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transformation

Perfection Not Required

Recently I was in Esalen for 4 days (check out the pictures here) and then leading my Money Map Masters Founder’s Group retreat here in Boulder (here are some pictures from the retreat).

I didn’t open my computer for the whole week.It felt great. And then on Sunday, I got anxious. Probably because I hadn’t yet written this Love Letter, or the emails announcing the end of the discount code for our annual membership offer, or the emails announcing our payment plan options.

Rather than succumbing to it and getting back onto the computer before I was ready, I let it be. I felt the anxiety, tried not to create any story about it, and spent time with my family.

Then, the work week started and I was deep into re-entry with focus on the expansion of the New Law Business Model business model. I’m bringing in a COO so we can go to the next level of growth while I step more into creating content and away from running the company.

I’ve tried to break through this level three times and I haven’t made it yet, but I’m betting the 4th time’s a charm.

So, here I am, sending this out half a week late and remembering (and reminding you) that it’s okay. Perfection is not required here.  Sure, consistency is best in business. If you can send out your newsletter the same day every week, awesome. And, if that’s not a match with your life, don’t beat yourself up for it.

Just get it out when you can and trust that the people who need to get it will.

I am making a conscious decision to not push myself the way I have in the past, to really live my Money Map and put myself first, family second and work third, knowing I have enough.

Pre-Money Map, I would push myself way harder than was really sustainable to make sales, to be “successful” by someone else’s definition and to keep up with the launch whizzes who are part of my peer group.

When I updated my own Money Map last year, I realized that it was not reasonable to have two businesses that were doing regular high pressure launches of products/programs to different audiences. Not without burning myself out.

So, even though I had invested $24,000 in a mastermind designed to support me to take my business to the next level and $15,000 in a launch manager, I decided to take a different path. I chalked those investments up to learning what I didn’t want, and sunk more deeply into what I do.

While I want the work of Money Map and Eyes Wide Open out into the world, it can’t be at the expense of my well-being and my relationships.  Those are priority.

So, I did end up getting out emails about the end of our payment plan, but I didn’t announce the end of the discount, which means I’ll extend it a couple of days. And that’s okay.

When you are in business for yourself, you get to choose what gets done and what doesn’t.

And I hope you choose wisely, putting yourself first, relationships second and earning money only last, with a clear plan to know you have enough so you can.

To do so will require you to get beyond your Money Dysmorphia (the distorted view of our finances that causes us to make poor choices around our non-renewable assets, time, energy and attention) and start making life and work choices from clarity.

My friend Myka did this and she was able to carve out 6 weeks to write her book, trust that she doesn’t need to take on revenue generating work for 3 months and is freeing up the space to live the life she’s always wanted.

Why wait to have the life you really want?

This is the time, your time is now. My work is to guide you to see the resources available to you to live that life today and stop putting it off until you have enough. You have enough now. It’s time to mine it and truly live.

I love you so much. Keep showing up through all of it.  Perfection is not necessary.

Love beyond,

Ali

 

PS — We have 10 spots left in our annual membership using code BOGO500OFF to take $500 off your investment (only with pay in full option) or you can pay over 12 months and get started for as little as $199. It’s our wisdom and experience on your life and income for a full year. Many of our members have been with us for years because they know you can’t find business model building, pricing and packaging, launch strategy, sticky situation management and legal, insurance, financial and tax knowledge anywhere else for this low of an investment. Would love you to be one of the remaining 10 to join us!

SAVE $500 with code BOGO500OFF: eyeswideopenlife.com/membership

START FOR ONLY $199 with payment plan.

 

Inspiration to Leap and Rites of Passage

If you’ve already introduced yourself, I’ve probably fallen in love with you. If you haven’t written in, please tell me about you; let me fall in love with you too ([email protected]).

I’m gearing up for a BIG week next week and I’ll be honest I’ve got a bit of pre-big things happening anxiety kicking in.

I leave for a secret retreat at Esalen on Sunday and get back on Thursday so I can immediately dive in to our first Money Map Masters in-person retreat here in Boulder. I’m super excited for all of it and a little anxious about being off the computer and away from my kids for pretty much the whole week before the in-person retreat.

Gratefully, I do believe both the businesses and the kids are ready for this kind of independence.

In some ways my kids and businesses are at the same stages, on the verge of adulthood and I’m being invited to let go more and more as they individuate from me, which has me on my edge, in the best way possible.

Learning to let go is one of the most valuable lessons we can receive in this lifetime, I think.

There’s a time to micro-manage and infuse yourself into your kids and businesses and a time to let it all go and trust you’ve baked enough of you into the system that they will continue to operate at a high level even without you there.

