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Tired of Conflicts and Confusion Over Money? 

If you're a solo professional, business owner or freelancer who is willing to examine - and eliminate - unproductive money attitudes and behaviors, sign up for my new course, The Zen of Money.

If you run your own day-to-day business affairs, then every week you have monetary transactions and discussions with customers, potential clients, vendors, project partners, banks and others.  You are setting prices or fees, negotiating deals, chasing down payments (or being chased), and rather relentlessly either battling or putting up with other people's and your own money hangups, beliefs and behaviors.

For most people, this takes a tremendous amount of emotional and practical energy.

FREE REPORT:  10 Strange But Real Lessons I Learned About Pricing During My 30+ Years in Business.   Enter your name and email address below and press "submit," and you'll receive an email with the download address for this free report.  You'll also receive follow-up messages about research studies and perspectives on money in your business.  You may unsubscribe at any time.

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Imagine, though, being able to step outside of your habits and disengage from your assumptions and knee-jerk reactions over money.  Instead of getting angry, upset or self-righteous when things don't go smoothly, you discover how to go into neutral and calmly assess the best way to handle each situation.

The payoff:  Less wasted energy, fewer money tangles with others, greater equanimity, quicker interpersonal resolutions and smarter business decisions.  Think for a moment what that will mean for your daily life.

Become Clear-Eyed About Money

By the time we go into business, all of us have accumulated a hodgepodge of beliefs, expectations and behaviors around money, picked up from our family, our community and the culture at large.  Despite having a heavy hold on us, most of these elements are not in our conscious awareness.  

When you do become aware of what's in your head, you can choose which ideas and habits to keep and which to let go.  As a result, you lose a lot of the stress you feel about money in your business and gain more control over your financial dealings.

This course helps you identify and detach from the mental mindset you've been bringing to your business dealings.  You gain the freedom to choose how you want to relate to others, to yourself and to money based on your current values and goals.  Less worry, fewer conflicts, more time and energy for your core business tasks, yourself and your family.

Here is a rough outline of the content of the program.

1. Money Transactions.  By pondering incidents with clients, customers, suppliers or partners that upset you or involved a lot of drama, you get your first hints about concepts and behaviors that run your mind and heavily influence your business interactions.

2. Beliefs and Values.  Which of your beliefs about money and your ability to earn it, keep it and spend it wisely are currently serving you and which are quashing your business potential?  Unlike many money-focused courses, we don't assume you want to get as rich as possible.  You use your unique values to decide on these questions.

"Marcia Yudkin’s sage counsel has helped me drop old baggage around money issues and develop a healthy, fair, professional attitude toward making money. She is not only a teacher, but a role model for professionalism in every business transaction. I owe her a lot for understanding how to practice the trader principle in business—in which each person trades value for value, and each person is richer thereby." —Jean Moroney, President, Thinking Directions

Like all the testimonials on this site, the customer comments on this page were provided without compensation, incentives or rewards.

3. Mindset.  Who is responsible for the money that comes into and goes out of your life?  What behaviors in others do you tolerate, to your own detriment?  Who do you blame when things don't go as planned?  Many people are taken aback at the patterns that emerge when they look at how they unthinkingly operate where money is concerned.

4. What is Money?  Everyone knows what money is... or do they?  Here you're introduced to some perspectives on the extent to which money is "real," along with some easy-to-understand concepts from behavioral economics that shed light on your personal quirks in assessing your financial situation and prospects.  Expect more jarring insights and surprising breakthroughs.

"Before working with Marcia Yudkin, I had the belief that more clients would hire me if I was a low-cost option. As a result, I was barely making a living. Marcia challenged and then changed my way of thinking about pricing my services, which resulted in tripling my income practically overnight, and achieving a six-figure income from my virtual assistant business. I highly recommend Marcia's new money course!" - Kathy Goughenour, Coach and Trainer, Expert VA Training

You may or may not be better off financially as a result of this course.  You definitely will have greater ability to be the master, rather than the victim, of your business dealings.  You'll have the power to choose to experience fewer money dramas, upsets and crises.  Again, imagine what you could do with that freed-up energy!

Components of the Course

The Zen of Money program has five components that work together to bring you a cascade of personal growth.

  • Four concise written lessons, on the four themes described above.  These introduce challenging new perspectives on money, with real-world examples and questions that get you applying the concepts to your business money bugaboos.

  • Four conference-call coaching sessions.  These interactive telephone calls offer exercises, ideas, answers to your questions and discussion.  They take place as follows:

Thursdays, February 4, 11, 18 and 25 at 8 p.m. Eastern time
(Convert that into your time zone using this free tool.)

These live coaching sessions last about 60 minutes each.  They will be recorded, so you can catch up with anything you missed.  Important: these recordings will not be made available to anyone not in the course with you.

  • A password-protected online forum.  Besides the coaching calls, we work through the exercises and ideas for each lesson together in a private forum.  Discussions there drive home different ways of seeing troublesome money situations.  Your access to this interaction, support and feedback continues through October 15.

