Welcome to the Rich Coach Club, the podcast that teaches you how to build your dream coaching practice and how to significantly increase your income. If you're a coach and you're determined to start making more money, this show is for you. I'm master certified life coach Susan Hyatt, and I'm psyched for you to join me on this journey. You're listening to episode 24, here we go.

Imagine winning the lottery, not just a small prize, but a huge one. You’ve won the Powerball. You wake up and bam, you’ve got $80 million or more. Pretty amazing, right? That’s a life-changing amount of money, right? Amazingly wonderful things are about to happen for you, right?

Well, here’s something that might shock you. It was reported in Forbes, the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards conducted a survey, and what they found was that over 30% of lottery winners eventually declared bankruptcy. And another survey says it’s a lot more than 30%. It’s really more like 70%.

So, many lottery winners wind up in much worse financial situation than before they won all that money. And other studies show that lottery winners are more likely to struggle with drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and more likely to die from suicide than the average American.

So, why would something so wonderful turn into such a nightmare and how does this relate to you and your coaching business? This has to do with capacity. And when I say capacity, I mean your capacity to handle the things that are happening in your life. Many people want big exciting things to happen, but when those things happen, they’re not prepared for it and they don’t have the capacity to handle it.

Here’s one very literal example of this. Let’s say your product gets featured in Oprah Magazine. Amazing, now you’ve got 100,000 customers flooding to your website. A dream come true, sales are going like crazy, except you’re not really prepared for all this.

Your website crashes from all the traffic. You don’t have enough inventory to ship out, so then the shipments get delayed, you don’t have a team in place to handle customer service emails, so hundreds of emails go unanswered for weeks, and you’re drowning in a puddle of stress.

Then your customers get super impatient and annoyed and leave one-star reviews all over the internet. Now, when people Google your company name, the first thing that pops up is a review that says, “Awful service. Total scam.” Yikes, now your company has a PR nightmare that you need to clean up and you’re in worse shape than ever before.

This is an example of what happens when you experience a big win but you don’t have the physical, emotional, spiritual, or logical capacity to handle it. And as a coach, you want to run a successful and sustainable coaching practice. You want to make some more money, you want to impact people’s lives, and you definitely don’t want to end up in a situation where you’ve stretched way past your capacity.

So, today’s episode is all about expanding your capacity to handle growth and wealth and success in your business. And if your current capacity is, say, a pint glass, we want to expand you to a gallon, bit capacity, so you can welcome big success and handle it like a boss. So here we go, let’s start with your Two-Minute Pep-Talk.

Here’s your Two-Minute Pep-Talk for the week. This is the part of the show where I share some encouragement and inspiration to get your week started off right. And I try to keep things to 120 seconds or less.

So, if you receive a windfall of cash or a sudden influx of new clients or a huge media opportunity but you don’t have the capacity to actually handle it, then you’re going to experience major problems. You’re going to wind up feeling exhausted or paralyzed.

You’ll probably end up sabotaging your own success. This self-sabotage might look like oversleeping, flaking out and canceling appointments, missing deadlines, freezing onstage and forgetting everything you meant to say, or maybe turning to food or alcohol to cope with all the stress, or all of the above, or something else.

Before you know it, this amazing stroke of good luck turns into a painful smack in the face. So the good news is, you can work on expanding your capacity. In fact, you can expand infinitely. There is no limit to how much capacity you can create for yourself.

So let’s try something together. Think of one area of your business where you need to expand your capacity. For instance, I need to expand my capacity to handle emails. I’m drowning in emails and I don’t want to do it by myself anymore.

Or, for instance, I need to expand my capacity to handle criticism. Every time I get a one-star podcast review on iTunes, I feel like I’m going to fall apart. It wrecks my mood for the rest of the day and screws up my productivity.

Or, for instance, you might say to yourself, I really need to expand my capacity to handle money. Every time I have a strong earnings month, I spend it all so quickly and somehow, I wind up in the exact same place. I never feel like I’m able to save any money.

Okay, so go ahead and think about one area of your business where you need to expand your capacity. This area might be customer service or finances or dealing with rejection, or the way you handle stress or your physical energy levels or anything else that comes to your mind.

