#322: Redefining Success: A Health Coach’s Guide to a Richer Life with Maegan Megginson

Michelle:
Hello there. Health coaches, I often talk about how I started my health coaching practice back in 2009, and I was in private practice for 13 years. What I don't often get into detail about is what that very first year of business was like and how hard it was. Changing careers was a huge transition for me. I used to be an art director, worked at the largest ad agency in Boston, and I had just worked my way up to senior status. I finally had that nice paycheck. I finally had the window office. So starting over in a totally different field, and I know many of you are in the same situation. You're a health coach and it's like a 180 from what you were doing before. I felt like a fish out of water, and I was absolutely desperate. This is my type A personality. I really needed to prove to myself that this was a good decision and I could make this work, and I wanted my then husband to also know that it was going to work financially and the world.
Everyone I knew was looking at me like I was crazy for changing careers like this, and I wanted to prove that I could make it work for them too. So in that first year, I was working 6:00 AM to 10:00 PM I was going nonstop and I experienced a lot of anxiety and exhaustion and tears. I also experienced a miscarriage that year and that whirlwind of hormones and stress just left me fully depleted. I was ready to walk away. I was like, this isn't going to work. I was burnt out, and I know I'm not the only one who's experienced this type of thing starting out as a health coach. Now, by the way, this episode is brought to you by Practice Better, which I used for years in my own practice, and I recommend all the time Practice better handles all of your billing, your scheduling, your client notes, your private sessions, your online programs, you name it, it does it all beautifully so that you can spend less time with admin tasks and your clients see you as the ultimate professional. There's a reason the Practice Better is such a favorite inside our Health Coach Power community. You could sign up for a free trial and save 30% off your first three months at healthcoachpower.com/pb.
Now, it's ironic, I was thinking before we started this episode. We're all about self-care. As health coaches, we're living healthy lives, we're helping people do the same thing, and we are small business owners. Nobody works harder than a small business owner. In fact, I think there's a meme. It says something like, I quit working 40 hours a week for someone else so I could work 80 hours for myself. And that's exactly what my first year of business was like. So when I came across Maegan Meson and her work, I thought, I need this woman on the show. She's a business mentor, a licensed therapist who helps entrepreneurs recover from burnout by creating more sustainable and energizing ways to work. I love that drawing on her experience as a healer and seven figure business owner. Maegan's unique magic weaves together the practical and spiritual elements we need to create successful businesses and truly wealthy lives, which we will talk about today. Thank you so much for being here.
Maegan:
I am so excited for our conversation. Thanks for having me.
Michelle:
I think we need you because like I said, even though we are out here talking about living healthy, balanced lives as health coaches, the coaches I talk to behind the scenes and many of them who I'm working with, I know they're working their tail off and that burnout thing is really real. So what do you think we're getting wrong here? You work with a lot of different business owners. What do you think business owners are generally getting wrong about the way that we're structuring our lives and our businesses?
Maegan:
I mean, how much time do you have? Because the list is long, but it isn't our fault. So I think it's really important that we start right away by saying the things that we're doing that are contributing to our suffering and our struggles as business owners, they are not our faults. These are all lessons that are conditioned into us by our larger society, the Society of Capitalism that has taught us that there is one very specific way to create a profitable business. And that way is often at the expense of our own bodies, our own wellbeing, our families, our communities. This is an epidemic that we're all struggling with, and it can be really overwhelming to start wading into the waters of this conversation because there is just so much that we are up against as small business owners. So I like to dial in and start with something small, start with something digestible that we can really sink our teeth into as business owners.
And I think a good place to start, you kind of queued us up for it, is to think back to why did you go into business for yourself in the first place? And to really reflect on those memories. Why did you make the choice to quit whatever you were doing before, which was probably some kind of nine to five something to take the leap, the risk to become a small business owner. What was your fantasy? What was your vision? And to really give yourself permission to dive deep into those memories, to write about it, to draw it out, to put it on the page so that you can sit with why did I do this in the first place? And when we get clear about why we went into this, what kind of life we wanted to create for ourselves through our businesses, then we can start reverse engineering. Where have we gone off track? Where have we maybe followed someone else's roadmap that wasn't in alignment with the values I was bringing into my business in the first place?
