What To Do When Making Money Feels Greedy Leave a comment

If you feel greedy about making money, you won’t make sales in your business. Or you’ll feel bad every time you do make sales and end up hating your business and burning the whole thing down.

So in this episode I’m sharing the perfectionist thinking that’s been making you feel greedy – even when you’re not. And I walk you through an incredibly counterintuitive approach that will have you feeling ready to make sales without feeling guilty about it – even if you don’t ‘need’ the money from your business because you’re already financially supported by a high-paying job, a spouse or savings.

If you’re a perfectionist building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.

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If you’re ready for coaching, accountability and support to take consistent action and grow your business successfully (and sustainably), join the waitlist for Perfectionists Getting Shit Done at samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction
This is the Perfectionism Project, the only podcast created specifically for perfectionists who are building businesses. I’m your host, Sam Laura Brown, perfectionism expert and entrepreneur. I teach perfectionists how to plan properly, consistently follow through and rest without guilt so they can build profitable and fulfilling businesses without burning out.

I’ve helped over a thousand perfectionist entrepreneurs do exactly that inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. If you’re tired of procrastinating, overthinking and half finishing your ideas, you’re in the right place. Now, let’s dive in.

Sam Laura Brown
Okay, so today I have an episode for you that is going to be incredibly helpful if you have found yourself putting off sales activities. So when it comes to building a business, taking action is an incredibly essential part. And one of the things that we need to take action on in business is sales.

Making sales, putting things out there for people to buy, all of the things related to having money come in. And what can happen for perfectionists is we will have thoughts coming from perfectionist thinking that stop us from taking action on the sales activities that are needed to be able to grow the business. So this is a core thing that we help you with inside perfectionist getting shit done.

And today what I wanna do is share what I recently coached one of our PGSDers on because I know that this is gonna be incredibly helpful for you as well. And I wanna mention too, so I’m in my office, my home office, and I’m walking on my walking pad. So maybe you can hear that in the background, maybe you can’t.

I was thinking of going for a walk with my dog, Cotton, and going outside, but it’s actually quite hot. So what I wanna do is still get some movement in and I’m gonna walk and talk at the same time. So if you can hear that in the background, that’s what it is.

And I’m really excited to share with you today all about how to shift your thinking when it comes to, in particular, feeling greedy when it comes to making money. And so I’ll tell you about this PGSDer. So she came to a coaching call and on that coaching call, she said to me that she knows that it’s time for her to start making sales in her business, that she has been marketing in her business with the help of PGSD.

She’s been taking action on that. Another essential thing you need to do to build your business and take action on is the action of marketing. So she has been creating really helpful free content and now it is time for her to sell.

But she has noticed through her power planning that she has been avoiding sales activities. She has been having a hard time figuring out what to sell. So for her instance, she wants to do a free paid, not a free paid workshop, a paid workshop that’s a small investment, but she was getting hung up on what to price it in.

And this is really important to note as well, that oftentimes these perfectionist money mindset issues can manifest as confusion. So if you’re confused about pricing something and you have been confused for a while, usually we just stay in confusion because if we aren’t decided on something, like if we’re still confused, then we don’t have to take action. If you’re confused, it’s very hard to take action.

So we create confusion for ourselves so that we have an excuse not to do the uncomfortable thing. So she wasn’t taking action. She noticed that when it came to her power planning that she wasn’t doing the sales things she needed to do.

She brought that to the call. And what we did together, and this is something that we really support you with so deeply in PGSD, is identifying what’s going on behind the scenes. What’s going on that’s causing you not to take action.

And when we got into it, it was something that was completely out of her awareness that was causing her to be confused about her pricing and to not be making sales. And it’s something that is so common, which is the thought that if I make sales in my business, then I am greedy. And if I’m greedy, that means I’m a bad person.

And if I’m a bad person, and she had a religious upbringing and she had the belief, if I’m a bad person, that means I’m going to hell. And if I’m the kind of person who’s going to hell, that means that people today will shun me, that they won’t like me anymore, they won’t love me, they won’t be friends with me. These aren’t the kind of thoughts that we go around day-to-day thinking consciously, but they’re the thoughts that are running in the background that have us decide not to take action on a sales task or not to make a decision about pricing so that we can avoid being imperfect, i.e. being the bad person who is greedy.

