Hey guys, welcome back to the Conscious Coach Podcast. Today we're talking about having fun along the way. And, as I prepared for this episode, I got to reflect a lot on where I used to be and where I'm at now. And I think it'll be fun to kind of share some stories, cause one of the things I'm going to talk about is the importance of enjoying the journey, which is a cliche, but it's still true.
I guess my transformation has been and where I'm at in my business now versus what I felt like was necessary in the beginning, and the repercussions of not having fun or at least not prioritizing joy along the way or having fun along the way. When I first started my business, I was so, I guess, enchanted by online business that every waking minute that I didn't have my babies, I was working.
So I would stay up late, I would wake up early. I would fit it in during nap time. I loved it. And it felt exhilarating. And many of you have probably experienced that when you've like first found coaching or first found online business as an opportunity for you.
And I was definitely one of those people, for sure. And I was originally, I would say part of like hustle culture, I guess, where it was like, you got to work hard, you got to push, you got to grind. And I think there's a lot of value in working hard. And so one of the things I wanted to say right off the bat, this isn't about not working hard.
I do work hard. I think it feels good to work hard. I think it feels good to put in effort and dedication. I really resonate with the word devotion. I feel very devoted to my business, to the vision that I have, to the success that I want to continue to create, and to like personal things that matter to me. I would call them meaningful milestones, right?
The meaningful milestones to me. The message that I want to share today is not in contrast to that. Doesn't mean that you don't work hard, but I think there's this thing that happens and I know it happened to me where my business became all consuming. Like I mentioned, I filled my free time with studying, with learning, with podcasts, about business, and mindset, and personal development.
And I still listen to personal development. I still take courses and I still do it, but I think what the difference was for me is when I really prioritized feeling good along the way. And I'm going to reference that as like a few different ways, either having fun along the way, having joy along the way, feeling good along the way.
Because one of the things that has changed my life the most is really embodying the concept thats, it's good to feel good. And I think that that's missed sometimes for entrepreneurs where it's like you have to hustle and grind and struggle. That is definitely a common belief that it takes a lot of struggle to have success.
And I don't want you to hear that and think if you're struggling, you're doing something wrong. That is not what I'm saying at all. I've definitely experienced the struggle. I've definitely experienced low lows, and frustrations, and feeling like I wasn't good enough, and feeling like I was doing something wrong.
But what I've learned is there is an alternative way to building, and that's what I want to be an advocate for, not because I want to make you wrong if you do struggle. I kind of want to walk you through how I've embodied more joy and fun so that I don't feel like business is a struggle. And one of the things that I also wanted to mention is this way of thinking happened before my business really took off.
So it might be easy to think, well, Amber, your business took off, so like, of course you don't have a struggle anymore. I see where that line of thinking comes from, and I feel like I tapped into this mindset of success before my business took off. And that was a gift, I think that I tapped into based on finding teachers that resonated with me more than the mainstream, work hard, massive action teachers.
And what's interesting is that here's the paradox, like I think of Tony Robbins as one of the major teachers of that massive action paradigm, and I still love Tony Robbins. And I don't necessarily subscribe to like massive action in the way that it's like relentless, and obsessive, and consuming. Because one of the principles that I teach and stand for, and if you've been a long time listener of the podcast, you've heard me talk about the idea of holistic success, where I don't just want success in one area of my life.
I want success in a lot of different areas of my life happening at the same time. And joy is one of those things like quality of life is a huge important thing for me and for many of my clients. It's not just making money. It's like do you like your life? And do you make the money that you want?
Like I think having both and having all is top of mind for me. It's what I like to help my clients with. Because one of the misaligned ideas or the thought error is the end that justifies the means. And you've probably heard that in different contexts. Where it's like well, I'm doing this so that I can get to where I want to go.
And I remember telling myself this, you know, I remember distinctly one night working at my kitchen table. My babies are asleep. My husband was asleep. It was like midnight or 1:00 AM and I was trying to get my freaking website, 'cause I did all my website by myself, and WordPress, and all these things that I was trying to learn at the time. I was exhausted.
I was miserable. I was frustrated. And I remember having this thought like, this is just the price I have to pay. And what's interesting is that it's like a really common way of thinking about it, right? Like the price I have to pay to achieve X is suffering and misery because that's the common story.
And I genuinely believed it until I started reading different kinds of books. And I can't remember what the first book I read was that I was like oh, there's like a totally different way of thinking about success. And I decided that I was going to find a way to genuinely enjoy the building process and not just the end result.
And it changed my life. And that's really what I teach on this podcast is how to enjoy what you do and enjoy the fruits of your labor, right? Like where you enjoy the actual building of the business. And you enjoy making money, and having success, and having opportunities come to you, and all the things that we want.
