Archives for March 2016

4 Questions to Liberate Your Fear of Credit and Debt

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Recently, I shared 5 main archetypes of fear around credit and debt.

Which one or combination of these do you find yourself most aligned with?

Whichever it is, you can likely feel it is this thread of fear that is keeping you from accessing all of the resources you need to create the life you are meant to live.

Your fear is rational. It is pointing to the truth that you have not been properly educated about how to best use the resources you do have available to you.

We have made mistakes. We have created extraordinary stress in our lives, born from the idea of not-enoughness.

We have decided that our failures define us and we must either be punished for them (if we have made poor choices in the past) or that we must not make them in the first place (if we have avoided loss up until now).

But there is a greater truth here and your feelings about credit and debt can be a beautiful pointer to your next stage of awakening.

This is why Eyes Wide Open exists; to help you see where how you show up in life and business is your path to awakening.

If you are afraid to access credit and debt, whether due to past mistakes, lack of experience or just general fear of doing it wrong, and…

you DO have dreams that would express in the world, if you had access to capital….

Your next step is to come to a deeper level of awareness so you can learn, grow and evolve.

Awareness begins with an understanding of where you are compromising your life for and because of money.

1. Ask yourself: where have you and do you continue to make choices that are guided by the belief (real or false) of not having enough?

The second step is to dive deep into clarity around how you would live, work and play if money was available as easily as knowing what you desired and it was the fuel for those desires, not the compass telling you where you can and cannot go.

2. Ask yourself: if I had [insert amount of money that represents freedom to you], how would I use it to create more good in my life and the world?

The third step is to mine the gifts of your mistakes (or your fear of making a mistake in the future) and remember that we learn through making mistakes.

Mistakes are our greatest teachers, when we open to the impact of these mistakes, welcome the pain of having made them and appreciate the learning that results.

When we contract in shame or self-punishment was a result of our mistakes, we miss the opportunity to learn, grow and evolve through them.

3. Ask yourself: what have I learned from the mistakes I have made or witnessed when it comes to credit and debt? 

The final step in the process of using credit and debt to fuel your own awakening, so you are no longer a slave to the mid-guided idea of not enough, is to consider what would have to be true for you to confidently access all the resources you need to live the life you are truly meant to live.

4. Ask yourself: What must I do next to trust myself to use my resources in the highest and best way possible?

When you complete this process, you may discover that your next step is to clarify: What is the life you truly want? What do you truly need to have that life? What are the resources you already have? With that clarity you can determine whether using credit and debt makes sense for you.

Maybe you will even discover that your next step is to learn more about how to access and use credit and debt wisely.

Perhaps you will begin to see that it's time to awaken yourself from the slumber that keeps so many stuck as slaves to a system, born not from any external perpetrator but the perpetration we impose on ourselves by not facing our fear and moving through it.

Wherever you are on the path, I welcome you. I invite you to the next stage of your awakening. I offer my hand in service to you  to use these oh so practical areas of life, money, work, credit and debt to be the foundational work of your next level of spiritual awakening.

I'll be hosting a free class soon to support you here. Dates are being chosen now.

I'm curious what a class that helps you face and move through your fears around credit and debt so you can access everything you need to have the life you want would be worth to you.

Send me a reply (alexis@eyeswideopenlife.com) and let me know. I am just in the process of designing and pricing the class and I want it to be accessible, yet at the same time priced high enough for it to be a motivational stretch. 

Yours in love,
Ali

Your Rational Fear About Debt and Credit, and How It Can Liberate You Now

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Since my recent message about the bad advice about credit and debt that is keeping you stuck and my request for your stories, I am seeing some common themes emerge.

You are afraid to use credit and debt. You don't trust yourself to use it wisely. And you don't trust others to make good choices with it.

This fear causes contraction and, in many cases, is keeping you from accessing the resources you need to live the life you are truly here to live.

There are 5 main fear archetypes I am seeing.

1. You have made poor choices with money, specifically the use of credit, in the past and you are sure that you will do it again;

2. You have protected your credit score for years and you are afraid that if you do use credit and debt, you'll make poor choices that put this sign of your “goodness” at risk.