Let go of trying to control the kids, but only after you know you’ve given them a solid foundation of learning to trust themselves and be trustworthy. Let them make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, grow and evolve.

Let go of control of the businesses, but only after you’ve established the systems and got a team in place that you know trusts itself to carry out the vision you’ve established.

One of my teams had an intervention with me last week and said “go, Ali. we’ve got this. You can be all of yourself out there in the world and know we’re holding down the fort while you do. We love you, we accept you, now get the “F” out of here.”   Well, it wasn’t word for word like that, but that’s how it felt.

And, I believed them. I felt so loved. We are creating a plan for them to buy the business so we can be partners and truly share the wealth that’s being created here.

My kids’ dad is in Thailand until Thursday and this is the first time ever I’m leaving the kids’ for 4 nights without me or their dad here. We do have a house guest here to stay with them and they are 12 (almost 13) and 16, but this feels like a huge rite of passage. They’ve assured me they will work together to get Noah off to school each morning, go to bed at a decent time and eat healthfully throughout the week.

Trusting my children to become independent is the weirdest process in the world. It requires me to face all of my own insecurities and I look forward to sharing more of my process with you as I see the outcomes of a few experiments I’m running in the background while parenting radically differently than most.

I’ll let you know how this 4-days away experiment went in the next Love Letter.

In the meantime …

I’ve been looking back over the many leaps I’ve made in my life to see if I can identify what most supported me during these times of great progress, so I can offer it back to you.

The leaps have been many …

From the security of the 6-figure paycheck into my own law practice. From the law practice into online business. From the online business to the farm and unwilling to do anything for money I wouldn’t do for free. To the willingness to let it all go and file bankruptcy. To rebuilding everything from scratch using “share the wealth” business models in which everyone wins. To coming out publicly and living with two names and distinct personalities in the world.

And here’s what I realize … I never would have even made the first leap if I had not seen someone else do it first. Just about every leap I’ve made has happened after I’ve seen someone else do it and said to myself “if she can do it, I can do it.”

When I first launched my own law practice, I had the courage to do it because I saw my friend Diedre successfully doing it. Then, when I decided to move it online, I had the courage to do it because I saw other women successfully creating lives of freedom and flexibility while sharing their work in the world.

Today, I am going beyond what I’ve seen anyone else do and I’m charting my own course. But, there’s no way I would have even gotten to this point if I had not allowed myself to be inspired and guided by other women (and a couple of men) who had done what I wanted to do and supported those early leaps with their courageous jumps first.

I hope that watching me go first is inspiring you to more of what you truly desire in life. I hope that I’m giving you permission to live all of yourself and integrate your work with your life fully so that it’s hard to tell the difference between work and play. I hope I’m the guiding light you need to know you can do this — you can make the leap and trust that the safety net you seek will be there to support you in the form of all the resources you need to experience the outcome you desire.

It does help to have a guide. It does help to have the support of someone who has already been there and done that. I’ve had a coach every step of the way. Each one perfectly keyed to guide me because they had already done what I wanted to do.

If you’d love inspiration to make the leap into an online business from a current bricks and mortar, on location reality, you may enjoy this post about how I made $117,000 in 67 minutes and transformed my business reality overnight (after a lot of not succeeding because I didn’t have the right guidance and support). The links at the bottom of the post are no longer active, but the post itself will guide you to the 4 biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make when making this leap to the online world + the 4 best tips I have for smoothing the process out and doing it well.

If you’d love inspiration and support for something you know I’ve experienced, please write in and let me know so I can speak to it in a future video or one of these love letters here.

It’s my absolute joy to share my experiences so you can learn, grow and evolve too because that brings us closer than ever to being able to play together.

With so much love,

Ali

PS — this is the last week for the Money Map Life Planning Series and the New Year’s Clarity workshop. If you have not gotten into them yet, do it now because we’ll be shutting it all down this coming week.

Money Map Life Planning Series is here.

Recording of New Year’s Clarity Workshop is here.

Recording of Live Q&A Call With Me From Yesterday is here.

PPS — if you are ready to have my support on your vision and the build-out of your business over the next year, join us in the year-long Eyes Wide Open membership: use code BOGO500OFF athttp://www.eyeswideopenlife.com/membership and take $500 off your enrollment + fund a scholarship for someone else in serious need.

Here’s some of what our new members are saying:

 

 

 

 

Can’t we all just get along?

I’m curious … are you feeling a massive shift since the start of the New Year? I am. All of the sudden the people and resources I have been dreaming of and envisioning for the past several years are showing up in my life with a full bodied yes to fully diving in together.

