Ep #331: The First 2K, the Hardest Part

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach podcast, where sales expert and master coach Stacey Bayman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey coaches, welcome to episode 331. Today we're going to talk about your first 2K, the hardest part. I am recording this episode for... My students who are in 2K for 2K live, the live course as part of our lifetime access program. And for you, if you're wanting to make your first 2K, but we are in week one. of 2K for 2K Live. It's a five-week course where I take my students through.

each part of the five-step 2K process to make your first 2K. And so this week we dove into, is dove? Is that a word? Dove into? Sounded weird when it came out.

I don't think it's dived. So I think it's dope. We dove into organic marketing and that's what we're discussing this week. But as you go throughout the live course and... you know, specifically speaking to my students, as you go through the live course, this is what I want you to be thinking about because the whole part, the whole point of going through the process, especially the live version is we want to make that first 2K.

in the first five weeks. Now, not everybody's going to do that. I get it. But we want to really make a concentrated effort to take that goal extremely seriously, take ourselves working towards that goal very seriously. So this episode and next week's episode, what I'm going to share are going to help you

do that. And if you're following along and you haven't joined us in 2K yet, maybe this will be the episode, these two episodes will be the episodes that really help you grow your belief in yourself that you could do this. Because that's really what's required to finally just decide I'm making the first 2K. I'm making money in my business.

is I'm just taking myself this seriously because I believe in myself, right? Regardless of what Stacy teaches me, like the motivation, the self-determination that happens when you just decide is very powerful. Okay, so let's dive in. The first 2K, the hardest part. You've been listening to this podcast for some time. Our outro talks about that.

I use it in my marketing. You're going to join 2K for 2K, and you're going to learn how to make your first 2K the hardest part. And there's a reason for that. I'm not trying to sugarcoat it, y'all. It's hard. This isn't get rich quick. We're building a foundation for a business that makes you money or life. Okay. The first 2K is the beginning of that.

So here's why it's the hardest part. I think if you understand why, it's going to change everything about your resistance to the process, things that keep you from not showing up to the process and not just getting it done. So I want you to think about this. It's the hardest part because you're going from nothing to something. You are literally moving matter. You're creating something tangible.

from your mind. So something that starts intangibly and you are bringing it forth into the world. You are birthing a business. You are creating momentum for the first time ever. It's going to be so hard for some of you. It might not be. Listen, some coaches get the first client right away. They'll join 2K and like immediately make their 2K back. And that's so exciting.

And some hit the hard part a few clients in. So you sign your first couple of clients right away, and then maybe there's a drought, a hard period. And sometimes people don't experience that until around 100K. And so we find it happens at different levels for different people, depending on skill sets they come in to the industry with, how much they're living in their own tools.

being a product of their product, an example of what's possible, how big of their audience they already have. You know, we find that like, for example, I have had a few clients come through who were network marketers before they became coaches. They had huge audiences, access to tons of people. They'd been working on personal development forever. They'd been exposed to coaching. Then they just decide to pivot and become a coach.

all of their people want in and they make money very, very quickly, right? Now, it's not that it's easy for them, but they already have some of the foundational things that others have to build. I had to build my audience from scratch. I did not have a big network. I didn't, I wasn't. popular in high school with tons and tons of friends I wasn't popular in adulthood with tons and tons of friends

I didn't keep friends. I wasn't a networker. I wasn't someone who knew a lot of people. I didn't have a big family. I just didn't have any of that. I was a nomad. seven years. And in fact, I didn't care about having more than the couple of close friends that I had.

And I was never around to do anything. I used to have a big network of theater friends. And then I just stopped getting invited to things because I was always out of town and I could never come. Everybody starts in a different place. Some start further ahead naturally. That doesn't negate what we have to do if we're starting from kind of the very beginning ground zero and building up.

For some of us, it's going to be the hardest part, especially if you don't have skills in marketing, especially if you don't have skills in sales, and you have to build from the very beginning. This is kind of who I'm speaking to. Here's what you need to know.

If you know it's the hardest part and you know why it's the hardest part, then you just prepare for it mentally and emotionally. I remind myself often I'm in the hard part. Anytime I'm in a hard part in my business, I just tell myself I'm in the hard part. There's something really profound about acceptance of being in the hard part, not acceptance of the results that come from being in the hard part.

because you're actively working to create new results. But in the muck up, I'm in the middle of creating something I haven't created before. This is the hard part. I've got to prepare myself. I want to be accepting of this hard part mentally and emotionally so that I'm not fighting against it, trying to make it go faster, trying to make it go away. And I'm not shifting.

unintentionally my actions and my energy and the output that I give to the world ever so slightly by being in resistance. I'm just willing to be... in the hard part, the way I think about it is I want to be the best. I want to be excellent at being in the hard part. I want to get really, really good at being in the hard part. I actually believe as a coach, the better you are at being in the hard part,

the more money you will make because the better you will coach your people who will always be in the hard part, right? Anytime we're coaching someone in the middle of a transformation, it's the hard part. So what we do is help people through the hard part.