3. I'm also seeing some who have not even dared get near it, don't even know if they have a credit score and have decided that the financial system generally is an evil best avoided.

4. On the flip side, and the least vocal, are those who have leveraged credit and debt successfully to build companies and lives, but may secretly feel some shame that they couldn't do it without taking on debt.

5. Last, and in the smallest group, are those who know they want to use credit and debt wisely, but don't even know where to begin.

The rational fear underlying all of these is that you want to make sure you do it right. This is your business. Your life. Your and your family's well being.

That's exactly why it's time to open your eyes, get educated about the effective and responsible use of debt, and make the best choice for you.

Which of these 5 archetype groups do you find yourself in?

Send me an e-mail (alexis@eyeswideopenlife.com) and let me know. And if you have not already told me your credit and debt story and what you would do with $50k loaned to you at zero percent interest for a year, please share that in your reply too.

I'll be back with 4 questions that will liberate you from your fear around credit and debt and guide you to your next steps.

With love and beyond,

Ali

The Bad Advice About Credit That’s Kept You Stuck

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I'm a little riled up as I write this.

I'm part of a private Facebook group and someone posted a request for guidance about taking out a business loan to support the next evolution of her business.

The immediate response she got back from 4 people was don't take out loans for your business, don't go into debt, and no debt = freedom.

This is the exact thinking that keeps so many people, maybe you, stuck in work they don't love, chasing false financial freedom and wondering why they don't have the lives they want.

Debt is not the source of your slavery.

Credit is a gift.

Used wisely, it can and will finance your learning, growth and evolution. And it can support you to create far more in the world than you can without resources.

In fact, part of the reason most of our country's wealth is captured and held by the 1% while the rest get poorer and poorer is because we've been conditioned into focusing on saving instead of on leveraging debt and other resources to invest in ourselves and creating more wisely.

If you would love support with accessing credit and using it wisely, hit reply and let us know. We're currently planning our next training on accessing and using credit with joy and we would love to know your biggest questions about this topic.

To your eyes wide open life,

Ali

PS — Tell me your story of using credit and being in debt by hitting reply so I can help you take your next steps beyond fear and conditioning. Better yet, give this one some thought and then tell me what came through: if you had access to $50,000 of credit at 0% for a year, how would you use it? What would you invest in? What would you create?

Package Your Services: You are priceless

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Hey y'all,

I just got off a training with my members on Pricing and Packaging your services.

We're creating ease of enrollment and wanted to offer you some of the juicy parts. Why? Because it is the #1 thing I repeatedly see most people in service-based businesses are missing the boat on and was the 1st step toward building my professional practice into a million dollar business.

#1. Be really clear about who you serve. Most business owners start off in business trying to serve way too big of an audience.

My law practice took off big time when I narrowed my focus to serving families with young children and was able to become the go to lawyer in my community by educating families with young children in a way no other lawyers were doing at that time. I later expanded to serving business owners with young children at home, when I began offering legal services for business.

Up until I narrowed my focus, I struggled to get clients in the door and when I did, they often had to think about whether to hire me or were shopping around. Once I narrowed my focus and designed my service to meet their needs, I became unshoppable.

 

#2. Drop the free initial consultation and instead create a first meeting that provides tremendous value, has a name, and a specific purpose or outcome.

No one really values a free initial consultation and it's most often seen as a sales meeting in which people really just want to know how much you charge so they can shop you.

When you shift away from the free initial consult and instead create a meeting that has a name, a purpose, and a value, your ideal clients want it, value it and whether they hire you or not, will tell all their friends and family about you.

Plus, you're delivering value right from the start and when this meeting is done well and you prepare your prospects for it well, they aren't focused on price, they are focused on the outcome of the meeting.

Make this meeting so awesome that you could charge for it and people would be happy to pay, but see below for how to use it in your marketing by offering it for free or discounted.

 

#3. Use your marketing to educate, educate, educate and give people an easy way to get your now named and highly valuable initial meeting for free or at a significant discount.

For example, if I served folks one-to-one, I would offer a pricing and packaging strategy session or Money Map Life and Income Planning Session at the end of this message, either at a discount or free, depending on how many new clients I wanted and where I was in my practice.

