Feb 22, 2023 |
These are decisions I have made, and continue to make.
(1) My intuition, spiritual downloads and moment-to-moment attuning to body wisdom will ALWAYS trump “strategy.”
(2) I am NEVER going to corporatize my business or replace heart and humanity with capitalism-“efficient” systems.
(3) I am NEVER going to “grow up”and be “serious.”
(4) There is nothing too big, too established, too “successful” that I can’t break if it stops being congruent for me.
(5) I turn down all paying opportunities, invitations and collaborations that I wouldn’t be thrilled to do for free.
(6) I stay in radical awareness of what my brain wants me to hustle for (money, approval, power, influence, etc); what I hustle for has the power to corrupt my values.
Feb 17, 2023 |
I love being well-paid. I believe an angel gains a wing every time a practitioner with real skills gets paid handsomely. I often talk people into charge more.
AND here are some terrible reasons to raise your price.
1. “That’s what other people are doing.”
So what? You have no idea if they’re even selling successfully at that price. Higher prices does NOT mean someone’s making more money (take it from me, who coaches people everyday who are struggling AF to sell high ticket offers.)
Also, there’s a lot of gross industry practices that feed on evaluating the worthiness/readiness of clients based on how much they’re able to pay, thereby jacking up average prices. That’s… fucked. Just because it’s a common practice, doesn’t mean you have to jump on board.
2. “I can work less and make more money.”
This is sometimes a valid reason. But it is a bad reason if it’s the PRIMARY reason you’re raising your rates. Your clients shouldn’t have to pay more just because you don’t feel like working.
And moreover, this concerns me because it is literally bad for business — as in, it will slow down your business growth.
When you’re not rock-solid in your skills and demand, and you try to “charge more so I can work less” now, that’s trading the ILLUSION of “more cash now” for the reality of a robustly profitable business later.
3. “Because I’m worth it.”
My love, I know you’re worth it. A hundred times over. That’s not in question.
Your pricing is NOT a representation of your worth, or the value of working with you, both of which are infinite.
Your price is determined by the intersection of (1) how good you are at your job, and (2) the demand for your services that is created by your reputation.
I don’t care if you do a better job helping people than Tony Robbins. He’s worked his whole life to build a reputation, so he has more demand.
Want demand?
Go out, carry yourself like a professional, be confident, kind, honest, and generous, and benefit many people as possible with what you know how to do.
If you keep the focus on doing that, your reputation (and therefore demand) will take care of itself. And raising your prices will be a no-brainer.
4. “Because I already invested so much in myself and I want my business to pay off already.”
This is gonna sound harsh, but I say this with love: you clients don’t give a shit how much you invested in.
And they most definitely did NOT ask for the responsibility to solve your finances.
This is a self-serving reason which will ultimately show up as a weird energetic incongruence that will subtly repel clients no matter how hard you market.
5. “Because I CAN (also known as: because people will pay it, because I can get away with it)”
This, too, is sometimes a valid reason. Sometimes, you should absolutely charge something because you can.
I’ve worked incredibly hard over the years to create a ginormous body of work that gives outsize value to tens of thousands of people weekly. An hour of my time now is much more valuable than it was, say, 5 years ago… and I will charge handsomely for anything that requires my time and energy.
If you have high-end “luxury” type positioning, and have a proven track record of correspondingly high quality of client results to back it up, it makes sense to charge a lot.
(And I love luxury, I believe there is a place in the world for fine, exquisitely-crafted, highest-quality, expensive things, and will always advocate for its existence and defend it.)
But also, there is such a thing as a self-serving price hike. Whatever that douche pharma bro’s name was… he charged a gazillion dollars for a lifesaving drug because he “could,” cutting off access to people who would get sick and die without it.
Granted, that’s an extreme example. Nobody will get sick or die because they couldn’t buy life coaching, for example.
(Okay, that’s debatable… but you know what I mean. If you try to equate coaching with an essential diabetes drug, you are also a douche.)
But, to avoid going down a sketchy slippery slope, you want to be mindful of (1) making the price reflective of actual VALUE delivered, and (2) not having your price be a giant middle finger to people who WOULD be good fits for what you have, and would suffer without access.
