Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, welcome to Lessons from a Quitter where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams. Hello my friends. Happy New Year. Welcome to the first episode of 2023. I'm so excited to have you here. I hope you had a fantastic holiday season. I hope you got some time to rest. Maybe you're still resting, kind of easing into 2023. I love that for you and maybe you're hitting the ground running and you wanna change everything this year. I love that for you too. I am super excited about this year. I can't wait to see how we're going to grow the Quitter Club and get so many of you in there and get you to stop treading your careers and get you to figure out what you wanna do and create quit plans and go after it.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
2023 is the year and I'm just so excited. There's so many amazing things that are on the horizon. So many things that I wanna try and teach. So I've been kind of using these last couple of weeks to dream up what this year is going to entail and I can't wait to bring it all to you, but enough about what I wanna do. I'm so excited about this episode and the fact that we're starting off the year with such a bang. You know that I don't do that many interviews anymore. They're very rare and I typically wait until I find stories that are so unique or inspiring that I have to bring to you. And D's story is just that when I heard it, I knew I needed her on the podcast and I'm so grateful that she made the time to join us and share her story.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
DL Sean started her career like a lot of us. She started out in college kind of figuring out what she wanted to do and picked a career that she fell in love with, believing that it's the way to kind of give back, have a steady career. And so she became a social worker and like so many of us, after incurring a ton of student loan debt and getting into a field where she realized that what she was being paid wasn't even enough to cover her living expenses and student loans. And so she had to do something to make money, to make some more money to be able to pay back her loans. And that's what began her entrepreneurial journey. This idea of maybe making a little bit more on the side. And that led her into network marketing and we'll talk all about that and then how that transitioned into coaching.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
And DL grew her coaching business on the side while she kept her nine to five and had a three hour commute. She did that for two and a half years until she grew her coaching business to a place that replaced her income and she felt safe enough to be able to quit and go full-time into her coaching business. And she didn't do that until the end of 2020. And we'll talk all about what has happened since then. How she went from making 40,000 in her coaching business to making a million in 2022, which is just mind blowing. And I think that she's just an the embodiment of what is possible. If you listened last week to the episode and be open to possibilities, I think she just really is an example of what is possible when you decide to go for it. And I think so many of you, so many people I coach, there's so many beliefs about why you can't do it, why it won't work, why it's not feasible.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
And I love bringing people that just by being themselves, just by sharing their story helps shatter those beliefs. DL now coaches women of color to build wildly successful coaching businesses so that they too can empower emancipate and elevate not only themselves but their communities. She's the host of the Black Banked and Booked Out podcast and she runs two sales programs, five Figure Freedom and six Figure Liberation. She's doing such incredible work in the coaching world and I am so excited that she's here to share all of her wisdom. So I will stop rambling and let's jump in and chat with dl. Hi dl, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
I am so excited to have you and I'm so excited to share your story cuz I know it is going to inspire so many people. So why don't you tell us a little bit about like what led you to become a social worker and kind of what that path looked like for you?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Sure. My mom is a preschool teacher. She worked in preschool my whole life. And so I was always used to being around kids. My college job or my high school job, I was always in a daycare so kids come very natural to me. So I was like, okay, I'll just become, you know, a childcare worker. I'll just be a teacher. That was my first instinct. And I remember had a little bit of a hint of maybe I could own my own childcare center. I don't know, that could be cool, but it was so small, it was just a hint. But I remember definitely thinking that, and I remember in high school I was shadowing the director of the childcare center. You know, if the kids were down for a nap, I would send her office and answer some of the phones. Like it's so interesting looking back a little bit of that.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Was there just a, just a tint? Not a lot. , not a lot. So I went to undergrad, got into child development. I was my first major. Hated it. I was like just, I just hated it. I hated all the theories, I hated all the, the rules when it came to kids. Obviously daycare, like there were a ton of rules in daycare, like ratios and food and all of that and tracking the kids and incident reports. But like I just hated the theory of it. I'm like, can't we just let the kids gotta be kids? But there, there was so much structure and so I kind of floated around. I was like, maybe I wanna do child events, like childcare events, maybe I wanna have a birthday planning company. So I kind of dabbled in the communications department and then I'll never forget, I was sitting outside of the psychology building and a friend literally walked by and she like walked past me and then she literally backtracked and she said, D are you doing right now?