I need to expand my capacity to blank. You go ahead and fill in the blank.  Okay, did you think of something, yeah? If you want to write it down so you don’t forget, go ahead and do that. Next, I want you to come up with one way that you could expand your capacity in this area.

How could you improve your ability to handle things in that area? How could you grow bigger, stronger? What kinds of support do you need? Do you need a coach, a team, a support squad, some new systems, new routines, a new attitude, maybe all of the above?

Think of one way you could expand. And if you can’t think of anything right this second, that’s okay. Just take a breath or take a walk or meditate or return to this question later. The answer is inside of you, and as a coach, of course, you know that. You’ve got the solution inside, you just need to let it arise in your mind.

So, how could you expand your capacity in this area? What’s a good move you could make right away? And once you come up with an idea, whatever it is, do it. Take a small step, get things moving in the right direction, expand your capacity a tiny little bit today, maybe a little bit more tomorrow, and the next day, and onward.

You could expand your capacity to jog on a treadmill without running out of breath and you can expand your capacity to handle stress without crumbling apart. You can expand your capacity for anything in your life and career. You have the power, just like that beautiful song by Sia, you have an elastic heart. You can grow, you can stretch, your potential is unlimited. Pep-Talk complete.

Now, we’re moving into the part of the show where I give shout-outs to you; shout-outs to listeners, clients, all the wonderful people in my business community. And today, I want to give a shout-out to Katie Soy. So, Katie and I have been connected on social media for a long time.

And she writes, in an iTunes review, “I’ve been following Susan for a few years and her content on all platforms is amazing and her podcast is no exception. She’s got great advice for anyone, from new to seasoned business owners, and is so positive, happy, and sassy that your day just get brightened. Highly recommended.”

Thank you so much, Katie. And that’s my shout-out for today. Hey, if you have something to say about this show, please send an email to my team, post a five-star iTunes review of about the show or post something on social media, and you might hear your name on a future episode. I love giving shout-outs to folks in my community, so holla at me. Thank you so much for the love, I love you right back.

It’s time for an interview. And today, I’m speaking with my girl Lisa Fabrega. So last year, Lisa had to deal with a slew of major challenges. For starters, one of her family member s was murdered. The investigation is still ongoing.

And then, she was evacuated from her home multiple times, first because of a wildfire, then because of a lightning storm, then mudslides, and that’s just the beginning. So much upheaval in Lisa’s life, and yet, she survived. Not only did she survive, she thrived.

She wrote about her journey and she had a strong profitable year in her business. She took care of herself and she took care of her clients. She rose like a phoenix and she’s still going strong.

How was she able to do this? Because Lisa’s a woman who spends a great deal of time thinking about her capacity. When things get tough, Lisa asks, how can I expand my capacity to handle this?

On her website, she recently wrote, “The future requires from us higher levels of capacity. The next five years won’t be easier because of a perfect revenue plan. It will only be easier when you learn how to expand your capacity.” Hell yes to that. without further ado, let’s talk to the amazingly fierce Lisa Fabrega.

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Susan: Welcome to the podcast, Lisa Fabrega.

Lisa: Hi.

Susan: Hi, okay, so I am totally digging everything that you’re talking about on Instagram right now, which is capacity. And I definitely am somebody who recognizes in myself – it’s taken me, over the years, 12 years really to develop the capacity of where I am today. When I first started my company, there were many things that I wanted. Like, oh, wouldn’t it be great to be a published author or wouldn’t it be great to be running these international retreats. But I didn’t have the capacity to handle that, so I thought you would be the perfect person to have on the show to talk about it.

Lisa: Yes, it’s one of my favorite topics.

Susan: So, in the work that you do with your clients, what do you notice when you’re explaining capacity to them, whether it’s the capacity to be more visible, the capacity to charge more, what are some of the things that are a surprise to your clients?

