15. The Bigger the Vision, the More I Needed the Basics

In Winter and Spring 2022 after the Dr. Joe Dispenza retreat, our work went through a major upgrade. We used to end our programs with taking everything we just did with our clients and going quantum. Now we chose to start with that. As you go through your upgrade on the identity level, so too does your service and offering.

I felt a cognitive dissonance offering the old version of our program (and what we built into our funnel pages). Like I said, if we were able to collapse what we used to do in 3-months into a 1-Day Intensive, why still offer what we used to? The time-to-value is much greater here.

We'd also increased our prices in the previous months, and it had been a while since we'd offered a longer transformational journey in the months prior.

I learned that when that's the case, just get the reps in and offer whatever you're currently passionate about and able to sell.

I'll be honest and say that there were many threads competing for my attention around this time period:

There were family dynamics at play, my grandma was passing away and there was frequent travel in NY for me to spend time with my family, and dealing with my own grief and having conversations with my family about her end-of-life care.

There was the turnover of housemates, as we were subletting 2 rooms in our house, every 4-9 months or so, I'd begin the roommate search again. And it wasn't just any fit will do. They had to be in alignment with our house ethos, and have a schedule that worked well with everyone in the house who was working from home, making sure we had enough workspaces for everyone who needed them.

There was taking care of the house with random things as house managers, a broken A/C, helping move some furniture around, taking care of the garden and watering the fruit trees (it was a timesuck for sure, but it did bring me joy). Sometimes I escaped into the garden to get some sun outside rather than focusing on what I know I needed to to move the needle forward. It was both a respite and a distraction.

And then, there was another societal-level project that popped in. An opportunity with a fund of funds. There was a fund in our Faces of the Future vision, so when we met someone who already had a fund structure set up and wanted to pivot in thesis, shut it down or have someone else take over, we thought, WOW, what a synchronistic manifestation, this is great. This is what we'd be calling in. And the container has just presented itself. So we teamed up with 2 of our former clients to bring it to fruition. We thought we'd just shaved off at least 6-12 months of figuring things out on our own and the money to get all the legal infrastructure set up.

Well, easier said than done. It turns out the legal infrastructure piece is a much lower priority piece than vision alignment. We met weekly attempting to sort out what the thesis, vision and unique competitive advantage was before rolling it out to our networks. As a Fund of Funds is really top of the food chain in terms of how it touches multiple funds in a single industry, it is about as macro or Societal level (our 6th S) as it gets. It literally is a vehicle you raise money for to pour into other funds which invest into and shape companies in a particular industry.

I learned that when you take on a project at the Society level, in order for you to succeed, you better have all your ducks in a row on the other S's because you are holding space for such a large manifestation aka a large morphic field.

You must have the capacity and take responsibility for your State, how you show up, present, focused, ready to go with a good grip of all the other spinning plates in your reality and where you're directing your time, energy and attention. Being in a state of nervous system dysregulation can really de-rail this one.

You must see yourself as your upgraded Self, stepping into the Identity of someone who is a fund of funds manager who receives large checks and takes meetings with family offices and other fund managers. Old narratives and imposter syndrome play a major role in self-sabotage here. Not taking the action until you feel fully ready to make the ask for large checks because reputation is at stake. You will never feel ready, you just decide to be ready or keep circling and spinning your wheels and not moving it forward.

You must have a service, because unless you have the financial resources and a generous amount of time to devote, this is the type of opportunity that comes secondary to your day-to-day bread and butter, so you must be actively generating income elsewhere. This level of opportunity doesn't pay until there is money raised. So you must have the finances to hold you over until you come into group consensus on the vision and thesis, build the assets and then raise the money. If you are not financially set, desperation to just make it work quickly can creep in. And before you know if, you are saying yes to opportunities that are not in alignment with your thesis.

You must have Systems for how you deliver your service that create spaciousness for you to focus on this kind of high level project. If you day-to-day work is completely tied to your presence, then you won't have much capacity to focus on a secondary project.

You must be a good Steward of your time, energy, attention and money management. Because that is a major need for mastery as an investor and someone who is due diligencing projects and opportunities for investment. And other people are trusting you with their money and decisions! If you cannot wisely steward your resources or other projects, or your own main business, you have not built up the capacity at the Stewardship level to take on this type of project.

Based on how I'm writing this, you can probably tell I and we were not a vibrational match for this project succeeding because of misalignment on the pre-requisite level S's. For some of us, it was State as the kink in the chain, for others it was Self, for others it was Service and having the Systems for consistent cashflow already set up to support ourselves to take on such a project.

For me the main kinks were on the levels of Self (not having had prior experience as a fund manger) and Systems. My main business did not have the systems set up to be continuously cash positive on a consistent basis.

It was a major learning experience though. The biggest takeaway for me from this, other than looking back with 20/20 vision through the lens of our 6S methodology now, is that our thesis Clifton and I were leading with, about psychologically de-risking the entrepreneur as a value-add that our fund of funds would offer for these fund managers to their portfolio companies, is what we lead with now in our 6S methodology. We just focus on solopreneurs and bootstrapped companies with it now.

Ultimately, a fund is a major piece that is part of the big picture vision of Faces of the Future, but like I said, the vision comes through non-linearly and it's up to us to sequence the appropriate order. Was it the right order for us to proceed with this project? Logically, no. But for the case of learning these lessons and infusing them into our methodology, yes.

Our business entity, which is a morphic field which we tap into and channel clarity from, is a manifesting generator, based on its human design chart of when it was formed. Which means it tends to move fast, break stuff and skip steps. Some of the pieces come in out of order, but always find their way back into the picture as a piece that's already been pre-assembled that we can pick up and connect when it makes sense. So that's part of both the beauty and the curse of building a business in the 3D, that's being orchestrated and guided from another dimension.

We were also becoming resource-strapped. With diluted focus on our main bread and butter coaching business, other than a handful of clients we worked with now online, that we'd never even met in person (those were a first), we were looking for other ways to make money faster. This is a common trap many conscious entrepreneurs fall into.

Getting involved in larger commission based projects, deals and intros that only pay a fee if something converts. The fee is a nice sum, but again that only works if you have something sustainably paying you in your day-to-day. Your nervous system has to get exposed to receiving money more frequently and more consistently, otherwise it cannot ground the larger opportunities.

Some of it is again, avoidance of doubling down on the coaching business side of things which had way more potential and way fewer variables of being steady and successful if we just put our heads down and focused, especially on consistent outreach and marketing for the offer.

But at this point, I was willing to do anything to avoid doing that. Including finding ways to pour my remaining funds into crypto to see how I can make crypto work for me. But again, this is an opportunity that only works if you are steady in your day-to-day cashflow and keep your emotions out of it.

I also realized that even at the fund of funds level, it still came down to sales and marketing. Because you are still working on your messaging for your value proposition in your fund, and you are taking meetings to pitch your offer for investors and family offices to write you checks to invest in you bringing your thesis to fruition, based on your credibility, team assembled and vision. So there really is no avoiding these skill sets at any level of entrepreneurship.

So I concluded that no matter how unique your vision is or what your offer is in coaching and the transformation you facilitate, whether or not you have 5D guides or angels whispering in your ear, even if you feel special, "chosen" or unique, on the ground floor it still looks the same and comes down to sales and marketing.

Fuck!