The Move to Millions Manifesto

Chapter Action Plan

1. Journal about the other side of your messy middle. Be sure to include what you’re grateful for and what your business will be like when you arrive on the other side of this season in your business.

2. Determine what you need to focus on getting back to the basics of in order to navigate this season.

3. Map your next best move during this season in your business.

4. Find a community for support as you navigate (try ours).

Remember: Information without action is a waste of time. Set a plan right now to implement so that your middle becomes less messy, and you get one step closer to your million-dollar goal.

“To make and move millions, it’s going to take mastery, operational obedience, vision, and execution.”

—GOD

When I was a little girl, I was lucky enough to be introduced to entrepreneurship through my paternal grandmother, Sylvia Jervey, or Nanny, as we called her. She sold freeze cups out of her South Bridge project. I’d watch her make a pitcher of Kool-Aid, usually the red kind, pour it into white Styrofoam cups, and place them in her freezer. When the neighborhood kids came knocking, she charged them twenty-five cents for one. Once a week, she’d have several flavors for the neighborhood kids to choose from. Nanny didn’t play about her freeze cups business. Even though we were Nanny’s grandchildren, she never gave us free freeze cups. Never. She was the first person to teach me, without me even realizing it at the time, that you had to have respect for your own pricing. In business, we solve problems for profit. The problem Nanny was solving was a sweet cool treat for the neighborhood kids on a hot summer day.

I learned many things from watching Nanny work. One of my favorite lessons was understanding the value of your product. I recall so many times when the neighborhood kids would try to get over on Nanny, coming to the back door with fifteen or twenty cents. They might have come that way, but trust me, they left empty-handed. Nanny didn’t play that. You could try to hustle her if you wanted. You were usually the one who felt hustled when all was said and done. She was the first person to teach me about fiscal responsibility. Anyone who’s come to any workshop I hold where I cover pricing has to recite several axioms as a result of what my Nanny taught me (I shared each of them in the offer suite chapter).

They were just a few that I can totally admit to having learned from watching Nanny.

You can blame Nanny for me not offering discounts! Nanny was serious about her coins. She made no apologies for it. It’s definitely a principle we can all leverage today to move our businesses forward. One of the biggest challenges I see our clients and prospective clients face and attempt to work through hinges on their pricing and the belief that something is better than nothing. This lack-minded pricing philosophy has stifled many businesses. Price is an indication of value by the consumer. When I see something that is priced low but promising a massive result, I run in the opposite direction.

When God gave me each word for MOVE, I remember immediately thinking about how I learned about mastery. Another time, I was at Nanny’s for the weekend, and I got into more trouble than usual. It was so bad that my dad was called in to intervene. While I can’t recall exactly what I did, I can recall the pain I felt from the experience. While I wasn’t a stranger to getting a beating, this pain wasn’t from my hands hurting. My dad was not a violent man; he was a practical one. He wasn’t above the belt, but he used it as a last resort if he thought there was a better way to teach you a lesson. Bob wanted better for his kids than he had. So, often, the lessons or punishment we received came in the form of something to aid us on our journey to adulthood. It’s actually a lesson I plan to take into raising my own children one day.

When I went to live with my dad after my mom went to jail, I learned the importance of mastery. My dad was a former teacher turned industrial engineer who was known for being a devout disciplinarian. I was grateful to my father for handling his responsibility when my mom went to jail. He could have disappeared, but he didn’t. I will always thank him for that. My dad is also the reason that I value education more than material possessions.

I believe that, when given a choice between material possessions and an investment to further your development, career, and livelihood, the answer is simple: invest for the knowledge. My dad taught me that.

My dad was very strict; it was his way or the highway. He also didn’t show much emotion. He let it be known that he loved us as evidenced by the roof over our heads, the food on the table, and the clothes on our backs. My brother Dar couldn’t keep up, so he ended up leaving and the streets became his family. So before long, it was just my sister and me. My dad was traveling a lot for work back then, so we were left with my stepmother a lot. When my dad was home, he resumed his post of disciplinarian. Any time we did anything he didn’t like, he sought to teach us a lesson. The lessons that he used were always designed to make us better. He wanted us to think logically instead of responding emotionally. When I started to think about sitting down to write this chapter, I instantly saw my dad standing over me with a stern look and a command to write one thousand sentences. He believed that, by the time you were done, you’d have mastery of the lesson he meant for you to learn so that you wouldn’t make that mistake again. He was usually right.

