Are you avoiding wealth?

I had a really disruptive thought while walking the dog today.

But before I tell you more about that...

Happy Valentine's Day to you!

I hope that no matter what this day means to you, it is filled with love - and every other day of the year as well.

We love to romanticize love, and we feel certain revelling in it, making it a goal, celebrating it and wanting it. Love makes us strong and vulnerable and joyful. It enables us to grow and build new parts of ourselves that had been dormant or unexplored.

Love is wonderful, universally coveted, and safe.

We don't feel the same way about wealth.

Yet wealth also enables us to grow and build new parts of ourselves. To feel proud and abundant, and generous. To open new pathways that wouldn't have been there before.

Especially when it's wealth that we created for ourselves.

But we don't talk about wealth that way. We whisper in dark corners about its elitest nature. That it's only for others. That if we had it, we would somehow be different, wrong, or greedy.

Why? We're shooting ourselves in both proverbial feet.

And it gets worse. All of the messaging we are fed as business owners pushes us towards wealth but then our cultural messaging steps in to block safe passage and sends us careening back into mediocrity.

"Haha, just kidding! Be successful and everyone will hate you."

It's OK to strive to be more profitable but don't you dare get wealthy.

It's OK to want more but don't actually get it.

It's OK to have dreams but they will look very different if they come true.

What in the world is this nonsense?

What is wrong with bettering ourselves, and our positions? For wanting to be comfortable (or more than comfortable)? To reap the rewards of work well done?

You are no less of a good human if you build wealth. You are exactly the same human, who figured out how to get a little further ahead, and allowed it to happen.

I'm not going to try and convince you that wealth is OK because you can then use it to give to others and make their lives better.

If you do, awesome! I would probably do some of that too.

But I don't want to perpetuate the narrative that the only way you can feel comfortable having wealth is if you commit to giving it away.

I want us to be comfortable having wealth, because we should be.

So here's the disruptive thought I had while walking the dog today:

Do we stay in service-based businesses to avoid building wealth?

Stay with me here for a minute.

When we sell only our time, we can sell only so much. There is an upper limit. So unless you keep ratcheting up your pricing (which very few do, kicking and screaming), there's an upper limit to your income, and therefore your wealth.

We have a perfect excuse for staying comfortable.

But hold up - I like running a service-based business! This is my superpower, my perfect work. It's what I do.

And so I shall.

But I am also going to create wealth. I am going to use what I've created in my many years of service, and build around that.

I am going to fly in the face of the status quo and create a hybrid business model that gives me everything I want - freedom and stability, creativity and growth.

I am going intentionally create a business that becomes an asset.

We don't get permission to do this anywhere else. In fact, we don't even get to consider this because it's just not done.

Well, let's do it.

I've got a group of business owners who are with me on this journey, and every week they are breaking new ground. They are thoughtfully, and with intention, freeing themselves of their constraints.

They are curious, creative and action-oriented, and they are supporting each other every day.

Care to join us?

The Asset Builders' Club is in full swing and we'll be going live again this week for group coaching, and every day in our Slack channel, solving problems, celebrating wins and designing strategies.

I'm so proud of these folks who are paving the way for a new kind of business where wealth is welcome.

They are learning that wealth is not only a healthy target, but is pushing them to think differently about their work.

What about you? Can you love wealth as much as you love love?