Michelle:
I mean, there's so much out there. We see it everywhere, probably in Facebook ads and whatnot. It's all make six figures in the next 60 days or some crazy promises like that or aspirations. And when you were just talking, I was like, Ooh, I know I, I got into this business because I wanted a family and I wanted to be a mom who was home and available for my kids. I grew up with a single mom who worked nine to five, and I was always at a babysitter's house. So that was really, really important for me. I knew working and advertising. I would also have my kids in daycare all day long, and I didn't want that. So it's like I always say health coaching is not a get rich quick scheme by any stretch of the imagination, and it can be profitable, but for me, it's been very slow and steady growth. Now, my boys are 10 and 13, but I am here. They have a half day today. They just walked through the door downstairs and I was like, hi, here we are. They're going to have lunch and then I'll take 'em wherever they need to go. So that's a really good point. We didn't get into this to make a lot of money, and yet all the messaging out there is like, have a six figure business, have a six figure business, blah, blah, blah.
Maegan:
Or maybe you did get into it to make a lot of money, right? It's like money to be clear, money is not the enemy here. Money is not a problem. Wanting money is not a problem. But for most people, the primary motivator, the core value that led you into becoming a healer, to being your own boss, to owning your own business, the primary motivator, I want to get rich. The primary motivator is often, I want more time. I want more flexibility. I want more agency in my life, and I want this business to make whatever amount of money I need to live my best life. Yeah, and I love what you said about the get rich quick because that, especially in the online business space and the healer business space, those messages are everywhere. They are everywhere. And I guarantee you, any scheme, any plan, any roadmap that guarantees you're going to get rich quick will come at a cost.
And that cost is often burnout, right? It's your body, it's your relationship with your family. It, and it's so mired in the capitalistic model, which is make money, make it quickly, and make it at any cost whatsoever. So this work, what we're talking about, how do we come back to ourselves? How do we come back to being able to practice what we preach to take good care of our bodies to live, to do self-care, to whatever it means for you to take good care of yourself. It does require a stepping away from the mainstream paradigm of make as much money as quickly as you possibly can. We have to take a slower or methodical, kinder, gentler approach to building our businesses.
Michelle:
Now, what would you say to someone who maybe like I did, left a good paying job and now everyone around you and your family and whomever your spouse is kind of looking at you like, well, where's money? Okay, you've been doing this now for a year, two years. Where's the money? There's other people. It's not just the ads and the expectations out there. Sometimes it's in the home. So how do you reconcile what you just said, which is very true with the obligation to contribute?
Maegan:
I think first of all, this is so deeply personal and unique to each individual business owner. For me, it's really helpful to feel in my body, feel the difference between perceived scarcity and real scarcity. So do I know, do I have a solid enough understanding of my personal financial situation to know how much money I need to contribute to keep me out of real financial scarcity in my life versus what an energetics, what emotions am I carrying around from myself or other people that are projections of fear are projections of not having enough. So when you're in that place, when you're feeling the pressure, when your family is pressuring you, when your business coach is pressuring you, wherever it's coming from, take a step back, take a couple of deep breaths, and then we find this balance of sitting with ourselves, sitting with our own intuitive selves and sitting with our spreadsheets and going, okay, let me look at the facts. Let me look at the data. How much money do I have? How much money is coming in? How much money do I actually need to generate? And let me sit with myself. What am I feeling about all of this? What are the stories I'm telling myself about how much money I'm making or not making? And it's the weaving together of those two components that really will help create the clarity that you need to know how to navigate out of that situation.
Michelle:
Now, I'm imagining that you probably work with business owners of all kinds, but especially women. We're coming to the table with a very different, I think, money story than men generally. And I wonder if you could speak to that, because 99% of our health coach population are women. Many are career changers like myself, many of our coaches are women who've maybe been stay-at-home moms for a long time and are just trying to get back in to working outside the home. Or I guess as a health coach, you still work at home, but yeah, sure, sure. Doing that work, maybe you say something about women in our mindset around money specifically.
Maegan:
I want to step into my therapist role for a second. I think, again, the answer to this question is so deeply personal. The answer to this question is going to be different for each woman who is sitting and exploring her relationship with money. But what I know is that money often is connected to our sense of safety, and the more money we have, the safer we think going to feel. But it tracks back to childhood. It tracks back to what was my financial situation like growing up? Did you grow up in poverty? Did you grow up with a tremendous amount of wealth? But parents who were never around, what did you learn? Did you learn that money is how you get loved? What did you learn about money? It could be a thousand different things that you learned about money, but I think it's true that as women, we have the extra layer of working against the patriarchy.
So as women, we're stepping into businesses, we're also caretakers, right? We're trying to be people pleasers. We're trying to make everyone happy, and we want to feel financially independent. We want to feel strong. We want to feel like I can do this. I can make just as much money as my male counterpart or my spouse or whoever it might be. The pressures that are bearing down on us as women, I think are so much more complex and nuanced than the common male experiences in his life. As a business owner, I'm throwing out a lot of different ideas because my hope here is that we're planting seeds for the women who are listening to this conversation. Just pluck out whatever seed or whatever nugget makes your body vibrate a little bit, gives you this kind of feeling of electricity, of like, oh, wait, that's part of my story, right? Oh, I feel that. And then take those seeds and then plant them and let them grow and get really curious about what your unique money story is, because that information is what's going to help you create a more solid relationship with money and finances in your business as the business owner.