And instead, by avoiding sales, we get to unconsciously uphold the identity that we are, in fact, a good, perfect, lovable person who definitely isn’t greedy, who definitely isn’t taking more than their share. So in her situation, she already has two jobs that she’s working and that fully support her financially. And also, she had been in her business before without the part-time jobs and was in this mentality of I have to make money, I have to make money, I have to make money, which is this perfectionist, all-or-nothing thinking that goes on, I won’t go into it in this episode, but really creating so much pressure and that pressure then just freezing you up and then you don’t make money and it’s so stressful.

So another episode coming on that at some point. But when she then got the part-time jobs to support her financially, and they’re part-time jobs that she likes, like her job, I think actually one of them might be full-time and one of them part-time, but her goal, she said, is to be able to leave employment in the next two to four years. So it’s on the horizon, but she’s not in a rush to get there.

And her thought is, I just want to do stuff for free, the content, or do my job. And I don’t want to be someone who is greedy. I don’t want to take more than my share.

I don’t want to do it and get paid. And one of the beliefs she had too is that I’m a helpful person. And so we investigated that and I’m mentioning this because you might also have this belief that is tied to it, which is I’m a helpful, i.e. good, i.e. perfect, i.e. lovable person.

And if I’m a helpful person, that means I need to not get paid for helping. A helpful person who gets paid isn’t actually helpful, they’re manipulative. Like there are these beliefs that we can have about why you have to help for free for it to be actual help.

And I was saying to her on this call, well, I help a lot of people. I do it for free, for example, on this podcast. And I also get paid to help people as well.

And so when we investigated into why is she not allowing herself to also get paid to help people, this thought about, well, that means I’m greedy. And if I’m greedy, I’m a bad person. If I’m a bad person, I’m going to hell.

And if I’m going to hell, then people today won’t like me. And I’ll be shunned in particular by her. I will be shunned by the art community.

We looked at this too, not from a, like, what do you intellectually believe? And I think this is where so much advice goes wrong and really where coaching comes in to look at your own specific thoughts and beliefs. And you need to not be intellectual about it. So we perfections, we love to be intellectual about things, to disconnect from the feelings in our body and instead be up in our head.

So what we can do is say, well, yeah, but I know no one’s actually going to shun me. I know that, like, it’s not actually bad to make money. But if your actual belief, rather than your intellectual belief, if your actual belief is that I’m a greedy, bad person who is going to be shunned if I make money, if that is your actual belief, even though you intellectually understand conceptually otherwise, you will be confused about the pricing, not offer the workshop for sale and not make money.

So that you get to be a helpful person who isn’t greedy, but then your business suffers because your business has needs. While you might have the personal need to not be seen as greedy, your business has a need for cash. Your business has a need for sales and for money.

And so while you might be meeting your own personal need, you are not meeting the business’s need for money. And so what we then looked at, and this is the real shift that I wanna talk about in this episode, because one place we can take this, once you identify a perfectionist money mindset thought that is causing you to not take action when it comes to sales and therefore not make sales, we can try and go into this place, for example, here of, no, it’s not greedy. It’s not greedy to make money.

Your business needs money. It’s super valuable, charge what you’re worth, like that kind of conversation. And I don’t think that’s actually helpful in this instance.

What I went to with this and what I have seen time and time again from coaching so many perfectionist entrepreneurs and also doing so much self-coaching in my own work as a perfectionist entrepreneur, that when we try and go into this place of, well, no, I’m not greedy, and we then go up against that thought, it only reinforces it. So instead of going to, no, you’re not greedy, what I said was, and I want you to ask yourself this, is what if I am greedy and that’s okay? Trying that on is so powerful because another example is for me, something that came up recently in my own self-coaching, I was looking at my own level of decisiveness and why I was less decisive than previously. I was noticing that I was having a harder time making decisions, especially big, bold decisions about the direction of the business, high level, long-term decisions, changing things that have been the same way for a long time.

