You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 111.
Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now, your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.
Hello, my friends. How are you guys? I'm amazing.
I just got back from a six-day training, teaching my six-day training with 30 of the most amazing students that I've ever seen in my life, except for the class I did before that one. What I did before that. We had such an amazing time.
What an amazing group of people. What an amazing journey we all took together with everybody really being honest and open with all of their issues and everything they needed coaching on. And we were able to do some epic work.
All of us. It's so magical. I love of love doing in-person trainings and getting everyone together.
So that's what's up. That's what I've been doing. So exciting.
So fun. The next training is coming up in September. And from then on, we will only be doing the training once a year.
We will only be doing certification once a year. We have developed our program now so that we spend a year with you building your business. And that takes a lot of manpower and energy from us.
And so we're only going to do it once a year. That's what's up. So when you come to The Life Coach School, we take care of you.
We're going to give you all of our attention and make sure you're rolling. So if you're interested in that, go over to The Life Coach School site and opt in, or you can email Jody, J-O-D-Y at thelifecoachschool.com, and she will hook you up with all the information you need for our upcoming September training, which will be our last training of the year. And then we won't offer another one until the following September.
So again, once a year is what we're going to do. But here's the good news. We have an advanced training that we will be teaching, and that advanced training is coming up in July.
And before we get started on this episode, I want to talk a little bit about some of the concepts I'm going to be teaching in that training, not to sell the training, but because I want you guys to kind of understand where my head's at. As I'm planning this upcoming training, it's a two-day training. again, you go to lifecoachschool.com for more information on it.
But what I do want to tell you is as I'm planning to teach the training, as I'm planning everything that needs to happen for that training to happen, I am so excited about some of the concepts that are coming to me. This is usually what happens when I start a new training, then I all of a sudden get all these ideas and I'm writing frantic notes and getting excited. But one of the questions that I asked myself, and I know it's a question that you guys ask yourselves and you for sure are asking your clients and your clients are asking is how do you have a good life?
How do you have a better life than you're having now? And one of the main tenets that I teach, of course, is feeling better. And I have a whole program on how to feel better.
But what about all the other components? What are the components of our lives? And one of the ways that we can look at it is that the model includes everything.
So the model that I teach, self-coaching model includes everything, all the components of our lives. So our lives are made up of five things. They're made up of circumstances, they're made up of thoughts, they're made up of feelings, they're made of actions, and they're made up of results.
There's nothing else in our life that won't fit into one of those things in our lives. And when you think about your life, you can think about it in terms of those five buckets. What are the circumstances of your life?
What are the thoughts you have about your life? What are the feelings you have in your life? What are the actions you take in your life?
And what are the results? What is the contribution that you're making in your life? And if you can break all of those down and put models together that make your life so all five of those components are just overwhelmingly amazing, you will have an amazing life.
And I really feel that I've been able to kind of dial this in for myself and really have an amazing life. And it includes some negative emotion. Of course, it includes some negative thoughts and includes some circumstances that aren't ideal all of the time.
But the way that we use the model and the way that I'm going to teach it in this advanced training is how can you take what you have to the next level? How can you use your mind juice, which is how I like to say it, to create the life that you want by being a conscious creator, by being so aware that you realize how you interact with the universe is how you create your life. So if you're interested in coming to that training, that's the kind of goodness that we're going to be talking about.
I am opening the training to anyone who would like to come. So I know that there are a lot of therapists and coaches that are already certified and people that have already had a lot of training that would like to come and learn from me. And that's why I am creating this course.
For those of you who are just really avid students of the podcast, and you just want to take all of your personal work to the next level, this would be a perfect class for you as well. This class is not just for coaches. It is open enrollment.
It's an opportunity for you to learn from me live. We had so many people come to the training that just said, oh yeah, it's all different in person. It's really different than just learning on the podcast.
So if you're one of those people, please come and check us out for our two-day training. We can't wait to meet all of you, and I can't wait to teach you guys all of this new material, this new way of thinking about the model, and how to advance your life using it. Okay, let's talk money.
I love money. You guys know that I love money, right? I talk about loving money and freak people out all the time.
It's great. People don't talk about loving money. They think that money's the root of all evil, and that money's terrible, and a lot of people put money down.
And when I say I love money, everyone kind of wants to fall over on their chair. I don't know why. I think money's fantastic.
I think if you think about everything that you could do if you have a lot of money, and I think helping the world and helping people end their suffering is a beautiful thing. And the more money you have, the easier time you're going to have being able to do that. My main focus in life is to help treat suffering at the middle age, middle income portion of the world.