Michelle:
I mean, a very common theme that I've seen among health coaches, and I guess women in general, but I'm most familiar with this group, is I don't saying I don't want to ask for money. I feel like I can't ask for money. I inherently don't believe I am worth whatever amount of money. I think there's this definite feeling of playing smaller, being hesitant, being shy. But then at the end of the year, we look at our bottom line and we're like, oh God, I make any money with this. My husband was right and never should have become a health coach. There's this terrible cycle that we can get into with that. So you're right, it is personal for everyone, but I think overall, would you agree women are less likely to be able to stand up and make it happen for themselves sometimes financially because of those stories?
Maegan:
One of my favorite memes is maybe we all have the confidence of a middle-class, middle-aged white man.
Yes, yes.
Yes, absolutely. That there is a way we're conditioned from childhood as women to be small, to be subservient, to give, give and not ask for anything in return. And of course, that translates into our businesses. Of course it does. But the flavor with which it I find is a little bit different for everyone. So maybe the questions we can kind of track back to are in what ways am I struggling to claim my power and my authority as the business owner, as the person who is responsible for growing and nurturing and tending to this business, which is designed to make money among other things. But this business does need to make money. There's a way in which I find sovereignty plays a huge part in our success as female business owners, as women in society.
We are all working take what we do for work out of the equation for a minute. As women in this society, we are all on a journey to discover our sovereignty, to find our power, our authority, to be able to stand firmly on our two feet and to do whatever we need to do to take care of ourselves in this world. And I think absolutely that has a parallel process inside of our businesses, and I think that's beautiful. One of my favorite things about being a business owner is that I get paid to heal my own wounds. I'm getting paid to do personal development work, which is such a privilege. It's such a gift that when you start looking at your business as kind of like a microcosm that allows you to really examine your own personal stories, your own wounds, and to become stronger and healthier and just more confident in the world, you're just checking a lot of boxes at once.
Michelle:
So much of business growth is personal growth. Most of business growth is personal growth.
Maegan:
Absolutely. I mean, it's amazing. I think it's a true gift. It's something that we don't get to experience when we're working a nine to five when we're working at giant companies, but it's one of the reasons I think being a small business owner is worth it because I'm getting to do a lot more for myself and just make money. Making money is important, but wow, the ways in which I'm getting paid as a business owner are actually so much more expansive and diverse than just the money that I'm transferring into my bank account at the end of each month.
Michelle:
But that just made me think is maybe the burnout that comes from figuring this all out. There's a gift in that. Because let me tell you, that first year of my business, certainly not the first time in my life that I've overworked and burnt out. That's a running theme that's been there. But if I was still working at the ad agency and I was overworking and burning out, potentially someone else could take on a project instead of me, potentially. I could lean on a coworker, whatever. I could take some time off. But when you are running your own business, you really don't have those options. Therefore, like you said, you're forced to confront these things. Does that resonate for you at all that maybe there's a gift in the burnout?
Maegan:
It does resonate. I think it is worth examining the definition of burnout just a little bit. It's hard to go online and find what's burnout different people talk about it in many different ways, but I think it's helpful to imagine a bit of a spectrum between a normal stress and overwhelm and burnout. And by the time we're in burnout, we're really talking about a clinically significant experience. So I don't ever want anyone to get to burnout. I don't think we need to get to the point of burnout, which looks a lot like depression. When we're really in burnout, that's when we wake up in the morning and we have zero motivation to do our work. We're full of resentment, anger, our bodies are in pain. We feel physical pain. We feel exhaustion, fatigue. We're at the point where we literally cannot continue, and that's never a helpful place to be.
It's painful. It's hard to get out of that kind of intense burnout experience. So I'm going to say let's do everything we can to make sure none of us ever make it to a real true burnout. But we're all going to experience different degrees of stress and overwhelm. We're all going to experience different degrees of stress and overwhelm. And I do agree completely that when we're in stress and overwhelm, we are receiving so much data from our bodies, so much information about what's working, what's not working, what I need to change. And there is something real like you're saying about being in business for yourself where there's no one to blame but yourself. And there's no one who's going to sweep in and take care of the balls that you're dropping but yourself. And I think that there are so many valuable lessons that we get to learn when we are solely responsible for ourselves and for our businesses. And I do love that even though it's hard and messy and makes us face a lot of feelings of self-criticism, of shame, of self-judgment, there's so much value and richness that we get to experience when we are in that deep, intimate relationship with ourself inside of our business.
