If you’d told me 5 years ago, that I’d be where I am today, doing what I’m doing today, in the way I’m doing it today and with the people I’m doing it with….. I’d have giggled a little. Not because it’s that far removed, really, from what I was doing back then, but more the way I do things now is kinda different. I’d have giggled because I didn’t really believe back then that I could have it ALL and on my terms…..

 

I had the big team. I had the big money. I also had the big expenses. Funny, though.. because I was alright with it, until I was not.

 

My break even costs back then, before taxes, was $40-$50K. That was just to keep the doors open. To keep the team being paid. This didn’t include MY ‘wage’. This was just to open the doors.

 

When you look at what I was making, which was $80K-$90K on average a month (which is AMAZING, by the way), take out the on average $50K in expenses, I was left with $30-40K/mth. Subtract half of that in tax (the tax rate was 47c in the dollar), I was left with approx. $15-$20K mth in hand. Now, I know that seems like a lot of money and it IS a lot of money…. But. (There’s always a but, right?)…. Like anything, there were sacrifices that came along with making that money. I was away from my family a lot. Now, I love to travel and I love to be away from them, but there was too much travel. I was tired. All the time. I was working early in the morning to suit my US people, I was working later in the day to suit my Aussie people. I was drinking more that I wanted to, but would celebrate a good day with champagne and a lament a not-so good day with Champagne.

 

What was worse, though, for me, was that I felt like I couldn’t even take a week off. Because if I took a week off, I wouldn’t generate the sales calls I needed to work the numbers. I wouldn’t be able to pay my team. I wouldn’t be able to keep it all whirring….

 

Effectively, I had created a J O B for myself with little way out. I didn’t know what to do. On the outside, I had it all. The travel. The things. The fun. Oh, it was fun. Dom and I had steadily worked our back from being as close to divorce as you can get. But there were other fractures that had started to get bigger in my world. Not so much the business world… but my personal world.

 

I remember having this realisation where I thought: wow. For $15K-$20K/mth, I could probably go and find a corporate job, where I would work less, I’d have a different kind of pressure than the one on me to keep everything afloat and working. I’d have less responsibility. I wouldn’t have to be managing on average 4 people’s financial households…. I would be able to make the same money (ish) with a lot more, well, benefits. Is how it felt.

 

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I was very grateful for what I had and for what I’d created. I know it was a lot of money that I was making. Which meant that there were A LOT of lives I was positively impacting….. but I realised that I wasn’t willing to continue to pay that price forever.

 

I kept looking for a better way.

 

And I kept finding one!

 

There IS a better way to make money.

 

There IS a way that you can make money working the way you want, with the people you want and doing the things that you want to do – the things that light you up.

 

For me, the thing that I realised, was that I could scale my business DOWN rather than UP and actually end up with more money in my pocket every month.

 

But I was scared. I was petrified, actually. I was worried that taking the leap into doing things my wouldn’t work. I was worried about ‘losing face’ in the online world. WTF?!?! I know. Pfft. As if it really matters in the overall scheme of things.

 

I desperately didn’t want to fail. I desperately didn’t want to be seen as failing. I didn’t want to keep going the way I was, either.

 

Something I learned about myself, is that I have a very HIGH pain tolerance level! I can put up with a lot and I mean a LOT! The way that I’m generally motivated more is not by moving towards a goal, but rather by moving away from pain. But that pain has to be pretty high!

 

What about you? Are you motivated to dig deep and dig in and when you’re thinking about where you want to be? Or does the thought of staying stuck, frustrated and overwhelmed lead you to move faster?

 

Things I used to play around with in my head:

 

Imagine making $10K/mth without having to make sales calls and do endless webinars!?

 

Imagine $20K/mth doing things like that.

 

Imagine $30K/mth doing things like that.

 

Imagine $40K, $50K, and more doing things in the way YOU want to do them rather than the way you feel like you HAVE to do them….

 

Without all the freaking overheads!

 

The possibilities felt a little ‘Alice In Wonderland’ish for me. Too far away. Too good to be true.

 

Yet, I knew there had to be a better way.

There HAD to be a better way of helping more people.

 

There HAD to be a better way of making money.

There HAD to be a better way of doing the work that I felt like I was here to do.

 

AND THERE WAS.

 

 

I threw the rule book in the pool! In the bin.

 

I decided that enough was enough… but it took me to the start of 2018 and a shitstorm of crap at the end of 2017 to get there.

 

I had looked at jobs. I was on job seeker email alerts. I was looking at courses. I thought, if this was it and I had the FREEDOM to do what I want, what would that be? Without worrying or thinking about the money. Without worrying or thinking about how I was going to cover everyone’s wages and salaries.

 

My ‘get out it all fantasy’ was to buy, renovate and sell houses. I was also looking at doing my old job that I used to do in the Bank that I loved (home finance manager) as a broker or within a brokerage firm or find a bank to go back and work in. I played with it. Danced with it. Did it, in my imagination….

 

And realised that heck! If I was going to reinvent myself in that way, then perhaps it was worth a shot at reinventing myself in my business. Perhaps, the sense of fun, creativity and joy that I imagined I would find in doing some manual labor, I could find in my business.