A lot of people want to go and build homes for people that don't have homes, and feed children that don't have food. And of course, totally needed and absolutely admirable for the people that do that work. My work is on the intense suffering that people go through emotionally and cognitively, unnecessarily in what I would like to call middle America.
And at a certain level of success in terms of a certain amount of money, and a certain amount of intelligence, and a certain amount of accomplishment, there's still a ridiculous amount of suffering for those people. And I think their suffering goes highly unacknowledged because it feels like it's not real quote unquote suffering because you have food to eat, and you have a car, and you have a job. But I will say I think that suffering is just as real and can be more debilitating than suffering that's more obvious.
And so that is my dedication to the work, is to work with people who struggle the way that I struggled. And I feel like the more money that I have, the more people that I can help. And so I love money.
I love what it can do for my clients. I love what it can do for my family. I love what it can do for all of us who get to enjoy what we can do with it.
And so I don't apologize for that ever. And I know that that turns some people off, and that's okay. I think that there's this misconception that if I have money, and I like my money and I like spending my money, that somehow someone else will have less money.
And I think we need to clear that up right away. It's not a zero-sum game. It's not like if I make $100,000, that you will then only get to make $20,000, right?
They just keep making more money. There's plenty of it. I think they said that there's enough money for everyone on the planet to be a millionaire, like literally.
So, I think that we get into trouble when we start believing that certain corporations and certain people, when they have a lot of money, it means we have less. I think that, I don't know, there's like this unspoken idea that there's just one pie, and that we all are just trying to get our little slice of it. And I don't choose to believe that that is how anything needs to be, or that is how, certainly in America, the opportunity is.
You should make a new pie. There's not a slice left for you. You just like go to work, and like bake a new one.
That's how America is, that we have opportunity to really create whatever we want, and we have the ability to literally create as much money as we want, and use it for whatever we want. So I want to talk to you guys about money, because one of the things that we were doing in our big group discussion, when we were talking on the last day in our certification program, we talk about business, and we talk about being an entrepreneur, and we talk about making money. And one of the things that was very obvious to me is that half of the room was very concerned that the other half of the room would find out how much money they had.
That people, they were very concerned that people would think, oh, I don't have enough money, or I have too much money. It was between that and level of education. We had people with multiple PhDs in the room, and then we had people that didn't even have a college degree.
And we were all loving and hanging out together and working on the same cerebral stuff. And it didn't matter what the level of education was to learn this stuff. And it's the same with money.
It doesn't matter how much money you have in your bank account, in your ability to show up and help other people in that room. And so we did a lot of coaching around money and thoughts about money. And everyone kind of gets equally delighted and horrified when I talk about money.
I can see it on their faces. I think people love the idea of loving money and, you know, spending it on whatever you want, being able to enjoy it without apology, which is something that I do. And then they also were horrified by the idea that we could just earn money and spend it as we want, that somehow that was reckless and that somehow we were doing that to fulfill a need that wasn't fulfilled otherwise.
And, you know, one of the things that I'm going to talk about later on in the podcast is the idea of generosity and how that has served me in my life. And you've heard me talk about abundance and the idea of what abundance is and how to think about it. And I think that money, and I've always said this, is I think money just makes you more of who you are.
So the more money you get, the more you get to demonstrate who you are in the world. So if you're already a very generous person, you're going to be generous in the world when you have more money. If you're already worried about money, getting more money will not make you less worried about money.
I think that's a big misconception as well. But one of the main things that we talked about, which I thought was a really interesting conversation, was earning money, and especially entrepreneurial money. And when you own your own business, and you earn money, and you earn money helping people, how do you wrap your mind around it?
And we had this conversation about how people have this idea that it's my money, and your money, and their money, versus just money in general. And so I'll give you an example. We had a student in the class that was talking about her husband's money versus her money.
And we had people talking about my client's money versus my money. And we talked about this idea, okay, when does the money become yours? Is it when the client gives it to you or pays you for a service, then that money becomes yours?
And then when is it no longer yours? When you purchase something? Is that kind of the way that most people think about it?
And I like to just think of it as the universe's money, and all of the universe's money is my money too. So if you want me to teach you something and you give me money, then it's our money. It's not like you have money and now all of a sudden I have money.
It's like our money. It's in the world and we're going to use it to, you're going to use it so you can come to a training and then I'm going to use it so I can go to a training. And it's all kind of in this big pot and it's not necessarily this is mine.