Michelle:
Yeah, you're so right, because in the past, I would've blamed my boss. I would've blamed my professors in college, or I would've blamed whatever. It's very easy to point fingers elsewhere, and then you're not actually taking on that responsibility and doing the work. Why am I overworking? Why am I in this scarcity mindset?
Maegan:
That's right.
Michelle:
Why is all of this happening? So when I was in business for myself, suddenly, oh my gosh, I have to figure that out.
Maegan:
Yeah, exactly. Which is great. And don't shy away from that again, that's the beauty. The magic of being a small business owner is you get to examine yourself in such a deep and intimate way. You get to heal yourself while you're growing your business. And very few people on the planet get to say that Very few people on the planet get to say like, wow, I get to pay myself to also grow myself. Amazing. Such a gift.
Michelle:
I bet everyone listening could make a list right now. I could probably make a list a mile long of ways that failing in business or having to figure something out that you've never figured out before.
Maegan:
Struggling.
Michelle:
Or all of this struggle has made you a better person. A far, far more mature person, a more well-rounded human being because of my business. I love that thought. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Maegan:
Yeah.
Michelle:
What a game changer.
Maegan:
It's a powerful reframe that puts us back in the driver's seat because we are talking about being in the nine to five, and it's hard to discern in the nine to five what's your responsibility and where can you put, because there's a lot of people in places and things that you can genuinely point the finger at, so it can be hard to see the forest for the trees, but yeah, when you're in business for yourself, you're the only tree. It's like you're the only tree, and you get to look at all of it through this deeply personal lens. And when we reframe that as a positive thing, as a gift, we're stepping into our power. We're stepping into that sovereignty a little bit more.
Michelle:
Oh gosh. I love that. All right, so we talked about obviously we need to make money in our business. We talked a lot about how personal growth is another sort of a benefit. We don't get the standard benefits. We don't get 401k, but we get a lot of personal growth. Is there anything else you would put into that category of revenue that doesn't come in the form of dollar bills?
Maegan:
Yeah, absolutely. I think this is, as business owners, we have a really unique opportunity to expand what revenue means to us. Again, the system of capitalism has conditioned us to believe that revenue is money, revenue is cash in the bank, and if we take that a little bit deeper, we've also internalized in our bodies the pressure to produce, the pressure to succeed, the pressure to make more money quarter after quarter, year after year. But to what end, when we're making money just for the sake of making money and we're not actually thinking about all of the other things we want to generate for ourselves in our life, that's when things get a little bit wonky. That's when we start exploiting ourselves or feeling deeply critical of the ways that we are succeeding or not succeeding based on these very narrow metrics. So what I encourage my clients to do is, again, take a breath.
It all starts with a big deep breath. Take a big deep breath and go back to that vision that we started with at the beginning of this conversation. Why did you go into business for yourself in the first place? What was it that you were craving? So you were craving, you wanted to have kids, you wanted to create a life where you could be home and present with your children. So many people, it revolves around their families. I want more, want more time with my family. I wanted more time freedom. I wanted more creative agency. I wanted to be able to really create an experiment without having to report to someone else or make my vision align with someone else's vision. So if you can start to think about the things that are most important to you in life, you can then start to think about them as types of revenue that your business can generate for you.
So in addition to generating cash in the bank, which is very important, let's not forget about it. Let's not avoid that. What if my business also generated time to be with my family? What if my business paid me to be able to pick my kids up from school? What if my business paid me to be able to go to a creative retreat so that I could work on writing my novel? What if my business paid me in time to take care of my body and time to go to the gym every morning and time to do meal prep on Mondays before the chaos of the week really gets started? What if I'm not just trying to make more money, but I am trying to generate all of the things that are going to help me live a really well-rounded life? I think of all of these things as non-monetary revenue.
So when I'm looking at my business, when I'm doing my business planning or kind of reviewing how things are going in my business, I'm looking at how things are going financially in my business, but then I'm also looking at all of these other variables that are deeply important and personal for me, and I'm asking myself, did I get as much rest this quarter as I needed or wanted? Did I have as much time for creative exploration as I needed or wanted? Was I as present with my family and friends as I wanted to be? I'm going to start looking at all of those things and evaluating how my business performed on those metrics with just as much attention and seriousness as I am attending to the metrics of my finances.