Call it what you want, but the man had a point. Because of my sentence writing skills, I didn’t go through half of what my younger sister did. I was the first of my dad’s kids, and the only of my mom’s, to actually graduate from high school. Getting out mostly unscathed and scandal-free was a plus by itself. Don’t get me wrong. I did my fair share of dirt, but it wasn’t the kind that you couldn’t wipe off.

When I got in trouble at Nanny’s that time, my punishment was to write five thousand sentences. I had until midnight to do it. The edict came down around five o’clock that evening. One thing for sure, and two things for certain, was that my dad was after the best from us. Even though I had blisters on my hands when I was done, I had learned a lesson that day. As I reflect some thirty-five years later, that lesson was about mastery. Master your mind so you make decisions that advance you. My dad was clear. At least one of his kids was going to be something in the world. Although he had never been able to overcome his own demons, his goal was that we (it really felt like I) were going to make something of ourselves. Dad was tough; he was after mastery. Now, at the time, it sucked. As I look back today, I’m grateful to my dad for teaching me a valuable lesson about mastery, especially since we lost him while I was writing this book. This lesson warms my heart, and I am grateful to be able to share it with you.

By definition, mastery is a comprehensive knowledge or skill in a subject.31

When I first started my business, I was the master of nothing. In fact, if you used to watch Good Times and you remember episodes that featured Lenny (pronounced lenn-naaay), I was like him. I had plentaaay.32 If you recall, you could find him at any time with tons of goods—from toothbrushes to watches and everything in between. Lenny was more of a generalist. When I first started IOE, I was, too. I would speak, facilitate, consult, coach on anything—seriously, anything. I had coached clients who had relationship issues despite the fact that I couldn’t keep my own man. I coached people on whatever they needed because I just needed to make money. I had bills to pay.

Being a generalist in those early days was a matter of survival. It kept me fresh because I had to know a lot of things. However, the challenge is that when you know a lot, you are a master of nothing. That reflects in your ability to get clients and to earn at a level to prevent you from having to go back to work and end up filing bankruptcy like I did.

When I wasn’t being a generalist, I was creating generic content. I spent the first nine months creating content based on what I thought my clients would like to receive from me instead of conducting some market research so that my time wouldn’t be spent in vain. As a part of those nine months, I created tons of “good” content; but it turned out not to be desired by the marketplace, which is why I ended up running out of money and, ultimately, filing bankruptcy and going back to work. To this day, I never recommend that anyone create before they sell; that is not mastery.

Mastery, on the other hand, is validating that the problem you solve is one that those with the problem are willing to make an investment in a solution, both financially and emotionally. These days, I like to call this the universal law of business. It is when we are masters of the solution to a problem that our most ideal clients have that we can get them to invest in the solution to solve the problem. People in pain will always be seeking a pain killer. The master can stop the pain.

As a result, I have mastered my craft. That is why I have won so many awards, had clients renew multiple times to work with us, and am known for changing lives in masterful ways. Mastery, according to Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, is considered having ten thousand hours of “proven” knowledge and experience on the topic you want to be known for.33 At this point, I have more than twenty-five thousand hours in, and that is why we also have five hundred testimonials on our company website. As Toni Childs from Girlfriends used to say, we specialize in results.34

After God gave me the acronym for MOVE, I quickly realized that it was a double entendre. It works in life and in business. I love acronyms. There is only one artform I love more than acronyms: writing manifestos. A manifesto is a public declaration, historically tied to politics.35 I got excited when God spoke Move to Millions because it meant that I was finally going to have my own movement, and that meant I would need a manifesto.

I remember years before when a brand influencer named Warren Carlyle, whom I had met at my friend Aprille Franks’ event, asked me, “What’s your movement?”

I looked at him with that deer-in-the-headlights look as I said to myself under my breath, What in the devil is a movement?

You see, I didn’t build my business to seven figures online. My business was built leveraging tried and tested offline marketing strategies, like speaking and live events. So, I wasn’t used to all of this online business lingo. I had struggled with the “tempermentalism” of online marketing. It seems like it could go away in an instant. I remember those times in recent years when Facebook or Instagram went down, and the whole world panicked. Well, probably everyone but me because my business never hinged on the internet or social media.

He went on to school me. “To stand out online you need a movement, a shared purpose and reason to bring people together. When you have a movement, it will galvanize people, create a shared purpose, and meet a substantial need. Everyone is looking for a place to belong, a place that feels safe for them to discover who they really are. That’s what your movement will do for others.”

I’ll admit not only did I love his definition, but I loved the energy with which he expressed it. I wanted a movement, and I wanted one bad. In that moment, as I stood there thinking about how to answer his question, I had nothing.