So if we're really good at the hard part, if we become experts in the hard part, we become expert coaches. There's no master program that you could take that's going to bypass that path. Mastery of coaching literally is. I am a master at the hard part.

So you decide to be all in with the hard, all in. And then what you want to do once you're all in with the hard is attach it to something really incredible and worthy. something really worth going for it, being in the hard part. This will make the hard part exponentially worth it. That could be your overall dreams. For me now, it's more about who I'm becoming.

as well as some of our big dreams. But who I'm becoming is very compelling to me. Freedom, financial freedom, time freedom, that was hugely compelling for me in the beginning of my business. Increased finances, that was compelling. thing to anchor to in the beginning of my business, serving and helping people doing what you love. That was one of the most compelling things for me. It still is because I remember making a ton of money for me at the time and feeling so purposeless.

I remember like a $10,000 week of selling knives in a department store and crying in my car thinking, is this it? This is what I'm doing. I'm selling knives to people. Like what? So the idea that I can make $10,000 a week serving and helping people doing what I love to do, coach and be in personal development, talk about personal development, this was the biggest anchor for me.

And I really think about this. I think about this all the time. I tell my husband about it all the time. There is such a small percent of people in the world who feel purposeful every single day in their work and have freedom. time freedom, financial freedom, and are paid well. But that is us. That could be you. That is us coaches. We get to create that.

The idea of a coaching business holds the possibility of all of those things, purpose, time, and financial and emotional freedom, and being paid well. We have the ability to create that. That to me is worth anchoring in the hard part. Once you're allowing it, you have it anchored in, then you have to focus on tangible, small actions every day that could create that first sale. that first $2,000. Don't go wide trying to get 10 sales or rush to 100K. Focus on the first 2K. Don't underestimate it.

I think most coaches who fail and quit do so because they underestimated the level of work and the level of hard that it would be to make that first 2K. And then they think it isn't worth it.

And it isn't enough. But what they aren't seeing that I want you to see from this episode is it's not just all that effort created only $2,000. That's the way the brain wants to tell you. All this effort only for $2,000, that first sale though, that first $2,000 is the result of who you have become. You become a coach. You become an entrepreneur. You become a leader. You have become someone who validated proof of a business, who validated their dreams. You have proof of concept.

That $2,000 means you have created momentum. You have figured out the hardest part going from nothing to something. It doesn't get harder than doing that part of it. And it's just the smallest part of the revenue. So it seems insignificant, but it's the hardest part of the effort. Everything after that gets easier. The effort you created, if you keep going.

We'll go on to create 20,000 and 40,000 and 60,000 and beyond. It's just the beginning. You've laid the foundation. And then after you've laid the foundation, you build upon the foundation. But you won't if you never get there, if you quit ahead of time or you quit immediately after because you tell yourself it wasn't enough because of how much energy it took to do that first $2,000. Seeing it as...

This effort only created $2,000 versus this effort created the hardest part I'll ever do. And now it's created the foundation for everything I do moving forward. You have to tell yourself, this is just the beginning. This is the foundation. I just got the rocket ship off the ground. And the amount of energy it takes to do that, now I get to fly to the freaking moon.

And instead of, again, seeing all the work in the beginning as like all this work just to make 2K, see it as the first 2K starts the chain reaction of money to follow. So it's not just that you're working towards your first 2K every day.

You are, but you're also getting the momentum going for your business for all the dollars to come. The first 2K, you focus on that so that you can do tangible things. to work towards it. Your brain isn't going to be able to comprehend what it takes to sign 10 clients or make 100K from nothing. So it will not give you the right set of actions and ideas that will help you make 2K unless you focus on 2K.

You've got to take small, actionable steps. When you write a post, you want to think of one person, not I have to create 10 clients from this post. You want to think of... When you're writing that one email or that one podcast, whatever you do, the blog, whatever you do, you want to be thinking of one client, one person. Like I want to make this worth $2,000.

Not this has got to work so I make 100K. Your brain just can't understand the steps to get there. It's too many steps, too far away from where you are. You focus on the first 2K not because... That's all you're ever going to do, but because it helps you stay small and tangible and actually do things that move momentum. And you have to do three of the most basic things. They're not actually hard.

I mean, they are a little bit difficult. Like they feel difficult, but they're not like they're very basic things. They're simple. You've heard me talk about them. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you have to meet people. You have to tell them you're a life coach and you have to offer to help them.

Meet people, tell them you are a life coach, offer to help them. And you have to do all of these things constantly in the beginning. It's your version of planting seeds as a farmer. You are building your audience, your network. One of those people that you meet and tell you're a life coach and offer to help them will be your first 2K or someone they know will be your first 2K.

