11. How to Make More Money, in Seven Simple Steps

TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome to Episode 11 of HOW TO MAKE MORE MONEY, a podcast that helps you get seriously good at the game of making serious money.

I’m your host Kelly Hollingsworth. I’m so glad you’re here. If you’ve been following along, congratulations! You’ve been through the foundational episodes of everything you need to know to make more money.

In Episode one, you heard the formula for making more money. Mindset plus message equals money.

Why is this the formula? To succeed in commerce, you must create a “meeting of the minds” between you and your customer. And the way you do that is through not just a money-making mindset, but also effective messaging. Everyone’s talking about mindset these days, but since mindset PLUS message creates money… That is the formula, the more interesting question in my mind is how do you create effective messaging?

Effective messaging comes from how you handle all four functions of your business. The manner in which you attract, convert, deliver, and collect—everything you do in each of these four essential functions in your business sends a message to the marketplace. This message is what creates the essential meeting of the minds that creates money.

It makes perfect sense, right? And as entrepreneurs, it’s what we all want to do. So what’s in the way? Episodes two and three covered what gets in the way of an effective message. The first is fear. In Episode two, we talked about the five fears that hold entrepreneurs back. That prevent you from attracting, converting, delivering, and collecting in the way you’d like to. In episode three, we talked about the problem of waiting for an invitation. The game of making serious money is a walk-on enterprise. You recruit yourself. You invite yourself.

Once you do that, then what? Then it’s a simple matter of skill. You need skill. And specifically, the seven skills we discussed in episodes four through ten.

What happens when you acquire and apply these skills? You start making money, because with these skills, the exact path to making more money stops feeling like a mountain. It becomes a flat, unobstructed, smoothly-paved highway, on which you and your clients are cruising towards your respective happy endings. You are attracting, converting, and delivering for them at the highest level, and in return you are collecting at the highest level.

So, now that we’ve recapped where we’ve been, let’s talk about today’s topic. What exactly does this path to making more money look like? In seven simple steps, here it is:

Step 1. Clarify the happy ending your business creates.

Step 2. Spread the word–tell everyone that this is what you do, and invite them to come along.

Step 3. Manage your vibe so that you feel cool and confident and attractive when you’re inviting others into your movement.

Step 4. Help your followers out of their fear, so that they can grab onto the hand you’re extending to them, and join you on the journey.

Step 5. While you’re on the journey, serve at the highest level, by scrubbing your business of all indulgences. In this step, you make your business about THEM and never about yourself.

Step 6. Shorten their path to success by severing all diversions and distractions from your business; and

Step 7. DO THE WORK of shedding your old self-concept. This is what allows you to make your inner vision—that business that you can see in your mind—and turn it into an external reality.

How can I be so sure that this is the path to your successful business? That this is the way to making serious money? One thing is just, it’s what I’ve seen over and over and over again, in every kind of industry. Hedge funds. Law. Life coaching. Lemonade stands. It doesn’t matter. When you deliver a happy ending, you will make money.

And this brings me to the second reason I know that these steps work. When you take these steps, what this necessarily means is that you are offering and delivering a happy ending to other humans. Do this ONE THING—guide humans to a happy ending–and they will want to do business with you. Every day. All day long. Humans want a happy ending so much that in the absence of a real one, they will pay good money for a poor approximation.

Not saying you would ever do that. Let’s deliver the real thing. And when you take these exact steps, that’s what you’re doing. You’re delivering the real thing. You are delivering humans to a happy ending, and the commercial value of that cannot be underestimated. So this is your exact path to becoming a high earner. Do these seven steps, using the seven skills that I teach, and you will transform. You will leave under-earning behind, and you will become a high earner.

So now let’s talk about how you do that. If you’re not making the money you want to make right now, you’re underearning. We’ll get into the formal definition of underearning in a future episode, but for now suffice it to say that you want to play a bigger game. You’re not playing a bigger game. You’re definitely not winning a bigger game. And that means you’re underearning. You’re included in the category of people who we would call underearning right now.