Nothing.

For years, I racked my brain, trying to come up with a movement. I even asked my clients and small team if we had one. They, too, looked at me like I had looked at Warren.

We were movement-less.

Probably because movements aren’t “come up with.” They are inspired. They are purpose personified. I now believe that a movement is a natural extension of who you are and the work you were called to do. In the early years, I felt that my work mattered. However, I hadn’t really taken the time to hear the purpose in my work until I decided that I was going to stop chasing the million-dollar mark. It was just such a shallow goal to live for. Until I stopped setting revenue goals and started to set tithe goals instead, I was just meandering, one step above mediocrity. Shifting my focus is what allowed my movement to come into my life experience. God was able to speak, and I was able to hear and then act because I was open, in alignment, and able to focus outside of myself. Focusing on tithing and, therefore, giving was the beginning of my Next Level Everything.

Movements don’t just spring up out of nowhere. Until I was grounded in something bigger than myself, I couldn’t live into my ultimate purpose. My purpose brought this movement right to my proverbial front door. What I tried to “come up with” for years came to be just like that. Just like God said, “Let there be,” there was Move to Millions. Just like that, I had a movement, which meant I needed a manifesto. In order to create a manifesto, the mission had to be clear.

The Move to Millions mission is to eradicate small business poverty (a low six-figure business) and create CEOs that normalize wealth, scale a sustainable business, establish a financial legacy, and shake the planet. We believe that wealth and abundance are your birthright. We believe that you came into the earth realm as abundance personified. Then, your family introduced you to fear, lack, and uncertainty. Don’t get us wrong. We believe that your family did the best that they could with what they had. We believe that their best was not the best, God’s best. We believe that God is calling you back to your birthright. We believe that it’s time. We believe you deserve to get everything God earmarked for you. We believe that entrepreneurship is the vehicle God created to bring wealth into your life experience. We believe that when businesses make more, the impact is felt by millions. We believe that if you didn’t come from millions, millions should come from you.

I love that it’s Move to Millions because, if you desire to generate millions of dollars in your business per year, it will require consistent movement—action—to make the journey. In fact, I typically go so far as to say that there are seven M’s that are essential to making, moving, and leaving millions: mindset, messaging, marketing, money, methodology, metrics, and movement (action). Since getting to the million-dollar mark doesn’t happen overnight, it’s important to remember that no one goes to bed a blunder and wakes up a wonder. There has to be consistent action happening to produce millions. It’s about the principles and the process. The move is a marathon, not a sprint. Our manifesto reflects our vision and mission. I am excited to share our manifesto with you:

I am wealth. I am abundance. I am blessed. I am grateful. I am loved. I am surrendered. I am an entrepreneurial leader who was made to move millions.

I came into the earth realm as abundance and now I am stepping back into the light.

I am an Incredible One and millions are my birthright. I’m ready to get what God has earmarked for me so I am ready to MOVE.

I make millions. I move millions. And because my business serves me financially, spiritually, and sustainably, I’m going to leave millions. My legacy will be financial.

I am prepared for rain, and I am changing the game.

I am my ancestors’ wildest dream. It’s my time. It’s my turn.

I didn’t come from millions, but millions will absolutely come from me.

Along with the manifesto I created, the inspiration kept flowing. So, I also created what is now the Ten Commandments of a CEO on the Move to Millions:

• Thou shalt stop stressing and start surrendering.

• Thou shalt forgive every day so that nothing keeps you from more abundance than your hand, heart, and bank account can hold.

• Thou shalt not be all the things; thou shall be the co-CEO and thou shalt know that God is the real CEO of your company.

• Thou shalt know that you deserve a business that serves you financially, spiritually, and sustainably.

• Thou shalt make decisions from your vision point, not your vantage point.

• Thou shalt work the business from the top, not the bottom.

• Thou shalt not base your prices on your time, but instead on the result you provide to the problem clients can’t solve on their own.

• Thou shalt set strategic sales goals and put the systems and processes in place to achieve them with grace and ease instead of hustle and grind.

• Thou shalt be confident at all times. Your confidence will close more deals than your skills ever will.

• Thou shalt focus on strengthening your strategy, systems, sales, support, and success mindset.

Chapter Action Plan

1. Journal about your own movement’s manifesto. What would you want to share with those who are part of your movement?

Remember: Information without action is a waste of time. Set a plan right now to implement so that you have the right words to speak over your life and business on your way to the million-dollar mark.