Monetize Your Mission with Nicola Grace

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TSP 138 | Monetize Your Mission

Episode Summary

Once you have a clear vision of how you want to express your passion in the world that is when you can monetize your mission and keep doing what you love. Nicola Grace can help you make the world a better place and leave a legacy for the next generation. Start acknowledging your dormant gifts and talents, because they can lead you to a passionate career and a life filled with happiness.

Today’s guest on The Successful Pitch is Nicola Grace who called in from Australia and is the Mission Mentor. She is really great at helping people realize what are their beliefs that keep them from being successful. She specializes in social entrepreneurship. She even has some intuitive skills that she uses with me on the show to tap in to what my beliefs might be that are keeping me from being my best self. Enjoy the episode.

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Monetize Your Mission with Nicola Grace

 

Today’s guest is all the way from Australia, Nicola Grace. She has this amazing story from cancer to making history by saving a billion-dollar industry from ruins. She’s an award-winning strategist and best-selling author. She literally helps entrepreneurs and visionaries clarify and monetize their life’s big mission so they can make a bigger impact, transform the world, and build their legacy. Who doesn’t want to do that? She is known as one of the top speakers on social entrepreneurship. Even though she’s from New Zealand, she lives in Australia. She has an intuitive visionary strategy skill set that makes her the secret weapon for politicians, business owners and thought leaders. She has built a six-figure business by spearheading hundreds of social business enterprises that are making a global impact. Welcome to the show. 

Thanks, John. Awesome to be here.

I’m always interested in how people start their story, the story of origin. If you wouldn’t mind, before you became such an expert in writing a book and helping people with social entrepreneurship, tell us how did you become an entrepreneur? 

TSP 138 | Monetize Your Mission

Monetize Your Mission: I’m a natural strategist and I could see how well if you just did this and you just did that, you’d get a better result

I became an entrepreneur really early on in my early twenties because basically I thought every boss I had ever had in jobs while I was going through school and university were idiots. I’m a natural strategist and I could see how well if you just did this and you just did that, you’d get a better result or you’d be a better person or things would work well and there’d be harmony. I was always in this critical mind of looking at how things could be done better. I really didn’t like taking orders from people that I arrogantly, in those days, assumed weren’t as smart as I was. Really early on, I learned that I wasn’t a good employee.

You are known for being a Mission Mentor. I think that is so important that people need to be able to express their vision and their mission to people who they’re trying to get to be on their team, as well as potential clients. How did you come up with being a Mission Mentor?

It was a process of evolution. I’ve been a serial entrepreneur for three decades now, but really everything came together for me when I’ve been diagnosed with cancer for the second time. I was in my office and she told me that it was a bill that was passing through New Zealand parliament that was going to have Australia and New Zealand form a corporation run by the pharmaceutical companies to regulate the Natural Health Industry and themselves. We all know where that would have ended up. They fought that legislation for seven years. It was passed in Australia. It was waiting for one more reading to pass in New Zealand. While that had happened, I had this flash of inspiration of a strategy that I thought would work. She got me an interview with the board of one of the big industry bodies that was fighting the legislation. I presented my strategy, and miracles of miracles would have it, they supported me and within six months we defeated the legislation when they didn’t do it in seven years. Everybody was saying to me, “You’ve got mission mojo. You’re a woman on a mission. You are the one that was supposed to do this, obviously, because it was part of your purpose.” Everything filtered in for me to think about this idea of mission.

I had two people in my life, my brother and then a partner later on, both of them said words to the effect, “You need to figure out what the success factor was and teach everybody that’s campaigning to make the world better, to change society in some way, to help humanity, to help the planet. Teach them what the success factors were so that we can get all of these missions for change out there.” I started working in the not-for-profit field, but that was a minefield. I was getting successes if they were implementing my strategy, but there was so much ego involved. It just wasn’t my thing. When I transferred to start working with entrepreneur activists, entrepreneurs that go into business to change something, either at the societal level or the world or what have you. Then it started to become social entrepreneurship, and I found my sweet spot. I love working with people that really want to create a better world for people, for the community or for the world at large. It evolved from there and then it just popped out that I’m going to be the Mission Mentor to help people strategize and put the social enterprises together.

[Tweet “I’m going to be the Mission Mentor to help people strategize and put the social enterprises together.”]

I am a bit different from a lot of people working in that space because I go to the spiritual side and start with, what is it that you’re really here to do? When you’ve got a purpose, when you’ve got, “There’s something else I’m supposed to be doing,” you’re hinting at the fact that you’re here to do something specific. That’s where I start, rather than, “What idea should we pluck out of the ear for you to build your business on?”

