like, "Oh, well, you can't do a group until you've outsold your one-to-one." That's pretty common advice that we hear.

And I remember there was a few weeks there where I was on the fence about it and I just... It's the same feeling of going to corporate. I could not stomach it and it's like, it's not that I don't love my people that I work with, it's not that I don't think I could be good at it, because I had done one-to-one before as one offs and it was great, but it was that path of impact and I was like, "No, I'm really driven to do this as a group. I'm driven to do this program as a group." So that was my moment of revelation where I had been sabotaging myself, spinning those wheels, wasting time just like, "Oh, should I listen to so and so who loves one-to-one and therefore she's telling me it's a great thing to do? Or do I do what I know is right for me?"

And the minute I did that, I launched that group program and talk about money up levels. I made close to a quarter of a million dollars my first time out at the gate, but I only think I could do that because I finally let myself lean into almost the satisfaction of how I felt it was okay for me to run my business rather than listening to others' really well-meaning advice. That advice could have been right for me, but maybe it was a Ruler thing that I just had a completely different vision or maybe it was a bit of a Maverick thing, too, but there was something about that that just didn't sit and I know that it was the shame reflecting from when I was a kid. "Oh, you're too big for your britches. Who are you to break the rules and how dare you be a success on this thing when you haven't done the time?"

And like Sarah said, "Why would I start at the bottom? And I know how that sound. I can hear myself saying that and I'm already thinking, "Man, people are going to watch this and be like, 'Wow!'" But it's not meant to be an arrogance. It's just I know where I'm called and I know what I'm compelled to do and allowing that to happen and letting that unfold, there's always hiccups and everything, but letting that unfold without feeling like I need to feel shame for it. And I realized in SMA, like you mentioned, we find a way to do things the hard way and I think you can see that in two perspectives. One is like we try to do everything ourselves. We try to do the tech, try to do the funnel, we try to do every little thing, but I also think the other way of doing it the hard way is really just to ignore your own tendencies.

Doing it the hard way for me would be like, "Well, I guess I better put up a sign outside my door and do one-to-one for the next three years." That would be the hard way for me and I think there's a lot of inner work we have to do to recognize, despite the fact that there's a learning curve and the natural hiccups of just growing a business, it doesn't need to be this long ass slog that people tell you it can. And it's not to say it's going to be an overnight discuss either, but why would you pause at that as a must-have? If you're good, you're good. And I think that Rulers, just from our conversation tonight, we seem to have this innate knowledge of what we're good at and it's not everything, but the things that do light us up, we just know.

And if we can lean into that. So I would say my biggest self-sabotages are not necessarily coming from the Ruler traits. It's not leaning into them without letting all the other conditioning, maybe the guilt and stuff over not being the other archetypes, looking outside the window and being like, "Oh, but I'm not a Connector. Boohoo." You posted in bootcamp once Denise and you were like, "Oh, that was Mara who sent that." It was a freaking light went and I was like, "I can do that? I could just have somebody be kind on my behalf and it's not a bad...?" That was ground break, honestly. It sounds so silly when I was thinking, "Oh my God, I don't have the bandwidth." Especially with a big group. I was like, "How does she do it?" And it's like, "Of course", and we love you all for it.

We love you all the more for it. Those little things of just allowing. Now I know enough. I'll say to my husband, "Oh, this is a Ruler thing", and I'm feeling guilt about this. I'm feeling like a bit of a jerk right now for wanting to bulldoze through this here because I don't want to wait. It's not a democracy. I want it and I want it now. And yes, we are in a world where patience is a virtue sometimes, but I also think as girls and women in particular, we're given that message enough. Like you said about your son, he will have enough models of successful, lovely men who are rich. It is also important for girls to get that too and I think Ruler women in particular maybe have a little bit more up against them to overcome. So that's my long worded spiel about Ruler sabotages. I don't think I've encountered a lot of sabotages from being a Ruler. It's not leaning into it and letting all the other stuff get in my way there.

 

Kerin Monaco

I think that that's why I struggle to hire anyone to support me in my business and why I've been a one-woman-show since day one, but things are quickly changing with that, opening up to that, but I also find that with my clients, my clients come to me because of the Ruler energy of, "No, we're going to get this done. We're going to launch this business. We're not going to mess around. We're not going to work towards perfection. We're going to get it done." And sometimes I come up against, "Ooh, if I say it too forcefully I'm too bossy or I'm too nudgey, are they going to stop liking me? Are they going to no longer work with me?" When the reality is that's what they need and that's why they're coming to me. So I've stepped into it. It was a mindset shift I had to have and definitely this house supported that for sure.

 

Sandra Hoffman

I've noticed that it's quite hard for me to focus on one product and it's so hard to launch because it's so hard for me to talk three weeks, four weeks about just one thing, because I thought, "Okay, you've seen the offer. You can book there and now just move on. Let's do the next thing." And that's so hard because I'm launching at the moment and it's two weeks time and I'm just like, "Okay, I want to stop now and do the next thing and do the next thing." And so that's quite hard for me. I think that's a sabotage. Doing things the hard way, I think I don't have this so much because of my Romantic side, so that's not very strong with me. So I like to do it the easy way. That's very strong, but the focusing and like you said, a patient is a strategy, not a virtue.

That's a good one for me because I'm impatient because I'm quick, I'm a quick decision maker, so I think, "Okay, so you've seen it. Why don't you just go ahead and we can move on? We don't have to talk about this anymore because I've shown you everything." That's probably one thing which is hard, but I'm trying to do it. I'm trying to focus on one and not to step aside and post something else and do this and then that. And when I started the business, somebody said before, I can do a lot. I can have a lot with a lot of technical stuff so I did everything and then I noticed, "Okay, that's not what I want to do and I am not a done for you girl, either." It doesn't work out for me at all. I'm sitting here and I don't want to do the work. If I can teach you, we can do live coaching. I can show you everything. I can teach you everything. That's fine. But sitting at home and doing the stuff for other people doesn't fulfill me anymore. So that's maybe something what I've learned, but what I didn't know in the beginning, but now I know so I'm trying not to sabotage me anymore.

 

How has joining Sacred Money Archetypes helped you?

Kerin Monaco

SMA is going to open up a lot of doors and understanding who you are energetically and how you can align to that within your business, within your relationships, within your home is going to change things. It's going to make everything feel so much easier and so much more fluid

 

Sandra Hoffman

For me, it opened up so many things. I don't know, I always felt like I'm strange. I'm different from everybody else, and so when I came into this group and when I read all the articles about Ruler, I thought, "Okay, okay, that's me and others are like me so it's okay to be like this." That was quite good. In overall, it doesn't depend on if you're a Ruler or not, but that was quite eye opening, I'd say. And it helps so much to reflect yourself and then also to choose the right business for you, as I said, and for you that didn't work out. So I'm doing coaching now. That's quite a thing, I think. And also, what you do, like the marketing part, so for me, it's hard to talk to others because I'm like, as I said, I'm quick.

So I tell you, "Okay, that's the offer. Take it or leave it and then we can move on." But I know other people, they need more information. They need like, "Okay, we going to love each other and whatever, doing this. It was a part where you said, "Okay, if you want to advertise or market to Nurturer then you have to do it like this and if you want to market to a Maverick, do it like this", and this helped me a lot because as a Ruler, as I said, a quick, easy decision making and everything, so I don't see the problems of others, maybe. And this helped me a lot to get to know the other archetypes as well, especially from the marketing point of view.

 

 

 

Why Rulers should join the Sacred Money Archetypes® Course

I’m sure you already have a lot of ideas about how to grow your business to profit from your Ruler strengths. 

You’ve probably got ideas for a new product, maybe even new businesses! 

I know you have BIG BIG dreams, and you’re impatient that they aren’t happening as fast as you’d like. 

Hear this with love: 

You have more inner work to do. 

You have to master “grace and flow,” even though you’ll resist it with every fiber of your workaholic personality. 

Surrender your worker bee credentials, and you’ll become Queen of your world.

As a fellow Ruler, I can help you unlock your intellect, work ethic, and leadership and avoid burnout.

So don’t miss this opportunity to get customized business mentoring from a multi-million dollar business owner.

Click here and let’s make your business and money goals happen faster.

xx Denise 

How Romantics can use Sacred Money Archetypes® to make more money

I recently had the opportunity to interview an incredible group of Romantic entrepreneurs and alumni in my Sacred Money Archetypes® course. In this fascinating roundtable, we talked about the strengths and challenges these entrepreneurs experience as Romantics and how they have learned to use their Money Archetype in their business. 

Here's a summary of our discussion and please read the individual member's case studies and course reviews to find out more.

Our Romantic Roundtable Guests

 

How did it feel when you found out you were a Romantic? 

