Male Announcer: You’re listening to From Pain to Possibility with Susi Hately. You will hear Susi’s best ideas on how to reduce or even eradicate your pain and learn how to listen to your body when it whispers so you don’t have to hear it scream. And now here’s your host, Susi Hately.

With this episode I want to dig into a topic that's highly and deeply passionate for me. So it's very possible that I might raise my voice through this episode, we'll see how I do. But it's about the topic of women and money, and particularly yoga professionals.

I don't talk about it a lot in this podcast because my primary work is helping people to eradicate pain. But I've seen such a strong correlation with the trainees that I teach, almost all of him come into trainings with pain or strain or anxiety or depression. And then as they grow, interestingly enough so does their client base, and there's a correlation to their pain or their other symptoms reducing.

So this idea of money has such a pattern and correlation to the way that they feel, that's why I bring it up. Because as yoga professionals we have a very interesting relationship with money, I find. And as women, since that's most of the clients that I see are women, it's added to.

I like to say that it's only been in the recent past that women have moved from being property to owning property. Where women aren't going to university necessarily now to get an M-R-S. And yet in the 80s, as a woman in some areas of North America you needed a husband to get a mortgage. That was only 40 years ago, I was alive then. That's stunning, it's still sort of F-bombing for me to imagine.

And the truth is, is that there is undercurrent there. I remember when I had my kids someone said straight to my face, "You must not see them very often." Because they had an assumption that because of the way my business looked on the outside, that I obviously was working all of the time.

And the reality is, is that now I work less than I did when I started out. I've just learned a bunch of stuff and have been able to use my calendar extraordinarily well. And so the effort that I put in is very different because I just no more. I wasn't born into this world understanding business, just like my teaching of yoga, just like my understanding of bio-mechanics, I learned. It's a skill.

And so that's in part what I'm wanting to do with this particular episode, like the other ones I've done is just to demonstrate that it is a skill. But again, because a lot of women have been brought up with that girls are bad at math and because money often has a math component to it, there's an assumption that women can't do it.

Even if you don't consciously believe that, that can be in the undercurrent. And then when we look at the investment industry, not to step too far from what this episode is truly about. But if we look at the investment industry, that whole industry is designed to create confusion for both genders, it's the way that they can validate the fees they charge. But that's for another time.

But all in all the point is, is that money can come across as confusing, business can come across as being hard. And I really want to express that all of it can have way more clarity to it. And if you take some time to grow the skill, you can be amazed at how much of an impact you can make. And you can do it from a place that's not depleted.

Now this is a segue to really the crux of the first part of this episode, which is that every time I get into the final phase of my certification program I ask people what do they want out of it? You've done a significant amount of training with me so far, you've developed a client base, you're getting a greater understanding of what you want and how you want to contribute to the world. So now what? What do you really want out of this last phase of training?

And sometimes they can give me a pretty clear answer. When I ask them the next question of how much money would you like to make? And how many clients would you like to see? Is it in private sessions, or group sessions, or workshops, or retreats, or all the other numbers of ways that you can earn a living as a yoga person? And that's when there's silence.

And that's exactly what happened in January of 2021. Now, not surprisingly given the times that we're in when this is recorded, there was a lot of fatigue in January, a lot of depletion. But the amount that was expressed was astounding. 80% of the group quickly talked about how depleted they were. To even think about making money and building a business was just not on their radar.

The other 20, a month and a half later were like, "Wow, I had no idea I was so tired." Because they were already really good and they were on their way to burn out if not already burned out.

What's been curious is that as the months have progressed, their perceptions of themselves have changed and what their capable of has shifted dramatically. And interestingly, and not surprisingly, how things that occurred with their clients have also changed as well.

They're clearer, they're more connected, they're more vital. And as they become more clear, and more connected, and more vital, many of them are almost fully booked. And what's key here is that the point is that money is a result of state of being.

So it makes sense that when you're depleted, that oftentimes money is less. The actions and behavior of when you're depleted tend to be distracted, or less focused, or less concentrated, or connected. And the activities also tend to be more depleted. It's like people who are burned out do more things that contribute to them becoming more burned out.