But of those people, as you keep building and nurturing and creating relationships and your audience and network starts growing, those people might also be your first 100K. So it matters.

One of the things I see people get caught up in is they're like, I went to this networking event and I didn't have anyone ask me to do a consult. Yes, that's normal. They probably won't. You build relationships and eventually people do reach out to you and say, Hey, I'm interested. Like, how do I work with you? That does actually start to happen, but not. right away always. I have had that happen, but less frequently than the relationships I poured into with value and connection.

that then eventually came to me and said, okay, I'm ready. That's the way I thought about it is my job is to just meet as many people as possible, tell them who I am. I'm going to keep giving them value, keep helping them believe in themselves and keep offering to help until they take me up on it. But just because they don't sign right away doesn't mean they're not going to be part of your first $100,000. You want to be thinking about that. I'm focused on my first 2K, that first client.

but I'm going to treat everyone as if one day they might be my first $100,000 of clients. You might meet someone that becomes part of your first group a year and a half later. You don't want to dismiss them because they didn't ask to do a consult the moment you met them.

You want to keep nurturing. Maybe they're not ever going to be a one-on-one client, but maybe you launch a group and they've been following you for 18 months and they jump in. You're going to make money along the way, but you want to be thinking of I'm nurturing my audience. I'm nurturing. a much bigger vision than the first 2K. I'm just focused on the first 2K so that I know what to do every day.

So my brain can say, okay, I just need to impact one person today. I just need to give value to one person. I just need to meet one person. Like one person could change everything for me and I could change everything for them. Like one person, we change each other's lives. That's fun. So it does matter. So when I was building my business, building momentum, I met tons of people. I met people through people.

I met people by engaging in groups online, by engaging with my friend list online, like just engaging online. I met people by showing up places, parties, dinners, networking events, creating them. I met people by being interested in others, starting conversations when I was out and about. And I started meeting people before I was even serious about making money or knew how to make money. I was going to a certification in March.

of 2015 and I knew I was going to need to get free clients as part of the curriculum to start my certification. And so I started meeting people for that. And I just somewhere in me, I knew it was going to take time to build an audience. And I wanted to start practicing. I was just so eager. That's the energy. I just was eager to start telling people I was a life coach. And I just something in me said, get started early.

And so I knew to start getting out to meet people. And then I got certified officially in July. And I'd been coaching my 12 free clients for six weeks. We had to do like 60 hours or 100 hours of free coaching. And of that pool of people, eventually I signed my first client, maybe a month after I was actually certified. So maybe eight weeks after I'd been like coaching for free. I don't know exactly the timeline.

but it was a friend of one of my free clients. So none of my free clients signed, but one of my free clients told her friend about working with me and her friend hunted me down and reached out to me. Then over the next 18 months, People that were in the pool of people that I had met between that beginning of 2015 and the middle half of 2016, so around 18 months, those people started popping with interest.

They had watched me do the hard part. They'd watched me stay with it. And they'd watched me bring people along on my journey in my marketing and in the value I gave. Like they just saw me. Stay with it and get better and grow and become more visible and have more people starting to engage with me. They saw me being a product of my product. They saw me believe in what's possible versus what's been inevitable and go for it. And they wanted in on their time. So they reached out one after another.

until I had 20 clients. And this was over a really short period of time. I've told this story a lot, but I think I signed like 16 clients back to back in an eight week period. It was crazy. And it was all from relationships that I'd been nurturing. multiple conversations that I'd had with people, multiple times I'd hung out with people, multiple times that people had, I mean, just 18 months of following me. I just kept nurturing and giving them value, watering my seeds and they grew.

That's what I mean by like the first client. That's the hardest thing. But then after that, everything gets exponentially easier if you keep building, if you keep capitalizing, if you keep nurturing. Now, the hard part of this, of the first 2K... And even beyond the first 2K, maybe your first 20K, I always say the first 2K is the hardest part. The next 10K is the hardest part. The next 20K is the next hardest part. And then it just starts, it really does get exponentially easier.

I remember there was a point where I was around 25K a year with payment plans and I really started to feel it happening. So it really does do that. So the hard part of this is staying in action. staying in belief, staying committed, convicted, and in service energy, and growing every single day in your self-confidence, your self-concept, your execution.

Actually, the self-concept, the confidence, and the execution, this is where most coaches lose it. Because what happens is they regress instead of progress because they don't evaluate, they don't get help. They don't see the progress they're making. They don't have awareness of how they're growing. They don't hold onto the dream and anchor, and then they don't increase their value as a result of that.

Because this is what happens when you grow through challenges and hard stuff is you increase your value. Not with a formula. People are always asking me, what's the formula? I want to increase my value. Tell me the formula for that. Tell me the process for that. But the process is growing through your own challenges and hard things. Every single thing that comes your way.

