This article is based upon an interview I did with Lisa Rodriguez, the owner of a Virtual Assistant company in New York. 

This was one of the most fascinating interviews I’ve done yet, because getting to the root of Lisa’s real blockage created such a powerful shift in her & her business.

Lisa’s primary blockage was The Money Wound™. And as is always the case with anyone’s primary blockage, it was created during her childhood and then reinforced by numerous experiences in her adult life.

Lisa’s Money Wound™ has its roots in her childhood

Lisa grew up in a working class family. She described herself to me as someone who only graduated from high school, and who was the first person in her family to own a car and a home. Her mother never earned more than $35,000/yr.

In her family, money was hard to come by and people “like us” had to work really hard for what little they got.

The attitude in her family was, “We’re honest, hardworking people, but we never get very much.”

Lisa’s Money Wound™ Intensified at Her Corporate Job & As a Business Owner

So when Lisa, the high school-educated daughter of a working class family, went off to the big city to look for a job, she scored a golden lottery ticket when she found herself working for a big corporate giant in New York City as an Executive Assistant, earning $250,000/yr.

While she appreciated her job and worked hard for the money she earned, she had all kinds of judgements and internal conflicts about it:

• I’m getting away with something by earning this much to do this job. It isn’t worth what they’re paying me.
• These people I work for are “bad” – they earn millions, yet they won’t pay their entry-level people – the secretaries and guys in the mail room – a decent wage.
• I justify continuing to take these people’s money because I’m  supporting my whole family with the money I earn.

These conflicts created all kinds of roadblocks for her when she became a business owner.

This job isn’t worth this much. Because of her experience of being significantly overpaid as an Executive Assistant (at least, what she felt at the time was overpaid) – ie, “this job I’m doing isn’t worth this much,” – she was extremely sensitive to her pricing a a business owner. She wouldn’t let herself charge one penny more than what the job was “worth.”

Rich people take advantage of their employees. When it came time to hire offshore assistants to help her business grow, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Or more precisely, she allowed tiny logistical challenges to derail her, because her underlying belief was that she wasn’t paying her Filipino assistants a “decent wage.” She felt, deep down, that she was just as bad as the evil corporate giant she used to work for, who didn’t take good care of their employees.

One interesting thing to note, Lisa felt like she was taking advantage of her employees even though she knew that the wage she was paying was actually very good. She’d researched average salaries in the places she was getting her employees from, and made sure that she was at the top of that pay scale. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t paying them enough.

The power of money to do good. I began to unlock the solution to Lisa’s Money Wound™ when she told me about how, when she had been an Executive Assistant earning $250,000/yr, she used that money to support her whole family. I realized that THAT was Lisa’s core motivation.

The Solution to Lisa’s Money Wound™

Putting together everything Lisa had told me, I realized that Lisa’s biggest blockage was that she was afraid of becoming just like the evil corporate giant she used to work for.

This fear was not only stopping her from taking the actions she needed to take to grow her business (developing a team of overseas assistants to handle an increased client load), it also formed the basis of a strong emotional resistance to even becoming a successful business owner.

To overcome this, Lisa needed to flip the switch on her limiting belief, and turn it into a positive one.

I said to her,

For you to grow this business, I think you need to feel like you are a financial kingmaker, the way your old corporate boss was for you.

What if you were to identify a couple of your best freelancers and start paying them the equivalent of $250,000/yr?

This would enable them to take care of their families the way that you took care of yours; plus you’d be able to feel like YOU were the one making that happen – creating a positive ripple effect of wealth around the world.

What do you think?

That opened the floodgates for Lisa.

She began excitedly talking about a workshop she’d been wanting to teach, but which she’d somehow never taken action on. She told me all about the content, how she would market it, etc.

I commented that what she’d just described was very different from the business she was currently running. She replied,

I know. I’ve been deliberately playing small. But that’s been my dream. I wanted to figure out how to incorporate hiring women who can’t find work in other places, even providing them with training, and having them show up in whatever state I’m doing an event. Give them a room, a food allowance, and pay them a flat rate for 2 days work to help people.

Think about that. I’d make plenty of money for myself, and they’d have the opportunity to do rewarding, well-paying work they would never be able to do otherwise. 

She kept saying things like, “I can’t believe how much this conversation has changed everything. I’m so excited. I can’t wait to get started on all my plans!”

I concluded our conversation by pulling it all together for her:

So fundamentally, it all goes back to the Money Wound™, and this belief of yours that money is intrinsically inequitable. That if you have money, you’re automatically one of THEM – those rich, selfish, greedy bastards who line their own pockets while abusing everyone in their path. 

And up until this conversation, you were feeling like a powerless victim of that inequity – “I can’t charge more, I can’t hire more people for these crazy-low wages” – because doing any of that would have made you one of these evil corporate bastards.

But as soon as we created the possibility for you that you could be the rainmaker – take on more clients by paying a few key employees really handsomely to take on leadership roles – everything changed for you. That was when all of your dreams came spilling out.

The coda to this story is that Lisa immediately started making plans to do her first workshop, and in just the few weeks since we had this interview, her whole business has radically changed for the better.

Click here to read about all 6 Primary Sales Wounds™

Click here to book your free consultation to explore your own Sales Wounds™

Hi, I’m Julia Kline. For help accessing your self-limiting beliefs, aka your Sales Wounds™, and to get started healing them, consider hiring me for private coaching. I offer packages starting as low as $5,000, or up to $25,000. I also offer affordably priced group coaching.

To start the conversation, email my assistant Rosie@JuliaKline.com. She'll send you my coaching brochure, describing all that I offer.