I think your passion and your purpose have to be more than just making money. It seems like that’s really where you’re starting from is, “What does your gut tell that makes you want to make a difference?” You really are the expert on telling people how they can get paid well to change the world. So many people associate this concept of, “That would be volunteer work. This non-profit would never pay me. Yes, I’d love to help build homes or whatever it is, make the water cleaner,” but that’s not a career there. What are your tips on how we can get paid well while changing the world?

I think that’s really important because as governments are donating the money to charities and more and more corporations are down-sizing and so therefore the giving is shrinking. It’s more important than ever. The way I approach it is let’s first of all find out how you feel passionate about your expression. What lights you up as you express yourself? When you’re speaking or when you’re interviewing somebody, when you’re creating a product or you’re creating something via writing or with your hands, or when you’re communicating with people, collaborating, networking, what type of expressions light you up and make you feel incredibly passionate? Because then, we know the essence of what I call your mojo. We know the essence of where you’re going to be happy, but also in that passion is your ability to influence. When we know those things, we’ve got some clarity on how we can trade, what are you going to trade, and then we look at monetizing that.

TSP 138 | Monetize Your Mission

Monetize Your Mission: I started speaking more, doing videos and getting out there and speaking my message.

To give you a clear example, for me, when I first started out my business, I was taking my intuitive skills and I was doing life purpose readings to people, helping people just figure out their life purpose. I started attracting lots of business people, so then I started doing workshops. When I discovered that my passionate expressions are speaking and writing, I wrote my next book and then within six months I became a three-time best-selling author, I’m now seven-time best-selling author. I started speaking more, doing videos and getting out there and speaking my message. My business just boomed and then I reached six figures within ten months and I’m now at double six figures, hitting towards seven figures. Then I went, “If that works for me, could it work with others?” I started using this formula. Let’s find out where these passionate expressions are and how that can translate into what you would trade, i.e. “Give me money and I will give you this,” then we can figure out the monetization model around how you’re going to trade your way to change the world.

What’s the name of your book?

I’ve got several books. The book that I wrote way back then was called Discover What You’re Here To Do. The other one that I’m launching, which is just a bigger version, a more updated version, is Right Mission Right Money, which is a social entrepreneur’s guide to clarifying and monetizing missions that transform the world.

Is there an example from the book besides your own personal example that you can share with us or someone you’ve worked with that you have helped?

There are several examples that I gave in the book. One client in particular who was the first client that made me realize that what I was doing was duplicatable to everybody. She thought she was a coach in the running space. Running was her passion and so she wanted to monetize running. How do you monetize running? She started coaching runners on how to run better, how to have mindful running and so on and so forth, and she was struggling with it. When we found out what her expression modalities are, we actually found out that one of her expressions was to change things. She was obviously in the space of transformation. She was also a speaker. When we started totally changing her monetization model, offering products that we had her leverage so she wasn’t doing one-on-one, where she was helping change makers make changes in a specific area or their life, all of a sudden she started getting more clients or just more people from social media, because she was very big on social media but it hadn’t monetized. She got more people saying, “I want to work with you. I’m resonating with what you’re saying.”

Even more miraculously, within three weeks I said, “Do A, B, C. Implement this into your business.” She raced away and implemented it, posted something on social media about this new direction. Two Google officials commented on it and said, “You’ve nailed it.” All of a sudden, overnight, people on social media went, “She’s the expert,” even though she was just beginning internet marketer. Things just snowballed from there. She’s rather big on the internet now working with change makers, helping them build their businesses.

It seems like it’s very important to come up with a niche, like you’re the Mission Mentor, I’m the Pitch Whisperer. I think when you really target and have something that’s memorable for people, it really can help your branding and your credibility to let people go, “This is what you do and this is why you’re the expert.” That really is so important, to get that clarification, isn’t it?

Absolutely, and the clarification and the congruity. I have had people who say, “I’m a business mentor. I’m a business coach.” I say, “How many businesses have you owned?” They haven’t owned any. There’s no congruity in that niche. Again, I take it back to purpose. What’s your purpose? Where are your passions? Who are you actually here to serve? You get that magnetism. People get you, they go, “I’m attracted to you. I’m attracted to what you’re saying. I’m resonating with what you’re saying because I’m feeling the congruence in everything that you’re doing, saying and how you’re presenting yourself.”

It’s interesting you said that because I coach people all the time on if you’re pitching to get an investor to fund your startup, for example, one of the questions they ask is, “Why are you uniquely qualified to execute this idea you’re pitching us to invest in?” If you say, “I have a military background and I’m pitching an idea to keep the school safe,” well then that makes sense. Or, “I’m a former math teacher and I have an app to help students with their math,” that makes sense. “I won Salesperson of the Year at Condé Nast, so I’m the expert on helping people tell stories in order to increase their sales.” The minute there is a disconnect, then it all falls apart. I love what you’re saying about that and giving people these three or four examples of figure out your passion but make sure that what you’re going out to say you want to do is tied to your expertise. 

