A Time to Bet on Yourself
This week in our Microdosing Facilitator Training I shared with the group the moment I committed to offering microdosing guideship professionally. I was so strongly drawn to offer this beautiful healing practice to others - incredibly inspired - but feeling pretty lost in how to actually begin… how to knit the gap from an inspired idea to a real-life-thing and professional offering.
Back in 2020 - like many of you - I had the passion, the personal experience, the motivation. I dreamed of creating a small group experience where I supported people in microdosing practice… essentially what I wished I would have had to support me when I first started out. It was the height of the pandemic, so it had to be virtual and online, I had to market & promote it online, and learn how to operate an online business after two decades+ of supporting people with their healing in person. The problem? I had never been on Zoom. Never taught a group. Never created a course. Never worked online. The brick & mortar healing arts studios I’d built over the last eight years were mandated closed, every penny I had was invested in those studios, and I was personally broke AF.
A big gap to knit!
So I had two choices in that moment: I could stick with what was familiar and try to wing it myself - learning haphazardly, subsidizing my idle studios by getting a job, offering this work as a hobby or side gig, OR I could hire the very best person I could find to teach me how to create an online group coaching program, bet on myself, and really go all-in on my dream.
When I shared with the group this week that the “very best person I could find” to teach me back then cost $11,000 to work with, you should have seen their reactions! 😂
Looking out across the gallery of faces on Zoom, many mouths dropped open, eyes went wide and I could read many muted lips silently saying “WHOA.” Indeed!
I remember my hand shaking as I pulled out my credit card to put $11,000 on it to pay-in-full. Trust me, I DID NOT have $11K laying around; at the time I was paying four expensive rents on my empty studios, raising money for our staff, hemorrhaging savings, and careening my way toward bankruptcy in a futile effort to save my studios. As I tapped my credit card numbers into the program registration fields, my mind and belly were doing flips - but my soul was strangely calm, moving forward in spite of me. Bet on Yourself, it said. You are your Best Bet.
And with that commitment, I went to work immediately - attending every class call, doing every course exercise, listening to every morsel of guidance, advice and coaching, moving through every discomfort & learning curve with support from someone who’d been right where I was. Six months later, I launched my first two group pilot microdosing programs for $597 per person — and people said yes! A lot of people unsubscribed from my mailing list, but some said yes! I made $14,328. In just one program I made my investment back and then some, and most of all, it gave me the confidence - a wink & nod from spirit - that if we follow our heart and bring our best to our work, we can make any dream come true.
With the world around us growing more confusing, overwhelming, chaotic and unpredictable by the day, who can we count on? When we see a need in society, who will create it? When there is no longer an authority or institution to trust or look out for us, who can we trust? What is the antidote? It’s US, star. We are our best bet. It’s time to invest in ourselves to heal, to create our lives, contribute our ideas, and bring our visions to life with the support of each other.
You are your own greatest asset: your health, your energy, your experience, your gifts. The more you invest in yourself - your own growth & healing - the more it will be returned to you a hundredfold.
Five years later, my life - how I feel, how I experience life - is unrecognizable from where I was in 2020 and it’s so wild to me that - looking back - it was that single decision, that moment I bet on myself, that made everything since possible. When I look back over my life, it’s the investments that I’ve made in myself: my health, my growth, my guideship, that turned out to be the most important bets I’ve made.
I share this with you today because I know many of you are contemplating big leaps of faith in your life right now - some by choice, some by fate - and I know how scary that is… to follow your steadfast heart while the rest of your body is trembling like crazy. Many of you have unexpected gifts arriving, the seed of a vision being planted, and idea for the future taking root.
We see real-time today that the individuals who have resources dictate how those resources are invested across society, or not. And if we want to build a future where we ALL thrive we must have more resources in the hands of healers, creatives, builders and artists. If you have a vision taking hold within you, tend it. Nurture it. Pour love & devotion into it. Trust you are capable, trust you are worthy, trust that you can create a beautiful life that feels fulfilling and free, creative and flowing, sustainable and in service to our shared potential & possibility.