I’m experiencing this sense of “whaaaaattttt? this is all really happening. finally. dreams. coming. true.”

  • A new romantic partner who is blowing my mind and heart wide open.

  • An investor for the lawyer business.

  • An operations manager for the lawyer business with ten years of experience running Eben Pagan’s companies.

  • A partner for the Eyes Wide Open business who I’m not sure I could have even dreamed up, if I was making a list of my ideal partners

It’s all happening. And, I would really love to bring you with me, if it’s a match and you desire to create this kind of alignment in your life and income.

I sense a big part of the key is that I’ve finally accepted that we can’t all just get along because … we don’t. And that’s not only a-okay, but it’s valuable. I can stop fighting for what’s not a fit.

The people and situations that are not a 100% match are dropping away with ease, making space for those that are to fill in.

I didn’t always used to think this. I thought if I didn’t get along with everyone, there must be something wrong with me. And I would fight to get along.

Conflict was rampant in my life and my companies. It tore me apart. Trapped me in drama, self-judgment and tremendous doubt.

I often felt wrong. And bad. And sad. And frustrated beyond belief. I couldn’t understand where I was going wrong. I was trying so hard to do it all so right. And I was failing.

Over the past year, I’ve seen a massive shift in my experience.

Today, I see that my belief that we all need to “get along” was keeping me trapped. I see that I didn’t truly trust that if it didn’t feel good, I could walk away and make space for what does. I thought I was a bad person if I didn’t stick it out and make it work.

Today, there is harmony in my life and my companies. This harmony springs forth from within me and radiates out among those around me. Where harmony doesn’t exist, the relationships drop away with ease, making space for those with which I am in full resonance.

It’s so much easier than the way I did things before.

In the past, I struggled to fix things, sure I could make it better, I would hold on to situations, people and resources that I thought I needed or who I thought needed me. It was a scarcity mentality.

Not anymore.

My new mantra is show up as all of myself, and if it’s not a match, let it go. And fast.

Not to say that it’s always easy. I can still get hooked into patterns of wanting to save people (and thinking I can), believing if I just try a little harder, I can make it work, and wishing it could be different.  I can still sometimes be tempted into the idea that compromising myself to “fit in” is necessary.

But now I can see when it happens quickly, come back to myself and let go of what doesn’t resonate much more rapidly.

I wish the same for you.

Because what will happen is when you let go of everything that is not a match, you’ll either find yourself surrounded by the most amazing people and relationships you can imagine or you’ll find yourself alone and having to face where you were not being the person you want to be and become that person before you begin to rebuild your relationships.

Either way, you are on the path to creating your own version of heaven on earth.

I desire that for you, whether we get along or not.

With love beyond the beyond,

Ali

PS — My son started cotillion today. I love that I am teaching him that he can be a suit and tie kind of guy and I can be a freaky feather wearing kind of gal and we can love each other fully and accept each other completely. Here’s a couple of pictures of his first night: me and him(Facebook); sparkle Noah (Instagram).

PPS — If you have not yet watched our New Year’s Eve Webinar and you want to work with me to fully align your life and income in 2016, this is the time to watch. We are 2/3 full in our program and if we are meant to work together, the time for me to get to know you is now. E-mail me at [email protected]


And watch the recording of the webinar here to determine if my support to align your life and income in 2016 is in the cards for you.

I’m in love…

This is a long love letter, grab a cup of tea and settle in for a few minutes.

Yes, it’s true, I am experiencing the beauty of new love. It’s tender, and a wee bit frightening. I’m not quite ready to share the details, and it feels way too soon after my last relationship but, I’m a lover. It’s my nature.

The truth is, now that my heart is open, I walk around feeling in love most of the time. Not just with humans, but with all of Life.

And, I’ve fallen in love with each and every one of you who has written to share the truth of your current reality and your vision for the future.

My guess is that if you haven’t written in, that I’d fall in love with you too, if you did. (And, please do — I read everything and I become evermore inspired to keep sharing, even when it feels like a stretch for me to do so.)

Your stories of where you are now and what you want to create in your life are inspiring me to serve more widely than I ever have before.

Thank you for sharing them with me.

If you desire to work with me in the future, it’s a good idea to write in, whether you are ready to get started now or you know it will be some time in the future because it allows me to begin to get to know you, which allows us to dive in deeper more quickly and support you with more precision right away when we do work together.

I have three things for you today:

1. You are likely investing your resources in ways that will not lead you to more of what you want in life — now, there’s help.