And what came up for me when I was investigating is my perfectionist thought of, I don’t wanna make another mistake and I shouldn’t have made a mistake. And where I tried to go to for a long time, and I’ll share the specific example, where I tried to go to was I didn’t make a mistake, it wasn’t a mistake because I learned a lot. And what actually set me free was I made a mistake and that’s okay.

So this particularly for me was relating to at the end of 2022, I decided to hire a marketing manager role in my business. And I learned so much from that. It was really valuable to make that decision, to try it out, and then to learn the lessons that came from that.

But what happened because I was trying to tell myself that wasn’t a mistake, which actually didn’t feel accurate, it really did feel like that was a misjudgment on my part. And of course, as an entrepreneur, and this is so important as a perfectionist entrepreneur, to really get this, because we intellectually understand it, but like actually getting it of you will make mistakes. So you need to have the mindset of, I made a mistake and that’s okay.

Because if you try to make everything not be a mistake, you won’t actually get to feel okay with making decisions because you’ll be so scared of making mistakes. So when I went to, I made a mistake and that’s okay, I finally felt the fears that I have had around making decisions and big decisions, and really owning that and like deciding things that wouldn’t necessarily be recommended by others. And like, this is how I built my business is going against a lot of best practices and trusting my own wisdom on things.

But I had been scared to do that because when I made that decision and trusted my own wisdom on that, it turned out to be a misjudgment on my part. But when I went to, I made a mistake and that’s okay, I finally felt like, okay, cool. I can make big decisions again, and I can make a mistake again.

And that will be okay. So in this case, bringing it back, going to, I’m greedy and that’s okay. What if that’s true? What if it is true that you are greedy and that it’s okay to be greedy? That it’s okay to have money coming in from a full-time job and from a part-time job and from a business as well? What if that is you taking more than your share? Like just looking at what are your beliefs and what if I just say, it’s okay.

Like it’s true. It’s true that I’m taking more than my share. It’s true that I’m greedy and that’s okay.

I found this works so well as well just to like neutralize a thought with, instead of I’m tired and that’s a problem and I shouldn’t be tired and whinging about it in my own head. Really, I am in the place now of I’m tired and that’s okay. When I am tired, I really do not think about it.

I do not have an internal debate about it. I’m tired and that’s okay and so I can just move on to actually using the energy that I do have but what happens when we are fighting against our beliefs and be like, I’m tired and that’s a problem is that that thought will not then have us go and rest. We will just complain in our heads while not resting and then drain our energy even further through all the self-complaining.

Something else that’s really important that we discussed in that coaching call that I want to share with you is the thoughts that you have about why you get paid, why money is exchanged. So something for me that I really had to work on early on a perfectionist thought that came up this like kind of all or nothing thinking was that I get paid as an accountant as compensation for doing something that I don’t like to do. So if I like to do something, for example, coaching, for example, recording podcast episodes, for example, creating content, for example, running my whole business, if I like to do that, then I shouldn’t get paid.

It’s wrong to get paid. That perfectionist all or nothing thinking is there’s a right way and a wrong way. And if it’s wrong, if I’m wrong, I’m bad, I’m unlovable, so I have to do it right.

And the right way in that case is that I should only get paid for doing things that I don’t like to do. And if I do like doing something, I shouldn’t get paid. Like those are the rules of the universe when actually that isn’t how it works.

And for me, such a big breakthrough came when I started to see that me getting paid to do something like me getting money as compensation for doing something I don’t like isn’t why someone would pay me. And also like there can be the belief of I get paid to do things that are hard, but I find this really easy, so I shouldn’t get paid to, for example, recording podcast episodes and especially coaching. Coaching I find so easy to do.

So I shouldn’t get paid for that because it’s so easy and I get paid to do hard things that I don’t want to do. But actually, if I had a really, really, really hard time coaching someone, then it would actually be a less transformative experience for the person on the other end because I’m so busy having such a hard time instead of when it’s so flowy and easy and I’m just in my zone and in my element. That is more valuable to someone to be on the other end of that, not less valuable for someone.

And if I’m helping someone and I love helping someone and I’m passionate about it and I do that in my instance through coaching someone, then it doesn’t make sense to say, okay, if it’s helpful, you shouldn’t get paid. And then if it’s not helpful, just think about the opposite. If it’s not helpful to someone, I should get paid.

