Business Report (Dec 2023 & Jan 2024)
I didn't realize I could do a bi-monthly report. Until I did it. Right now. Lol
Let’s start with the most boring part, the numbers.
December revenue:
One new client for a 8-session package: $700 (lowest tier)
One returning client for a one-time session: $65
One new annual Substack subscriber (who also happens to be one of my lovers 😂): $80
Four recurring monthly Substack subscribers: $32
Total: $877
January revenue:
One new client for a 8-session package: $900 (highest tier)
Two recurring monthly Substack subscribers: $16
Two new monthly Substack subscribers: $16
Total: $932
This is all just wild to me because the only thing I have committed to over the past two months is to try to exist in my humanity and pay attention to my aliveness.
Building my business was not at the forefront of my mind. The only time I made offers was when it felt fun, very sporadically. Because I was drowning in my own life shit. And somehow I managed to make $1,809.
Which brings me to this thought: My aliveness alone is inherently valuable.
The more alive I am, the more I get to delightfully transmit my value to the right people.
In practicing my aliveness, I practiced some of my values that were at the forefront of my mind over the past two months. Let me share those values and how I experienced them.
Congruence
Congruence is where what’s going on outside is a reflection of what’s going on inside. An example of incongruence in my business is where I would sell, sell, sell when I actually want to rest, rest, rest. Or if I would rest, rest, rest when I actually want to sell, sell, sell.
Which is why I am always inquiring, what am I up to?
I follow my curiosity. Not rules or standards of business set by other people. Following external answers is the fastest way to incongruence.
So when I am inquiring about what I am up to, I look at my own capacity for different things. In the past couple months, I have found my capacity to be limited in directly marketing my work because I was more focused on expanding my capacity for some other feelings like frustration, anger, and disappointment in relating to my mom and other family members.
This doesn’t mean that I had zero capacity for work or that I lost my capacity to be helpful. I still wanted to work, and that was my congruence. Which is why I still made invitations and still received clients. And when I grow in my capacity, that information is naturally transmitted out into the world in the form of marketing & invitations to work with me for more humans who want to work with me.
When I practice congruence, whether it is in my business or elsewhere, anybody who enters into relationship with me (my clients, my lovers, or any other connection) get to encounter me as I am. Not some version of what I think I ought to be. Because what I transmit is a reflection of what is actually going on with me.
I don’t find a purpose in dishonoring my congruence.
Value & Worthiness
I am always unwiring conditioned ideas of what value and worth mean in my world.
I have been subscribed to the belief that value and worth are measured by numbers, particularly some monetary measure. That is becoming less and less interesting. Some examples:
I am more curious about people who are actively not making money and creating value in some other way by expressing themselves.
I am entirely uninterested in people talking about how much money they are making as an attempt to elevate their worth. I find no dimensionality in their humanity when they center numerical figures.
I find more value in the depths of exploring my humanity, like the way I ache and long for love and sex one day and the way I transition into feeling grounded the next day. The way my heart skips a beat when I notice fear in my own vulnerability and the way I experience novelty and creativity in others and their expression.
Of course, we need money to operate in the current capitalistic systems. And I carry a lot of privilege to explore my business with flexibility.
This is why I will use my privilege to do my part in dismantling capitalistic systems by decoupling money from my worth in the way I operate. I will listen first and foremost to my own authority on how I find, create, and experience value in the world. Embodying this work is how I get to teach more congruently. I cannot talk about dismantling oppressive systems if I am not doing the work myself.
Trust
I look for different ways to practice trusting myself. Sometimes, knowing things intellectually is different from actually embodying the knowing. Like, I can say that I am decoupling money from my worth, but parts of my body will still be subscribed to the paradigm that my value is attached to how much money I make.
That is when I turn to my community for support.
My teacher Simone said to me several weeks back, “You are integrating a lot right now. You will know what to do when you want to show up in a bigger way.”
She teaches me about trust. When I turn to my community for affirmation, perspective, guidance, or any other form of love they have to offer me, I am able to drop my knowing into my body more deeply.
Which goes to show: love is the most effective way to become anything or go anywhere. It is the very thing that creates spaciousness to move forward with ease, flexibility, and grace.
I turn to love when I practice trusting myself as I move at my own pace.
Rest
To me, rest is anything that allows me to depart from duty and obligation.
While my role as a coach, a spouse, and a parent (among other things) feel delightful to me, I still find myself suspending myself from the full experience of my humanity when I step into these defined, socialized roles.
So, to me, rest is what happens when I step outside any such thing and come back home to myself first and foremost. Sometimes that looks like drawing for hours. Sometimes that looks like writing nonsense for a few minutes. Sometimes that looks like a nap. Whatever that feels restorative for me in my body is rest for me.
Rest is the most essential and core ingredient in expanding my capacity for anything. The reality is that there are things in life that I have to do that I don’t want to do, and there are things that I want to do but still need a bit of capacity building in order to get into it. Rest is the first requirement for me to show up congruently for any of those things. Which is why I will practice it whenever I desire.
Every time I rest, I resist any and all voices that require anything from me. (Source of inspiration: Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey)
Relating
Relating is another word for connecting. At the fundamental level, connection between a point A and a point B requires both points to exist. Which means a prerequisite for relating is for two human beings to exist in their fullness.
So I first relate to myself by honoring my fullness. What do I require to experience my fullness? Do I need time or space? Do I need attention and validation? If it were safe to want what I want, what would I want?
Then I engage with the same line of inquiry with others. I support their fullness. I become more competent at supporting others’ fullness when I honor my own fullness.
In such a practice, I get to relate. I get to connect. In connection, I watch my heart come alive.
I do this in my business. All I really do with my clients and community is relate to them. I want to know them as human beings. I want to support their nourishment. To that end, I experiment. I am willing to feel weird, stupid, or disappointed in that process.
I find that relating is simply the practice of love.
Freedom
This is a value that feels most terrifying and unfamiliar to me. I had been living most of my life doing the “right” thing, making sure that everybody around me is safe, happy, and comfortable.
But as my teacher James-Olivia says: Nobody is entitled to comfort and convenience.
Especially those in power.
For too long, I had prioritized the comfort and convenience of those in power at the expense of my own freedom and my full expression. I had thought first about how other people will react when I think about what I want to say because they have the power to excommunicate me from some form of community.
Examples: Not being able to say what I want to say at work out of fear that I might get fired. Doing whatever my mom tells me to do out of fear that she may not love me anymore. Ignoring racist comments in a “women’s empowerment” meeting because I don’t want to “ruffle feathers.”
I thought that suppressing my own freedom of being and expression was the most effective way to exist because my existence depended on those with power and privilege.
That was because I had ignored my own power and privilege. I have the power and the ability to exist, build, and create. This is what freedom feels like for me.
It is terrifying to me because recognizing my own power feels unfamiliar and even dangerous. But I am emboldened to recognize it because I don’t find that there is another option.
If I don’t recognize my own power, I cannot congruently support others in their own power.
So I practice watching myself stand in my own power so that the only side effect is that I support others in amplifying their power. This is at the heart of my work in supporting my clients and community in exercising their power in their relationships.
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Building my business at the pace of my own body is not easy because I am constantly bombarded by the culture of urgency and linearity. It feels hard to feel like I belong when I trust my own knowing.
But I am proud of where I am and where I am going. I am remaining steadfast in my own knowing because there is nothing to build and nothing to sustain when I am not showing up as my full, present self.
I am in the business of encountering myself at every turn of my experience as a human being and supporting others to do the same. I find it to be the most interesting and enlivening task.
What are you in the business of doing, and how is it interesting and enlivening to you?