sell more of your work Archives - ⚡️Kristen Kalp

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Money is Your Friend.

money habit

Psst! This is part of a That’s What She Said podcast series about befriending all the things you spend in life: time, money, and energy.  Enjoy!

Just like you might not feel like the phrase ‘time is your friend‘ is true, ‘money is your friend’ might strike you as a bold-faced lie. AND. I do not know of a single person who operates completely outside the realm of money. I know no one who doesn’t think about, spend, save, worry about, or use money to operate their lives.

Part of what fucks with our heads about money is what we were taught about it growing up; how much our parents had or didn’t have, how our family used or didn’t use money.

I grew up going to both protestant and Catholic church each week (more about that here), where I was taught that money is the root of all evil. That wanting money is bad. That having money is bad. And that giving money to the church is good. Like, WOW GOOD.

It’s taken decades to unravel those early ‘money is the root of all evil’ teachings from the reality of how money operates within spiritual belief systems, so I want to briefly address this issue. (Side note: THE LOVE OF money is described as the root of all evil in the Bible, not money itself. Editing and context matter. Words are really easy to truncate and manipulate, particularly by people who have access to a spiritual text and a pulpit.)

If church of some kind messed with your head around money as a kid: two quick facts.

Fact #1: The Roman Catholic church is estimated to have assets worth a minimum of $30 billion dollars.

Fact #2: A 2016 study found that the U.S. faith sector “is worth $1.2 trillion, more than the combined revenue of the top 10 technology companies in the country, including Apple, Amazon, and Google.” (Source)

So…money is bad, says (much of) religion, BUT ALSO WORTH 1.2 TRILLION to the U.S. faith sector.

Money is VERY VERY BAD, say most places of worship, but also please buy our books, programs, services, belief systems, and political candidates. (Guilt trips included at no extra charge!)

I’m talking about this not to bash religion in any capacity, but to point out a place where you may specifically have been coerced into shutting down around money.

If you’ve ever been taught that having, using, earning, spending, or worrying about money messes with your spiritual side, can we let that shit go?

Treating money as purely bad is both untrue and unfair.  Worse, that belief holds us back from doing our truest work in the world.

I grew up in a trailer and bought all my clothes from thrift stores, the mall being reserved for a Back to School Outfit and new sneakers once a year. Money was always scarce. I wasn’t taught money skills, money tips, money tricks, or even basic budgeting. Junior high and high school classes failed to teach practical money skills in any capacity, but WOW DID CALCULUS COME IN HANDY (kidding).  College led to my discovering the world of credit cards, which really amounted to racking up tons of debt with no solid plans for paying it down. Owning a business has revealed that while I am a consummate earner, saving and budgeting are still skills I struggle to manage.

Absolutely everything that I know about money has been hard-won, and I hope my sharing three ways I improved my relationship with money will be helpful for you.

MONEY HABIT OF MAGNIFICENCE #1: LOOK AT YOUR BANK ACCOUNT(S).

This might seem like a REALLY small thing if you’ve grown up without having experienced poverty, overdrawn bank accounts, or massive debt. But to those who have experienced the warm wash of shame that happens when you open up your banking app and feel like you don’t have control over your life because you don’t have control over your money, it’s a big deal. (Read: I actively avoided checking my bank account for a number of years in my late twenties. Once every few weeks is more than enough, right?)

I know you don’t want to look at your bank accounts when the chips are down. I know how your pulse races, your cheeks blush, and your fingers shake when you login to see how little money you’ve got or how much the overdraft charges are for today.

I get it. AND. The only way to get better at money is to face it directly.

Logging in to your bank account every day, even when the balance that’s waiting for you is drastic or terrible, is better than avoiding your money reality. Hoping your money issues will go away or miraculously be fixed actively harms Future You.

Being willing to look your money in the face is a HUGE step. From there, we move on to some simple numbers.

MONEY HABIT OF MAGNIFICENCE #2: KNOW WHAT’S ENOUGH.

Business owners often come to me for coaching (details of working with me here!) without knowing how much money is ‘enough.’

Enough is the point at which you can pay your business expenses, your salary, and your taxes without drawing from savings or going into debt.

Enough is the bare minimum upon which you can operate a profitable business. It’s often a smaller number than you’d think, but you can’t know until you actually do some math to find it.

🔥I’ll happily help you break down Finding Your Enough Number in this podcast, and you can pick up the workbook in which I walk you through Finding Your Enough Number for $10.

We’ll dive into your numbers, find your Enough number, and take one more step toward befriending money as a business owner. With that number in hand, we can move on.

MONEY HABIT OF MAGNIFICENCE #3: BE VERY SPECIFIC ABOUT THE MONEY YOU WANT.

