Welcome to the profitable Joyful Consulting podcast, where you'll discover how to double your revenues without exhaustion. Working with perfect clients on transformational engagements, increase your profits and enjoy your business more. With your host, Samantha Hartley.

Hey, it's Samantha Hartley of the profitable Joyful consulting podcast. This season we're talking about consulting ideas, and today I wanted to talk about a concept of receiving. The ability to receive is one of the things that either facilitates or blocks you from bringing in what you want to have in your business and in your life. And it's one of the things that I see the issues that I see recurring with my clients as an obstacle that we need to address and be mindful of. So I'm going to talk today about how you can become aware of your capacity for receiving and how you can get better at receiving so that you can bring more into your life of what you want to. I just saw the statistic that most lottery winners go bankrupt within three to five years. And, of course, the common talk about this is that what happens is that they're undisciplined with their money, and all of their relatives want something from them and things like that. But I think the truth of it is really, it's very difficult for people to receive and take in and keep the money that they've brought into their lives. So there are three types of receiving that I want to cover today. And again, as you listen, I want you to think about where this applies to you, where you are skillful and are able to receive with ease, and where you kind of run into hitches along the way. So the first thing is receiving just positivity. Can you be around happy people and happy things that are going on and excited energy and good things? Can you be around that, and can you receive praise and compliments and just positive energy that's brought to you? In a lot of cases, I'll notice that someone has, you know, they're holding so much negative energy that it's actually hard for them to be around positive energy and specifically with compliments. You know, I remember when I was a child about, you know, maybe ten or eleven, being taught by my mother that when someone gives you a compliment, you say thank you. Now, we know that there's a lot of people who will shame you for that. If you are given a compliment, like, you look nice, or aren't you pretty? Or, wow, you did a really good job on that. They want to explain or deflect that compliment. And so I love that my mother was saying, and this is, I don't know if this is the way southern girls do, because I know plenty of people who don't. But just say thank you. And even today, I remember over the weekend, someone was giving me compliments, and I was, you know, I'm overcoming the urge to either explain or say you too, which also I try not to do because it's not as sincere as originally generated, generating a compliment and giving it. So that's the thing that I just want you to kind of monitor. It's an easy thing. Can you receive praise? Can you receive compliments? If someone is being positive towards you, does it make you uncomfortable? Or is that something that you can allow to come into you? One of the things I want to do with my business is create more positivity and more positive energy in the world. And so it means I need to receive it in order to exude it. Right. I must contain that within myself. The second thing I want you to look at is help and support. We had guests, and one of them had been very sick and had been three weeks with some sort of flu and had to be taken care of by others because she simply could not do anything. And so when she came here to be our guest, she decided, I'm just going to let people take care of me. And it was really hard for her. A lot of women, and she's a slightly older woman than me, a lot of them are from a generation where you don't receive, you get up and help. You offer, at least offer to help, and you go and do a lot of things. And she admitted that it was incredibly sweet for her and touching to receive help from everyone and to be weighted on and taken care of and to nothing. Get into that old habit of stepping up and doing things. Now, what this can look like in your business, in a lot of cases, is rejecting team members, the support of people thinking that the way someone is doing something is not the way you want it done or the way that it's not good enough. So I have a lot of clients that I can see. They struggle to have someone else in the business do something that isn't done by them or have team members come in and support them. If someone is supporting you in work that you're doing for a client, they're not saying that the way you do it is not okay, saying, I don't think you can do it. They are saying, hey, I have gifts that I want to contribute to this, and we are contributing those things together. A lot of times, it can, you know, come into ego that others are taking care of you, and you feel very well that you can do this yourself. So that's one of the ways that I see people sabotage, especially with team or with bringing in other people, is getting stuck in ego and feeling like, no, no, no, no, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to do it better than everyone else. No one can do it as well as I can, and all those kinds of beliefs. Also, it is important to allow yourself to enlist support, to ask for help. So help and support can look like so many different things. It can be asking a coach or a mentor, a question or a colleague. It can be saying, do you mind endorsing me for something on LinkedIn? It can be, hey, my book has just come out. Would you mind buying the Kindle version of it? So there are small ways that you can ask for support, and then you can say, having a really hard time lately? Would you have time to talk with me on the phone? Or can we get together, really bringing in help as you need it there for you personally and not just for the business? And then I think so often when someone is really feeling overwhelmed, what I believe they've done is forgotten about universal support. You can ask the universe to help you. You can pray and ask God to bring you some assistance in a difficult