Lisa: Yeah, the biggest thing that I find is a surprise to my clients is that we don’t realize where our capacity issues are, first of all. And a lot of times, they’re hidden in blind-spots. And we think that we’re going everything we can to expand that capacity, but when we dig deeper, when I dig deeper with them, they actually are not doing that at all. They’re just scratching the surface. And part of the reason is that I think a lot of women, you know, the women who are in your community, Susan, women like you and me, we are incredibly brilliant, really smart, and we are used to relying on strategies and structures and, you know, like hiring people to teach us the right strategy to do something. And I’m not knocking strategy, because I think strategy is a really important building block to support where you want to go. But the problem is that, at a certain point, we can have the best strategy on the planet, and yet, I don’t have the capacity emotionally, spiritually, mentally, structurally, financially, whatever capacity area I’ve got going on, I don’t have the capacity to either implement that strategy in a way that’s aligned with me and will bring me the best results, or I implement the strategy, it brings a deluge of results, and I don’t know how to handle it, so I sabotage it or I kind of restrict the flow of the abundance that wants to come my way, or I get stuck in a plateau where my revenues or my visibility or my finances only go up so far.

And then because I don’t have enough capacity to receive the next level, it doesn’t matter what strategies I have, I can’t seem to get past that plateau. So that, to me, is like the most surprising thing that the women I work with notice, that they’ve been investing in all these strategy masterminds and working with all these business gurus, and they can’t seem to get the traction they want. And when I kind of flip it and go, that’s because you haven’t prioritized building your capacity, everything begins to shift in ways that even surprise me sometimes.

Susan: Oh my gosh, so I am thinking back to – I guess this would have been three and a half years ago. I hired a launch expert. And I only had two sessions with her because, it wasn’t that she didn’t know what she was talking about and di could intellectually understand what she was explaining to me, but I did not have the capacity, as you’re explaining it, to implement said strategy. And in capacity, I mean mental bandwidth to wrap my brain around it, because I was so full with all the things I was doing, raising these kids and one on one sessions and running retreats. And I was like, oh my god, how am I supposed to facilitate this list of things when I don’t have the capacity? So I have been there.

Lisa: Yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest things that I hear, you know, a lot of the women that are in your community and my community, they’re very busy. They’re doing great things. They’re up to amazing things, and they kind of feel like, with kids, with this, with all that’s going on with my family and managing my calendar and showing up at this talk and doing this, it feels like, how am I going to fit one more thing on my plate? And then we stop our growth because of that or we feel like we’re limited, and that is a capacity issue.

So if you ever find yourself saying, I don’t know how I’m going to fit one more thing on my plate, or recently I had a woman write to me and say, “I know I have to do this capacity work, but I’m going through a divorce. I’ve got kids to take care of. My business is expanding and I just don’t have the room.” And I thought, well, in about a year you’re going to come to me hurting even more badly because this whole thing about not feeling like you can handle it all, it’s really just a capacity issue. It doesn’t mean burning yourself out or pushing yourself to adrenal fatigue or doing all the things, it just means exploring where you’re maxing out and what things you can put into place which will allow your capacity to expand so you can hold more of what you want to do.

Susan: So what do you notice, when you’re working with a woman who comes to you? She’s like you described, smart, hardworking, high-level, and you identify quickly that there’s a capacity issue going on. What are the kinds of things that could help somebody if they’re like, yep, that’s me?

Lisa: Yeah, well I think it depends on what capacity area you’re struggling with. So first, you have to identify where are my capacity plateaus. And I find that is the place where a lot of women misdiagnose themselves. So they’ll think they have an issue with their structures, and they’ll put all of this money and time into putting in like the perfect calendar and the perfect team that’s going to support you, and they’re still feeling the same way and nothing is changing or things aren’t progressing. And that’s because they haven’t properly diagnosed where their capacity plateaus are. So that’s the first thing; what is your actually capacity plateau? Where are those areas? And the areas that I find that most women tend to struggle with in their capacity are money, structures, boundary, embodiment, which is physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual capacity, and purpose and visibility. So there are six areas that I find women tend to hit capacity plateaus and struggle with the most. So I think, depending on where your capacity plateau is, then we know what we can do. So I can quickly go through each one of the plateaus and give some suggestions.

Susan: Yeah.

