Leah Gervais: Welcome back. My name is Leah, I’m so excited to be here with you guys. And I have a, from the heart episode today, I think it’s kind of a good example of leading business through your intuition through alignment. I really just made this decision. It feels right. And I wanted to kind of share with you guys and explain. 

So let me backup a little bit. If you are listening to this or watching, you probably have seen the title that I’m sharing our decision to no longer share our income publicly. And so if you have followed me for any length of time, then you likely have seen in the past that I’ve been very open about how much I’ve made and how much my business has made in the past two years. Um, I have openly shared when I had my first five figure month.

I shared when I hit six figures. I have shared when we hit $50,000 months consistently, because that basically meant I turned my, my annual income, how much I made when I started my business into my monthly income. And very recently, like literally two days ago, I shared that we had a six figure month and I stand by sharing all of that. 

And so I want to first kind of look at why I decided to share all of that in the first place and share transparently that decision with you all so that it can kind of make sense. And I want to make clear that I’m not like reversing my decisions. Anyway, I’m just going to go into first, why I made that decision to begin with what I thought the benefits were and why we are no longer going to share that. So let’s back up a little bit.

When I started my business, I was in a nine to five job and I was a side hustler and I was so excited about getting my business, going, getting it started, getting it off the ground. Uh, and I was pretty alone in my excitement. Um, I had very supportive friends and family, but no one really knew what I was doing and I didn’t really know what I was doing. 

And so I looked a lot to other online business owners, other people who had been able to quit their nine to five jobs for inspiration and for motivation. And I specifically want to shout out some people that really motivated me during that time through their income reports. So one was a girl named Abby who is still a blogger, and she runs the DIY and home decor blog, just a girl on her blog and her and her husband.

They, they, you know, she was the breadwinner of their family. Well, I guess they worked together on this blog and they had two kids and they were able to fund their whole family with their blog, which I thought was really inspiring. And I would watch them publish income reports. And they, I watched them go from making like $5,000 a month blogging up to $30,000 a month. And that completely blew my mind. I was making like, not that much at all. 

So she really showed me that it was possible to make money from a website. It was possible to monetize things in a creative way. It was possible to, to, you know, do this, to leave your nine to five job. Another one that I really, uh, got inspiration from was a girl named Melissa Griffin, who I still look up to to this day.

She also is a very successful blogger who was able to leave her nine to five job. And she also published her income reports every single month. So I really do think that if it weren’t for people being so transparent with their income in those early days, for me, I don’t know if I would have had the guts to do this because like I said, no one in my life knew what I was doing. They wanted to be supportive, but they didn’t really know what to say about my dreams of having a six-figure business that I built from my Macbook, you know, on with a WordPress site. So seeing other people doing it and seeing them transparently share how they did it was hugely helpful to me. I’m not gonna lie if I would say that it did make me a little bit envious, but not envious in an ugly, jealous kind of way envious. And like, uh, it, it lit a fire under me kind of way. 

So I’ve always remembered that I always remembered the hope that that gave me. I always remembered the courage that that gave me. And I always remembered the community that, that made me feel. So when I started mine, when my business did start taking off and I started making more from it than I was at my nine to five job, um, I wanted to share that for the same reasons, because I wanted other side hustlers to know that if you’re sitting at your nine to five job and you’re feeling stuck and you don’t know what other options there are for you, there are other options for you. I’ve been there. And I’m not just saying that I quit, you know, blindly, or that I did this all through a guessing game. I worked my ass off and I was able to make more money than I, than I was at my job.

So I wanted to create that same sense of excitement for them. And I wanted them to know that they weren’t alone and, you know, have I had fears sharing my income over the years? Of course, you know, is this tacky? Are people going to judge me? What are my, what? Like, what are my family members- what are they going to think when they see this? Like, I didn’t grow up in a family where we openly shared our income with, you know, our friends let alone the worldwide web where people can criticize you. Um, what would my, you know, I was getting married. Like, what am I in? What are my in-laws gonna think of me? Um, what, what will friends think of me? What will the public think of me? Is this, is this new money ish like, yay. Look at me, I have money.