#4. Make a list of all the services you can possibly provide to your ideal clients by focusing on the problems they solve using outcome based language.

I see too many people trying to offer their services in terms of time or number of sessions (3-hours or 4 sessions) rather than in terms of the outcome provided.

Your pricing should be based on the value of the outcome you provide to the people you serve, not at all based on the number of hours or sessions it takes to get there.

#5. Base your fees (at least in the beginning) on the LEAST you can charge, rather than buying into some idea of charging what you are worth.

You are priceless.

You couldn't possibly charge what you are worth, even if you tried. What you can do though is charge what you need so you aren't sacrificing your life in service to your work AND once you've got confidence with your enrollment structure (which will happen quickly if you follow my guidance here) and your practice is full or close to full, you can increase your package fees based on the true value you are providing to the people you serve.

In order to ensure that you are not under-charging for your services while at the same time knowing the least you can charge, make sure you understand your Money Map Numbers at five levels — min to be happy, min to be of service, preferred, no limits, and now — so you know what you are working towards.

These numbers are calculated based on the life you want to have, what it will cost to have that life at your next number, the amount of time you have to earn in exchange for your services — which is less than you probably think given all the other things you need to do in your business.

If you found this helpful, check out our Money Map Life Planning Series. You can get it here.

Does your business need a LIFT?

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Today's love letter is all business.

March 15 is the deadline for you to elect S-Corporation status for 2016 for your LLC or Corporation.

This is an important determination because it allows you to pay yourself a salary via payroll (thereby giving you a W-2 as if you worked for a company) and to only pay self employment taxes on the part of your income that is your salary.

If you have an LLC and do not elect S-Corporation status, you pay self-employment taxes on all of your income!

This could add up to a several thousand dollar difference for you come tax time next year.

If you need support with getting your legal, insurance, financial and tax systems set up, you may want to consider our LIFT Foundation System + Toolkit.

The LIFT Foundation System covers issues like:

  • How to incorporate your business
  • How to maintain your business entity
  • How to protect your intellectual property
  • How to set up your team members properly
  • How to get legal agreements in place
  • What types of insurance you need
  • How to set up your financial systems
  • How to save loads of money on your taxes

You can read about the full system here.

Your investment in the system gets you the education + the agreements + the implementation maps you need to get your legal, insurance, financial and tax systems in place and will easily save you tens of thousands of dollars on taxes, ensuring you don't get sued, and that your business is LIFTed with the foundation you need for success.

Whether you get the LIFT System or not, please make sure you've got the right legal entity in place to protect your personal assets and ensure you don't overpay on your taxes.

The LIFT System comes with 60 days of Eyes Wide Open membership AND if you are one of the next 5 people to enroll and pay in full in either the digital OR deluxe versions before March 12 (to give you time to make the deadline to file for your S-Election), I'm going to get on the phone with you personally to answer your questions about legal, insurance financial and tax systems in your business.

If you have any questions about whether this System is the next best step for your business, hit reply and let us know. We are always here to support you in making Eyes Wide Open investments in your next evolution.

Love beyond,

Ali

PS — having the wrong tax setup in my business cost me over $100,000 back in 2006. I created the LIFT Foundation System so this wouldn't have to happen to anyone else. You can hear that story plus several more in my presentation here + get a coupon code for an immediate $500 discount on the LIFT Foundation System:

http://www.myliftfoundation.com

The Spinning, Worrying Mind + Why This May Help You

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One of the things I love about Facebook is that it reminds us about memories from prior years. I tend to live so much in the moment these days that I can forget how far I've come, how much things have shifted.

This time last year I was in the midst one of the most challenging times of my life, by far.

I was cleaning up a huge business mess after my former partners turned out not to be the women I thought they were. My daughter was deep in the midst of the hardest part of her teenage years, by far. And, I was beginning to recognize that the man I had hired as CEO of my lawyer training company wasn't a strong long-term fit and I'd likely have to step back in as CEO, which I have since done.

Facebook sent me this memory, which reminded me of all of it and how much things can shift in one year.