Well, that doesn’t actually make sense. So if you have that belief of, if I’m being helpful, I shouldn’t get paid for it because then it’s not really helpful. Then what you’re also believing is that people should get paid for unhelpful things or no one should get paid for anything, which is a completely different belief set about there being essentially no capitalism, no financial exchanging whatsoever.

So I won’t go into that. You probably do believe that there is a time and place for someone to get paid. But if you have the belief like this PGSDer did, that if I’m a helpful person, that means I shouldn’t get paid.

You have to admit to yourself that I am also believing then that unhelpful people should get paid the most. And do you think that the world works that way? Do you want it to work that way? Or is it actually, I should get paid the highest when I’m doing something helpful that genuinely benefits the world, the person on the other end. And if it comes easily to me, if it’s effortless for me, if it’s something that I am so interested in, maybe it is challenging, maybe it is really hard.

And I love the challenge of it. Like I would do it as a hobby, then that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get paid. That is actually a sign that you are experiencing it.

You have expertise in it that is highly valuable. And so we tend to as perfectionists undervalue what comes easily to us and overvalue the things that are hard for us, which actually ends up with us having like undervaluing the things that are most valuable and then overvaluing effort and hardness. So if I actually ran my business that way, I’m just trying to think of what’s something that I find really challenging to do.

So say, for example, this is beyond my skill set of doing a whole production setup for a podcast and having this incredible production studio with all the microphones and all the lighting and all of that. Currently, I’m just recording at my desk as I have for every other episode or walking, but I’m recording with a microphone just plugged into my laptop on QuickTime on my computer. I’m not using any software, any lighting, any of that.

And I have a very successful podcast, but it is beyond my skill set currently to set you up a really fancy podcasting studio. But you could pay me a lot to do that. I would find it really hard and I wouldn’t want to do it.

So should I get paid really highly to do that? Or would it be better to pay someone who finds that so enjoyable, they geek out about it, they absolutely love it and they find it easy. They know exactly which lighting to use. They know exactly how to plug in all the cords to the right places.

They know exactly how to sort out all the tech. They know exactly how to solve for any issue. I would much rather pay that person to set up a fancy podcast studio than to pay me who finds it really hard and unenjoyable to do that specific task.

So you’ve just got to start examining that thought pattern as well when it comes up of you thinking, I only should get paid if I’m doing something hard for me and unenjoyable for me. That doesn’t actually make sense. And that was a thought that had me not take action on offering my coaching services because I enjoyed creating content for free.

And this is especially the case if you have started your business as a hobby because you’re interested in it, because you enjoy it. Maybe you have a business as a lot of our PGSDers do around something that was originally a passion. Say for example, an artist that they do art because they like doing art.

And then they decide, actually, I could sell this. Then it doesn’t make sense to say, okay, but because I would do it for free, I should. That’s just not commerce.

That just doesn’t make sense. And that’s not how the world actually works. And people love buying art.

People love paying money for art to have something on their wall and be like, I invested in this incredible piece by this artist. People love doing that. It’s easy to be in this mentality of like, no one wants to pay for art.

Well, certain people want to pay $0 for art. Certain people want to pay millions and millions and millions of dollars. And so this is that perfectionist all or nothing thinking again of everyone’s the same.

We had this sort of like, no one wants to buy this, for example. No one wants to spend money on this thing. But you’re talking like everyone is the same.

Instead of there are billions of people on this planet and every single one of those people have different money beliefs, different preferences for how they spend their money, different values of what to spend money on, different levels of income. Instead of the all or nothing of like everyone’s the same and no one wants this. And then we just go into self-pity about it.

And then I need to find the perfect idea, the perfect offer, the perfect price to try and connect with what everyone wants. Instead of like, everyone doesn’t want the same thing. That’s why there is so much space in the world for so many different kinds of businesses and so many entrepreneurs to succeed because everyone is different.

But our perfectionist brain just always wants to go back to like, everyone’s the same, no one this or everyone that. That’s that all or nothing thinking. I want to actually do another episode.

I’ve done all or nothing thinking episodes in the past, but really I have been noticing so many different ways this all or nothing mindset comes up for perfectionists in business and stops you from taking action and building your business and making sales and making progress and making money. So more to come on that. But for now, I just want you with this episode to really be paying attention to your perfectionist thoughts.

