Alan Cohen argues you deserve to be paid well for doing what you love, not just suffering through work. He suggests reframing interim jobs as support for your real practice, offering early coaching at any price point to build momentum, and focusing on excellent work so clients refer you. Cultivating passion and vitality attracts both people and payment.
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It's one of the foundations of my teaching as well as Brian's. And optimize. The world is inside out and upside down. So we've been taught this very weird paradigm that you only deserve to get paid for what you're suffering at, that it's not a real job unless you hate it. And it's just bizarre because it has nothing to do with truth. Just think of it. What kind of God would set up a universe where you'd be rewarded only for being in pain? It makes no sense to me and everybody should write this down if you want to remember something from this conversation. You deserve to get paid extremely well for doing what you love. And it always pains me when I see healers or teachers or coaches. They're not willing to own their spiritual gifts, so they go out and they're waiting tables doing carpentry, whatever it is. And they could just as easily be getting paid for doing what they love. It's fine to wait tables, do carpentry, it's all good. But the universe wants to support you for giving your highest gifts. And that's a pattern we have to reverse. We have to get out of that old paradigm that says suffering equal, equal success. There's nothing in my universe that says that that's the way life works. And you know, the people I know, I get paid very well for doing it. You know, the more I love what I do, the more I get paid for it. When I come up with a new program, it's like, woo hoo, this is fun. And people start flocking to it. You know, they're happy to pay because they see that I'm in my passion. You don't want to work with somebody who's bored. So when I'm in my passion, they feel my passion for what I'm doing and they want to come and play with me and they're happy to pay me for it. Nobody's ever complained about paying me for something I'm passionate about. Because most people are starved for life force. When somebody shows up who's emitting life force, they want to be with you, whether you're an artist or a teacher, a healer. People are hungry for life, so give them some life.
That most people are starved for life force. And it's almost like our only job repeat, which I know Brian talks about this a lot, is to cultivate our life force and to share more life force with others and to follow that life force. So then, okay, I'm with you, totally aligned here. We should flip the paradigm on its head and be willing to be paid for. No, be excited to find joy in what we're doing and allow ourselves to be paid handsomely for that. What happens in the period between I'm starting out, I'm excited for this, I'm passionate about this. This is something that I love to do, I'm working on it and I'm not yet getting that financial compensation.
Good question. Well, you have to reframe what you do. Let's say you're waiting tables while you're studying coaching. So you reframe waiting tables in the service of studying coaching. You don't complain about it. You say, well, thank you God that I have a source of income so I can study coaching and, and build my coaching practice and you don't have to be a full time coach tomorrow. You know, you can basically weave it in gently into your life and you know, coach one person here and there, coach for free if you need to in the beginning, but get the ball rolling. You want to get your head into a coaching mentality because the more you think coaching, the more people you attract. And I'm having people now in my coach training. They're getting paid in the first month of their coach training. It's a six month program. Some of them are getting paid in the first something, not all of them. And they're amazed at how well they're doing because they're putting their gifts out there. We had one lady who coached a friend just as a service and the friend said, well, what's your fee? And the lady said, well, by donation only. And this lady took out a check and she wrote a check for $500. And so what you want to do is put yourself in the experience of enjoying coaching so much that like a snowball, it builds momentum. Builds momentum. And then I tell my coaches your best. We have a whole section of marketing, as I'm sure you do your best. Marketing is to give good coaching. When you give 100% to that one client sitting in front of you, they're going to come back, they're going to want to pay you, they're going to tell their friends. I had one person say she was intimidated to coach a lady who was a professional business coach. This lady said, that was so good, I just gave you a name to four of my friends. I'm going to send them to you. So show up, quit worrying about the money, just do it. Do what you love and the money will follow. And I'll tell you, the more that you're good, the more coaching you give from the heart, the more people will pay you from their heart.
Hi, it's Michael, head coach at Optymyze, and I hope that you enjoyed that wisdom from our brilliant luminary. Guest faculty member of Optymz Coach, it's time. It's time to master yourself, to serve heroically, and to empower others to do the same. Our world needs virtuous, heroic leadership and you at your absolute best. Of course, helping you do that is what Optymyze Coach is all about. You can find all the information and sign up to join Class 3, which starts soon at www.Optimize.me. coach let's be the change and change the world one person at a time together, starting with you and us today it.
