About Heaps Of Money & Leaps Of Faith

To quote a certain blonde pop singer I was a huge fan of at ages 12-14: “It’s been a while. I know I shouldn’t have kept you waiting, but I’m here now.”

(In case of any doubt: yes, I mean Britney Spears)

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged or spent enough time reading your blogs, but I am here now 🙂

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A few weeks ago my mother came to me and told me about a nightmare she’d had: her and my father had died, my sisters had insisted on selling the house and I had ended up spending the rest of my life living in a cardboard box.

My mother has since repeated this fear to me with increasing anxiety, as she’s convinced it will come true.

What my mother is incredibly good at, is 1) projecting fears onto people and 2) blaming them for it.

Her SUPER POWER, however, is making people who already feel bad feel WORSE.

I’ve been feeling like such a failure for months on end now, because my business is not picking up. It’s gotten to a point where I can honestly say it’s doing as bad as any decent doom scenario: I am losing money. I have bills to pay and make no income. Can’t get worse than that, right?

After my mother’s nightmare talk (pun intended) my dread grew worse and I picked up my phone to start looking for a 9-5 job immediately.

If anyone of you has ever read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, you might recognise the lesson to “listen to what you heart has to say” when I write that my heart ached as I clicked on a job opening for a pharmaceutical packer.

I don’t know what a pharmaceutical packer does exactly, but I do know they make way more money than me – but so does the rest of the World right now, I imagine.

My heart almost literally hurt when I clicked on job description after job description and I eventually caved; I don’t want to just give up on my coaching business until I’ve at least really tried to make it work!

So I did the unthinkable and hired a business/marketing coach.

It cost me almost the remainder of my savings, but after netting a 30 minute free “strategy session” that turned into a 90 minute excited talk about passions and how to deal with the marketing aspects of a business, I dare say me and the marketing coach really clicked. I enrolled in her marketing programme that starts in September and she’s immediately given me access to all her online trainings (that are quite impressive in number – and success rates!).

Taking this step, this risk, scares me witless. What if my investment won’t pay off? My bank account will hit 0 sooner than my mum can make curtains for my cardboard box! But… If I don’t do this, then the results will inevitably be the same.

I understand my mother, I know she’s only worried. I am the first person in our family to try and start their own business and therefore I am not related to anyone who can relate (you’ve got to admire that sentence!).

But I have to do this… As painful as the confrontation with my mother was, seeing that money disappear onto someone else’s account was strangely liberating. I am actually going to do this. I am going to give it a massive, honest, passionate try! With almost literally everything I got!

With that, I felt my heart rejoice. If it doesn’t scare you, it’s not worth doing, right?

I hope that’s right.

I’ve given myself a year to get on my financial feet. If after that time it didn’t happen, I’ll gladly take that cardboard box from my mother’s nightmare.

And use it to do whatever pharmaceutical packers do.

 

 

 

 

What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done? How did that work out for you?