Houda AzzaOui
(Click here to read Houda's full review)

And I wasn't surprised at all. I'm a Cancer as well, so that kind of romantic has always been part of my life in my romantic relationships as well. And hearing your video and your video describing the archetype, oh my God, it was just so me, the easygoing, the abundance. I know at home, we used to say money comes and goes and there will always be more, so don't worry. And I still remember one thing that really spoke to my heart was secretly ignoring money problems and wishing they would solve themselves. That's something I was doing unconsciously and it was just so spot-on. Yeah, really all of it. It just made so much sense.

 

Jennie Winter
(Click here to read Jennie's full review)

No, it kind of felt like, oh, that explains like... I'm sure most people can relate to this. I've been called spoiled and those kind of things a lot when I was younger and that kind of thing. When I first read it, I was a little like oh no. I saw it kind of like in a negative light. But then as I started to look into it more, then I was like, oh, okay, that is me. And it helped me settle into that instead of trying to change that part of me and expand upon it versus trying to get rid of it.

 

Katie Muir
(Click here to read Katie's full review)

So yeah, when I found out I was romantic, I think I would've been absolutely flawed if I wasn't romantic, so everything just made sense. And even now when I'm doing my marketing or I was trying to launch a product that I really did not want to do, did not like, but I kept having to go back going just try and appeal to the romantics because they won't want you to walk them through it all. They'll just go, "Yeah, this is great." Yeah. So for me, it was a no-brainer when I saw romantic. It definitely fitted more than everything else.

 

Stacey Taylor
(Click here to read Stacey's full review)

No, I was definitely not surprised to be a romantic. Give me velvet, give me satin, give me hand [inaudible], give me faux fur all day long. So that was actually one of my biggest challenges that I've been dealing with with putting my line of stuff together is I don't want to have my pieces printed on basic cotton canvas all stitched in white thread. I want on velvet with the right trim and the right stitching and everything. It's been a process to figure out how to do it one step at a time, but oh yeah, definitely romantic. Velvet, satin, bubble bath. Oh yeah.

 

Tenille Williams

Okay. So I wasn't surprised to get romantic at all because my first thought went to how I love to fantasize and I love to have luxury environments and be comfortable. One part that was a little bit surprising was probably how I viewed whatever romantic would be and one of my first thoughts is I'm not really a girly girl. I'm not into clothing, handbags, makeup, that kind of luxury. But I'm into staying in luxury places, having a nice home, having a nice meal out, indulging in the finer things of life and put my comfort up very high as a priority and then fantasizing about what's going to happen for me in the future, maybe to the point where it distracts from setting goals that are a bit more actionable and working on fluff tasks and feeling like yeah, I'm working and I'm going to get there one day, but they're fluff tasks. They're not really important tasks that are going to move the needle in the business. And I was maybe hoping that Maverick would be up there kind of higher because I feel that bit.

 

How do your top three Archetypes work together?

Camy Kennedy
(Click here to read Camy's full review)

I would say I'm very motivated by money first. And I have to convince myself that I also care about people. My clients wouldn't say that, but that's like my own self-perception. My clients are like, "Oh my gosh, you're amazing." But I feel it in my external, in my client work. And this is certainly true for everyone. They see me and receive me a very different way than my husband receives me. So like I can be a jerk over here, especially because he's accumulator and my clients are like, "You're amazing and you're so like, oh, connected."

So when I was listening to the Connector, I'm thinking of it more so of divine connection. That's how it resonates with me and that's what enables me to slow down, stay grounded and even have that moment of self-reflection to go like one of my values is discipline. Like disimplicity, discipline and simplicity. How can I live into that value because that's not what I wake up wanting to do each day. So just remembering like how can I make things simple? And then exercise that discipline and get the help that I need in the areas that aren't easy for me, such as saving money.

One of the ways I just did a mindset shift with that is so my dog recently tore her ACL and it was potentially going to be a surgery for like $5,000 or $6,000. And in that very emotional moment, I realized that it's a luxury to have savings for my dog. And so that was like, oh, savings is luxurious. And now I've been able to shift into like I'm going to hire somebody and make savings a priority so that I can afford any emergency that could ever happen, and specifically my animals are really important to me because I don't have my own children yet.

 

Houda AzzaOui

I relate so, so much to what Stacy just said in terms of that's where I'm at in finding the fun again in my business and in trying to follow all those processes and stuff. It's just killed my vibe. And just now actually, as I started surrendering and even letting go of the outcome and of the money goal and just doing it for the process and enjoying, things started coming. Like just a few days, I was invited to the round table and then another invitation to webinar came in and I was like, "Oh my God, this is me. This is my life. Thanks. Come to me. Like it's happening again."

And yeah, SMA definitely changed my life and I'm changing my business model. In the first life of SMA last year when I joined was just at the time I was finishing my beta version of a course that I was just launching. While my romantic was having a course out there and then running on passive and the passive income thing, then I realized, well, two things. My romantic wasn't happy. The lifetime access model that my mentor was encouraging us. It was like a lifetime. What does that mean? I cannot commit for my lifetime. I love what I do. And it was weekly calls as well. And the weekly calls, even bimonthly. I made them bimonthly even for my beta because weekly was just too much for my romantic. And even that, bimonthly was too much.

But what I realized is that my other archetypes, nurture and connector weren't happy because people were not joining the call so much. They did the work, but I didn't get to be there with them. And then I started contracting for this company doing one-on-one for corporate. And then I realized, oh my God, one-on-one. I love one-on-one. I just have to show up in there and don't have to prepare for anything. No course to record, no funnels or whatsoever. I just need to show up for the one-on-one and then it's done.

So I'm swapping definitely to one-on-one and high ticket one-on-one, because it just feels so aligned. My romantic is happy because I don't have to prepare anything. I'm keeping myself very mindful of not over-promising to send things after the call. That's definitely thanks to SMA. I would always, like being a nurturer and connector, just over commits, being in the energy in the moment to doing things after and sending things and then just never bother and procrastinate for two weeks before doing it.

So now I'm keeping being mindful of that before I promise anything. And really, yeah, that's been really, I think, the main change in my business model and I'm just taking completely other turn, not excluding putting up the group coaching program at some point, but writing completely passive, like more easily than that. And for now, I just cannot deal with another launch. Like I love it, just putting content out there as I feel it and having people come in and yeah, no official launch with a deadline. To have a certain number of clients with the deadline, that's putting me off. No, I can't deal with that. Had a bad experience.

 

How does your Romantic sabotage you in business?

Patience Modevi
(Click here to read Patience's full review)

I think it's showing the same way, as you were saying. I've also hired a VA, but I do... Like she has to chase me up a lot. And sometimes I'm just like I feel guilt. I think sometimes I feel guilt that I've not done what I'm supposed to do because then she can't do what she's supposed to do in that sense.

But I've got this... I don't know. I think I live in like Lala land a little bit. So sometimes I kind of go into my dream and when I go so far into the dream, I get so motivated that I do a lot of work. And then I get this phase where it's like I wouldn't say it's burnout. It's not burnout, but it's like more of a phase like hm, well, you know, I'm okay now, so... And I just leave it. And then I'm like, oops! The inspiration is back here.

So yes, I'm a bit of like an upside down person. But I've learned to accept a little bit more of that and to go with the flow. So I'm not giving too much into the guilt no more, but I'm being a little bit more authentic. So I will say on social media, well, this is what happened this week. So you will hear from me, hear me, whatever. Or I tell people like we need to reschedule much more in that sense without feeling like I have to because this is this. Yeah.

 

Camy Kennedy

I sabotage with onboarding a VA. I've had several VAs. I'm not organized enough to delegate. And I have one really good VA who allows me to be a hot mess and just send a voice memo in the moment and be like, "Hey, could you do this today?" But I'm scaling my business and I'm now creating a course. And I'm embracing I need an actual system. But part of me wants to hire the person to do the system for me. So that's kind of where I'm at.

And how am I overcoming it? I think the way I'm overcoming it is bit by bit. So right now, I'm building the course. I'm outsourcing some tech stuff. And then, I do think it's important for me to take responsibility for my students, especially in the beginning to understand are they getting their emails? Are they getting everything? And then how does that flow? And then just doing one thing at a time and realizing like it doesn't need all be done in a day, which is some of the sabotage. Like I want to jump ahead to $600,000 and I don't want to build the program.

Houda AzzaOui

Sabotage is for me, definitely procrastination. I mean, it's been a big, big problem and challenge and it's really just getting my butt to sit at my chair at my desk and start doing something. And I think one big one is that I burnt out in my corporate job. So I resigned in December 2017 and I was like, "Okay, let's start a business." And I had taken the life coaching training prior to that. That's where the resistance really started in me getting action. And I wonder as well if my romantic isn't that high because of the burnout and that kind of brought it up.