So the first thing to consider, is what kind of under-earner are you? There are basically two kinds of under-earning, and they are generally divided on gender lines. Under-earning in women happens because women are socialized to second-guess what they know. Underearning in men happens because men are socialized to never second-guess what they don’t know.

I’m not a social scientist, but this has been my anecdotal observation of the last thirty years of focusing on, and solving, the problem of underearning in both genders. Research also bears this out. I think it was Zip Recruiter that reported that men will apply for jobs when they meet only some of the requirements for the job. As I recall, it was around 70%. Whereas women won’t apply for jobs until they meet 100% or more of the requirement for the position.

Now, I’m not saying that this is the tendency of all men and all women. I’m saying that when women underearn, it tends to be for a very different reason than when men underearn. Here’s an example. As a lawyer and business advisor to hedge fund managers—all of whom were men, I might add—I have had countless conversations with men who called me up, wanting to start a hedge fund, having never traded a stock or derivative instrument profitably in their lives. This is, by the way, a prerequisite for successful hedge fund management. Someone has to know how to trade. But without this essential skill, they’re ready to start a hedge fund, these men who I was talking to, so they can figure out how to trade. They wanted to set up a fund and create a multi-million-dollar laboratory of someone else’s money that they could play in while they figure it out.

This is not a conversation I’ve ever had with a woman. “I’m ready to dive into this thing that I want to do, having no idea what I’m doing,” are words uttered by no woman I’ve ever encountered. With women, I see exactly the opposite, over and over and over again. Not with all women, but with women who underearn, the conversation is, “I don’t know enough,” when in fact they have PhD level expertise and they know more than enough.

Both types of underearning wreak enormous havoc on society, at enormous cost. We’ll get to that in a second. But guess which makes approach more money? The male kind. The reason men as a group currently make more than women as a group is because not worrying about what you don’t know gets you out onto the field, where generally you figure it out.

This brings me to the cost of underearning. What happens when you don’t figure it out? When the plane you’re trying to build on the way down doesn’t in fact get built in time before the whole thing crashes? That’s when you see colossal failures such as Long Term Capital Management. Such as Victor Niederhoffer’s disastrous bet on Thai bank stocks. These are hedge fund references, if you don’t know, and specifically they are notable hedge fund losses that are largely attributable to, “Oh yeah. Looking back, I can see that I was playing the game in a way that required expertise that I just didn’t have.”

There are few data points on this, because there aren’t many women in hedge fund management. But studies show that female-run hedge funds tend to out-earn male-run hedge funds. And in my mind, this isn’t an accident. Although there are few data points, I think this happens because women tend not to play any game that they feel uncertain about winning because they don’t have 130% of the expertise that they need to win.

The upside of this tendency is that it would tend to avoid colossal failures like those we’ve seen in the hedge fund world. With more data points, the question of whether this discernable tendency for female-run funds to outperform… the question of whether that’s going to become a persistent trend, remains to be seen. But what we’ve already seen, in more ways to count, and in more industries than we can possibly count, is the enormous personal, familial, societal, and global cost of women not getting onto the field when their contribution is certain in fact, but not in their minds.

This, my friends, is female underearning in a nutshell. And it’s the thing that I’ve pledged to resolve in my lifetime. From the outside looking in, we can all see that a particular woman can get on the field and play to win. But on the inside, she’s questioning herself, because she doesn’t want to play if not winning feels even remotely risky. This is when the fear of confrontation that I discussed back in Episode Two looms large. What if I’m wrong? What if I make a mistake? What happens then? That feels terrifying, but it doesn’t have to.

Inside of Gateway to Seven, this is a terror that I help women dissolve and resolve. And we have to  dissolve and resolve this fear, because we have really smart, really talented women who are capable of making amazing contributions and amazing money, but who are paralyzed with fear.

This doesn’t mean that I only help women. Professionally, I help everyone. This show is for everyone. My coaching assistance is for everyone. But my personal passion project is closing the gender wage gaps and gender wealth gaps in my lifetime, and that’s why you’ll see things like my Facebook group called Women Making Money. If you’re not in that group and you’re a female human, you should totally join. On social media, that’s where I do my socializing. And the way I socialize is to make friends with women, virtually and in real life too, who want to make money. I can’t think of anything more fun than revenue generation with one’s friends. It’s not just my day job. I think about making money all the time.