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And I was like, nothing. Like I don't know what I'm doing with my career. like, this is so depressing. And she said, well I'm about to go to a social work intro meeting, you wanna sit in with me? And I was like, social work, I don't wanna take people's kids away. Like I don't wanna do that. And I was like, oh sure. I mean I have literally nothing better to do. So I sat in this meeting and within 10 minutes I signed my major declaration forms. Oh wow. I just, I loved everything that they said. Everything about social justice work, everything about such a wide range of what social workers can do. I loved all the different types of classes I would take. We took biology classes to understand the body. We also took psych classes, we took political science classes and then obviously a lot of social work, like just the range of the type of classes.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
And I ate all of it up. I just gobbled it up and it, it was such a huge part of my identity being a social worker. I talked a lot about that higher ed experience zooming out a little bit because the way social work works is you typically get your B S W, your bachelor's in social work, it's an accredited program throughout the country and then nine times outta 10, you know you need to go get your master's. So I got my master's at U N UNC Chapel Hill, very prestigious program. I think it's like number three in the country. Um, worked my butt off to get in . I had like a three one G GPA and like terrible G R E scores, like embarrassing GRE scores. But I did well in the writing so I'm like okay, at least I can, they see that have a brain, right?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So like it's such a big deal that I get in a Chapel Hill. I was one of three people Wow. In the program. I also got into it at the advanced standing level, so like the most prestigious part of the program. Such a big deal. And I just remember thinking I loved higher ed so I was like, let me be a researcher, realized I hated math. But then I looked back and I said I absolutely loved being in college and exploring all that. So that's when I decided to be a higher ed social worker in particular. And I did a little bit of other things. I did nonprofit work, I worked in prisons too. And that was for like nine months, eight months I did research since that's what I studied in school. What does it mean to be a higher ed social worker? A higher ed social worker is just a social worker that works in higher ed. There are more and more people that are stepping in to higher ed as social workers because college students at that age, so many things are changing. It's so many identity shifts are changing, they're picking their careers. There's a ton of case management, higher ed, social work. Very cool.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
You kind of land in higher ed social work. And how long did you, you work in that field?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I worked there for two and a half years.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And where in this journey do we start? Even like the seedling, kind of the inkling of maybe I should be a coach. Like how does that even get introduced you know, into the realm of like things that you might wanna do?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
So I had all this e education, right? I had all this, all these fancy degrees in a a ton of student loan debt. And the first way I even found entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship wasn't even like talked about in my family. The first way I found it was Beachbody network marketing. And so that's how I got into it. One of the women that I went to in undergrad, she was in Beachbody and she actually did pretty well. She made a full-time income on Beachbody. So that's how I started and I learned about the coaching industry from there through podcasts, people would send me different podcasts. I was like, wait, I don't know if I wanna do network marketing, I wanna be the coach who are supporting the network marketers. Not that in particular, but I was like, I wanna know more about this coaching thing.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
So would you say that the reason you were drawn to Beachbody or Monet marketing was to supplement your income to be able to pay back loans? Is that what the motivation was? Totally,
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yes. I was only making $2,500 a month at Duke. That's it. And I barely was getting by, had no money to pay off the six figures of student loan debt that I got myself into. Can
Speaker 1 (10:19):
We just talk about how insane this system is? It blows my mind that like this isn't talked about with people that are going into a field like social work where I mean what is the cap? What is the max that a social worker is making? I can't imagine it. It's that much and like they're allowing kids to take on this much debt. It's mind blowing.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah and there's so many different programs, right? And there's lots of loan forgiveness stuff. Yeah. But I'm like 10 years I know in a nonprofit is rough. Like 10 years of you know, living paycheck to paycheck is rough