situation. And I think it can help you if you believe that way, to bring that part of you into your business so that you can, I will say, delegate things to the universe. I'm like, here's the stuff that's hard. This is feeling really hard, and I will delegate things to the universe. Like, it would be really nice if you might show me where I can find some clients, or you might show me who can help me on this project, or, you know, whatever help you need and really trusting that that help is available. For some people, that might sound woo woo. For some people, it may be just like, well, that's not my belief system. I just don't believe those things are possible. What I will tell you is I have been in situations where I've asked for that kind of universal support, and then people show up for me all around me, whether that's clients. I've said, I really want to bring two more clients in my business, and then those people have shown up, or whether I have asked for resources of who can support me, and then that shows up. And the reason that is so valuable is you are bringing that into your conscious awareness. So whether a deity helped with that, and that's not your belief or whether there's these cosmic energies that helped with that. When you say, I want to bring some support in to help me with this, because it's hard, what happens is you start to look for that support and then things show up for you. Now, maybe those things were going to show up for you earlier, but you could easily not notice when those things would happen. So I'm not trying to explain how prayer and manifestation works, because I honestly have no idea how they work. I just know that when I allow myself to invite the universe to support me, or I say, oh, man, this is a hard time, I'm really gonna need some help on this. I notice that things get easier for me and resources show up. I can hear that there are those who are gonna say, well, it doesn't work that way for me. So what I do is invite you to just begin on a small level, just to ask people for support. Can you find one person that you can ask in a small way to help you and expect them to say, yes, expect it. I hope you're not disappointed in that, and I hope that if you are turned down, that you keep asking, because there are going to be people out there who want to support you. So, you know, send someone an email and say, can you help me with this? Pick up the phone, send a text, ask a friend, ask a partner, ask a spouse, hey, I really need some help on this. Can you maybe do this part for me? And let's allow ourselves to be surprised and pleasantly surprised by how that goes. In general, the more you're willing to receive that kind of support, the more you are able to sincerely give that kind of support to others because your cup fills up when you receive from others and you have more to give when you are generous. We tend to think of caretakers as those people who are constantly doing the giving and giving, and then they deplete themselves. And we will categorize people in two camps. Those are people who give a lot, and then those are people who take a lot. There's a wonderful middle ground called people who give and people who receive. And if you have a healthy balance of that, then it's going to be good for you as a person, and it's also going to be good for you and your business. So naturally, the third thing that I want you to think about your ability to receive it is money. In our businesses, we need to receive money, and I've had a number of clients who will come to me and be stuck about what they are able to receive. So that will often look like a plateau in your business or a maximum price. You've never done anything for more than that amount or duration. You've never worked with clients any longer than this. So there's a place in which you are stuck receiving money. So to me, the first question is a yes no, are you okay receiving money, and can you receive money? Well, if you have a business, clearly you can receive money. So that's probably a yes. Can you only receive money if you really feel like you've earned it? So is money that kind of falls in your lap, whether you got, like, a commission that you didn't expect or, you know, somebody paid you for something you did and you didn't ever expect that money to come in. Can you receive that money as well? I've said on here before that one of my favorite affirmations is I invite money to come to me in expected and unexpected ways. I don't always need to know how my money comes to me, but I do know that for a lot of people, they need to feel like they have earned their money, they have worked hard, and then they deserve that money. So money that was too easy, Will. Will quickly leave their hands. Not unlike the lottery winners, that money is very easy money, and so it's hard for it to stick to them. They can't hold on to it for very long. So if you say, yes, I'm good at receiving money, I'm apparently really good at receiving $150,000 a year, because that's all I've received in my business for the last five years. Right. You get stuck at a plateau. So what do you do to receive a higher and higher amount? How much can you receive? That is one of my highest, and my favorite questions is asking, how much can I tolerate receiving right now? How much am I able to bring in right now? And if you ask yourself, it's funny because you can get a response, and a lot of times it's a visceral or physical response, like, in your body. So can I receive $200,000? You might ask, if you're stuck at 150, can I receive 200? Well, maybe. Kind of. I don't know. Kind of feels like. It feels like I could. Well, how about 300? No, that's when we hit the border of what's possible. And I recently did this for myself because I don't think I have no money blocks. I know I have some money blocks, but I feel like I don't hit up against them very often. So I was thinking about bringing in a certain amount. And then I thought, I heard in a meditation, you're already receiving that amount. And I thought, oh, how exciting. And then I heard another amount. And so I heard in my meditation, you're already receiving this much. Well, that much was almost twice as much as what my target