Michelle:
Just a couple episodes ago, I talked about planning for the new year, and I shared that this year in my business, I actually earned less, a bit less than the year prior. And how at first blush, that sounds like very bad thing, but I got to tell you, I felt extremely wealthy this year because I went to bed by 11:00 PM every night, and that was not always true. I was up and doing my workout every morning. Usually don't start working until about 10 or 11:00 AM That is a huge luxury in this world.
Maegan:
Right.
Michelle:
What is that worth? That's what we're talking about here, right?
Maegan:
That's right. There's a quote by the philosopher Alan Watts, and he's talking about western society, and he says, we've confused money with wealth as a people. We have confused money with wealth. And when I read this quote for the first time, I felt such a deep resonance in my body. It's kind of like tears came to my eyes. I felt a vibration in my whole body, and I was like, hold on a second. This feels deeply important because yes, living in a capitalistic society, we're taught that wealth is how much money do you have in the bank, right? We're taught that you are only successful if you are growing quarter after quarter, year after year financially. But that's not true wealth, right? True wealth is what you're describing. True wealth is I have enough money. I have enough money to live the life that I want to live. I have enough and I'm getting rest, and I have time with my family and my workday feels gentle. There's no urgency, right? It's when we start painting that picture that we really get to feel in a more holistic way that we're living truly wealthy lives. It's a huge reframe, and it can be hard to wrap our minds around when we really have been focused on financial success our whole lives, but I guarantee you it will be the most magical, liberating, reframe you can gift yourself.
Michelle:
Now, if I could go back and talk to myself in 2009, that person that Michelle would've said, I need to make more money, and that was true. I really was making pennies. So yeah, I did need to make more money. My plan for that was to work longer and harder and more, because the more I worked, the more likely I was to get paid, right? And what I was coming up against was that there's only so many hours in the day. So that plan maxes out pretty quickly. Sure. Could we make an argument for the opposite? Could I go back and tell her the opposite? Actually, maybe if you work less, you will find what you're looking for.
Maegan:
Well, it's hard to say that just like carte blanche because again, everyone's situation is different. And I would answer that question differently to a business owner who was a single mom and was going into debt. I would answer that question differently than someone who is in a dual income household where they are contributing the base amount that covers the bills, and the family is okay, they're surviving. They can get by on six months of not generating much revenue. We have to really attend to our real financial constraints in this material world. And I think that this is a real danger in the spiritual space, specifically in the spiritual business space specifically, is that people are really quick to talk about just manifesting abundance and just trust that it's all going to be okay and you're going to get what you need. And it's like, okay, to a degree, but we do have to check.
We have to do checks and balances of all of this to make sure that the decisions that we're making, yes, are aligned with our values and our intuition, but they also are supporting us in having a secure and stable financial base. Because when you don't have real financial security, your whole nervous system goes into fight or flight, and you can't do anything helpful or productive from a state of danger in your body from a state of fight or flight. So I want to be really clear that you need to understand your financial situation. You need to understand the difference between perceived scarcity and real scarcity in your body. And once you understand that, then we can start playing with this conversation. How much do I actually need to work? Do I need to work harder? Is the solution actually to turn down the volume and to do less? Then we can start playing and looking at your unique business model and your needs in the world, and really painting a picture that's totally unique to you so long as we're painting it on top of a foundation of financial safety and security.
Michelle:
Well, that makes some good freaking sense. Thank you for that. One thing, I know health coaches, we don't like to talk about money. We stick our fingers right in our ears, la, la, la, la. I don't want to look at my finances. And there is that whole, let's just go in the forest and manifest our business. And it's like, like you said, yes, and also not.
Maegan:
Yes. And to be clear, I absolutely go into the forest to manifest my business. 100%. Yes. I think that there is so much wisdom and knowledge to be found in nature, to be found through more spiritual avenues of creating our businesses. But at the end of the day, we are still operating inside of the playground of capitalism and this material world, and we have to make sure that we understand the rules of this playground and that we're playing the game just enough to be able to pay our mortgage and pay our electric bill and buy grocery, buy organic food at the grocery store. We have to play the game. There's no getting out of playing the game. So it's how do we play the game, but balance it with a more holistic, spiritual core, values driven strategy? And that balance can be really hard to find. Let's be honest, this isn't easy what we're talking about. We are literally deconditioning from a very powerful system, but it's so worth it. The journey is so worth it.
Michelle:
Maybe the takeaway for everyone is to look ahead with your business thinking about, yes, how much am I earning? What promotions am I going to run, et cetera, and also, how am I paying myself in the other really important ways? And am I getting enough rest and am I hitting those other goals? The reasons that you got into this in the first place. I loved that idea, and I want to thank you so much for joining us today.
Maegan:
Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having this conversation with me.
Michelle:
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