WHY are they always, despite all the work they’re doing STILL broke after all this time?
And the question that has always been of great interest to us both as Coaches:

What is really getting in the way of them making that shift from adversity and scarcity, to the every day reality of having an abundance of material resources to utilise and GIVE at will?


Having had literally thousands of conversations with Practitioners and Small Business Owners this last several years about their level of comfort with things like charging full stop or putting up their prices, as well as

Having worked in close proximity with a Mentor or two who were born into money and having had a few years of observing first hand how they think and do things differently, plus

Having worked in few Organisations and Clinic environments who's clientele were within mostly Melbourne's financial elite, as well as
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My community services career, gave me some pretty good insight into this and the importance of the notion of entitlement within this.


Beyond all the judgements we hold around money and no matter how much business and financial skill we have or might learn, in the end, a very large part of it actually just comes down to wether, deep down, we feel entitled to it (meaning we feel worthy of it) or we don’t. As well as wether we believe it's realistically achievable or not.


For those who have been born into money and have lots of it, when they walk into any place from a restaurant to Officeworks, often, they were born with an understanding (despite whatever might go wrong with money at times or how people behave when they have or don't have it) that money and the resources they need are readily available for them, so they often perceive having a great freedom of choice and an innate “the sky’s the limit” mindset in terms of available possibilities to them, from what they can do with their life, to what they might buy themselves or a friend for lunch. They perceive that they have a lot of available resources


They often have a freedom and great desire to be very generous with it. Plus, for many, when they walk up to that desk, it is super clear in their mindset that the nature of the relationship is for the person at the desk in front of them to provide a service for them that meets their need, in fair mutual exchange for money…it is a business transaction….and money is a tool with which they can

1. do what they want, but also
2. actually also BE OF SERVICE, HOW they want in the world….and
3. give one form of love

People who were born into lower or middle class families have in common that


They too have a great desire to do good and be of service in the world
an incredible spirit of generosity, and the desire to share what (sometimes little) they have to help both family, friends and a stranger out. Some of these things are just "human."


BUT, when it comes to their innate sense of entitlement TO money and material wealth, and their belief thus in what available resources they have at their disposal, They often WEREN’T born to think they CAN have it all. While we're children and our brains were sponges, we picked up all kinds of perceptions about money and the people who have it, that we might not even realise that we have until life mirrors them back to us through experience later in life.

And a time in history where, for Gex X, Gen Y, Z and below, with the best aspirational paths laid out in front of many on a 40-50K average salary, even to those on a 120k salary, while they’re looking at 1 million dollar plus housing pricing for the place with the backyard they could raise some babies in and having to cover the cost of a working environment that now demands constant up-skilling at an extra 2-50k per piece to keep up, many are actually struggling to believe that their version of the have it all dream is realistically achievable. An when we don't think something is possibly achievable, it can kill our motivation to even try, in a "what's the point" kind of way.  Until, we make a choice to step out of that we of being and thinking and start to surround ourselves with thinking, people and opportunities that are the living embodiment of it BEING possible.


  
Having had a Mother who both had Christian values and was a Social Worker and having worked in Community Services a few years myself, we were talking daily with people from “disadvantaged” backgrounds who had to ask someone, anyone, or the government/agency or charitable resources they were clients of for many of the common basic human luxuries many people take for granted that they have  every day.


Which means, they are NOT feeling innately entitled, in their reality, they actually have to make a case, a sales pitch (and you the worker on their behalf to several other services for them) for why they need and are entitled to that basic human resource. In their head, Someone else has a great deal of power they may not perceive they have in that moment to say “yes” or “no” to them. Which creates a disconnect between them and money/abundance, an invisible psychic wall between them and what they want, which basically sets up the sub-conscious mindset that


“ I AM NOT NATURALLY ENTITLED TO OR WORTHY OF WHAT I WANT AND NEED IN LIFE, I HAVE TO PROVE THAT I AM WORTHY AND DESERVING BEFORE I CAN RECEIVE IT” and “THE POWER TO RESOLVE THIS LIES OUTSIDE OF ME”


They’re not alone in this are they though? How many times have you been to Woolworths or Aldi and watched the middle class child making their pitch to their single parent about why they are WORTHY and DESERVING of that chocolate bar, or maybe for the teenager, why they need and are entitled to that bottle of acne cleanser this week within the wider (and often limited) family budget? But more than that, how many parents within the financial elite, made their kids have to do the same thing before they'd hand them their own money? The learning of those above beliefs in motion. 