And just recently actually I realized how sad the burnout made me feel, that I let myself down, that I abandoned myself. And one thought that keeps happening in my head is that's the reason, like the only reason I'm doing always all the struggles of entrepreneurship is just so I can have the flexibility and do what I want to do and take my time having breakfast in the morning. I would take at least one hour just waking up and having breakfast and then [inaudible] and then, oh, I want to go for a walk and then come back and then, oh, I need to shower. And then it's lunchtime. And then okay, let's prepare lunch. And then, before I know it, then, oh, I need a little nap. I cannot possibly work. I'm so tired. I then take a nap or lie down for a bit and then it's 4:00 PM and I'm like, "Oh my God, it's four again, I didn't do anything."

So when I say I didn't do anything, it's not like ruler works for seven hours and they didn't do anything. It's like literally, I didn't [inaudible]. So that brought a lot of shame actually and it's really took me a lot of time to start talking about it and I secretly thought until a few months ago that I was the only one who was dealing with procrastination as an entrepreneur. I really felt that.

 

Jennie Winter

I'd say for me, the biggest thing is I just kind of that I don't want to be bothered. I'm afraid to get stuck in something. So it's like, oh, well, I get clients, but what if I get stuck with them? Or what if I have to spend too much time and then I get bored? Or even, I think, with like systems. It all seems really complicated and once something's complicated in my mind, then it's like, ugh, nevermind, it's not even a mess, it's too complicated.

And let's see. With teams, I haven't even thought of that a whole lot. With marketing. I really struggle with marketing a lot because it feels overwhelming because marketing feels like a long process to me and people say, "Oh, people have to see your thing this many times and they have to do this." Then it's like ugh, what if I can't keep up with that? And so if I get overwhelmed, then I think that is my biggest sabotaging thing is I don't want to be stuck in anything. I don't like to feel imprisoned by anything.

SMA really helped me with that like okay, well, then just create your business differently. You don't have to do a year-long container or anything like that. And that really helps. I think that's my biggest sabotage and also being willing to invest in things but not myself. I mean like myself, like courses and things like that, but not like teams and systems and things that would actually make the business grow and be more profitable. That feels overwhelming, so I don't invest in that, but doing emotional work or those are all beautification things for me, so it feels like to make my environment, my energy better, then I'm happy to invest in that versus seeing that having systems and teams would actually make my business more efficient and that kind of thing. So I think that's probably my two biggest sabotages that I can think of.

 

Stacey Taylor

You had asked about pricing. Before SMA and bootcamp, no, I was not charging anywhere near enough. I actually was showing a good friend of mine who is an interior designer also, showing her some of my art and she was telling me how much she loved it when I was just barely starting. And I asked her, "Well, how much do you think I should charge for this one? How much do you think I should charge for that?" And she's telling me certain prices and I'm getting all excited. Like, "Oh, you really think I could get that much for it?

And then after taking SMA and bootcamp, I started doing the math. I was like, "Oh no, no, no, no, no." And now anytime... I shouldn't say this, but so many times when she or someone else says, "Oh, I'm surprised how much that cost," I go in and I up the price. I'm like, "Oh no, you didn't." I spent so much time on that. You're not going to tell me it's not worth that.

And in terms of sabotages, always looking for... Okay, so wanting to simplify my business and make things easier and find people to help me reproduce some of my design so that not everything is one of a kind, because I can be a slow creator. I'm particular. I want what I want. So wanting to do some reproductions, but it's got to be good quality. I spent all this time working at like MGM Design Group and other interior design firms in town. And once you see those materials that you can't buy in a regular store, your romantic just goes crazy. It's like, you wouldn't believe the stuff that is out there that you can't just go get in a regular store. So I got a little spoiled with that. And so, when people would say, "Oh, you should do this print on demand side and do this and do that." I'm like, "Nope. Not good enough quality, not good enough quality." And I would get stuck.

And I kind of froze for a while because I wanted to put this whole line together. And I'm very ADHD too. Literally, diagnosed ADHD. And so, I see everything all at the same time. ADHD, it's now and not now. So I see this whole huge vision and I want to wave my magic wand and it's all in my head. It's all there. I can see it. Why is it not in reality?

So I've had to say okay, can I get one of the type of products done the way that I want? And then can I move on to the next one, rather than what everyone was telling me to do, which was do all of it like lower quality. I just... Not going to happen. So that's taken me a lot longer.

But I've also realized that that needing to be taken care of thing with the romantic, liking to be cared for. I have no interest in outsourcing to China or anything like that. It doesn't interest me. I want the local small business that I can go and see their quality and get to know the people. And if there's an issue, I can drive down the street and say, "Hey, can we work on this?" I'm not going to be stuck on the phone with customer service one of a bazillion people. I can walk in the door and say, "Hey, Jeff. Let's talk about this project." And that's something that's really important to me, that being taken care of.

 

Tenille Williams

Yeah. Big time sabotages. I think growing up, I never really wanted to work. I hoped that it'll just all work out and I'd be taken care of and do the least amount of work possible. And so, I will find myself dreaming about making big money and resisting the work to get there. Just resisting work. Procrastinating a lot and making just enough to be comfortable and then stopping working until it's running out and then panicking and starting working again and doing it at the last minute. That's probably the biggest way that I sabotage in my business and in life.

And when that's happening and things are getting urgent, I'm running out of money, I don't want to look at it. I don't want to deal with it and I just resist it and protest it and just want everything to just work out and just tell myself, "Everything always does work out. You always have enough," but never getting into that state of having more than enough and having a decent buffer and saving.

I'm trying to think what else. Definitely some flamboyant spending. And if I do make a lot of money one month, my husband will even say to me, "Oh, you're looking for ways to get rid of it? You're looking for ways to spend it straight away?" And returning to that point of just having enough and oh, shit, what am I going to do now? I have to make more money.

Around clients, system, team, marketing, launching. Definitely procrastination. Not wanting to deal with the hard parts. And connector is my lowest and I'm an introvert, so I resist calling clients back and anything to do with getting all together and talking with real life people.

And systems, I always have these lists of ideas for systems I want to put into place and then resist putting them into place and just wishing we could skip to the end, skip to the good part where it's paying off.

Team, probably some resistance there around the social aspect as well. I do have a virtual assistant, which has been a big help and I just palm off as much as I can to him.

And launching, it's a little bit like flying by the seat of my pants, rather than having it planned out ahead of time properly.

 

How has joining Sacred Money Archetypes helped you?

Katie Muir

I think I didn't know anything about SMA. I think it's when I joined bootcamp and I'd wanted to join bootcamp for a while. And I think I was just waiting for the Aussie deal where it was in Aussie dollars. And then we got everything else. We got the Advanced Manifesting course and we got SMA and that was the first time I'd really looked at it. And kind of knew straight away, having a look at them, I was like, just I know that I'm a romantic, but it was kind of, I suppose, it really, really helped me. I think it helped put everything into place. And I'm normally one where I'll take a bit of something from here and a bit of something from there, but it just encapsulated everything about me and that's where I felt like that's actually given me permission to be myself.

Because I think my whole career, I have just tried to fit into other people's boxes. I wanted to do interior design at university and everyone said, "No, no, no, you have to do a business degree. You have to go and do something where you're going to make a lot of money." So I did IT and then I actually changed to psychology, but I felt like I'd wasted so many years because I hadn't actually done what I wanted to do and what suited me. And then when I was looking at that, I was like, "I can do what I want to do. I can do what suits me in a way that it suits me." And it was that permission thing. I think I always... It's like I always need someone or something to give me permission to be myself and do what I want to do. And that was literally me summed up in one profile. I was like perfect. That's brilliant. 

 

 

Why Romantics should join the Sacred Money Archetypes® Course

This is your personal invitation to join my new business course.

I hope you’ve enjoyed soaking up the energy of the free Leverage Your Strengths workshop - did you watch it in the bath? 

You’ve probably got many ideas about creating more abundance and ease using your Romantic gifts.

As a fellow Romantic, I’d love to welcome you into our new course and community. 

I want to appeal to your inner little girl.

The part of you that probably wants EVERYTHING but may have been told that you’re just “not good with money.” 

I know thinking about money sometimes bursts your chill bubble, but I promise you it will not be boring, complicated, or scary. 

Money will help take everything on your dream board and turn it into reality.

I won’t bore you with every detail of what’s in the course - but know it’s packed with both practical and woo-woo ideas to help you leverage your unique strengths. 

So don’t miss this opportunity to work with me as your business mentor and feel inspired by the new possibilities of doing business in a way that embraces your Romantic. 

Don’t procrastinate.