When coaching peeps want to make ‘more’ money in business, we first spend time getting to a VERY specific earning number. Then we break down how to reach that number in the coming months of business.

We don’t say we want Barbara to find ‘more’ clients. Based on her Enough number, we want her to find 13 clients in the coming 6 weeks.

We don’t say we want Krysta to book ‘more’ weddings. We want her to focus on booking 3 weddings in the next 3 weeks.

An amorphous ‘more’ can never be reached, and therefore you’ll never feel satisfied with regards to money.

Based on your Enough number, how many products or services do you have to sell in the coming month? And next month?

This is the unsexy way that business is done! You can have all the bells and whistles and coaches and programs in the world, but being an entrepreneur really does come down to knowing your expenses, your income, your tax burden, and your needs — then marketing your work accordingly.

Your Enough number provides the baseline for running a soulful and profitable business.

The people I work with don’t want to make seven figures in the next 22 minutes using THESE 8 STEPS THAT ARE AVAILABLE ONLY THROUGH THIS LIMITED TIME OFFER.

My peeps want to create and nourish a demand for the work they create that allows them to be both well paid and time affluent.

Today’s deceptively simple approach to money allows you to reach Enough without having to scale your business to include 17 employees, AND it gives you the time you need to do your work in the world. (Or to fuck off and do nothing at all!)

THE MONEY IS YOUR FRIEND ACTION RECAP

🌈  Login to your bank account. Face what’s there. Login again tomorrow. Repeat. You’re building a muscle and this will become less scary with time.
🌈  Find Your Enough Number if you own a business so that you know exactly how much you need to make in order to run a profitable operation. (Listen to the podcast and pick up the workbook, too!)
🌈  Work backwards from your Enough number in order to create Very Specific marketing goals for the coming months.

Hugs,
K

P.S. Want to dive deeper into selling from here? Try That’s What She Said podcast episode #100, Stay on it.

Three $0 ways to make more money in 2019.

more money headshot

As you continue to be hit with the ‘New Year, New You’ vibes that encourage everything from starting a Keto Diet to taking endless free trainings that end in pitches for multi-thousand dollar programs, I wanted to give you a few ways to make more money that cost nothing more than your time.

$0 way to make more money #1: Separate your work from your worth in the world.

The value of your work is dependent upon many factors; some economic, some artistic, and some woven into the fabric of society itself. That’s why tying your work — specifically, the number of dollars it brings in — to the sum total of your worth is bound to disappoint you.

If you’ve ever said, “I’m gonna charge what I’m worth” or “they’re not willing to pay what I’m worth,” stop EVERYTHING and listen in. That’s dangerous talk, and we can untie your work from your worth in this brand new podcast episode.

$0 way to make more money #2: Clear energy and plan for the year ahead.

Clearing the energy of the past year while making simple, straightforward tweaks to your calendar can help 2019 be a touch less frustrating than 2018. If some part of you wants to usher in a clean slate for the year, particularly in business, this podcast episode will help.

Also! You’re not behind or wrong or dumb or hopeless if you don’t have a 2019 plan. It’s January freaking EIGHTH, you’re a living breathing amazing human who doesn’t have to waste one more second on perfectionism of any kind.

$0 way to make more money #3: Pay me, dammit!

If you’re afraid of making more money because you think you’ll somehow change — like making six or seven figures means you become a racist, sexist, no good, very bad asshole of DOOM (been there, thought that) —

Or you don’t think you deserve to get paid fairly for your work.

Or you don’t trust yourself to make more money.

STOP EVERYTHING AND LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST EPISODE.

Pay Me, Dammit! is a free class about money, but it’s really about all the ways money is a stand-in for the ways you’re holding yourself back. We tackle ‘em, together, and then I throw down scripts and techniques that just plain make you dollars.

Lemme know what happens when you listen to any/all of these, please! I’d love to hear about it, and I’m always here to answer your questions.

Hugs,

K

P.S. If you wanna make more money with my 1-on-1 help in 2019, check out KK on Tap for a full year of biz coaching.

Get. Bigger. (That’s what she said.)

In this interview with Nick McArthur, we talk all about the ways we make ourselves small (and smaller still) in order to fit in with the world, and how to begin reversing that pattern.

“We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love.” — Glennon Doyle

I could give you a bullet-pointed list of the things we cover, or you could just trust me and listen ’cause Nick is brilliant, witty, wise, and sure to get you ballsier every time you lend him your ear.

We’re sick of seeing women play small, put themselves last, and get passed over for mediocre white men all over the damn place.

We want to live in a world where women a.) don’t hesitate to sell their work at a fair price and b.) advocate for their own time and well being without apologizing.

Ballsy helps you do reverse the patterns that keep you small, exhausted, underpaid, and stressed the fuck out.