You need to use your unique skill set, your talents and your gifts. I find people struggle knowing what those are a lot. My first module in my signature program, Right Mission Right Money, hones in on those passions and I call it the passionate purpose factor. What are those expressions? Where’s the passion? When people go through that process, they find that they’ve got gifts and talents that have been dormant that they haven’t acknowledged, or that they even never knew they had because they took them for granted. If we could give a tip to the audience today, it would be to sit down and have a look at everything you’re denying about how good you are, what you do for others, the gifts that you have, what people say you’re good at, and you deny. Write it down because there’s a lot of juice in that denial.

TSP 138 | Monetize Your Mission

Monetize Your Mission: You need to use your unique skill set, your talents and your gifts.

It’s interesting because we assume that our gifts, our genius, if you will, everyone can do them and you realize, “Everyone can’t do them.” Sometimes it comes easy to us so we just assume it’s easy for everyone and that’s not the case. A lot of people have a lot of resistance to playing what you call a bigger game and fear is part of it, I’m guessing. What is the resistance and how do we remove it? 

That is a really great question and a really necessary question because it’s one of the reasons why we’re floundering in the world right now. We’re leaving the change up to politicians that aren’t really motivated to make the significant changes. When I worked with the Natural Health Industry in New Zealand to do that big thing, I really dissected a lot of them and many people out there who want to do good things in the world. I thought that I had to do that for free because it was my service to humanity and you shouldn’t charge for serving humanity. I actually didn’t make any money doing that. That was totally volunteer work but 30,000 jobs were saved and 3,000 businesses were saved. There were a lot of businesses that got to keep trading and keep money coming in because of what I did. I didn’t think that I should get paid for that.

I realized in that moment, actually it was an epiphany moment where I actually saw my brain come outside my head and present itself in front of me. I clearly saw the two hemispheres of the brain, the left and the right. All the thinking about money and reward and work were whirling away around in circles through the left hemisphere, and the passion, the purpose, love and doing what I want to do and everything was in the right side. I could see that they weren’t communicating with each other. I came up with this concept called Split Brain Hemisphere Syndrome. I saw it in a lot of my clients whereby the idea of making money by being on purpose was repugnant, as in you should give the gifts that you’ve got from God for free kind of attitude.

For some reason, it’s actually okay to exploit the plan and get paid a lot of money. There’s a real split in this thinking. Through the process of looking at what beliefs actually hold that split in place and then removing those beliefs, learning how to dissolve those beliefs, that resistance to charging what you’re worth for being on purpose started to subside, and even believing that you could make a lot of money by being a social entrepreneur. There are social entrepreneur billionaires. Richard Branson is one of them. Roger Hamilton is a multi-millionaire, big social entrepreneur. Elon Musk is a multi-billionaire. We’ve got these great examples out there. Anita Roddick was probably the first social entrepreneur, The Body Shop. She broke the mold there in creating a beauty line where she was bringing forward this idea of saving the rainforest. They were the forerunners. The rest of us are being programmed to think in these split ways. You’ve got to work to make money and you have to volunteer to save the world. We bring those two together and people are going to be on focus on solving some of the most pressing problems in the world because they’re getting paid to do it.

It’s really removing that belief that things are mutually exclusive, that I can’t make a difference in the world and make money. It’s fascinating. I heard someone give a TED Talk on that. Why are we paying someone all this money to do something that’s not helping the planet? Yet when someone who’s working in a charity, people don’t want to attract the best talent to run the charity because they don’t think that person should have a high salary. It doesn’t make any sense. 

It doesn’t make any sense. It’s like a false apex or should we say an upside down apex, because the apex should be completely flipped. If you’re doing something that’s destroying the planet, you shouldn’t be getting paid anything.

You mentioned your intuitive side earlier. I’m just curious, how does that work? Do you need the person in front of you? Can you do it via Skype? Is there anything you pick up from someone’s voice or energy? I just thought if you have that ability, let’s see if you pick up anything that the listeners who listen to my show on a regular basis would know something about me, where it could be a fun little way to play and something unique.

All of the above. Usually, I need to have some material and got to be in the head space for it. Let’s just see, I think that’s fun. I’m up for the challenge.

Sometimes I’ve been guest on shows and they ask me to come up with a pitch for them right away. You just have to trust your process. I just thought if people could get a sense of, obviously it’s not a whole reading, but just any initial hints or thoughts that I can say, “That’s definitely me,” or, “I’m not sure about that.” I thought it would be fun for people to get to see you in action a little bit because then they get a sense of, “I need to get her to help me.”

TSP 138 | Monetize Your Mission

Monetize Your Mission: You’ve got a level of mastery, you’ve got a following.