This is yours. This is theirs, right? But really just thinking about it as like whose oxygen is it?
Well, I just breathed it in. Now you're breathing it in. Whose is it?
Like trying to claim it like that I think is a different way of thinking about it as just thinking about like it's our money. Like my money and in my business with my clients, it's like our money. This is what we're doing to build this amazing thing.
And I love thinking about it that way. So I think it's important to when you are becoming an entrepreneur, if you are an entrepreneur or a freelancer, that you ask yourself really clearly why it's okay for you to charge money. Because if you don't know the answer to that question, and you don't feel good about that answer, then you will never charge enough for your services, and you probably want to attract the type of client that you would most want to work with.
And for those of you who don't work entrepreneurial-ly, you can still think about this in terms of your salary and how you're paid. Or if you don't work at all, how you get money and how you spend it. Like, how is it possible that you get money and spend it if you're not earning it?
And I think that's a very interesting question. When people say, well, that's not my money because I didn't earn it, then you have to all of a sudden start defining, what does it mean to earn money? Right?
And how do you define that? And it's worth taking a minute for us to kind of pause here and let you think about the answer to that question, because how you answer that question will really define your life. And I think the way we are raised and what we are taught, as we're being raised with money or without money, what we're taught about it, we'll define that later.
And we, and many of us don't go back and question what we were taught. And it's important for us to do that now. So when you think about the term earned money, what comes to mind?
Now, a lot of my students will say, well, my parents used to tell me money doesn't grow on trees, you have to go out and earn it. And a lot of my friends that are parents talk about how important it is to teach our children the value of money and teach our children how important it is to earn it. And it doesn't grow on trees.
You can't just buy whatever you want whenever you want. And I always kind of argue, especially with my intellectual friends, who I can pick a fight with and they'll have an intellectual argument with me. I love to talk about this because I was never taught that.
My mom never said you have to go and earn money in order to have it ever. And in fact, my mom received an inheritance from her dad and had money and was able to provide me with money without going out and earning it, as you would think earning money, as many people would define it by getting a job. And I was thinking about this the other day, and I thought this, it's a really kind of fascinating way of looking at it.
For those of you who are married and don't work too, what does it mean to earn money? And if you don't earn it, how do you define it? And if you do earn it, how do you define the word earning?
So my mom used to just, whenever I need money, she would just give me a $20 bill, always. I would be going to the barn to ride my horses, and I would say I need some money, and she'd give me $20. And so I would go to the barn, and very few of my friends had money with them at the barn.
And we would have vending machines. It was hilarious, because the $20 bill you couldn't put into the vending machine. It wouldn't take it.
And so we're always trying to get change so we could spend this money that I never thought of, hey, this is my money, so I'm going to buy myself a snack and not you. I always thought, hey, we have $20, and there's three of us. Like, let's make something happen.
And so we used to walk down to Taco Bell and buy lunch because we couldn't put that. We'd be in our horse boots, walking down there, riding boots, going down there. So I think from a very young age, I was shown that money is very easy and that you actually don't have to earn it.
Now, what's interesting about that in the truest sense, right? You don't have to go and sell lemonade on the side of the road, or you don't have to go get a job in order for there to be money. There's plenty of money and my mom had plenty of money and she didn't work.
So that was kind of what I had learned in my mind is, you know, without being taught it directly. But what's interesting about that is I could not wait to get my work permit. I would go to the barn and I wanted to get a job at the barn and work there, but I wasn't old enough.
You had to be 15 to get a work permit. And I was counting down the minutes until I could get my work permit and get a job. And I remember that minimum wage at the time I think was like $3.38 an hour.
And I could care less. My mom was giving me $20 bills, remember? So the $3 an hour didn't matter.
It was being employed and being able to go to work for someone. I couldn't wait. And as soon as I got my work permit, I went to work at the barn and also went to work at Chevy's Mexican restaurant.
I was so excited to interview for that job. I was so excited to get it. And I love working, and I haven't stopped working since.
I have always wanted to work. And I used to have a job. It's so interesting.
I used to have a job at Nordstrom. I told you guys a story about how I got involved in a cult and gave them all my money. And then I got a job at Nordstrom making money.
And I had some of my own money in a checking account. And I used to forget I would work at Nordstrom and I'd work really hard and I loved it. And I would forget to pick up my paycheck because I had some money from the settlement that I'd gotten back from my cult situation.
But anyway, and I would just forget to pick up my paycheck. And people would be like, you didn't pick up your paycheck. Oh my gosh, what are you doing?
