Get paid to be you (yes, it's possible)

Mindset blocks that stop creative women from making money

Photo by Joseph Recca on Unsplash

Just a quick heads-up — the membership fee for Bloom will increase to $35/month on July 1.

This is the membership where creative, ambitious women turn their hard-won wisdom into soul-aligned businesses.

Join for instant access to our deep-dive challenges, monthly Q&A / hot-seat coaching and group chat to help you remember who you came here to be.

---

Let’s talk about money, honey!

Money is one of the most emotionally loaded topics.

Wanted by all. (Even if you pretend you don’t.)

Scorned by many.

Loved by many. (And there’s nothing wrong with loving money. Greed is a spirit of poverty, but true abundance is holy.)

Changing my relationship with money changed my life and business forever.

I went from grinding myself to the bone, making $14,000 one year early in my business to making $67,000 the next — solely through purpose work — after working on my money mindset.

I’ve gone on to make much more money than that, but even more important is what the money means.

It means freedom.

The knowing that I don’t need to work for a boss or wake up with an alarm because I’ve developed the skills to monetize my gifts.

It means fulfillment.

The feeling of helping others with my life’s wisdom, and of going to sleep every night knowing I’m who I’m meant to be, where I’m meant to be.

Yet, despite doing so much inner work to feel worthy of earning, and see my gifts as valuable vehicles for receiving, I’ve hesitated to talk about money.

Which became a hesitation to fully embrace my purpose, guiding women meant to monetize their soul’s gifts, instead of just heal their hearts.

My own money story, as someone who grew up in an upper middle-class home and never struggled with money, made me feel like I didn’t have the right to talk about it.

This is scary to write about, but that’s exactly why I’m doing it!

I thought I had a healthy relationship with money.

Even when making $10 or $12 an hour as a newspaper reporter, I still managed to save, spend, and sometimes even forgot when my next check was coming because my bank account was in overflow.

Sure, I tracked every penny, but I took pride in it. Made it a game.

After cancer, I decided my frugality was lame, and I wanted nice things.

But even then, I simply found a way to make more money. I started writing for this online outfit Demand Studios, which paid per article.

A key abundance mindset shift is moving away from statements like, “I can’t afford it,” which make you feel powerless. More expansive statements sound like: “this isn’t a priority for me right now,” or tune in and ask, “how could I create the money for this?”

Writing for Demand, I’d earn enough to go on little shopping sprees at the mall, and buy cute clothes. When I noticed myself buying clothes thinking, “I’ll just write more articles later,” I checked myself, realizing that was a fast path to bad situation.

So why, when I started working for myself, did I find it so hard to believe I could actually make money?

I know I’m not alone in this —

So many creatives and spiritual entrepreneurs doubt their ability to earn, on their terms, even — or especially — if they make good money at their day job.

We want to make good — no, great — money doing what we love, what we were born to do, and help people with our wisdom, but worry that people won’t buy from us or that our gifts aren’t valuable enough or that we simply can’t make it on our own.

When I first started writing online, I knew I wanted to monetize, but my first goal was simply to find my voice.

I started writing every day on Instagram, and was honestly thrilled just to grow my audience and have people engage with my words.

I wrote for a year, cataloguing an unfolding spiritual awakening, initiated by the 40-day yoga practice I did.

(That practice became my first course, The Big Shift. People still talk about it, 10 years later, and I’m planning to set it up as a self-paced program because it’s just so powerful. It removes all the energetic debris keeping you from living as your true self and finding your purpose.)

It was a deeply spiritual time in my life.

I did a yoga teacher training led by a woman who studied extensively in India, so it wasn’t a typical ‘exercise-based’ certification.

I thought about God all the time. I felt SO much peace, although I was still working through a lot of heavy, dark emotions, so I guess it was more like a lot of breakthroughs punctuated by periods of darkness.

Anyway, I shared it all on Instagram, the guts and glory.

When I sold my first course, about 50 people enrolled! I was ecstatic!

It was around Christmas — the program was set to start in January, and I had zero idea what I was doing.

I didn’t take a course to learn how to make a course or sell a course.

I simply outlined all my ideas, organized a 40-day program with daily written PDFs and journal prompts, filmed a yoga practice, hired a Kundalini yoga teacher to create a second practice, analyzed other people’s sales pages to write my own, talked about how the 40-day practice changed my life to sell it, and honestly…

Tuned into God every day to ask what I should say.