Lisa: Like, if you have money capacity issues, then that could mean a whole host of things. A really great example of a money capacity issue is that I had a client who was doing really, really well. I think she was making multiple six figures in revenue in her business, and yet she just couldn’t get above that 300K mark no matter what she did. And she was in some of the most elite business masterminds, you know, doing all the stuff she’s supposed to be doing as a responsible business owner. But she just kept hitting that plateau. And when we looked deeper, I found that she had this old experience from when she was younger where she had watched her father divorce her mother. When her mother started making above $200,000 in her job, her parents went through a divorce because her father became very threatened by his wife earning more money. So she had this old belief going on that she couldn’t make more than 300K or everybody would leave her or her husband would leave her.

Susan: Right…

Lisa: And so this is the kind of stuff that I don’t care how many strategies you have, if you’ve got this stuff going on out of your awareness, there’s always going to be a plateau you’re going to put on yourself. So in that case, I’ll look at where are the areas that are limiting your money capacity. Do you have some weird beliefs that you’re not aware of going on there? Are you overspending in areas that you don’t need to be spending in and you need to be redirecting it to where you should be redirecting it to expand your business? Are you throwing money at problems that aren’t really problems in your business instead of putting that money where it would most grow your investments? Money capacity issues can also look like lending money to family members that you know they’re never going to pay you back.

Susan: Ooh, girl, you just kind of hit one of mine.

Lisa: Yeah, I think we all, as we start to make more money, we start to run into that problem, right?

Susan: Yeah.

Lisa: Or maybe they don’t even ask us but we still give it, and it doesn’t actually help them in the long run, because we have guilt over making so much more money than somebody in our family. So in that area, it’s let’s look at exactly how it’s showing up for you and then really explore the fears you have around giving up those behaviors so that you can expand to hold more wealth. If you have beliefs that it’s not spiritual to make money – I had a client that was making seven figures a year and she signed this huge corporate client. And I was like, of course, you have to have charged them at least $65,000 for the work that you’re going to be doing. And she’s like, no I only charged them 25K. I’m like, what? I mean, it’s not commensurate with the amount of effort you’re going to have to put in. And her response was, well, you know, I already have enough money so I don’t need any more, like it was a greedy thing to charge what the actual value of the investment was. And so it’s really unique to each woman, but these are some examples of how we can work on money capacity. That’s just money. I can go through the other ones if you want as well.

Susan: I think that what’s interesting is that plenty of the coaches listening today will be really curious about the money capacity because so many coaches struggle with the spirituality example that you gave. I mean, most humans have some kind of money thing going on that needs to be explored, but coaches in particular have a bunch of layered money stuff that we all can learn from. And then, I would say, well visibility, I think, is probably hot for my listeners, but what do you notice in the work with your clients or some of the top – I mean, people probably have a capacity issue in all, but is visibility the most popular occurring one or?

Lisa: Visibility is one of them and embodiment, emotional capacity is another one. Visibility, for me, is we think visibility is about how much media attention we have or how much people know about us or how many people are aware of us or the influence we carry, but I think visibility is so much deeper than that because almost every woman I’ve worked with, no matter how successful, has a visibility capacity issue because what happens is, the more we show up, the more we’re seen, the more people are aware of us, we start to feel a growing sense of responsibility. We start to feel a little pressure, like more people are watching me, what are they going to think of me? And a lot of times, I find that women are holding back little bits of themselves that they think are not going to be acceptable to the mainstream. So I know you’re really good at not holding that back. Things like cussing – if you cuss, just cuss in your marketing, because otherwise, somebody’s going to be offended every time you cuss, right? But a really great way that I saw this with one client is she actually was incredibly intuitive and was a shaman.

And she had been doing this for years and her community knew nothing about it. she was not talking about it, and it was really starting to grate on her because the way her business model was setup and her message, what her message had been that had built her all the success that she’d achieved up until now, it wasn’t including this huge part of her that kept growing and that she wanted to reveal to the world.  But she wasn’t doing it because she was afraid that being seen under that light or that part of her being seen was going to make all these people unsubscribe and she was going to lose a lot of money. And the opposite happened. When we expanded that visibility capacity so that she felt safe enough to express that, it’s incredible what happened. She had this event that I think she would get like 80 people for every year, but last year she got 250 people.