And it was because of the way that I thought about money. I was never careful about it or worried about it. Now, that's different than not taking care of it, right?
I always took care of it in the sense that when I did get it, I would cash it and I would spend it properly. I didn't do a lot of stupid stuff in terms of the way that I spent my money. But I always wanted...
The reason why I think I got involved in the cult situation is I never wanted to be dependent on it. I never wanted to be dependent on money like the way I had seen my mom. I felt like she was always so worried about the principle and don't touch the principle and always live off the interest.
And that really served my mom well. And in the sense where we talk about earning money, my mom earned a lot of money by taking care of her money and investing it very wisely. And so she didn't have the traditional type of job and she did get an inheritance, but how she took care of that earned her a tremendous amount of money.
And I was thinking about talking to her about this because I don't know that she would use those words in terms of earning money, but I really feel like that's exactly what she did. And so I think it's important for us to decide what we want that word to mean to us. And if the way that we talk about it feels good to us, that's really important because, and here's where I always talk to my students about how important it is to consider this idea.
If you are very vested in earning your money, like how much money you earn per hour, you will be very limited in the amount of money you will allow yourself to earn. So for example, we talk a lot to our students about the difference between earning $100,000 versus earning $500,000. Earning $100,000, you can hustle your way to $100,000.
You can work, put in some long hours. And in fact, I think that's what everyone needs to do. I think your first 100 grand per year, you really need to hustle, and you can work enough hours and do enough coaching clients and do enough groups and hit the pavement enough to make 100,000.
But if you want to make $500,000 a year, you can't hustle hard enough per hour to make that happen. The math just doesn't work. You either have to charge a really significant amount of money per hour that you're going to get yourself into some issues with your own belief systems of how much you're worth per hour, how much is coaching worth per hour.
I love this part. I love the part where we get to, am I worth charging this? Is this group coaching group worth charging this?
Is this training worth this? And I always tell my clients, I say this is, or my students, I say this is how you know if you're charging the right price for something, is you ask yourself, would you pay that exact amount yourself for that? And then would you be delighted that you did?
So I just recently did stop over reading Masterclass course. I'm just bringing that to an end. And that was a significant investment for the people that invested.
And one of the women who I know spent that money, and it was not an easy amount of money for her to spend. And she said to me, it was worth every penny and more. And that's like such a huge compliment to me.
Like I would spend that money again twice to get that same result, to get that same experience in my life. Can you guys think of things that you would do that with, right? Like it felt like a lot of money at the time, but you're so glad you spent it.
For some of you, maybe it's your education. For some of you, maybe it's your car. For some of you, maybe it's a pair of Louboutin shoes or bag or whatever, whatever it is.
And you're like, yes, that was such a good spend. That was such a good use of my money. It feels so great to be able to say, yes, I love that I did that.
And I think that that's how we should feel about all of our purchases, right? When we purchase something or even use our money for something, that we feel amazing with how we used it. And we also feel amazing in how we received it.
Like, I know that I put a lot of quality out there in the world. I know that I showed up. One of the things that I like to teach and one of the things that my teachers have taught me, and this is especially the work of Abraham, I think has taught me this the most, is that you give to the world in the way that you best know how, and you receive in the way that the universe gives and you don't question it.
So, for example, if I buy the person behind me Starbucks, right? I say, I want to pay for their, the person behind me's Starbucks order. I want to pay for that.
I may not have someone paying for my Starbucks order the next time around, but I will have a very generous, wonderful life coming at me if that's what I'm putting out in to the world. It may not come back in that exact same way, but if I show up in the world and I give generously, I will be receiving generously. And it may not be in the same way that I expect.
It may not be in dollars. It may be in something completely different. And I love knowing that.
I love knowing that whatever I put out into the world will create a more generous world, right? If I'm generous in the world, it would create more generosity and that I will get to experience that from just being alive. And I think money really helps us demonstrate that in our lives and how we feel about money, what we're willing to charge, what we're willing to give away for free.
So when you think about earning money, are you thinking about everything you're putting out there in the world and letting it come back to you in a way that feels good to you? Or are you thinking about, I need to earn this much per hour or I need to earn what's fair? So when you think about what you want to create in your life, in terms of what you want to create in terms of money and what you want to earn in terms of money, one question that I think is really fascinating to think about is what is normal?
Because your ideas about what is normal will affect everything in your financial life. Now, I mentioned earlier to you, like to me, it was very normal for my mom to give me $20 bills when I was young. And you know, that was back in the day even.
