By Kate Wolf, business coach and speaker trainer for magical entrepreneurs
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‘You can’t make money from that’.
You’ve probably heard that hundreds of times, right? ‘You’re a coach? A coach is just an expensive cheerleader. You’re a healer? How can you charge for such gifts? Oh, you’re a therapist? You listen to people’s problems for money; isn’t that what friends do for free?’
When the messaging all around you is that your gifts can’t make money, it’s easy to start to believe it’s true.
But it’s not. You can make money from your magical gifts, and you should.
You know you’ve got something special. You know that you can help people grow and heal. You know that you see the world differently, and always have.
Maybe you are that person that strangers just tell their life stories to. Maybe your friends tell you that when they need to feel calm they think of you, or when they need a pick-me-up they pick up the phone and call you. Maybe strangers on the internet thank you when you share your thoughts, and tell you that you’ve managed to put into words something they were feeling, but couldn’t express.
There are people in this world with all kinds of different talents and outlooks and we need all of them. But if you are someone who sees things differently, and people come to you naturally for support, then chances are you came here to be a coach/healer/guide – whatever you want to call this amazing job of guiding people to grow themselves and change their lives.
You’ve most likely been doing it for free for a long time… maybe your whole life. You’ve received thank you notes and cards and wouldn’t it be great if you could pay your bills with gratitude?! Sadly we can’t though. Is it time to start making good money in return for all you give?
When you’re a coach, healer, therapist or entrepreneur doing the world-shaping work you came here to do, people often think they have two choices:
Option one: Do the work you love, but end up burnt out and struggling because you never quite make the money you need.
Option two: Build a successful business that makes money but which leaves you feeling totally unfulfilled and like a 2D version of yourself (and having to work hard to keep up pretences of perfection which ultimately also leads to exhaustion!)
But that’s a false choice, and there is another way, and when you stop thinking you have to make that call, and understand that you can do the work that lights you up, help the people you’re meant to help and make blooming good money for it too, that’s when the universe gets behind you and it starts to happen.
So. Are you up for making really good money with your magic? Yes? Then you need to do these five things.
One: Define your magic
Two: Discern who needs it
Three: Get disciplined about talking for them, and only for them.
Four: Design a message that calls them in and offers that keep them coming back.
Five: Decide you’re in it for the long game
ONE
DEFINE YOUR MAGIC
The first step is to get really clear on what your magic is.
Often when we look for our gifts and talents we are looking to pieces of paper with qualifications or a series of letters on them. And while these may represent merit, our magic is so much deeper than that. Our magic is hiding in our responses and reactions to things, in our desires and our jealousies, in things we did when we were a child or do when no-one is watching.
When you’re a magical entrepreneur, so often you’re multi-talented and multi-passionate, but most traditional business coaches will tell you that you have to choose one or the other, or else you’ll confuse your audience. But think about it this way – turning up at your friend’s door with either eggs, sugar or flour, is far less impressive than showing up with a cake. The same thing applies to your gifts. Stop compartmentalising and start combining your gifts and what you offer to the world will be so much more impressive, delicious, and valuable.
What do you have expertise in? What do you have experience in? What have you always done, naturally?
For more prompts to uncover your magic, download my guide: signposts to your purpose and magic, here: katewolf.global/signposts
TWO
DISCERN WHO NEEDS IT
Once you have clarity on your gifts to give, it’s time to look at who wants and needs them. It’s time to choose your audience. Where can you place your gifts that they can do the most good, in the direction of your vision and purpose? Where can they have the greatest impact? Who does it just make sense for you to work with, based on past experience and expertise?
This is where we start putting your magic and your value through the filter of your just-right client, and asking: why should they care? What’s in it for them?
There are two things we need to know:
- What do they want?
- What do they no longer want? / want to stop?
A true journey of gathering your gifts is a deep dive into the world of you, but now we need to come up for air, take a look around, and stay surface level for a while. Because no-one spends money on things that aren’t important to them. So – why should anyone care about your magic?
Honestly? They shouldn’t. They should only care about how it makes their life better.
So we’d better get really good at communicating that.
THREE
GET DISCIPLINED ABOUT TALKING FOR YOUR JUST-RIGHT CLIENTS, AND ONLY FOR THEM.
Nearly 10 years ago now, I made a video talking about how there must be another way – another way to grow your business that doesn’t depend on manipulation, pushing, striving or hustling, or following a 3-step plan or formula that happened to work for someone else, someone completely different with different circumstances, connections and collateral.