Speaker 1 (10:51):
And even they make those programs so rough like you have to jump through 4 million hoops. And I know so many friends just through law who also went that route. Like when I went to law school I knew I would work in public interest and so I was around a lot of people that were also not making that much and had tons of debt and I have so many horror stories of people who did work for 10 years and then still like there was like some thing that they missed and this didn't qualify and it's just a nightmare. So anyways, that's another topic for another day. Okay, so
Speaker 2 (11:19):
.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So you decided like I'm gonna take on this side hustle in order to be able to pay off some of this debt. Did you have thoughts like a lot of the people that I work with and a lot of people that come to me have this idea of like, I wanna do something on the side because I wanna make more money or just because I, I like it or I wanna see what entrepreneurship is about. But then it's like all of the thoughts of like what if people see me doing this or people are gonna judge me for doing this or they're gonna be like, what she's now you know, selling network marketing or now she's a coach or whatnot. So when you were first deciding to get into Beachbody, did you have any of those like, like fears and doubts come up?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yes and no Especially but the negative stigma of network marketing and like literally the business model is contact your friends and family and post on your personal Facebook. It was very rough. And so totally I did the thing that I'm so grateful for and and I know exactly what you're talking about, I felt like I didn't have the luxury to question or the luxury to care because I was like I have to make more money. And so it wasn't that I was forced into it but a thought that I thought a lot while I was side hustling was what options do I have? And that can sound like a desperate question but for me it was very empowering. I would constantly ask myself what options did I have and I didn't have many So I said okay, how can I make this work for me?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
What a fantastic question. And this is the thing is like the quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions you ask yourself. Cuz I think so many people either we get frustrated or overwhelmed and we throw our hands up like there's nothing I can do. Or like you said, I mean there may not be that many options but when I look at what can I do, what are the options here, at least you kind of get into problem solving. I hear that question in a very empowering way too. Like okay this is the situation, this is the facts. Like this is how much I'm getting paid on paper, this is how much I need, what can I do here? And so I love that that's how you reoriented yourself to kind of figure out what you wanted to do next. Did you ever think maybe I just have to get a different type of job or go into a different field in order to make more?
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Totally. And so you were asking how do social workers like make a living one track is therapy, you can get your license and you can do therapy. It's so funny now, now that I'm a coach and all I do is talk to people one-on-one or in groups, right? Just like a therapist. I had a major story around like there's no way I could do therapy. I'm too messed up myself. Like how could I do therapy? And so I never explored that but you can make six figures as a therapist easy in private practice easily. Um, yeah, no totally you could do self-pay. There's so many options. My husband is a therapist and he's close to six figures now. So that is a a route the majority of social workers go down. But another route that I went down was getting my PhD so I applied some programs I got in and I was offered some money as well and I worked in higher ed too where it's just normal you go get your PhD. Like that's the culture of being in higher ed. Like the more education the better .
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I got into some programs so that was going to be my next step. But that's also when I learned about coaching and I made the decision to do coaching over my PhD because I also had the thought, well I'm just gonna get 'em to more debt. And then that I also like funneled my way into higher ed to also look at the salary bands and I was like Max these people are making six figures but that'll take me 20 years to do. And so I said I'm still still gonna be around the 40, 50, 60 mark for a very long time plus additional student loans for my PhD. I'm like, the numbers just don't make sense.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
So when you decided to kind of go into coaching, what was the decision to jump into coaching and who did you wanna coach?
