Here’s the hard truth about being an entrepreneur; you think that you are in business to be good at what you do, because you think that excelling in your field of expertise will enable you to earn more money. So, you focus on being the ‘best’ at what you do. Being the best coach, expert, maker, artist, practitioner, and assume that that will bring in more money.
And to be the ‘best’ you do another training, another course, you sign up to another mastermind that will unlock the secret to you earning more.
And when that doesn’t happen, you think “I’m just no good at business” or “I’m not the best”, or “I’m no good at what I do”. In other words, you think you are the problem, that you were not cut out for this.
Worst still, you make money the problem because you feel that your business should focus on the community it is trying to help, not on making money, so you might even look down on money because you feel it degrades your work.
And, let me tell you, trying to make money, when you look down on money is not going to do much for your business profits!
I can talk about this with authority dear reader because this was me for most of my professional life, and it did nothing to foster my relationship with money. So, I stayed in the same place financially for a VERY long time, proving nothing to anyone, and getting very burnt out in the process because I was so under resourced.
Identity is everything
You see, we all get into business because we want to help, we want to do good, because we have something to share. Not because we want to be a CEO. (In fact, some of the time, entrepreneurs were CEOs and so they may even be consciously going “Well I’m not going to do it like that.”)
And because we think of ourselves as coaches, experts, practitioners, artists, rather than founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs of our businesses, we get stuck in believing that we are here to deliver, rather than make money. That our business is about delivering not selling.
I have worked with many artists over the years who want to make more money but will always say, “I’m just no good at promoting myself/marketing my art” and this is partly true. But it’s more about their ability to sell their art.
An entrepreneur (which you all are BTW) needs to know they are an entrepreneur. They need to get comfortable with identifying with that. Recognise that they are an entrepreneur that makes money through their art/coaching/therapy/products. And an entrepreneur/founder/CEO is there to sell and to develop their business.
That is the only secret there is to making money.