I mean, I felt all of these things. Um, I also worried as my income grew that I, that it would end up coming off as unrelatable. And I don’t mean that in a snobby way, but I’m just trying to openly share the fears I went through. Um, as I decided to share anyway, because in the beginning when it was like, yeah, I’m making more money than I was from my nine to five job that I, I meant to do that. 

Or I did that intentionally hoping to be relatable, hoping to actually be the voice out there that could say, Hey, I don’t have a million dollar business. Um, I don’t have an inheritance. I didn’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this. I went into debt to do it, but here I am, you know, and I was able to make more than I was at my nine to five, which at the time was like $6,000 a month.

And so I wanted to be relatable. I wanted people to be able to see that I’m no different than them and their story could look the same way that I, that, that mine does. Um, and two years later, you know, now being able to share that we’ve had like figure months, I don’t want to lose anyone. I’ve been afraid of feeling like people are like, Oh, I could never get there. Or that’s just so far for me. 

Or I don’t know if that’s what’s ever going to happen for me because I felt all of those things too. So anyway, I’ve been afraid of what family and friends would think of me. I’ve been afraid of what people would think of me. I’ve been afraid of coming off as tacky. I’ve been afraid of being unrelatable and I’ve been afraid of being an oversharer. I’m actually a relatively private person.

I know that that might sound weird. It’s actually, I actually don’t even know how to say it because with some things in my life, I’m very private. I keep my marriage pretty private. I feel like not, you know, the internet doesn’t really know much about my family life, um, or what I do off the internet. 

But then I have been very open about business related things like I’m pretty open about, um, the experience quitting my nine to five job, I’m open about the failures that I’ve had. I talk openly about what it was like processing the grief of my father, uh, while growing my business. And so the income thing has always kind of been on that teetering line of like, is this oversharing? Is this a part of my life? I even want the internet to know about, do I want to share this?

So I questioned all of those things. Every single time I would share how much we made in a month or how much we made in a launch or how much we made, um, in a year or anything like that every time. So why did I do it when I had all of those doubts, all of those fears, all of those worries about coming off as show-offy, as annoying as bragging is all of that. Well, I did it because I wanted it to inspire people.

I wanted to show people what was possible, the way those before me did the way Abby, from just a girl in her blog did the way Melissa Griffin did the way. Um, I also used to read, making sense of sense. I don’t know if you guys know that blog, but it’s a personal finance blog and she’s also always shared her income really openly.

And it really gave me so much faith when I was like sitting in a cubicle reading. Those gave me so much hope. So I wanted to do that for other people. And I’ve been so transparent with my journey. I mean, people who have followed me have watched me go from, from that place of like, I’m still at my nine to five job and I’m about to quit to you know, now are our businesses at the million dollar mark. Like if, you know, if we were to make this for for eight months or 10 months, I guess it would be, and that’s happened relatively quickly. And so I’ve just always wanted people to know that this isn’t a pipe dream. You can do this too. There’s nothing unique about me. There’s nothing stopping you from you. There’s nothing stopping you from doing it too.

Yes. I’ve had setbacks just like you. Uh, and you know, you’re strong enough to get through them. So that’s always, that’s always trumped my fears that has always been more important to me than what people think about me. If I could inspire someone, even one person, if even one woman looks at one of my posts or one of my emails and says, wow, you know, she went from being at a nonprofit where she didn’t have much money to now having these multiple five figure months. Um, I’m going to start a business today. 

I’m going to go for it. I’m not going to let myself hold back. I’m not going to let myself hold me back anymore. Then it’s all worth it to me. And I really stand by that. Um, but I also think that another reason that I have openly shared it, that I am not totally sure on how to handle it, honestly. 

The other reason is that I think it’s important for women to start being more transparent about money. I do, because, you know, we’ve all grown up in a world where in a society where it’s taboo to talk about money, it doesn’t feel classy to talk about money. It feels tacky. It feels trashy. It feels inappropriate. 

And where has that gotten us? Honestly. Women are not paid enough. I have not met one woman in any of my programs or even that I’m friends with that would not be living the life that she really wants at a closer mark of like $10,000 a month. Um, and so often women don’t make that much because they don’t think that they can, or they think that that it’s too much or they don’t know how to get there. And so the more we openly talk that like that is the norm and we normalize it and we show people how to get there. I think it’s a better thing for women.