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, so the first thing I did was become a life coach because I was social worker, I was already helping people, I just become a life coach and so I wasn't certified or anything but I had my degree so I thought that was enough. So I didn't have like that mental jump to go through and I actually created something called the Busy Girls Club because all of my friends would ask me how was I doing it all? How was I juggling at all? So I was like I help busy women hit their goals and that was my first couple of clients and my first couple of dollars.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I love that so much. Okay, so you decide to make this and then how do you get clients? Did you reach out to people? You know, how did you decide how much to charge? Like what was the first iteration of this business for you?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So my friends were the first people to hire me. I told the internet that I was doing this on Facebook, then they reach out to me. I wanna be clear, I was done cold pitching people from network marketing, I was done with that also Facebook groups. Facebook groups were huge back then. And so I started telling people everything that I was doing and how I can help them manage their time too with everything that they wanted to do. And that's how I signed my first couple of clients. I charged a thousand dollars for four months of coaching.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
I love that. And you were still, to be clear working as a social worker when you were doing this right? Oh
Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yeah, I was working as a social worker. I had a round trip commute so I was three hours of my day was just spent commuting and so on top of working an eight hour day. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
So when did you find time to coach and build a business?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
So, and this is something I teach, I call it the one thing method and how I learned how to do it was I just did one thing before work and one thing after work and that's all I needed to do. I made sure to have my weekends off just to have a break from both my job and my business. But yeah, I did one thing in the morning and one thing in the evening I would coach typically on the evenings and in the morning I would do some marketing stuff. I used to have this thing called Bonnet Chronicles where I will wear my bonnet at five o'clock in the morning, say something motivational on Instagram and then go to work. And people loved it. People loved how I was just making it work with what I had.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
I love that so much. That's one of the things like I try to teach people a lot too is like getting it out of overwhelm and we create so much confusion and busy work and all these things we need to do and it's truly like what's one thing that's gonna move the needle forward and and the vast majority of stuff we do is not really that necessary. It's like there's such just critical things that you should do in order to, for whatever building a business, like finding a new job, you know building up your resume, whatever. But I think we create in our head like I need a whole day to be able to sit down and like update my resume. No you don't. You need an hour, you know like in the morning before you go to work. So I love that. Did you have kind of any of my drama around selling, putting packages out there, prices like telling people what you do.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
I think of so many of us, you know that imposter syndrome kind of creeps and I know you had the degree so you maybe had that legitimacy within your own brain like hey I studied this, I know how to do this stuff. But I think for so many of us, like we wanna start a side hustle but just all those doubts and fears creep in. So I'm just wondering how you maybe handled some of that or if if it's the same thing that you were saying like it was just necessity you had to make money so you didn't have the time to kind of engage with those thoughts as much.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
If anything I was more burned by network marketing. Um, and this isn't like a network marketing slam, like there are literally multimillionaires out of network marketing. Yeah like loving every second of it. Like it's totally a business model that can work for a lot of people. It just didn't work for me. But I was burned from network marketing so my hack for that was dealing with my mindset drama was I said well I'm just gonna start brand new social media pages. I'm gonna like no one will know that I'm doing this. And so um, I started a new Facebook page that I dedicated solely to my business. I started a new Instagram account and I worked from there. I started from zero and that helped me a lot. And so I'm all for working through the mindset drama, trying to change limiting beliefs. But I also believe like what's just another way that you can still get what you wanna do done right but also work with your brain and just what are some other options other than having to go to your deepest darkest trauma to post on social media
Speaker 1 (19:14):
. Totally, totally. I that's, I mean I think if you can change a circumstance to make it easier for yourself, do it if you know, as long as you know that there, there's still gonna be maybe fears and doubts but okay, that just brings up another fear that I feel like so many of us have is like so many people try one thing and it doesn't work for whatever reason, it just didn't work. That wasn't for me. Especially in the this entrepreneurship game. It's so much just doing and learning and seeing what works for you and seeing your own style and, and so you tried network marketing and it didn't work for you and I feel like so many people take that as just evidence of like see you can't make money as a side hustle or what these people are selling on the internet is a lie and I can't do this or why would I, you know. And so that you go to kinda shut it down even the next thing where it's like well then coaching is not gonna work. So what do you think was different for you that you sort of saw the potential that like even if network marketing didn't work for me then like coaching still can.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
So here's the fascinating thing, especially when it comes to making money and entrepreneurship is the people who quit entrepreneurship or say that entrepreneurship doesn't work for them, any sort of entrepreneurship, they often have made money. Like I made money in Beachbody, right? Like I know lots of people went in my beachbody circles that made money that made even 50, 60 k like you know, made pretty good money and they still quit and say that it doesn't work, right? Well I'm thinking about one of my coworkers at Duke, she was the HR person and she saw my business growing and she was like, DL help me figure this out. And so we figured out that she should do career coaching and so we just made a few posts on on social media that she's going to do some resume reviews, nothing crazy. And she got a person to do it. She got one person appear a hundred dollars to review her resume and then she never do it, did it again. And so it's like what do we define not working as? Right? I think we should be a lot more honest and say oh I didn't like something. Not that it didn't work. And so like how I talked about Beachbody, I said people kill it in Beachbody, it totally works, it just didn't work for me. That's a completely different conversation and I think a lot more honest one. Oh
Speaker 1 (21:24):
I love that so much. Okay so we start building this coaching business and how long did you build it as a side hustle before you decided to quit your job?
