lifestyle design

(WARNING: profanity in first line of post) Do you have any idea what you are getting yourself into?

Faaaaaahhhhhhck.

That’s my general feeling about business right now. And, I put it right up front to weed out those of you who are too sensitive to be part of my Eyes Wide Open community and don’t actually want to hear what’s real.

[If you don’t like it, you can still benefit from my work through people I have trained as Personal Family Lawyers, Family Business Lawyers, Creative Business Lawyers, or Money Map Masters, most of whom would never use a “bad word” right up front in an email like this.]

eing Afraid and Doing it Anyway…Not Anymore

I’m done pussy-footing around trying to make everyone happy.

I’m building businesses to support people who want to live life and do business awake, aware and on their terms, with their eyes wide open.

I’m putting in a HUGE amount of effort to make the work I’ve created accessible to people without requiring the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars of investment I’ve made along the way to learn how to do the things I teach.

I once invested $25,000 for a DAY of coaching with Lisa Sasevich on how to structure my business model.

I once invested $100,000 for a year long mastermind with Ali Brown. Out of that mastermind came my willingness to teach my LIFT System so you can be smart about the legal, insurance, financial and tax parts of your business.

Would I have created that system if I hadn’t made that investment? No.

As I was making these investments, I promised myself I would make my programs accessible to more people than just those who could afford $25,000 and $100,000 investments in their business.

It’s right about now, when I’ve circled back for a 4th time in the life cycle of these businesses to build the next level systems necessary for scale that I begin to wonder — have I chosen the wrong business model?

What the heck have I gotten myself into?

Currently, I sit behind my computer for 12 hours a day writing copy for sales funnels, reviewing opt-in sequences, creating autoresponders, talking to my team members, coaching my team members to make it through the conflicts, firing people, hiring people, writing job descriptions, creating organizational charts.

Training sales teams.

Considering new governance models.

Should we implement holacracy or keep the traditional hierarchy based governance structures in place?

Daily, I wonder if I should just say fuck it and stay a high-end coach, delivering expensive one-to-one services and going seriously deep with private clients.

I know how to do that, and I do it well.

As I am re-building the systems for both companies, I am working with two private clients and woah, the work is deep.

Both of these clients came to me to discover their own foundation of Enough, and who they are and how they be in the world from the spaciousness of Enough. They both happen to be navigating divorce settlements.

In one situation, I am supporting the entire multi-generational family dynamic, working with the young adult children, and the elder parents in addition to my client.

I LOVE the work.

And, I know it’s not yet time for me to do it full time.

I am compelled to build the systems in New Law Business Model and Eyes Wide Open for them to serve at scale.

All the components have been created.

The only thing in the way is my own ability to stay focused, keep my eye on the ultimate vision, and keep saying yes.

The resistance is alive and well.

I want to write my book. I want to post on Facebook. I want to be done with this part already. My mind tells me I should have done this years ago and tries to convince me I won’t be able to do it.

I know it’s a lie.

I know I can.

At least, I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

If I had known what I was getting myself into with the Star Creator Archetype path would I have chosen another way?

I can’t say yet. I’m not at the end. I’ll have to let you know.

For now, I am in it.

I am doing the work that I’ve discovered only I can do.

Each time I have tried to hire this work out to others, an interim CEO in one case, marketing funnel automation specialists twice (to the tune of $40,000), a promised Chief of Staff … what I discovered is that this part requires me.

If you could just hire it out, everyone with money would have successful, sustainable, make a difference businesses.

But it’s not as easy as that.

It requires determination, focus, grit, persistence, willingness, learning, growth, evolution.

I’m in.

And I’m going to do a better job of communicating and sharing from here.

I’ve been hiding out a bit.

Because I wasn’t sure I could keep going and frankly didn’t want to share from my uncertainty.

But when I got this message from Facebook yesterday, from 4 years ago, literally the month before I filed bankruptcy, I remembered ….

I chose this. I want this. I don’t HAVE to do this, I want to do it.

And I can share my uncertainty. It’s okay. Valuable and helpful even because you are probably uncertain about whether you can do it too (whatever your “it” is.)

Where I got trapped back in my last iteration of “success” that ultimately led to my giving it all up was that I stopped sharing vulnerably.

I listened to the voices that said “you can’t do that, you can’t say that, you can’t write that, you’ll hurt the business.”

So I fired everyone, let it all go and traveled around in my RV, lived on the farm, and said whatever I wanted for a couple of years. Remember the Whole Truth Show? I loved that show! I loved speaking my truth.

But I missed the businesses.

I missed knowing that when I am being all of myself, and speaking at events, and writing what’s in my mind and heart and soul and people are inspired that they can easily flow into business structures of support that can help their learning, growth and evolution.

