I Love My Business: Where's the Money?

Hey, Gorgeous. I'm so excited to spend this time with you. I just want to say again, thank you so much for listening to my podcast. And of course, hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and leave a review if you want to. But I just want to say I'm grateful that you listen. Today, we are talking about that feeling you get when you love your business and you maybe love what you do, but the money just hasn't shown up yet. So it's like, you know that old saying of like, "Love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life."? Yeah. So let's talk about that one because I love what I do and I work as well. So it's great to love what you do, but sometimes, that in itself isn't enough for the money just to magically show up.

And it's incredibly frustrating because of course, you're supposed to build a business based on your passions, based on what you love. You put your heart and soul into it. And then, sometimes things just don't land with your audience or you've launched something and you haven't had the sales that you wanted to. Can be really, really frustrating. Maybe you've been limping along like this for a while. Maybe you've hit an income plateau and you just think, "Okay. Maybe it's time to give up." Maybe you even have pressure from other people in your life to quit your business or go back to a job or just to give it up altogether. So before you panic, there could be some really practical reasons about why this is happening. And I want to have some Denise real talk about what could be going on and what you can do to fix it.

Because you can have a business that you love and you can make money from it. It doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. Okay. So as I just said, that we've been fed that, that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. Was it Confucius who said that? I can't remember. But I remember reading this really early on. I was at my father-in-law's house, Mark's dad's house, and I was leafing through his personal development books. And there was a book, and it was called Love What You Do and the Money Will Follow. And it was a rainbow book. It was really beautiful. And I was like, "But when?" Because I was at a crossroads where I was like, "I love helping people, but where's the freaking money? Where is it? This is really frustrating."

And I had big desires for my life. I wanted to buy a house one day. But I just wanted to feel like I made it. I wanted to feel like I was contributing and making my own money. And so it was super frustrating. But the other part that I think it's important from a saying kind of point of view is that we've also heard that Joan of Arc quote... and I've mentioned this before on the podcast... is, "I am not afraid. I was born to do this." And so sometimes, I think people think that if there's any fear involved, then that's not what they're meant to do. So we're all tangled up in this idea of, I have to love what I do and the money will follow. And if it was really, truly my calling, then I wouldn't feel fear around it.

And that's not true. I'm here to tell you it's a freaking roller coaster being in business. Some days, you're going to love it. Some days, you're going to hate it. Some days, you're going to feel so much fear. You want to hide under the blankets. And occasionally, when I have that feeling of fear, when I'm growing my business or sometimes just getting sick of the consistency of it, I fantasize about quitting my business and just like, "I just want to do nothing. I want to do nothing at all." So give up the idea that you have to love everything every day. Give up the idea that you're never going to have fear in your business because it's not true. It's a roller coaster and it's a privilege and it's freaking awesome all at the same time. It really is.

Okay. But let's have a check-in point because I think there are different times in your business where you can check in and just see if it's still working for you. And that doesn't mean you have to chuck it away. Sometimes it takes real courage just to tweak things and to give yourself permission to make it work for you, make it work better for you. And that means you can undo stuff. You can set new boundaries. You can shift and change up the way you do it. Okay.

So the first thing to check in with is that you might love the idea of your business, but is it a valid business idea for you and where you're at right now? Okay? So is it a business that will that sell something that people actually pay you for? And is it something that you even want to do? Okay? So this can be a hard one to admit. So a good business should be something that you love to do, something you're good, at and something that people will pay you for. And you want to have all three, not necessarily everyday, because you're not going to love it every day, but that's really the sweet spot in finding a profitable business and something that has longevity for you.

So it's okay that maybe your business is something that you are good at, that's something that people would pay for, but it's not necessarily something that you'd love to do forever. And I often see this at people's practice businesses. Okay? Or it's something that you started out doing and you want to shift and change it. So a really good example is I love helping people but I'm not so good at doing one-to-one coaching long-term. And it just doesn't suit my personality. I've got ADHD. I kind of get bored. I'm not necessarily good at holding people to account for longer periods of time. And I just can't hold that space for a long time one-to-one.

But I love helping people. Okay? So coaching for me, one-to-one coaching, wasn't my sweet spot. So I gave that up so I had more energy to create my Money Bootcamp so I can still help people. That's what I love doing, but I don't have to do it in the same way that other people might be doing. So just because something is a good business idea or someone told you were good at it or it started off like that for you, it doesn't mean that you have to keep on doing that forever. Okay? So you can renegotiate the way you help people. You can renegotiate the way you deliver your programs, the way you deliver your service. You can discontinue things. It's totally okay to do that. You can tweak it. You can let things go. Now I know it can be really hard to take a... when you're making money, you feel like there's no time and energy to sit and renegotiate things, but you really can because I want this to be something you can do for a long time.