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Two and a half years. Wow. So a pretty long time. Yeah I wasn't one of those people that like just jumped off the deep end three or six months in like I took my time and that's amazing that people do that. But my nervous system and my trauma couldn't
Speaker 1 (21:48):
. I love that. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Were you waiting to make a certain income or were you just like, I'll know when I'm ready to quit and I'm just gonna keep this like I can make it work on the side so I leave this stability of my job.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
So I always knew that I wanted to quit. Like that was always the goal but I don't think I had the confidence to actually set a date or to set any parameters on what that would look like. So it was kinda like this pipe dream of like I'm gonna quit one day, I'm gonna quit one day, one day I'm not gonna be here. But I think I was too nervous to put down numbers on a piece of paper to be like okay, what would it actually mean for me to quit? What would I need in the bank? How do I wanna set up my business so that I could quit? I never took myself there until 2020, which was the year that I quit. I quit at the end of that year. I said I actually think I could do this. I think I wanna quit. But it took me a long time to even dream that. I remember the first person I reached out to to told them about entrepreneurship. I remember looking at that message and it said I just want enough money to pay off my student loans. I couldn't even imagine that this could be my full-time career.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
What was maybe the catalyst where you decided now I can see this as a full-time thing and I can leave this job
Speaker 2 (23:04):
In 2019? I know I made $40,000 and I was like that's enough, that is enough for me to live off of. That's enough for me to believe that this is a full-time thing. So I had a little bit of a window there and I kept making sales and I told myself, am I gonna quit my business anytime soon? No. So what if the job is the thing to go? So I had a little bit of uh, a seed of like I think I'm onto something and I decided I think I wanna try to go for it and in 2020 and that's what I did. And for me the biggest thing was I made, you know, $40,000 doing that crazy schedule. But sending me home was like okay DL, you really have no excuses now. Like you're working from home, you can save three hours a day, let's really knock this out. And so that's exactly what I did.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
That's so amazing. You said earlier that like being a social worker is such a big part of your identity. So how did that kind of play out when you decided to quit or did it at all? Was that something that you had to grapple with? Like that identity piece of leaving something that you had worked towards for a very long time and got the degrees and you know had the career or by that point because you had created this business, was it easier to just switch and leave identity piece behind? So
Speaker 2 (24:23):
I got to a couple of places. One place that I got to was I believe that coaching is social work. I believe that I was still doing the same work. I believe that I was still impacting people. I have the dreams and actually right now I'm filing to have my own nonprofit. And so that part of me is always there. And I knew that it was so ingrained in me that it was never going away no matter how much money I make or how big my business got, I knew that I was always going to be a social worker. It's funny, my clients like to tease me. They're like, you're a formal so social worker. I'm like never . Never ever, ever. I do my N S A W dues just like you do like you, this can never be taken away from me. And so I have that in me all the time and I knew I could always come back to the field.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
And then I also got to the place where I sat with myself. I, I remember I was really frustrated with one of my students. I was working with students from Sub-Saharan Africa and this is when the pandemic hit and he decided to go awol, like literally missing in action in Nairobi, Kenya. And he would not answer my WhatsApp messages. We had to get the embassy involved. I stayed up all night because of the time zone contacting the embassy and the higher ups of the university cuz we had a missing student. It was a mess. And I had a moment with myself where I said I think someone could do this better. I'm pretty good at it. You know, I did really well. All of my department would publicly thank me say I was the best person in that role that they've had in decades. I did well but I was still like my heart is not in his obviously I want to find the missing student in Kenya, right? Like obviously, but I was just like I think someone could do this job better. I think there's somebody who literally wants to eat this and breathe this and live this day in and day out and it's not me. I know that I wanna run my business. And so I didn't have any ego there. I didn't think I was the best and no one could replace me, none of that. I didn't have that ego. I was like someone could do this better. They just could. And