But let’s be very clear on one thing– this is a show for all humans. My personal passion project aside, I don’t discriminate. So please know that if you are interested in working with me to increase your skill so that you can transform your earnings life, there are two portals of entry. One is called Gateway to Seven. This is the portal of entry for women. One is called Creating Alpha. This the portal of entry for men. In each program, you will acquire the seven skills so you can apply them to your business and transform your earnings life. But inside Gateway to Seven, we are doing this work through a lens of, “You know more than you’re willing to admit. Let’s get you on the field in a way that feels safe so you can play and you can win.” Inside of Creating Alpha, the lens is different. We are doing this work through a lens of, “It’s okay if you don’t know everything. Let’s figure out what it is that you don’t know, and keep you on the field in a way that doesn’t get you sidelined by undue risk.”

So here’s what to do now. If you’re a woman who wants to earn, my Gateway to Seven program is the thing for you. If you’re a man who wants to earn, your program is Creating Alpha. If you’re not sure, it doesn’t matter, because no matter who you are, the next step is to book a call to discuss where you are in your business, where you want to go, and if my programs are the path that will get you there.

So how do you book this call with me? Go to kellyhollingsworth.com and at the top of the home page you’ll see a button to schedule a call to talk with me. I think the button that goes to my calendar currently says something like, “Let’s talk about you playing a bigger game.” It’s super easy to find. And know this. I recently opened up my calendar so there are a bunch of empty call times available. I’m not going to do this forever, but if you go now—this episode airs towards the end of September 2020. If you go now, you’ll see even some weekend slots coming up.

You should know that this is not a “sales call” in the commonly understood meaning of that term. This call is diagnostic. I’m going to ask you questions that will cause you to think of things in a way you’ve probably never experienced before. You’re going to hear things you’ve probably never heard before. Actually, I’m not going to hedge. I daresay you’re definitely going to hear things you’ve never heard before, because that’s what people tell me on these calls all the time. “Wow. I’ve never heard that before.”

So book the call, because these programs are just like a hedge fund. The best returns come from getting in early. Why is this the case? One reason is because the quicker you learn this stuff, the more life you have left to earn. I cannot stress this enough. If you’re in your thirties, don’t put this off for your forties. If you’re in your forties, don’t put this off until you’re fifty. I currently have a client who is twenty-four years old. If I knew what she’s learning at age 24, I’d be in the billions by now. That’s with a “B.” If I could go back and do it again so I had this knowledge at her age? I can’t even tell you… I have no words for what I could have accomplished, and for what I could have made in my lifetime.

So this is not a thing to delay. Sometimes I talk to prospective clients in their 60s who say, “Well, now isn’t the right time.” If age sixty-plus isn’t the right time to learn to earn, when is? Seventy?

You can learn to earn at any age. My mom and I were just having this discussion. She was saying, “It’s too late for people my age.” To this I said, “If a twenty-five-year-old can become a millionaire in five or ten years, someone who’s sixty-five could most certainly do the same thing. But why on earth would you wait?” It’s like investing in that amazing handbag or Chanel suit when you’re young. You get to enjoy it for EVERY special occasion over the course of decades. Why put it off until you’re ninety-five, and you get to use it maybe just one time????

What I’m saying is, just book the call. You’ll be happy you did. Kellyhollingsworth.com.

And now that we have that out of the way, let’s use the rest of this episode for a listener question.

Recently I posted the seven simple steps to making more money on social media, and I got a question from a listener who wants to make more money. She wanted a little more detail. Specifically she asked for some suggestions on helping followers out of their fear.