Versus when you are more vital then the actions and behaviors shift. And the how of how we're doing the actions and the behaviors shift. So you might be doing the same thing like sending emails or posting to social but the vibe in behind what contributes to you doing that is very, very different.

And that becomes an interesting piece to pay attention to because you can't fake the vibe. You can't fake the energy. You can't fake the experience that you're having. You can fake the actions, but you can't fake the actual experience and the energy that is fueling those actions.

And this is really important because a lot of yoga teachers have the perception, when they see other yoga professionals who appear successful they're doing all these front facing things. By front facing I mean sending emails, posting to blogs, doing a podcast, doing social, offering stuff on YouTube, things like that.

So they think, "Okay, those are the actions that I need to do in order to grow their shtick." But what they don't understand is what's the energy that is fueling that. So they could do some of these actions, but because they haven't tapped into that vital connected energy, those actions are not going to actually lead to sustainable change or sustainable growth.

Ultimately, it's all about you. It comes down to you, it comes down to your vitality. So let me give you an example of this for myself. So when I first started, it was like late 1990s when I actually ended up getting my yoga teaching certificate. And then I started to connect with people.

I was teaching anatomy at a yoga studio and a number of people in the studio, their eyes were glazing over. And I said, "Do you want me to send you an email, just to remind you of the topics that we've covered?"

And so every week I sent them a little email on a topic we covered. At end of that week, someone else who was not in the workshop emailed me and said, "Can I get on your list?" And I'm like, "List? What's a list?" I didn't know there was such a list.

So the point being is there was no real email marketing back in the day, back in the late 90s early 2000s. There were no platforms, there were no email server, nothing like that. There was no MailChimp or any of that stuff back then. I just did my thing. And I wrote the way that I spoke.

In fact, when I read some of those earlier emails, and maybe one day I will bring them out if I have the courage to, but they were really awful. Like very, very bad. Very poorly written. And the piece that I'm sharing here is that shortly thereafter, sort of 2003-ish email marketing started to become more of a thing.

And there were a number of experts who were saying, "Here is the right way to do it." You know, there was all caps, and there was bold lettering, and there was shading, and there was yellow covering it. And there were certain things that you said and didn't say. And I found that when I read those templates I felt like the person was screaming at me. And it just didn't feel right to me in terms of the way that I wanted to share what I knew.

So I didn't. Instead I focused on the way that I wanted to write the email. Instead I focused on my heart. And then what I noticed is when I came from a place that was my heart, like if I sat in front of the computer and I just quieted my breath and settled into my heart and let the words come from my heart and into my fingertips, then I found better results.

I wanted my voice to come through my fingers. I wanted to nurture relationship. I wanted to make a difference even to people who hadn't bought. I simply wanted to serve.

So the reason why I share that is because that's a timeless principle that is as true today as it was back in late 90s and early 2000s, is to come into your heart, is to come into your voice. And if you can speak from that place, if you can share your story from that place, you're going to find your ability to connect with people a lot better. You're going to find your conversation a lot more organic. You're going to find that you won't be in this kind of salesy kind of role.

That you're simply sharing what it is that you have had an experience of and then the person is either going to resonate with it or not resonate with it. Because people purchase from us when they know us, and they like us, and they trust us. And not everybody, for example, who comes across my material, my work, likes it or trusts it. They would prefer somebody else. Maybe they prefer a physician or a physio who also understands yoga.

Meanwhile, there are other people who would prefer not to work with a physio or a physician, and just with someone who knows yoga. So the idea here is to come back into yourself. And to remember that someone is choosing you based off of your energy, based off of your vibe.

So with that, I want you to consider the following. If you are a yoga teacher listening to this, or a yoga therapist, and you are interested in bringing on more clients I want you to ask yourself, and even to write it down. We're going to write down five reasons why someone would register with you next week.