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Love just like giving yourself that permission. I think for so many of us, like you said, we think that like we have to leave that identity behind or you know for me, like I know I wouldn't go back to law but I know that it informed who I am, like the way I think. Yeah the way I look at things that can never be taken away from you And that becomes like not only just the part of the story but really who I am and and how I approach my business and how I approach my life. I'm super grateful for for that. And I think so many of us think like once I quit then that's it. Like that part of me is dead and it's like no that's informed who you're bringing with you into the future. But we attached so much morality to all of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Like certain work is good. And again I say this cuz I had a huge complex, like I was a public defender and I had this martyr syndrome and like I can't leave these people and if I do I'm a terrible person. You know? And I think putting the ego aside and deciding like I really want to run this business and there's other people that can do this better than me. And giving myself permission to be okay with the fact that like I wanna see where I can take this business and like because I said I wanna do something or did it in one way that like that has to be the way that I do things for the rest of my life. And I think just allowing ourselves the fluidity of the human experience, right? It's change and constantly growing and trying things in different ways. And so I love that you were able to not only just navigate that but give yourself that permission to decide that maybe that chapter's over and someone else can take that on and now you wanna see what else you can do in the coaching realm.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Totally. Yes. And just realizing that career is ever evolving too. Like I'm a coach now but I could totally see myself like hiring a C E O for my coaching business and me being full-time in the nonprofit that I'm creating. Like there's so many options.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Love that you say that by the way. I've always had the same thought like when I left the criminal justice system, like I didn't know how but I kept thinking like I, well I'm going to help, I'm going to do it in another way not just help people but within the criminal justice system it's, it's so important to me and it's fascinating for me to see the ways that I've like figured out how to incorporate that type of stuff in my life and prove to myself that I can still do it and I will more in the future. And really like see that there are things that are evolving. And I always talk about one of the most liberating things that happened for me when I quit was just showing myself that I could change. While that sometimes is scary for people that are so, you know, stuck on kind of quote unquote certainty.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
It it was the most freeing for me because I kept thinking now like I have no idea what I'm gonna be doing in five years or 10 years. Like I love this business, I love this platform, I love this program that I'm growing and there's a hundred things now I can think of that I would wanna do or try or grow. And so as you like are saying, you know, who knows what will happen with this coaching business or your nonprofit or even something completely different, right? Like there's so much more possibility when I think we open up these boxes that we've kind of held ourselves into. So
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, it's like we're gonna keep on quitting
Speaker 1 (29:08):
. Exactly. We're
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Gonna' gonna keep on quitting. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (29:10):
We're all about the quitting here. Okay, so tell us what happens when you quit and then in 2020 you start to go full-time with your business. Were you still doing the busy girls club? So then what did we switch to in that time?
Speaker 2 (29:25):
So it's kinda like I could hear the eye rolls from here , but I, I promise it'll be a, a ethical story if you will. I pivoted to business coaching again. I could hear the eye rolls from here.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Why? Why do you even say that?
