We’re excited to announce our 2nd Annual “Bliss Talks Summit.” This year it’s virtual to reach more people. Our line up is astounding. Take Samanta Samantha Skelly for instance – she’s an epic human being following her bliss in legendary ways, so don’t miss her Bliss Talk for the world.
One of my core beliefs is that ANYTHING can be monetized and that the Universe will reward you based on your level of expertise (translation – hard work put in to become an expert at your Bliss).
This means that when I hear someone say they can’t do their bliss because they can’t earn a good enough living and would have to sacrifice too much, I raise an eyebrow in disbelief and wonder if said person has already given up on themselves and their dreams. This may sound harsh but my job isn’t to make you feel good about any lingering limiting beliefs, it is to help you break through them and win at your Bliss. Why do I believe this?
My career is proof positive that anything can be monetized and that if financial wealth is important to you, you can have your Bliss and incredible financial wealth, but you may have to develop a very important attribute to get their – belief that anything can be monetized with enough creativity.
When I was 25 years old (in 1995 ish), I decided my bliss was to travel the country putting on major music festivals. I saw an opportunity to fill a niche nobody else was doing. I would provide corporate sponsorship fundraising services to underwrite touring festivals, giving them more money to grow bigger and faster. I was told by everyone in the music industry that musical artists (bands) would never allow corporate sponsors at their concerts as it would be an affront to artist’s integrity. I chose to disagree and pursue it anyway. I formed my first company, a sponsorship agency, and for the next four straight years, I pulled in over $1,000,000 a year in corporate sponsorship revenue to underwrite over 200 concerts in 40+ states and three countries. My first client was the Vans Warped Tour. Guess who got Vans in the tour name – yours truly! Turns out all l had to do to overcome the artist’s integrity issue was give free swag to all the band members (sunglasses, hats, shoes, socks, whatever) and they were totally cool with sponsors banners being hung everywhere. Today you can’t attend any concerts without sponsorship signage and booths everywhere. I created my own job and I got to tour the world living my bliss for five years. I even earned the nickname Sponsor Boy! I laughed all the way to the bank earning 15% of every dollar raised for the Warped Tour, the Sno-Core Tour and other large festivals I engaged. When I started my company, I was 25, lived in a shitty two-bedroom apartment in an even shittier city and had less than $1k in the bank. By age 27, I lived in a million-dollar oceanfront beach pad in beautiful Manhattan Beach, drove a Mercedes and had more in the bank than just about every friend my age combined.
For my next Bliss act, I decided I wanted to inspire college students to discover and pursue their Dreams. While everyone I know suggested I write a book, become a motivational speaker and get into coaching (sound familiar to anyone in this group?). Instead, I looked for a different way that wasn’t so saturated (meaning the space was crowded). Again, I saw a unique opportunity to create a summer internship program that would allow me to have my own stage to inspire college students in a unique and lasting way. I created my second company, University of Dreams, which repurposed vacant dorm rooms on college campuses around the globe so I could run summer internship camps for college students. That company went global. College students paid me $100 million dollars for unpaid internships, the right to live in crowded dorm rooms on campuses, and be inspired! Yes, you heard me right!
In 2010, I stepped into my third bliss career reinvention by truly embracing a secret ambition I had for decades. I formed my third company so I could buy an 85-year-old historic live theatre out of foreclosure, in a city nicknamed “Deadwood City” for $6mm dollars. Everyone told me I was crazy. I used an SBA loan to buy the property and seven years later I sold the theatre for $18.5mm. Along the way, I drove $30mm in revenue operating the theatre portion of the property. I also turned its 1100 square feet dirt gravel loading dock area into the catalyst for development and a new building now worth $150 mm.
If I can turn a bunch of vinyl banners, empty dorm rooms, an 85-year-old historic theatre that nobody wanted and some dirt gravel into over $250 million in value, then why can’t you win at your Bliss financially? Why is that so many people convince themselves that they can’t monetize their bliss?
Next time you find yourself thinking about quitting your Bliss, or worse, never starting it, because you can’t make enough money doing it, please remember this story.
