Hola gorgeous Goddesses,
Welcome to Part Three of ze Biz & Blog Goddess workshop series. You can check out Part 1 & 2 here.
But today! Today! Something huge & momentous & beyootiful!
Since becoming a Business Goddess, one thing I absolutely adore reading is the stories of how others do it. How they run their businesses, how they carve their passions and joys into something that is profitable and abundant and makes them some juicy dobleros.
And being a Scorpio that I am, I have no qualms whatsoever about talking about a lot of things that other people can find squeamish – sex, death & money, namely. It’s all sacred to me.
So I wanted to share the idea behind how my business currently makes money – and how my business strategy for the last six months has been based off one book.
A Book With A Question
I found a book when my daughter Ostara was six weeks old. It was in a musty secondhand bookstore – one of our usual haunts. Ostara was unsettled – at the time I only had about 20 minutes between feeds. So I sped through the aisles, making my way to the business section, pulling out a pile of books and handing them to my love. These. Mine. And then I sped out the front door, nestled into our warm car with Ostara and fed her again.
I read it when we got home, as she nursed and slept in my arms.
Newborn mama & newborn baby
It was the book “The One Minute Millionaire.”
And actually – it’s not even true that I read it all. I read half the book. There are two parts to the book – a novel about a woman who needs to become a millionaire, and the practical steps to use to become a one minute millionaire And because stories ALWAYS inspire me more and make more sense to my brain, I read the novel, ditched the practical part. I won’t recount the story to you here, because it isn’t important.
What the story DID to me, however, is.
It struck up a question in my mind:
What would be my one million dollar idea?
And if I had to make one million dollars, how would I make it?
It wasn’t just some hazy kind of idea for me. It wasn’t just some kind of vague what-if-in-the-future question.
It was real, and it was a question I needed to answer.
The Question I Needed To Answer
You see, my love and I had decided it was time to make The Change. For eight years, we’d been living in a cold alpine city away from our families and our beloved ocean and homelands. We were both working as public servants in the Australian Government. I’d been building my goddess business part-time for a couple of years and it was going really wonderfully.
But now was the time we had to make a giant leap of faith.
Just the four of us: baby, my love, me & fluffy Charlie ears. Oh & a fluffy Angel puppy hiding under a blanket somewhere. She’s a funny dog.
I didn’t want to go back to work after my maternity leave finished. And my love didn’t get to see Ostara for the five days a week that he worked. We didn’t want to be so cold and isolated. We wanted to be together and warm and raising our daughter and having a good life.
So we decided to quit our jobs and move back across the countryside to our homelands in tropical paradise in North Queensland, Australia. My hometown is beautiful, but there aren’t many jobs here – much less the kind of jobs we wanted. So we knew we would have to rely on my business. And don’t get me wrong – I had a huge amount of faith and belief in my business, just as I do now. But I wanted to know how I could make my income easily – without having to push every month to make my goals. I needed a Million Dollar Idea.
What I Needed
Except right now? I didn’t really need a Million Dollars. I worked out the sums of our mortgage and car and bills, and worked out we would need $75 000 a year at least. $100 000 a year to be able to put away savings and live comfortably. (Out of interest, when I talk to some of my lovely international friends about mortgages, they are often surprised at how expensive Australian mortgages are. Our home was $265 000 & is one of the cheapest prices you could probably expect for a house anywhere in Australia. Interest sits at about 8% I think? I’m not fantastic at remembering interest rates, but it’s something like that.)
Which is all a rather elaborated way of saying, I decided I needed to have a One Hundred Thousand Dollar idea.
Don’t get me wrongsies – I totally think I could come up with a One Million Dollar idea. But for right now? The One Hundred Thousand Dollar idea is what I wanted to stretch myself too. I knew I had an intense year ahead of me – new mamahood with a baby and a move across the countryside. That’s my energy parameters. Maybe next year it will be a Two Hundred Thousand Dollar idea? Who knows!
So it was to be a One Hundred Thousand Dollar idea.
How to make it happen?
I started running numbers. How many ways could I create one hundred thousand dollars? I took stock of all the e-courses, meditations & workbooks I had created.
- I could sell 1000 copies of my workbook at $9.95 to get almost $10 000. Only $90 000 to go!
- I could sell 200 meditations at $49.95 each for another $10 000.
- And then I could sell 800 of my e-courses. I could run 4 terms and get 200 students each term.
There’s my $100 000. I knew it could be done, I just knew it would be a stretch. It would mean a lot of hustle, a lot of marketing, a lot of energy and time.
I would need to have to convert sales as often as possible, drive traffic as much as I could, push, market, create and push.