 

There had to be a better way

 

 

I think one of the great things about being in the business that I’m in, is that there are other people out there, similar to me, making their businesses work for them on their terms. With or without teams. In or out of corporate.

 

So I decided to play. To seek fun. To seek joy. To seek ways of doing what I love to do, in the ways I love to do it, with people I love doing it with.

 

It became my non-negotiable.

 

 

Right now, I am making my way back up to the million dollars a year… but it’s going to be on MY terms.

 

With minimal team. Not because I don’t love people, but because I don’t want to be the person who is SOLELY responsible for someone’s financial household.

 

With minimal sales calls. Not because I don’t LOVE the shit out of talking to people, but because I’d rather be spending the majority of my day working with my clients and prioritising them and what they need, rather than feeling like I have to sacrifice every spare moment to booking someone new in.

 

With FREEDOM. Real freedom. Not bullshit freedom that I created before. Yes, I could travel, I could buy whatever I wanted (and did, which is a whole other story in money management, by the way, but for another day!). I could do whatever I wanted…. But I couldn’t really. I had created a very safe, a very trapped sense of Freedom. I mean heck. If you can’t even take a week off or a month off without worrying about it imploding, you havent’ created a freedom business, you’ve created a freaking set of damn heavy concrete boots. That’s not freedom.

 

With FUN. I know I had a lot of fun in my business back then… but fun is a non-negotiable of mine. If it’s not fun, I’m not doing it. That goes for the way I create content. It goes for the way I create my programs. It’s the way I RUN my programs and sessions. Yes, there are times where there’s hard stuff, but for me, it’s got to be more like a 99%-1% split. Rather than an 80%-20% split. You might be happy with the latter. I was not.

 

I decided that I wanted to get the business working the way that I wanted it to work. So I could take time off if I wanted to. That there was fun…

 

And that I’d get to keep more of what I was making. Because isn’t that a big part of why you’re doing what you’re doing?

So you can have more money to do more things? To help the people you want to help? To create what you want with your money? To be generous? To give? To be gracious? To buy what you want?

 

So imagine for a moment this:

You get to make $10K/mth without having to do endless amounts of stuff you don’t want to.

 

You get to make $20K/mth without having to do endless amounts of stuff you don’t want to.

 

You get to make $30K, $40K, $50K and more without doing all the things you don’t want to do….

 

Or whatever YOUR number is.

 

It’s a choice.

 

You need to draw the line in the sand.

 

Remember: There will be some things you do ‘have’ to do. Like marketing. Like social media. Like putting yourself out there and being VISIBLE. That is a necessary thing (the 1% perhaps of what you do). You need to be the face of your business. You need to put YOU out there. Everything else, you get to do it YOUR way.

 

Everything else, THERE IS A BETTER WAY.

 

Let me help you find that for YOU.

 

How can I help YOU do that?

 

Well, to start with, you need to increase your VISIBLITY and there are three main ways to do that in June:

• In #contentology This is content inspiration program that will help you increase the content you’re putting up that shares multiple parts of you. Yes. It’s necessary. But it’s THE thing that’s going to make the 99% of your work more fun, because you’ll be attracting your Hot Coal Clients in. You can join here: www.nicolajmoras.com/contentology  <- It’s only $97 for the whole month! (Yes, less than a coffee a day)
• In my Rebel With Soul Content Academy. This is a content marketing and authority marketing training immersion program. You’re going to learn everything you need to get you out there, to be VISIBLE and of course, how to make money from all of your efforts online.  You can join here: www.nicolajmoras.com/rws  <- Only $497 for an entire months worth of training, support and  fun.
• The third option is: BORN FOR IT: The Renegade Accelerator Program. This is more like an “All In With Nic” program for 3 months, where we work on the above two items as well, but you also get me 1:1. People in programs like this have added $100K to their business or more. They have clarity, momentum, personalisation and motivation. If you’re someone who doesn’t really want to be part of the groups because you want me, 1:1 in your business, then this is the bees knees! <- You’ll need to message me or email me to chat about this one!
• I know I said there were three main ways to do this in June, but I wanted to let you know about this as well. My 30 day Radical Implementation Challenge is less about learning and more about implementing. With extreme accountability and FUN (of course) at 6am SYD (1pm LA, 4pmNY) every week day, you’ll be working on getting more achieved in the next 30 days than you did in the last Quarter. Yep. That’s what happens.  <- Only $497 for the whole month of daily accountability,  support and community. You can join here  https://bit.ly/june202030dric    or go VIP here: https://bit.ly/30dricjune2020VIP

 

Obviously, this a long blog. If you have questions, feel free to message me on my Facebook page and we can chat through there. You can hit reply and if you want to hop on the phone to talk about what the best option is for you, with where you’re at right now.

 

But here’s the thing I know. You’ve read this far.

 

SO there’s something that has resonated for you and with you in this.

 

Maybe you’re looking for a better way.

 

Maybe you’re looking for PERMISSION to do things in YOUR way, rather than in ‘The Way’.

 

I promise you, the answer to these last two points is that you CAN.

 

I’d love to help you if you’d like that.

 

Love, Nicola

 

 PS. It’s time. Time for you to get out there and help some people and to have FUN doing it. And remember: The World Is Ready For Your Brand of Awesome.