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Have you ever noticed yourself wanting to say something in a newsletter or a piece of content and stopping yourself because you think that some members of your audience might not like it?

I have. Multiple times.

Over the years, I’ve noticed myself censoring different parts of my message because I was afraid they would be off-putting for some people in my audience.

Years ago, this happened around planning and goals. I stopped talking about them as much because I got pushback from people for whom planning felt too rigid or too structured, and rather than root into the fact that planning, strategy and goal-setting have been a huge part of my own success, I softened that part of my message to make myself more palatable.

It took me years to realise I was doing it.

And once I saw it, it was immediately obvious that I had been suppressing a huge part of who I am, how I run my business and what I know actually helps my ideal clients move forward.

More recently, I’ve realised I’ve been doing the same thing with something else.

Money.

Wanting money. Setting financial goals. Naming income desires. Talking honestly about ambition. Talking about the connection between impact and income. Talking about the financial results I’ve created in my own business and the results I’ve supported my clients to create in theirs. Talking about the money stories that keep so many conscious business owners undercharging, overgiving and struggling financially.

And I think I’ve avoided talking about it as directly as I want to because I know that some people in my audience will be uncomfortable with it. But here’s my truth:

I’ve always been ambitious about money. I want to have enough money to live in a beautiful home, put my kids through college, help out loved ones, give generously to causes I care about, take care of my health and invest in my personal and professional development.

I want choice, agency and spaciousness. I want to be well-resourced. I want to be able to make decisions from a place of ease and stability rather than fear and scarcity.

And I want the same for my clients.

But for some reason, I’ve rarely talked about that part of myself explicitly.

I can talk about putting people before profit and service over sales all day long, because those are deeply held values for me and they always will be. I can talk about ethical marketing, relationship-building, integrity, trust and being of service without hesitation.

But what I’ve neglected to talk about explicitly is that those principles do not mean you have to struggle financially.

They do not mean you have to undercharge, overgive, stay exhausted, avoid growth or quietly hope that your needs will somehow get met if you just keep being a good and generous person.

Because here’s what I know to be true.

You can be ethical in how you run your business and make a really good income. You can care deeply about your clients and still be well paid. You can reject manipulative sales tactics and still sell out your offers. You can put service at the centre of your work and still want your business to generate more money than you personally need, so that you have more power, choice and capacity to do good with it.

And I think avoiding that conversation keeps us stuck.

I think too many conscious business owners have absorbed the idea that wanting more money is somehow wrong. As if ambition is automatically greedy. As if having wealth is automatically unethical. As if the only way to prove that we care is to keep ourselves under-resourced.

And I just don’t believe that.

In fact, I think it’s ideas like these that keep brilliant, caring, talented people exhausted, underpaid and constantly questioning whether they can ever do enough to earn enough without compromising who they are.

Now I know that there will be members of my audience who will say, “I don’t do what I do for the money,” or “money isn’t what motivates me,” and that is absolutely fine.

I’m not suggesting that money needs to be your primary motivation or that your work should become all about income. For many of us, myself included, the deeper motivation is impact, service, contribution, liberation, healing, justice, freedom and love.

But personally, I am done pretending that money does not matter.

Because it matters when you want to take care of your family. It matters when you need dental or health care. It matters when you get an unexpected bill. It matters when you want or need to rest without financial worry. It matters when you want to get support, give support, invest in your own growth or contribute to the growth of others.

I also think it matters when you want to do this work for a long time and for a lot of people, because making sure you are financially sustained allows you to have a greater impact for longer.

And for me, this is where the next evolution of my work is going.

Not away from integrity or ethical marketing. Not away from service, care or relationship based business.

But towards a fuller conversation about what becomes possible when we stop treating ambition like a dirty word and allow our desire for more income to sit alongside integrity and ethics.

Because I want to work with people who care deeply about doing business differently and who are also ready to own their ambitions and desires.

I want to work with people who want their work to have impact and for their business to be successful. People who are ready for more income, more stability, more spaciousness and more agency because they understand that being properly sustained is what makes the work possible.

And if that puts some people off, I’m learning to be okay with that. Because the more honest I am about what I believe, the more clearly the right people can recognise themselves in my work and the more clearly the people who aren’t aligned can opt out. Which, of course, is how it should be.

So I’m curious to know if you see yourself in this. If maybe you too have been quietly denying your ambition, or minimising your desire for more income because you’re afraid that wanting more makes you greedy, unethical, materialistic or somehow less devoted to your work.

If so, I want you to know that I see you. And I think your desire for more might be asking you to expand your perspective of what’s possible.

I think it might be asking you to stop building a business around survival and start building one that is capable of supporting you, your life and your ability to have huge impact. 

I’d love to know if this resonates. Let me know in the comments.

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