I also think that there’s a huge issue of a pay gap in this country and honestly all over the world. But I can’t- just talking about the United States right now. So why are we continuing to go off these, you know, business or finance practices or finance ways of doing things that so clearly don’t work. That so clearly resulted in women getting paid less and gender aside. I think that we have a personal finance crisis in this country. 

People have a lot of debt. They don’t know how to, they don’t know how to, you know, they don’t know what they want to do with their money. I’m not going to get into that because I’m not a personal finance expert and it’s a different conversation. But my point is, I do think there’s something to be said for changing the narrative around talking about income, being a taboo thing.

I think it’s a better thing for women If they can see how other women have made money, I think that they can give themselves permission to pursue how much money they actually want to make, not how much they think they can make or how much they think they should make. So that has always been a supporting reason why I’ve shared my income as well. 

The primary one was when I said before, which is that I really just wanted to show other entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs that, you know, these income levels are possible. They can happen quickly if you take massive action. Here’s how I did it. And I’ve just always wanted people to see that in themselves as well. So all of this to say, I just listed out all the fears I have whenever I share my income and that I’ve always had. And then I shared the two big reasons why I’ve done it anyway, primarily because I want to show people what’s possible.

And secondarily, because I think it’s more beneficial for women. If we have more open conversations around what is possible for us, financially. And so now why am I deciding to stop? 

After I just shared that we had, I just shared October’s income and I’m recording this on November 10th. So I, it is not, the irony is not lost on me that I’m doing this like very quickly after, but here’s the truth. I have been kind of toying with this for a few months now, I would say, and just feeling a little bit different about what happens when we share it. And, you know, yes, I’ve still had those fears of like, are people judging me? Is this tacky? Is this necessary? Those haven’t really gone away, but I’ve just kind of tried to dismiss them because they’ve never really been big enough to outweigh, you know, people saying like, Oh my God, this really motivated me.

Or this really showed me something different. I’m going to, I’m going to show up differently now because of what you’ve shared, like those have always been more important. The questions that have started coming up for us that have made us as a team decide not to continue doing this is our clients and what, not so much our clients, but like our audience, like people that follow me on social media, people that, you know, read my emails, coming back and then asking us, okay, so you made $50,000 in a month.

Let’s just say, how do I make $50,000 in a month? And that’s the wrong question to be asking. So what I’ve started realizing is that sharing our income months have detracted or are detracting or could detract and not really share where it is in the process, but I want to stop it before it goes any further from the reasons that we have those incumbents to begin with.

Uh, it’s not done overnight. It’s done through a lot of things, but I consider the two most important things. The two biggest things I teach my clients, which are one work on your mindset every day. Just like you take care of your physical body, just like, you know, you need to sleep every day and having a strong, strong entrepreneurial mindset, which is why mindset is the core of all of my programs and second, having great digital marketing strategies.

So, all of my programs focus around mindset and marketing mindset and marketing. Are there things in between of course, like I would never consider myself like a PR expert or a social media guru or anything like that. And those things can be beneficial, but I have found having taken all of those programs, having tried a lot of those things and having had a lot of them work for me that if you can really just simplify it and balance it to like you becoming the person that makes $50,000 a month and you creating a marketing strategy that makes $50,000 a month, you can do that then with any income level.

So that’s sustainable growth. That’s sustainable work. That is what you should want out of working with me is knowing how to become the person who makes as much money as you want and knowing the strategies and the marketing that goes into it so that you can replicate it again and again and again, because if we teach you how to make $50,000 in one month, well, one, I think you’re kind of missing the point and two, that’s not such sustainable growth because you don’t know then how to do it again. What we really want you to understand. And what we really want to teach is sustainable, like personal development and pers and sustainable business strategies that allow you to scale up and up and up. 

And so I feel like I don’t want the pure numbers or the pure income to take away from what makes the income, what is to begin with and by focusing more, or just making sure that the focus isn’t taken away from those things, I believe we are actually going to be able to empower more people to have those higher income goals, because there’ll be asking the right questions. Um, so that’s how I made my decision. 