Click here to treat yourself and join us for this abundance coaching experience.

xx Denise 

How Nurturers can use Sacred Money Archetypes® to make more money

I recently had the opportunity to interview an incredible group of Nurturer entrepreneurs and alumni in my Sacred Money Archetypes® course. In this fascinating roundtable, we talked about the strengths and challenges these entrepreneurs experience as Nurturers and how they have learned to use their Money Archetype in their business. 

Here's a summary of our discussion and please read the individual member's case studies and course reviews to find out more.

Our Nurturer Roundtable Guests

 

How did it feel when you found out you were a Nurturer? 

 Anna De Acosta
(Click here to read Anna's full review)

For me, it was obvious. So as someone who has struggled with co-dependency, it's kind of like the dark side of being a Nurturer, I think. And the thing that I learned right off the bat was that there's a positive side to being a Nurturer. And so often I focused on the negative side of that and being taken advantage of and looking at it as a weakness, but it was actually a strength. And that's what I learned through SMA.

Yewande Akindiji
(Click here to read Yewande's full review)

I do this because I'm a huge cheerleader, which correlates with my sacred money archetype. I wasn't too surprised I hadn't come about that before, but it was just a confirmation because even my name means the mother has come back, and it's usually a nurturing grandmother who died. They have this reincarnation belief in my culture that they name the girl child born in the family, either in the direct family or the extended family. Yeah. And my second money archetype is Nurturer, Connector and Romantic. I wasn't at all surprised, but it just explained a lot of me. It was a huge sense of relief for me when I did that sacred money archetype quiz.

 

Kate Arbuckle
(Click here to read Kate's full review)

For me, it was blindingly obvious I was a Nurturer. I am a Nurturer. And I'm 50/50 Nurturer Maverick, which made perfect sense. And probably the most un-Maverick thing that happened for me was that I didn't try and fight the fact I was a Nurturer. I almost was like, "No, I'm more Nurturer. I'm definitely more Nurturer." It made me feel understood. And it helped me give myself permission to be me and not to fight it. And just to, I think every other time I've done any of the personality quizzes, et cetera, I've been like, "Stop telling me what to do," which was my Maverick. And this time it gave me permission to really enjoy the strengths of who I am and to accept who I am as I am, as opposed to try and fight it. It also gave me permission and remind a mantra that I work with quite often is, I am not responsible for everything in the world. And that's really helped me create stronger boundaries in all areas of my life, whether it be my business and my personal, I am not responsible for everything. I am not responsible for others decisions. And that's been a huge, powerful shift in creating strong boundaries.

Tracey Rampling Brown
(Click here to read Tracey's full review)

I definitely resonate with that too, Sarah. I was not surprised in the slightest when mine came back as a Nurturer. I'm also a cancer sun sign or a cancer star sign. And so it was just like, well, obviously, and of course... But what was really good about it though, was that looking at the traits of putting everybody else first to the detriment of yourself. And I was like, "Oh, this is why I keep repeating these patterns over and over and over again." And then looking at, okay, it's about boundaries and getting better at bringing in and enforcing boundaries and things like that really did help. Obviously it's still a work in progress because work is never done, but I was not disappointed.

In fact, I probably resonated with it most and almost ignored all of the other archetypes. And then when it was like, so what are your top three? And I'm like, oh, was I meant to look at the other ones? Because I just was like, "Oh, Nurturer. Yep. That's me obviously. Well, just don't worry about anything else." So it's been interesting for me also to explore how the other different archetypes also play into that and modify it as well.

 

How do your top three Archetypes work together?

Mia Hunter-Pappas
(Click here to read Mia's full review)

I can definitely see the Nurturer connector in pretty much all of my business all the time, even the Ruler at times. I think I need more Ruler. I definitely need someone, I need the person that's going to make me charge. I would say looking back at my businesses, the most I've ever made is usually when there's someone else at the front desk or something like that, making me charge what I'm supposed to charge in the hairdresser world. Even when it was my own salon, I had those,.I can definitely see the connector energy as well, just because everyone does become my friends. Now I go to the majority of my clients' homes to do their hair. It's just easier. And because we do kind of have that friendly relationship, but that's what I like about it. And they trust me and that's kind of how the whole real estate thing came into play as well, is just wanting to help people on a much larger, grander scale.

But yes, my downfall is typically not charging enough, just wanting to help everyone to definitely spite myself, even when I try really not to. So I need that Ruler energy kind of comes into play, but only when it's kind of forced, so.

 

Tracey Rampling Brown

When I actually first discovered Denise, just at the very beginning of the pandemic, before I became a lucky B, after I read, Get Rich Lucky Bitch, I was a Nurturer, Maverick and Accumulator. But then last year when I joined Money Breakthrough, and did it again when we started SMA last year, Ruler had come up and overtaken Accumulator. So still Nurturer as number one, but it had sort of dropped down. Maverick had come up a little bit and Ruler had stepped up to the plate. So it was interesting to see how much that had changed in 12 months of just doing money boot camp type or not doing boot camp, but reading the book then doing the things on my own, and then coming into bootcamp and going from there. Yeah, so that's it.

 

Patience Modevi
(Click here to read Patience's full review)

And also another thing as well is supporting other people. So that's really important for me in general. And I feel like by being the way I am, by showing myself more authentically, I've inspired other people to also come and show themself in that way and not be afraid. So today I look like this, tomorrow I might be with a hoodie. I go with the flow basically. And even though I go with the flow, I have to be honest with you, so having role model like you and some people that are in the bootcamp is help me to know that you don't have to be perfect every day, but you still need to show up and still do what you need to do. So sometimes yeah, it so scruffy but I still show up and accept myself in that way.

In term of the Celebrity is caused more problem I will say in my life, or challenges I will say in my personal life with my husband, because my husband is more of an Accumulator. So we kind of bump into the spending of the household and things like that. So for example, so way before I learn about you or your existence, I had a nanny and I also had someone to help me clean, to do some cleaning. The reason is when I had my third child, I was like, "No, it's too much for me. I can't do it." So I just hired someone. And from there it was a bit of a fight to get that person into the house. And then it was a fight to give them a key so that they were actually part of the... So it went like that, but I kind of took over more of my needs and went with it. So I think this is where they show up in my life really.

Sora Schilling
(Click here to read Sora's full review)

So what I notice with my three Nurturer, Ruler and then Celebrity, is the way I entered life is that I amplified all of it. It was on a hundred notch. And so therefore I over gave as much as I could, right? And in order to do so, that meant that I was going to overdo how much work I did. So I was going to work a whole lot. Why? So that I could be the Celebrity. So that I could have reached that fame and that abundance and live that luxe life that I love. But I love the beauty and the luxurious, but then my Nurturer also is like, "Oh, but I'm here only to give all of me and my money. Why would I want anything?" And so there was this pull in all these directions and a lot of shame for wanting everything and nothing at all.

And so that helped me realize, okay, so I wasn't looking at my money. I was spending my money. I was working until all hours. I was totally depleted and I was looking for validation everywhere in order for me to feel successful. And so when I started to harmonize all of them, and the way I looked at them was, since knowing these archetypes and loving archetypal energies already, I started to think about, okay, what is the energy of the archetype that is desiring for me to match and play from a sovereign space? And so for nurture, it was what is the energy of my business? So what does my business actually want from me? And it's not to over-give. Because once I learned how not to over-give, my community members were still so used to it, they constantly were trying to take, take, take. So I had to reconcile that and learn how to be really loving, but also firm in my ways.

And then with the Ruler, learning okay, what is the essence of my joy? Because I kept on, I love what I do, but that meant I wasn't doing anything else. I think Denise, you say in one of the videos, you basically take your passions and turn into profit. And that's what I was doing all the time. And so nothing was sacred for me. And then the last piece with Celebrity was really honoring the energy of money. How do I relate in a sovereign way? Not just always wanting to have this imaginary amount so that I could spend lavishly, but how do I grow it in this conscious way in honor of the deep work and the people I could reciprocate the money to? So learning about my values. So yeah, that's what has happened with me.

 

 

How does your Nurturer sabotage you in business?

Yewande Akindiji

So my bottom archetypes are equally tied between Accumulator and Maverick. I knew that from the start. I'm so good at spending money, especially impulse spending. I had to reign in on that. And as I said, sub-story spending, giving away my money to people. I'm always donating something. And so how did SMA really help me? First, it was a huge relief. Like I said, I watched all the videos one night, I didn't sleep. And it was just gave me a renewed sense of alignment and direction that I knew what I was doing. And that alignment, I really needed it because I needed to block out all the noise on the internet street and all the rules of business and branding and all of that. And also gave me permission to be the kind of person I wanted to show up to be.