Go download the Ballsy Session One audio and workbook!

P.S.  You’re not crazy.

Show Your Work

show work painting Kristen Kalp

Heads up: this episode of the podcast is coming to you from a bubble bath in California, ’cause inspiration struck.

Lots of us do invisible work and then resent the crap out of people who fail to see it.

In this episode of That’s What She Said, we talk about making your work visible. Even your boring work, your dull work, your everyday work, and the work you’re sure you’ll be stuck doing until the end of time.

What if we made our internal checklists visible to other humans?
What if we changed up the ‘just shut up and be a martyr’ pattern and instead, asked for help?
What if we asked for people to acknowledge our completed tasks, to-do lists, and the many items we accomplish on a daily basis?

Once we tackle small to-do’s and offload tiny tasks, we can build up to asking for help for big and/or important tasks. Like parenting. Like entrepreneurship. Like being human.

Then, we move on to actually showing your work to other humans instead of minimizing it, pretending it doesn’t matter, or turning it into an albatross that causes you to hate everyone in your life.

One step outside of the domestic world, there’s the career-related behind-the-scenes work you complete and don’t share.

For example: breathwork is the energetic reset-slash-scrub down practice I do on a regular basis, and I trained in both New York City and Los Angeles to become a practitioner in 2017, with more trainings coming up this year.  Work. Made. Visible.  You can take a class here, schedule a 1-on-1 session here, or learn more about breathwork itself here.

You’ve got behind-the-scenes work, too.

Whether it’s editing video, shooting images, writing copy, making art, holding workshops, planning, prepping, and/or training, it’s time to let your peeps know that secret, private, or often-minimized work happens, and to make it more and more visible.

Listen in to get started, to stop resenting your family members and/or loved ones, and to dig deeper into exactly how much you accomplish on a daily basis.  HINT: IT’S SO MUCH.

P.S. Vulnerability 101: how to stop hiding your work and be seen by all the people who matter.

Vulnerability 101: How to stop hiding your work and be seen by all the people who matter.

vulnerability headshot

Psst! This is an episode of That’s What She Said, my podcast! You can listen in below or keep reading and I’ll tell all.

When I talk with my peeps 1-on-1 about being a little more vulnerable in business, they freak out. They imagine a world in which every secret they’ve ever had is laid bare and then featured on a reality show that’s beamed into every home on the planet — AND it’s shot in HD so that every pore on their face has its own character name and story line.

Vulnerability doesn’t have to happen all at once.

You don’t have to go from being a master of mystique to spilling your secrets in one fell swoop. Often, the first steps into vulnerability will look like having your face on your website. Your face in a headshot without your partner, your kids, your dog, your tools of the trade, and/or your cat(s). Just you.

Add your full name, your location on the planet, and your phone number or e-mail address so peeps can actually contact you, et voila! You’re 30% more visible than you were at the beginning of this article.

When you’re even a shade more visible, you’ll be tempted to retreat and stop making the cutting edge work that’s calling to your spirit at this moment. Please don’t give in to that temptation to stop making, doing, or calling rad stuff into being.

Make the work, even if you don’t show it to anyone.

I write poems that no one sees all the time.  (Here are the ones you can see.)

The willingness to be vulnerable with your SELF — with your own feelings, desires, insecurities, fears, and demons — is the only way to be comfortable sharing any of your vulnerable bits with anyone, ever.

In other words: don’t self censor.

Even if you only make stuff that lives in a closet or drawer or under a bed, you’re much further along than those who let their best and most vital work languish in their minds, never to see the light of day.

This step is impossible to view from the outside and no one can possibly hold you accountable for doing it, so I can only say it here and hope you hear me: don’t self censor.

Don’t self censor, don’t self censor, don’t self censor.

The parts of yourself that you’re most afraid to show to others will often be the parts that are embraced with the most love.

I started writing about my struggles with depression in 2013. I was certain that somehow the world would shatter, people would stop hiring me, and I’d be fending off flaming bags of dog turds for writing that article. (All roads led to homeless and penniless in my mind.)

Instead, people wrote kind notes. They sent me e-mails and letters and they’ve hugged me upon meeting to let me know that I helped. Years later, I still get thank you notes for that original article.

Oh and, that first article didn’t ‘do’ anything, either. It didn’t end with 84 Steps to End Your Depression Forever! It simply acknowledged my ongoing struggles with mental illness and let my peeps know that I was still alive. (Please remember this when you’re tempted to believe you’re not being ‘useful’ enough.)

Further: you can unfold by degrees.

Every relationship begins as two strangers meeting. Trust deepens over time.

From that first article with depression, it took years for me to go deeper: keeping the wolf at bay, hard-won depression tactics you can actually use, and the depression chronicles.