Because that was always my intention. When I found out about the life coaching industry and like, even just the online business industry, I was hooked because I didn't know that's what I wanted when I was a younger girl. I wanted to be a therapist, right? Like that's what I want to do in high school. It's what I went to college for. That's what I started my master's degree for.
Be thinking because I wanted to work part time as a therapist, not knowing that coaching was a possibility. And so when I found out that it was a possibility, I was like hooked. I was like, yes, this is definitely for me. But what's interesting about this opportunity is that the opportunity is there to do things very differently than corporate world, very differently than traditional education models, very different than traditional jobs, very different than traditional success.
I remember high school, it was like, you go to college, you get a degree, you get a job, like you get married, you have babies, like you live in the suburbs, like you've made it.
And that was a very mainstream understanding of success. And then in the coaching industry, like I started to see people that were like retiring their husbands and making millions of dollars and working part time. And it's just like a very different way of thinking about life and work and success.
And it's a whole new paradigm, right? So this is really where when you change the way you think about things, the things that you experience begin to change. And this is the same principle that I'm going to try to really sell you on, which is have more fun, have more joy, really love your life, even if you're not reaching your goals yet.
Because one of the things that I started to see, especially when I made the transition from life coaching into more of like business coaching or money coaching. And what I do now, like business mentorship and more high level mindset work. I noticed that my clients were like postponing their happiness because they weren't where they wanted to be in business.
And I remember that is not how I experienced my business. I didn't feel like I was waiting to be happy until I achieved some result. I felt really happy now. And this is where I think my study of more spiritual principles, I started studying like Eckhart Tolle and David Hawkins book, like Letting Go or Byron Katie, Loving What Is, like a different way of understanding success while studying business success and money success. And the combination really is at the heart of The Conscious Coach podcast, which is what I teach here, where you're integrating both.
And so you feel aligned, you feel alive, you feel connected, you feel one. And you're taking action and thinking thoughts on purpose in a way that are creative so that you create money and success. I made a post on Instagram, about quiet wealth. And I think that it's relevant to what we're going to talk about today. I said, quiet wealth, waking up happy, feeling grateful for what you have, loving what you do for a living, feeling appreciation for a slow morning, not feeling like you have to do anything when your business feels like art.
Knowing you're helping others. Hearing, Mommy, I love you. The loving glance your partner gives you when everything feels right in your life. Knowing that you're loved. Knowing how to love others. Feeling like your work matters. Making money in a way that aligns with your soul. Knowing there's nothing to fix, but loving the process of expansion and becoming.
To me, that's quiet wealth, and that's what I think my intention is for this episode. It's called having fun along the way, but it really is about embodying this quiet wealth in your life and business. And that goes so far beyond like how much you made year to date, and how much your monthly revenue is, and you know what your profitability is.
And while that's part of the equation, the equation is a lot bigger. And so I just wanted to kind of talk about how I'm experiencing that now because I do make multiple six figures. I work 20 hours a week. I play with my kids. I take them to school. I'm very present in my home. Me and my husband have an amazing marriage. We have great communication. We spend quality time together. Like the girls always joke, like you guys are in love and we're like, yeah, we are. And we are. And that's not an accident, like all of these things are super intentional on my part. I feel spiritually connected.
I feel like I have great relationships with my clients. I love what I do. I feel like I embody this quiet wealth and part of my journey has been adding fun and adding joy along the way increasing doses. I don't get all of my joy from my business because that was something that I struggled with early on. It's like almost all of my joy is coming from like making money.
And I was like so enchanted by the idea and this was like when I wasn't even making that much money, but like every sale, every time I signed a client was like a high. And I got quickly addicted to making more and more and more and more. And it felt like a treadmill that could never end.
And we see this play out in our industry for sure. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to make more money. I also want to make more money, but I realized that the way I was approaching it, the way that I was thinking about it was not helpful for me. Because it became something that like, we talked about this last week, about addictions versus preferences.
It became an addiction, like making money became an addiction. And I lost myself in that for a little bit. And maybe maybe you understand what I'm talking about and maybe not. And you can toss this. But for me, it was like this, especially in the coaching industry for people who are, you know, wanting to make money and grow abundance.
It's like this thing that we feel like we have to always be making more money. We have to be growing our business and there's no room for plateaus. There's no rooms for like backslides. There's this pressure that kind of grows, especially if you accidentally compare yourself to other people.
I know for me, I have to be really mindful. I always say, keep your blinders on because it can be easy to compare to other people and think you're doing something wrong or think you're missing out or think something's like done, like you've messed up somehow. And that's not true. And I think having fun along the way is what kind of mitigates the feeling like you need to always create more.