Susan: Oh my gosh.

Lisa: Yes, and she went from like 500K in revenue to I think she’s on track – we created a plan for her to be hitting seven figures this year in 2019. And she’s on track for it. I think she’s already made like 650K so far since a few months ago when we implemented this. so visibility is not really about how many media opportunities you have or how much press you’re getting, it’s more about are you really fully being seen for who you really are. Because if you’re not, you’re going to start to attract opportunities – like, you feel like you’re getting all the wrong opportunities for visibility or you’re getting clients that are, like, kind of jerks or not aligned with you because you’re not showing all of who you are.

And then the emotional capacity piece, to just go over it really quickly, which is part of my embodiment capacity pillar, is that to me, honestly, Susan, is the most important one for me and I think it’s the most important one out of all of them because – and you and I have both experienced this with the haters and the rude comments and the horrible things people feel free to say to you on the internet and the family members who are threatened by you expanding and becoming more successful, those things can be the most hurtful to us, to our hearts, as we expand. And the more visible you are and the more people know about you and the more successful you are, the more you’re flying in the face of societal traditions that say women are supposed to be lost and be told what to do, or women shouldn’t make this much money or they shouldn’t have this much power. And so you’re going to get lots of little micro-aggressions. The more people know about you, the more micro-aggressions you get, the more people get threatened, even people you love very dearly. Their egos can get triggered. And if we let a comment throw us off for a week or if, you know, one of my family members makes some rude comment at the Thanksgiving table for how much money I make. And that just really gets to me if I really let that get to me, which most of us are pretty sensitive individuals because we care and we’re trying to do things to help the world. If that really gets to us, that can throw you off for like two weeks.

And two weeks of being thrown off or being afraid of continuing to talk about what you’re talking about because it triggered a mean comment is throwing you off your momentum significantly. And little by little, throughout an entire year if you think about that, if every little comment or every resistance or every little drama affects you emotionally and you don’t have the tools to be able to detox it and let it go and keep going, then you’re just going to end up either physically sick or completely contracted and thrown off completely from your momentum and your growth. So I think just having the emotional strength to handle hater comments, to handle the nervousness of being seen more, I think that is one of the most important capacities. And to me, in my opinion, is one of the deficient in our world and we are not taught to have emotional capacity or higher levels of emotional health when dealing with these levels that we want to go to in terms of impact and success. Like the celebrities that have the meltdowns, right? That’s a great example.

Susan: Yeah, and if you think about it, this whole new world of social media and having a platform that is different from – like, it used to be just celebrities dealt with this sort of thing. Or if someone was a traveling motivational speaker in our industry, they would deal with it because they were legitimately getting up on stages in front of people in person. But now, with social media as a tool, you know, it’s not just not reading the comment section of a newspaper. It’s a constant comment section 24/7 online. And I agree with you wholeheartedly about this, that it’s the emotional capacity. I mean, coaches who are listening, you know I talk about hatters all the time, and there’s so many clients I’ve had who are brilliant businesswomen. They have a lot of offer the world. And one of my clients last year was just completely derailed by some drama going on online over a podcast interview. And I was like, hey, listen, let’s talk about how much your business and your clients have suffered because of this online drama that isn’t even real.

Lisa: Yes.

Susan: It’s not even part of your life. So would a seven-figure version of you spend a week wallowing in haterade? I don’t think so.

Lisa: Exactly.

Susan: So in terms of growing your emotional capacity to deal with visibility and to deal with emotional capacity to handle the emotions that come up with running a business at a high level, what are some of the interesting homework assignments or tips you’ve offered your clients to expand their capacity?