And it is hard to do that. That’s why we have coaching in PGSD and it’s like the core thing that we help you with. We teach you your growth goal, power planning, clean rest, bad tools to support you with taking action, prioritizing what to work on, actually getting that done, having a goal to work towards.

It’s crystal clear and supports your growth, having rest to fuel you to that goal and have a personal life as well. And through the coaching, whether you come live to a weekly coaching call, whether you post and ask a coach, whether you listen as many of our PGSDers do, just listen to all the coaching call replays on the private podcast. You will have these perfectionist thoughts that are stopping you from taking action or having you take very inconsistent action or these big bursts of action and then pulling back and stopping.

You will have those beliefs shifted, not just you intellectually understanding, no, it’s not greedy. Like, okay, what if actually I am being greedy and that’s okay. And then you also have other thoughts that are stopping you as well.

And so it’s really about having the ability to not just have the tools to support your perfectionist brain, but to be able to have the perfectionist beliefs, particularly all or nothing thoughts, or like the way that we as perfectionists, and this is part of the all or nothing mindset, make things so moral. I’m a good person if I make sales. Like what is making sales have to do with being a good or a bad person? Like we just want to make everything this moral concern when I’m perfectionist because we want to make sure that we stay in everyone’s good books, that everyone loves us and that we get to love ourselves because everyone loves us.

And no one hates us and no one’s rejecting us. And like everything then becomes a test of whether or not you’re good enough. Marketing feels heavy.

Sales feels heavy. Any action taking besides doing a bit of researching or thinking some more, everything else feels so heavy. And so what we do is we shift those perfectionist thoughts by like, in this case that I mentioned, this PGSDer wasn’t even aware that this thinking was underneath her pricing confusion.

So she could go to someone and say, okay, what price should I make it? And then decide on, okay, here’s the price. But without this perfectionist thinking being uncovered beneath it, she probably wouldn’t have then gone on to be able to sell it. Or she would have had to just like force herself along and have these spurts of motivation to, okay, get the sales page up.

Okay. A few weeks of doing nothing. Okay.

Now promote the sales page. Okay. A few weeks of doing nothing.

Okay. Now I feel really bad. So I should do something again.

That’s because that perfectionist thought makes it feel so bad to take action. If you believe I’m greedy to make sales and it’s bad to be greedy and I’m going to go to hell and then no one today is going to love me because I’m the kind of person that’s going to hell, regardless of your religious beliefs today. This was the on the coaching call.

Sure. It might’ve come from like you believe that since childhood unconsciously, but it’s all about what are you thinking today? Because your action or inaction today is coming from your thinking today, including from your perfectionist thinking and taking action is absolutely essential for business building. You’ve got to take action when it comes to sales.

You’ve got to take action when it comes to marketing consistently, you’ve got to take action when it comes to delivering to clients and customers, you’ve got to take action to be able to do the admin, to organize the business, to do the operations, to do the finances. It all involves like action is the thing that holds business together. And if your perfectionist thinking is stopping you from taking action or having you take really inconsistent action or just working in these spurts of motivation, then you can’t rely on yourself.

You can’t trust yourself. You then don’t allow yourself to have big ideas or big visions because you can’t trust you’ll actually be able to execute on them for more than a couple of weeks. Your business won’t be able to grow.

And I am in the business of helping perfectionist entrepreneurs take action. That is my mission to help you because I was someone who was not able to take action because of my perfectionist thinking. And then I was able to start taking inconsistent action.

I was just in a place where I was so debilitated by it, like extremely. And then I was able to take inconsistent action, but then I was able to shift and take consistent action and then actually really do my needle movers. And this is what we have you do in PGSD, doing your needle movers, really moving the business forward and doing that within the business time that you want to work and getting really high quality, clean rest for your brain.

That’s what we have you do in PGSD. So I wanted in this episode to just share with you an example of a perfectionist thought. And I hope it was really helpful to hear about that specific thought and to just try on.

I’m greedy and that’s okay. Or I made a mistake and that’s okay. Or I’m tired and that’s okay.