I am not special. I just NEVER had the limiting belief that I could not monetize my bliss. If this is one of your greatest obstacles, fear not, because my first order of business this year will be to convince you that this limiting belief is a bunch of hogwash! We are going to help you shed this forever!
Let’s do this! Your Bliss Island awaits you if you are willing to burn the boat loaded down with your limiting beliefs once you land on Bliss Island.
Bliss Warning!!! Discovering one’s Bliss doesn’t mean you must or should become an Entrepreneur to live your Bliss. If your Bliss is the sunset in this photo, is there more than one way to get there? Should you take the path everyone else is taking or create your own path?
I encourage everyone I meet to discover and begin living their bliss but it might surprise you all to learn that I encourage very few people to become Entrepreneurs. As a lifelong Entrepreneur, I find these two things to be very different leaps of faith.
I believe that all Bliss Journeys can be monetized. In some cases, becoming an Entrepreneur to monetize your Bliss may be the best option, but in many instances, it is not the best path to monetizing one’s Bliss unless you have the attributes necessary to be an effective Entrepreneur. In the months ahead, we are going to reveal and profile the attributes that make Entrepreneurs successful. It is very possible that your attempt to be an Entrepreneur may be the #1 thing holding you back from living your Bliss.
In evaluating how to monetize your Bliss, start with these questions.
1) Does your Bliss translate into a product or service or is it simply something you want to do more?
2) Are the most popular delivery platforms for your Bliss, as a product or service, already in saturated industries?
3) If you can see your Bliss as a product or service, what are some of the creative (non-obvious or traditional) ways your Bliss can be monetized?
4) If yes to question #2, what other ways can you get paid to do your Bliss, without having to turn it into a service or product as an Entrepreneur? Meaning, is there a career option that will actually pay you to do your Bliss?
Truly helping someone realize their “secret ambition” (or “follow their bliss” as I like to say) doesn’t look like what you probably think… Here are 7 major things I’ve learned about helping all kinds of people reach all kinds of dreams;
1. You might think it looks like strategy sessions and business coaching. Of course, that’s part of it, but the deeper, more real work is getting involved in people’s emotional world, their wounds, and their limiting beliefs born out of pain and hard things. Until these are dealt with, strategy is rather useless. But as these are attended to, progress increases exponentially.
2. To really help someone realize an amazing dream, you’ve got to create a trusted space where people feel safe, open up, and reveal their actual dreams and real inner worlds. Creating safe spaces is done from the heart and with a true intention to care for people. If your ego is involved, the space won’t feel safe. Plus, you have to be able to hold any hard thing that a person brings up with compassion, love, and therapeutic consideration.
3. Most people aren’t good at visualizing their unrealized secret ambition in vivid exciting details. But when you coach them to really see it, feel it, and imagine it -magnificently realized in full glory – you help them immensely desire it more.
4. Most people aren’t good at taking risks. But when you teach them the difference between knowing a good risk from a bad risk, they begin to take more risks and make much greater progress.
5. Most people are awful at engaging with a mentor, so they are going it alone. But when enable help them feel comfortable with “Mentoring Up” as we call in in my company Bliss Champions, they quickly benefit from all the progress a great mentor can enable.
6. To help someone, you have to have 100% certainty that they can do what their dreaming to do, and more. You can’t have doubts. Because while you’re coaching them, they’re needing you to believe in them more than they believe in themselves. They need to borrow your confidence.
7. You gotta be in it for the long term on. People don’t rock their bliss because you gave them a day or a weekend’s worth of your advice. They accomplish great heights because you supported them for months, or over the course of a year as we do in Bliss Champions.
It’s deeply fulfilling to help someone reach a dream they felt afraid or uncertain they couldn’t achieve. That’s what we’re doing in my company Bliss Champions. We’re going to help 100 people in 2020 realize their secret ambition. If you’ve read this with personal interest, we’re accepting applications now at blisschampions.com and I encourage you to apply. We’re a very close-knit community of amazing heart and soul-centered people – and we have a very phenomenal time.