In my gift business, what I want to be is the background person like, that entrepreneur secret weapon to which she's going to use to transform her key business relationships. And I always thought that it was a visibility problem. It was a success saboteur issue. It's not. I just want to be in the background and let people shine. I want to be a magic maker for people. And I love that. I am really so comfortable with that. It has nothing to do with my self-esteem. And I've struggle to come to this place, so accepting that this is who I am. I'm a cheerleader and I want other people to shine. And when I help more people get what they want, I get what I want because my life is flooded with fulfillment.

And the other thing SMA really helped me was one of the first things that helped me shine light about boundaries, about actually saying no to people and having the grace to offend. Because I've always been that person, people thought, "Oh, Yewande, Mother Theresa." And having the grace to offend. Like at Christmas time last year, what I did, my sister-in-law, I was just recovering from COVID and I had a huge mental fatigue lasting months. It wasn't long COVID, but something similar. And then they were still saying, "Oh, Yewande, are we driving by for Christmas lunch?" And I was like, "I'm just recovering from COVID." And I was like, "Hell no." And they were like, "Yewande, are you serious? Well, I guess you must still be so tired." That was a reply to a text. And I was like, what the hell? And she went on and on about it, but I didn't even say anything. And I was so proud of myself. It's a big win for me because previously I was like, "Oh, okay, can I make something and post it to you?" I would post out frozen food to people. Yes, that was me. Yes, that was me. So boundaries, real boundaries.

Then systems, understanding about systems, knowing that I'm not the person that really uphold those systems. I need people in my life to be accountable to. I need that structure of a scaffolding support. Either in the people I hire or my coaches or mentors, I realized I needed that. The other thing was in terms of hiring people, as much as I always want this, "We're one happy family," I knew I needed to hire polar opposites of my personality, because I knew I was going to get any work done. I was kind of person to hired the [inaudible] one coach, checking on her. She was like, "You have 20 hours left. You paid for that. Yewande, what are we going to do?" And I'd be like, I was so overwhelmed. So those are things I learned from SMA and how SMA helped.

 

Anna De Acosta

For me, I've definitely felt alienated in the business world. As someone who has a full-time job, is raising five kids for a long time I was the sole breadwinner for our family. And that push to just quit everything and do your business full time, it's just not possible for me. And I've been told by people, "Oh, just quit and do your business." But you can't do that when you have kids to take care of. And I've definitely felt forced into, "You have to show up on Facebook live and Instagram live and here and there. And if you don't, you're not doing it right." And feeling like, okay, if that's not the way I do it and I'm not doing it right then I'm never going to succeed. But I've learned that if you show up in those ways inauthentically, you're not going to get anywhere. And if you keep spinning your wheels, trying to do all these things that aren't right for you and don't listen to what is right for you, you're not going to get very far, right?

And so my experience has been taking it really slow. And for me, my business is my passion. It's what I love in my life most I'd say. That's what I do that is just for me. And so it's the thing that energizes me, that brings me a sense of purpose in my life, more than any of my other roles. And I do it as an act of self-love. But I can't dedicate all my time to it, and that's okay. And I think sometimes slow and steady wins the race, right? You don't have to be first to everything. And when COVID happened, there was this big push from the self-help community to pivot and show up and help other people. And I mean, for me, it was enough to just show up and be there for my family. And that push to have to do everything and be everything for everyone, it's overwhelming, right?

And so I definitely have been resonating with everything that all of you have been saying. And I think, yeah, just to add a little bit more to that, when you have so many responsibilities and you're a Nurturer, you want to take care of everyone and you want to do everything right. And I think there's this negative tendency towards perfectionism. At least for me, there has been. And in that business world, you feel like you're not enough because you can't show up and give a hundred percent. You can't work 60 hours a week on your business. It's just not possible. But there is another way. And there is a way to do it that's more aligned with who you are, and that's sort of what SMA teaches you.

 

Kate Arbuckle

I'm resonating with everything that everybody said. I've absolutely experienced coaches trying to sort of railroad me into a different direction. And one of my first business coaches who taught me so much, and I am so grateful to her, and she is a Celebrity Ruler. And she said, "Go to every single networking group within a hundred mile radius." And I remember in one of the modules, you've said that, and to have permission for me when I did that, and I tried that and I followed that path, for me it would take me all day to recover because I was just spent from giving and giving and giving and giving. And very similar to going to big events with hundred of people. Yes, I enjoy them. And now I know that if I do anything like that, it is of service to me to have the next day off.

And I don't have to go straight back in. I don't have to tick and implement every single thing on someone else's timeline. I guess that's the biggest thing for me is I don't have to do all of these things on someone else's timeline. I can nurture my soul and nurture who I am, which then allows me to feel into the space and be comfortable with what I'm doing, to then get the better results. I've forgotten the question. And absolutely I've definitely also had coaches who said, "Oh, you need designer handbags and everything." It's just not me. I'm a hippie, and that's okay. And it's okay to be a wealthy hippie. So it's definitely wonderful being able to accept who I am and honor my soul as I go about my business, whilst helping incredible clients who resonate because we all have clients who resonate with who we are.

Michele Tracy Berger

My last two are the Romantic and Ruler. And in the last couple of months, I have really tried to engage that Romantic energy, which is in some ways, because I'm a professor and also a coach, just feels very alien. Everything has to be hard and you have to work hard. And really just trying to go into the ease and the beauty and just making it very joyful. So I've been trying to lean more into the Romantic and how easy can this be in terms of producing products and services for people. So that's been really helpful for me. I would say also SMA as a whole, what was striking to me is that it just ushers in a different way to think about business. It just ushers in a much more playful way. I think so also used the word authentic. I feel like it is a way to get at some of the issues of why people might be stuck.

So for me thinking about the Nurturer and the shadow side of the Nurturer, because there's a shadow side to each of the archetypes that you talk about. Understanding, if I continue on a certain path, I'm going to really manifest the martyr side of the Nurturer. And I've seen a lot of that in terms of folks who are Nurturers, who are in business. So it really allows a different way to think about how you want to be and looking at creative ways to call in that work. And I found the SMA cards where you think about the words that help to define the archetypes using that. I started to use some of that in my copying it in some of my sales page and really being intentional about the kinds of clients that I would want to attract. So SMA just has been so helpful for just really rethinking how one does business and how one can attract more of that client energy that we want to foresee in our world. I find it just so playful to so helpful and playful.

 

Patience Modevi

Well, to be honest with you, the Nurturer is kind of leading my life up until last couple of years, to be honest. But another thing that I found with the Romantic and also, so I'm very generous and I'm very generous with people I like, with people, my family, my friends. And I found that in the, I will say five years, yeah, last five years it's become a problem for me. So knowing that now I'm a little bit more assertive into how I'm giving and I'm giving on purpose. So into my business, I've incorporated a little bit more philanthropy. So I kind of give in that way. So instead of over-giving and being like, "Oh, we've had the coaching session, but I'm still going to keep on going and give you another one extra for free," and so on and so on because it never stops. I go like, "Okay, so we've come to the end and I'm going to maybe use some of the money that has been there to give to a charitable cause or something like that." And that's kind of been feeding, not only my way of feeling like, okay, I'm not guilty because I'm getting money from someone or from something. But at the same time I'm giving back in that way. This was one thing that came out a lot.

 

 

 What would you say to someone interested in joining Sacred Money Archetypes?

 Patience Modevi

I will say you need this. That's the first thing. And then second, I will say it really gives you an insight. I think Shay said it before. It gives you an insight into yourself already, you personally, and the people around you. And you start to realize that, oh my gosh, I can't move forward if I don't have this knowledge. And I think you give a lot of knowledge in terms of, this is why you feel like this, or this is why those kind of things happen. So for example, for me, where I'm a giver and over-giver, I was able to put a little bit more boundaries into my business and be like, oh, when I'm creating those courses, I don't have to over-give myself because the people do it by themself and I don't have to be there so much. And then my energy is not overrun and I feel happy to be with people, if that makes sense. So I will really encourage everyone, not only for the professional and the business, but even for the personal, people who want to come and try the SMA.

 

Why Nurturers should join the Sacred Money Archetypes® Course

 

 

I’d love to welcome you into my new business course, and I know you’ll get a lot out of it. 

I know you don’t like feeling rushed, Nurturer - but sometimes, you have to admit, you need a little incentive to put yourself first and invest in your dreams.

So I’m going to role model for you how to do that with integrity and ease. 

Firstly, thank you for being part of the free Leverage Your Strengths workshop. 

I’m so glad you were involved, and I’m sure you have some great ideas about how to tweak your business to grow from your Nurturer strengths.

I created this new course so you can get support and coaching to make money from your unique gifts. 

You don’t need to change who you are to be successful in business, and you don’t need to hustle and burn out. 

I know you care so deeply that sometimes you feel helpless and small. 

Your heart aches at all the problems you want to solve in the world.