I’m writing this on my way to San Francisco (now Oakland due to flight delays into SFO this am) for a 24-hour trip to support the launch of what I am calling the most rational book I’ve ever read on how we can invest our resources in the new economy for true safety.

I’m investing the time, money and energy to be in San Francisco for the launch because I know that the investment in tribe-building that comes along with my trip will be worth it — and that’s part of what you’ll come to understand creates real security, once you read the book.

I recorded an interview with the authors, Bryan Franklin and Michael Ellsberg. Here’s where you can hear it.

Read the book and change the way you think about how you are investing your resources, forever.

Check out my personal Facebook profile for some pictures from the day and the event itself.

2. How to become free to be all of yourself.

One of the questions I get asked the most by people who write in is — how did you go from being an uptight legal expert on TV to becoming free to be all of you?

Check out the live Facebook video I recorded this past weekend — on the process of becoming free to be all of yourself — here.

All I want to do lately is share what I’ve learned so you can build your life and income with your eyes and heart way more open than mine were.

3. The support for creating the life and income you really, really, really, REALLY want – not the one “they” want for you.

It’s SO easy to get sucked into creating a life and income you don’t actually want.

The pull toward safety, security and fitting in is strong for most of us, so we find ourselves making choices and decisions that lead to more of what we don’t actually want.

We follow the “leader” (monkey see, monkey do style) only to discover we’ve created a life that doesn’t feel right, dependent on an income that keeps us trapped in that life.

And the pressure to save, save, save so we can retire comfortably later.

Fahgeddabout that. It’s time to wake up.

Please stop waiting for later, and take a step toward getting the support you need to step into the life that’s waiting for you.

Watch the recording of my New Year’s Eve Clarity Call and you’ll hear about and from other people just like you who have done it, stepped into a life of freedom, liberated.

And you’ll learn how you can have my support in doing just that.

I’ve revamped my own income model for 2016 and I’m done with big launches of my products, don’t want this business to be a million dollar business, and I’m narrowing in on who and how I serve until I’ve freed up more time in my other business.

I promised myself last year that I was not going to go down the road of big launches, competition-based models, and enrolling as many people as possible in a short period of time.

It’s a “successful” model that leaves me wanting to quit the business every time. Not sustainable for me and my life. And while I’m fairly good at it, I’ve been committed to discovering a new way.

Yet, this fall I hired a “launch manager” to help me build out my systems so that anyone can sign up for our programs at any time, so I can just focus on creating great new content, and I could feel myself getting pulled into the old model that I had sworn to myself I was not going to get caught up in again.

It’s so alluring.

Blindly, again and again, I built my income model based on what others were doing “successfully” — but each time, I would get to the finish line and find I had created something I didn’t want, based on conditioning I couldn’t see.

This time, fortunately, I was awake enough to understand the road I was heading down wasn’t going to lead me to where I really wanted to go, and if I didn’t make a hard right, I’d be right back in the same place I had ended up in time and again.

So, at the 11th hour, I changed up the plan. I said no to the big launch, the affiliates, the million dollar business, and remembered what’s most important to me.

Rather than strategizing my webinar to maximize sales, I read everything you wrote the night before and stayed up until 3:30a (it’s when I often do my best work) and created a presentation that spoke directly to what you actually need.

If you haven’t watched yet, you can still do so here.

I made the decision not to enroll as many people as possible, but to limit the offer to a container of just 50 people right now. A container me and my team can handle and serve well and deeply. And we are already half full.

It’s enough. There’s no need to go bigger right now.

What matters isn’t how many people I can enroll, it’s how many people I can love. And right now, I’ve got  room for 50 in my inner circle attention field.

For so many years, my eyes were blind and my heart was closed.

Awakening these parts of myself has been both painful and ever so rewarding.

Coming into true alignment with the life I am here to live, and creating the space to live in my heart and share from the overflow could have been faster, if my own clarity had come sooner.

Of course, it couldn’t come any sooner than it did. We are each in the evolution process of discovering what’s true and that means someone has to take the long, circuitous route there.

I sense that I am in your life to ease the process for you. You are ready to see with clear eyes and to feel with an open heart.

You long for guidance as you step onto the road less traveled and I offer an outstretched hand with the other on my heart, welcoming you.

Welcome.  And thank you for being on the journey with me.

With so much love today and everyday.

Ali

PS — for you skimmers, here’s the three things:

1. Buy the book the Last Safe Investment and  start re-allocating your resources today. Here’s my FB message about it and an interview I recorded with the authors.

2. Check out the live video I made on Facebook: how you can become free to be all of yourself.

3. Watch the recording of the New Year’s Clarity Call before it comes down for good.

The Darkest Days…

By the time you receive this love letter, it will be Winter Solstice, the longest, darkest day of the year.

