 I remember having an exploratory call with a potential client and I asked this person, well, tell me about your goals. And what they said back was, well, I want a business beyond my wildest dreams. Doesn't everybody. And, you know, I always remember that because that energy of chasing wild success is the same energy I had when I started my business. And I'll say when I was maybe less sophisticated about the truth of the entrepreneurial journey. Not that we can't achieve wild success. I feel today, I mean looking at where I was back in 2009 when I started and today I would say, if I looked at my business today my that's that's pretty successful. But the chasing is what I want to talk about. And what I'm doing differently over the years with that chasing. And I guess maybe what we're talking about is the definition of success. I think it's really important to continually return to how we consider ourselves successful, or not successful. Because a lot of us are unknowingly defining success based on some kind of meeting of our parents expectation, perhaps, or some other family members expectation, or to try to compete with our friends, our colleagues to say, Well, look, they're, you know, maybe it's high school friends college friends or, or, or just people we've met, you know, in our, in our adult years, and say, Well, that person can do that well I can, I can do that I should be able to I should be, it's either well I can do that too. Or, well look at them I should I should be farther along by now. If you ever have these thoughts. I want to encourage you to let them go when you when you catch them, let them go and replace them with something that is more uplifting for you, something that is more encouraging, because any of those thoughts of competing with others or chasing after an external metric. Because you should be further along. It's eroding this authentic power that you have to actually create with your unique genius. And so, so basically, I burned out when when I started my business in that way, learning from the six figure seven figure eight figure gurus who are putting those thoughts in my head of success means a certain lifestyle. Usually it's on the beach a lot, you know, usually just, they look like they're on vacation all the time. And they have big houses, you know, fast cars. And, you know, just, they look successful, whatever that means in the maybe Hollywood or media sense of things. And I burned out after three or four years of chasing that so 2009 to 2012 13 I kind of burned out in that time. And I restarted my business over because I said you know I, I'm doing business in a way that doesn't feel true to me, because I'm chasing after those metrics. And I started off back in 2014, trying to be find my humility find humility again in the face of, you know, my, my divine source, and believing and remembering that in some mysterious magical way. And I believe we're all taken care of our souls at least are all taken care of for eternity. And number two, I believe we're here in this life, not to experience. Well, sure, experience pleasure that's fine and to experience success or ambitions that's fine but I feel like the something deeper for this life is something more along the lines of spiritual growth. You know, expressing our souls purpose, loving one another, loving ourselves, all these deeper metrics, you might say, is what I recommitted to when I restarted my business in 2014. So I made a decision that I'm going to be. I'm happy being average in the external metrics, but to lead from the internal metrics. I'll say that again. When it comes to the external metrics of followers, how many followers I have on the different platforms, how much money I'm making the external things that humans measure success I just want to be average. I just want to aim to be average. Truthfully, I think the amount of money I'm making is actually above average for people in my industry right now, but it's not seven figures. It's low, you know, low ish six figures. 200, 300 K a year, it's, but it's so I guess depends on you compare it with I think based on the kinds of success metrics in my industry, I am average at best. Okay, and definitely based on the followers of my industry, I am below average. Maybe if you wanted to say what is a successful business mentor a business coach, I would be below average in the in terms of followers. But here's what I'm happy about is that the stability of my business is above average. I just heard today from a client of mine who said that she had worked previously with another business coach who made big promises, and you know, ran a pretty good program but their business went under that the business coaches business went under, and they couldn't keep their promises and their guarantees, even meet the guarantee. It is so common in my industry that people just have these blips. They look really successful but you don't realize that, you know, they're their businesses not stable they like are not able to fulfill the promises to their customers and their students and their groups and their clients, whereas I have been stable in my business since since 2015. I started in 2014 I kind of started my group programs again in 2015, and I've been stably growing since then, both in my money but also in in my ability to serve my clients in my audience. And it's that's really hard to it's surprisingly hard to come by. There are a handful of people in my industry whose businesses have been stable for more than you know three four or five years. So, the key, in my opinion that the people who are able to be stable and not flaunt their wealth and success and show we'll look like their life is always on vacation. I think the key is to prioritize the internal metrics. That's the secret of success in a sustainable and authentic way. So prioritize the internal metrics and just be happy with being average in the external metrics. Now average of course depends on who you compare it with but just to be as happy as possible with whatever our external metrics are, but to prioritize the internal ones let me go ahead and share with you well what are the internal metrics that I am prioritizing and that you might want to consider how this aligns with your own chasing after success or your own prioritizing every for your annual goals for your monthly goals and your weekly goals and your daily sense of whether you're going to progress or not so let me let me share this with you there are basically three major areas that I prioritize, and I kind of let the externals take care of themselves. The external metrics will take care of themselves they take care of these three internal ones so number one is to become ever more masterful at my craft. Number two is to do this you are taking courses to improve your coaching skills, or your mentoring skills or your healing, or your facilitation, or your technical skills or whatever it is that you deliver to clients. So for what I deliver to clients is the ability to teach better to coach better, particularly in specific areas like, you know, advertising and productivity and how to how to frame our message wrangle all of our ideas into a framework and to launch courses to self publish books and to to do net caring. So I that's sort of like my sort of quote quote technical skills that I'm continually working to improve to become better at based on what I know this works with my clients and myself and learning from other people other mentors and noticing, you know, my clients what they're trying what's working out am I like gathering all this stuff to continually refine my body of work, essentially. And if I get better at my craft. All of my students benefit right all of my clients benefit. And when they benefit. It encourages me to, to get even better at my craft. So there's this