Speaker 2 (29:37):
The eye
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Rolls. Yeah
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Because I feel like it's like oh everyone just wants to teach about how to make money. Mm-hmm right? And I really feel like I kept getting referrals and I kept getting questions and I didn't like what was out there. Especially as a black woman, I didn't see anybody who looked like me teaching it this way either. So it was kind of like against my will. I was like I guess I'll do business coaching. I don't wanna be one of those people. But it turned out really good
Speaker 2 (30:07):
and I've helped a lot of people and my clients are always thankful cuz once they hear my story they're like I can't see you not doing this. Like I can't believe like you thought this would be crazy. So the only thing I'll say is I always make sure to always promise people what I have done and nothing more. So when I was first starting out and I didn't make six figures, I wasn't promising and I'm gonna hope people make six figures or I wasn't even promising I'm gonna help you quit your job when I was still in my job. Like I always make sure to stay in integrity, to be like well I've signed some four figure clients, I paid off a few credit cards. That's what I'm gonna help and market to people. So that was always the line that I wasn't willing to cross. And I think that's important in entrepreneurship. You can still have whatever niche you wanna have, do whatever you wanna do and stay within integrity as well.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
Absolutely. And I will say, just as a caveat, obviously I'm in the coaching industry myself and I hear a lot of those things and I think when you're working mostly with coaches that can be more exacerbated I think because I work with mostly non co people that have never encountered coaching. I don't think everybody is a business coach. You know, I think that there's tons of coaches out there doing tons of other things and I think business coaching is really important. Like I'm so grateful that someone taught me how to do cuz I you know, not born knowing business and for some people it comes more naturally or you maybe you find your own way. And I was not one of those people and I was a lot more like I just want someone to tell me what to do and how to do it and help me with all this mind drama. So I am forever indebted to the business coaches that decided to be like, hey this is how I did it. Do you wanna learn? Right? And like you said, I mean I think you can absolutely do that in an ethical way where it's like I'm not promising you things that are impossible or just to get you to sign because like my end all Beall is to just take your money. It's like this is how I did it and I can save you years of frustration so you can learn how to do it too. Literally
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Years. Yeah, literally
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Years. Yeah. No I know. I mean that was uh, just as a aside for people when I learned that coaching not just existed but that it was like, oh I get to pay you so that I don't have to take three years to figure this thing out, whatever it is. Or I can pay you to speed up all of the angst and yeah, let's do it now I just throw all my money at coaches. I'm like, you wanna help me with my health? Great. You wanna help me with my business? Perfect. It's so good.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
I love this industry. This industry has changed my life. It's changed my marriage, it's changed my health. I was diagnosed with a chronic illness this year. I have a life coach that's keep me sane. Like I love all the coaches too. I'm so grateful for this industry.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Same, same. I know. And I think about, I'm like how did I make it through life without this like ? It's so good. Okay, so then you then you go into business coaching. We're full-time now 2020. Tell us what happens.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
So I quit at the end of October, but before that I was building my business and I actually ended 2020. I did that year still with my nine to five. We were home from the pandemic, but that whole year I did $300,000. I was like, I think I'm good now.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
,
Speaker 2 (33:00):
I went from 40 to 300,000.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
I said that is mind blowing. Can we just stop there for a second? Okay. I just wanna know cause last week's episode was all about being open to possibilities, right? And just like it, the possibility of making a certain amount of money and then you can tell me what your thoughts were, be around what was possible when you were at your nine to five. But I know for myself, I just didn't even think it was possible to make certain amounts of money and work them out that I did. When you were doing this, was this like, oh yeah, of course I could do 300 k or was it blowing your own mind? Oh
Speaker 2 (33:30):
No, it was shattering everything . So I, I did 1,000,012 months this year in 2022.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Holy moly. It's
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Been a whirlwind, a huge whirlwind. But I have more identity stuff at a million than at when I quit my job for some reason. Interesting. I think it's because everything caught up to me. The reason why I'm saying that is I kept moving. I was like, all right, I got clients, I have groups, I have people to get results. Like I think I just kept going and going and going and now all of the identity stuff is finally starting to catch up with me cuz I've slowed down a little bit. Um, but I wasn't freaking out that much. I was like, okay, I quit my job, I got a calendar full of clients, let's go, let's go, let's go. And so that's a good thing. I think it's pretty neutral, but the biggest thing I think people always ask me like what was the difference mindset at work? That's when I learned about the model. And so I think just mindset work and putting anything into the results that I wanna create, thinking about my thoughts, thinking about my limiting beliefs in a completely different way because I'm a trained social worker, I know a lot of different psychology tools but nothing was the same as learning about the model and learning about thoughts create my results. Yeah. So yeah, it, it's been a big game changer. I