I am writing you on the eve of Solstice from a place that is quickly becoming one of my favorite places on the planet, Boulder’s very own Starhouse.

This land has been calling me, reminding me, helping me and guiding me to remember.

What is this remembering?

That I am always, always and in all ways loved, supported, given all I need for my next evolution. And so are you. 

I am so thrilled to see so many of you resonate with my Love Letter of last week taking a stand for no longer being motivated by fear. It is time, we are ready. Fear no longer needs to be the motivator. It has it’s place, but not as a source of motivation.

We can trust something else, something far bigger and more inspiring than fear to motivate our next steps.

I can see the future and it is bright. Fear no longer controls us. “Not enough” no longer rules the day. We are pulled by (and trust) our Desires.

We welcome all that comes to support and serve that Desire — even when it appears to not be what we thought we wanted.

We are learning to know — truly know — the source of our True Wealth and the great power and responsibility that comes with it.

Your job is to look for all the places fear still motivates and notice. Retrain your brain.

Imagine the contribution you would make if you knew you had enough, if you knew you could afford it, if you knew you would be supported.

I invite you to step into that with me in the coming year.

From the darkest day comes the most beautiful light. Open your eyes and see the dawning of a new days is here now.

All you need to do is simply say yes to it and then use gifts you’ve been given — including every single hardship that has come your way — to make space and call in the resources that are always here for you.

With so much love this Solstice eve,

Ali

A Day in the Life of a Transformational Leader

I used to have this idea that once I was a transformational leader, my life would be like what I imagine Wayne Dyer’s and Suze Orman’s lives and businesses are like …

In this dream/vision, I’d be the perfect cross between the two of them.

I’d spend my day writing books, appearing on television and doing interviews.

Oh my, that is a dream come true. Can’t you just see it? Maybe you even want it to for yourself too.

[Side note: if you don’t want it for yourself, good! We need more people who want to support, facilitate, connect, and create behind the scenes. And, you still need to check out this video series because the world needs you to lead!]

But let me tell you (because we are about eyes wide open around here after all), the reality isn’t like that at all. At least, not yet. I do believe it’s coming, but before that can happen, I have this burning desire and personal need to build the business infrastructure to support it all.

You see, my mind tells me that once I have the business infrastructure, then I’ll have the stable financial support to write the books plus the wisdom to actually share something worthwhile on television and in interviews.

I’m not sure yet whether this is true or just my incessant need for achievement that is fooling me.

Regardless, it’s my path. And I surrender to it.

Building businesses is the exact experience I need to have in order to truly become the transformational leader I desire to be.

So today, I won’t be writing my book, doing interviews or appearing on TV.

Instead, my day will be all about clarifying and documenting agreements, getting a system set up to manage my metrics and getting coached to create KPIs (key performance indicators that allow me at a glance to measure the health of the company or parts of the company).

This is the real life of a transformational leader. Or at least a leader in the making.

Oh, and I will be getting a facial. One thing I’ve gotten really great at is maintaining my self care — facials, network chiropractic, regular trips to the hair/lash salon, float tank. I couldn’t lead anyone or anything if I didn’t care for myself along the way.

Here’s what I feel super stoked about:

I am finally being the leader I’ve always wanted to be and knew I could be, but truly had no idea how to be. The resistance is mostly gone and I am actually doing it and being it.

Partially, I think it’s because I am finally seeing exactly what I need to do and that doing it (ensuring that the businesses supporting my work are properly led and supported) is actually the key to having the time, energy and space to write the books, do the interviews and get back on TV to fulfill my dream of transformational TV.

Agreements, metrics and KPIs. I never imagined I’d be excited about and looking forward to getting those locked in.

If you want to get excited with me and truly step into the next level of your own leadership, watch the next video in the Transformational Business Leader video series.

This one is about the 5 Essential Elements of a multi-million dollar transformational business. If you have any desire to impact on a big scale and have the business in place to support that impact, watch the video series now.

Alright, this was long and it’s time for me to get back to agreements, metrics and KPIs so I can make it to my facial on time.

I’ll be back this weekend with some details about the agreements I created, system I am using to track my metrics and the KPIs I landed on to track the health of the company.

Enjoy your Friday! May it be full of actions that move your life and business forward in the most ideal ways for you.

Love beyond the beyond,

Ali

PS — There’s a whole thread of super enlightening and entertaining comments below the video. Look for my comment there and reply to it so we can dialogue about what we are learning in the series.

Register for the series and watch the video here.