And so one of the things that I'm going to share in this podcast that I want you to consider is where are you creating joy for yourself? For me, when I realized that my business was only one source, but like I wanted lots of sources of joy. I started playing basketball.
I started reading fantasy again, which I hadn't done in years because it was like all personal development, all business development because that's what I was addicted to. And now I think when you experience it more holistically, there's lots of different places to have success. Some of you are being like, duh, Amber, like I know that.
And some of you are going to resonate with the feeling of being addicted to always growing or addicted to the personal growth, business growth, pursuing more, fixing your mindset, things like that, and this podcast is for you. Because I think one of the things that I was afraid of, is if I spent time doing things that I love, if I spent time away from nurturing my business or thinking about my business, I was going to mess it up somehow, or like I was missing an opportunity.
And I first heard this idea from Russell Brunson who says entrepreneurs can accidentally attach an ROI to everything. And so how this looked for me was like, well, I could go play basketball as an example.
This actually just happened. I caught my old way of thinking. It was like, well they're playing on Friday morning. If I go play basketball for two hours, like what could I have gotten done in those two hours that would create revenue for me? Like that was kind of how my mind initially, like it was like an old pattern and I noticed that I was like, oh, that's an old way of thinking.
But that's how my brain, especially like in the beginning of my business, it was like, everything has an ROI in terms of like finances, right? Like money, how much money I'm going to make, not just the ROI of the quality of my life. And that's I think my biggest message today is ROI goes way beyond how much money is in your bank account.
ROI, I think the most important one is quality of life because quality of life encompasses how much money you make, but it also encompasses your relationships, your relationship with yourself, your health, your mental health, the fun you have, the spiritual connection that you have, the free time you have, because one of the things that I became very aware of is it's not that I didn't want to work.
I wanted to have the freedom to choose to work if I wanted to, but also the freedom to choose not to. That was something that was always very compelling to me about being an entrepreneur. That's a form of wealth. Money is a form of wealth, but also time freedom, I think is why we want money, right?
We want to be able to choose what we want to do. And so the biggest time collapsing thing I've done. I really like the word time collapse because it was like really jumping into my future self and bringing future self into the present, was recognizing what I really wanted was the feeling of like expansion and freedom. The freedom to pick up my daughter from school if I want to. And I do. I'm almost there every single day picking them up. And I have lots of weird times cause I have kids that go to school at different times during the day, you know, life of a busy mom. And that was important to me. But every time I have a moment where it's like, I don't have to work, what would I love to do?
I relish in that. I savor that feeling of freedom because this is what I wanted when I started my business. And for many of you, I've coached so many people where they're so caught up on the money that they're not making, they're missing places where they already are experiencing abundance, like time abundance.
Where they get the freedom to do whatever they want, and they're looking at where they don't have clients or whether or not, you know, making sales or their offers aren't landing and missing the time abundance that they have. And so working on both, recognizing both, being grateful for what is, while you create what's next is like the pattern that I've done.
I really feel like I've created miracles from that mindset of like being grateful for what is, creating what I want and then using, you know, setbacks or things that don't go as planned as more context and more clarity about what I do want and lining up my thoughts, my beliefs, my words, my actions, with the things that I do want. And that has been a game. Like it really feels fun to do that work. It doesn't feel like I'm trying to fix something. It doesn't feel like I'm trying to solve for something. It feels like I'm creating. It feels like art. And that's what I want for all of you. And so one of the things that we've talked about a lot is like the gratitude piece, looking for places in your life.
And it might feel cheesy at the beginning, but you stick with it that you already are grateful for, that you already have evidence like this is what I want. I just want more of this. And for some of you it's gonna be time freedom, for some of you It's gonna be like being home with your babies or your kids, for some of you it's gonna be the relationship that you're in, and for some of you it's gonna be parts of your business already feel like they're really working and that feels really good and you just want more of that. Because to me, building from that place feels so different than trying to overcome where you are to get where you want to be, which is very much what people think that they have to do, right? I have to overcome where I am to get to where I want to go instead of recognizing this is just like, I really like Simon Sinek has this idea of infinite games.
Business is an infinite game because the whole point of business is to stay in business. Like you just want to keep doing it. And I think for me finding a business model, like truly where I'm at right now, I just want more of what I already have. I have a passive income product. That's the Conscious Coach Academy, which you can check out by the way.
If you're not in my world, that's a really great place to get started. And then I have the Matrix, which is like my 12 month group coaching program and I have one on one clients right now. And it feels great. I don't really want anything to change necessarily yet. And I'm not opposed to it changing in the future, but like, I love my business model.