That’s how we came to this conclusion. It’s I don’t want to say it was a hard decision because like, I don’t want to sound over dramatic, but it is a change. I want to make really clear that I’m proud that I never made this decision out of fear. So I listed to you guys, all of the fears that have always come up for me, every time I’ve shared and all of the worries of judgment of people criticizing me, what they think about me, are they gossiping about me? Do they think I’m a liar? Do they think that I’m greedy? Do they think I only care about money? 

All those things are, were never big enough for me to, they were never big enough to get in the way of what I viewed as leading with service, um, which was being able to be transparent, being able to show people that this is possible for them as well. So it’s really more of a strategic decision. Um, and you know what, maybe it will work the way I envision it. I don’t know. I’m figuring this out just like you guys, but I I’ve just noticed over the past few months that the kind of feedback we’ve gotten about it has been more about the number itself and not about the, the foundation behind the numbers, why the numbers are the way they are, how we got them there, how you have the, how of how you can get them there.

Um, and that’s really what my programs are all about. And, you know, if someone were to join like scalar side hustle or my mastermind, and that is really the only thing they want to learn is the income goal. And they don’t want to learn the mindset behind it and they don’t want to learn the strategies. It’s not gonna, it’s not gonna work. 

So, I just want to make sure that I’m being really clear around who I can help, who will be successful learning from me. Um, and you know, what, we really are very good at which yes is making high income months with a, with a small team. Um, but we do that because of our mindset work and because of our marketing. 

Now, all this is to say that if you do find the monthly breakdowns helpful, what I’ve decided to do is create a PDF that just is a snapshot of- I think we’re going to do two or three months, um, that are, I think we’re going to do like a $10,000 a month at a $40,000 a month and then like an $80,000 a month. Just to give you a breakdown of what that actually looks like, what types of things we were doing at the time, what types of things we were selling, what worked, what didn’t. Um, so you can download that and have it any time so that you can still, if you did find the inspiration from hearing about, you know, if you do find like kind of income reports in general, inspiring, we still want to be able to serve you with that. Um, and so you can go to LeahGervais.com/monthly-reports. So LeahGervais.com/monthly-reports, and you can download them, they’re free and they’ll give you that breakdown.

Um, and we’ll, you’ll always have that. You can always have that to refer to. We’re not going to take those down. It’s just that moving forward. We want to make sure that the conversation and the narrative is around the things that actually make those income numbers happen, not the numbers themselves. 

So that’s why I decided to do this, but to all of you out there who have ever sent me a message, um, after you’ve heard, after I’ve shared something really vulnerable, like that shared something very personal. I just want to thank you guys so much. It really has, um, you know, reminded me why, why I do this, why I work through those fears, why I worked through those fears of judgment, because I really do want to, uh, inspire anyone out there to go for their vision. And I want to, I want to pass it on, you know, what I needed at the time to move forward is what I hope that I’m able to give to others.

So, um, anyone, uh, you know, I feel like I have the best audience in the world because I’m always so overwhelmed with negative feedback, whenever I’m afraid to share something, I am very rarely met with negative feedback, knock on wood. Um, and if I am, it’s always, it always pairs in comparison to the support, the congratulations the, um, notes of, you know, what you’re going to do differently because of this. 

And really, I appreciate that so much. So if you have any questions about this, you can always DM me at @LeahGervais_ Instagram. I’m really active on Instagram. And I love hearing from you guys, but I hope that you appreciate kind of our process here. Um, again, if you have any questions, let me know. Or if you just want to share any feedback, let me know if, Oh, I guess the last thing I should share is that if you do love my monthly income reports and you love knowing it, um, you, I can, I encourage you to consider applying for my mastermind because we are going to continue sharing it with them for learning purposes. 

But other than that, I hope that you download these. I hope you continue, continue to follow us. We still will always be talking about how to help you make more money. What strategies are helping us, what strategies are helping our clients and any and everything in between that can help you live out your biggest vision. So thank you guys so much for tuning in. Thank you for being part of this community. And here is your biggest vision. I’ll talk to you guys later!

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