So that you feel comfortable discussing personal matters, you can choose to participate in the forum on a first-name-only basis - or with your full business identity.  That's up to you.  Course participants agree not to share any content from this forum with others not in the course.

  • Emails from me throughout the program.  Two or three times a week you'll hear from me about course logistics, additional exercises, thought starters, examples and questions to think about.  The goal is to keep your discoveries coming - starting from shortly after you sign up.

  • One private, one-on-one, half-hour phone session with me.  This gives you an opportunity to get my input on anything that is troubling you in your money reflections or that you can't quite get a handle on.  You can schedule this private call any time that works for both of us prior to October 15.

Although all the above components are available to you, your own preferences and constraints might mean you concentrate on certain components and ignore others - and that's fine.  For instance, you may not like the coaching calls but eagerly invest energy in "talking" to me and other course members on the discussion board.  Or vice versa.  As long as you engage somehow with the ideas, you'll get loads of value from the program.

Why Me as Your Instructor?

Often in launching a course like this, the instructor shows you pictures of their yachts, drops a lot of famous names and rattles off how much money they have made from what.  That is not who I am, not what I value and not how I choose to present myself in business.

I do consider myself to be in excellent shape financially.  I have two fully paid off homes, one by the beach in Maui and the other at a lake in rural Massachusetts.  I no longer work very hard, although I certainly did in the previous 34 years.  I have a lot of interests that I am pursuing now - such as swimming, jogging, reading, learning languages and traveling.

More to the point, from my point of view, is that money issues come up repeatedly in the questions I get from coaching or mentoring clients.  Most freelancers and professionals whom I help appreciate my cut-to-the-chase approach in pointing ways out of the mental and interpersonal tangles in which they find themselves enmeshed.

"Marcia's money insights helped me get beyond my narrow thinking about pricing. She asked me the $64,000 question: When had I last raised my prices? The answer led me to higher rates that clients accepted - without a word! And when a new client could not pay my full fee, Marcia helped me identify things like program advertising that the client might offer to supplement the payment. Marcia's smart, tactful questions led me to excellent business decisions I am glad I made." - Lynn Gaertner-Johnston, President, Syntax Training; Author, Business Writing With Heart

In addition, having been in business for myself since 1981, first as a writer for national magazines and then as a writing coach and marketing consultant, I have encountered and resolved innumerable vexing money problems, including clients not paying, partners expecting me to break a contract, difficult negotiations, a couple of ill-advised and ultimately doomed collaborations and much more.  These experiences taught me many valuable lessons, and I relish the opportunity to pass them along.

This course is part of my contribution to the world of business before I retire.

What This Course is Not

This course does not discuss personal finance or investment.  It is not therapy.  It is not positive thinking.  It has nothing to do with the Law of Attraction.  It will not enable you to get rich with a snap of your fingers.  It will not turn you into a socially responsible entrepreneur.  It will not challenge any religious or political commitments you hold.

You will hear very little "woo-woo" philosophy in the program.   It mostly consists of questions that smack you in the face, get you thinking and alter your perspective.  I call it "The Zen of Money" because your concept of money will shift, rather as in this classic Zen quote from Qingyuan Weixin in a book by D.T. Suzuki:

Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.

Similarly, you'll go from a largely unconscious and reactive concept of money to money being something else besides money and finally money being just money again - but oh, what a difference in your peace of mind and self-mastery when that happens!

If you'd like to get a sense of my intellectual background, a good thing to read is my page on 30 books that have influenced me greatly.

Why So Astoundingly Inexpensive?

For now, the Zen of Money is only $297.  I have charged $797 for comparable interactive learning programs, but during the beta phase of this course, I want participants who are already familiar with the high value I provide to my readers and customers and who are extremely eager to explore this topic with me. 

Later, when I have testimonials attesting to the value participants gained from the program, and I have kicked out any kinks in the process, I will open it up to a wider public at a higher price.  If I decide to turn part of the content into a non-interactive online course, you'll receive a free ticket to that version of the program.   

I'm limiting enrollment this time around to just 10 people, so if you're reading now with avid interest, be sure to sign up below without delay.

Your Guarantee, a Warning and My Expectations

This course is not for everyone.  You may find portions of it unnerving.  You may get angry at me or other participants in the program when ideas in which you are deeply invested get questioned.  I will do my best to keep discussions gentle and on track and to keep the focus on the goal of self-discovery for everyone.

As stated above, this program is for solo professionals, business owners and freelancers who are already in business.

The refund policy is as follows:  Sign up and read Lesson #1 when it comes to you by email.  If you cannot get on board with my approach to the topic, you'll know.  Simply let me know prior to our first coaching call on February 4 that you'd like your money back.  Beyond that point, there are no refunds. 

Because this program is new, I'll expect substantive (private) feedback from you on what you got out of it and how you think it could be improved.  Please enroll only if you believe you will be in a position to give it your time, energy and sincerity - around one hour a week in addition to the scheduled coaching calls.

If anything in my description isn't clear, or if you have questions about the program, I am happy to provide answers.  Just email me.   

Sign Up Here

The whole course fee is due when you sign up.  Simply click the link below to enroll:

   

 

 
   
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