In the end, at some level all pricing is arbitrary, this is your personal decision, and no one else can tell you what the right number is.
I’m always incredibly wary of all morality police…
… and I’m even more wary of those who associate “goodness” with financial martyrdom, and think people in any helping profession should get by with as little as possible. I have always argued that this is actually an insidious form of sexist oppression, as “helping professions” tend to be women-dominated. Fuck that. I love being financially comfortable and want you to be the same.
But the point is this: we’ll all be better off when pricing, in some way, remains tethered to actual value and the realities of the people the product is meant to serve, and isn’t a giant “fuck you” to the majority of the world.
Feb 16, 2023 |
There are good reasons to use sliding scale, discounts, or scholarships.
And not-so-good-reasons.
Some of us use them as a cop-out.
Is that you?
See if one of the following applies to you.
(1) You firmly believe that There Aren’t Enough People Ever Who Can Pay Your Full Price
Or… even if there are, They’re Too Far Away or Mysteriously Hidden and You’ll Never Find Them.
Then you might be using the “I’m building equity!” thing to avoid building a sales mindset that actually works.
Selling at full price is a skill that, at some point, you have no choice to build if you want a profitable business. If you don’t want to do the mindset work around this, that’s fine… but tell yourself the truth.
You’re giving away scholarships because you’re scared to believe in yourself and the value of your offer.
And it has nothing to do with equity.
(2) When you imagine yourself abundantly, even luxuriously provided for, you feel… guilt, shame, anxiety. Abbunance feels like a zero sum game where, if you’re thriving, you must be taking from someone else.
I’m not talking about the clean pain that comes with acknowledging the fact that some people are grossly economically oppressed.
That is a real thing, and if you are paying attention, that should enrage you and break your heart. It should make you slow down and think twice about creating a flow of wealth that is community-enriching and socially responsible.
But here’s something that will be telling. If you would be genuinely happy to imagine a loved one, or someone you deem “worthy” be abundantly, luxuriously provided for (let’s say your kid, someone who is overcoming hard circumstances, someone you really respect)…
… but when you imagine yourself enjoying the same, it feels uncomfortable, we are no longer talking about your sensitivity to injustice.
We’re talking about “I am uniquely unworthy to enjoy nice things”. If you don’t heal that, you’ll always create and serve at under your full capacity.
(3) You are automatically suspicious of success and abundance, and equate wealth with greed or evil.
Listen, I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of people whose wealth is earned and hoarded in suspect and gross ways. Clearly, there are. And our society is rigged to encourage, enable and abet that in so many ways.
And it’s damn wise to hold onto an awareness of that.
But there are also all a lot of well-off people, financially comfortable people, who have kind hearts and discerning minds and are working damn hard to leave the world a better place than they found it, and ARE succeeding at that in many important ways…
… just as there are a lot of poor people who are shitty, cruel people that leave the world worse off than they found it.
Equating financial abundance with evil wholesale is lazy thinking, on top of the fact that it is a super effective way to make sure you stay under-resourced.
Being a leader of any kind requires the audacity of belief.
Being willing to try on, find evidence of, and indeed, create evidence of what you wish to see in the world, what you envision creating with your one-and-only, limitless, God-given life force.
If your current beliefs are working for you, keep them. If not, dare to imagine having something different.
Feb 14, 2023 |
So many entrepreneurs stay stuck in the same income level because their nervous systems literally don’t feel safe receiving more. And how much you can receive is directly tied to how much you can give.
(This post is for you if you suspect that you have trouble with receiving.)
Here’s my best tip: make a mini donation.
Here’s the thing. Everyone has what I’m gonna call their “giving comfort zone.”
If giving $2-5 to a cause you care about feels okay, that’s your giving comfort zone.
If you’re used to giving $20-30 and that feels pretty comfortable, that’s yours.
If you have more money, and it’s no trouble to part with $500 or so at a time, that’s yours.
Whatever range of money feels customary (for you) and not-scary to give away for a good cause… that’s your giving comfort zone.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to pick an amount that is just sliiiiiiightly out of your comfort zone… but not so much it will screw up your finances or fry your nervous system.