Every breakthrough that you have increases your value. Every time you solve a problem, it increases your value. Every time you think above a circumstance that feels hard in your life and you rise above it emotionally, mentally. then you increase your value. Every time you create new, more powerful thoughts, you increase your value. Like everything required.

To stay active and overcome challenges to make that first 2K is increasing your value. But you're doing it just with who you become. And then it just becomes natural. It's not a process. It's not like...

this is more value than something else. It's like just how you speak starts becoming more valuable. Then once people start engaging with you, there's two things you have to do. Really like two-ish. You have to learn how to have the conversation of working together. It's a little bit awkward in the beginning to go from someone expressing interest to actually getting them on a consult, which is like moving them towards commitment.

So you have to learn how to have that conversation. And a lot of that is just who you become. The more you are growing yourself, the more you are staying in action to grow your business, the more... important, you're going to see it for people to just bridge that gap and go from interest to getting started because you're going to be like, oh, you got to get started. You want to get started right away, but you're going to be in such integrity with that.

But you've got to learn how to have the conversation of working together. And then you have to learn how to do a consult and sell on a consult. You have to learn how, what I say, do a consult and sell on a consult. What I mean by that is you have to learn how to extract information on a consult to really listen to your client, not your own drama in your brain. And to explain your process for solving their problem, your client's problem, in a way where it's so clear and tangible.

That they believe if they do what you say, if they follow your prescription, if they coach with you, it guarantees they have success and they get what they want. That is how you make your first 2K. all of the monies after, not just your first 2K. It's not like this is what's required of your first 2K. And then it's a whole nother set of things to make 2K more. That's not what it is. Your brain's going to try to tell you that.

It's this is what's required to sign that first client. And maybe not all of those things will even be required. It could be like half of those things, but that's what you work towards. That's what guarantees you that first 2K. And then... all the monies after because now you know how to do it. And now you just learn to do it better each and every single dollar afterwards. You work on getting good at it. It's like you work on getting it to your first 2K.

Then you work on getting good at it to your first 20K. And I will tell you any objections you ever get on consults are because the selling part didn't happen right for the client. They didn't. see the value. They didn't see how they would guarantee themselves success, how they would get what they wanted. Typically 90% of people have objections.

When they didn't clearly understand and see how you were going to help them get success and how they were going to get what they wanted at the end of doing all the things you've said you're going to do. Not because they don't have money, but because they aren't parting with their money for a gamble. And so they didn't hear what they needed to hear to feel like it wasn't a gamble. And that part, again, is hard. It takes experience and practice and relentless commitment to improvement.

And it is the foundation for everything. It's not just like, do all of this that Stacey said, and then you get compensated $2,000 for all of what Stacey just said. Of course it won't seem enough. from that lens. It's do this and 2K is the first tangible sign to you that it's working. It's the first result that is proof. It's hard, but it is worth it.

Because once you have this skill, you learn it and have it for life. And it compounds the more you work it, the better you get at it. It's so important. It's the hardest part. And it's also the foundational part. Okay. So that's the podcast for today. Again, I created this thinking of all of you going through 2K for 2K live with us. We're in week one. I will say if you're not in it yet, there is still time to join us.

This is the only time I'm doing the live course this whole year. So you want to join. Even if you watch this in replay, if you hear about this in a few weeks and you join, you're still going to get the replay version. end the original course, and you'll still be able to work towards your first 2K this year.

I always say, people are always like, well, should I join during your live thing, but I can't make the live call. So maybe should I join another time? And I'm always like, you know when you should join? When you want to make money. When you decide I'm going to make money in my business, join. The moment you want to make $2,000, join the program. You want to make money? Do it. I would not ever wait to make money. I don't think there's ever a good reason to wait to make money.

And all of the reasons that we have to make money are just old versions of ourselves, not believing we could actually do it. Because if you believed you could actually make 2K, there's no way you would hold yourself back and prolong this process. If you believed that that was on the other side of the hard, there's no way you'd be like, well, after this, next time you offer this, when it feels easier, when I finish this other program, it just wouldn't be any of that. It would be like, wait.

I could really make 2K in the next five weeks. If I believe that, I'm just going to go do it. I'm not going to prolong it. So join us. Do this hard part. Get through it. Get to the easier parts, the better parts, get more clients, right? This is just the beginning. Okay. Have an amazing rest of your week. If you do want to join us and you're listening.

in the live version. We still have four more live calls. We have three workshops coming up. It's really going to be like a fabulous time and you can sign up at StaceyBayman.com. forward slash 2K for 2K live. Okay. Talk to you next week. We're going to talk about another aspect of making 2K. See you then. Hey, if you're ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you're going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part.

using my simple five-step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceybayman.com forward slash 2K for 2K. We'll see you inside.