And to just really know the benefit of having these perfectionist thoughts that are just running behind the scenes and having you like having the biggest influence on your business, but just a very hard to spot. That’s why I have coaches to help me spot like, Oh, you have this thinking like, Oh, I didn’t realize. And I also do self-coaching in PGSD.

There’s a self-coaching masterclass. So you can learn and through the tools of your growth goal, power planning, clean rest, you can learn how to spot those for yourself because those tools will reveal it to you and get coaching and hear coaching from other perfectionist entrepreneurs. So that the thinking, the perfectionist thinking that has been causing your business problems can be shifted, which means your business problems can be shifted.

The inconsistent sales or no sales, the inconsistent marketing or no marketing, the having a big dream, having potential, having intelligence, but not actually having that result in a business that will shift when you shift the perfectionist thinking that has been stopping you from taking action or taking consistent action. So I want to invite you into PGSD. Our next open enrollment is happening soon.

Let me just go and look at my calendar and look at the date that we have for PGSD opening. So it is going to be open on the 8th of April. So that’s only a few weeks away.

And I have a really exciting announcement as well, which is if you really want to be in PGSD, which I highly recommend, and you want to get started right away, the power planning course is open for enrollment. And we are doing something that we haven’t done in the longest time in 18 months. And we are offering live support for the power planning course.

So if you’re someone who signed up in the last week or so since it opened, you will get this. And for those of you who sign up as of now, you will have access to this round of live support for the power planning course. So that’s a Facebook community where you can get supported by me with your power planning.

And also three coaching calls with me personally, three group coaching calls, but I will be the leader of those coaching calls to coach you. And then you can apply your investment for the power planning course to Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. So you can get started with power planning, with setting your growth goal, with clean rest, with support, with community, and then join us when the doors open to PGSD on the 8th of April, if you so choose, and apply that payment for the power planning course towards Perfectionist Getting Shit Done.

So you can go to samlaurabrown.com/planning to sign up for the power planning course and get instant access. And really just power planning is such a cool tool. As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, this PGSDer had this awareness of what was going on because of her power planning.

She was able to say, oh, this is coming up for me. Like she had to have that to be able to support her, to have the awareness she needed to even bring it to coaching and to even then have the epiphanies that came after that and have the shifts that came after that. So you want to be power planning.

You want to actually work with your perfectionist brain instead of against it. Power planning is a tool to support that and to not only have you plan your time, but it’s also such an incredible self-awareness tool, a mind management tool. It’s my absolute ultimate coaching tool, my tool for shifting, not only just like how I’m taking action, but resolving my inaction so that I can do the things I need to do and do them sustainably and consistently.

So you’ll find the link in the show notes to go and sign up. I’d love to see you on one of those coaching calls, or there’s a private podcast as well for the power planning course to get the replays and the Facebook group. I’d love to meet you.

I’d love to support you and then invite you into PGSD when we open enrollment. So go there now, sign up, join us inside. That offer to join us for the live support inside the power planning course is only going to be available till 11:59 PM on Sunday, the 15th of March Eastern time.

So you need to be inside the power planning course to get access to that live support for this round of the power planning course by Sunday, the 15th of March, 11:59 PM Eastern time. So I want to invite you in to start power planning, to start getting out of your own way, to be able to take action consistently and sustainably on your marketing, on your sales, on your operations, on all the things that actually hold a business together and actually make it successful.

You can’t have a successful business if you are not taking action, if you are inconsistent, if you are constantly burned out, if you are constantly overthinking, if you’re constantly procrastinating, if you can’t rely on yourself to follow through with your plans.

So I hope to see you inside, sign up in the show notes and that’s it for today’s episode. I will wrap up there. I will talk to you next time. Bye.

Outro
I hope you enjoyed that episode. So as mentioned, the power planning course is now officially open for enrollment. You can go to samlaurabrown.com/planning to sign up today.

You can learn power planning within one afternoon. I will personally guide you through your very first power hour. Everything is in there for you to start power planning.

It’s a very simple process. Anyone can learn it and you can use it right away to build your business. You can say goodbye to overwhelming to-do list and start power planning so your business can finally grow.

So samlaurabrown.com/planning is where to sign up today.