And as I held my newborn daughter in my arms, and felt the mammoth task of mamahood in front of me, I knew I just didn’t have that kind of energy and time. I needed a better idea. A simpler idea. One that was happier and more joyful and full of ease. And as I’ve shared before, the idea came in a dream, in the haze of milky hours between nightime newborn feeds.
My dreamtime elders said to me:
Give it all away. Give everyone everything you’ve ever created and will create for $99 for the whole year. You only need a thousand goddesses to say yes. You will offer them all you have to help them and support them on their journey. And they will be happy to support you on yours.
And I woke up in a blaze of happy tears, and I wrote down on a piece of paper:
1000 x $99=my $100 000 idea
give them everything!!!!!!!!
When the light of morning came, I looked back at that piece of paper, and I wondered at the possibility of it. I had 2000 people on my mailing list, and 750 RSS subscribers. I’ve always had a really amazing “conversion rate” with my tribe of goddesses… even though my numbers are relatively small by epic-business-proportions, my goddesses have always been incredibly receptive & supportive of my ideas & courses & projects. I’m very very grateful for it, and I try to give as much to them as I can from wherever I am.
Building the Idea
So with all these things beating in my heart and soul, I knew it was the right thing for me. And I knew with all my insides that my beautiful tribe of goddesses would love it too. For years they had been asking for a permanent private circle home, instead of just intermittent e-course circles where they could connect together.
So I set about building a mini-empire for goddesses to populate. My beautiful Goddess Circle. I wanted to create a sanctuary for them, a space where I could pour all the love and guidance and inspiration I had, and they could take whatever they needed each moment, each day of their year.
I also decided to open up 10 premium memberships at $1000 each – it included coaching & business-brainstorming & a custom painting. I wanted to offer something for goddesses who were wanting to have as much access to me as they needed.
So that’s what I did. The Goddess Circle membership site opened its doors on 1 September 2010.
How has the $100 000 idea gone?
Six months on, we are at over 600 members – so I am well on track to reaching my dreamtime goal of 1000 members. And my premium memberships were sold out within a month of opening them!
It’s been a huge, ginormous, glorious success… of spirit and abundance and love and ease… and everything I could have ever wanted it to be.
I get to help people. I get to earn money easily. I get to create. I get to give it all away. And it all turns into this wonderful rainbow-scented circus of love.
I don’t need to hustle. I don’t need to push. I don’t really need to market that much anymore.
I write the best posts I can to help as many goddesses as possible. I create podcasts & videos & posters & meditations & ebooks, and set them free into the world like sparkling birds.
And I just create. I’ve got the Business Goddess e-course coming out soon. A mini-workshop in the midst of Creation Land. And another e-course in the works.
And goddesses can keep up with my free goodies, or they can become Goddess Circle members if it sings to them. It’s all worked out to be so easy. SO joyful. And so so stunningly splendid that I still blink my eyes in amazement whenever I think of it.
Where the idea has led…
Sitting here, on a Monday afternoon, inside the little wooden hut that houses our local library, the monsoonal tropical rain is pouring outside. Yesterday was my daughter’s first birthday. And we got to celebrate it on our old wooden verandah, surrounded by all the ones we love. It’s the reason we’re here. She’s the reason we wanted to be here. And right now? My daughter is nestled up in her bed in our little cottage a couple of streets away. My love is with her. While she sleeps, he studies for his dream job as a counsellor.
I get to come here – sometimes to the library, sometimes up an ancient fig tree – and open my laptop and pour out everything that needs to come out. I come here to reconnect with myself and feel like a creative goddess again. We don’t have to worry about money which is a miracle in itself. And in two months time, my love & I will go back to the beach we fell in love at ten years ago to the day, and we will wed, in front of all our dearest ones.
We are blessed. Beyond blessed. And my goddess, how we are grateful.
I so hope all this talk of money and strategy and marketing hasn’t scared you, dearest. Because it’s not really about that. It’s all just a vehicle, a vessel – one that lets me do this thing I adore, and serve women – and earn a beautiful living from it too. And that’s all business ever is – one person offering their gift to the world for anyone who needs it.
I want to share with you the story of my miracles. I want to be as starkly honest and helpful and open-booked as I can about my dream come true.
Why?
Because I so want it to help *you*.
One book’s story so many months ago helped me profoundly. It got me started asking one question. And it led me down one amazing journey that has been such a gift to me, my love and my daughter, and I dearly hope, to all the goddess tribe who surround here too.
Questions? I would love to help, dearest Goddess.
I’m going to open comments – please ask any questions you have and I’ll do my ding dang hardest to help!!!
Love, bliss, spirit, gladness & gratitude,