For those people who’ve worked IN the government/nfp/charity organisations too, or any organisation that deals with money and resources or the potential of losing them, you have to be careful also not to take on the client’s “stuff” and fall into BELIEVING again in the scarcity mindset and thus further perpetuate the childhood beliefs gained within family environments where financial pressure WAS an issue, that


"It is a constant battle to get money and to prove oneself WORTHY of money and abundance."


 
And that is where a lot of the judgement of money and the nature of people WITH money (and if we’re going to be really honest)  jealousy of the perceived ease they have that people born with less and who’ve had to work their freaking butts of their whole lives just to get to where they wanted to go, have of those who they perceive have “just had it handed to them on a silver platter” and “won’t be generous with giving it to them.”


Having worked with many such abundant people now myself TOO though (and had my slightly smaller share of abundant moments at times too, BUT had to slam face first into my own wall several times now into almost every one of the blocks I’m talking about IN this blog)


I’d say actually though that the “wealthy” DON’T always get it “easy” they can be just as messed up and traumatised at the abundant end of the spectrum too and there is just as much financial pressure and hard work (only now it involves HUGE amounts of money and massive numbers of people who’ll be potentially impacted)…and money and material possessions at ANY end of the financial spectrum can just as much be used as a weapon of abuse and manipulation in the pursuit of trying to bring about a certain outcome. Thus many of these issues are NOT confined just to one end of the spectrum at all.

Thus we as humans potentially have some struggle or some beliefs in common in why we may or may not feel entitled to money and stuff.


And we ALL have in common in this material reality that we have to learn how to manage money and material resources, so that, if we choose: 

• we may have a cushion to full back on in hard times AND
• we may have some freedom to live the life we want and be of service through the good times and the bad ones.

And we ALL have to go through that to financially get off the financial boob and grow up into our grown up material management pants. (And no amount of tanty-ing gets any one of us out of that in the long term in a material world.) Make sense?


Skill with money and finance doesn't just drop out of the sky, it's a life skill we need to take some time to learn and practice in before all other things. In the process of that, if our parents/guardians/family or later the people around us  (like teachers/mentors, employers, partners, housemates, friends etc) heavily scrutinise every choice we make with money and hover over everything we do ready to confiscate it out of our hands at any given moment before we make a mistake (rather than let us make and grow from said mistake) we can take on the idea that


“I can’t be trusted to well manage my money and abundance. I need someone to do it FOR me.”


OR at work, in any number of industries where we might be assigned responsibility for either managing existing resources, allocating existing resources or bringing IN new resources, depending on HOW we’re managed from entry level, this TOO can either help us grow in our confidence around creating or managing money and stuff, or (if we let it) add extra material to the already growing stockpile of psychological damage and the story about money and stuff we already hold, and hence help or hinder our future ability to engage in the process of give and receive that's required to accumulate, grow and give back out material wealth. 




So how do we help our clients, friends or family overcome this and or, if we need to ourselves, overcome this?


EDUCATE- it all starts with creating awareness of what pattern is actually playing out here. You first have to understand the problem before you can fix it. Thus, with love and gentleness, we can either choose to educate to create awareness. Or let life and the people around them/us be our teachers, until they/we "get it" what they're playing out and what's really going on.


MINDFULNESS- Then, having that awareness, one can now keep an inner observer eye out for when one is PLAYING these beliefs and the associated behaviours that follow, out and, with awareness, choose to make a different choice about what to do in future instead.


