90% are you KIDDING me?

YIKES!  I was just watching “Design Star” and one of the designers did a terrible job –

When it came to the part of the show where they have to defend themselves or face elimination, the judges asked her what grade she would give herself…

Now, she obviously thought claiming how badly she had done was the only way to go, so she gave herself a 60% as a grade…

Okay…no big deal, we all have bad days and at least she claimed it…

Now here’s the part that made me leap from my chair to come write this post…

She was eliminated, and during her final interview, she talked about how upset she was with herself for putting in a 60% effort because she is normally a 90% person…

90% — Are you kidding me?

Listen, you aren’t always going to get amazing results with everything you do, but do you want to be someone that gives 90% or 100%?

Seriously, is 90% acceptable to you?

Now, please realize I know that there are days where your 100% will be significantly different than 100% on other days –

For instance, I was feeling under the weather the other day, so my 100% was hardly the same as it is when I am at peak and feel great…

But the fact of the matter remains…

This is YOUR LIFE and you are either going to invest yourself 100% or less than 100% — so which is it going to be for you?

This may seem like tough love, but it’s because I know the path to you having an extraordinary life is by putting yourself 100% into your life — remember, this isn’t about results…it’s about how invested you are!

Leave a comment on this one and pass it along to anyone you thing might benefit from it!

I value you 100%!

Go Big!

Kristen

You Won’t Save the World by Giving Your Solution Away for Free

Have I already hit a sore spot?

I know it’s a touchy subject when it comes to making money from your passion, and I hit on it slightly in one of my posts a few weeks ago and I’m still getting emails about it.

So what’s the nerve I’ve hit?

I’ll tell you…

You won’t save the world by giving your solution away for free!

We’ve been doing all of this work on finding your passion and making money from it and discovering how you can help people…

In other words, defining what solution you have to someone else’s problem…

I do one-on-one and group coaching to help people do all of this and time and time again one of my clients will say to me…

‘But I want to make the world a better place and if I have a solution that someone else needs, shouldn’t I give it to them for free?’

YIKES!

NO!

Here’s the deal…

Do I want you to take advantage of people?

No, of course not!

But the fact of the matter is you are NEVER going to make the world a better place by giving your solution away for free for 2 main reasons…

1. If you give it away for free, how long do you think you’ll be able to keep giving it away? Honestly, won’t you end up depleted of resources like time and money and energy if you go this route? I say this to my coaching clients like a mantra, “When you fly in an airplane, there’s a reason they tell you to put the oxygen mask on your self first.”

2. People don’t have anything at stake if it’s free and if you REALLY want to help people they have to have something at stake.

Now before you argue with me on that second point, I have proof…

Years ago, I had enough people ask me why I didn’t give my coaching for free so I thought it would be an interesting experiment. I invited 10 people to work with me one-on-one for free. This normally would have been a $5000 investment for them to work with me, but I agreed to have them pay that amount once they finished the program and saw what it could do for them.

What do you think happened?

Well…the first 2 weeks went quite well, everyone stayed accountable and took the action I gave them to take and then…

Well, let’s just say that after 5 weeks I was putting all my time and effort into chasing them down.

I called a group session together and asked them what they thought the problem was…

I’ll be completely honest about the response…

• 1 of the men in the group said that I just wasn’t the coach for him
• 1 woman said that she realized she really didn’t want to do what it would take to be an enterpreneur
• 1 younger guy didn’t even call into the group session
• And the 7 remaining people agreed that because they didn’t have any skin in the game, the program had gone to the bottom of their priority list…

They literally told me that because they didn’t have their investment in the program pressuring them to follow through, they just weren’t making it a priority at all.

Ultimately, as a group, we called off the experiment and 3 of the people made the investment to start working with me…

The results?

2 of them now have extremely successful businesses and the third didn’t follow through anyway so I let him out of the program.

So, I’ll say this a million times if I have to…

If you have a solution that will help people, and you really want to help as many people as you possible can, the results will be much better for everyone if you don’t give it to them for free!

I’m all for giving and charity, but that isn’t what this is about…

You don’t have to charge huge amounts of money, but it does need to be enough that it inspires the person to follow through and actually use the solution you have offered them…

If you want to make money from your passion, please take this to heart…

Put the oxygen mask on yourself first and then get out there and you’ll be able to help all the people you can reach!

Leave me a comment or shoot me an email to let me know how you feel about this, it’s a hot button topic and I want to open up a conversation about it!

Go Big!

Kristen