I want the both/and.

I want to be a free spirit with business systems to support my freedom.

Ali and Alexis, integrated.

And to have that, I need to put in the effort and focus to truly build the next level scalable systems that work to support it.

So I am.

What are you building  that’s forcing you to face all of your resistance, all your old patterns, all your places that you just want to play small?

Are you compromising your life just because it seems easier to do that than to stretch?

It’s time to stop doing that. I’m stopping with you.

Love beyond,

Ali

PS — On July 7, I’m hosting my first live training in 6 months, specifically for those of you who want to stop compromising and start building your life and income awake, aware and on your terms — with clarity about what you are doing and what you really want so you can choose the “how” strategically and wisely, instead of just throwing money at problems like I’ve done so many times in the past OR being stuck in your head wondering what your next steps should be. Sign up here.

In the fire + pictures from Costa Rica (including my boyfriend!)

A quick love letter from Costa Rica to share with you some of my experience here in this beautiful place.

First and foremost, for those of you who are most focused on the Eyes Wide Open business teachings, and not so much in the Raw and Real parts of what I share, I’ll warn you now that this love letter is a mix of both.

There’s a little business and a little raw/real happening in this love letter. If you are all business, all the time, you may want to close this one down now and get on to the next. But if you like the raw/real, read on and you’ll get some business goodness as a bonus.

I came down to Costa Rica a week and a day ago with my family, so I could speak at Envision Festival. I haven’t gotten all the pictures uploaded yet, but you can see a few on my private Facebook profile.

And here’s a quickie of the whole family as we were sending Melina, Lotus and the boys back home after Envision. The boys (men really at this point), are my son, Noah, Kaia’s boyfriend, Max, and my boyfriend (yes, I did just say that), Rainbow. Yes, his name is Rainbow.

Kaia and I stayed on for a women’s retreat with Jess Magic and Elena Meta, and in it we are exploring the elements, dance, voice and writing.

Today, the element was Fire. Breath of fire, dance of fire, sweat lodge, fiery food, and a fire ceremony to burn up whatever is ready to be released.

For me, it was the control paradigm and the last vestiges of my need to prove myself.

So, what does all this have to do with building your life and income awake, aware and on your terms?A few things …

#1: Integration of the learnings

In the past, I’ve moved so quickly from one thing to the next that I have not had time to integrate the learnings. Just last month, I went immediately from a private event at Esalen (called Return) to lead my Money Map Masters in a retreat and then immediately after that into a month of intense focus to prepare for me to be out of the office for two weeks.

This time, I decided to stay on here in Costa Rica for an extra week to attend this retreat with Kaia and to integrate the teachings and learnings from my time at Envision.

Taking my whole family to Envision was a big deal. It’s really a working event for me, not just a vacation. I’m there to speak and network, not just to hang out and have fun. And having the kids (particularly my 12-year old who still really needs a lot of me) with me was an added challenge.

But having them with me was also really fun and I had a lot of support from friends, as you can see in the pictures. Plus, I always feel really great when the kids get to hear me speak because I’m teaching some radical money concepts that they aren’t going to get in school or from the media, so I’m glad they are getting it from me and not just by osmosis, but consciously and intentionally.

#2: How to free yourself in your business

I’ll be gone a total of two weeks. Most of it off my computer, other than time to write a couple of emails, do Facebook and chat about a few things with my team via Skype.

A month ago, I was working like crazy. I wasn’t sure how I was going to manage getting out of town, let alone being mostly offline for two weeks.

So I decided to make the investment in hiring someone who could really stand in for me in both businesses and bit the bullet. I brought in Brenda Mathisen (most recently Chief of Staff for one of the PayPal investor/founders), spent a month connecting deeply with her and providing training and then left town so she could take over with minimal interference from me.

This is the counter-intuitive way to free yourself in business. Get the right person or people on board and then leave town. In the past, I thought I needed to hold on and oversee things for way too long. What I realize now is that was disempowering and indicative of my lack of trust.

By leaving town, I showed my team (and Brenda) I trust them and while I know some mistakes will likely be made, I trust them to learn, grow and evolve from those mistakes, which includes figuring out how to fix them when they happen.

Repeatedly, I have seen this with women lawyers in my New Law Business Model coaching program — they get pregnant, and if they coach with me ahead of their maternity leave to hire the right person then hand off systems with trust at the foundation, they leave to have a baby and come back two months later with a practice that is thriving far more than it would have if they had been in the office micro-managing every day.

Try this one yourself, even if you aren’t having a baby. Just plan a vacation and then actually take it. But do remember to hire a great person first.

#3: Death

The last thing I want to mention in this week’s love letter is Death.