But you’re afraid that asking for money for your talents will turn you into a greedy, soulless b*tch. 

That will never happen, but I can help you with the beautiful boundaries you need and help you develop courage.

Together we can find your path of least resistance to a business based on growth, caring, and abundance. 

Click here to join us in SMA and learn to prosper and serve more people

xx Denise

How Mavericks can use Sacred Money Archetypes® to make more money

I recently had the opportunity to interview an incredible group of Maverick entrepreneurs and alumni in my Sacred Money Archetypes® course. In this fascinating roundtable, we talked about the strengths and challenges these entrepreneurs experience as Mavericks and how they have learned to use their Money Archetype in their business. 

Here's a summary of our discussion and please read the individual member's case studies and course reviews to find out more.

Our Maverick Roundtable Guests

 

How did it feel when you found out you were a Maverick? 

Anna Pugacova
(Click here to read Anna's full review)

It just made me feel so safe. It's safe to be who I am. And it just explained so many things in my life and in my business.

 

Aprille Reed
(Click here to read Aprille's full review)

Not a huge surprise. When I first did the quiz, Celebrity kind of creeped up in there and it was like, "Yeah, I can..." When I read the definition like, "Yeah. Okay, I can see myself being a Celebrity." And then just when I did the quiz, again, those top three kept coming up and it's like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, Ruler, got it. Leading. Not really a follower. Maverick..." Oh my gosh, that opened up so many ahas, so much acceptance of myself. And we'll probably get into that later. I wasn't really surprised, I must say.

 

Beatrice Weber
(Click here to read Beatrice's full review)

So when I took the test, my Maverick came out super, super high and I was not surprised, and it's always been validating for me. I guess< because I come from such a rigid background that I was like, "What's wrong with me?" And then taking this test and being like, "Okay, just how I am." And I took the test twice and my two next ones came out different, but Maverick always came out on top, like sky high. So my latest test that I took in 2019, my Maverick was 36, then it was Nurturer and Ruler. So those are the other two which just feel very, very resonant.

 

Gemma James
(Click here to read Gemma's full review)

When the results first came out, it wasn't necessarily a surprise. But it was more like the realization of, "Ah, okay. So it is actually a thing. It's not just that I'm a bit flaky, and really bad at business, and just rubbish at picking a niche, and things like that." It's actually allowed for me to do it this way. And since I have, I guess, honored that and stepped in that, that's where even more of my Romantic has come out because now I know it's allowed to be easy and I get to do it in my way.

 

Helen Pritchard
(Click here to read Helen's full review)

Oh, so when I got Maverick, I was like, "Of course, I did." I was like, "I really wanted it." And when I got it, I was like, "Yes, I always get what I want. This is brilliant." I was so pleased to have it because all of my life... I got moved up here at school, so I went to school a year early. So, I was 10 when I went to high school. So I was already different to everyone else. And then I got the older boyfriend, I dropped out of school. But then I managed to just come back and get all my exams. I've always done things differently to everyone else. And over the years, I'd say it's probably caused me quite a lot of hardship in a way. I wasn't particularly popular at school, got bullied. And then I had a mental health breakdown and then I was in a hospital. So it was almost like I was always doing things that other people weren't doing, weren't conforming.

And I just think when I found entrepreneurship, I was like, "Oh, this is it. I can create things out of nothing. It's like magic." I was like, I couldn't believe it. I trained as a holistic therapist first, and the first time someone gave me £40 in cash and they said, "Thank you very much." I was like, "Wow, I've created that money. I had nothing." I felt like a complete magician. And I was hooked from then on in. But buying into Money Bootcamp was the scariest thing I've ever done. I did not have the funds in place. I put it on a credit card. I was shaking.

But as soon as I got in there, it kind of stopped my Maverick in its tracks because at the time I think I paid $1,500 to get in and there was 2,000 people in the group. And I remember sitting on my chair and doing the maths and thinking, "Oh, okay. Right. So I've done all these other things, but if I just sell one thing and I stop doing all the other things, and I just create a million different ways to sell the same thing, all roads lead to bootcamp." For me, it was like I've got a [inaudible], all roads lead to this training. And even my training is completely Maverick because everyone else in the LinkedIn world seems to talk about sending lots of DMs, getting obsessed with what time to post, focusing on engagement. And I'm completely the opposite. I'm like, "we don't send any DMs, we don't care what time you post." All that kind of stuff. So it's completely different.

And when I first launched into the world of the online world, very naively thinking everyone's going to love me, this is going to be great. Because just everyone seemed to hate me and it wasn't great. And I was like, "Oh." But I think a lot of people were triggered because I was teaching things that nobody else had really taught before because it was completely against everything. So definitely that's where Maverick showed up for me. But realizing that I can create magical opportunities to sell the same thing over, and over, and over, and over again has just been such a gift to me. But the roller coaster of the money that I think Maverick seemed to love, I love it. I love it. And I wish I had, like you say, more of the Accumulator and the Nurturer to study that ship a little bit.

But when I did seven figures in 2020, and I just remember sitting there going, "Where's my marching band? Where's my big hair? What happened?" I thought something would happen. I was just sad on my own in January in my office. But then I was like, "Well, I've done that now. I don't need to do that again. I can go to smaller launches. I don't need to spend so much on Facebook ads." And it's almost like I just see opportunities, I want to do it. I want to tick the box. And once I've done it though, I'm like, "I'm good with that. I want to do something else now. So, now I'm going back to selling the same thing, but in a different way to different people. So for me, Maverick was like, "I'm so pleased I've got it." I would never want to do the quiz again in case something else came up. I know when I was looking at investing, they did my investment risk and they were like, "You were the highest we've ever had in... You were 90 out of a 100."

And I'm just like, "Hey, I'm going to Vegas on Thursday and I just think that life's a game to play. It's like you all come in with the same amount of chips, you're going to leave with the same amount of chips. You might as well play it full out while you're here." And for me, entrepreneurship as a Maverick has been a gift from God because it allows me to play the game, have fun with it. The ups, the downs, the wins, the losses, the drama of it. So, it wasn't a huge revelation to me, but I was really pleased to come out as a Maverick for sure.

 

Kierra Jones
(Click here to read Kierra's full review)

Yeah. It's so interesting because I did my quiz twice and I believe it was a year or a year and a half apart. And so I honestly couldn't remember the first one, but right before I started the program and I did the quiz, I did not pay as much attention to it the first time. So it's one of those things of growth. But the second time around when I looked at the quiz results, seeing the idea of like, "You are rebellious and you are a rebel", I was all here for it. I have a little trophy right there, it's my most extra award. And it was literally a part of me embracing this extra-isms that I like to pour out in the world. And so I wasn't surprised. But what I really love, and I'm sure we'll get through it with the program, it's really all about understanding how to infuse that into your business, from your business model to how you want to show up.

Ad for me, I would take this a step further and say is that... And it's still doing, it made so much sense with the work that I do. So when I first started, sales was just... It's my corporate background, so it was like, "Yeah, teach sales." But I hated the fact that my clients would come in and it's like they want to talk about sales from a numbers perspective. And I was like, "Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's cool." And I'm all about women making money, but it was like, "There's something deeper you're wanting to say that you're not saying. There's something deeper you want to sell that you're not selling. And what if you just gave yourself permission to do it?"

And that was when I really started to realize I don't want to teach sales or be known for sales in the way that others in the industry have, but I really want to hone in on what I call your power message and powerhouse selling, which is just getting into this really intimate space with not only your clients, but also with yourself. How can you connect with your ideal client if you can't truly connect with yourself in the most aligned way?

So it actually gave me this opening into more of what do I really want to be known for and being a rebel in my industry, and doing things a little different, and speaking about it in a different way. And sometimes you're afraid because it's like, "What if they don't get it? What if it's too different?" But really just being okay with it and embracing it. And like my grandmother has called me miss Missy since I was three years old, and really that's what came up for me was me remembering I've always been this girl who beat to her own drum. And so I think really it wasn't a surprise, but it was more of this deeper permission of like, "Yeah, I've literally been this way forever. And now it's really up to me to embrace it and bring it into every part of my business."

 

Kim Galloway
(Click here to read Kim's full review)

So I only took the quiz once because when it came up with Maverick and I was reading the description, it was this breath of fresh air. Somebody finally got me. Somebody finally understood my ability to go, "You know what? I don't have the money, but I think I'm going to go ahead and invest in this thing and I'm going to make it okay." And then I do. And so when I got the whole list of archetypes, there was not a single one that I was surprised at with where it fell. But it was this great level of permission and understanding that, yeah, I totally jump and then look later. Hope that the water's there, hope that the net shows up. And it always does seem to.