Okay. So here's the second thing to look at is not everything has to be a business and not everything has to be your business. Now I know if you've got a hobby that you really like, it can be really tempting to turn it into a business, or it could be something that was a stage of life for you and you've turned it into a business. And I see this a lot. One of my first businesses was helping people with internet dating because I was internet dating. One of my next businesses was helping people lose weight for their wedding because I just got married. But I realized I didn't really like talking about weddings and brides. It was just a situational business. You see this with people. They love planning their own weddings so they think that, "Oh, cool. I'll go into a wedding planning business."

And you have to really love doing that for other people for that to have longevity for you. Same with some people start a business around having a baby. So they're like, "Oh, I couldn't find any maternity clothes. So I will start a business. At some point that might not be what you want to do anymore. Okay? So not everything has to be a business.

I actually did this. It was another mistake. I totally had forgotten I had done this. I love movies. Love, love movies. I go to the cinema all the time. I love watching movies at home. I love the movie business. I read tons of books about making movies. I love celebrity gossip, all this kind of stuff. And so one of my very first blogs was movie reviews because I thought maybe I could be a movie reviewer, a movie critic.

And so I went alone to a movie. I had my little notepad and I sat there and I was just like, "This sucks. I just want to enjoy the movie." And so I thought it would be a great business because I was like, "Well, I love movies. I can write." But it was my escape. It didn't have to also be my livelihood. Okay? So some hobbies should stay hobbies. It's okay for you to not monetize everything in your life. It's okay for you not to talk about everything in your life either. Definitely I used to think that I had to mine every one of my experiences for my blog, my podcast. And so I'd go through an experience and it'd be like I did some therapy, and after each therapy session, I was like, "This would be a great blog post. This would be a great podcast episode."

And I was like, "Oh my God, I'm allowed to experience things for myself. I don't have to mine every one of my experiences for lessons for other people." And it was just like, it created so much spaciousness in my life just to have things that were just for me, just for my own lesson, just for my own pleasure. But of course, if you're an entrepreneur, sometimes we're always thinking about money making ideas, but it's okay for you not to have to monetize everything. Okay? So my advice is to find something that you love to do, but that fits the good business model that I talked about before that's like, you love to do it. People will pay you for it and you're really good at it as well. And then you can enjoy your hobby and you can just build a business you love and you don't have to do everything for everyone. You don't have to monetize everything. I totally get it.

Okay. I'm going to take a break. But when I come back, I'm going to talk about the third thing about like if you love your business, but the money hasn't shown up yet or what is probably missing. Dun dun dun. All right. I will see you straight after the break.

Hi, my name is Raluca I'm from Romania. I have two children and I run a bespoke travel business, meaning I create bespoke travel packages for foreigners who wish to discover Romania. I also coach and consult women entrepreneurs, women who wish to become entrepreneurs. I do this on the side as a way of giving back and as a way of building a community of amazing women. So I work with two, three women at a time because I really want to be hands-on and help them.

I stumbled upon Get Rich, Lucky Bitch at some point in 2019 shortly after I gave birth to my son, and love the content, love Denise's voice. And immediately after I finished it, I got Chillpreneur. I signed up to get the newsletters, I watched some of the videos, and I had made up my mind to join bootcamp. I just wasn't sure when, but I took the plunge in 2021 in January and I just love it.

It's been amazing. I haven't yet done all the homework and the exercises. I do the EFT and the tracking. And yeah, it's just amazing how much more than money is related to money. I guess this is the biggest insight. And I'm realizing it's going to take years to work on this, but it's a great journey. Thank you.

Hey, welcome back. So if you love what you do, you're really good at it, and you're doing your business and the money hasn't shown up. What's going on? What's missing? Today's real here. I think you are missing the M word: marketing. Marketing. Marketing. Doesn't have to be a dirty, dirty word. Every now and again, I meet someone and they go, "I am an anti-marketer. I'm against marketing. I'm going to manifest clients," and said, "Hey, marketing is manifesting clients. Manifest just means to make real. Marketing is how you manifest clients." But marketing doesn't have to be the same way for everybody. There are so many ways to market your business. As I share in my book Chillpreneur, my two-step marketing process is share what you know and make offers. Share you know is like share a tip, share a blog, post, share a free resource.