is for my business. And I thought. And then I heard myself say, I'm not sure I'm ready to receive that much. So I have ideas about what it means to receive that much money. Ooh, look how exciting. I get to work on that, right? So in case you're wondering, how do I go about working on that? Here's what I do. I want to. I ask questions, and this is what I'll ask of you. What's the most money you've ever received for anything? So maybe you had a $50,000 engagement, and you're like, yes, okay, so 50,000 is the most I've ever received. Okay, well, what's the most you've ever made in an entire year? Well, when I was back at corporate, I made 189,000 in one year. Okay, fabulous. Or, well, I had. I made this much, but then I actually, you know, I sold my car, or my grandma died and left me some money, and I actually had received, you know, $230,000. So whatever is that amount? Like, think about what's the most you've ever received in a year? And then here's the fun one. Just make a loose calculation of, like, how much you've received over the course of your working life. Now, that's going to be a big number, right? Especially if you made 189,000 at corporate and you worked there for three years. Well, cool. There's a bunch of money, and then, like, you know, you don't have to go back to your allowance when you were a child. You can just do during your working years, but you're going to come up with a number that's probably going to be in the millions, and that's a lot of money over a lot of years. Cool. So you actually do know how to receive, you know, let's say $2 million. You know how to receive $2 million because you have received 2 million. And then we get all these excuses like, well, not in a row and not by myself and all those kinds of things. Yeah, yeah, you have received it. So I have already received $2 million in a year before. And you're going to begin to affirm that you can even double it if you want. But whatever is that number that you feel like is going to be the most expansive and fun number to work with. So either 2 million or 4 million. You know, I've already received 2 million in my life. I feel like I could bring in another 2 million million and bring in 4 million. I can bring in 2 million a year. I am bringing in $2 million a year. I have already earned $2 million before, and now I am bringing it into my business. I bring in $2 million a year. So as we say that, a few things happen, like, our body is having a reaction to that. We're adjusting to it on some level. Our brain is saying, well, that's not true. That's not true. So it's just reacting. The mind is just reacting to something that is unfamiliar. So one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Matt Kahn, talks about affirming things, and you just move it. When you're saying it, you're like, that's not true. Well, you're. It's just. It's not untrue. It's just unfamiliar. So you're moving this affirmation from the unfamiliar realm to the familiar realm. So after you say, I earn $2 million a year, I bring in $2 million a year. My business brings in $2 million a year. I graced successfully and effortlessly bring in $2 million a year. So you just bring that closer and closer and closer to yourself as you affirm it. You visualize, like, I have, I visualize myself earning $2 million a year. Well, do I look at, like, all of the ways that I would do that and how many clients I would have? No, because that doesn't feel joyful, does it? That feels like work. So let's not do that yet. Let's just expand our capacity to receive by affirming that we move the idea of, I receive $2 million a year from the unfamiliar into the familiar, then soon it's like, I do receive $2 million a year, and then you might find that your $150,000 plateau is so easy to move. Like, that's. That's not even true anymore. So I offer you that as an exercise that you can do because I think it's super fun. And before we go, I really want to emphasize, we talked about three kinds of receiving, you know, positivity, compliments, positive energy, receiving help and support in your business and in your life, and then also receiving money. And I always want to make sure that we remember that it's not about the money. It's really about the joy. How much joy can you experience in your life and how much of that can you bring in. And I find it's fun to give joy and to receive joy. So whatever are the ways which you're seeing, how are you seeing yourself receiving joy in your life? How are you seeing yourself give joy in your life? Where in your life do you see joy? So I think just bring bringing that mindful awareness to yourself about where it is and when you're experiencing it, affirm for yourself. I'm experiencing joy right now. Wow, this is really fun. I'm having a great time. I'm enjoying myself. Affirm that and notice it. Because the things that you notice grow. What you focus on grows, right? And so you'll notice even more of that. So I want to make sure that you know that the number one thing that we want to have more of is joy. And along the way, let's learn how to receive compliments and help and support from our friends and family and co workers here on the planet, and also from universal forces. And let's learn to receive way, way, way more money than we've ever been used to before. Because when you receive money, you do amazing things with it. I noticed you are very responsible and generous with your money. I notice and I would love for you to have more of it. I have a guide I wrote called the definitive guide to winning six figure clients. And in it I have some visualizations and exercises about how to bring, how to craft your 100k offer and how to bring more and more money into your business. And you can find that guide@sixfigureclients.com. with a six at the start six figureclients.com. and I think it might help you to expand on the work that we've done today if that is something that you would like to do. And with that, I am wishing you a profitable and joyful 2022 in your consulting business.

Thanks for listening to the profitable joyful consulting podcast. If you like our show and want to know more, check out profitablejoyfulconsulting.com and please leave us a review on iTunes.