Lisa: I love this question. Actually, one of my favorite and most unconventional ways of doing this, whenever I tell a woman to do this, she’s like, what? How is this going to expand my emotional capacity? And I do it on my mastermind retreats. Like, I make them do this. And I’ll tell you what it is. It’s sense expansion – your senses, your five senses. A lot of women who are here to help the world, which are your community, my community, right? They’re very sensitive and empathic individuals. So we can feel a lot in our environment. That’s what makes us so good at what we do. We can sense all of the emotions and all the stuff that’s going on. So what happens is, because we tend to be more empathic and more sensitive to what’s going on around us, we’re not cut off. We tend to sometimes shutdown or limit our senses because we’re afraid we’re going to get overwhelmed with all of the emotional information and the environment around us. So I had a client who would not even go outside for a walk because it would send her into anxiety, which is an emotional capacity issue. Or when she envisioned getting onstage in front of thousands of people – she had been invited to do a talk at a really big conference – she was terrified because she felt like she was going to be overwhelmed with all of the energy of the people in the room and going to be absorbing it. So one of the things I love to do is to do like desensitization training on our senses. So it’s kind of like lifting weights. You know when you lift weights, your muscle gets stronger and stronger?

Susan: Yeah.

Lisa: So a lot of times, I’ll do this thing where, for example, on one of my recent retreats, I took all the women to this beautiful botanical garden near my house here in Santa Barbara and the assignment was to walk around for an hour and a half and turn on all of their senses, really notice the colors, allow themselves to experience the colors, really enjoying the scents of the flowers and the plants and all the different medicinal herbs that were in this garden, touching things, really allowing themselves to receive and experience the fuzzy leaf that they’re touching or the pleasure of that experience of touch.

What are they hearing – and imagining that they’re amplifying their senses like, if they’re usually at seven, to 12 for example. And it’s amazing, Susan, how much anxiety this brings up for people because they have this belief they’re going to be overwhelmed by all of this information in their environment, and it sounds like, what the heck does this have to do with your emotions? But it’s so connected because if you have the capability of receiving all the information in your environment without it throwing you off of your core and throwing you off of what I like to call your equanimity, which is to be able to stay connected to yourself even when there’s chaos around you, if you can’t train your basic senses of your body to do this, then you can’t do this in any other area. So it’s kind of like a sideways way that I like to come in to bypass their egos. Goes straight to the body to go straight to expanding what you can even hold experientially with your five senses. And even that can begin to build your emotional capacity. Yeah, another one that I’m sure you’ve done as well, which is very common, is examining sense memory in your body from negative experiences when you were a child and releasing that. I do a lot of visualizations with clients where we go back to a point where they first felt a certain feeling that comes up for them that overwhelms them emotionally and holds them back.

And we do a series of releasing exercises so that they also don’t feel afraid of feeling that feeling that they stuffed away. And they realize that their feelings aren’t going to kill them, that they – I do an exercise where I bring the feeling up from one to 10 in their bodies, and by the end of it, they’re like, oh I didn’t die feeling this feeling, so I can feel these feelings without getting totally derailed. So those are two examples of ways I like to do that. There’s many more.

Susan: I love those. I’m going to challenge all of our listeners here to do a sense walk within the next 48 hours if possible.  But I’ve done something like this, not exactly like this, a couple of different ways. One of the tools that I’ve had my clients carry with them on something like this is a camera. So not your smart phone camera, but like a camera camera, so that you can see what you notice with your eyes. But I use this in BARE work as well, engaging all of the senses, evaluating what’s coming at you through your environment and not just your mouth. But I find this fascinating, this whole concept of capacity, because I know for myself, just listening to you talk through the different categories and talking about ways it can show up, I’m like, yep, yep, yep. And dealing with, like hey, I don’t need to throw more money at something, I need to deal with capacity issues; fascinating. So, Lisa, are you currently working on a capacity issue for yourself?

Lisa: That’s a great question. I am always working in all the capacity areas because, I’ll be honest, this work never ends. Because every time you hit a new level of success, a new level of visibility, a new level of you, shit’s going to come up because you’ve never been there before. So a great example is when I raised my one on one prices to 50K, I was terrified. And it took me two months of expanding my capacity to be able to even say that price on the phone with somebody, to even be able to believe that somebody would want to invest that in me, even though I knew my work was worth $100,000. And so, yeah, recently that was one that I was working on, expanding my capacity, my money capacity. And that doesn’t mean I wasn’t charging high prices before. I’ve always had high-end coaching programs, but with every new level that we reach for in terms of our pricing or our revenue, there’s new levels we’ve never been to that we don’t know how to handle.

