I wrote this on the weekend at the Biznest Intensive I hosted in my Biznest Studio. In case you were wondering what we got up to?
It’s crazy late. Well, to be ‘working’. I’m wearing my pyjama’s but I’m working still. Hosting a retreat for my chicks and they are working like Trojans, and after our massive day of work and meditation, and more work, and lunch (crostini platter of the most incredible combinations) and more work and walks to the beach and swims in the ocean and fusion food (sushi and crepes) for dinner and showers, here we are.
Essential items for Biznesting (in no particular order):
- Time and space (dedicated)
- Superb Wifi
- Delicious, healthy regular food, drinks, coffee and tea
- Lots of things from the office shop and stationary and pens and stuff, big sticky notepads
- Power and multiple places to plug things in
- Magnificent women who will wear anything and sleep anywhere and be open to whatever the weekend brings. That’s probably about it.
I’m tired in a food coma kind of way. Eating the scraps of my daughter’s last Nutella-loaded crepe may have been the tipping point. Or perhaps it’s just that that’s enough.
Biznest Intensives are like this. Intense. And nestified. And if I said it wasn’t at all like work, would you believe me?
I have always been a hard worker. Dedicated. Would stay up late to finish stuff. Get up early to start. Go beyond. Go until my feet hurt and there was nothing left of me. Defined by what I believe constituted work.
Is work writing? Unwinding the words? Is it going to a meditation class, and finding the space between the light and dark, inside but not insular? Is work teaching people how to open up and find the thing inside and show the world? Is it talking and laughing about hillbilly teeth and the gap year gap and being flaccid and the weird smell in the room when we all leave and come back? Is it creating marketing and funnels? Is it planning the coming year with detail and coloured pens? Is it walking to the beach at dusk with my kids and swimming in the ocean? Is it around the table in PJs?
They are like you and me these women. They have dreams. They have children and responsibilities in life. They have loves. They have fears. And yet still, they are prepared to find a way to have it all.
The thing I’m having the most trouble accepting is that somehow I got everything I wanted. In pretty much exactly to the day 12 months. Is that a coincidence? Is it that I am lucky? Is it that I am fearless? Is it that I really truly believed it? Or perhaps it is that for the first time ever I got really clear about what I wanted and then did what I needed to do to make it happen – without hustle (mostly, except those time I forgot and hustled and it didn’t work), without fear (mostly, except those time I got scared and stopped and it didn’t work) and without worrying about what other people thought about what I was doing (mostly, except those times I did and I got momentarily caught up in some thing or other and went on a tangent or tried to tone it back and it didn’t work).
There were many things I wanted, but underlying all my struggles a year ago was all the stuff about money. I had never actually thought about how much money I needed to earn in business to support my family. For some reason I just hoped if I loved it enough and delivered the shit out of everything I would have enough money to keep us alive. I just I didn’t know what enough was.
When I actually worked it out I decided my business would make $120K. Well before this became a reality I updated my details with Centrelink to say I would earn $120K (because I was worried I would have to pay them back when I earnt it). The $700 a fortnight I received was immediately stopped well before I didn’t need it. There was that time I had twenty bucks. There were many weeks of shuffling and sometimes just downright prayer, and awkward conversations.
My business turned over $127K in the last financial year. $120K originally seemed like a pipe dream, but a nice idea. It’s SO possible. And through HONEST, REAL sales. Where I sell stuff to people because I know for sure it will help them get what they want and I will deliver incredible value and it will be good and real and honest true, and if they do the work, they will get what they want. I know it. And I know it because I did it. It’s just this thing that I did, and the one thing I had not ever done before was get so clear about what it was I wanted to earn and why that would matter.
It’s not all about the money. But these women are here because they’ve invested money into me (and by default themselves and their dreams) to help them to get what they want. To hold them accountable. To keep them on the path, to keep them going, to stop them hiding or going on tangents, or getting distracted by relationship turmoil, or crazy beliefs or self-doubt or haters, to remind them why they even started this in the first place, to hold their hands and to let them go at just the right time. To be real and true and honest. And to have that they need money. And so they need to find ways to exchange what they offer for what it’s truly worth. And the stuff they do with people is too important, too magnificent not to do. Really. And even if they want to (which sometimes they do because it gets hard and overwhelming), they cannot make it go away. And so they work out ways and means to get what they want.
In 2016 we decided to do the next one on a Station outside of Alice Springs. Because we can. I can, and they will come because it will be on the path and not the tangent. And we will work like Trojans. And we will get what we want. And most of that will not feel like work at all.
Want to know about Biznesting? Pop your details in here and we can talk about if it’s for you. It could just be the thing to guide you home.