So, if $20 feels good, give $23.
If $5 feels good, give $6.
If $300 feels good, give $350.
If you feel a slight edge, a little nervousness, but you know it’s realistically okay, that’s the right number.
I believe that incrementally building safety is the best way to expand capacity.
We’re not shocking anyone’s system into it. I strongly believe that the most sustainable and generative kind of expansion doesn’t work that way.
Feel that slight edge of the slightly bigger number… (and make sure it’s slight!), hit that donation button, and take a few deep breaths, reminding your body that you are safe.
Then, take a moment to visualize your money traveling to where it will go to benefit someone in need, adding more goodness to the world.
One new increment at a time.
Practice this every time you make a donation — to the extent that you’re not jeopardizing your financial safety.
(Please, there is no glory or wisdom in setting yourself on fire to keep others warm.)
And you will experience — as if by magic — an expanded ability to feel safe receiving greater amounts of cash.
Does it work? I am living proof.
I remember when I first donated $20 to Obama’s campaign in 2008. It was a significant amount of money for me at the time, fresh out of college. It made me feel powerful.
The biggest lump sum I donated in recent years is $250,000, to aid refugees of the war in Ukraine.
You better believe the expansion in my ability to give was, and is, directly correlated to my ability to give.
Dec 20, 2022 |
n. bi-directional social media hygiene: taking care of your energy by being intentional about
(1) whose content you choose to consume
(2) whom you allow to consume your content
If you make ONE resolution for 2023, let it be this practice. Let’s talk about each one.
(1) whose content you choose to consume
Decide to take 100% responsibility for whose voice and influence you let into your energy field.
Yes, I know that we get ads and random shit in our feed that we can’t 100% control. And yes, that’s annoying. But decide you’ll exercise 100% responsibility over what you CAN control.
If you don’t like the way a certain account makes you feel, unfollow, mute, or block them.
The most misunderstood thing about this is that THIS IS NOT PERSONAL. There are a bunch of people I have nothing but warm-and-fuzzies and huge admiration for, whom I unfollow or mute on my feeds because they influence the way I think in an area where I want to keep “clean” to develop my own thought leadership.
Another tricky area I see for people is when they follow people who makes them feel subtle self-doubt or anxiety because they find SOME useful things to learn from them and don’t want to miss out, or they want to “keep up.”
Dude… your feed, your call. But know exactly what you are allowing into your brain and energy space when you choose to follow someone. And take 100% responsibility for your choices.
(2) whom you allow to consume your content
I recently saw an Persian content creator I admire creator go off about how this idea that, just because you post on social media, you have to be “open to critique” or “open to debate” for whatever you say… is such a “white” idea. I laughed so hard because I couldn’t agree more.
Maybe it’s that I’m Asian, and I don’t believe everyone is entitled to everything.
Any thoughts or teaching I offer on social media FOR ENTIRELY FREE…
… is a GIFT. Anyone who doesn’t treat me accordingly, and doesn’t regard my words with due respect and appreciation is not entitled to be in my audience or have my attention.
(Please feel free to adopt these thoughts, whatever your ethnicity.)
I’m human and sometimes make mistakes. I grow, learn, and change my mind about things. Sometimes I do harm unwittingly.
And I do not owe interaction or conversation with anyone who isn’t willing to extend to me the kind of grace they would extend a friend that is precious to them, and give me the benefit of the doubt. PERIOD. End of story. (Feel free to borrow these stances.)
I have an extremely quick and trigger-happy delete-and-block finger.
Using it liberally to make sure that, every time I log onto social media, I am extremely likely to have a pleasant experience amongst people who adore me and make me happy to do my best work and share it generously?
100% worth it.
This is me. You don’t have to do what I do. But please know that, while you can’t control 100% of who shows up in your space and what effect they have on you, you have WAY MORE control over it than you might assume.
So much more peace, energy, and creative genius is on the other side of making a few powerful decisions to set boundaries and steward your energy.
And you know what? You’re worth it.