I asked the group that started in January to do this very exercise about a month ago. And what was so fascinating is how the feedback I got was that this was a bit like sorcery, a bit like magic. That not a week later people were emailing for consults or to book.

Now it might seem a bit hokey, but there is something in the vibe when you can connect with yourself. This something kind of filters out into the world when you believe in yourself. And what's interesting is that there is such a correlation to the reduction of pain.

Because so often in the process of reducing pain we can get overwhelmed by symptoms. Or if we've been told that pain is interpreted in your brain, which it is, we can sometimes think that well, it's all in our head. And then we can disassociate from our body. Where the healing process really is one of connecting brain and body in a way that makes the communication so much more wholesome, efficient, connected.

And then in the process of that recreation of wholeness, not that wholeness has ever left, but it's kind of like this perception of wholeness. We regain that, and this recreation of that, this reconceptualization actually might be a better word of that, we tune back into our inner authority, our inner voice, our inner wisdom. And we find that pain starts to go away.

So it's correlated, as we connect more into what it is that we're really good at as yoga teachers or yoga therapists. And we tap into our innate nature have been, the yield results of increasing more clients and more money and reduction of pain. The point being is that reduction of pain is a result. The increase of money, the increase of clients is a result. And the source of that, or a source of that is our state of being. Our state of being fuels our actions.

The next thing I'd like you to do is after you've done the list, and you've sort of tuned into what makes you really great and really effective as a yoga teacher or yoga therapist, then notice what that feels like in your body. Feel the vibe of that in your body.

And then as you go about doing those actions, so whether it's social, or whether it's email, or whether it's having conversations with people. Whether it's writing blog posts, or whether it's making offers to your students that you currently have, then you get to notice what's working in what it is that you're doing and what's not working in what it is that you're doing.

And just like a yoga practice, it's not like you just do a thing and then hope and pray it's going to work. You notice what's working and notice what's not working. You refine what it is that's not working, you nurture the thing that is working. And then you continue to evolve the process. And that energy, that undercurrent of energy is helping fuel it.

I know that money can have a bad rap. And I also know that as I get more and more connected to why I'm here on this planet at this time, that there is a purpose for it. I don't always know exactly why I'm here at this time on the planet, but I know that I am here at this time for a reason. And so I just do what it is that I do and I connect to myself.

And the reason I said what I said in the way that I said it, it's kind of like a bee. A bee moves from flower to flower to flower and the reason the bee moves from flower to flower to flower is the bee is feeding itself. It does not know that it is pollinating the flowers.

So its innate purpose in terms of pollination, it does not know that is what it's doing. What it's doing is it's getting nourishment from the flowers. So while I know that I'm here teaching yoga and helping people recover from pain, and eradicate pain, and recover from symptoms, or eradicate symptoms, that's what I know on one level I'm here for. But there's another purpose that I don't even know that I am having an impact on.

I might never know that. And that is not necessary for me to know. What I do know, that I can continue to hone which will also impact that other purpose that I might never know about. I can continue to hone my own self.

Connect to my own inner wisdom and my own inner authority, continue to refine the things that aren't working, nurture the things that are working. Connect to more people and help them to connect to themselves. Help them to connect to their own inner voice, their own inner wisdom, their own inner authority.

That's what this episode has been all about. Money is merely a result, reduction of symptoms is merely a result. The process is the state of being. Hone that and you will amaze yourself, if you're willing, in terms of what your results will be.

I've got two options for you if you find that this is really resonating. The first is that we are running Women, Money and Yoga. A four day event where you will learn from four of my teachers. A copywriter, salesperson, and two investment people all who love yoga. And they will teach you what they have taught me. And you will love this seriously.

Now I've gotten feedback from people saying but they're not like yoga professionals. And I'm like yeah, that is why I chose them because I have learned from them. Because what they are absolutely skilled at are those things of marketing, sales, investing. And they will help you build those skills for yourself so that you can make the difference in your world, with your clients and with your money. For details, please email us at [email protected] and we can give you all the details. I'm looking so forward to working with you further. See you next time.