INTENTION- rather though than constantly going looking for problems all the time (which keys your brain into constantly SEE nothing BUT them) it helps to have created your picture of what it is that you want to do in life with money and material resources:
What would the exact opposite of the above lack based beliefs be for you/them? How will you use money and material resources to be of service and what quality of life could you create or give others in having it? It’s about aligning with and reminding ourselves of that intention daily and intending our connection with THAT reality to be louder than our past perceptions and experiences long enough to create lasting change. (That and you have to both want money and resources to come to you and give it a purpose to come to you FOR.)


ENERGY- but more than that, FEELING it daily. Here's the whoo whoo step of, not only do you want to visualise it like you’re actually doing every day things you would actually do IN that picture and feel yourself doing it. But this is also about consciously calling in and energetically connecting with the reality in which it's already happened.
Whatever your language for it, connecting with the divine and earthly energy and people that will support us to realise our highest potential in living it AND activate and awaken all the qualities within that we ALREADY HAVE to help create this.
As well as to further HEAL and RESOLVE any of those invisible barriers that still exist around the BELIEF that "I am/they are worthy of and entitled to my/their dream life" that you/they may still occasionally collide with along the way.


ACTION- then you follow your inner “ding” and or maybe plan out some concrete action steps that help you create and experience that vision. Generosity and being of service may well STILL be a key part of our/their part in that. Taking action to distance oneself from people and environments that are committed to staying IN the scarcity reality, or at least be very conscious in reminding yourself that the perception of scarcity is an illusion might also be a part of that action. No differently than if you want to get off drugs, you stop hanging out with addicts. if you want to brake the habit of scarcity, stop hanging out with scarcity addicts and if you must, make it other one's who, like you/they are equally as committed to their broke people's anonymous 12 step abundant living plan, as well as those who are already better off and happy to share what they know and have with you, in exchange for what you do.


RECEIVE- having got out of the way of our own invisible barriers, and learned a few things about how to create, receive and better manage our money and stuff going forward, it then it’s up to us to receive without resistance what we keep asking for and

GRATITUDE- forever keep acknowledging and being grateful for all we do and receive along the way.


In the end, as our basic human right, we’re ALL entitled to, meaning worthy of, everything we’ve ever dreamed of. We have to though, challenge ourselves to believe it. In that respect, when it comes to money and abundance, our sense of entitlement, IS actually incredibly important, in that its key to helping us step into the universal free flow of give and receive without resistance. A lot of people get worried about taking that step because so much new (cage) and spiritual literature damns the whole notion of entitlement and privilege as evil. BUT we can't throw the baby out with the bath water on this one. We have to first acknowledge that we CAN have something, before we can ever develop a gratitude-LESS over-inflated sense of entitlement and expectation to ever be judged ON. Like anything, there's a light side and a shadow side to all things and staying heart centred in the end is always the key to staying on track, in business, in love, in life.


Until next time, have fun, take care.

​There are a lot of blogs out there on how to write blogs. But how you will write a blog really depends upon what purpose you want the blog to be for. That means making a decision or two about who you want to write it for and to what end? Do you want it to get you more one on one clients? Do you want it to show case your knowledge/expertise and writing style to potential publishers you might want to contribute articles to? Do you want it to appeal to certain companies, who you might like as sponsors, who pay you to review products or services? For a hobby, you write what you want to write for the sake of writing it, for a business, you make a decision about the purpose and the end goal and where along the sales sequence of events your blog will fit into that chain as a tool.

That being decided upon, when it comes to then writing the actual blogs themselves, one of the absolute simplest ways you can write a blog is to start by thinking one market, one problem, one solution.

• Who out of your audience/s has this problem?
• What is the problem in their eyes?
• What is one simple suggestion you would give or practice you’d give them to help them resolve it? That's what you write about.

You may also like to include a call to action at the end of it. What is one of those, in case you're not familiar with that marketing terminology, it's basically an invitation to do some more work with in a certain capacity. Rather than assuming and leaving it up to your audience to contact you if they want to know more, you be pro-active in offering a point of continuity. If you ever get worried about feeling too salesy, try and think of it like this....you're a Practitioner/Consultant/Professional of some kind, you just opened a can of worms of potential questions regarding the client's problem/s that now need answering/further exploration following that blog, if the client wants support in answering them, what are their options for engaging with you further? You're not being pushy to give them an option, you're a) being of service b) educating them about your services through your blog and c) you're honouring your duty of care too. 