May 24, 2022 |
Here’s the shocking thing I am learning from having made millions of dollars.
Here’s why money is so attractive to good people, and why making and having a lot of money is such a powerful experience for so many of us.
It’s what money gives us, which I personally experienced for the first time in my life: a true abundance of options and a great sense of safety.
I come from an ancestral legacy of colonization, war, and poverty.
Mind you, there was great dignity in our resilience. And honor in our values, ways of life, and the way we stewarded resources.
But needless to say, a deeply felt sense of physical and spiritual safety, AS WELL AS having access to an overabundance of options, was and is foreign to us.
This is what money bought me and my family. It felt like more than just “it’s sweet having nice things!”
It felt like a cleansing. A medicine. A redeeming. And a sense of coming home.
Because here’s the thing: you don’t have to be Korean to have inherited a legacy informed by theft, violence, trauma, and diasporic displacement.
You can be Indigenous American. Black. Latine. Irish. Jewish. Palestinian. Armenian. Romani. Uighur. Tibetan. The list goes on.
And/or the economic underclass of basically any society.
And/or just NOT a cishetero male.
For us, HAVING a lot of money will, for the first time, and at least briefly, give us that sense of SAFETY AND OPTIONS.
The option to exist.
The option to care for our loved ones abundantly.
The option to do what we like, not what we are forced to do.
The option to make decisions for joy and thriving, not mere survival.
But money was never inherently what gives us these things.
WE HAD THESE THINGS IN THE BEGINNING.
SAFETY AND OPTIONS TO LIVE RICH, JOYFUL, FREE LIVES ARE OUR BIRTHRIGHT.
And for so many of us, money was what allowed us to BUY THEM BACK .
In the past few years, having money allowed me to feel a complete freedom to be my entire self and live out ALL of my values without compromise… for the first time.
The trouble is…
MONEY IS NEITHER THE THING ITSELF, NOR THE SOURCE OF THE THING.
When we mistake money as being THE THING itself, our relationship with money morphs into a different subjugation and bondage.
(I have seen it happen a lot. I know you have, too.)
As a business coach, my highest and most aligned aspiration is NO LONGER giant piles and piles of money for you.
It is now the reclamation of your spiritual birthright.
Your spiritual birthright to an over-abundance of safety — the kind that recodes your nervous system.
To an over-abundance of options and freedom.
To a powerfully felt experience of what your ancestors, too, had, before they were stolen from and subjugated — THE JOY OF ALIVENESS, CREATION AND INTERDEPENDENCE.
For some of you, the journey of reclamation may very well involve making giant piles and piles of money with your business…
…and learning how to steward that wealth in ways that break toxic paradigms and create new ones.
For some of you, it might not.
It might mean just getting you to a place financially where you can easily meet all of your needs, aligned desires and commitments to the ecology that surrounds you…
… and seeing where the spirit of your business wants to take you from there.
The aligned path will differ for each of us.
And it will ask us to wrestle with what it means to reclaim what is ours in a world dominated by cruel, dignity-stealing, earth-depleting systems of supremacy.
It will ask each of us to bring our unique gifts and perspective to the table to be part of the healing.
But I am no longer available to co-sign the falsehood that wealth is the ticket to freedom and aliveness.
Freedom is the ticket to freedom. Aliveness is the ticket to aliveness.
And both are already parts of your soul.
They cannot be purchased. Only claimed and activated.
And it was only ever the legacy of imperialism that ever bamboozled us into thinking that we needed to earn them…
… by making and hoarding millions of dollars through participating in a wounded economic system.
If you’re resonating with what I’m saying, thank you for being here.
We got big work to do together.
Mar 28, 2022 |
What would it be like if, in your business, you stopped solving for money, or more clients.. and started solving ONLY for joy?
It’s a million-dollar question.
What would your marketing be like, if your only criterion for determining “success” was whether it brought you joy?
What would your offers look like if their only goal was to make YOU feel joyful?
What would your sales process look like if the only requirement was that it be joyful to you?
etc.
But here was a question I got in response that I know is shared by so many others:
“But what if solving for my joy makes me stay in my comfort zone and then I never grow?”