A stranger on the internet commented on the video telling me I came across as weird. The thing about being weird though, is that it’s a permission slip to freedom. And on the journey of stubbornly doing it my way, I found that in truth, that’s the only way.
The only way to build a business that feels fulfilling AND fills your bank account, is to build it as yourself.
It feels fulfilling because when you get ‘there’ you get to turn around and go, wow, look what I did – without compromising my integrity, without having to pretend to be anything other than who I am, and ultimately getting to sleep really well at night! (before having a newborn 😉 )
And it fills your bank account for one very simple and cool reason – being yourself out loud (that part is key!) is what beckons ideal clients to your online door. The lady who told me I came across as weird was not an ideal client. She may have been drawn to someone more serious, less playful, less expressive, less colourful – not me.
One of the joys of being self-employed is you get to choose exactly who you work with, and who you don’t work with. No annoying colleagues you have to put up with every day. No bosses making dumb decisions that you can see play out and know it isn’t going to end well. No overly demanding clients or ones that want things from you that you don’t truly want to give.
When you dare to show up as yourself, really truly no holds barred, you attract only the clients who see your magic, get it, want it, respect and value it and are happy to pay you for it.
And that makes all the difference.
When it comes to sharing content, stop asking ‘what will people think’ and start asking: does this serve my just-right client?
FOUR
DESIGN A MESSAGE THAT CALLS THEM IN AND OFFERS THAT KEEP THEM COMING BACK.
It doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do, if you want to grow your business you need to be attracting a steady flow of interest in your work.
Of course, that’s what marketing is for.
But, marketing only works when you get your message right, and when you’re someone with intangible gifts, getting your messaging right can feel like an impossible task. If you’ve spent hours trying to squish everything that you are into an elevator pitch, only to end up with a message that not only sounds like everyone else’s but fails to fully communicate the deep value of what you do – YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
So many coaches, healers and entrepreneurs survive through word of mouth referrals only, not because they’re not good enough to scale, but because their message is too wishy-washy, generic, vague, and barely scratches the surface of what it really means to work with them.
This is a problem that tied me up in knots for years, until one day it clicked.
The message is just the front door.
Imagine someone with a headache walking down a street where the shops were called ‘medicine’, ‘medicine’ and then – suddenly, clouds parting – ‘cure your headache’.
You know which shop they’d enter, and which shopkeeper would get their money.
But most entrepreneurs are sign writing ‘medicine’ on their shopfront instead of ‘cure your headache’ – and losing clients and money as a result.
Now, the tricky part comes when you know you do so much more than cure headaches – or heartache or leaky gut or money blocks or whatever it is you do.
But here’s the good news – once they’re in, they’re in. And you might have headache medicine in the front, but in the back, you can have an Aladdin’s cave.
The clarity has them walk through the door. The variety keeps them exploring.
Just don’t try to put the variety – everything you offer – in the shop-front window. Because they will walk on by and into the shop of the person proclaiming to sell exactly what they know they want and need.
FIVE
DECIDE YOU’RE IN BUSINESS!
It’s time to uncover your hidden magic and share it with the world.
That bit feels exciting, right?
But we also want you to be bringing in the money.
When you’re a caring, sensitive, intuitive person, the whole money conversation can feel like a necessary evil.
We’ve all seen that meme – the one that says the planet doesn’t need more successful people, instead it needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers and lovers.
This gets shared a lot and it’s easy to agree with- it seems sweet, nice, good. But what it actually is, is an unnecessary and damaging false choice and if you’re believing it then this false choice is hurting you.
Can we not have both? Can we not BE both? Do we not NEED people who are both?
I believe we absolutely do. We need more than anything, SUCCESSFUL peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, lovers, artists, creators, poets, crafters.
People who are in touch with their magic, claim it proudly and deeply and share it with the world- and are well cared for in return.
No more starving artists and no more frustrated healers, thinking there’s a choice to be made between doing your healing work in the world and experiencing the life-affirming energising joy of being a financial success with it.
You’re not a charity. You’re in business. It’s time to open those doors and get the cash flow flowing.
It’s time to make money with your magic! Remember – you were made for this. Now, it’s time to get paid for it.
Kate Wolf is a business coach and speaker trainer for magical entrepreneurs, creator of the Money for your Magic method and Mesmerise, the year long coaching and training program where spiritual and savvy entrepreneurs share their voice to grow their business. When you’re ready for work that fills your bank account and deeply fulfills you, it’s time to work together.
Go here to stay in touch with Kate Wolf : katewolf.global