Confronting the reality of your mortality will result in you having a better life. It is coming up in my reality frequently and I want you to start to consider how that might be true in your life.

Have you confronted your mortality? If so, have you planned to make life better for your loved ones after you are gone or are you starting doing that now? How is your own life getting better by looking at the reality of your own death?

I know this may not be an easy conversation or consideration for you, but it is an important one so you can make the very best decisions regarding the use of your resources that you possibly can.

If you want any support with that, please send me a message at [email protected] and let me know. It’s something I’m being asked to do more and more lately and I’m feeling called.

Love beyond,

Ali

PS — we have twenty new Eyes Wide Open members who are also B-Schoolers and I want to send a great big welcome to you all! If you have not already received your invite to our private member’s forum and requested to join, please check your email including the spam folder. Welcome! I’m excited to see you there.

Using the Money Map to Design your Life and Get Paid to Play

The Money Map to Freedom™ process is all about lifestyle design. You designing the way you work and get paid to be in full alignment with your life, who you are, and how you truly want to be in the world.  Or, in simpler terms … the Money Map is about you getting paid to play.

There are two phases to the Money Map process for designing your life so you can get paid to play however you like to play.  And leave behind the security of your steady paycheck with a plan you can count on to support you.

First, clarity.

What do you really, really, really, REALLY want your life to look like. Not just one-dimensionally, but all along the spectrum from minimum to be happy to preferred if you could afford it to no limits.  And finally, where does your now fit into that spectrum?

Once you know where your now is in relationship to the rest of the points on the spectrum, you can map out a path with the straightest line possible to get from exactly where you are now to exactly where you want to go next.

It’s nearly impossible to chart a straight line between two points you can’t see, so that’s where we need to start.

But before we can get into charting the path, you need one more bit of clarity.

Who are you, really?  And how do you love to get paid? What combination of factors has work feel like play to you?

I’ve identified 8 entrepreneurial archetypes that almost everyone who wants to serve or create in the world falls into and you can mix and match to create the ideal income model for you that truly does allow you to get paid to play.

Once you’ve got your Money Map numbers clear (where you are now and where you are going next) and you know the mix of Entrepreneurial Archetypes that are most true to you, you have clarity.

You’ll know exactly where you are now and exactly where you are going next. Now, you can chart the path from here to there.

Now, it’s time for certainty.

You’ve got the what down (which is the step MOST people skip when trying to build their income in alignment with their life), now it’s time for the how.

Yes, how in the heck are you going to do it? How are you going to get from where you are now — probably NOT having the life you really, really, really, REALLY want and maybe not even making enough money to support a life you don’t want, let alone the life you do want — to a life you absolutely LOVE making plenty of money along the way?

Once you know your what, the how is actually pretty easy.  Each of the Entrepreneurial Archetypes is keyed to a specific business model with knowable steps to take to get from where you are now to where you want to go.

The reason you don’t know how is you probably aren’t clear enough yet on the what to ask the right questions to get the how going in the right direction.

I’ve seen it time and time again — people try to dive into structuring how they’ll earn their income before they even know how much they really need to make and how they like to make it.

When that happens, you are either “successful” and find yourself stuck in a business model you really can’t stand, but have to keep doing because it’s “working” to earn you money, or you struggle.

If you are successful (in this context defined by earning plenty of money), you become addicted to the money you are bringing in. You can’t stop (the money is just too good), but you really hate the way it feels each time you do it because you didn’t have clarity on how you really like to get paid before you started.

And listen, if you think I mean that you are doing something bad for the money, I don’t. This success conundrum applies to anyone who is in the wrong business model for their unique Archetype Path.

I was a lawyer, serving clients with a very high-end estate planning service that the clients loved, but it was no longer the Entrepreneurial Archetype that was right for me and each new client I took on felt like it was taking something from my soul. If you are in the wrong model/utilizing the wrong archetype (for you), you know exactly what I mean.

On the flip side, if you are a more sensitive type, you won’t be able to be successful by using an Entrepreneurial Archetype and Archetype Path that isn’t aligned with you and where you are.

You may do all the right things, but they simply won’t seem to pay off with the same results.  You will wonder why “it” isn’t working.   But, of course it’s not.  If you are a sensitive being and not aligned, you won’t have results even if you are following all the “rules” for success.  Because there aren’t really rules, there’s simply truth and you aren’t aligned with your truth when you are using the wrong set of Entrepreneurial Archetypes.

You can read about the 8 Entrepreneurial Archetypes in this article.  And, start your own Money Map using this Money Map online tool.  Clarity is close at hand, and the exact steps on HOW to get from where you are now to where you want to go next are right around the corner.

Make sure to sign up for our next live Money Map training plus access to the Money Map Life Planning Series as our gift to you.