This year, I'm back in Costa Rica, CEO of both companies, and my relationship with Kaia has completely transformed.

The Spinning, Worrying Mind + Why This May Help You

While in Costa Rica for Envision last year (with my then boyfriend Michael, my videographer Robert and Kaia) I made a last minute decision to send Kaia back without us and to stay on for an additional week and go to the Roots Gathering in Punta Mona.

If I had really known what was going on with her at the time, I would not have sent her back. But I didn't. I thought we were on an upswing in our relationship, and we were. What I didn't know is that it would have to get worse, much worse, before it got even better.

That's often the case, and if you are in the midst of a tough time, I encourage you to know and understand that. Just keep showing up, moving forward, and taking care of yourself.

I often remind myself of this quote by John Lennon:

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”

I just read the book The Surrender Experiment and it once again reminded me of this truth. If you haven't read it, it's a game-changer. Check it out.

So, what does all this have to do with Water + Earth, Integrity and Authenticity?

Well, here I am back in Costa Rica again. This time, as I mentioned in the Love Letter I sent last week, I sent back the guys who traveled with us this year (my new guy friend, Kaia's boyfriend, and my son) and Kaia and I stayed on for retreat.

Yesterday, in the retreat, we explored the elements of Water and Earth.

Here's what I noticed that may be relevant to you and your life and your business.

First of all, so often my mind doesn't want to do the things, but once I do them, my other parts (body, heart and soul) are so happy I did it!

For example, we started the day at the ocean with bodypaints. My mind was judgmental. Didn't want to get painted. Didn't want to go in the water and get my hair wet.

Didn't want to, didn't want to, didn't want to.

But I did it anyway (a huge teaching of the surrender experiment, by the way) and my body, heart and soul were thrilled!

A reminder to not listen so much to my mind, as she is often running old programming that doesn't truly serve. She's great at solving problems, not so great at running my life.

What that means is it's my job to give her the right problems to solve and not listen to the stories she spins thinking she's solving problems that often don't even exist.

It's easier said than done, for sure. But the more I practice, the better I get.

Can you relate?

It's the reason I created the Money Map program. My mind needs me to give her the right questions to ask. For so long, the only question I asked and the main problem my mind focused on was “do I have enough money?” and “how can I get more?”

The wrong questions to ask. My mind would spin for hours upon hours seeking the answers.

I created the Money Map so money would no longer be the compass of my life, and instead become the fuel for my creative dreams. It worked.

Today, my mind no longer spins on money. Not because I have millions in the bank, but because I know where my money is coming from, how I'm using what I have, and because I've given my mind the right questions to ask. That's the power of the Money Map.

Today, I'm able to be in integrity around money and my work in the world, the use of my time, energy and attention, in ways I simply couldn't before.

I couldn't be in integrity around any of that before the Money Map because I didn't actually know what I needed, so I was always focused on getting more. And sacrificing time, energy, attention and even relationships for it.

I thought I needed millions in the bank to be free.

I thought I had to put money first to be responsible.

I thought the ability to earn money was the most important skill to learn.

I did a lot of thinking back then.  My mind constantly spinning, worrying, questioning.

Now, I get to put play at the top of my list and spin poi, instead of my mind.  This picture from Envision captures my very first time spinning lighted poi and I hope to do a lot more of it. It's way more fun than the mind spin.

This was not imaginable 6 years ago. I was chained to work. Play was not at the top of my list. Self care was barely on the map. And relationships definitely took the back seat.So, I'm curious about you …

What does your mind spin on? Where does worry about money fit into the equation? Are you ready to shift from the question of whether you have enough to clarity around how to use the resources you do have to create the life you really want?

I'm curious about you and where you are on this journey. Send me a note at alexis@eyeswideopenlife.com, I read all the responses I get. Knowing you better fuels what I share here; it is the best way to support you in building your life and income awake, aware and on your terms.

Love beyond,

Ali

PS — I have a cool gift for you. My friend Joanna Lindenbaum asked 25 women to contribute their personal rituals for life and business to this guidebook and she's giving it to you free. My ritual is something you can use each time you send an important email and I know it will help you have more of the outcomes you desire. You can get the whole guidebook here.

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