How or where do you come up with a list of problems?

Regardless of wether you're in start up or have already had a few decades of experience that have given you clarity about WHAT your area of expertise already is, regardless of wether you start with a list of topics you know about or a list of problems you can solve, for a blog to be effective, you need to make a decision about who cares about those things and needs those problems solved on the way to achieving their aspirations.

And, you need to make sure that you divide that list into the problems that YOU know that they have and the problems that THEY are aware that they have. Because sometimes when someone is NOT succeeding in achieving the thing they want to achieve (eg the one experiencing the problem) it's like they are the guy in the boat on the surface of the river. However, you, through your training and experience, have the amazing super power ability to both fly above like an eagle and see things from that perspective, as well as land on the boat and see at the eye level of the boat, as well as dive under the water and see what's going on underneath the boat. The guy on the boat might not know why on earth you're blogging about underwater obstacles they might run aground on or that might seize the engine, when all they can see is clear open water ahead, until you give them the practitioner equivalent of a depth finder and the ability to detect and hence make decisions about avoiding said hazards. Thus to get them to recognise the value of your knowledge and warning in this instance, you need to start by talking in terms that relate to what THEY see and know about, then link it to what you know and how you can fix that.



How do you create a list that also includes the problems that they KNOW that they have?


A) You could reference PAST CASE NOTES/CASE STUDIES (or case studies if you’re not long out of study) for past client problems you might have forgotten about and to check up on the details on how they described their problems.


B) SURVEY PRESENT CLIENTS or people from another market you're considering on what their current greatest challenges are right now, ideally a combination of written survey or poll questions and verbal interviews. Add the problems that come out of your research to your list.


C) Check out ONLINE GROUPS on social media that your target market spend time in or that already relate to their existing problems and aspirations, to see what problems they're talking about right now. Add those to your list.


D) Check out the NEWS, CURRENT AFFAIRS TV PROGRAMS, ONLINE CHANNELS and WEBSITES, as well as the local and national PRINT MEDIA websites in your area too to see what's topical and trending right now. Check both the articles, episodes and the feedback on them for clues. They're great for quick, last minute inspiration and it's more material for the long term list.


E) Check out the PEAK BODIES, ASSOCIATIONS, PROFESSIONAL JOURNALS and any GOVERNMENT or EDUCATIONAL BODIES in your industry for RECENT PUBLICATIONS and RESEARCH relating to issues impacting upon your target market. You might also want to add those to your supporting research and or reading lists, as well as your list of your audience's problems.


F) Have an email address just for subscriptions to OTHER EXPERT'S EMAIL CONTENT, where you keep up to date on other industry experts and what trends they’re noticing and problems they’re talking about. Are you seeing them too? What do you agree with or not agree with that they're saying? What would you add? Add those ideas to your list.

And last, but not least:

G) MEDITATE ON IT and ask for guidance on what your audience needs right now and how you can be of service to them. You could also request signs from life over the coming days to further clarify, from potential and existing clients and any interactions you have with them that give you ideas. And add those to your list too.




NOW SOLVE for X
Now, it's time to use everything you know, all your training, experience and do some research to come up with solutions for each problem on this magical list. And solve them.


Only, before you completely freak out at the size of that task, remember, you don’t have to do this all at once. The idea is to work on this over time with clients and in between clients when you have some time you can regularly block out for it. Depending on how much blog content you're planning for and for how long in advance, you might in your progressive spare time come up with 52 little and big problems your target market/s face (one for each week of the year) or 26 for fortnightly or 12 for a monthly newsletter style one. The list simply gives you a point of focus to start from and then you can plan accordingly from there. 


As you're working over time, you might also start to notice the patterns, or natural sequences of an order in which they move through them? That might be what your programs and future books, talks, workshops etc cover. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. First, you can use your blog or vlog to TEST YOUR IDEAS. SHARE THEM, SEE WHAT RESONATES, WHAT DOESN'T with your audience and later you'll build these things based on that.