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Mean that's mind blowing. Like honestly, if we sit back and think in three years, 20 20, 21, 22 you went from 40 to a million dollars. It's the most amazing story. It's incredible. Like it's amazing to watch you and watch you help so many people and really like help people bust through their own kind of ceilings and the possibilities and create generational wealth and create businesses that give them freedom and create all of this incredible things. And then to see how fast that has snowballed into this incredible business is unbelievable to watch. And I just think it's like such an inspiring thing for so many of us who are stuck in like not only if it's not possible but it's this, oh I dunno either that it's not for me that it'll take too long. Just all of these thoughts that it's just like, you know, I think let DL be an example of what could be possible. That it could all be so much faster than you think it could be and so much bigger than maybe you even dreamed that it could be.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think um, one of the things that helped me was I have something called like the 10% happiness project where that in between of you know that you wanna quit, right? You know that you wanna quit something but you can't do it just yet because of your current circumstances. I just remember thinking about, well what can help me 10%? Like not drastically, like what's gonna help me quit my job but what's gonna bring me just 10% more happy? And I remember, I personally hate overhead lighting in offices. Like those yellow flickering lights dragged me insane. So I remember asking myself this question and I spent the whole afternoon searching for a floor lamp and I was able to get a floor lamp and I put it in my office and I had turned it on and my whole nervous system relaxed cuz those awful lights weren't there. And I was like, this makes it a little bit easier to work on the thing but not be in a rush. Not stress myself out, not say that you know, I'm not doing it right or doing it good enough because it's taking too long. And I was like, I could do this for five years if I have to. I can be in between my quitting journey for five years if I have to. So I did a lot of that work as well. I
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Love that so much. That's a lot of the work that we do in the Quitter Club. Like we have this thing called like a dream life, like a dream day or dream life. And a lot of the things that are in your quote unquote dream life you can do now, right? It's like right going for a walk in the middle of the day or taking a nap or waking up and slowly like sipping my coffee as I read and yet we don't, cuz we're all so busy and like, oh, I got so many things to do and I have stress and, and just thinking like, what a wonderful way of thinking about it. Just 10%. What are small changes I can make to just bring some more joy and happiness into my life so that I can, if my short-term goal is to be here for another 1, 2, 5 years, what can make this more pleasurable or joyful or happy so that I don't feel the desperation and panic of like, I have to get out, I have to get out.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Can you go maybe a little bit into more detail of who you work for?
Speaker 2 (37:41):
So I'm a sales coach for women of color. I work with all people. We do have men, we do have white people in the group as well, but primarily for women of color. We just make that clear that we center the experiences of women of color and our coaching style. And so that is who I coach and I talk all things starting businesses side hustling, being in between a nine to five and a business. And I primarily work with coaches, people who want a coaching business and don't have one or people who already have a coaching business and want more sales.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
And where can they find you at?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Yes, you could find me at DL sharan on Instagram. My website is called dl sharron.com. I have a free sales training you, you can go to dl shk.com/free training. And I have a podcast as well if you wanna listen to more of my rambles called black Banked and Booked Out.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Oh, I love that. We will link to all those in the show notes if you can't write it down right now. So you can go there and grab all those, those. Any parting advice for people who know there might be something more out there, want something more, maybe want more freedom or money or flexibility or whatever if they feel stuck and they don't know where to go from there?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Yes. The first thing I would say is start with what you have. Um, I'm thinking about a client who has a coaching business, but she also wanted to have an empanadas business and she literally just started selling empanadas at her church because that was the closest group of people right next to her. And so what if it's just a little action, a little bit of momentum? Like for me it was the Facebook groups. I'm like, I'm already in them. I'm gonna talk about that. I help busy women. It could be something that is literally an inch away from you. It doesn't have to be anything that you have to start up and like find new people. But what is the simplest way that you can start right now? I would say is the first step and have the energy of, I'm just trying this out. I'm just testing. I'm not married to it, I'm not glued to it. I'm just testing this out and then see what information you get from there.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Ah, that is gold. Thank you so much. D it's been so fun chatting with you and I can't wait to have you back when you're in multi multimillion 10 million businesses. Amazing.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
This was so fun. Thank you so much Goey.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessons from a quitter.com/quitter club and get on the wait list. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.