But if you just do that, you will always just attract the freebie chasers, people who are then so outraged if you talk about how you can help them and how you can actually make money out of it. So you can always couple that with an offer. And it's literally just like, "Hey, I can tell you I've got this free workshop. It's called the Money Blocks workshop. It talks about seven different money blocks entrepreneurs have that hold them back in business. Cool. You can get that denisedt.com/blocks." This is a real thing by the way. And then on you'll sign up for it, give me your email address. At the end of that workshop, I'll be like, "Hey, great. So we've talked about the seven blocks that entrepreneurs have, and I've given you tons of tips of what you can do about that. If you want to take this further and you know you have more money blocks to deal with, come and join my Money Bootcamp. It's at denisedt.com/bootcamp."

That's it. I have made millions and millions of dollars out of sharing what I know, helping people with free tips and free resources and podcasts and blogs and all that kind of stuff. But I always, always, always make an offer. I'm either telling you about coming over to my newsletter to buy my book or to join my Money Bootcamp. And you can see there's no desperation in it. I like myself either way. I like you either way. You could be listening to this podcast for 10 years, and then in 10 years, you'll join my bootcamp. But I still tell you the next step because I know if there's a hundred people listening to this, there's one person who needs that next step right now. And if I don't make the offer, they might never join.

So this is why if you love what you do and you're good at what you do but the money hasn't shown up yet, you are missing the marketing piece. It is a skill that is essential for businesses. If you're not marketing yourself, how are people going to know about you? Okay? But it's normal to feel a bit icky about marketing. Marketing definitely has a bad reputation because there are a lot of people who really do it in a yuk way. They're sleazy. They use mind Jedi techniques to con people into giving them money. It feels like you're bragging. And honestly, this is all related to our money blocks, that we must be doing something bad or wrong or hard or yucky in order to make money.

Marketing does not have to be yuck. It's totally safe for you to market your business and just tell people what you do. So for example, if you send out a weekly newsletter, that's marketing. Don't just send out free stuff. Tell people the next step. Not everyone's going to want to take the next step. You're not expecting everybody to take the next step. You're just making it there for the 1 to 3% of people who are ready for it right now. You can use that language, by the way. "If you're ready for the next step, here's my thing. If you liked this and you want your own, here's the thing. If you liked these tips but you want my help to get it done, here's my thing." Okay? "So here's your weekly Virgo astrology for the week, free." Generous. "And if you want your own chart down to see what's coming up over the next three months for your planetary transits, listen to me. Click here and get your own personalized report."

It's not sleazy. You're just telling people the next step. "Hey, I hope you enjoyed my tips on how to create your own website. If you just want me to do it for you, click here and get my website in a weekend course or book me just to do it for you." It's so simple. It doesn't have to be sleazy and yuck. But just I want you to cast your eye around some of your marketing pieces. Look at your social media. Is it just giving tips with nothing in return? You can go and look at mine. So my handle is @denisedt on Twitter. Twitter is just my random place. But on Instagram and Facebook, you'll see that not every single time, but at least every second time, I'm like, "Hey, if you want to join bootcamp, here's the link or send me a DM and we'll see if it's right for you." Or like, "I've got this free resource. Here's where to go." Or, "This is only my book. Here's where you buy my book."

I role model that for you because I don't think marketing has to be sleazy. But without it, where are the clients going to come from? They're just not going to know about how you can help them. So you're allowed to love your business, you're allowed to be good at your business, and you're allowed to make money out of your business. You are allowed to prosper from your skills and talents, and it's allowed to be fun and easy. And it doesn't have to be complicated. You might get really in a tizz sometimes about technology, because you'd be like, "I need funnels." Funnels were the buzzword about... Oh God, four or five years ago, everyone was talking about funnels, funnels, funnels.

And I never got around to doing really fancy funnels or really good follow-up sequences. But I was really good at just telling people how they could buy my thing. And so in the early days I'd be like, "Hey, I've got a Money Bootcamp. If you want to join my Money Bootcamp, the link's denisedt.com/bootcamp." And some people would just join without the fancy funnel, without the followup sequence, without the countdown timers. So if you're procrastinating right now on your marketing, just do this, right? Sales page. "Here's my thing. Here's how you can buy it." On your website, have a book here. If you have nothing to sell right now because you're still trying to finish your course, you're still trying to make everything fancy, just sell an hour of your time. "If you want my help with this, click here," And get them to book in and pay for an hour of your time. If you have nothing to sell, just do that.

