Let's do a quick experiment.
Copy and paste the following to your Facebook.
"Hey fam. I'm starting a new side hustle cleaning houses. Try'n to get 4 over the weekend. 50$ bucks a pop. Hit my DMs."
What are the chances you just made 200$?
Hold that thought.
Since starting my solo therapy practice back in May, I've been learning a lot about how businesses work. The whole process is fundamentally shifting my beliefs around money.
Years ago I tried to give a marriage enrichment seminar. I say tried because even though I blasted Facebook for a month I only got one hit. I ended up canceling the class.
I've seen sooo many therapists make the same mistake.
We spend weeks putting together a "Yoga for Business Executives" workshop, and then get frustrated when no one shows up.
The big mistake, in a nutshell, is that we are selling things people don't want.
Of course my marriage enrichment seminar didn't sell! Would you want to hear a newly married 24 year old speak on marriage?
I'm starting to believe that this is the biggest reason we struggle to make money.
Which also means the opposite is true:
Making money is easy; if you sell what people want.
This sounds too simple. I mean of course making money is HARD. Right?
What if it's not?
I suspect that for most people reading this blog, making money isn't the problem. The problem is the beliefs we hold about money.
I see three major beliefs getting in the way of us making money. The first? We know what people should want.
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Belief #1 : We know what people should want
Say you're driving home from work and you're getting hungry. You decide to stop at the next light and pick up a sandwich from McDonalds.
You pull into the drive through and say "yes, I'd like a quarter pounder with cheese."
And the cashier says "Naw, you need a salad."
How do you feel?
The problem with knowing what people should want is even when we're right, it doesn't matter. People are entitled to their own decisions. You can either respect those decisions and make money, or not.
The therapist's version of this is getting mad when business executives don't buy our yoga course. The question is, did we create the course asking, "what do business executives want to buy?"
Most of the time the answer is, "No, we never asked that question."
Instead we were focused on ourselves. We thought, "what do we think they ought to want?"
Making money is easy; if you sell what people want.
Belief #2 : We can't make money and be true to ourselves
Another belief that holds us back is we want to be true to ourselves.
If you're the yoga enthusiast trying to sell to business executives, how big is that pool?
The smaller the pool, the harder it is to find them.
You could work really hard to find them.
Don't do that.
The TL;DR is it takes too much work. If you're reading this, you're not big time. No worries, neither am I! But since we're not big time we don't have the resources to solve a hard problem. Let's solve a simple problem instead.
Some of you know this. That's why you've given up. It feels too hard.
Don't give up. The trick is to find where our interests overlap with what people want.
If I were a yoga fanatic wanting to sell yoga to executives, I would call HR and offer to do a course on managing burnout. And I'd talk about burnout for 30 mins and then lead them through one yoga activity they can do at their desk.
HR probably has to have trainings for employees. So even if an employee doesn't care, it doesn't matter, because you sold HR on the idea. And by talking about burnout you've found an avenue to do your yoga activities.
Making money is easy; if you sell what people want.
Belief #3 : Certain work is beneath us
There's a third reason why the idea that "making money is easy" is hard to swallow. This one is personal. We think we're above certain types of work.
I'll speak for myself. I think I'm above certain types of work.
"I have a Ph.D" I say to myself, so cleaning houses is somehow beneath me. I worked hard and "graduated" out of doing that kind of work.
This is the biggest thing blocking me from making more money.
I knew this girl in college who was a Bible major. Which, if you knew the church she went to, is laughable. That church was so conservative that women couldn't serve in ministry. So a woman with a Bible degree was like bear with an iPad. It just didn't compute.
About a year ago I heard through the grapevine that she was making 100k a year.
WTF? How?
She was cleaning houses. She started small, then hired a few people, and her business was growing.
Making money is easy; if you sell what people want.
If we want to make money we have to clean house.
See, the thing holding me back is not resources. I'm, fortunately, a person of privilege.
The thing that holds me back is my willingness to do the dirty work. This doesn't mean that I have to actually clean houses. It means I've got to do the work to clean out my old and dingy beliefs about money.
Beliefs which tell me that I know what people need...
or that I can't be authentic to myself...
or that certain work is beneath me.
So I'm on this journey of cleaning out my beliefs about money. And if you're on this journey too, well then at least I know I'm in good company.
Best, Jordan (the Counselor) -Fin-
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