I really wish this next thing I’m about to say wasn’t the case.

You can’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

Obviously, true. Easy to accept? Nope.

Let me give you a little context:

Ever since 2017, our company had been roughly at the same revenue level, give or take 10-20%, for 5 years.

I was ready to break through the revenue plateau. But the problem was, I couldn’t figure out what the block was.

(A breakthrough was important… because I don’t believe in more just for the sake of more. I wanted to pay my team more, hire more talent, expand our reach and impact in some paid ways, get even more traction with our investments, give more to causes that we believe in, and be able to spend the summer in Maine to see people we love.)

So many folks out here on these personal development streets talk about clearing money blocks, but what about when we have no freaking clue what’s blocking us?

So, what did I do? I sat in a circle with a group of really inspiring, high earning women entrepreneur friends and got a little financially naked. I let them know what was going on, how I felt about it, and what I wanted instead.

There’s something truly magical that happens to me when I dare to bare my soul with women who are playing full out in life.

I couldn’t have gotten what I received from them as they went around and shared their personal experiences with revenue breakthroughs if I’d stayed in the silo of my own little mind.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know… until I came to know it through my experience being mirrored by a group of high octane women.

I had the biggest money breakthrough in my life that day.

I realized I was operating under the largely unconscious, erroneous belief that if I really opened up to receiving more money that I would prevent someone else from having it.

This circle of women helped me see that my holding back was actually lowering the level of abundance for the people around me, the people on my team, and my customers.

Instead of helping others by staying smaller, I was holding them back with me.

I recently read the data in Heather McGhee’s book, The Sum of Us, that, at least in the United States, there’s enough to go around for everyone to have a good life.

The false belief in the zero sum model is actually what holds us all back.

Clearing my unconscious adherence to the zero sum model helped us increase our revenue by 50% and have our highest revenue year of all time, despite taking the summer off and not launching anything from June – November 2022.

If we can’t know what we don’t know until we know it, how are we supposed to move past our blocks?

My advice? Listen to people who have something you want.

If it’s a business, that’s bringing in 7 figures a year so you can support your family, create jobs, and contribute to making a difference, listen to women who’ve done that.

See if, in their stories and experiences, there’s something they say that activates something to heal in you, like it did for me.

I think we need to learn some things the hard way, for sure. But sometimes we get to take a shortcut and integrate a lesson someone else already learned.

As Adrienne Maree Brown says in Emergent Strategy:

“What is easy is sustainable. Birds coast when they can.”

Xo,

Kate

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