To help followers out of fear, you have to know where fear comes from. It can come from something we smell. We talked about this in Episode 6 on dissolving fear for fun and profit. Why can we smell fear? I don’t know the exact anatomy, not being a medical person. But one of my friends is a medical person and she explained to me that the olfactory nerve is connected straight to the limbic portion of your brain. I was also able to confirm this through the Googles: “As soon as a molecule of smell enters the nose, it triggers the olfactory nerve, which travels straight to the limbic system. The limbic system, the most primitive part of the brain, is in charge of emotions” among other things.

 

Fear being an emotion, what this tell us is that we can experience the emotion of fear from a molecule of fragrance.

But in business and in life, smell is not where most fear comes from. If you look closely, you’ll see that almost all fear comes from a story we’re telling ourselves about the future. When we’re afraid, we’re thinking that if circumstances change in a certain way, then we’re going to feel pain or sadness or some other emotion that we don’t want to feel.

Here’s a little example from my own life. I have three sisters, and our mom is 78 now. The other day I emailed my sisters and said, “Let’s do a girls’ weekend with mom because after all of this isolation, I know she would enjoy some company with all of us together.”

And everyone agreed, and then my younger sister sent us some photos. Her husband’s cousin owns a ranch in Montana with a habitable fire tower on it, and she said we could stay in the fire tower over the weekend.

It looks amazing, and we were all chatting about it on a group text. And then my older sister in this thread said, “That sounds fun. Is it dark enough to sleep there?”

Notice what just happened. The “pitch” is a girls’ weekend at the fire tower in Montana. And one of the potential “clients” on this retreat—my older sister–is having some fear. What is her fear? It’s front and center in her question. She’s worried it won’t be dark enough to sleep there.

In other words, she’s concerned that moving forward on the girls’ weekend is going to represent a change in circumstance that she will experience as unpleasant—i.e. that she won’t be able to sleep, and that she will experience negative emotions as a result.

This, my friends, is an objection. It comes from beta energy, or in other words, an emotional state that is circumstance dependent. So here’s something for entrepreneurs to consider very carefully. Unless you’re giving off a fear-based smell that your audience is picking up on, every objection that you ever get in your business is grounded in their own beta-based fear.

So how do you alleviate this kind of fear? All beta-based fear is based on a story. Specifically, the story that when circumstances change, I’m going to be uncomfortable and I’m not going to like it.

So how did my younger sister handle this? She helped my older sister write a new story. She told her, “At night, it’s pitch black. It’s in the middle of Montana. When the sun comes up, it’s light, but there are blinds on the windows, and you can wear a sleep mask if you need one.”

Then my older sister replied back, “Okay, sounds good.”

And with this, we are “in” for the weekend. With these comments, my younger sister “converted” my older sister, from a “prospect” on the girls’ retreat, who didn’t know if she would go or not, to a “client” of the girls’ retreat, who is going, and excited to go.

Why did this work? Because my younger sister offered some words to my older sister that helped my older sister write a new story about the weekend, the sleep she was going to get, and how she was going to feel during the weekend.

This, my friends, is the skill of causal coaching. Causal coaching is the art and science of offering new thoughts to someone who is afraid and stuck. These new thoughts help them write a new story—a story of success rather than of feeling stuck—so that they are no longer afraid. When you do this in your attracting and converting phases of your business, then folks can grab on to what you’re offering and get what they want. Causal coaching doesn’t just help you attract and convert, though. This is a skill you should use in every function of your business—attraction, conversion, delivery, and collection. At each stage of the game, your audience is going to have fear-producing stories in their heads, and if you’re doing the skill of coaching well, you’re going to be helping them out of their fear so they can grab onto the hand that you extend to them, and stay with you at every step of the journey so they can get their happy ending.

So this is an example of using causal coaching to help your audience out of fear.

So now let’s bring things back to our listener question. The listener is a weight loss coach who’s wanting to know how to help her audience out of fear. It’s exactly the same process. To be effective with your marketing message, the most important thing you need to know is that your audience is telling themselves an untrue story about the happy ending—weight loss–that you offer. They are telling themselves that it’s not available to them. They are telling themselves it is going to be too scary. That it’s going to be too difficult. That it’s not going to be worth it. That the results won’t last. And your job as an effective marketer of your business is to have a conversation with them, through your marketing message, where you help them pop all those obstacles like the soap bubbles that they are.