One last thought on FORMAT


If you're interested in one day having your writing published, i'd also do some research on your FAVOURITE PUBLICATIONS or ones that relate to your industry and find out what their criteria and preferred formats are for submitting articles. You may wish to start writing a few blogs in that format, to that length. Any that don't get through, you can still potentially publish as blogs.



A few final points to remember:

Aim for high quality but don't get stuck in trying to make them perfect. No matter what you do, your knowledge and understanding of the same set of problems will evolve over time. One day, you'll look back on the one's you did 3 years back, eye roll and go "OMG, really? I said that? It so should THIS now!" Or you'll add steps or take out or simplify some things. It's normal, it will happen. Your clients still need right now though the version you KNOW right now.

Have fun, this is your chance to be be creative, as well as do the detective work needed to be of service, try and enjoy the creative process, as much wishing for the expert outcome


If you have any questions, just let me know. This might too be one of the kinds of things we can soundboard out one on one in my 1 year mentoring program, in those moments where you need a wise business sage to help you either plot the course around the obstacles ahead or, for those occasional program and content design and delivery moments where you feel like you've temporarily run aground. If you'd like to know more, you can get in touch, here.

Thanks so much for tuning in. Until next time, have fun, take care. 

running a multiple 6 figure clinic and 2 people are 5 days overdue on paying their 2.5K monthly room rental invoices and you have 3K worth of bills and rates to pay by tomorrow, 2 of which, were due yesterday, BOTH can quickly induce that sudden attachment to the almighty dollar they represent in the short term) it actually pays though to bring it back to the quality of first impressions and your heart centred desire to be of service in helping solve this person’s thoroughly annoying problems. In other words, to think about the quality of relationship you want to build over the long term.

I ask them to consider this: suppose the next person who likes your Facebook page (and you want to reach out to (as a part of your Client Relationship Building Strategy) is going to turn out to be not only someone who engages in every one of your programs for the next 2 years, but also one day turns out to be one of your partners in sharing your amazing work with the world and together you will go on to help a thousand people together, not to mention have helped each other create successful, viable businesses together….how would you want to greet that person the first time you met them? What would you want them to feel? What first impression would you want them to walk away with? How do you want them to feel about engaging with you in future and ongoingly?
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World class, rockstar level customer service, the kind that starts business relationships that last a lifetime and sees your business grow to 7 figures and beyond, all starts with the quality of that first impression.


To me, every time I’ve ever Coached, Mentored or Trained, CRM’d, Event Crewed, Event or Business Managed, my intention is that the people who get first impressions from me through those roles feel genuinely loved and respected, deeply appreciated and genuinely soulfully aligned, that they feel a little bit special, like they’re getting the VIP treatment and most importantly, that they feel the warmth and excitement, genuineness, commitment to professionalism and feel like they can relax, feel safe and even laugh and have a little bit of fun, while I’m finding out who they are and how I or we can genuinely help them.


​​Combine that with a well researched offering you’ve put together that genuinely solves that person's problems as understood by them, and an event or conversation that clearly gets to the bottom of what their problems are in their terms and briefly articulates how what you’re offering will help them get beyond that to where they say they really want to be instead and you’re off to an award winning, service based start.


If you’re ever in doubt about what to say in a first message, email or scenario above, bring it back to considering how would you want to greet this person the first time you met them? What would you want them to feel? What first impression would you want them to walk away with? How do you want them to feel about engaging with you in future and ongoingly? And let's not forget, how can you (from your expertise) be of service to them? Try writing your own script from there for each different kind of touchpoint and see what comes out. Then depending on what method of contact it is (in no more than a couple of brief sentences, you want to add in something about who you are and how you or the thing or opportunity you're offering could help solveAnd if you then feel like you would like some help to refine it to help come up with some versions that are both heart centred/genuine and commercially savvy, please do reach out for a chat, as it’s a part of what we can do together one on one….and hey, I just spent the last few years writing those kind of communications for 7+ figure businesses, so have a feeling I must be doing something there right.


Thanks for reading, really appreciate and it really looking forward to chatting more soon.


Until next time, have fun, take care.