Usually I work best if you’ve got some issue or pressing question or some clarity that you want to talk because that’s my expertise. I use that as a doorway in. You’re scaling at the moment, are you, because you’re forging ahead with great speed. You’ve got a level of mastery, you’ve got a following. You’re also going up to a higher level within your teaching, you’re downloading something really big. It’s pretty huge and it’s going to need a lot of collaboration, but you’re running into that problem that a lot of people have when they scale, which is lack of time and lack of that extra funding that you need. That’s slowing you down a bit but that’s coming from a belief system actually, which is nice to know. We need to correct something within your belief system to move forward. It has to do with being a male leader. Now, I may be way off the charts here but you called me so I’m going to give it to you as I see it.

I love it, you’re right on target.

This is really true about a lot of really good men on the planet right now. It’s the guilt of the ancestral men and what they’ve done to the planet, what they’ve done to women and children. You need to shake that off and not take responsibility for that, because that’s part of the belief system that’s holding you back. Power corrupts; “If I had absolute power as a man, I’m going to get corrupted.” It’s a belief system around those ideas that actually on yours, you’ve inherited them from the men in your family. 15% of our brain is ancestral. The thoughts in our brain come from our ancestors.

That resonates with me in a lot of levels actually. My parents are from the south and I was just mortified as a child to read about slavery. That just freaks me out. As a white Anglo-Saxon male in this country, I’m very aware of all the advantages that I have, and certain things going on that upset me and I feel guilty, I guess. I’ve always said I don’t really want to run a big company because that’s not my passion, managing a bunch of people, but I love helping people. The interesting thing is this lack of time. If I’m not working every single minute then I feel guilty. That’s where it is, there’s the belief. I can’t be wealthy unless I’m exhausted and working myself to the bone, which I think a lot of entrepreneurs feel. 

You’ve worked really hard so that you feel like you deserve it. Again, that comes from having a look at all these people that were wealthy and were corrupted and lazy, but we’re in a different time. The key thing is unlocking that relationship between power, corruption and evil. One of the ways I do that is I allow myself to be the powerful woman that I am because I only use power as a source for good in the world. I now allow myself to be as wealthy as I possibly can be because I’m using my wealth as a force for good in the world. I only use my money as a force for good in the world. I only use my power as a force for good in the world. You just keep affirming those things to bring out the opposite and then get rid of the beliefs that come up around that, and that you are a powerful force for good in the world to drown out that ancestral use and abuse of power.

That’s so helpful because just that makes me already feel lighter, a little more focused, and a little less guilty. I wasn’t even aware I was having any of that. I can’t thank you enough. It’s really valuable. I can see why you’re so successful.

Thanks. That’s good. It’s great to have that. You do need to be forging ahead with what you’re doing because the more people you could help then the more people they can help, and the ripple effect to that is going to be massive, causing a transformation in the world.

Tell us our listeners how they can engage with you. We want to send people to your website, NicolaGrace.com. I also want to see if there’s a way for people to start following you on Twitter and if you have other things that they could start learning from you. 

Twitter’s not my thing because a lot of my audience aren’t on Twitter, but definitely Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll find all of that on my website. The best thing to do really is to go over to my mini course because it introduces you to the entire concept of how to clarify and monetize your mission today in today’s world. We’re going into a robotic revolution. We’re losing a lot of jobs and a lot of businesses and roles and everything. There’s a specific way that I have people prepare for that and monetize that. It’s five days with short videos with things that you implement and clarity assessments that you do for yourself, and that really introduces you to all of my teaching. From there, you’ll be invited to come to a master class or contact me and work with me if you feel you want to go into that depth of transformation.

[Tweet “Get Clarity To Monetize Your Mission”]

Is there any final thoughts you have to give people who are saying, “I have a business now and I want to learn how I can incorporate social change into that.”?

It really has to do with people asking those questions or feeling that desire, there are also hints and clues and things that are being drawn to you at the same time to help you with that first step. I really encourage you to take that first step, and obviously, do my course and then also listen to what else is going on in you. Most importantly, say yes because I see this a lot. People go, “I’ve got this really good idea or I think my mission is along this line, but who am I to do that? Who’s going to listen to me?” We’re being so programmed. I guess the final thought is don’t believe in the program. Know that it is just a program and yes, it is you. Yes, it is, you are the one that is going to do something that will cause a ripple effect to make change. At this time on the planet right now, it doesn’t matter what culture you come from, what country you come from, we are all being called into higher service to make sure that our world continues to survive.

I can’t thank you enough for sharing your insights, your intuition and your passion with us. You’ve inspired all of us to take some action and realize that we all deserve to make a difference and make money at the same time. 

Thank you.

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Tags: Discover What You're Here to Do, John Livesay, Monetize Your Mission, Nicola Grace, Right Mission Right Money, sellingsecretsforfunding, successful pitch