I love how I work with people. I love my schedule. I love being able to take time off. I love being able to support people. I love being able to make the money that I make in the timeframe that I want to make it. And I think that is a luxury given to coaches that we often miss. Where it's like, if you get to work from home and cancel calls when you're sick or go on vacation without needing to rehearse time off, that's a luxury that many people in the world don't have. And so one of the phrases that you've heard me say over and over again in this podcast is to be in the miracle. And when we remind ourselves to be in the miracle of what we get to do as work at home people. Even if you have a corporate job, like really being in the miracle of what you want to do as a coach, as you're building your secondary business and income, the gratitude that you'll feel will help you achieve what I mentioned was holistic success.
When I feel grateful for my business, I feel a sense of peace and presence when I am like playing on the floor with my kids or when I'm watching them play sports or when we're on a walk or when I'm watching a show with Wesley at night. Like there's so many different ways that it shows up.
It's not just my business when I'm grateful for my business and I relax into the success that I feel across the board, I have more fun, I do things differently, I'm not in this frantic energy of trying to fix my business. It's an expansion. It feels different than trying to fix something. And so my encouragement for you is how can you have more fun? How can you enjoy your business more?
Like I said, there's that common thread of like the end justifies the means. And I'm like no, no, no. What's so cool about having a coaching business is that the means and the ends can both be enjoyable and amazing. The way you make money can feel just as good as actually making the money. Coaching can be equally enjoyable as getting paid for coaching. That's why I love what I do. And I'm sure many of you will relate to that. It's not just like the financial freedom. It's also the quality of life it gives you because it fills your life with meaning and purpose.
And so when I think about, I guess to sum this episode up is like having fun along the way means that you're making the profit you want to make, but you're living a purposeful and peaceful life too, where it's not just, you know, success at all costs. That just doesn't resonate for me. If you're listening to a podcast like this, I don't think it resonates for you either. And so if you've been stuck in the addiction of more money equals more success, I want to invite you to step out of that paradigm and acknowledges a lot of different ways of thinking about success.
One of the things that I think about all the time is that sometimes coaches are weird, right? Where it's like, if you haven't made seven figures, you're not successful, that doesn't resonate. Can you make seven figures? Yes. Eight figures. Yes. Are there people that do? Yes.
But what would be sad and a mistake I think would be making what you've done up to this point wrong or not enough because you haven't hit some milestone that someone else has instead of really recognizing all the things that are great in your life, all the things that are working, all the things that are magical, all the things that you used to pray for that are happening now in your life and business. Like that's the miracle. There's a great book called The Gap and The Gain, which is basically this concept where you're really looking at the gain in your life and business.
You're looking for the things that are working and celebrating it. You're celebrating where you are today. Here's an exercise for you. Compare where you are today to where you were last year. Compare where you are today to five years ago. And ask yourself to witness yourself and all the growth and all the decisions and all the things that you've become because of your dedication and devotion to doing the work.
And give yourself grace to enjoy other parts of your life. Another thing I'll say before I close, I have this conversation a lot, especially with clients who, if you're into human designer, like manifesting generators or generators is like, we like to be busy. Like we like to work.
And even if you're not a mani gen or anything, I've had projector clients who feel this way too, where it's like, I like working, but I want the choice, right? I want the freedom to choose. That feeling of freedom is what entrepreneurship is all about. And so what's interesting is, you can be upset that you're not making the money? For sure. It's not that I don't want you to be upset. Like, if you're upset about that you have more, you want to do, like I understand. I would turn that into a desire. You have a desire for more money, but look at your life and all the things, all the abundant opportunities you have right now.
Usually that's a form in relationships, time freedom, purpose, fulfillment. It goes beyond financial success. And I think having more fun, infusing more fun and presence, just helps the game feel better. And then, ironically, that's when it works better too. When you're having fun, when you're loving what you do, not just in business, when you're having fun in your life, when you're fulfilled by the things that you're studying and the concepts that you're applying, when you're fulfilled by conversations that you have, when you're fulfilled by your business model that you've chosen on purpose, you win.
That's the secret. Because what we all want at the end of the day is higher quality of life. Money is one aspect of that, but there are so many other things that contribute to that. And I think that that's a really powerful understanding of what we do, especially as life coaches. It's the quality of life that we're after. It's the feeling that we have every day. That's inner work.
And so if you've been addicted to success, meaning more money, I want to invite you to think about it differently. And if you think I'm full of crap, I respect that too, but I just wanted you to try it on and see what you think. What is holistic success mean to you?
How can you have more fun? How can you prioritize fulfillment as much as you do making money and watch your quality of life change. Okay. Be in the miracle and enjoy. All right. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.