virtuous cycle. So rather than the typical vicious cycle of chasing success, finding that it doesn't really fulfill so you got chase the higher numbers after that. So that's not really fulfilling either chase higher numbers of money and followers and status. No, it's like with with the internal metrics, instead of a vicious cycle it's a virtuous cycle because the more we grow on the inside. The more the people we we touch in our lives grow as well and are aided and benefited by our growth. And that encourages us to grow even more on the inside. So to mastery of our craft is the first internal metric that I continually work to improve. The metric that I use, you might wonder well how do you measure that the mastery of your craft well, I'm getting better about that too right the learning how to measure the internal. So the way I measure it is like, at the start of my courses that I've been teaching this year, particularly. I have a startup, start of course assessment to say, Okay, tell me how you how confident you are about these different sub areas in this course. I have my students score themselves. At the end of the course I had them score themselves again, and I see the improvement or lack of improvement in certain areas. Okay, that's where I'm doing. Okay, this is where I can improve my my ability to teach in these areas and. And so I measure the level of growth of my students and my clients as a way of measuring whether I'm mastering my craft so that's, that's area number one is the mastery of our craft area number two is the. The awareness of our inner qualities in terms of how our personal growth, the areas of our personal growth that touch our business growth. So, for me I believe that all business is really a stage for spiritual development that's that's really my. My secret intention is to bring more spiritual or personal growth into business. You think I'm teaching you LinkedIn ads or how to launch a course but secretly and hoping I also infuse into you. The desire to grow in awareness or in compassion or in courage or in perseverance and all that stuff. It's because I think that's really what's what life's about the launching the course making enough money making more money that's just, that's all just a stage to practice or or a tool to practice awareness, our ability to see the blessings of our life and to find compassion ABC ABC, I actually have. I've been writing about my spiritual alphabet ABCDF G hi to 26 letters each representing a particular virtue or value that I'm practicing, you can find that over at my soul gym Facebook page if you want to. You'll find my posts there about my spiritual alphabet. I'm publishing a book soon about that too but anyway, that's my second major area is my spiritual alphabet. Every week I focus on one more letter one more virtual value. Every week is happens to be the letter X represents exhale, exhale, so it's like being aware of my breath throughout the day and how you know when I am, you know, working intensely on a project I'm, I find that I'm like sometimes like stop as I go focus on the breath again breathing joy and gratitude into the task at hand, you know, practices like this that I focus on one practice each week and it's just one it's wonderful it makes my. Well, this is why I'm able to be stable in my business, calmly stable and growing year after year is because business isn't about the ups and downs for me. It's not about Oh my God successful launch all sad bad launch all successful all sad bad launch. I did that already first couple years of my business and I just I burned out doing chasing those externals and focusing so much on that now I'm like, doesn't matter it's up or down I'm focusing on the practice my spiritual practices week in my business and I feel like if we each do that, whatever your spiritual practices and we focus on that and business can be joyful can be, it's just to stay whatever the numbers are we show up consistently day after day, whatever days you work, and just focus on the spiritual practice within sending this email or fixing the problem or prepping a client or doing our bookkeeping or planning our business or writing our content or making showing up on video or overcoming the fear showing up on video or whatever it is we're doing it's just spiritual practice just showing up for it. It's not about whether it's successful or failing success. The numbers tend to take care of themselves if you show up consistently practicing courage, practicing graciousness with others practicing compassion toward yourself and towards others as well right. So that's the second major area that I really prioritize focus on is the spiritual practices and the inner life continually every single week focusing on something. And then the third major area focus on third internal internal aspect that I want to become a leader on to really lead others to really compete. You know, these these three. Let me say this again. This is where I'm competitive. I don't care about competing on the how much money I'm making and the followers that I don't care about that. But I want to compete with all of you, and with my peers, and whether we are really focusing on the internal growth. I want to compete there compete in the good sense that I let others who are who who are infusing that kind of presence into their content and their offers and the way of doing this is I want to I want to be inspired by what's possible and try to increase that level as well. Just as I am hoping to inspire you with my internal leadership and and inspire you to continue rising up to a higher level that that I know you can. So the third area. Okay, as I said the first area was mastery of my craft. Second area is to practice my personal spiritual growth every day my business and third area is to practice balance is to continually optimize the balance between work. Rest. And hobbies. And by the way family life kind of leaves into all that sometimes family life is part of rest and part of hobbies part of work as well anyway, but work rest and hobbies these three kind of core areas that most of us have. Always continually needing to be balanced right have you noticed, because work always change keeps changing, and your need for rest keeps changing and you keep forgetting to rest enough. All of us do. All of us keep forgetting to take enough breaks throughout the day to be aware of recovering ourselves and our spirits and our bodies and our minds and our hearts and our emotions. And regulating them also to to work on our hobbies because hobbies, whatever hobbies you do brings more creativity and fun into your life, which of course spills into your work as well. It allows you to be to think new thoughts and to see in a new way. I work rest and hobbies I'm always like working on, you know, and the practicality of that is working on my schedule to make sure my schedule incorporates enough of these different areas. So I hope that this is inspiring, or at least reminds you again to bring the daily focus back to internal metrics of success, which are, which all of us can grow forever whereas the external metrics. We all bump up against each other it's like, if you're growing in followers that means someone else. It's like, attention is limited money is also limited right people can only spend money on certain number of things so like as someone makes more money that people spending money on their stuff, there's less money to spend on someone else's thing right so like the external stuff truly is limited and it's like competing there's it's like it's a scarcity game whereas the internal is abundance game. You can't get more and more without competing without taking away from anybody else. So I hope this is helpful and I look forward to your thoughts and your comments below. Thank you so much for joining me.