And it worked. To the tune of $5,000 on my very first course, which blew my mind.

After that, being the Capricorn that I am, I immediately wanted to capitalize on my success.

I started thinking — how can I turn this into a legit business? If I can make $5k without a clue of what I was doing, imagine what I could do with a little strategy behind it.

But the truth is, the more I turned to strategy, the more the magic was lost.

I took courses from proper Internet marketing gurus, learned ‘what to say,’ but found myself losing connection to my true message.

Over the years, I’ve told myself I have to become an amazing marketer if I want to have a chance in hell of building my business into what it’s meant to be.

But that’s not why I started.

I wanted to make money yes, but longed for something much bigger…

I started my business because I wanted to share my story, spread my message and make money with my soul’s purpose.

Creative and spiritual entrepreneurs sometimes get so lost in the ‘how do I make money’ part of it all because…

we’re not fully connected to God, and end up losing connection to the very thing that makes our gifts valuable, and attractive to others —

That sense of indefinable magic, a sense of living the best and highest version of your life, expressing what comes through you, and trusting that as you create things of value, you will be provided for.

Another money mindset shift: Money doesn’t come from courses, clients, people. Money flows through them. Money comes from God.

Money is energy. It’s a neutral resource that wants to flow to us, but we block it with our own fears, doubts, low expectations and hang-ups.

That’s why the inner work is the most important part of building a successful business based on your true gifts.

The foundation of it all is loving and valuing yourself, being who you’re meant to be, and sharing with the world who you are, what you believe, and how you can help them.

You must do it with conviction, faith, courage and persistence.

Business is a journey, not a ‘fill-in-the-blank’ proven template.

It’s deeply spiritual. (And if this resonates with you, join Bloom.)

The best way to generate wild abundance through your purpose-led business is to focus on service.

There’s a caveat to this, because sometimes the energy behind service is:

• I don’t care about money

• I don’t need money

• I don’t like money

• Money is evil

• I’m above wanting money

That’s a scarcity mindset that will lead to under-earning and over-working 100% of the time.

Think if you were in a relationship with someone. If you told them every day — I don’t need you. I don’t like you. You’re evil — they probably wouldn’t stick around.

People with this mindset tend to either be REALLY plugged into their purpose, and just not feel worthy of earning for it OR…

NOT plugged into their purpose, and not creating from the desire to help others.

God WANTS to give you resources to live your purpose. Why would he give you a purpose, and not access to money or other things to walk it out?

Because purpose is ultimately about service.

Purpose is about how your unique expression helps others live happier, healthier, more abundant and fulfilling lives.

When you do that in the unique way you’re meant to — and know the incredible value and worth of your gifts, and how the people you’re meant to serve absolutely need them —

And you’re a clear channel for wealth to flow to you, with a healthy relationship to money —

That is when you experience overflow.

My biggest and best sales periods are always when I’m so tuned into service, how my offer will change others’ lives, and how I beyond deserve to receive for that work.

That comes not only from soul-aligned strategy, but tuning into God every day and asking — what would you have me say? What would you have me do?

There’s a deeper spiritual energetic component to this as well, which I talked about in yesterday’s Bloom Zoom.

When you focus TOO much on money, which comes from not feeling worthy of it, from it always feeling out of reach, from an energy of chasing…

This is also scarcity mindset. It’s basically an insecure attachment in a relationship, where you’re like — “I need you to feel good enough,” and the other person runs away.

Money does the same.

This is when you start contorting yourself into a pretzel to say what you think you need to say, and be who you think you need to be… just to make money.

This obviously detracts from your purpose, as well.

The key to earn abundantly from your TRUE purpose…

Is to know what you’re meant to do and who you’re meant to serve…

Be clear in the value of your gifts…

Share your message and create offers in the the way you’re meant to…

And be a clear channel to receive abundance in all forms.

If you want to do that…

🌹 Join Bloom

The membership community for soulful, ambitious women ready to grow beautiful, abundant businesses and lives from the inside out. The price is increasing July 1!

💎 Apply to work with me 1:1

Break free from feeling stuck and build a soul-aligned business and life you love.

💫 Download the free guide to overcoming limiting beliefs to grow your soul-aligned business

The only thing holding you back is the belief you’re not ready.

---

You don’t have to choose between purpose and profit. You get to live in overflow — rooted in purpose, unapologetically self-expressed, and the happiest you’ve ever been.

It’s your time to bloom!

All the love,

Suzanne