So we have to expand our capacity to meet the level at which we want to be, otherwise there’s a misalignment and shit starts to fall apart, to be totally blunt about it. And recently too, one of the places I’ve been working is my structural capacity, which is what are the structures and support systems I have in my life that maybe worked for me a year ago, but now, because things have changed, things have expanded, I’m doing more, I’m reaching more people, I need to reevaluate my structural system. So it’s looking at my team, is my team still the team I need? Or do I need to hire another person? Do I need to change a role? One of my favorite ways that I totally sabotaged my structural capacity is with my housekeeper.

Susan: Oh my gosh, say more about this.

Lisa: So, okay, great example – and I called myself on it and I was like, okay I’m not doing this again – my housekeeper comes every week to clean my house because the amount of money that I get paid per hour, it’s more cost-efficient for me to hire someone, pay them well for their job. It’s still less costly than me doing it. And I don’t want to spend my Saturday cleaning my house when I’ve been working all week. So I had that down. I’ve got the housekeeper. She’s wonderful and she comes and cleans my house every week, but then I started realizing that I was still doing my laundry. And I’m like, I hate doing my laundry. I hate it. I hate folding laundry. I hate putting it in the washer. I hate it. So I thought, why don’t I ask her to help to do my laundry and I’ll pay her extra to do my laundry. So I asked her and she did it, but then I told her to not put my clothes away, that I would put them away.

Susan: Oh my gosh, I’m doing this right now.

Lisa: I know. We all do it. And I was like, why am I doing this? Why don’t I tell her to put the clothes away for me? But there’s like this guilt thing where I feel bad asking her to put the clothes away for me. But it’s not serving me because I’m still doing that work that’s not in my zone of genius, that I don’t want to do. Meanwhile, my housekeeper loves what she does. She gets paid very well for it because she’s very good at what she does, and I’m like, why am I not letting her put my clothes away for me? So that’s a structural capacity issue. It’s like, you get annoyed that your housekeeper is putting things in different places every week, but you don’t ask her to not do that. or you get annoyed that you have to put your clothes away, but that’s your own fault because you could ask her to put the clothes away for you. So that’s one of the funny little ways that I’ve been expanding my capacity lately.

Susan: And what do you notice when somebody makes – alright, so now your cleaning person is going to be putting this amazing laundry away beautifully in your home. What do you imagine, other than freeing up time, that’s going to do for you?

Lisa: Oh my gosh, so much. I mean, I have two planets in Virgo in my astrological chart, so I like things to look organized. And it literally gives me a sense of emotional wellbeing when everything is like Marie Kondo-ed in my house. And I’ve been doing this since before I knew about Marie Kondo. Like, I’ve been folding my clothes that way.  I’ve been color coordinating my closets. That’s how I like things. When I walk into my house, I open my drawer or I open my closet and I can just easily pick my outfit for the day. That’s like eliminating decision fatigue for me. As we grow and we expand, we have a shit ton of decisions that we have to make on a daily basis. I don’t want to waste time going through messy drawers taking 30 minutes to find an outfit, instead of opening my door, boom, all the colors are there, my shoes are color coordinated, they’re perfectly organized. I know exactly what to pick and where to look for what. That takes me five minutes versus wasting 30 minutes of my valuable time. And emotionally, I just feel more mentally clear when my house is de-cluttered, when my house is clean, when my drawers look nice, and honestly, even just spending 20 minutes putting my clothes away.