And it's interesting that everybody's calling themselves a rebel because my Maverick does not manifest that way. It's very specific in the money where I'm really good at saying, "I really need this thing. I really don't have the money, but this is my next step. I'm going to go do it and I'm going to figure the rest of it out." And that always seems to come together.

 

How do your top three Archetypes work together?

Shazia Imam
(Click here to read Shazia's full review)

Maverick, Ruler, Accumulator, oh my God. First of all, I am a powerhouse. I mean, that is a powerhouse combination. So my powerhouseness, I'm getting stuff done. If I walk into a room, you know. It's all good on paper. It's good in so many ways, but it's never enough. It's never enough. Never. And my Accumulator drives me bonkers. My Accumulator is never happy. I mean, how much more money do I need to have in the bank account? How much more does my retirement need to be set? How much more for it to be enough? But it's never enough.

And then my Maverick loves to do big wild things, like I bought my Tesla last year in cash. And then I had nothing left in my account, which my Maverick is fine with that. But my Accumulator was like, "we're going to die now. We will literally die." And that energy is so exhausting. It's so exhausting. And I want to just enjoy my stuff. I want to enjoy my success. So there's a part of me that's like, "I just want to enjoy in life, but my Accumulator will not let me." And my Maverick and Accumulator are always at odds. And then my Ruler's constantly like, "Well, you're not there yet so stop even talking because you have more stuff to do." So it's hot mess express. But on the outside, I look amazing.

 

Anna Pugacova

I'm a Maverick, Ruler and Alchemist. And I was born in very poor life settings. I was born and grew up in another country in orphanage, no family, everything so poor and dysfunctional. And what I struggled throughout my life is that I was shaming myself for who I am and that I want to go against that, and not follow everyone else's path. And I have received so much shame about that and around that. And I had to let go of that because I know when I discovered that I am Maverick, for me it was like, "This is me. This is who I always was. And I was born to do this. I was born to be wealthy. I was born to inspire people. I was born to lead and I'm not bossy."

And also being an Alchemist, I always have these amazing creative ideas. And I had to stop giving them away for free because I ended up building other people's businesses and I never got paid for that. So my solution to that is basically remind myself every single day that I am the person I always wanted to be, and stand in that power and shine as much as I can because that's when I attract so much money and so many opportunities.

 

Aprille Reed

Definitely. Especially when I have a big win, I feel like I have to relax and my business can take a dive as far as what I should continue to keep doing, because it's like, "Yeah, I had this huge win. Now, I'm going to binge on Netflix for a week." And so just even understanding that about myself and then there's that Ruler, that guilt, that Maverick, "You should be doing something." And just getting back on the horse. And then the Romantic is battling, "No, it's certainly okay just to relax and chill." So there is that, like the good angel, the bad angel, which none of them are good and bad. But it's just the Ruler and the Maverick against the Romantic that, "You should be doing something." And I just want to relax and chill.

So one of the things that I've done is create non-negotiables, like my evenings are free. My weekends are free and I may not stick to it a 100%. If I can get something out of the way in a couple of hours on one weekend, I may do that. But just having that standard for myself, like my evenings are free and my weekends are free for my family, for myself just to chill guilt-free, that's how I try to balance everything.

How does your Maverick sabotage you in business?

Beatrice Weber

One of the things for me was trusting myself that a lot of money could come in and it could come in easily. Again, because of my upbringing and messages I was taught around women being able to earn money, I didn't believe it. But if I look at large sums of money that have come in since 2018, since I joined bootcamp, it's been incredible. Last year when I totaled up how much money I had made, even though I was unemployed for half of the time because of COVID, it was double of what I had ever earned, so over $300,000. And this year as well, I'm looking at the money and I made this deal that just fell into my lap of... I'm not even a real estate broker, but somehow I'm making money by selling somebody's business. And there's like this $100,000 money waiting for me, which is amazing for me to be able to just relax into that because somehow I still have that fear like, "I'll never have enough money. I won't be able to make money." But the facts show otherwise, so I can definitely relate to that.

I think for me, one of my biggest sabotages is jumping from one thing to the next like, "Oh, that looks interesting. Oh my gosh, I could really figure that out." And then once I start actually working on it and getting into the nitty gritty and understanding it, I'm like, "Oh, whatever. This is boring. Let me do something else." So I would say that is my biggest sabotage. What I've done for that is to make sure that I have steady money coming in so that I know at least there's steady money coming in, I can pay all the bills. We're fine. But then with the things that I'm passionate about, I do a lot of that jumping around, totally relate to the shiny object syndrome. When I'm in, it doesn't feel like shiny object. It feels really important, right? That felt really, really good and really important. But next week it doesn't really feel that way. So, that's really, I would say, my main sabotage.

 

Shazia Imam

What's coming up as you all have been sharing too, the overcompensating and then also I would totally be burned at the stake in another lifetime for sure. One of the things I know that I really overcompensated for is, I'm a Brown girl in the U.S. And I grew up in a very white town. And growing up, I always wanted to make it. I wanted to have a seat at the table. I'm a Ruler too, so I'm ambitious. And I would say all the way probably until my mid-30s, that's what I wanted. I wanted to make it. I wanted to prove myself so that I could be seen as just as powerful as all the other white men that kind of get there so easily. And I had this shift within myself where I was like, "Actually, I've reached kind of the on paper success", but it wasn't fulfilling.

And what I really shifted into, and this is where I see my true Maverick coming forth is that, my shift is that I just live in delight. And for a woman to live in delight and a woman of color to live in pure delight is a revolution. And if that's what we can do like, "Damn, that's amazing. That's what I want. And I don't need a seat at the table anymore." And then I thought, I'm just going to create my own table. And I'm like, "Forget it. Why are we going to sit at a table? Let's go enjoy ourselves and go jump out of a plane or enjoy a nice spa." And now I actually do these VIP days with clients. But my point is that my Maverick being able to just enjoy truly, that's fulfilling. And if women could just do that, I mean that would really make me happy instead of have to slog away, and do this, or the patriarch, and all the other things. I'm like, "Let's just enjoy." I mean, that's just not even allowed, it seems, across many places.

 

Aprille Reed

My business, my life feels like I'm jumping out of an airplane. And as I'm falling, I'm like, "Oh, wait. Maybe I should have been paying attention when they were telling me how to pull the safety pull so I can land safely." It's just so many things are just jumping, "I'll figure it out." And I'm always chasing that shiny new object syndrome, the next thing. One of my big sabotages, and I was thinking about it and it's like, "Well, everything I have ever tried to monetize in my business, I have made money." But where my big sabotage come from is just I hit that ceiling very quickly because I'm always hopping to the next new idea. And I don't stick to something that is working very long, or there's always something to tweak. And for whatever reason, I could make money in a funnel. And it's like, "You know what? I don't like it that, let's tear it down, start over from scratch because I don't know, just something's not good enough about it."

And so that has come up in my business, in my life a lot, just it's always the next thing. I'm never really focused on one thing. I get bored very, very quickly. And my husband's an Accumulator and my business bestie's an Accumulator. And it's funny because I'm on a call with a Accumulator now. And a lot of times they do want to say, "Wait, let's pause. Let's research. Let's make sure this is where we want to go." And it's like, "What more research is there? No. We're going to make money, let's just go. What's taking you so long? Why aren't you hopping on to this?" And what they've taught me is to slow down and to listen more. And there's a lot of things that I can appreciate from an Accumulator that does not come natural to me, that it's like, "You know what? I need to really focus on my future and slow down and appreciate that part of them."

 

Kim Galloway

When my business was new, I definitely took on anything that related to, "Oh, you want to write a book? Cool, I'll ghost write for you." I'm a lousy book-length ghost writer. "Oh, you need blog posts? Sure, I'll do that too. Oh, you need copy." I was a bang up copywriter. And so I settled in on just doing the book coaching. But where I sabotage my business, where that Maverick comes in is that need to take the risk. And it's always around the finances. I look at some of the Accumulators in SMA and I'm going, "But your money, it's just sitting there. And you don't spend it, it just sits there?" So that Maverick really comes out with, "I have worked really hard to not spend every single penny that comes across my bank account and just get rid of it as quickly as possible."

I know that this will just cause Accumulators to just have heart attacks, I don't think that debt is bad. I am very comfortable with my credit cards. If I need something and I'm like, "Cool, how can I juggle this? How can I invest in my business? How can I invest in myself? How can I get training or join this program?" And the way that really sabotages those, I carry a lot of debt. I'm constantly living on that edge of the feast or famine. And those have been the things that I'm working on, but how do you work on it so you're more comfortable without losing that delicious live on the edge, take the risk, roll the dice, be excited? And it's really interesting, the fine line between the strength of the Maverick archetype and the sabotages of the Maverick archetype. But yeah, I'm the Maverick in a group of Mavericks, I have not burnt down my business in the last 10 years.

