The following is excerpted from “You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth” by Jen Sincero, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2017 by Good Witch LLC.
My first experience with the power of mastering your mindset happened when I was working with my very first private coach, the one who helped me start my online business helping writers complete their book proposals, called writeyourdamnbook.com, and who was also helping me hone my chops as a life coach. At the time, I’d worked with a couple of private coaching clients of my own here and there, and had basically tripled my annual income with writeyourdamnbook.com. Tripling my income was hugely exciting, but wasn’t gonna have me flying first class anytime soon, considering people working the drive-through at the Friendly Fajita made more than I used to make. I wanted to bring in the kind of money that would make me feel like a different person. I wanted to feel large and in charge, like I could make whatever I decided to make, like I was free, flying, f*****g around no more.
My coach asked me to come up with an amount that, if I totally hustled and busted my ass, I could make in a week with writeyourdamnbook.com. She said not to think about it, not to do the math, not to figure in what other people were charging, but to just let the amount come in intuitively.
The number that popped into my head was five thousand dollars in one week. Until then, the most I’d made in a week was probably one or two grand. It was terrifying, but I was excited and dare I say a little bit cocky about my ability to make it happen.
“Great,” she said. “Now double it.”
Once I came to, we put together a plan of action. I would work privately with three people and help them write their entire book proposals for three thousand dollars each. I was also going to sell one of my already existing thousand-dollar group coaching programs, which would bring my total for the week to ten grand. I had no idea how I was going to talk three people into spending that kind of money for the pleasure of working with me. All I knew was that I was going to make that ten thousand dollars because I was officially unavailable for any other outcome.
Related: If You’re Not Thinking Big, You’re Thinking Small
Then we did the energy work, and I got clear on things like:
Why do I want the money? To feel in charge of my life and to feel free, like I’m not at the mercy of money.
What will I use the money for? To pay off my ten thousand dollars’ worth of credit card debt. I hate being in credit card debt, credit card debt is a giant sucking thing.
What will I do to make the money? Sell three private book proposal–coaching packages and one spot in my group coaching program. As well as stay open to any suggestions the Almighty Universe tosses my way.
When will I make it by? This question was a doozy because I knew, in order to pull this off, I had to go at it like it was a life‑or‑death situation. I knew I’d have to be so unflinchingly focused on making this ten thousand dollars that you could pelt me with rocks, cut off my electricity, and let a gorilla loose in my living room and I’d still stay the course until I was victorious. I didn’t know how long I could sustain that kind of no‑nonsensery, so even though my coach said I had a whole week to make the money, I decided I would make it in two days.
So I’m on the phone with my coach and we’re figuring all this out and I’m all psyched up and freaked out and ready to make money my bitch and suddenly this idea pops into my head out of nowhere. There was a man who I’d worked with a year ago, he was actually my very first private life-coaching client. I hadn’t heard anything from him in at least a year, but maybe I could reach out to him to see if he wanted to work together again. He wasn’t a writer, but maybe he wanted to do some general life-coaching stuff? Almost as soon as the idea popped into my head, an e‑mail popped into my in‑box. From him. I had heard nary a peep from him in over one year and the moment I thought of him, he appeared in my in‑box. My hair is still standing up over this one. In his e‑mail he said he wanted to start working together again, what kind of life-coaching packages did I have and how much did they cost?
To make a long story maybe actually come to a freaking end around here, I sold him a six-month private life-coaching package for twelve thousand dollars and ended up selling one of my three-thousand-dollar coaching packages to a writer the next day, which meant I made fifteen grand in forty-eight hours. Which for me at the time might as well have been a million dollars in eight minutes.
There are a couple of things I want to point out about this story. One is that the money came to me through a different person in a different way than I thought it was going to. Part of working with Universal Intelligence is doing everything you know how to do but staying open to ideas and opportunities that “come out of nowhere.” Your job is to get your energy aligned, be dead serious about bringing this money in, and take all the action you know how to take. Universal Intelligence’s job is to move what you desire toward you in whatever way it sees fit.
The other thing to point out is the mindset shift I had to make in order to charge my client twelve freaking thousand dollars. I adored this man, I’d had such an excellent experience working with him before, and I really wanted to help him. The last time I worked with him I was charging something like twenty-five bucks an hour for my coaching services. My twelve-thousand-dollar coaching package put me at three hundred dollars an hour. At least. Sending him back an e‑mail with that price tag on it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, because part of me, the part I was in the process of shedding, felt like a bad person, like who the hell did I think I was to charge that amount? This part of me felt like if he wrote me back and told me to go to hell, I would respect that. But the part of me that was ready to play big, that had the audacity to think I could make ten thousand dollars in forty-eight hours as well as do anything else I set my mind to, that understood the different energy behind charging three hundred dollars an hour versus twenty-five dollars an hour— this part of me felt my price was right on. I’d been coaching and studying coaching for years at this point, I knew I was good at it, and charging that amount of money, as terrifying as it was, was also totally exciting, empowering, and felt, energetically, where I was meant to be. I knew I would show up as the best damn coach I could possibly be, and when he wrote back immediately and told me to sign him up, I realized he was ready to stretch himself and play at that high a level too.
By being clear about where I was at, and aligning with money at that high a frequency, I offered him a chance to participate at the level I was at too. And I will tell you, it was so much money for both of us that we both kicked so much ass I’m still feeling it. I became Super Coach and he went out and manifested a multimillion-dollar business deal within the next few months.
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While it’s true you can’t control other people (except through physical force and manipulation if you’re lame that way, of course), you can control your thoughts and actions, and that is what you need to focus on to shift your financial reality. The people who complain and blame— blameplain?—stay stuck: “The economy is swirling down the toilet bowl right now—of course my new electrical business is tanking! How the hell are my thoughts supposed to control that?” Instead of upgrading their mindsets and demanding of themselves, and the Universe, that things start to change around here, they insist that everything is out of their control. They hand all their power over to their circumstances instead of taking responsibility and changing their lives themselves.
You can have your excuses or you can have success. You can’t have both. Whichever outcome you train your mind on dictates the reality you see before you.
“You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth” is available now at fine booksellers and can be purchased via StartupNation.com.
