Why I am 100% fine with making less than some of my clients
Spoiler: It's because enough actually is enough.
I've been a business coach for seventeen years. I have an MBA. I've coached and mentored over 400 people and reached thousands of others through my writing and podcast. I also live a pretty great life in Europe with my family.
I could absolutely leverage all of this to push all your FOMO buttons. I could absolutely frame my successes in the gilded glow of the-life-everyone-wants. And I could absolutely make it seem like anyone who doesn’t have my enviable life is doing it wrong and should desperately want to work with me to learn my secrets and touch all my perfect-life-and-business-Midas-magic.
I could tell you that you should want to seek seven figures and freedom and travel and blah blah blah.
But dear lord, can we finally start seeing that for what it is? It’s pretend. There is no business coach on earth who runs facebook ads to their ‘Magic Super-Duper Money Method’ who is actually living like that (and who cares if they are anyway?!). Because if they were, they would not be working their ass off running courses teaching you to do the same. They would be sitting on that beach in their photos drinking a top shelf margarita and giving zero fucks about you, your goals, and/or whatever makes you happiest.
Marketing like that only works because dreamers want to believe in the dream. You want to believe that what they’re selling is not only possible, but that having it will make you happy.
And maybe it will. But maybe it won’t.
Personally, I hate the sun so a beach is only fun for me if there is also shade. Being entirely swaddled in a linen sack in the shade isn’t all that sexy in an Instagram story. I'm really am not that into travel either. I live in a small apartment in a great neighborhood in a pretty amazing city where people take tourist photos of the building I live in every day. I have a simple life that doesn’t make me feel like I need a vacation from it. I don’t even have a car anymore. Yes, there are parts of my life that people might envy. But there are parts of many of my clients’ lives that I envy too. We all want something.
But one thing I never envy in my clients (or anyone else, really) is the number in their bank account. If money is how you measure value and success, that sentence probably turned you off. Fine. You know where the door is.
And for the record, I think money is fine, it buys the fancy sauces I almost never use all of. I am not playing small. I do not have a scarcity mindset.
But if you you actually want to know why talking about this is a good thing, here’s why.
1. I teach people to go after the life and business they want. Not the life and business I want/have.
2. I have enough. Enough for retirement. Enough for vacations. Enough for moving to Europe. Enough for solid health care. And my enough is different than your enough. Yours might be a lot bigger or a lot smaller than mine.
3. Chasing money so you can afford a good life is not the same as just chasing a good life. It's not the same as chasing wellness. Or personal growth. Or happiness. Or fulfillment. Sometimes you need money for those things. But sometimes you don’t.
4. I'm pretty sure that of everyone behaves as if they deserve to have millions of dollars, the whole world is doomed. It's also impossible. So there's that.
5. I have spent my whole career being told I should charge more because other people who aren't as good as me do. But I charge enough. And I charge what a lot of people would consider quite a lot of money. When you actually stop and think about it, I'm pretty sure that supports the very idea that people who are not as good as me charge more. It says more about them than it does about me, doesn't it? If you can say that someone should pay you $50k for coaching people who would need to mortgage their house to pay for it with a straight face, you go right ahead. Be that shitty. Be that asshole. Come back as a cockroach next time around. The world never seems to run out of cockroaches. Trust me, being that shitty does not last for seventeen years.
6. I care about teaching people how to have enough. That they deserve enough. That they need enough. And how to get enough. If you need seven figures because for you, that's genuinely what enough looks like.... sure. I can help you do that. It's not about the number. It's about knowing what the number should be for you and your work in the world.
7. I don't want to work more than three days a week. So I don't. My life and income is the right size for that. I did my time hustling. If I wanted to make more, I could work more.
8. Every single client I have ever worked with had a different set of wants and needs. And a different set of constraints on what was possible for them based on their specific business and circumstances. Why on earth would you follow anyone who has a one-size-fits-all approach to any part of your work or your income goals (no matter how sexy all those zeroes look in the facebook ad)?
9. Scaling isn't everything. Who said your business needs to grow in order for you to be "successful"? Scaling *might* be exactly what you want, but is doesn't have to be. Knowing what's right for you and your business is the first step.
10. Value does not inherently have anything to do with money. I work with people who are capable of seeing value even when they aren't overpaying for the advice they're getting. My people are the ones who value experiences over things. Actual joy over perceived joy. Integrity over reach.
If you don't know what enough looks like for you, it's time to find out.
If you don't know what is most valuable about what you offer (no matter what fresh hell the economy brings us), it's time to find out.
If you aren't sure how to be in business without losing who you are, I can show you how to do that.
I do it every day and so do my clients.
Because enough really and truly IS enough.
If you happen to be one of the many people reading my work who struggle with the simple question of, “What is the next right thing?” Check out my Do Less, Make More Project Planner. It’s completely free and is a simple and distilled taste of the work I do with clients every day.
Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.