 

Kierra Jones

For me number one aha was like, "I just need to go into deeper alignment. There's actually not so much that's wrong, it's just that I need to realign it." That was one. An area that I sabotage myself in definitely was regarding funnels and webinars. For me, because I'm such an intimate person, I felt like funnels weren't intimate. I felt like they didn't create connection. I felt like everyone had the same webinar type of thing and everyone's doing it the same way. And I just didn't vibe with that. And I was like, "Oh my God, I am such a rebel that I want to say F you to the funnels. And I want my people to fill me in all that." But that totally was a sabotage because when you talk about creating simplicity... which I'll definitely talk about in a second, like changes I made to my business model... But in general, when I think about simplicity, I had to really do work around seeing the beauty in funnels and seeing what they could create. How I could leverage repurposing my content, creating more automation, making a balance?

There's some live stuff I can do, because I know that I will have amazing, amazing conversion rates. When people experience my energy, whether it's in person, or whether it's on a challenge, or masterclass... I don't like the word webinar. I like to say masterclass... but see even that, my energy around it. So it was really just some shifting and some reframing that I had to do on stuff. And not doing it the way that I thought I needed to do or format it like this, and your site has to be like that. And once I found my jam in my master classes like, "I don't want to talk at you. I want you to come on screen. I expect for you to talk."

I remember one of the first master classes that once I finally gave myself permission to do it in my way and just interacting with people, they were so... I had to tell people like, "I actually want you to talk. I'm not recording it, you can talk on it. I want to interact with you. I'm a human being." They were so shocked. And so just finding ways to bring me into it, but leveraging some of those automations and things like that, instead of trying to fight it. Because if I don't, well, then everything is live. And so now I'm getting to the place where I am exhausted. So trying to find the balance between the two was definitely something I had to realize.

The other thing that I will say is definitely team. Team, team, team. I don't know if anyone else has this. I haven't heard much about team. But for me, there's this... I'm also a control freak. So there was this like, "I have to do it myself. You're not me, I have to do it." But then also this like, "Who are you to tell me what to do, even though you're my team?" My content manager that I recently was working with for eight months, that journey was definitely a lot of growth for me because I had to learn, her giving ideas and suggestions, it's very empowering for her. But it also was difficult for me to be in a space of someone else trying to tell me what to do or me wanting to do my thing and trying to resist it. And it was like, "Why are you resisting? You literally are paying her to give you this stuff. Why are you resisting this?" So that is definitely something I am still working on, to be quite honest.

Someone talked about decluttering, I think it was Gemma. And I think we all seem to be talking about that. For me, I had to introduce to myself this concept of the power of the core. And so for me, I had 15 different offers before SMA and I had gotten rid of some of them before. But in essence, before 2019, I had 15 different offers and it was stressful. It's like I don't launching, but yet I was in a launch model. I always had to launch and do all these things. That was exhausting to me. And so for me 2019, as I stepped into 2020, my plan was like, "I want to create more focus. I want to really hone in on my core."

And so I talk about the core four and really just claiming your core, what's the core message? What's the core client? What's the core thing that you do? Just honing in on what's your core offer. And so for me, for the 2020... Well, since 2020, 2021, so last two and a half years, I have literally focused on selling two things, and that is it, in my whole business. And being able to do that has been so amazing. And I just want to say this is such a beautiful conversation because it helps you think about the growth that you've done and like, "Whoa, this is what's happened."

And I wanted to just share this story. So in 2017, I had my first $20,000 month. And I could not figure out how to make them consistent at all. 2020, when I had my next $20,000... I had had another 20,000 a month, but it wasn't consistent. From 2020 and 2021, to be able to be in a space where before it was from a one-on-one program and then to look at my business, and it's from a group program, and I can bring in handfuls of women at one time, I literally worked part-time from May, all summer long. And I still was doing 20-25K cash months, not even sales months, but just working part-time. It was such an aha. And even now I'm still taking it in that I allowed myself to have this time. It is the next level to me.

And so I just wanted to point out how we're talking about decluttering your business model, focusing on your core, creating simplicity. I never valued simplicity as much. And one of the breakthroughs that I was talking about from yesterday when I was doing this recording for the podcast, I said something to myself around so much of my identity was in me being a smart girl. So much of my identity growing up was like I got good grades, especially being raised in a low income home, single mother, education was the way that we were taught to get out. And I was the first to go to college in my family, the first to work in corporate America. People thought I was crazy for leaving this big corporate job. There was so much identity I had in being the smart one, and knowing the answer, and all the things.

And so when you become an entrepreneur, I feel like for me, it was like, "Go, go, go." Making money harder is the answer. To make more money, you have to work harder, and all of these things. And just being in a space where I know that I allowed this for myself and now my next step is continuing to allow it for myself because I've seen some little sabotages try to come in, in the last two months or so. I had my two biggest years. And then going into this year, I'm like, "Okay, I want to top that." And as I've started 2022, it's like I've seen these little sabotages.

So one, I just want to thank Denise for bringing this circle together because I just have this aha that it's like, "Oh my God, I have to go back through SMA because..." And even if I didn't go through it, just being here in this time, it's kind of like, "Kierra, this was why you created this program." So I know that Gemma was talking about a membership. I have a high ticket membership. It used to be low ticket. I couldn't deal with that shit, $97 a month wasn't working for me. I'm too extra and give too much for it, so I realized very quickly I couldn't do it. So then I was like, "Oh, I'm just going to make a high ticket one." And everyone was like, "There's no high ticket membership. That doesn't exist. It has to cost this much." And I was like, "Well, this is how much I'm giving them. This is how much I'm paying." And it took me a minute to really be okay with that in 2020, but I know that I've grown in it.

I've increased that program in a beautiful way and I'm excited for where it's going next. And I saw myself having a little sabotage January where I was like, "Wow, look at what I did this year. I was in like 60K of debt. I paid off 40K of it. I'm like, "Last 20K." I had all my taxes done in January. I had investing team. I felt like financially, I'm like, "I'm on my shit right now." And so there was this little moment of like, "Oh, gosh. Wow, look at all this stuff that I did." And so I think sometimes as a Maverick, it is like, "You did all of this and you worked less this year than you did three years before, but you may double and triple the amount of money." Like, "Really?" And it's like, "Yeah, and we're going to take that to the next level. That's the next future sabotage that I'm working through.

And I am so grateful to just this circle to just remind me of that whole idea of simplicity, it is powerful. As a Maverick growing up, being little, it's like doing all the things I thought was really cool, and that was my identity. And now it's like, "No, I like that my day is simpler, and I can lay on the couch, and I can play a video game and still sign a client in the middle of me playing a video game, and all the things." So lots of different ahas for sure on sabotages and things like that. But really, really grateful for this space.

 

How has joining Sacred Money Archetypes helped you?

Aprille Reed

SMA has been so eye opening. So I would say, "Do it because if you are having guilt, or if you're struggling, or if people are judge-y on something that just comes natural to you, and maybe you feel like, 'I have to follow the norm and I have to fit into this box', I feel like SMA, what it did for me was it gave me the permission..." And I think a lot of times... And I hate that, especially with women, we need that permission to just be okay with who we are and to be different from society. And so, yes. Okay, if you need the permission, I'll give you the permission to invest in SMA. And then you're going to get the permission that it's okay when you have that tingling feeling like, "This doesn't feel authentic to me. This doesn't feel quite right. Maybe I'm just not cut out..." No, you are definitely cut out.

You just need to know what your strengths and what your weaknesses are. And when you know that, you're going to be able to make grounded, and sound, and very smart decisions in your life, not just as an entrepreneur. And I know there are people on here that are not trying to go toward that, but just in your life in general. So yes, definitely invest in SMA just to understand yourself better and show up in this world as your most authentic you.

 

Why Mavericks should join the Sacred Money Archetypes® Course

Let me try some reverse psychology on you – don’t join this course. 

In fact, you’re forbidden! Ha ha. 

No, seriously, I know you sometimes resist the herd, even when it goes against your own self-interest.

Do you know what’s more fun than being a rebel? 

Being a RICH rebel! 

Nobody has more freedom than a wealthy maverick. 

Break the rules AND be a role model for others who want to break free too. 

Rebel against generic, cookie-cutter business advice… make money your way. 

I’m sure you already have a lot of ideas about how to grow your business to profit from your Maverick strengths.

So now’s the time to finally embrace your creativity and bravery to fulfill your potential.

Join my new business course, and let’s leverage your Maverick money-making ability and change the world. 

I know you don’t need all the details - you probably already know how to make a great return on this investment. 

So don’t miss this opportunity to get next-level business coaching from a multi-million dollar business owner (and fellow Maverick!).

Click here to join - with your intelligence and charisma, you’re going to rock this.

xx Denise