And here’s another thing to think about. Consider how my younger sister could have handled these objections. As a participant in this exchange, it would have been very easy for my younger sister to think, “What’s her problem?!? Why is she asking these questions? Is she trying to get reassurance that this retreat is guaranteed in every way? Is she going to want a refund?” It would have been very easy to think, “OMG. I don’t want people on this retreat who need perfect darkness to sleep. Why am I not attracting the right kinds of sisters to the retreat?” It would have been very easy to think, “Great. If I tell her it’s going to be dark and it isn’t dark enough, then it’s going to be my fault if it isn’t. If she can’t sleep, I’ll get blamed.”

These are sort of ridiculous questions to think about a girls’ weekend, but I’m flagging them here because this is the exact kind of thing that we think about in business. All. The. Time. This is the real reason that we hate objections. It’s not because objections are inherently objectionable. It’s because we’re in the beta state ourselves, and we perceive that the objections hint at a future of circumstances that we think are going to change our emotional state. The client will be unhappy. The client will want a refund. The client will blame us. And if these things arise, then we’ll feel bad. And we don’t want to feel bad, so we deflect the objections. We don’t feel comfortable coaching our clients on them. Because giving the clients reassurance means that we’re putting ourselves in line for responsibility, and if we’re responsible for an outcome that doesn’t happen, we’re afraid that we’re going to feel bad. That’s how those dominos fall down, and it all starts because we’re in the beta state of worrying about that we’re going to feel bad if the circumstance is not to our liking.

What you need her is the skill of high-profit thinking. High profit thinking renders all of these “worried about the future” questions irrelevant. Because with the skill of high-profit thinking, you no matter what comes up at the retreat, it won’t change your emotional state. With the skill of high-profit thinking, you don’t get into any of this. You just think to yourself, “Oh. A potential customer—in the case of my sister, a retreat attendee–is stuck in a story. I will help her out of it.”

This is how the skills build on each other. With high-profit thinking, you are in the alpha state. Your emotional state is driven by you and what you know will be an effective emotion to succeed, rather than by what’s happening outside of you. When you are in the alpha state, you are able to do the next skill—the skill of coaching—to help your audience into the alpha state as well.

So in no uncertain terms, the way you help your audience out of fear so they can hire you and avail themselves of the solution that you offer is to use the skills of high-profit thinking to get yourself into the alpha state, where your feelings are determined by you, not your circumstance. And then, once you’re in that state, you use the skill of coaching to constantly offer new thoughts for your audience to think that pop the old, obstacle thoughts like soap bubbles. That help them into the alpha state so they don’t fear future circumstances and feeling bad about them. When you help them alleviate the fear that arises when they think about future circumstances and how they might feel, they feel better now, and they think they’ll feel better about how to, they are then able to grab onto the hand that you’re offering and get on the road to the happy ending, with you as their guide.

So that is the answer to the listener’s first question. I was so excited to get a listener question. Yay for that!

By the way, if you’d like to submit a question to be answered on the podcast, just go to my website kellyhollingsworth.com/podcast. You will see all the episodes there—each episode has its own page, complete with transcript–and you can post a question in the comment section at the bottom of the page for any episode. If your question is about a particular episode, you can comment on the page for that episode. Or you can post your question in the comment for the most recent episode. Whatever is easier for you. It doesn’t matter. After you post, listen for your answer. I will endeavor to answer all questions on the podcast, until the volume gets to be more than I can handle. At that point, I’m going to have to be selective, but we’re in the early days of the show right now, so if you have a question, now is definitely the best time to ask it. Because a) you’re more likely to get an answer quickly, and b) why would you ever wait to get your questions answered to make more money? The time to make more money is NOW. It’s always now. So if you have a question, get on with the asking! www.kellyhollingsworth.com/podcast.

 

And while you’re on the website, book a call to talk to me about how you can make more money. And with that, we’re going to close for today, my friends. Thanks for being here, and I’ll talk to you next time.