make more money

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Radical Action

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Radical Action

Once we know the truth, our decision has been made and our target is in focus -  it’s time for our next move. Radical Action.

Radical Action is doing anything and everything to jumpstart the change process.

We must become a fanatic. We must be willing to create significant and extreme change. Now.

Radical Action means sacrificing more than we ever want to. And working harder than we ever thought possible. It’s about stretching our strength. Our resolve. 

It’s a memo to the universe that we’re serious. And that we’ll do what it takes.

It seals our self-promise in blood. Sweat. Maybe even tears.

If we’re not serious about changing, this step will be painful. Maybe even excruciating. It will eventually cripple us. And stop us in our tracks.

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Set Your Target

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Set Your Target

The process of creating change is a temporary condition. 

It begins with the decision to change the status quo. It continues as you undergo the procedures, efforts, consequences and actions of creating The Change. And, it terminates at the point where The Change has been made. 

Our Target is the point where present tense becomes past tense. We are no longer changing. We’ve changed. 

The debt isn’t being paid off. It has been paid off.
We’re no longer losing weight. The weight has been lost.
We’re not quitting. We’ve quit.
We’re not starting. We’re doing it.

The target isn’t The End.

This is only a target to reach. It’s a fixed point with a clear definition. 

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Tell The Truth

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Tell The Truth

If you want to make a big change. Pay off debt. Build wealth. Lose weight. Start a habit. Or break one.

You must understand the difference between lying and telling the truth. I’m not just talking about lying to other people. Or about lying to ourselves. 

I’m talking about pretending. Faking it. Wishing it was true. Trying to sound optimistic. Looking at the bright side. Acting ‘as if.’ Exaggerating. Minimizing. Fudging. Rounding up. Or down. Bullshitting. Fabricating. Distorting. Spinning. Misrepresenting. Omitting details. Cheating. Being polite. Playing nice. Putting on a smile. Fantasizing. Embellishing. Romanticizing. And all the other ways that we manipulate strings of words in our minds and contort our lives to try to make ourselves (and other people) feel better.

To really change. We’ve got to understand where the truth ends and a lie begins. And we’ve got to learn that this isn’t a fine line. Or a flimsy one. Or a flexible one.

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What A Lemon Tree Taught Me About Mon

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I have an over-achieving lemon tree in my back yard.

It's a small tree. It doesn't take up a lot of space.

But it is serious about lemon production.

It's not like a regular citrus tree with its arms reaching up to the sun. It more like a weeping willow with heavy lemon-laden branches. 

There are at least five hundred lemons on it right now. (I didn't count... just go with my story here.)

When I first moved in, it was spring.

I thought lemons were in season.

And I picked tons of them.

And tried to use them all.

And then they rotted on my counter tops.

And the lemon tree kept on making lemons.

Summer came.

Still lemon season.

I ignored the tree.

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Talking To Kids About Money

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Talking To Kids About Money

I am driving my daughter to her friends house for a sleepover. We are making small talk. I'm still in denial that she's growing up and my almost-nine-year-old wants to spend the night away from home. It was just two minutes ago that she needed Mommy for everything. She's growing up faster than I am.

She says, "I can't wait to see Lilly's house."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because I want to see if she lives in a fancy house or if she is poor." 

At this point, I'm a little woried, but I have to ask anyway. "Do we live in a fancy house?"

She looks at me as if I just asked her if I was a purple unicorn. Like, I'm asking her a trick question because the answer is so obvious.

"No, mom. We're poor."

Ok. Ouch. That was below the belt. Regaining my focus, I ask, "What's the difference between a fancy house and a poor house?"

Three Types Of Earning

Three Types Of Earning

I am so fortunate and incredibly smart (if I may say so myself) to have chosen a career that I like.

Actually, I don’t just like it. I friggin’ love it.

I love opening up my MacBook and checking my email.  I love a full inbox. I love my clients. I love writing my blog. I love the students I train. I love answering emails. I love reading new material. I love creating classes. I love working on my website.  I love invoicing my clients. I love “Notification of Payment Received.”  Best. Subject line. Ever. 

To tell you the truth, I would do this job whether or not I was paid, because I love the work itself, but shhh… don’t tell my clients that.