I feel like there’s three levels that we go through when we’re expanding and increasing our success, Susan. When we first start out, our concern is money. We’re really concerned with making money, making sure we’re making enough money. But once we’re already making enough money and we’re making enough money, the next level is time. Now my time is really important. It’s more important than money, because I know how to make money. But then there’s a third level, which I believe exists, which is energy. So now, I’ve got the time thing kind of mastered, but now my energy, where I’m putting my energy, matters. If I’m putting my energy spending 30 minutes putting clothes away, that’s 30 minutes I’m taking away from putting my energy on making more money, on helping one more person, or going on a walk and enjoying a hike or exercising my body for wellbeing. Those minutes of where I put my energy are very important to me, and it’s not high-leverage for me to put 30 minutes into folding and putting away my clothes, unless that’s something I get a lot of satisfaction out of. Like, I love cooking and I’m not giving my cooking to anybody, because that’s like a meditation for me. So yeah.

Susan: It’s so awesome and listening to you talk about decision fatigue is another thing that I notice lately more than ever. I got home from Savannah and I spent the weekend running a mastermind retreat. And on the ride from the airport home, I’m asking Scott, AKA the silver fox, I’m like, okay so what’s the food situation at home, and he goes, we should probably order out. And then I opened up Grubhub and I literally was like, somebody else is going to order this. I cannot even… And then he’s like throwing out options and I’m like, stop talking. Someone just put food in front of me. I’m not deciding a single thing. So I agree with you, streamlining all those things so that your time, energy, and capacity is popping for what your mission is so important. So, Lisa, how can people learn more about capacity? How can they learn more about your work?  Of course, we’re going to have lots of links where people can find you in the show notes, but where do you hang out and where do you want to direct people?

Lisa: Yeah, well you can go to my website, which is lisafabrega.com and on there, we actually just released a series of videos in three chapters exploring all of these capacity areas and helping you identify if you have that capacity issue. And, more importantly, how you avoid expanding that capacity, because we avoid it in ways we don’t even realize, like not telling the housekeeper to just freaking put the clothes away. That’s a way I avoided expanding my capacity structurally. So yes, if you want to check those videos out and dive deeper, they’re right on my blog and they are in order, meaning that you just got to go back to the first video, which is called Stripping Away the Vale. And I also hang out a lot on Instagram, and you can find me @lisafabrega on Instagram. We do a lot of capacity videos on there as well on the IGTV channel. And you know, we hang out there, chat, post provocative things.

Susan: Yes, I love following you on Instagram. It’s so fun.

Lisa: You too, I love following you too.

Susan: And my homework is to ask Emily Rosenquist, who is my right hand here at home, to put my freaking laundry away. She’ll probably hear this before I even ask her. No, I’m going to ask her today.

Lisa: Good.

Susan: Thank you so much for your time.

Lisa: You’re welcome. My pleasure.

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Whoa, Nelly, that was an amazing conversation. And I’m just so grateful to Lisa for sharing her time with us. Before we wrap up today’s episode, I want to pose one last question to you. What’s one thing you could do right now to set yourself up for a successful week? For instance, you could order some healthy food to be delivered to your house. You could book yourself a massage to help you de-stress. Could you ask your spouse or partner to pick up the slack with the kids so you can work on promoting your new coaching program?

When you plan ahead and when you take steps to set yourself up for a great week, what you’re doing is you’re expanding your capacity for success. So again, what’s one thing you could do right now to set yourself up for a successful week? Do it, boo. Plan ahead so that you’ve got a big capacity tank, a gallon-sized capacity tank, and not a little dinky sippy-cup, alright.

Expand so that you can welcome all the clients and bookings and deposits and opportunities that will soon come your way. Make room for the victories to arrive in your life.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Keep looking for ways to expand your capacity, to expand your capacity to handle stress, to handle new challenges, to handle an influx of clients and customers and cash. There’s always room for more expansion and there’s always a new way to level-up.

Alright, thank you so much listening to Susan Hyatt's Rich Coach Club. If you enjoyed today's show, please head over to susanhyatt.co/rich where you'll find a free worksheet with audio called Three Things You Can Do Right Now to Get More Clients. You can download the worksheet and the audio, print it out, there's a fun checklist for you to check off. Just three things to do. Check, check, checkidy-check.

This worksheet makes finding clients feel so much simpler and not so scary. So head to susanhyatt.co/rich to get that worksheet. Over there, you're also going to find a free Facebook you can join especially for coaches. Bring your coaching practice and your income to the next level at susanhyatt.co. See you next week.