Look at your newsletter. And you can repurpose the same wording every time for your newsletter. "If you want my help with this, click here if you want my help booking a session with me." That's it. "My course will be ready soon. But in the meantime, if you want my help, book here." That's it. It's so simple just to give people the next step. But you've got to get honest with yourself. You love your business. You think you're good at what you do. Get really honest about how many marketing messages you're sending out. And so you can just do a little review. You can see how many newsletters you're sending out, how many things you're sending out on social media, how many clicks you're getting.

You can get some data around it, but you just got to be really honest about where those income-producing and marketing activities are happening. Otherwise, you'll attract freebie chasers for the rest of your life, honestly. And we don't want that. I want you to have as much money as you want. I want you to prosper from your skills and talents. I want you to make money and really round out that beautiful thing that we're all striving for, to love what we do, to be good at it, to make a difference in the world, and to get paid while we're doing it. And they always say that's the thing. Find something you would do for free, and you'll never work a day in your life. It's like, well, find something that you would do for free and charge for it, and you're going to be happy as Larry because Larry is really rich, apparently, and very happy.

I can tell you it's super fun. I've made millions and millions of dollars from that two-step marketing formula. Share what you know. make offers. It's never been more complicated than that. I live my life on placeholder marketing as in I'll just do that and I'll just tell people about what I have and then I'll make it fancy and great and sexy and complicated later, and I never get round to it. And in the meantime, I'll just make millions of dollars. So maybe if I ever got my act together, I'd make tens of millions of dollars. Who knows? But hey, you can start with what you've got right now and start making more money just by doing that.

Now, if you want a little bit more nuance around that, I go through that marketing formula in a little bit more depth in my book, Chillpreneur. It is available in all the normal places. If you want to support an independent bookshop, bookstore, you can just ask them to order it in, in paperback or in hardback. The hardback is lovely, by the way. It's got a beautiful spine with gold writing on it. Or you can get it from Audible. I read it myself. Or you can get it on Kindle, instant gratification, and get it right now on Amazon. So yeah, you can get them from all the normal places. And if you've read all my books and you know you have some money blocks that are stopping you from receiving money from doing something you love, please come and join us on Money Bootcamp. It is an incredible course and community helping you to release your money blocks and live a first-class life. And all the information for that is at denisedt.com/bootcamp.

All right. I love today's episode and I've got some final thoughts right after this last break.

Hey, animal lovers. My name is Leslie [Nes]. I live in Vermont in the US. I help people and pets who share their lives, connect, and bond on a deeper level. I read Lucky Get Rich Bitch when I was looking for a female role model that was a successful online entrepreneur. Denise showed me that if I let go of my old money beliefs and started believing in myself, I could turn my talents into a successful online business. I had to work through the notion that no one would pay a higher price for my services. For me, Denise became the mentor I needed to push my business forward and live the life I dreamed of. I also learned that my ideal clients stayed with me as I increased my prices, launched online courses, and designed bundle packages that fit their needs. If you're looking to let go of what was and create a new life, then I highly recommend any and all of Denise's books. And don't forget to sign up for her emails for the latest Chillpreneur tips.

Hey, Gorgeous. Welcome back. Thank you so much for being with me today. And here is my final thought for today. Might be good news or might be bad news, but the real tea is that fear never, ever, ever is going to go away, truly. And I remember when I started my business, I asked someone I really looked up to. She was the first millionaire that I'd ever really seen in real life. And I said, "Hey, can you let me know when is fear going to go away?" And she said, "Never, ever." And I was like, "But surely there's an amount of money where it just disappears." And she's like, "No."

And so I want to tell you that too, that I'm often scared. I get intimidated. I get scared by things. I still have a lot of fears in my business. I fear that I'm not good enough all the time. And the good news is that you can just do it anyway. You know that famous quote of Joan of Arc and it's, "I am not afraid. I was born to do this." And I don't think that's true. I think that even if something is your destiny, even if you're born to do it, it's totally okay and normal that you feel fear.

And I used to get really scared about public speaking as a teenager. And I remember saying to myself my affirmation, which wasn't snappy, but it really helped me. I'd say, "Fear gives me the energy to do my best in a new situation." Every time I felt that fear, I was like, "Oh, cool. This is just the energy I need to do my best in this new situation." So fear is not going to go away. So please don't wait for it to do it. Really you can just start today. It's okay to be scared. We all are. But that doesn't mean that you get an out. So do what you need to do. Go forth. Chill and prosper. Peace out for me. And I will see you next time. All right. Bye.