I love to kick ideas around with my colleagues. I love the challenge of a difficult thought.   I love working from home in my yoga clothes. I love that I don’t have to be pretty, have my hair brushed, or even have shoes on to make money.

I’m pretty sure I’ve made my point. But, for clarity, let’s just say: I love my job.

After reading my little rampage, I’m guessing that you’re either happy for me or entirely nauseated by me.

Either way, I want this love-fest for you, too.

Because if you don’t friggin’ love the way money comes to you, you’re never going to reach your full earning potential.

How we feel when we earn our money has an enormous impact on our financial results.

Four Types Of Spending

I really never used to give much thought to my spending. In my mind, it was a means to an end. I liked paying for some stuff and hated paying for other stuff. I liked shopping and buying stuff. Especially stuff from Macy’s, Nordstrom and Target. And, I hated paying for things like car repairs, taxes, and my retirement. But, I never really broke down how I felt about the actual spending of the money. The verb. The exchanging. 

Instead, I focused on trying to make more money and tried not to focus on the spending. To be honest, thinking about my spending would just send me into a tailspin of feeling stupid, dishonest, entitled, childish and guilty. So, I did my best to avoid that subject.

Now, I give careful consideration to each money exchange and I help my clients do the same thing. We pay attention to how and why we spend our money. We recognize what type of spending that we’re engaging in. We know where we are on the Abundance Scale. We recognize our patterns and deliberately keep our focus on the result that we are trying to relate.

We all spend money. We pay our bills. We pay the parking meter. We buy things. We go to the grocery store. We put gas in our car.

It’s very rare to find a day that we don’t spend money.

Each time money leaves our hands, or our debit cards, or our credit cards, or our bank accounts – we have an opportunity to learn about our relationship with money.

How we feel when we spend our money has an enormous impact on our financial results.

The Abundance Scale

The Abundance Scale

There have been very few moments in my lifetime that definitively and completely changed the trajectory of my life.  Of course, most moments in life have this capacity, but in general, when I look back over my life to date, my top life-altering moments can probably be counted on one hand.

One of the moments on this short list was the first time I was shown how my thinking created my feelings. 

Until then, I was stuck in a mind that believed its own stories. I didn’t know that I could question what my mind said. I didn’t even know that my mind said things that weren’t true. I had no concept of the bondage that I was experiencing by my own hand. 

In tandem to this, I really had no recognition of what an emotion really was. I only really knew if I felt bad or… not bad.  I knew what intense stress, worry or fear felt like. And I knew the absence of that. 

Words like happiness, peace, calm, joy, jealousy, regret, boredom, really only had a conceptual meaning to me. I knew, in my head, what they meant, but I had no idea what they felt like in my body.

Most of the time I either felt bad or numb. Or badly numb. Or numbingly bad. 

What We Really Want

What We Really Want

We say we want more money. We say we’d like to win the lottery. A better paying job, a bonus, or a raise. We say we’d like our stocks to go up, or our house to sell. More clients,  better investments or passive income.  We say we’d like a windfall, or a book deal.

I used to say things like that, too. I used to say that I wanted more money, more clients, a better house, better car, more vacations and more clothes. 

But now I know that this isn't what I really want. (Except for the clothes, of course... I still want those.)

What I really want is the freedom that I think the lottery would give me.
The security from the better job.
The pride from the bonus.
The confidence from the raise.
The safety of higher stocks.
The independence of selling the house.
The stability of more clients.
The ease of passive income.
The relaxation of the windfall.
The honor of a book deal.

Where Money Problems Start

Whether we want to earn more, or spend less, or get out of debt, or save more, or worry less. If we want to have a better relationship with money, there’s only one thing we need to do to create lasting change.

Change our mind.

It’s not more complicated than that. We don’t have to understand investments, banking, real estate, business, dividends, stocks, ROI’s, percentages, budgets, spreadsheets, or exchange rates. We only need to understand the way our mind works.

And, by the way… that’s a big ‘only.’

Money is a neutral thing. It can be proven to exist or not exist. It’s a fact.  It’s a number. It can be a number on paper. It can be a number on your computer screen. It can be a number on a receipt.  It can be a number on a dollar bill in your wallet.