Other notable spots in the unfolding-by-degrees: 100 ways I’m broken, magic often feels like broken, and coming out of the spiritual closet.

I’ve answered questions in interviews this year that would have completely broken me five years ago. (This interview comes to mind.) Now, I just take a deep breath and tell the truth.

You don’t have to share your experiences in the present.

It took a full a full year for me to talk about my divorce anywhere, in any capacity. It took two years for me to admit the full cost of having hosted Brand Camp publicly.

I had depression for more than a decade before I talked about it with anyone other than my doctor and my best friend.

Vulnerability means, in the words of either Brene Brown or Glennon Doyle or both in some class they taught that’s no longer online — writing from our scars, not our wounds.

You don’t have to share your gaping wounds, but you can write/sew/dance/make/leap/film/photograph your way through them. You can take notes to use as fodder. You can keep an open list of ‘This Will Be Funny Someday’ vignettes on your computer. You can move through a tragedy of any kind knowing that someday, somehow, this, too will be a scar.

You don’t have to accept feedback.

When you’re putting work in the world, you’re not required to ask for or to accept feedback of any kind.

You can have teachers and mentors. Or not.

You can keep a handful of trusted advisors close to you. Or not.

You are in no way, not once not ever, required to hear the feedback of the critics or of total strangers. This especially applies to completely subjective works of all kinds.

Your watercolors are too smudgy? Who the fuck cares.

Poems too complicated/accessible/modern/traditional? Write ’em anyway.

You’re too loud/soft/dumpy/big/small/timid/brash? YUP. And?

The minute you let someone else’s opinions matter more than your own internal barometer, your work gets diluted.

Are you pushing your own limits?

Do you stand beside what you’ve made?

Would your past self be proud of what you’ve created?

The answers to those questions are far more important than whether someone, somewhere, on the internet approves. (Personally, I’ve got three people I trust to look stuff over and tell me where/if it’s falling down. I run harsh critique through those same three people to see if it’s valid or if it’s just trolling. I ask my clients for feedback once they’ve worked with me and address their concerns one-on-one. This isn’t to say that I don’t accept feedback, only that you, dear human, are not required to ask for it at any point. Sometimes work is better when it’s yours and only yours. Too often, we give others’ opinions far more sway than our own at some delicate point when the aliveness of the whole project hangs in the balance.)

When it comes to bringing your work to the public, start with a sure thing.

I sell every single book, program, product, class, whozeewhatzit or thingamabob I make to a sure thing before I release it to the general public. Meaning, I make a thing and then ask one of my favorite peeps to buy it, knowing that the person will say ‘yes.’

This takes away the vulnerability of ‘OH GOD WHAT IF I DON’T SELL *ANY* OF THAT THING’ and frees me up to release my work into the world with less stress about how it will perform financially.

If you want to sell a new thing, start by hitting up the people who told you to make that thing in the first place. If they’ve bothered you to teach yoga for years and now you’ve got classes on the calendar, ask ’em to come. They’ve been hounding you to paint, and you’ve just finished a bunch of pieces? Ask ’em to buy.

Ask, ask, ask. And, um.

Asking is always vulnerable.

It’s somehow easier to take on a task if you know it’s difficult. Thus, this is me telling you that you’re not broken or weird if you find asking for help and/or a sale to be practically impossible. The good news is that it gets easier with time and practice. Where once I felt like I was going to puke every single time a person e-mailed to ask about hiring me, I can now report that I feel only a brief wibbliness in my belly before answering the message and signing ’em up for the right offering.  (Related: you could probably use this breathwork class.)

Finally: there are laws, there are rules, and there are opinions. Distinguish between the three carefully.

People will take it upon themselves to give you advice and to ‘look out for you’ in many ways.

Someone once told me that calling myself an orphan hugger was the most offensive thing she’d ever seen and made me look “hopelessly naive.” I’d just spent months in countries literally hugging orphans and was merely being accurate.

Other opinions! People have told me how inappropriate it was for me to mention the shaving of legs (SUPPORTING THE PATRIARCHY!), how completely wrong it was for me to take products off the market (HOW DARE YOU NOT TAKE MY MONEY), and the ways my use of strong language is offensive (yawn).  Related: what to do when strangers are mean to you on the internet.

They’ve sent me long, long lists of reasons they’re unsubscribing.

…and I’m still here.

Still alive, still vulnerable, still doing my best to avoid self censoring.

Still taking a stand for the introverts, those called to the depths, and those who are sensitive AF and learning to live with it.

Still helping creatives do their big important magnificent brutal difficult lovely work in the world.

And still writing, too.

P.S. 29 ways to stop hiding.  And what to do when success equals panic.