An important question to answer.
Here’s the thing.
If you think planning your business around your joy means you’ll stay in your comfort zone forever and never grow…
… you may have spent too much time using “growth” as a weapon against yourself.
Flowers grow.
Trees grow.
Animals grow.
Growth is just what happens when you let your true nature unfold, and are given the sunlight and the nourishment you need.
The idea that hatred-of-where-you-are-now, suffering and punishment are necessary for growth…
… is a lie invented by oppressive human-created constructs.
They do not come from nature.
And any human-created construct, we can un-create.
It begins with you declaring:
“I now release all suffering from my business, and return it to the earth where it can decompose back into the elements.”
“I now place unconditional joyful trust in the sacred unfolding of my design.”
“Who I AM is growth, and no human-created force can undo that.”
Yes?
Yes.
May 26, 2021 |
Hear me out with this one.
Thinking you need an “angle,” a “thing,” a messaging strategy to get people to want to work with you….
… is like thinking you need an “angle,” a “thing,” a messaging strategy to get people to want to DATE you.
Sounds ridiculous when you put it that way, right?
My friend, you don’t need a script when your entire life and worldview are knit from fascinating stories.
You don’t need a “thing” when who you are IS the thing.
You don’t need a messaging strategy when your heart is full of love and your brain is already full of knowledge and wisdom, the combination of which could turn someone’s life around TODAY.
(And don’t you dare pretend that’s not true.)
Who would you rather date?
Someone in a perfect outfit, perfect “angle”, with perfect rehearsed “lines” every time…
… or someone who is multi-dimensional and unscripted — because they’re giving you the courtesy of being their true human selves with you?
The latter is honestly so HOT, isn’t it?
It’s hot AF when that comes from someone who is self-aware, self-assured, and isn’t looking to you to validate them.
It is ESPECIALLY HOT when it comes from someone who is genuinely interested in you, and shows up over and over to be 100% present with you.
(Oooff!! I’m fanning myself just thinking about it.)
What works in dating… works in marketing.
Marketing is just human relationships. Showing up as the kind of person you’d want to “date”. Over and over.
As simple as that.
None of this is complicated.
And there are no secrets.
You can do this.
Apr 5, 2021 |
Here is a question I NEVER EVER ONCE IN MY LIFE asked myself:
“How do I add value today?”
If you think about it, that is kind of a weird thing to say… like, in real life, no?
One of the biggest marketing rules I live by is: if I don’t think/talk that way in normal life, I don’t think/talk that way in business.
For example, I never get up and ask myself, “How can I give more value to my husband today?”
That is a little… creepy, no?
Instead, I think: “That’s my boo. I love him.”
I love him so much that I want to do nice things for him. I want to make him feel loved.
I want to take action to make his life easier, where I can.
I also want to know him, and help him to get to know me at a deeper level.
I assume “more of the real me” is better, because I know that when we got married, he chose me in my full humanity. He said yes to the fun, sexy, agreeable parts of me, as well as the…. errr… everything else. (And trust me, he knew plenty about the ‘everything else’ going in…. )
That’s loving partnership, right?
For serving my peeps, it’s the exact same thing.
I love you, and therefore, I want you to have everything you want. I want your life to be easier.
I think tons about what is USEFUL to you, and try to give it to you as much as I can. Out of the joy of loving you.
Because I love you, I want to learn more about you. The REAL you. So I pay attention to you.
I assume you love me too, so I help you get to know me better, too, by telling you the truth about me. Even when showing only the presentable, pleasant, buttoned-up parts of me feels “safer”.
How much simpler is that?
Can we make it even simpler? Let’s try. Here are the rules for “adding value.”
(1) be human. (Your messy humanity is ALWAYS more valuable to others than a manicured robotic perfect life-coach-bot version of you because…. well, duh. The truth is always of higher-value and has greater power to connect and heal than the alternative.)
(2) give a shit about other people. (as you already do!)
(3) and be useful in ways that will require you to grow into deeper levels of your love & courage.
Sacred work it is, no? And that is LITERALLY all there is to marketing.
We can do this.