And she was just give me a $20 bill, and she bought me pretty much anything I needed and wanted. It was just available to me. My mom was very generous with, she never told me that I had to do anything to earn money.
She didn't put me on allowance. We had tons of chores to do around the house. We spent a lot of time doing dishes and cleaning the house, we always did our own laundry, and we had to take care and pick up after the dogs and everything like that.
But it was never tied to a small amount of money, which I think is kind of interesting. Like we're expected to work, and we're expected to show up, but it wasn't tied to when you do this, you'll get this amount of money. And I think that has served me so beautifully in my life because I think a lot of times the amount of work that I do physically doesn't match the amount I make.
It's more, I feel like the higher level thinking that I do, the more money I make. And I think that's a beautiful way. I want to teach all my students to think that way.
Like if you think at a higher level, at a generous level, at a compassionate level, then you will be able to exceed what you have always thought was maybe normal for you in terms of how much you could earn. And so coming from the life coaching industry, when I was talking to my coach and I told them, I wanted to make seven figures in my business because my passion in life is to be an example of what is possible. And he just kind of giggled at me and said, well, that's a good start.
That's somewhere where we can start. And his perception on what's a normal amount of money to be making in our industry was very different than what I had been exposed to. And I'll tell you what, just that one interaction and just talking to him really changed my paradigm around what is possible in terms of our ability in this day and age with computers, being on the Internet, owning our own businesses, how much value we can create for the world, and therefore, how much money we can make is really exciting.
I love to watch some of my mentors. I like to look at Pat Flynn and Amy Porterfield, John Lee Dumas, and these people that are out there on the Internet, really generously giving of themselves and how much money they post there. Some of them post their income reports and just being able to see how much money they're able to make by showing up in a way that's really authentic and beautiful and offering so much to their clients.
It's so inspiring to me. So I really want to encourage all of you that are my students, and that includes, I guess, anyone that's listening to this podcast, if you've never even taken a live course from me, is to think about what are you doing to invest in your life and in yourself? How do you feel about the amount of money that you are earning or creating or bringing in, and do you want to change that?
Do you like your beliefs about money? Do you like what you think is normal? What's a normal amount of money to make?
What's a normal amount of money to spend? And do you like the way that you're thinking about it? And I'm going to end because I actually have like seven more talking points that I could talk about on this, but I feel like I've just been rambling on and on about all of these ideas because I get excited about them.
But one of the things that I really want you to think about is the possibilities for what you could change when it comes to your financial life. If you could have any amount of money, they could really think about that. Would you create it for yourself?
And if the answer is no, they could really explore why. People won't like me if I have more money, I won't be able to relate to people, whatever it is that goes on for you. And I'd like to think about the difference between what does it mean to earn a million dollars?
What does it mean to inherit it? What does it mean to have it given to you? What is the difference for you?
And how can you think about creating money in a way that feels good? It feels good because of what you're able to create and what you're able to give. And I want to say there is nothing more amazing to me than giving to the world anonymously, giving to people anonymously, not expecting anyone to come up and thank you, but just really giving what you have to give and knowing in your soul that it will come back to you.
And I really, really want to encourage all of you to start doing more of that. We give because it feels great, because it creates an abundance mentality, because it's how we want to show up in the world. And there is no better way I know of to do that than with money, because it really I think is a quick demonstration of what is possible.
And that's why I love me. I love making money because I love showing the world. I love showing my students.
I love showing other people what is possible when you are dedicated to creating with Abandoned and really not limiting yourself in what's possible. And I want that for all of my students. So I hope you guys have a most beautiful, wonderful week.
I look really forward to talking to you all next week. And if you want to check out the advanced training, meet me in person, spend a couple days here with me. I would love to have you come.
It's much, much more affordable than my other trainings, and it is worth every penny. As you know, it's worth that investment in yourself. So come check us out.
You can find out more about the advanced training by coming to thelifecoachschool.com and clicking on trainings. I will talk to you guys next week. Have a great week.
Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to The Life Coach School Podcast. It is my honor to show up here every week and connect with people that are like-minded, wanting to take their life to a deeper level with more awareness and more consciousness.
If you are interested in taking this work to the next level, I highly encourage you to go to thelifecoachschool.com/howtofillbetteronline.
It is there that I have a class that will take all of this to a deeper application, where you'll be able to really feel and experience how all of these concepts can start showing up in your life. It's one thing to learn it intellectually. It's another thing to truly apply it to your life.
I will see you there. Thanks again for listening.
