12. Real Talk: My Income Has Been Coasting for 3 Years - and Why That's Okay!

Is it okay to "coast" in business and not make growing your income the #1 goal of your life? Of course it is! This is something I previously felt ashamed to share but no longer do.

The past few years, I have been prioritizing my mental health over income growth. That means I have intentionally not grown my business. I haven't hired business mentors, I haven't tried to grow my audience, none of that. I've focused solely on EMDR trauma therapy and getting myself to a place of regulation. And it's served me well! I feel stable and balanced and in a place where I'm ready for expansion (not to mention, while also making a full time income in my business). I hope that if you've been feeling pressured to hustle and grow your income constantly, this can give you another perspective!

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Success through Scars. Today's topic is about coasting in business because this is something that I have not. Really admitted because I felt ashamed of it, and I no longer feel ashamed about it. I have been coasting in my business for the past three years. Let's take it back to the beginning of my journey and why I have been coasting for three years. In the business world, so many times people say that you need to constantly be growing, constantly be moving, constantly be. Investing constantly be doing something. But I think that sometimes it's okay to just be where you are and enjoy where you are in business and let it support you. And that's definitely been the case with me. You all know that I went through a lot, ages 12 through 18. I had an eating disorder. I have depression in adulthood. I had really intense anxiety at different points in my life to the point where I had tons of panic attacks in college. I had panic attacks all the time after college for a few years until I started my business. I have scarcity from experiences after college that lives in my body, and that's gonna be a whole other podcast topic on scarcity and how it lives in your body and how it's actually a trauma response. Even when you're not in scarcity. But anyways, I went through a lot, right? And the past three years I have found an amazing system in my business where I run group programs and I have one big consulting client that I've had the past three years, and I have been able to. Run my business on very little, like busy work every week and kind of stay at the same amount of clients, the same amount of workload every year without expanding, without hiring a team. If you don't know, I had a full-time fitness business up until 2020, and then when the pandemic hit, I ended up. Doing more business coaching and consulting and still doing fitness. And then in 2022 was when I decided to stop doing fitness coaching full time. And now I only run my fitness coaching program once a year. And I mostly focus on business mentorship, either smaller businesses, people who are just starting out or bigger businesses doing consulting and coaching. I've been helping a school to get their music program back after Covid for the past three years and making the program bigger and better every single year. And then I also have been running my Crescendo Club program. One to two times per year. And then my strength for singers program once a year and then taking on random, consulting clients, one-offs, things like that. And that has been what has sustained me the past three years. And I have not actively tried to grow my following, grow my audience grow my business. I haven't tried to push past the level financially that I have been at. So my income has not really changed the past three years, and honestly, it has gotten easier and easier to sustain this level. And now I'm getting to a point where I'm getting bored, right? Because I have the capacity to expand right now. But before this, the past three years, I have been coasting. And the reason that I've been coasting is because I had some other things come up, some self living beliefs, some deep rooted trauma in my body that I felt that I had to work on healing before I could focus on business growth. So you all know that I am a holistic mentor. I care about your lifestyle more than I care about your income level. Yes, the two go together, right? Your income level affects your lifestyle and vice versa. But also sometimes it is necessary to take a step back and let your income stay the same for a while and not constantly be focused on income growth so that you can heal some of these other things and up your quality of life. Right? So that is what I have been doing the past three years. I was in a really bad relationship in 2021, and before that I went through a horrible heartbreak. And both of those things affected me a lot and it made me face a lot of deep rooted beliefs that I had about my value as a woman. My value as someone who wants to be married one day and have kids one day, and all of the pressures that society puts on us as women. And I have been healing. I won't get too much into the details. I'm purposely not sharing those things'cause they're private. But I've been healing a lot of really deep rooted stuff the past three years. It's things related to the eating disorder. Anxiety, depression, and I have really gotten to a place where I can manage all of these things. But I don't think I would've been able to do that and also grow my business because when you grow your business, you grow your visibility. So you grow the amount of people that are seeing you, and as a result, you grow the amount of people that can potentially judge you. And for me, that has felt really unsafe the past three years as I have been trying to. Get my nervous system and my body to a place of being more regulated because I'll be honest, I started my business from a place of wanting to help people. Of course, that's really what it came from. But it also was a necessity at first for me to grow my income and get to a certain income level, and I am no longer in that place where it feels like I have to. Grow because I can't have the quality of life that I want unless I grow. I have right now everything I could possibly ever want. I live in a, well, for my current level I do. Right now I live in a beautiful three story, two bedroom townhouse. I can travel whenever I want, I do work that I love. I have amazing friends, amazing family. All of this is the result of not only building the business that provides the income, but also healing and regulating my nervous system the past few years and doing intensive EMDR trauma therapy. And working on healing some deep rooted beliefs. So I have been coasting at my income level the past few years, but that does not mean that I've been coasting in growth by any means. So just wanted to share because I think that sometimes when people talk about success, they make success mean monetary success, and you never know what's happening behind. Closed doors with people. Someone might have a multiple six figure or even million dollar business, but they might have horrible work life balance. They might be having a really bad argument or having problems with their family members. They might have really poor health and be struggling and feeling exhausted every single day. And I can say with confidence that all of those areas of my life. Are really good. So I feel like I have it all because I have a business that pays me well. I have great friends and family. My health is really great and I have peace and a really good quality of life. And now that I'm at this place, I feel like I can finally start dreaming about the next level. What would I do? If I hit$15,000 a month,$20,000 a month, that type of thing, what would I use that money for? So now I'm in a phase of life where I can start dreaming about those things and figuring out the next step goals and how I'm going to hit those goals. But the past three years, I haven't been in a place where I have even wanted to think about the next level because I was trying to regulate my nervous system to the current level that I'm at. So. The good thing is since my current level has been easy for me to maintain, at least in the past year and a half, two years as I've felt more regulated I think it's going to be a fun journey now to see what my next level is and what I want to do next. I have a lot of different ideas and things on the horizon that I'll probably be sharing at some point soon, once I finalize what I actually am doing. But I hope that this episode can give you the permission because you don't need someone else's external permission to just be happy where you're at. But I feel like it's something that's not common in the business world to just simply coast with where you are and be happy with where you are and focus on things that are not just financial goals. And you all know I'm a Capricorn, so that was hard for me, but I think it was a very necessary part of my life because it helped me to feel like I have it all instead of just having money. I hope that this was helpful for you. As always, please leave me a review. Please let me know how you liked this episode, and I will see you next week. Thanks. Bye.